First year of college = DONE!

     I'm taking a brief break in the post series that I'm doing featuring the goofy e-mails between my and my 9th grade crush, because today is very exciting! This morning I'll be taking my very last final which means that after noon I'll be done with my freshman year of college! The first few weeks seemed the go by slowly but then time started to fly. I thought that I'd show my favorite picture for each month of freshman year, as well as sharing some memories of the best and most interesting things that happened to me this year.

*August

One of the first pictures taken of me after arriving at college! The little purple fella is Mr. Purples, who was a graduation gift to me from my senior prom date. I'll have to write a seperate blog post about his adventures sometime.

Another highlight of the beginning of school was a Bojangles trip with some new friends! Bojangles is one of my most favorite things about the South... people make fun of my obsession with it!

*September

I celebrated my 18th birthday on September 6th, 2012, also the day that I started this blog! This was my first birthday spent without family and friends from home, so it was bittersweet. A highlight of the day was spending it at the school radio station though! Volunteering there has been one of my favorite parts of freshman year.

...September was also the month that I decided it was time to change up my look. I got my belly pierced a couple weeks after my birthday...

...and I got a perm!

*October

October brought my first college homecoming experience!

It also brought my first trip back home to Maine since leaving for college! 

*November

One of the best days of my life happened- I met my favorite Christian author Karen Kingsbury as apart of her fall book tour! This was seriously a dream come true and you can read my post about it here!

Since I had just gone to Maine for October break, I spent Thanksgiving with my friend K's family in her hometown in NC. It was a wonderful time and I got to see many new parts of the state!

*December

The weekend before finals I hosted a small Christmas party in the common room of the suite that I lived in. Sadly I cannot take credit for any of the cute decorations though- my suitemates did most of those! 

I went home after finals for a three week winter break! At my mom's side of the family's annual Christmas party, I learned that it was the year of the scarves when it came to gifts! Luckily I really like scarves. :-) I also got to catch up with some high school friends in December, and "enjoy" the frigid Maine weather.

*January

I spent January 1-4 with my dad in his homestate of New York! NYC is one of my favorite places and it had been a few years since we'd been there. I also went back to school for second semester in January, but that's not nearly as exciting. ;-)

Almost forgot! Shortly after second semester started I saw Florida Georgia Line in concert. They were AWESOME!

*February

I spent my Valentine's Day evening eating dinner with some fellow single girls in my bible study at the "classiest" restaurant on earth... Waffle House! We don't have Waffle Houses in Maine and although they kind of scare me I've always had very funny experience everytime that I've been there. Another Valentine's as a single girl was also a great excuse to finally wear my Sexy and I Know It t-shirt! (Yes, I love the song so much that I have a t-shirt bearing the lyrics.)

February was also my first trip to the beautiful state of Tennessee! The French club at my school took a winter retreat there. This was my first time seeing snow south of the Mason-Dixon line- pretty exciting! I wrote this post about the trip.

February 24th was the day that I came down with one of the worst illnesses that I've ever had. The doctors I saw still aren't quite sure what I had. I had every symptom of mono but both of my mono tests came back negative, so they think it was a weird virus that acted like mono. I also got a sinus infection on top of that. Being sick and away at college was one of the hardest things that I've ever had to go through. This is when I first started considering transferring to a different school.

*March

After I had been sick for a week and a half and showed few signs of getting better, my parents put me on a last minute flight and flew me home to rest. Unfortunately my illness lasted three weeks and conflicted with spring break. My mom and I were supposed to go to Italy for SB with a tour group from my university, but we were unable to because I was still very sick. In total I missed two full weeks of classes and my whole spring break. I finally started feeling better the day before that I went back to school.

Here's me on the one day I was feeling well at the end of spring break! My mom took me for a brief walk on the beach before I left. After I got back to school the rest of my March consisted of making up two weeks of missed work... not fun.

*April

 April was a good and bad month. I was still working on getting back into a schedule after out sick for so long, and I still had a bit of make-up work to finish. The good news though is that most of April was a warm and beautiful month!  This New England girl was very excited to see temperatures in the 70s and 80s so "early" in the spring! I spent as much time outside as I could.

April (aka three-ish weeks ago) is also when I cut my hair! My long mane was getting to be too much to manage. I love long hair and will grow mine out again eventually, but right now I'm still loving my new 'do! 

I don't have a picture for the last thing, but at the end of the month I found out that I was accepted to the school in North Carolina that I'd been wanting to transfer to! They offered me a very good scholarship so I'll be a transfer student next year.

*May

May isn't even half-way over yet, but in the first weekend it brought the annual Spring Formal at school! It was a great time to celebrate the end of the year with my friends and have fun before finals. Here's the post with more pictures. 

And here I am, now done finals and off to Maine again for the summer. My dad has flown down to NC to help me pack up my dorm and drive home. We're making the trip into a mini-vacation and are spending the night in a few states on the way home. My most recent newsworthy event is that I finally have gotten called for job interviews! I've applied for a ton of jobs back home, so it is a relief to finally hear back from a few of them. My first interview is next Monday and I'm already crossing my fingers that it will go well!

     One thing that I can't show in a picture is that my faith and love for the Lord has grown so much this year. I have learned to trust His will for me and I'm much more confident in my faith now than I ever was in high school. I finally feel like I'm not doubting what I believe anymore, and I'm learning to live out my faith. I hope that this will only continue to happen in the future! God is so, so good. 

     While not every situation and thing that happened to me this year has been wonderful, all of it has been a learning process. I love the person that I'm becoming and I'm realizing how blessed I really am.

     What has your year been like?

     xoxo Miss ALK


     P.S. I actually pre-wrote this post on Tuesday when I had some free time between exams and packing. It's now 1 a.m. on Thursday morning and my poor dad only got in an hour ago. He was supposed to be in NC at 5 pm tonight. He left New England in the morning and his layover at JFK airport in New York City experienced delays... which altogether has added up to about 8 hours! He was finally supposed to come in at 10 pm finally so I drove to the airport with my suitemate to pick him up (the airport is an hour from school). Once we go there we found out about the extra couple hours, and I had a morning final and had to go back to school, so the poor guy will be spending the night at an airport motel. Guess I just couldn't leave college without a little extra excitement... Hopefully packing everything up tomorrow will go smoothly!