Last week, I bought my tickets for a Doctor Who convention in May! It’s the weekend of May 29th-31st and I could not be more excited! Each year, I usually attend one convention and that’s CONvergence. This year I won’t be attending CONvergence because I want to do something else on the Fourth of July weekend. So I found out about this Doctor Who convention and I bought my ticket. I am super excited to meet more Whovians like myself and to cosplay. I’m planning an Amy Pond one for sure.

Doctor Who is probably the coolest TV show ever. I got into Doctor Who last summer because I just finished finals and I wanted something new to watch. I decided on Doctor Who because I heard good things about the show. I started with Christopher Eccleston. After watching the first episode, I wasn’t sure what I thought. It’s a really weird show, but I wanted to watch a full season before I made my decision. I was entranced after the first episode. Rose became my favorite companion and I absolutely loved the episodes in Eccleston’s season. I was really sad when he left the role, but then Tennant was amazing. I am currently on the last series of Matt Smith’s run and I am really enjoying him so I will be sad when he leaves.

As for cosplaying, I plan on doing an Amy Pond cosplay. I really want to buy a red plaid shirt and draw the tally marks to represent the silence. That’s a pretty simple cosplay that I could pull off. I also have my Tardis dress that I intend to wear for one of the days of the convention. I am really excited that I will be attending a convention this summer and I will definitely post the pictures that I take.

Until then, I will finish Matt Smith’s series… GERONIMO!

I am definitely not a creative person. I am definitely more of a logical type of person. However, Pinterest has a lot of creative ideas. That’s how I found out about a date jar! Me and my boyfriend made one a couple days ago. Basically, both you and your partner come up with date night ideas and add them to a jar. When you have no idea what you want to do together, you pull an idea out and that’s what you do!

It was really fun to make! We both had really creative ideas to add. Also, our date jar is a Tardis because we both love Doctor Who! 😛 The first idea we pulled was to watch a scary movie. I am excited because I added a lot of cool ideas like rollerblading, canoeing, coloring, making crafts, and pumpkin carving! It will be cool to be able to do fun and spontaneous things!

Eventually, the “date jar” will run out, but our plan is just to do it all over again. I would highly recommend this idea to anyone! It’s really creative and it’s cool to see what your partner will come up with to add. Thanks, Pinterest for the cool idea.

I had a really fun weekend! The weather was absolutely gorgeous so I ended up skipping the gym to go on a nice long walk. As soon as you enter Winona, there are two lakes that surround the road. That’s where I ended up going on my walk. There is a bigger lake which is around 3.2ish miles? and the smaller lake is 1.7ish miles? Total it ends up being 5 miles. I love walking! I think it’s a relaxing way to be active and walking long distances is a really good workout. I posted some pictures on my walk. I even found some cherry blossom trees which are native to Japan. Apparently, our university has a good relationship with a Japanese university so they gave cherry blossoms to Winona. It’s super pretty now that they have finally bloomed.

On Saturday, I went rock climbing! In our recreation center, we just finished building this massive rock wall. I climbed up to the ceiling twice on two separate rock walls. I was pretty proud of myself actually. There were two other walls that I couldn’t figure out how to get up. I want to go back so I can get up those rock walls. I have been sore in my forearms for the past few days now, but it’s really worth it. I hope to go back again before finals!

Happy Belated Easter! I did not go on any Easter egg hunts or eat chocolate bunnies, instead, I went hiking and relaxed all weekend!

One of my good friends from home came to visit me on Easter weekend. I live around three hours from home, so I chose to stay in Winona. The first thing we did was head back to the Winona County Library. I already made a post about this so I won’t talk about this too much. I did take some really nice pictures of the library that will be posted below.

The other exciting event this weekend was hiking! Whitewater State Park is located about twenty minutes from Winona. I love hiking because it’s a workout outdoors and it brings such an accomplished feeling. I took some beautiful pictures on my hike and it was absolutely gorgeous outside!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures I took on Easter Weekend:

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.