in which India remembers she has a blog

Wow, I think I had forgotten that I had a blog. It's been so long since I've clicked "New Post" and stared at an empty page thinking about what to write! Sad! It means life has been full and overflowing though. I will spare you most of the details of the past month - and just give today updates, and summer goal updates. For anyone that cares. If not, skip to the very last paragraph :) (and you won't offend me if you do, promise)

Today: last day of summer dance camp! Whoo-hoo! That means I have now approximately one month to start planning for my fall dance classes. Exciting! I think I get to teach more than I did last year, and that will be cool.
Also today: had my (4th? 5th?) violin lesson. I can't remember if I have told you, my bloggy friends, if I was taking violin lessons. Well, I am! And they are going quite well. My teacher is pretty amazing - she reminds me of my old teacher and that is a good thing. I've learned a lot and have been having fun doing so.

As far as my summer goals have been going, I've knocked 11 of 19 things off my list. Over half - yes! One of the things that was on my list was "get a slight tan" - I've never tanned before, and I wanted to see if I could do the right things (not including fake baking) to get tan. First I burned, badly, then I got white again, then I spent a few hours at a time in the sun..... and I now have a slight tan! Mind you, it's very slight, but it's the tannest I've ever been. It made me super happy when one of my co-workers said to me "India! I can tell you've been in the sun.... but you're not burnt! It's kinda tan!" <-- day made. I know this is lame, but for a red-head, I think it's a big deal. :D

This up-and-coming weekend is the summer state swim meet for my brothers. I don't particularily like swim meets - but I do like watching my bros swim crazy awesomely and I do love helping to time. Since it's outdoors, I can work on my 'tan' ;) :D

That's probably long enough. Happy August-in-like-6-days - OH! and Happy Olympics! So excited to watch it. GO USA!

nostalgic moment

My brother bought a car this afternoon. My.Brother. He's 17! And growing up. So I was thinking about growing up.... how all my siblings are growing up.... how I'm growing up.... and it was kind of a sad moment. I remember how my brothers and I would build forts in the living room, how I used to put all kinds of hair ties in my brother's hair. How we'd go in the woods and play 'spy' and how we'd pretend to buy all the things in the store when we went shopping with mom and dad. And those don't even skim the surface of the memories I have with my brothers.

I'm not sure why the act of Noah buying a car made all these memories come flooding back.... but it did. And it made me realize that we're not little kids anymore. We're - like - getting old. Getting to be adults (well, I'm already an adult technically). I'm glad we're growing up - cause it means awesome times to come in the future, but at the same point I kinda miss the past. Those were pretty good times too.

Noah and I - 7 years ago :)

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?