ahem! funny post - ready set go.

So I'm in Alaska at my good friend Esther's house, (you may have remembered when she guest posted for me awhile back?!) and it's super late, and we were thinking.....

....if Mark Zuckerberg has Google +........

then was Adolf Hitler a Jew?
did Steve Jobs use an HP?
was Louis Pasteur dairy-free? (Esther had to explain to me who that was! oops)
was Milton Hershey a health-nut?
did John Calvin believe in Armenianism?
did Lady Gaga compose concertos?
could Molly Brown sink?
was Amelia Earhart afraid of heights?
did Fidel Castro start the Peace Corps?
did Henry Ford drive a horse and buggy?
did Martin Luther King Jr ever struggle with insomnia? or nightmares?
does Tom Brokaw actually watch the news?
did Mozart listen to the radio?
was Benedict Arnold loyal?


....yeah. that's what 2 hyper girls come up with at like 1am. :D 

diploma vs experience

YAY! I'm freeeeeeee!!!!!

Not really. I was free before. Anyways.

It's just that dance recital is now over, and I have free time on my hands. I kinda forgot what that was like! It's amazing! We are working on doing laundry and stuff from all the dance costumes right now.... you think it's a big job making 900+ costumes, try having to get all of them sorted, washed, organized, and put away. Whew! At least we don't have a crazy fast deadline on that. And it's kinda fun. Loud music, cool people, yeah :)

On to my post. (And yes, I'll probably post dance recital photos sometime - unless y'all don't care, or saw them on Facebook already :) )

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on the importance of a college degree. For me personally, I have had mine for a year, and haven't used it yet.... but I'm up to my eyeballs in jobs and job offers. I didn't even need a college degree to be a substitute teacher - go figure! My resume has quite a bit of stuff on it - a lot more than the one line that says "Thomas Edison State College - B.A. in English 2011" (or whatever it says about my college education).

I'm not saying that I wish I hadn't gotten my degree - I loved earning it! I love school! I love learning! A huge part of me wants to go back to college and get a Masters or another degree or just take classes - something! What I'm saying is, I think our culture puts too much emphasis on college - saying you need a degree to go anywhere or do anything in life.

The more I'm around people I work for, work with, or other people who have "been around the block more" per say, the more I'm finding that good references are worth their weight in gold. If an employer hears from another employer that you were a hard worker, on time, worked well with others, and did a great job, I'm pretty sure that would be worth more than you having a college degree (some exceptions, of course).

Besides, for certain jobs, college is kinda worthless. I could have gone to college to be a dance teacher, sure - a couple of my coworkers did. But what I learned by first being a student, then being an assistant teacher, then by being a substitute teacher (and putting lots of time and effort into learning from other teachers), really, really prepared me for being a teacher... which is why I got hired. My experience spoke volumes, and I was hired before I had even started college so that didn't matter one bit.

A friend of mine was talking about this, about how he felt he had wasted time and money getting a degree, when the job he was applying for wasn't even remotely close to what his degree was in. How sad is that? I know he learned amazing things in college, and probably doesn't regret the learning part of it, but since it wasn't all that necessary.... why did he do it?

I'm not saying that college should be thrown out the window. Obviously you need it for lots of professions out there (and yes, I am thankful I have my degree). I'm just saying that you should think long and hard about investing that much time, money and energy into a degree - and see if the job you want to do for the rest of your life can't be gained by experience instead of college classes.

Thoughts? :) 

...fireflies...

Blah. I tried, and can't really write a coherent blog post right now. So this is just a little post to say "hi" to all my bloggy friends, to say that yes, I am still alive, just busy, and not able to tell you lots of things at the moment. Which I regret! Cause I love blogging! My Mom even told me the other day that she wished I could have more time to blog. This summer (like, after June 3rd)....!!! I shall blog more. I shall...!!! I hope.

Anyways - have a lovely week everyone (it's dance recital week for me - fun fun!!) - and I shall talk with thee soon!

Oh, and the title, just a random song I was thinking about while I typed this up. Go listen! "Fireflies" by Owl City..... it's a great song. :)

large families

I was reading in Psalms a few minutes ago, in the 120's. It's late, I'm tired, I've been working since 6:30AM and I really want to sleep! Just doing a bit of reading to get my mind on things above before I fall asleep - you know. Then I read Psalm 127, and boom - India, you should blog about this. But I'm tired! But you should really blog about this. But I'm really super tired and if I closed my eyes right now.... India.blog.about.this. .....Okay.

So here I am, at midnight, blogging away. Shall I tell you what on? Large families.

My family used to hang around a large group of homeschool people - maybe 10-12 families - and we all did 'home churching' together. It was pretty neat - I had my girl friends that I'd be around, we'd all read/sing/pray in a huge group, eat together, play games together - it was mostly pretty cool! Except every family there seemed huge to me. Granted I was, say, 10 or 11, but coming from a family of 6 even a family of 10 seemed large! And in the homeschool arena, large families aren't uncommon.

Back to Psalms. I'm reading Psalm 127, and it says "Behold, children are a heritage of Yahweh. The fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. They won't be disappointed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. 

I can remember a time (or two or five), when one of those larger homeschool families would stand up and recite those verses with pride. They seemed to say "Yes! We are living out that Psalm - just look at how many children are in our family!" 

Please don't misunderstand. There is nothing wrong with having large families. I think they are awesome! I hope to have one of my own someday! But the thought process of "I have lots of children, therefore I'm obeying God and I'm so much better than all of y'all with only x (say, less than, like, 5) children" -- that's just wrong.

God telling us that a man will be happy when his quiver (house) is full of arrows (children) doesn't mean that 'full' = 20. I believe that God made every quiver a different size... aka every family a different size. And if you come from a family like mine, where there are only 4 children and that's what God has blessed us with, awesome! If you come from a family like some of my homeschool group friends, where there are more like 12 children in a family, that's awesome too! Because God plans the family, right? Which means He decides how many children are in a family, right? I think so. Which means, I would think, that thinking you're closer to God because you have more children than so and so..... isn't okay.

Just because I do have friends reading this with larger families, I'm going to say this. Please don't think I'm judging you! I'm judging no one by this post. I just want to make the statement that small and large families are from God, and both are wonderful. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone either.... I don't have anyone in mind writing this post. Just felt like it was something I needed to write down and share after reading that in the Bible tonight. :)

plans!

I could do a whole post on how we can make plans but God actually decides what happens.... but I won't.... so instead I'll just make a quick comment about it.

You know how we can make plans but God controls what goes down? Well He does! But that doesn't stop me from making plans. I just have to know that things could change based on what God thinks is best. Back to my plans. I made some summer plans! They include:

• spending a week in Alaska
• teaching 5 weeks of dance camp to 1st-3rd graders
• taking violin lessons again
• taking an online physics class
• possibly getting another job to pay for all my adventures (my mom (and half my hometown) thinks I should open a sewing business :O we'll see what comes of that....) 
• being in my cousin's wedding

HOPEFULLY I can do some running and biking, and keep up on my sewing. And spend more time with my family. :) And hopefully I'll be cool if God decides things need to change.

Do you have any epic summer plans? Are you okay with God changing them if that's His plan?

justifications

A friend told me a story a few months ago, about something that happened to him. What choice did I have but to believe him? He'd never lied to me before - from what I knew anyways. He told me the other day that the whole story was fabricated and something totally different happened. "Oh, I didn't tell you the real version of the story? Ha - oops!" he joked. My emotions for the moments following consisted of anger, sadness, disgust, and the realization that my friend wasn't very trustworthy anymore.

It would have been different had he come back and apologized for lying, for not telling the real story, and being sorry. But he wasn't - that was the hard thing. He listed reasons why he lied - and not to me either, to lots and lots of people - trying to justify his actions. It was pretty disheartening, to say the least.

The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that I do the same thing. Not with lying, necessarily, but there are definitely things I do that I try to justify in my own mind to make them 'okay.' Are my justifications any worse than my friend's? Absolutely not. We all have a conscience, and it's our decision whether we listen to it, or go against it. If we go against it, of course we have to make it 'right' somehow. According to God, that's not right. So this is me telling myself, to stop justifying wrong things and just do the right thing. Easier said than done, but do hard things, right?

a lovely wedding

My family and I drove to Kentucky this weekend for a good friend's wedding. We have been friends with the groom and his family since 2000! So 12 years. That's a long time, and our friendship has remained really strong throughout all those years. We were pretty ecstatic to hear that the oldest son, Barrett, was getting married. He and his lovely bride Devin were betrothed in Israel last fall, and were married this weekend. Here are some photos I took :)

the bride and the groom hadn't seen each other since January, so she was eagerly waiting his arrival with her bridesmaids

the groom pulled up in this carriage, and together they rode to this gorgeous amphitheater type thing on the river, while all the guests followed them on foot

the canopy where the got married - by the river - at sunset - it was gorgeous

the bridge on the river.... the bridge was out (as you can see) but it was still pretty

got to put my 70-200mm lens to good use and see that the bench had their names carved in it! :D

the bridesmaids waiting for the bride and groom to come

the groomsmen waiting

there they are!!!

the ceremony begins

the grooms dad talked and blessed them

the best man (the groom's younger brother) holding their Ketubah - they read it out loud together (it's a Jewish marriage contract - they got it in Israel when they got betrothed!)

they drank wine together

this was cool - they did the salt covenant - where they each had a bag of salt and poured them together, symbolizing how their lives were coming together. the only way their marriage covenant could be not-in-effect would be if Barrett got his salt back and Devin got her salt back.... which after being mixed is kinda impossible. it was cool :)

and I hate that this photo is fuzzy, but this is Barrett's dad announcing "Barrett and Devin Warren!!!" so exciting. then Barrett smashed the shot glass in a bag - Jewish tradition

then the men carried them around in their bench, to partying Israeli music. after that, there were photos, food, dancing, toasts.... but it was too dark and I'm a bad photographer in the dark. :( but it was an exciting day to be sure!