Stretch.

Yesterday I got an email from my dear friend, Teylar, who was my PA freshman year. She wanted to send me a quote that she had read that reminded her of me. And here it is:

"Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle...We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us. But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other and are invigorated by the stretching." - Gift From the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This really speaks to me with where I'm at in my life. I lead a floor of 31 amazing girls, but we are very different from one another. There is great diversity here, with girls of different backgrounds, places, ethnicities, interests, talents, majors. They are all fantastic girls, but if it were up to me at the very beginning of the year, I doubt I would have put us altogether. But I would not change things. God knows what He's doing, and I'm learning so much from the girls around me. As Anne Lindbergh says, we have to stretch to understand each other. It's tough. But it's rewarding, and we are "invigorated by the stretching."

Let yourself be stretched.

20.5

Today is my half-birthday! To celebrate, instead of working on my piles of homework in the 2 hours I have to do that today, I decide to blog.

I'm 20 and a half now. I feel much older! That probably sounds kinda silly to anyone who actually is older because it's easy to look at younger people and think "you are so young still." But I think I feel older precisely because I am often with people younger than myself, living in the residence halls and all. I am the authority figure and girls look to me for advice, answers to their problems, and last night they even called me their "floor mom." If I'm gonna be called "mom," I daresay I should feel a little older than 20!

Also, this year has stretched me a lot already. I've dealt with situations that I never dreamed of being faced with (and I doubt I would have encountered had I not been a PA). I'm not trying to be all dramatic, but I definitely feel that my life has changed a lot since becoming a PA. I have a lot more responsibility, I'm faced with many situations in which I must respond, and my time is no longer just my own. In a nutshell, it's leadership.

So I feel older. But that's ok. It's good for me! And here's a list of the reasons why I love my girls on 2nd West:
- we build awesome, epic forts
- they're musically inclined, and they loved jamming with my lil sis (they taught her to play the ukelele)
- we sit in Gwinn and talk about weird things, like how to touch your tongue to your nose...and then we all practice. I very much hope someone was watching that because I'm sure we looked hilarious.
- they all make fun of how I eat. maybe I don't love that, but no one has ever paid enough attention to comment on the way I eat my ice cream (letting it melt on my tongue and then swallowing...so it doesnt touch my teeth), so I guess that's cool
- they break open bananas with their foreheads now, thanks to me =)
- they let me know when there are problems...even if it means they have to wake me up to do it!
- they are not afraid to share their opinion
- they miss me when I'm gone