LDOC 2011

Guess what today is?

Here's a hint:

(In case you're concerned, I had help. I don't actually have four arms, as useful as that may be...)

Oh, heyy, good guess :) It's LDOC (pronounced EL-dock) --- also known as the Last Day of Classes! Other colleges & universities may have LDOCs, but let's be serious... Duke perfected LDOC and everyone knows it.

Here's a little LDOC blast from the past:

Freshman year: LDOC 2009

Ok, these were actually taken late at night after LDOC ended, obviously. Such an eventful LDOC, though. Alison & Megan met up with Kevin, called Casey, and it only took them another year and a half to start dating :o)

Sophomore year: LDOC 2010

(Look at how much my hair has grown!)

Casey still laughs at me when we relive the Jay Sean concert (needless to say, I don't react well when guys I've never met before in my life come up behind me & start trying to put their hands on my waist and dance with me. And by "with me," I mean "on me." Yuck. No thanks.) Despite that, we had a blast :) PLUS, I hated the LDOC 2009 t-shirt design so much that I submitted one for LDOC 2010... and ended up winning!

And now... it's time for LDOC 2011!

(Is it sad that I secretly [not-so-secretly] wish that Ludacris would bring Justin Bieber along tonight so they could perform "Baby" together? I'm not really a huge Luda fan, but that would definitely make everything worth it.)

(Sorry, LDOC committee. My wrists are smaller than the average toddler [fact] so it slips off easily, but I promise I'll put it back on before heading over to West.)

Speaking of heading over to West, I'm on my way now! And although my camera only has days left to live (baby is in sad shape), I promise to capture a few memories to share tomorrow :)

In the meantime, it's almost the end of the month again (insane!) I'll be accepting questions for my end of the month Q&A until Friday, so feel free to ask away :) You can see questions that have already been answered here.

Happiness Is... (Part 2)

Happiness is...

...brand new Easter dresses.

...Daddy's girls.

...hugs and kisses.

...little kids coloring.

...not-so-little kids coloring.

(You should've seen the look on mom's face when she asked me to make an example on Saturday night and I handed that back to her five minutes later.)

Happiness is...

...a room full of children who can tell you all about how "sometimes we do bad things and it's called sin, but Jesus was perfect and never sinned and God sent Him to earth and He died on the cross and rose again so we could live with Him in Heaven one day."

...a little girl who never fails to color a picture for you every week & then gets so excited when you're home from college and she can actually give them to you.

...two girls who crawled around in the church nursery together nearly 21 years ago.

Happiness is...

...more birthday wishes and celebrations.

...didicars and hardwood floors.

...finding money in an Easter card from Grandma & Grandpa.

(Please check out that progression. Boy was thrilled.)

Happiness is...

discovering that I spent a portion of my Easter weekend the same way Kelle Hampton did.

(if you want a good laugh, read Kelle's Easter post.)

(I promise Sophia is crawling out of the giant inflatable hamster ball, not falling...)

...love that only gets stronger with time.

(my grandparents, who have been married for almost 47 years)

Happiness is...

...sugar and spice and everything nice...

...and snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

...once again, the feeling that comes along with taking a really darn good picture.

Happiness is also opening my mailbox to see a graduation announcement from Hannah Guisewite, with a super sweet note enclosed! Congratulations, precious girl! I'm so proud of you :)

Once again, what are some of YOUR current happinesses?

:)

Effortless Perfection

The following article was published anonymously in Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle, back in 2003. (On my 14th birthday, actually---long before I was ever accepted as a Blue Devil). I've edited it down a little simply because a portion of the article deals with an eating disorder, which is (fortunately) something I haven't ever struggled with and I didn't want anyone to think that I was referring to myself. (You can find the original article here.) But the truth is... I see this all the time on campus. I believe this article is just as relevant today as it was seven and a half years ago.

She was, in many ways, a typical Duke student. She enjoyed her classes, but she was smart, not brilliant. She went out occasionally, but she was at best, cute, not beautiful... She was, what you could call, a "student leader;" she attended meetings with "Larry" and "Zoila" and "Nicole," and generally knew what was going on on campus. She had the onion-peels-friend structure: the widest layer of natural acquaintances from classes, freshmen dorm, organizations, an inner layer of good friends from different groups, and a small core of intimate friends.

People thought she was self-assured, articulate and together. "Oh you do so much!" they said. Just like every student on campus. No one would have ever suspected she harvested anything but happiness and a prestigious degree from her Duke experience.

She worked hard on that exterior. It was important. Because what no one suspected was the demons that controlled her life, that had ravaged her self-esteem during her four years at Duke. No one realized how she felt from the moment she rolled out of bed to the early morning hours when she hit off the light. Like a failure. "Effortless perfection," the Women's Initiative called it. Female undergraduates wanted "effortless perfection." It was the new catch phrase. She didn't even want effortless perfection. Just perfection. She'd work for it. She wasn't afraid of work. But she was fixated on the ideal, and sooner or later, it all began to come undone.

She'd never been particularly self-critical or low on self-esteem in high school. Like all Duke students, she had made the grade, led the team, won the award, gotten the scholarship. But college was hard on her. She wasn't used to... the competitive acquisition of a new group of friends... She wasn't used to people thinking her A-minus wasn't good enough, or that wearing sweatpants in public was something to be scorned. She wasn't used to the constant reiteration that she just wasn't good enough the way she was.

...she wavered on the edge of self-confidence, and the seemingly minute failures began to stack up, layers of bricks in the wall that slowly was pressing all the oxygen out her lungs... Too boring. Too unhappy. Too dumb.

Too scared.

Too scared to tell anyone how out of proportion the little failures had become. The little failures, the demon "almost but not quite..." Failure boxed her in, trapped her in a roomful of mirrors confronting her with her "almost, but not quite" life...

Sense of failure isolated her from her friends. She felt nervy, anxious. She was a senior without career plans, the only non-banker amongst them. She watched them fly to New York and compare interview notes, and she knew she'd never make it in the corporate world. Another failure. Poor people are not effortlessly perfect. She had loans to pay. "So what are you doing next year?" they smiled and asked. "Well?" Nothing. Because she wasn't good enough.

Her lack of interest was a failure. She'd never been anything if not energetic. But now she felt different. Flaccid. Tired. People called it "senioritis." "Oh yes," she laughed, "I'm ready to graduate." But all she wanted to do was go to her room, lock out the world, lie in bed, sleep and not wake up. She didn't want anyone to see her... the grades she couldn't forget, the classes skipped she couldn't forget, the date functions with her girlfriends she couldn't forget. Entering the world meant walking outside to see "effortless perfection" striding across the grass, stepping on the bus, strutting down the runway. It meant seeing the world through the film of inferiority.

So on the outside she smiled and she ran and she led and she studied... and she played the role of "effortless perfection" to the world. But alone in her room she hid and she ate... and ignored the phone and skipped her classes.... Until she started to worry her façade was going to crack. And she would have to commit the greatest failure yet: admitting there was a problem...

[source]

I know way too many people at Duke who could have written this. Goodness, I could have even written portions of it. This year at Duke has been rough, to say the least. I'm SO ready to be done with classes and exams and forget all about this semester. I'm ready for summer and a chance to clear my head and start my senior year fresh.

But even when things seem messy and complicated and somewhat hopeless, I'm SO glad that Christ was perfect so I don't have to be. I'm completely over the whole "effortless perfection" thing. My life is far from perfect. Amidst all the doubts and insecurities that go along with being a Duke student (or a student of any top ten university, I assume), I'm so glad that I find who I am in Him, and not in grades or internships or GPAs.

And I'm so glad that I was reminded of that yet again this past Easter weekend.

Happiness Is... (Part 1)

Happiness is...

...being home.

...a gorgeous spring day.

...a lazy diva kitty who secretly think she's a rockstar.

...being able to light as many candles as I want because I'm not in a dorm room.

...blue coconut slushies from happy hour at Sonic.

...making "cookies" with the leftover communion bread dough.

Happiness is...

...watching the baby tree I planted when I was four years old grow to be as big as the rest of the trees in the yard.

...raindrops on spider webs.

...the ten year old privilege of having pierced ears.

...making wishes.

Happiness is...

...afternoon naps.

...reunited siblings.

...curly bed-headed cousins.

...the thrill of going up and down on a seesaw... over... and over... and over.

...the feeling that comes with taking a really darn good picture.

Happiness is...

...first ever Easter egg hunts...

...and second and third and fourth ever Easter egg hunts.

...celebrating Easter with your significant other despite being 2500 miles apart.

...grandpas and papas and baseball hats.

...never taking anything for granted.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Easter weekend!

What are some of your current happinesses?

Class of 2011 Exhibition

Ahh, I just got my invitation for this year's "Visual Arts & Practice-Based Visual Studies Graduation with Distinction & Senior Capstone Exhibit." (Yeah, that's a mouthful.)

I can't wait for the opening reception on Thursday! I've watched so many of these seniors develop their project throughout the year & I've had the privilege of taking classes with many of them throughout the past three years. Congrats especially to Daniel Aum, Marissa Bergmann, Nutishia Blake, Chrissy DiNicola, Anamika Goyal, Hilary Huskey, Kyle Singler, Justine Tiu, Bibi Tran, Nina Wu, and Adeeb Yunus. You are all so incredibly talented & have undoubtedly impacted my life as an artist.