Unfortunate freshman year flashbacks.

     Nope, not this freshman year of college that I'm currently almost finished with. I'm taking everyone wayyyyy back to the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009- aka my freshman year of high school. I've mentioned a few times now that I'd like to do some posts featuring (really embarressing) e-mails between me and my high school crush. But I think they're funnier if I really set the stage and paint a picture for all of you of who I was at 14, and what the major focuses of my life were then.

I couldn't find any pictures from 2008 on this computer, but here's a couple pictures of me from my family's trip to San Diego, CA in February of 2009, right in the middle of freshman year:

     ^ I thought I was super cool for posing with the palm trees here. 

     Our California trip was shortly before I cut my hair. Here's some pictures from the spring of 2009 and the end of freshman year:

      ^ Thinking I was even cooler than in the palm tree picture. Selfies on the front porch, Hollister sweatshirt, new haircut and no make-up (because I wasn't allowed to wear it to school then). #swag

My sweet Lily! We used to take her for "walks" on a rabbit leash around the backyard. She passed away in April 2011.

Above is one of my favorite pictures ever of me and my baby girl, Shakeena. About a year after this was taken I developed bad cat allergies, and she past away the year after that. So this is one of the last good pictures that I have of us together, minus the fact that I look somewhat scary here. 

     Now that you've all seen what an awkward person I was back in the day, here's some of the songs that were the soundtrack of my life that year.

Britney Spears-Circus

I was obsessed with this song my freshman year. The lyrics used to give me a huge self confidence boost, plus I've always been a Britney Spears fan and this was one of her most successful come-back songs.

The Black Eyed Peas-Boom Boom Pow (edited)

Everyone in my youth group loved this song, and since my youth group was such a big part of my life that year I had to share it. This song will be mentioned again in a later post once I start getting into detail of my friendship with my crush. 

Jason Mraz-I'm Yours

Another song that was very popular with my youth group, and also just popular in general. Sheesh, all I can remember about that year is trying to turn on the radio and this song would be on like four stations at once! I have a distinct memory of a weekend field trip with my youth group (bowling perhaps) where my dad drove and the backseat was piled with kids. On the way back to everyone's houses we all belted this song out, even my dad. Good times!

Human-The Killers

I'm not a fan of rock music at all, but this song has more of a europop feel to it, which I later learned would be one of my favorite music genres. The Killers were a popular band with some of the hipster kids at my high school, and I felt cool for liking this song, plus it has a great beat. I still don't understand the lyrics though.

    One of my not so favorite freshman memories is that I spent most of the year complaining to my parents about how my cell phone wasn't good enough. Although to my credit- below is a picture of a similar cell phone to mine:

     I hated this phone. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it better if I had internet or texting, but I wasn't allowed to have either. All I got were about 400 monthly minutes that I had to share with my mom... woot woot.  2008 and 2009 were the times when the brighter and more buttons your phone had, the cooler it was. Why have an iPhone when you could just have an iPod and a cell phone? Below are the two options for phones that I really wanted: the LG Lotus and the Samsung Propel. Near the end of freshman year I tried making my dad a fancy powerpoint presentation on my laptop to convince him to get me a new cell phone. It didn't work.

     Back then my favorite stores were Hollister and Abercrombie. I'm quite ashamed to admit that now but those were really the only two places that I wanted to shop. I thought that "style" was wearing a Hollister t-shirt with a matching Hollister sweatshirt... eek. 

     To sum things up... looking back it appears that I was a very shallow and materialistic person my freshman year. I'm not saying that I was a mean or cruel person, but since I wasn't well accepted by my peers in high school I blamed it on the fact that I didn't have enough "cool stuff." The truth is, people were probably just intimidated by me because I was (and still am) a "good girl." Luckily I was blessed to meet a few friends that shared my goody-goody views later on, but for that first year I may have been identified as a Christian and very involved in my youth group but "stuff" was my God. I am proud to say that while I still love shopping and dressing up and being girly, my first priority now is definitely my faith and relationships.

     The only thing that I've left out of this post is my freshman year crush... but he's a whole other story. Stay tuned next week for the first part of that saga!

     How did the years 2008 and 2009 treat you?

     xoxo Miss ALK