The Well-Kept Body Image Secret

By Mallory

So. Awkward subject, but I bet someone out there can relate.

When I went to college, I gained weight - pretty much the official Freshman 15, actually. Then I lost 25 pounds, over 4 months, in a healthy way.

But I didn't even notice a difference in the way I looked. In the mirror, I looked as big as ever. So I've learned that my actual jean size has nothing to do with how I feel about the way I look.

Which is really scary.

Changing your appearance doesn't help your self-image if there's already something wrong. Losing weight didn't solve my problems. New clothes, new hair, new makeup...  they didn't, either. When I looked in the mirror this morning (and yesterday morning, and last week and last month) and hated the way I looked just as much as I did a year ago, two years ago...

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Where Do You Belong? (Re-Post)

By Erika

  “...thought I belonged
but I know I don't
thought I had love
but it is not enough
an aching inside speaking to me
how could I feel like this
so aimless
I've always known this wasn't home...”

- Aimless -
[Bethany Dillon]

I was hit with a thought tonight while I was doing my quiet time. The funny thing is, it did didn’t really have too much to do with my designated reading - it came by way of my ipod. I wasn’t paying much attention to the music playing in my headphones until I heard the line I've always known this wasn't home ring in my ears.

Something clicked.

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Cash Register Syndrome

By Mallory

So you’re at the grocery store, or Target, or wherever you shop, I guess. You’re at the cash register paying for your stuff. The cashier hands you the receipt and your change.

What happens next?

If you’re like me - and a lot of other people, I’m guessing - you hustle to put your change away and get out of that line as fast as you can, even if there’s no one behind you and even if you’re not in a hurry.

It's kind of an unnecessarily stressful moment. It's not like the cashier isn't going to start helping the person behind you in line, anyway. Why do we feel like we need to hurry? Something is propelling us out of that place, and we don’t really stop to think about what that is.

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Who You Know

By Mallory

Here they are, the two questions college students get asked all the time:

1) What's your major? 

and 

2) What are you going to do with that? 

I figured out question one (for the second time) about a year ago, and it's getting to be that time where I really need to be able to answer question two. I've over half-done my degree. So it's time, I suppose, for me to go do all the things good college students are supposed to do so I won't have to live in a cardboard box someday. For example, this Friday I have an appointment at my school's career services office, where I'm hoping to wrestle out some kind of helpful advice about getting a summer internship. (Yes, for next summer. Notice the panic.) According to the career services office, an internship is pretty much my only hope for getting a job someday. In order to pick the internship I want to apply for, I kind of need to know what kind of job I'd like to have some day, and I really, really don't know that right now. 

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Silly Fears -- No, Really.

By Mallory 

Carla: The reason I don’t touch the seat when I go to the bathroom isn’t because of germs, but because I’m afraid of toilet snakes.

Elliot: And now so am I.

- Scrubs

For anyone growing up, nervousness and fear regarding the future and the ‘real world’ seem normal. But I know a lot of my fears are unhealthy. While life will always continue to get more complex, I sometimes treat the future like it contains way too much doom and gloom. But as I try to find peace about my more serious fears, I’ve noticed I have a lot of irrational fears, too. Here’s a list of some of them. All of these have crossed my mind at one point or another, but you’ll see that they’re really not too serious.

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