conflict resolution

After we had the class on Thursday about conflict resolution I began too think more and more about what I do when I fight with the person I’m dating/living with and I do things I shouldn’t do. I never noticed that I seem to sort of make things worse sometimes. Like I try to blame them and I sometimes cant admit what I did wrong. We got in a small agreement the other day and to be honest I’m not sure now what it was even about but I was going to blame her and I caught myself and I tried to see their side and I took blame for what I did too! It actually seemed to catch her off guard because it was different than the way we usually fight. Like usually I seem to point out her faults too then we both say sorry in the end and everything is fine. We never really get in big fights and we always resolve the fight within a short period of time. I use to be the person who avoided conflict and wouldn’t talk about what was wrong and nothing would get resolved when there was a fight. I would run from the problem. I would leave the situation and then not talk about it later. I have gotten so much better and I always want to talk it though and figure it out and now I know how to resolve the conflicts in a better way.

Content vs. Process

I don't know if after thirty years of marriage if I have become a stone-Waller or a verbal bomber. Many of us who have been married would even think of airing the dirty laundry that we produce in our marriages; my parent made it look as if marriage had no problems at all.
therefor as a husband I had to learn how to defend and process without any knowledge how to make my love relationship work, even if I did not get what I wanted. My brothers and sisters look at me with contempt because I am passive to my wife right; well they (my bro. and sis.) have all been in several marriages but me only one, when I stone wall I go to the garage and work on a project and laugh and giggle about what my wife and I disagreed about; I have been caught a few times, and when I do get caught I always throw that verbal bomb like "your crazy" or "you must think I am stooped", my wife feels some guilt and accept some responsibility and I later apologize for making her feel sad, then we go to dinner at a nice restaurant or we do something we can not afford and were back to where we were, OH! except the love-making part in between.

not feeling so good...

I'm not feeling so good but I still wanted to make a blog just in time. I feel very upset that I'm not going to make to class today and if anyone has the notes for it please feel free to email them to me or something...jalesajohnson@ymail.com. I enjoyed lat class about the talk about marriage and I understand a lot more about who has authority and who doesn't. I hope to learn better throughout the rest of the semester.

Power & Decisions

Tuesday’s class was about the power and decisions. Making decisions is a very important aspect of a family life. When I was young, my family was a traditional family. My mother was a teacher; she paid more attention on my education and the housework. So when we make decisions about our family, my mother has the power because of her information influence. Most of the time, my parents have referent influence; they respect and love each other. My parents always made decisions on me, maybe they use the legitimate influence. They can find so many reasons to reject my decisions. They think they have enough experiences and know more than I do, especially about the social life. Now, the relationship of my parents is not very well, but they still have my power to maintain. However, when I decided to study abroad, they sustained me a lot. This is the first time I feel that I have so much power in my family. I do not know why, but since that time my parents already treated me as an adult more than their child. Now I am studying abroad, I made the most decisions of myself.

Making Decisions

My parents always tried to make it seem like they had equal power in making decisions. I knew from a young age however, that my dad was the one with the final say. If I was asking my mother if I could go to a concert or stay over at a friends house, she always told me she would have to talk to my dad first. At some point I just stopped asking her and went straight to my dad for requests.

Decisions in Marriage

I have noticed that in my family contrary to what history says about the man being the head and making most of the decisions my mother makes most of the big decisions in the family. My dad is rather passive and usually always tells us to go to her for answers. But lately since their marriage issues have started catching up with them my father is taking a more dominant role which has lead to a lot of arguments. It seems like they are fighting for control of the family. I also think that it might include race. My mom is black and my dad is white but my father is very interested in other cultures and I think finds himself more acculmated to them than to his own culture. My mother is very firm in her culture and from this strong sense of self-identity she has grown a very dominant and strong personality that leads her to want to be in charge.

Spring Break and Power

Over spring break, I had this wonderful power struggle with my parents. I live on my own when Im off at school, but I have to live by my parents rules when Im home. When I was growing up, my parents made all the decisions together. Even now, I see them doing that for my 11 year old brother. Everything has to be run past both parents before they could talk about it and decide on an answer. Even the simplest things, such as a sleep over, was a big decision! Now, Im almost out of college, in a serious relationship and looking in the job market, I have my own ideas about what I want to do and when. When Im at home, I have to completely rethink everything I want to do! I do understand they want me to grow up and live my own life, but in some ways I think they like me being there little girl. Im ready to make my decisions about my life, but my parents still want to have "their hands in the cookie jar" persay. I understand they want me to keep them as an influential part of my life, but I think its about time for them to turn the power over to me and let me completely make my own mistakes!

Division of Power

Tuesday's lecture was very informative about the different divisions of power. Because my parents are divorced, and have been since I was a baby, I have lived the majority of the time with my mom, so she makes most of the decisions and has the power. On the other hand, since my mom remarried, my stepdad also plays a part in the decision making process. Usually, my mom and stepdad talk about everything together before making a decision. They rarely make a decision alone and have to confer and discuss every little thing. It used to get really annoying when I was younger and couldn't just get a straight answer out of either of them. I had to give them ample time to discuss the matter, and then wait for their decision. As I've grown older, I understand more about the process of their decision making, and yesterday's class really reinforced for me how important my mom and stepdad's relationship is. I understand that they both value and respect each others' opinions and that's why they talk about things so much.

Making Choices

Tuesdays class on decisions in marriage. It really made me think about how my parents made decisions and why my family functioned that way. It was interesting how different every one's parents made decisions in there family. When I first heard the topic, I really didn't think there could be that many different ways to make decisions, but the more we learned the more I began to understand how it is possible. It all depends on the type of people you are. it depends on how aggressive or assertive you are. You can be aggressive and assertive without even raising your voice. Besides thinking about how my parents make decisions, it made me take a closer look at how I make decisions every day with the people around me. It is interesting how the function of the decision making changes when I am different people. I don't even know it, but with some people I am more assertive than with other. This class on decision making in something I will keep in mind for the future especially when I am getting married. There are a lot of decisions to be made, what kind of decision making pattern we fall in to will be interesting.

Who has the power??

I guess I've always seen my mom as the one who has the power. Yes, people say the man of the house is supposed to have the power, but for a long time now, I've always gone to my mom. It's been a long time since I've had a good relationship with my dad, so for the past few years I haven't gone to him to ask him to do something. I have always gone to my mom for as long as I can remember. I knew most of the time what her answer would be if I wanted to do something. I think I've seen her with the power because she was the one who has always had a steady job, paid all the bills, and took care of us as a family. My dad has had soo many jobs in my life that I can't even count them. For the past year and a half or so when he was sneaking around, he didn't really have any power because he seemed to never be home. I never went to him to ask if I could do something if my mom wasn't home, I just did it.

I think it's great that every family is different when it comes to finding a way to manage power, but I think it needs to be split evenly, and not have one person be in complete power.

power

So after Tuesdays class I got to thinking about how my parents divided power and it was kind of hard for me to really remember because my parents have been divorced since I was in 2nd grade. But if I wouldn’t have had this class I would’ve thought my dad had most of the power but I think it was more my mom. If it had to do with discipline my dad was better than my mom but for power I think my mom had more. She made more money and was a strong woman and what she said went, when it came to her and dad. Then once they were divorced my dad didn’t really have much say in how we were raised or anything. The only time I got in trouble by both my mom and dad was in high school and I got caught drinking and when I got up the next day I knew my mom was going to have a talk with me but I had no idea she called dad and he was there too. So in that instance they ended up sharing power and it worked because I knew this was serious and they were both really mad.

Yesterday's lecture was pretty interesting about the divisions of power. I had never really thought about how the power was shared in my family. My parents make a lot of decisions together but there were definitely some differences of who to go to for what. My mom was always the one who made all the decisions about the daily activities. She got to decide when we got to go to our friend's houses or what we could do on the weekends. My dad would make the bigger decisions like when our family would go places together. Both my mom and dad would decide the most important decisions together like what we did as a family for vacation or other activities. I think they had a pretty good way of dividing up the power. Neither my mom nor my dad were overpowering at all when I was growing up. They both respected each other's opinions and tried their best to decide things together. I hope that when I have a family, my husband and I will be able to share the power like my parents did.

Parents..

Today in class when we talked about the power and decisions it made me really think about my parents. The 6 sources of influence were really easy to understand. Of the 6 influences I see the referent influence in my parents. A lot of their decisions are made together and are made with respect and love. Of course they have their moments where they use the information or expert influences. Either way usually they make the decision of the one that knows what is best because they are the expert or know the right information. They rarely use the authority influence in those situations because they both end up coming to the fact they respect and love the other person and would never make them choose a decision that might make the other person upset. Often a lot of their decisions are about me and my siblings. When we ask to do something or if we can have something or anything they won't say yes or no until they talk to the other one. To me it's annoying that I can't get an answer right away but at the same time I've learned through this class it makes sense why they want to wait to make those decisions with my other parent. They know that they work as a team when it comes to us and they want to talk things through with the other one first.

Power and Decisions

Today's lecture was actually pretty interesting. A lot of the information came to me as common sense but when we started talking about the 6 sources of influence my knowledge began to broaden. I never really looked at certain situations with that particular outcome in mind. I loved how with every principle there were great examples given to support the influence. I actually understood everything to a pretty good extent. I also liked how we watched the movie clip from "The Family Man" because it really made me realize how people use these 6 influences without even realizing it. The process was taught very well today and in my opinion a good teacher is a teacher who teaches you something that makes sense when you learn it. For instance when a test is coming up a student should feel confident in the material they learned to only glance over their notes for the exam.

(This all relates to class cause it's exactly what we talked about today and I related it to myself by explaining that I absorbed the information great for the upcoming exam.)

Communication

Communication is very significant in people’s lives. The process of transmitting can be feelings, attitudes, beliefs, ideas. We can use verbal as well as nonverbal to communicate. In addition, through the class，I knew that the communication of male and female is different. Different culture has different style of communication. I experience it deeply. I met so many people from different countries during I stayed in the USA. We communicated in different ways. Even though we say the same language, we still have different style to communicate. For example, people in south of China always speak slower than the people in north of China. Sometimes, when I heard a person who comes from the north of China spoke very quickly, I thought if he or she was so busy and did not have time to communicate with me. In my family, we can communicate easily, but my parents do not share everything with me, especially bad things. They always share with me their good feelings. I do not think it is good for me. I hope my parents could not treat me just as a child anymore.

Spring Break

I'm so excited to go home for spring break!!! There's been so much drama in my group of friends lately....I can't wait to get away from it all. Being away from them is hard. I miss my mother so much. I wish we would talk more. Even with all the technology available for communication, its still not the same as seeing her in person. Having a relationship with her is important to me, so I'm trying to make a "phone relationship" work. The good news is that my parents are moving back to Nebraska in April!!! I can't wait for my parents to only be 45 minutes away rather than half the country away.

Communication

I was recently at a party and I was being the "sober friend" for the night. I was able to listen in on conversations and observe the behavior of my surrounding settings because I wasn't partying like usual. As I participated in a conversation with some of my girlfriends I couldn't help but notice another group of girls in the corner giving me and my friends the "evil eye" and conversing amongst themselves. I tuned out my friends to try and listen in on what these girls were chatting about. They were bashing on an outfit that one of my friends was wearing. Another, was talking about Mandy and how she was supposedly flirting with a guy she liked and as a group they acted as if they were higher up on the todum pole than us. I then began listening to my friends conversation and noticed they were bashing on the same group of girls that were talking about them. Neither of them were aware that they were being labeled AND gossiped about. Both groups were guilty of being drama-filled gossip queens. Girls are so mean to each other. One group made assumptions about another group and at the same time as one group feels authority over the other, they are actually being equally talked about at the same time. Girls are so catty, selfish, and in opinion jealous of every other girl. Why do they do it? To make themselves feel better when something they consider a threat walks into their territory.

This doesn't necessarily relate to a particular topic in class but after lecture on Tuesday and communication between couples I began to notice that it's not just communication between couples it's miscommunication between strangers/friends. Body language, tone of voice, verbal and non verbal communication can be mis read ALL the time between different people, genders or race. (but in my opinion the biggest is girls)

Communications...is the key!

I always believe that communication is the key in ALL relationships! Doesn't matter if it's relationships between friends or even girlfriends and boyfriends. In class we talked about communication. Communication is the key to intimacy and family interaction. Without good communication relationships will fail. You have to be willing to communicate with people to have a positive relationship with them. It's so many things that have to do with communication like the cultural differences. I didn't think it really mattered in different cultures or type of people. So remember people without communication...you have nothing.

Communication and relationships

Communication with male and female is very different. I have found this out the hard way. Many time I have expected things from the males in my life and didnt get what I wanted. Looking back, I see I illuded to what I wanted from them, but never flat out told them. I forget people cant read minds and we all have our own ways of misinterpreting things. I know communication is very important to a strong relationship. With my best friend, we are not the best at communicating with each other. We go to different schools, have different majors, different friends and live in different cities. Its not always easy to relate to each other and give feedback on our lives. We have come up, very unintentionally, with a great way of communicating with each other. We call it the blab listen friendship. Since our lives have gone in such different directions, we have found it easiest to let one person talk until they have nothing left to talk about, then the other person can talk. We really dont say much to each other, its just mainly a listening friendship. I really do think this is probably the best friendship I have ever had and it weird to know we really dont have that much in common anymore!

Professor Hollist

For my entire life I have wanted to be a pediatrician. I've worked towads this goal in school for years and I am now in Organic chemistry and it is by far the hardest class I have ever taken. It has made me doubt myself and wonder if my grades and work will be enough to get me into med school. My passion for the field is dying out but after taking this class and seeing some of the work that Professor Hollist does it has made me very interested in the child therapist field. His way of teaching is very effective, I don't think that I have ever felt more comfortable participating in class and more interested in a subject. I think I might of found a better profession for myself simply by taking this class.

Communication

Communication is very critical to relationships. I think that it's important to have relationships with both males and females because of the different ways that they communicate. I believe that people need the different ways that males and females communicate. People can learn different ways of dealing with situations based on which gender they talk to, and I think it's important for people to get a variety of opinions. It is interesting to see how the different genders communicate and ways that they deal with situations. I think it is important that genders communicate differently because we need a variety of ways to deal with situations and get throught problems. As was already mentioned, life would be very boring if everyone communicated in the same way and handled problems and situations in the same way. I really think that, even though the differences in communication are sometimes frustrating, it's very important that there are differences.

I really enjoyed class yesterday. Topic of the day was communication. It was espcially interesting to hear about the differences between men and women. You can tell from a young age how boys and girls are taught to communicate with eachother and their peers. It is interesting what is socially acceptable for communication levels. Right away from the toys kids play with they learn about communication. Girls are given dolls and barbies. They are told to be nice and play nice. They are taught to be very social. This is setting them up for a lifetime of communication. On the other hand, little boys are given actions toys. Examples are action figures, toy guns, blocks, and models. This teaches them to solve problems and take action. Women talk more about emotions and try to relate everything together, while men are problem solvers. It would not be soically acceptable if men spoke more about emotions etc., or would it. We were talking in class about how different men and women communicate, then someone brought up an thought probing question. The question was, if we like how separatly men and women communicate. I have been thinking about this all day. It would be nice to have men communicate like women but I don't think it would create more unity in the world. I believe it would cause more problems. It is like the saying, if everyone was the same the world would be boring. This was one of my favorite class dissucsions so far. I really enjoyed talking about communication and the differences between men and women communication.

Today in class we discussed some of the differences between men and women. It was really interesting cause a lot of it I feel like I knew but I just seemed to have forgotten. The part about men having 'solution oriented' personalities and women having 'connection oriented' personalities is so true, well at least in my life. My boyfriend and I get in so many arguments because of this reason along. Its kind of funny now that I think about it because it is so common sense. The sad thing is that a lot of the stereotypes that most people have about men or women are pretty true to my life. I feel like I am a typical girl who cares way too much about her emotions and I'm dating a guy who can't stand emotional things and just likes to get right to the point. I just find this kind of funny from my point of view but I guess there are a lot of people out there who all have different ways of dealing with things.

content VS process -

Have you ever heard you never get too old to learn?

Just going through the motions of relationships is what most people do. Of course they do this as routine, or habit. The truth is they really just don't know any better.

Getting into heated discussions, arguments, battles, whatever you call them, the process is what needs attention, not what is said. All too often we get lost in what has been said or what we would like to say, lost in symantics. There have been times when I just wanted to get in the last word.

O.K. let me admit it; process is how we resolve our issues. I am trying to learn how all of this works together. But don't tell my wife, I am just not ready to give in unless I get the last word in to prove I am right.

So in today's discussion we talked about how the different systems of the family communicate different with each other. When we talked about how the two people having the conversation get upset with one another because they aren't listening I thought of my dad and my brother. I think that people that have similar personalities it makes communication more challenging. My dad has a tendency to be stubborn and my brother has the same problem so when they get into arguments it's hard for them to settle on anything. They both blame the other for not listening or being to demanding. I saw how the principle of communication failures rest with both people when I think of my dad and my brother. They need to understand that they are acting so much a like that it is difficult to settle anything. They need to take the time and communicate with each other and that consists of listening to the other person's point of view.

Mate Selection

In Tuesday’s class, everything I listened is very fresh. I thought that the people who are playing games kind of dating are so stupid before I took this class. People couldn’t know each other very well just by playing games. Through this class, I knew that there are two different types of the game: constructive and destructive. Some games have good purpose and can lead good outcomes. In addition, I have never heard that there are such kinds of test that available before people get married, such as FOCCUS and RELATE. The premarital tests can help those couples to facilitate communication and evoke thoughts and emotions. If every couple takes these kind of tests before they get married, would they not easily get divorced in the future? Hopefully it is. One of my friends has engaged, after this class I recommended him to take premarital tests with his fiancée, but he thought it is kind of meaningless. I really hope these premarital inventories can be publicly to be known.

Single Parent Adoption

My aunt is 38 years old, she's never been married or really had a serious relationship. She's tried internet dating sites and church singles gatherings, but she's never found the one I guess. She recently adopted a beautiful baby girl from Guatemala. She went through so much to get that baby. Its really hard for a single woman to get approval for adoption. There were days when she was pretty sure she'd never get to see the little girl she wanted to take care of. Its really sad how hard it was for her to get Eliana. My aunt is perfectly capable of taking care of that baby and the agencies were very against letting her adopt.
Thankfully Eliana is now part of our family. She's now my youngest cousin out of 43 cousins.

single life

When we talked about single life it made me think about my friend who is 31 and single. She has never really had a serious relationship and I think its because she isn’t single by choice. She is one of those people that you feel bad for because she always talks about how she is single and how much her life sucks. She is a workaholic and has always been like that. She has older values like no sex before marriage and pretty much always does that right thing. I’ve tried setting her up with people but it never works, I think its not that the people aren’t right for her I think she just needs to be happy with herself or she will never find someone. But I really don’t know what to say to her to her help so I guess I hope things just get better.

Foccus!

I have many friends getting married in the Catholic Church in the near future. Each couple has their own opinion on the Foccus premarital test. From listening to them, they sound like its a pointless, meaning less, unaffective waist of time. I also have an Aunt and Uncle who work with engaged couples and administer the test. They have alway been excited to talk to the couple about the results of the test. I have never realized really how much of a big deal it is in the Catholic Church to take this test, but it is something you have to do before you can get married. I think its a good idea and I would be very interested in seeing how things would turn out. I know Im not going to be taking this test anytime soon, but when the day comes....Im going to be excited and interested, not thinking its a waist of time.

"The Bachelor" Reaction

I know many people watched "The Bachelor" this season, and I will admit that yes I did too. I have heard of many people's disgust, and I will also say that I am right there with them. Going on the show in the first place is to find their mate. I think it is very hard to find love in that situation, and to my knowledge there has only been one couple to make it work successfully. But I must say that I was rooting for Melissa from the very beginning. I liked her as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, and so it was no different on The Bachelor. I have to say that I was very happy he chose her in the end, but during "After the Final Rose," I though Jason was horrible. I couldn't believe that after all the hurt he has been through, that he could turn around and do the same exact thing to someone else. I guess I have to admit that it was better for him to break it off before they went any further and actually got married but for him to make a decision when he wasn't actually ready to say "I am only in love with one woman and I want to spend the rest of my life with her." He admited to falling in love with both Molly and Melissa, but for him to not even fight for a life with Melissa is just a little heartless. And poor Ty. I mean, that kid was introduced to Deanna last season, and then spent time with both Melissa and Molly this season. He seemed to really like Melissa from the start, and was a little hesitant with Molly. I feel bad for him because he had gotten to know Melissa because her and Jason had spent so much time together after the show, and now he has to lose someone he had gotten to know for Molly, who don't get me wrong, may be a great woman, but he will have to get to know her now too. I guess I'm just disgusted in the fact that Jason went from breaking it off with Melissa to kissing Molly within the next 10 minutes. It was just a little wrong in my book.

Going on The Bachelor is definately a different way of finding a mate!

Mate Selection

I found yesterday's class extremely interesting. I had never sat down and thought of how people choose each other to spend the rest of their lives together. It is a very big step and a lot of thought goes into it, or sometimes as we talked about it in class, no much. I had never heard of these test you can take before you get married, such as RELATE and The Prepare, or FOCCUS. They are not very well publicly known I feel. After I heard about them in class I went online to see it was well known. There are tons of websites online that have these kinds of tests. It is fantastic. It sounds like they would help at all, because you think you know someone, but you may forget to talk about little things. Dr. Hollist mentioned in class about a couple who one person wanted to have six kids and the other wanted one. It is amazing that such things can get pasted by. This is why I think these test are well worth the time and money.
I also that it was very interesting how much people who are dating play games. When you are in a relationship and playing games, you do not always realize what you are doing. It was funny to talk about them in class and talk about the reasons why people play games when they are in relationships. There are two different types of games; destructive and constructive. This sort of surprised me. Playing games with peoples heads always sounds destructive to me, but I learned that some games have good intentions and can have good outcomes. I really enjoyed this class disscussion and look forward to more in the furture.

Yesterday's class discussion was very interesting. I never realized there were so many different types of inventories and helpful questionnaires available to people that are thinking about getting married. I think that these inventories are very helpful to couples to determine what areas they really need to discuss before they rush in to something. These inventories can be helpful in determining areas that couples disagree on and can help them see what they need to talk about and really decide how important each matter is. I think these inventories are really important resources for engaged couples or even just couples that are thinking about getting married. I know that in the future, my significant other and I will definitely use these resources when we seriously consider getting married.

Engagement..

So i've never really been close to engagement at all. I did enjoy talking about it today though it got me thinking. I feel like I have a better understanding of what to expect and what I want from it. I definitely want to have a premarital inventory done. I see a lot of logic in that. When it comes to my friends I can see how we influence each other too. One of my best friend was in a long term relationship and before it started getting to serious they talked about marriage. Odd because they weren't to serious and they had only been dating for a little over a year but what they did seemed right to me. They talked about their religion because they have different beliefs and different churches. Well before they wanted to continue on in their relationship in fear that they might waste all that time together and find out after they get engaged that they weren't going to be able to settle on the topic of religion they had several conversations trying to figure it out. Well sadly they ended up breaking up but it didn't bother them to much because they know if they are meant to be, they will be together. They also found out that they weren't compatible and that neither one were really wanting to change their religion for the other. Just talking in class today getting engaged and relationships are really important and it's sad when people don't take it seriously and run to vegas to get married and end up divorcing months later. It's really nice to be able to talk to my friends who are in relationship and kind of give them some guidance or try to about their relationships with what I learn in class.

I have enjoyed the past few class discussions and topics on single life and dating. I think they are very big issues to a lot of people, not just college level but everyone. Having insecurities about either one are pretty normal but listening to the discussions in class really made me think about my own life. I have been dating my boyfriend for 2 1/2 years and sometimes I still really question a lot of things about our relationship. Everyone is different but hearing the 'typical' relationship characteristics is really interesting. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it all but its nice to get a different perspective on things. I think it can be hard in college to be single or in a relationship. There are so many things going on all around you all the time and it's hard to know what is right for you. I really like the things we have been talking about in class and I hope we continue this topic for awhile. I think it will help people in their lives. I know it's helping me.

Independent

I'm finally getting my own place. It's exhilarating to think about living completely on my own. Doing my own grocery shopping, paying rent, learning to cook, the freedom of growing up has finally approached. My freshman year I lived in the dorms, my sophomore year I lived in my sorority house and now I'm finally getting my own place. I just can't wait to have my own room again and be able to finally eat some decent food. Whenever I'm hungry, or want to cook, I CAN! My freshman year I unfortunately had to live in a converted Lounge room in Smith. It was awful. I was not a fan of the dining halls and I always seemed to be hungry when they were closed. My sophomore year I moved into the sorority and although it was a great experience I was not as pleased at I would have liked to be. Lunch was an hour long, dinner was a half hour. Most of the time I had class and missed out on meals that I had been paying for. We have "late plates" but most of the time someone snatches it from the fridge before I even receive it. It will be so nice to only have 3 roomates in 3 seperate rooms instead of 4 roomates living in just 1! I will finally get to sleep in my own bed again and if there's a day I feel like being messy I'm more than welcome to! I can do my laundry whenever I want and not have to worry about paying with quarters or staying up all night because the only available time slots are at 2 a.m. I can come and go as I please and I won't have to worry about "man hours" anymore! If I want a boy in my room I can surely do so. Oh, how I can't wait for May!

The reason I am blogging about this is because it reminded me of the day we talked about single life. I'm single and even though it has its low times it can also be very exciting. You can do so many things when you're young and its nice to be able to experience so many more options when you are single and independent!