Day 817: Stay Motivated

I don't stay at school most weekends, mostly because I generally have something going on at home or somewhere I need the car to get to, and on those rare weekends when I have nothing going on, I generally like to spend the little bit of freetime I have lounging around with miss Lillybelle or looking at slides with my family. My roommates, I know, probably wish I would stay more often, and if it were up to me I think I would. I adore my roommates and I love college...it's just that it doesn't always work out that way. However, because we just got off of spring break and this next week is shortened because of Easter, I figured staying on campus made sense, especially thanks to the huge amount of work I had to get done.

Midterms, thank goodness, are now officially over, or at least they are as I'm actually writing this (Monday, March 30). Midterms generally surround spring break and into the following weeks, so while it's nice to have them sort of split up, it just so happened that I ended up with two midterms on the same day. It's never nice when that happens (and it also happens to be the reason that the last week of the semester, finals week, is more terrifying than anything else in the world), and therefore I spent most of my weekend surrounded by an obnoxious amount of books and paper, trying to finish up a take-home essay-style midterm for Classic American Novels while also studying for a French exam.

Unfortunately, lots of work means a lot less Disney, and while it creeped it's way into a number of things over the weekend, there just wasn't a lot of time for the usual Disney beyond my daily Disneybounds and the continuation of the Everyday Disney Challenge. However, I needed to keep myself motivated to work somehow, and luckily it was Disney that provided exactly the thing I needed to keep me going: IllumiNations.

Over the weekend, as part of the Everyday Disney Challenge, the prompts both included pictures from IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth, mostly because there are so many different things that you could photograph, and since the second prompt was "We Go On," you could even include older pictures from the Millennium Celebration. Regardless, I posted two photos from the fireworks presentation, which you'll see in a few days as I round up the month of Instagram photos, and that got me thinking.

Luckily, with everything I've done over the past few years through my vlogs and with filming for the Band Trip Video, I have most of the attractions and performances at Disney on recording. It means that, at any given moment, I could probably sit down at my laptop and easily watch High Def recordings of just about anything from Walt Disney World. You name it, I have it: Spaceship Earth, Test Track, Pirates of the Caribbean, Expedition Everest, Festival of the Lion King, Fantasmic, The Great Movie Ride and, of course, IllumiNations.

So at the end of the night, after finishing most of my work for the day and getting a good chunk of studying done for my midterms, I sat down, plugged in my good headphones, turned down the lights and watched Illuminations on my laptop. Now, maybe it's not 100% like being there live, but if you get close enough to the screen and pretend, it works well enough for me.

My next piece of Disney Video Motivation? The American Adventure, which I was going to watch Sunday night, but didn't get a chance to because instead I just headed to bed early. Maybe tonight though, if I can manage to make my way through 7 chapters of a book, make new French Flash Cards, fill out a housing application, and get through three hours of rehearsal time this afternoon. 

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on March 30 due to Midterms).

Day 706: Finals Are Rough

If you haven't figured it out yet, finals took quite the toll on me this semester, causing me to end up around 3 weeks behind in blog posts. However, I'm slowly making them all back up, and the interesting thing that happened this time is I actually ended up with topics for just about every day I missed. Maybe it's because of the spreadsheet I now have that helps me keep track of all the blog posts, or maybe it's simply because I figured that the last time I got really far behind and didn't note down topics I ended up really frustrated, but either way, here I am.

If case you were wondering, I ended up doing very well on my finals. All As except for two ABs. Of course, those ABs aren't even that bad when you consider the fact that I was 99% sure one of them was going to be a BC, but I can definitely deal with AB. For sure. 

The question is, what got me through finals week this year? Last year I shared the Hook study memes, which, as I mentioned in a blog post I just wrote tonight, ended up inspiring the Door of Encouragement in our dorm room. But hey, just for the fun of it, let's share them all again:

In reality, however, these memes might be a bit more appropriate for the Non-Once Loving Person, if those people actually even exist: 

But let's be real here. Even with all the Hook and Disney motivation, our finals week is more accurately represented with this meme: 

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on December 22 due to, you guessed it, finals week!)

Day 703: The Door of Encouragement

College is hard, but I'm sure most of you already knew that. Granted, I get significantly more sleep in college than I ever did in High School, and I definitely eat better and I'm probably just healthier in general, but the homework? The homework is definitely harder. Which is why my roommates and I need encouragement.

Of course, we have little Melvin to keep us company, sitting in between my desk and Ashley's desk, but as motivational as Melvin is, we need some other motivation too. Actually, it all started with one very specific picture:

It's in a frame and sits on one of my shelves, and so the rest of my roommates were kind of jealous of my extremely awesome study motivation, so we found/made some for them: 

Don't ask. 

Anyways, even before that occurred, we had another idea. We love the television show Chuck in our room, and we all love the character Casey, so one night, when we were listening to our favorite relaxation song, Hang On Little Tomato, I was hit with an idea. A motivation board. And I had the perfect place to put it. The front door of our room is giant and green and a perfect spot for some motivation. And so, the door became one of encouragement. 

Every few weeks, something new will appear on the door. We started out with Hang On Little Tomato and the "Keep Studying" Poster with Chuck's Casey, as well as the "Tiny Potato," and just went from there. Lots of things have been added, and I'm excited about the fact that there's already a few motivational posters to find a home on the door when we get back from Holiday break. 

As you can see, there are a few Disney things on the door, including: 

The door definitely keeps us going through the hard days, and will be added to in the future. Maybe I'll have to do another post at the end of the year when the door is completely filled! Regardless, the things that Captain Hook starts in our room. It get crazier with each passing day, but we love it.

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blot post was written on December 22 due to finals).