Yesterday, I had an advising appointment with my adviser to sign up for classes. I love advising. I love planning out what classes I’m taking and in what order. As it turns out, I am on the five-year plan to graduate. I’m okay with this.

Freshman year of college, I had the idea that I wanted to go to medical school. So I majored in Biology Allied Health and Pre-Med. In my sophomore year fall semester, I had an epiphany. I hated organic chemistry and I realized I didn’t have the passion to go to medical school. I called my mom in tears because I had no idea what to do. I ended up changing my major to Exercise Science because it’s still a form of biology. A year ago I switched my major and I haven’t looked back.

This major switch has set me behind. Instead of graduating on time, I have at least another semester plus my internship before I graduate. For many, this may be frustrating. I am actually pretty happy about this conclusion. I can take 12 credits per semester and graduate instead of plowing through 18 credits in two semesters to finish on time. I want to have the time to delve deep into my required courses.

Plus, I love school. I am so proud to be a Winona State University Warrior. I love my campus, my professors, and my apartment. I have made so many great friends here and I love where I work. I will always have a connection to Winona State and I know when I graduate I will come back and visit.

Once a warrior, always a warrior.

Today I figured out my summer plans. I have decided to live in Winona, MN for the entire summer. However, I will be going home at least once a month to see my family. Me and my family are pretty close. I consider my mom more of a best friend than a parent. My brother & me play Magic the Gathering, various awesome board games, and video games when we hang out. Being in Winona will make me miss my family more. I am excited to stay in Winona for the summer.

I have many reasons that led me to this decision. In May, I’m taking a summer class. The class is titled Nutrition for the Physically Active. I think it would make for a great summer class because it’s Monday-Friday 7:45-9:45. This class lasts until June and then that’s when I decided to update my lease to 11.5 months instead of 9 months.

Going to school in Winona has made me realize how much I consider Winona to be a second home. I have made so many memories in college that will carry with me for the rest of my life. I have talked to friends of mine who have all agreed on how gorgeous Winona is in the summer. There are no college students, the town is incredibly peaceful and it has the most gorgeous weather.

I love the feeling when you finally figure out your plans. I can relax and start the countdown to the end of finals and the start of summer.

Today I went to one of my favorite places in Minnesota, the St. Paul Science museum. Starting February 20th, the Science museum was doing a space-themed exhibit until September. Since I’m the secretary of the Astronomy club and my best friends are the president and VP, we made a trip. Today we took the two-hour trek to the science museum.

When we got there, we got tickets to the exhibit and the Omni-theater. The two showings we saw were about the journey to space and the Hubble telescope. The journey to space movie was really fascinating. It takes a lot of time and effort to come up with the technology that brings people up to space. After watching that, I felt so small. The galaxy and our universe are so big and we haven’t really explored much of it yet. I really hope in my lifetime that we will be able to explore more of what’s beyond the stars. The second movie was about the Hubble telescope. It’s orbiting around the earth! It also displayed in the movie how astronauts had to take trips to help fix the telescope.

Besides the Omni-theater, we went to the actual exhibit. It was really busy so I didn’t have time to really do all the activities that were there, but we did wait in line to be in this machine for about five minutes. It simulated what it’s like to be weightless in space. It was really interesting but at the same time, I felt really dizzy afterward. We don’t even realize how beneficial gravity is until we are in space and it’s nonexistent.

Our group took a lot of pictures! It worked out because all the club officers made the trek! So it was the group of five who wandered the museum and learned cool new stuff about space! The science museum is my all-time favorite place to go and it was really interesting to learn cool new stuff and to get out of town for the day.

This week has been stressful for me. I had a fifteen-minute presentation to give, and I have been preparing for two very important tests that are happening on Monday. Yesterday, I ended up crying a lot. I was trying to go to bed and I just felt like I wasn’t doing enough or I wasn’t smart enough.

Anatomical Kinesiology and Exercise Physiology have been taking up a lot of my time. Anatomical Kinesiology is the study of how the body moves and how certain muscles move in different planes of motion. Exercise Physiology is all about studying the structure and functions of the body while it’s being put through exercise. I love my major! Exercise Science is where I belong. These classes are super interesting, but at the same time, they require a lot of my time.

I try and deal with stress by trying to find time for myself. I have been reading a lot this semester. Reading is really nice because it helps me get a good night’s sleep, but it also distracts me from my classes and presentations. I have also been trying to keep up with this blog. Writing a blog post always makes my day a little better. Sometimes the best way with dealing with stress is to talk to other people. I got off the phone with a friend of mine and just catching up with her completely distracted me from everything I had to get done today. I also studied with a friend of mine, and we started talking about baseball and how much we wanted to go to a game this summer. It’s the simple things in life that really make me calm.

My goals for this semester include: seeking out my friends for advice and giving myself positive encouragement. When I’m upset about something, I tend to keep it to myself even though I feel like I’m about to explode. Now, I am trying to seek out advice and vent to my friends to try and relieve the tension that I have. Another goal of mine is to give positive encouragement. Instead of beating myself up over one bad quiz score, I need to tell myself that I can do this. I am not going to let a simple letter grade define who I am.

This weekend was super exciting because I ended up going home with my boyfriend to meet his parents for the first time and explore a brand new city! Meeting the parents always makes me nervous. It ended up being a blast and his parents were very nice and really accepted me for the weekend that I spent at his house. Part of that weekend included seeing Milwaukee for the first time.

I have never been this far into Wisconsin before. I never really had a reason to. My boyfriend lives about a half-hour from the city and so we decided to make a day trip. The first stop we made was at the Harley Davidson motorcycle museum. This museum was very interesting and really cool! The first part of the museum shows some of the earliest motorcycles known to exist. It shows gradually how the Harley brand and the motorcycles have changed throughout the decades. The second part of the museum shows motorcycles in pop culture, racing motorcycles, and the newest motorcycles coming out in 2015. My favorite part of the exhibit was the Captain America motorcycle! In Captain America: First Avenger, Steve Rogers is riding on this retro military motorcycle. They had the motorcycle at this museum. I thought it was amazing to look at. I also loved the other type of motorcycles that were donated to the museum. This included a rhinestone motorcycle with red, white, and blue rhinestones.

If you’re ever in the Milwaukee area, I highly recommend this museum because the motorcycles were very interesting! After the motorcycle museum, we decided to go to the Milwaukee art museum! It’s right along Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, the museum was between exhibits so there wasn’t all that much to look at but there was this really cool glass sculpture in the museum that was stunning.  We also did a little shopping which included me buying books and a new Spider-Man mug.

I love exploring new areas and Milwaukee is a really cool city. I wish I was 21 though so I could have checked out a couple of the bars in the city that also leaves room for another trip to Milwaukee!

My winter break is officially over. I am glad to start classes and get back to a normal routine after having a lot of downtime. Today I met up with some friends and we gave our secret Santa presents. For my secret Santa, I got her a Batman-related present which included a t-shirt, a necklace, and Batman socks. She loved it! I received a Tardis journal. It has the Tardis on the front and “Bad Wolf” written on the Tardis. If you watch Doctor Who, you get the reference. Overall my friends definitely know enough about me to get me an awesome present!

I have also been busy because I have been preparing to go back to Winona. I had to get my car’s oil changed, get a haircut, pack, return my library books and finish most of them, make a grocery list and wash clothes. All of that is out of the way and I am sitting in my room writing this post. I love having a car on campus! It’s more freedom on where I can go in Winona. There is this awesome coffee shop called Acoustic Cafe that has live music. I can go there more often now because I have a car!

Finally, I got a haircut! This is always weird to me because I have always had my hair long. I got it cut short because I really wanted a change and it’s a lot easier to take care of too.

2014 was definitely a fun year to remember. Usually, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but I have been thinking of some goals that I want to accomplish next year.

1. Add Yoga to my workouts.

Yesterday, I went to a Hot Yoga group fitness class. It’s essentially yoga but the heat is turned up in the room. I walked out of that class feeling stronger. Yoga strengthens the muscles you didn’t know you had. It’s also very relaxing. I do use yoga as a stress reliever. I want to make sure I do Yoga at least once a week next year, but if I do it more often than that, that’s fine too!

2. Read more!

I have set a reading goal of 25 books to read in 2015. Goodreads is helping me keep track. Reading is important to me because it helps me fall asleep. I try to read every night usually just a chapter or two. I also love reading because I really get entranced in a story. The last book I finished, The Magician’s Nephew of the Chronicles of Narnia, had me entranced in the world of Narnia. I always imagine what the characters look like in my head or what Narnia looks like. It allows me to be creative and let my imagination run wild. I have also been getting into comic books and graphic novels. I love the stories and the images and how much effort went into making each picture in the comics. I plan on reading a lot more next semester!

3. Check out more books at the library!

This goal goes along with my previous goal of reading more. I want to check out more books at the library. This lets me save money, but I also find the most random cool books in the library. Last summer, I read a random book about Darth Maul and it was super interesting!

4. Run a 5K

I have never been a really good runner. I have been working on increasing my speed and my distance. I think it would be really cool to run a 5K. A 5K is around 3.2 miles. This sounds like a long-distance but I think that would be really rewarding for me.

That’s really all the goals I have at the moment. My main goal is to have a lot of fun and have new experiences. I want to meet new people but improve upon the friendships I already have. Here is to a great and fantastic year. 2015 is officially here.

I feel grateful that I have a sibling. My brother is three years older than I am and since going off to school, my and my brother hang out whenever I come home. Today my brother and I went to the local comic book store by my house. Recently, I have been reading more comic books and graphic novels. It’s become a new interest of mine.

Hot Comics & Collectibles is fifteen minutes from my house. I’m pretty sure I have been there before because I felt a feeling of deja vu when I entered the store. It’s a pretty cool place. As soon as you walk in, there are boxes and boxes of individual issues of comics. That’s where I first looked. I love individual issues of comics because it gives me a feel of what I will like and won’t like. Each issue is around three dollars. If I don’t like a certain series or character, I didn’t really waste that much money instead of buying a graphic novel for fifteen-twenty bucks and not liking it. They also had some really cool action figures, Magic the Gathering cards, Doctor Who memorabilia, and books. I ended up purchasing comics that revolve around Elektra, Fantastic Four, Hawk & Dove, and the Huntress. I would definitely go back there again! It was a cool store, and I could easily spend hours going through each of the back issues of each superhero.

These are some of the pictures I took. There was a section in the store completely devoted to the Hulk. I really wanted to find those Hulk string lights because I thought they were awesome but I couldn’t find them. I found this book about speaking Klingon and that made me think of the Big Bang Theory and the episode where Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, and Howard play Klingon Boggle. The action figures that I saw were amazing. The Thing action figure cost around $650 but it’s accurate and actually pretty big.

I would definitely come back here again but right now I have plenty to read in between the books I have on my reading list (see my other blog post) and these graphic novels, I probably won’t be back for a while. I have two weeks left of winter break so it’s time to get reading!

Winter can be a beautiful season. I have noticed that the older I become, the more I enjoy winter. I think the snow can be beautiful. It turns my neighborhood and my backyard into a winter wonderland. Of course, winter does have its downsides such as the cold, ice everywhere, and the absence of the sun on most days. I don’t think I could ever live in an area without snow or without winter. The perfect winter day is when it’s lightly snowing, the temperature is around 20-30 degrees, it’s bright outside not a dull gray and there is no ice on the ground to trip over.

I have been taking more pictures recently because I haven’t been using my camera as much as I should. I feel like these pictures capture what I really enjoy about the winter and the holiday season.