Maddison's Musings

Hello Everyone! Sorry I didn't post last week, but I was busy being social and going to hotels. (If you want a longer explanation, go check out my new post on my main blog here- Post on Main Blog! it also talks about what I did this past weekend.) Speaking of what I've done this past weekend, that leads me to my topic for this post: Dream Schools. If you know me at all (or read my other blog post), then you might know that my dream college/university is the University of Texas in Austin. I've been dreaming about this school for a little under a year now, and today I finally got to tour it! My mom, little brother, and I did a "walking" self-guided tour. I put quotes by walking, since all I did for the first 45 minutes was run, skip, jump, and basically to anything except walk. After 45 minutes, people started appearing out of thin air, and I had to tone down my excitement. I had to try to be like any other person- just a person touring the campus. It was hard. All I wanted to do was to continue skipping and giggling like a small child. But no, I had to act like the mature teenager I am. Or at least, I had to act like that around other people. I could act however I wanted in our car. Don't worry, this personal-type story actually ties into what I'm going to be typing in this post.

Having a goal in life is great, but most people don't just have one big goal. You may have ten big goals, and two small/supporting goals, but most everyone has at least some type of goal in life, even if it is to just go to bed without crying yourself to sleep. It's okay! No matter what your goal, my question for you is this: do you have a college/university goal that you have in mind? Do you want to go to college for 4,8,12, or even zero years? Whatever your answer, it's okay; at least you know! For those of you who even just thinking about college makes your stomach twist into knots, that's perfectly fine to! All I'm trying to say really is that it's okay not to know what you want to do. I've known since last year that I want to go to UT, and I've known since early on this year that I want to be a teacher, but not just any teacher, but a Special Education Teacher.  I also want to be an author, but I've known that since first grade. I love Sped kids (special ed), and teaching was kind of one of those things that I never thought I would want to do. I've always been told, "Oh, you would be such a great teacher," or "I can totally see you as a teacher," etc, etc. In 8th grade even, we took this career test thingie to show you career opportunities you would be good in, and guess what I got? Yep. It said "Teacher" written across the screen in big, bold letters. I immediately thought, "Oh heck no," but look at me now, wanting to be a teacher.

Anyways, maybe you don't have the next few years of your life planned out. Maybe you're more like my older brother. Someone who just wants to get done with school. He graduated from high school last year, and he started college at a local college for the winter/spring terms. He got a little break by not doing the fall semester, but only because he was working full time. He still doesn't really know exactly what he wants to do in life, but he's getting his pre-requisites done, since everyone has to do them anyways.

What I'm trying to get through, is that whether you have your whole life planned out, or you live day to day, both are okay. You don't have to know everything super early, but it's okay. It's also okay if you have no idea what you want to do. As long as you set some goals in life, it's all good.

I don't know if this post helped any bit, but I kind of wish it did. If not, sorry, but I'm not a professional, just a teenager speaking her mind. :)

~Maddie

Hello Everyone! So do you remember the time I said that I would start trying to post weekly again? Do you also remember the time that I told you that I'm a high school student? I really did mean to blog last weekend, I promise, but I was being social and had a friend over Friday, and then my family went to a hotel Saturday for Mother's day, and we didn't get back until Sunday afternoon, and by that time I had a lot of homework and no time to blog.

Anywho, now time to talk about everything that I've done this past weekend! First thing's first: Friday! I woke up around 9:30 am Friday morning, and within the hour, my mom, little brother, and I were off to a small city south of Austin for my piano competition. You see, the reason we drove five hours for a piano competition was because this wasn't just a normal competition, oh no. This was All-State. This was a big deal! We arrived at the hotel around 1:30 pm, and we were swimming in the pool by two. Our hotel was right on a river, and although I didn't swim in it (I can't stand swimming in water in which I can't see very far down in), it was beautiful to look at. We spent a good three hours outside swimming and looking at the lake before we decided we wanted some food. We decided to eat at the hotel, since we didn't know where we were, and it was convenient. The food was delicious, and I can't tell if it was just because we were famished, or because it was actually delicious. I guess the world shall never know.

The next morning I had to wake up at 6:20 in the morning and get ready for my All State competition. We left the hotel by 7:10 and I made it to Texas State University (where it was held) by 7:35 am. The way All State works is pretty simple. They break you up into groups based on your instrument and your level in that instrument. From that broad group, they break you into multiple groups of 12-15 students. Once your whole group has played, you wait about and hour to get your scores. If you get an "Outstanding" as your score, then you could get picked to be an "All-State Winner." Out of all the "Outstandings" in one group of the 15 students, only one will be known as the "All-State Winner." It might sound kind of complicated, but it's really not. My play time was at 8:25 in the morning, and I was the very first one for my judge/division. I ended up getting a Superior, which I'm proud of. Yes, I wish I would have gotten an Outstanding, but since it's only my first time going to state (I was eligible last year, just didn't go), I was very proud of my Superior. Also, since I was the first performer of the day, the judge was in the most "judge'y" mindset. It's all good! I even got a ribbon! All-in-all, I'm very proud of my results.

After I had gotten my scores, I was able to leave. My mom, little brother, and I went back to our car wondering what we could do. We looked at the clock, only to find that it was just 10:30 in the morning. On our way back to our hotel, we found a shopping district place thing, and found a Hobby Lobby. We went and got a frame for my award sheet (pictured below) and we also found some cheap flip flops (since I didn't have any) for the pool. We got some food for lunch, and once we were done, we went back to the hotel. We went back to the pool again, and that's where we spent most of our day. When we got back to our hotel room we had a few snacks before we went back to the shopping district to explore. We went to Target, since it has everything, where I got some pretty push pins, and two books. The books I got are: Looking For Alaska and Paper Towns, both by John Green (the author of The Fault in Our Stars). I loved TFIOS so much, and he's such a great author, so I bought both books of his that Target had. I love Target. After we went to Target, we decided to go see the movie "Heaven is For Real." I had read the book a few years ago, and since it's a true story, they can't mess with the book! The movie was fantastic, and the little boy was adorable! I loved it! After the movie we went back to the hotel and slept, basically.

The next morning (Sunday/today) we woke up around 8:30 to start on our journey home. By around 9:30 we were checked out of the hotel and on our way back home. We stopped at a gas station place called "Buc-ee's," and let me just tell you, that store is something else. It has a whole bunch of stuff. It had rows upon rows of candy and food and meat and Texas-shaped fudge and merchandise and practically anything you would want whilst on the road. We got some Gatorade, beef jerky, watermelon taffy, and some other gummy candy for road-trip snacks, and my little brother got a "bro-tank" for fun. Once done with "Buc-ee's," we were on our way to Austin.

If you know me, you might know that my absolute dream college is the University of Texas in Austin. I've even gone so far as look at dorms and stuff online. I can't even remember exactly why I chose UT. If I'm not mistaken, I think last summer I was looking at best colleges in the country, and best colleges in the state of Texas, and UT happened to make both lists. The school has a good website, and I fell in love instantly. I started looking at campus maps, online tours, tuition costs, online dorm tours, etc. Let's not forget that I wasn't even in high school yet; I had only just gotten out of 8th grade. Now, nearly a year later, and I'm still just as in love with it. Not only that, but I got to tour it this morning! I was super excited, and when we got to the campus, I was literally jumping, skipping, and running everywhere. There was no walking until about 45 minutes into it, when we started to see people. I couldn't stop smiling, and giggling. It was so surreal to be at the place I had been dreaming of for a little under a year. We got to go all over campus, and I took so many pictures (see the collage below, since I don't want to post every picture). It was so amazing, and probably one of my favorite days of this year!

Once done with touring my dream school, we still had another four-ish hours until we were home. That got pushed to five hours when we were stuck in traffic for FIFTY (50) MINUTES FOR NO REASON AT ALL! Not fun. But I did get to read a chapter of To Kill A Mockingbird. I would've read more, but I just didn't want to, also it was weird reading in the car, even if we were literally parked on the freeway due to the traffic, and I have bad motion sickness, so I only read for about ten minutes maybe. When we made it home, the first thing I ran to was not my room, or the couch, or the bathroom. Nope. It was my kitty.

Hopefully this long post has updated you significantly on my weekend and makes up for my lack of posting recently.

Have a nice life. :)

~Maddie

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, but I've been both too busy and too lazy. The reason you're getting this random mid-week-ish blog post is because I had to go to the dentist today... As everyone knows, the dentist is torture. Pure torture. I had to get a few small cavities worked on today, and now that I'm fully un-numb and able to smile properly, the pain is starting to kick in. I literally hate needles, and I had experience with needles twice in the past week. Last Friday I had to get my blood drawn, and today I had the cavity thing, which also included needles full of numbing substance. Not cool, not cool at all. I'm going to try to keep this post short (and hopefully not too rubbish), as it's already 7pm, and I haven't done any homework! Sorry about that, but I'll try to be back this weekend with regular posts (hopefully)!

Anyways, at least the dentist was nice, but I could go my whole life without having to go to the dentist's office again. Nope, nope, nope. I vote no on any dentist/doctor visit ever. If only...

Sorry, but I'm going to have to stop here. I have homework to do (sadly)... I'll hopefully be back this weekend with less-rubbish posts.

~Maddie

I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a while! I have been really busy lately, but I've also gotten a case of summeritis. For all of you who don't know what summeritis is, it's basically when all you can think of is summer, and you don't feel like doing anymore school work. It usually comes on pretty strong in either the last few weeks of school, and/or right after all the state/big tests are done with. I don't ever remember having it this bad, but I'll get over it quickly enough!

First thing's first: when it comes to summeritis, don't let it take over your life, especially if you still have a lot of things to to in school. If you're still in school and feel a case of summeritis, don't worry! It isn't a legitimate excuse to stop doing everything, but it does help you to feel a bit more relaxed, and a little less stressed. I have five more weeks left in school, but I just got done with my state tests, so I feel like school should be over with already! But no, I still have four more weeks of "learning," and then my last week of school is finals and half days.

This post isn't really going to be a "How to Beat Summeritis" post, as let's be real here, I can write down a bunch of tips, but you probably won't do it. Heck, even just writing this post I get distracted. I either open up a new tab, watch TV, or eat. I've been "writing" this post for about three hours now... Maybe it's just the fact that I had a church conference last week, so I haven't done any homework since Wednesday, or maybe it really is summeritis, but I'm sure that once I get back on a regular school routine tomorrow, then my summeritis will slowly fade away until it comes back full-force in a month.

Sorry this post is a bit rubbish, but I haven't post anything in a while, and I wanted to do just a little update-y type thingie, I guess. Either way, I hope to be back to normal this weekend!

~Maddie