I know the sun will rise!

I realize it's been a while since I last posted an update about my life. A lot has happened, so I will be brief about each. Spring semester at UW-Madison is well underway; at the end of the month, I have 4 midterms in 4 days. That being said, however, I'm managing to stay afloat much better this semester. Classes are difficult, but my base level of happiness and peace is leaps ahead of where it was in the fall. Winter is dragging on and on, although the high of 40 today brings much needed relief from the cold!

This morning, I bought my subscription to Coaching Actuaries, a website designed to give us actuaries the best chance of passing the actuarial exams. I used their services for Exam P and was very pleased with the result, so I've decided to use it again for Exam MLC, which is now 69 days away! I'm a little nervous, but I'm also hoping that I will be studying little by little to avoid the awful stress when my countdown reaches single digits.

This Thursday marks the 4 year anniversary of Natalie Bolin's death. Natalie was a swimming teammate of mine in high school, who died in a car accident involving 3 other swimming teammates. It's an emotional time, although also an inspiring one. Natalie's motto was I know the sun will rise. I've been striving to apply that mindset to my daily life. Natalie's birthday was also in February, on the 27th. This would have been her 21st birthday, so my home swim team hosts a memorial swim in which swimmers complete 21 repetitions of some distance. I didn't go to the event this year, although yesterday I swam 21x100's on my own. It was a tough workout, considering I have not been staying in shape as much as I'd like to, but I finished it! It was thrilling to finish in honor of Natalie.

Finally, my other big news is that I'm planning to study abroad next fall! I have almost completed my application, and will be submitting it shortly. My finalized list (at least for now) of top choices is:

1. Oslo, Norway
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Copenhagen, Denmark

To say that I'm excited would be to understate my enthusiasm. Not many of my close friends at school know about it yet, because I wanted to wait until it was finalized. Regardless, the friends that do know about it are excited with me!

I should probably be getting back to studying, so goodbye for now! Prayers for God's will in my adventures next fall, as well as all those who are affected by/remembering Natalie this week would be greatly appreciated! May the sun keep shining down on all of you. :)

-T

Well, Wow.

In the past week and a half or so, my life has been a rollercoaster, as cliche as that sounds. I've been struggling a lot with sliding back toward depression and pulling myself away from my friends. At the same time, I've been exceedingly overcommitted with classes, work, various clubs and organizations, and BadgerCru. Just as my excitement and passion for being back on campus was being drained away by all of these things, my closest friends here and I had a fairly large misunderstanding. I'll spare you the details, but basically what transpired left me in a much worse place than where I had started the week - not the thing I needed to be added to my plate. So, that was last Wednesday night - I was up until 3:30 AM, crying, tossing and turning, frustrated, and angry. As you may imagine, that's not a good combination.

Luckily, even though these friends were not understanding what I needed, I latched onto my family and a couple other close friends and through the grace of God, I made it through the remainder of the week. During the weekend, I hung out with other friends and my sister, brother-in-law and niece came to visit! Even aside from the turmoil happening with my friends, however, I've been feeling discontent.

This brings me to the next "big thing." As you may or may not know, I was planning to co-lead a freshman bible study here on campus. The troubling thing was, however, that I had begun to dread all things having to do with Cru and the bible study. I am so overcommitted, that I started viewing this bible study as an obligation - something I was being forced to do instead of something I wanted to do, something that I was choosing to help me pursue Jesus and help others to do the same. In turn, I could tell I was starting to feel resentment toward my faith in general. The things I was doing last year because I wanted to grow closer to God were now more like things I had to check off my list for the week. I have been growing farther away from Jesus. After praying and talking this through with my co-leader and mentor, I decided to take a step back and focus on my personal relationship with God right now. As with backing out of the summer camp counselor position, I can't help but wonder if I'm doing this for selfish reasons - if I'm just afraid to commit to anything lengthy involving my faith. It's something I'm still struggling with and I'm trusting God will help me see what he has in store for me/give me the courage to commit to the opportunities he wants me to commit to.

So, though a lot of things have been stressful, I have been focusing on the little blessings in my life. The next few weeks are when a lot of interviews for summer actuarial science internships occur - and I already have 4 interviews scheduled! I don't know what will transpire, if anything, from these, but I recognize that I'm blessed to even have the opportunity to interview with four different companies.

Additionally, I have started swimming with the UW-Madison swimming club! It seems to be the perfect commitment. I've gone to two practices so far, and it's so great to be surrounded by people who like to swim and will keep me somewhat accountable for working out. I'm not sure yet if I will be travelling with the team, but either way - it seems to be a good fit for me and a wonderful way to relieve some of the stress.

Lastly, perhaps the most troubling thing of the past few weeks has been the spike in violence in and around campus. On Wednesday night, much of the University of Wisconsin campus went on lock down, as there were shots fired on a street just off campus, and the gunman fled into campus. Additionally, there have been numerous armed robberies/muggings/break-ins. While I have never been afraid to walk across campus before, extra safety precautions are a must now - even as early as 9:00 at night. It's both saddening and frightening, and I am praying that God protect our campus and strengthen the men and women working to keep us safe!

I hope you are blessed by the little things this week. As for me, I'm off to the Badger game! On Wisconsin!

-Theresa

Back in my city!

Yesterday morning, I arrived in Madison for the semester - to be honest, I was extremely excited to be back all summer, and then just the beginning of this week I started having second thoughts. My little brother's birthday was Monday night, and then Tuesday and Wednesday I took him to school in the morning. Because yesterday morning was the last time I'll see him, I gave him a hug and then I almost cried on the way back to my house. It was sad!

Now that I'm here, however, I'm happy to be back with my friends. About half of our "pod" has arrived - there are 10 girls in a pod, and 7 of us all knew each other and chose to live in a pod, and then my roommate and one of the other rooms were random girls. My roommate seems nice and easy to get along with, so I'm not too worried! Last night, after we were all moved in and made it through our house meeting, we all just hung out and caught up a bit. Tonight should be more of the same! 

Colleen and I in front of our "second home"
(also, note my reddish hair!!!!)

Today I haven't done much exciting - my friend Colleen and I ran a  few errands- picking up our football tickets, going to Walgreens, and stopping in front of the business school - the place we like to call our second home. All in all, I've walked about 4 miles today - definitely a sign I'm back on campus! Then, tonight I hit up the pool with Colleen to swim a quick workout, before meeting a few other people from our floor. The people I've met have all seemed friendly and nice, so I'm optimistic for this year!



Adios for now!
-Theresa

Refreshed, Rejuvenated, Ready to Go!

After a long, dragging week, I had a great weekend! It was a great kickoff to my last week of work! (yay yay yay!) Friday afternoon, I was able to leave work a half hour early, and headed over to the YMCA to get an hour swim in - I went 2500 yards, which was the longest workout of the week, and finished with 50 yard freestyle sprint, clocking in at 29 seconds! For many of you, this is probably fairly meaningless, but to swim a 29, from a push off the wall (as opposed to diving off a starting block/side of the pool), after only a week back in the water was exciting and motivating! I'm looking forward to heading back to the Y tomorrow afternoon after work, hopefully to swim another 2500 yard workout.

After my swim, our family went to Subway for dinner, and then my mom and I headed to the mall to do a little bit of shopping. I'm not typically much of a shopper - I get bored with it really quickly, but this excursion was fairly successful! After we got back, we met up with my dad and treated ourselves with frozen yogurt. It was a wonderful low-key evening.

Yesterday was a bit more hectic, but fun nonetheless. I spent the day reffing a 3v3 soccer tournament, which featured some really good teams. Because the fields and teams were so small, the play was faster than the typical soccer game I ref, and other modifications to the rules added to the challenge, but it was a relatively good experience! As an added bonus, I ended up getting paid a dollar per game more than I was expecting!

The "brownies" (note hair color)

The gang out for dinner!

Last night, I headed out to dinner with 5 of my close friends from high school. We ate at a semi-fancy restaurant (to give you context, it was the same place that we went for one of our homecoming dinners - fancy enough, but not overly pricey.), then had a night of facials, Pitch Perfect, and a baking adventure that ended in strawberry-blueberry cobbler! Tasty! This week, our group begins to disperse to our respective colleges, as the rest of us slowly follow in their footsteps. It was a great time reminiscing and catching up, but it also reminded me of the weird dynamic of having two entirely different lives now - one at school with all of those friends, and one back home with all of these friends. Luckily, I've been blessed with good friends in both places.

Finally, today was mostly about family. Beginning this morning, at church, I saw two people who are very dear to me - Mike and June. The past three years, they have hosted foreign exchange students. The first one, I was very good friends with, and therefore came to know Mike and June, who are much like second parents to me now. Additionally, I will admit that I have an attraction to anything foreign - people, places, things - so that definitely is a big draw, too. They just welcomed a new foreign exchange boy from Hungary into their home, so I'm excited to get to know him better!

This afternoon my older brother was home, my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and aunt and uncle came over to swim and grill out. It was laid back and not completely overwhelming like some of our family get togethers can be. The food was delicious, our pool was warm, and the sun was out - what a perfect day! We even introduced my aunt to geocaching - and the cache we found had awesome camouflaging - a log had been cut into two pieces, and then a hole had been drilled into one of the pieces, where a pill bottle was placed. The other end was reattached so that the log was in one piece again - so, in order to find the cache, you had to notice that the wood had oddly been cut all the way around. My brother-in-law made this observation, and we came back to supper satisfied (and hungry)!

Although I'm certainly not looking forward to the next week of work, I'm down to only four days left. This weekend has been a good kick-off to my final week, so I'm hoping the next four days continue the trend!

I hope the last few days of your summer find you relaxing in the sun!
-Theresa