Good Memories Don't Leave You

Something that my old school does every year is that the graduating students put on a show.

For the past seven years, it was "Roi de l'École" meaning "King of the School".

Because it was the King of the school, it was only the boys who could enter as contestants although the girls were in the show, however they couldn't win a "prize".

This year was the first edition of the "Star of the School", so anyone who wanted to could enter as a contestant.

There were only five contestants, but all of the graduates participated in it someway or another.

This was the first year I went to go see this event at the school, so it was a little weird seeing something I always thought I would participate in.

I met up with a few of my old friends when I got to the school and we watched the event together.

The event was really well done, it was amazing and it was great seeing all of my old friends.

However, I have to admit that being at my old school brought up a lot of good memories and it made me want to go back.

These are the kids that I've gone to school with since primary, we have pictures of each other from when we were 5-6 years old! I moved away from everyone that I knew since I was little and sometimes I still wonder "Well, what if I stayed?"

Honestly, I thought about going back for grade 12 and it was immensely tempting.

When I got home, I talked to my parents about it and the only way I could go back to my old French school and still stay in the IB program would be to switch back after Christmas break this school year.

I wouldn't be able to go back just for grade 12 because the schools don't offer the same IB program and to go from none intensive writing in French to a high level French exam, I would be a little rusty.

I can't lie, I spent my whole evening thinking about what I really wanted to do, all of my good memories are at that school, and then I realized something important.

Memories don't change.

I can have all of those good memories at the French school and make more at my English school.

Of course the friendships aren't as close as my past ones, but you're constantly meeting people your whole life and being with the same people for so long can cause you to be in a safe bubble you can no longer venture out of.

I don't need to be in the same school to remember the good memories from it, I just have to remember that those memories aren't going anywhere.

Until next time!

The Importance of Long Term Time Management

I love blogging. I love the idea of posting freely whether it's a long rant or posting pictures with captions that are just a sentence long, I love everything about it.

I haven't gotten to write too much on this blog simply because I haven't had the chance to, but I plan to change that within the next few weeks.

I was planning on writing a post a few days ago, but I was too tired.

Naturally, this inspired a blog post for me.

I was on the phone with my boyfriend Wednesday night, I had my headphones and mic set up so that I didn't have to hold the phone up and my laptop was in front of me, I was ready to write a new blog post, but I kept falling asleep.

I felt awful for my boyfriend; I believe it was mainly a one sided conversation because I kept falling asleep every five minutes and I would be out for 10 minutes at the time.

I apologized a few times, but I definitely felt like I should've apologized a lot more because I did feel just awful about it.

This will bring me into my topic of today: time management.

Many people can list off the importance of time management for short term reasons, but I'm starting to be affected from my lack of time management for long term reasons.

You see, I'm a swim teacher that works Saturday and Sunday mornings, but I recently picked up an extra shift at the pool Thursday nights to make more money.

When I thought about the consequences this would have on me, I only thought about a few weeks into the future, maybe two weeks.

I didn't think about how it would affect me during a six week period.

I didn't think to manage my time in the long run and this has already caused me to be overtired, cram a little bit with schoolwork and to generally not have 100% control over the things I would like.

This taught me the importance of managing time within a long term as I will definitely be doing things differently for my next work term.

When you have an abrupt change in your schedule and you know it's going to be for a long period of time, plan ahead that far, look into your schedule that far into the future so that you know you aren't overworking yourself.

In other news, I went to go see the new James Bond movie, Spectre, and for the most part it was great! The other parts I can't remember because I fell asleep.

Yeah, I fell asleep in a movie theatre because I was that exhausted from work and schoolwork.

This just goes to show the importance of long term time management!

Until next time!

Don't Hold Back

As some of you may know, I volunteer at a museum. 

More specifically, an immigration museum.

As a volunteer, I tell the volunteer coordinator when I can go in and she adds me on the schedule accordingly. So far I'm going in every Saturday afternoon until the end of November.

Seeing as today is Canadian Thanksgiving, she asked me if I could go in today and said that she understood if I had family plans. I told her it was no problem and I would be there for the shift she put me for.

I walked in today and it turns out that she forgot to add me to the schedule. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to make my mom drive back already to pick me up, I decided to stay and to just walk around, talk to our visitors and see if I could help them out with anything.

Because I made that decision. I met some wonderful people today.

We have two exhibits at the museum and I met one group of people in an exhibit and they were looking for something in the opposite exhibit, so I told them that and said that I'd be more than happy to escort them over to what they were looking for.

They were pretty thankful for that and I led them over to the exhibit.

I ended up giving them a tiny tour of the exhibit and talking to them a lot about the stories of the immigrants from France, the story of the Deportation of the Acadians and a few other stories that I knew. I told them a few personal stories of my own and they said that they loved that I was sharing my stories with them because it enrichened their experience at the museum.

I was so honored to be able to meet and to talk to these people because they were just wonderful and the sweetest people.

Not too long after that, I ended up chatting with an elderly woman who immigrated to Canada from Scotland. 

She was telling me that for her, her brother and her sister in-law, the experience was long and awful. Her brother and sister in-law got so fed up that they decided to immigrate to New Zealand instead.

I was chatting with her about her whole immigration process and I asked if she had any regrets.

She told me that she packed her bags in Scotland at 18 years old and hasn't regretted it one little bit.

She then proceeded to ask me about myself. At first she thought I was a university student, but she was rather shocked when I told her that I'm still in high school.

She then asked me what I wanted to be when I'm older and I told what I want to be: a travel writer.

She told me that every time I get a paycheck, I should take 10% of it, put it away and never touch it so that I could retire at 55 and live comfortably. 

It was really good advice and I'm going to follow it. She also asked me where I wanted to go, so I told her my top destinations but that I was also hesitant to go.

She looked me in the eyes and gave me advice that I'll never forget.

She told me to go for it.

She told me to do what I want to do and that it's a good thing to be scared. 

She told me that she wasn't sure if she wanted to immigrate to Canada or Israel, but she said that if she didn't like it in 5 years time, she could change her mind. But 30+ years later, her she is, still in Canada.

She packed her bags at 18 to find something better and I'm going to do the same.

I can't say that I'll immigrate to another country, let alone another continent when I'm 18, but I'm not going to let fear hold me back from going to new places and meeting new people.

Great minds must think alike because this lady and my amazing older cousin both gave me the same advice.

Don't hold back.

And I won't.

Until next time.

Becoming More Responsible

They say that you have more and more responsibilities as you get older and that you become more responsible, but that's not the case for everyone.

I've heard many stories of kids who grow up too fast, and that's another way to say that they received too many responsibilities at once and had to mature faster than they probably should've.

I can't say that I have a case like that, but I've definitely have matured quite a bit in just a little over a week.

Now that I'm a swim teacher, I'm currently trying to balance a total of four jobs. As I mentioned, I'm a swim teacher, I dog walk, I volunteer at a museum and I babysit.

That's a lot to balance alone, but you also have to throw in my softball schedule and gym schedule in there.

This is my first year being a swim teacher and volunteering at the museum, so I'm still trying to figure all of that out.

My schedule is crazy now. My softball team has missed about eleven or so games due to weather, so their constantly being pushed back and that affects everything else in my schedule.

It's becoming complicated to take shifts at the museum and take possible subbing shifts at the pool when I never know when I'm playing anymore.

This has caused me to become more responsible.

I went out the other day to buy a monthly calendar to be able to see my schedule for the whole month and not overbook myself.

Of course there are many phones out there that have calendars, and I do in fact have one on my phone, but it's a lot easier to have everything written down and be able to see everything at the same time.

When school starts up again, I feel like things will be okay.

I will still be working, volunteering and babysitting, but softball would be off the table and that's good because my schedule will be straightforward.

No delays, no cancellations, no makeup games, my schedule will be more regular.

In the end, it's good to be organized.

It might be a bit scary to have all of these responsibilities all of a sudden, but you figure out your own way to manage your schedule and your responsibilities.

My way is to have a calendar while to someone else, it could be having a schedule that doesn't change at all.

Either way, become more responsible is a challenge at first, but you learn.

I thought that I was going to be terrified with having so many responsibilities, but I found a balance that worked for me, so that's good!

In the end, I'm learning balance and how to become responsible and it shouldn't be something to be afraid of. It's an adjustment that we all make.

Until next time!

Being Body Positive

Nowadays, if you ask people if they're happy with their weight, the majority of them will say no.

That's a problem.

Although everyone struggles with body images at times, I'm mostly going to be referring to girl clothing because I have more experience shopping in that section and I'm not all that sure as to how boys jeans sizes work.

While girls are striving to fit into those double 0's jeans, a study done in 2015 has proven that the average jeans size in America is 14.

The main goal in 2015 for girls is to have the perfect boobs and butt while still maintaining a slim body.

One of the biggest beauty icons ever known, Marilyn Monroe, had stretch marks. If we have stretch marks now, that's considered a bad thing,

I remember this one time when I was shopping, I overheard these two girls talking.

They were just chatting while looking through the clothing, but one girl stopped and said "Oh my god, this is so gross. I'm usually never this size, but I'll have to get this shirt in a large if I want it."

I left the store before they did, so I don't know if she got the shirt in the end.

Although I don't know what happened in the end, I do know that it's a problem.

We live in a society now we're the word "fat" is considered bad or as an insult and the size "large" is too big to be considered hot or sexy.

I'm fat.

I'm fat because I don't fit into society's view as a perfect body. I'm fat because I don't have a flat stomach or abs. I'm fat because the skin on my legs shake for a second longer than they should when I walk.

I'm fat because I don't have big boobs, hips and butt while having a small torso and legs.

Because I'm not someone's view of good-looking, I'm automatically fat.

Because of that, fat is now considered a derogatory word.

It's extremely difficult to be body positive when you only hear words that have evolved to be insults about yourself because you don't live up to someone else's standards.

Even though it seems like an impossible thing to do, we all have to start loving our bodies and being body positive.

If you wear jeans that are a size 10 and are self conscious about that, then rock those jeans! I bet you nothing else would look as amazing as those jeans do.

That goes for every single person out there who are unhappy with their jeans size.

Personally, I'm different sizes for jeans. I have jeans that are sizes 3,4,5,6 and 7. Those are five different sizes for jeans because they all have different cuts. If I try on a pair of jeans and I have to go a size up, I slowly became to accept that because I realized that different jeans will all for differently.

The same goes for shirts.

I have all sizes from small to extra-large because it all matters on the style of the shirt.

People seem to think that once you've been in one size for awhile, that's what your always supposed to be.

Of course you can lose or gain weight, but it doesn't matter if you bought a shirt that's a size small yesterday, you can buy a large today.

Sizes all depend on fits and how comfortable you feel in it.

You can't be body positive if you aren't comfortable in what you're wearing.

It's okay to not be 100% happy with your body right now, but you can build yourself up to the point of loving it.

If you think that you need to take different measures to feel better about your body, then so be it.

If you don't like something about your body, there's always a solution. If you don't like your hair, get it cut or dye it! You can use nail polish if you don't like your nails.

Do whatever it takes to make you, and you alone, happy with your body.

Saying that you like something about yourself does not make you vain. Even if you think it does, what's the bad part in that?

You're loving your body, the only one you'll ever have, and I don't think that that's a bad thing.

I can't remember where I saw or heard these words, but I would love to share them. Just know that they're not mine.

In the end, it doesn't matter what your body looks like. We all have the same goal: to love life to the fullest and die with no regrets. When we're gone, we aren't remembered by what our bodies looked like, but we're remembered by the things we do and the people we reached out to.

Those words helped me get through my low self-esteem and is still helping me everyday.

It's okay to not be happy with your weight, it's okay to have flaws, but you will come to love yourself. I can't say that it will be soon, but you will love yourself. It will happen.

I hope this might of have an impact on you guys as it did for me when I heard those words from before.

Until next time!