This spring break was one of the most emotionally exhausting weeks of my life since I started college. Despite my hectic academic course load, the root of my exhaustion was not school. In fact, the main catalyst for my exhaustion was my rocky relationship with a boyfriend that I went to high school with. And I didn’t have a plan for a breakup.

The situation was complicated because he attended a college in a different state. The two of us never agreed to end our hazy relationship because of the distance between our universities and because of our own preoccupation with ourselves. Unfortunately, my self-preoccupation and hectic work schedule were getting in the way of all aspects of my life.

It would take a little heartbreak for me to see how my schedule was destroying my mindfulness in life.

Let me give you a larger idea of the type of person I am. Everyday my alarm goes off at 6:47 a.m. I purposefully chose to set my alarm to a number that is not a multiple of 5 to force unconventionality into my hectic work schedule.

Me, living in the moment.

After my alarm goes off, I pack my food and materials for classes, the gym, and clubs for the day into my Jansport backpack. After I have double-checked that I have every material necessary for every step of my event-packed day, I walk outside my apartment door.

Often times, before I leave my building, I am so focused on which direction I should turn when I walk out onto the main road that I can never seem to remember whether I locked my front door or not.

If you haven’t concluded how Type A I am, then maybe this will convince you more. So much of my life revolves around a schedule: I predetermine ideal times to use the restroom, I decide exactly what I am going to eat for the entirety of the week when I make my weekly grocery trip, and I have a daily block schedule handy at all times.

Even though I thrive in an organized environment, I came to the realization that a little lack of preparation can be refreshing. For spring break I decided to make a trip to see some old high school friends and the aforementioned boyfriend.

I was ready to force myself to ignore my desire to plan everything. I considered it an experiment in living life in the moment.

I’m proud that I decided to turn the trip into an experiment to see whether I could enjoy my time in the unknown. After all, they say that it is the journey and not the destination that matters!

However, there was one problem that I felt plagued the success of my trip: how would I feel when I saw him. The unknown haunted me. I ended up feeling confused and hurt and I spent the majority of my trip floundering in a sea of previously buried emotions.

Our future together felt so up-in-the air, and I wasn’t sure how to process the situation or my feelings. It was so much easier to go about my day at school knowing that I would not have to see him and therefore not have to deal with him.

In the end, we mutually decided to end our relationship. Even though we ultimately decided to call it quits, I learned something valuable. I learned that neither preparation nor lack of preparation can protect you from the unexpected pangs brought upon by life.

There is absolutely nothing that I could have done to prepare to protect my heart. Now I see that this is actually okay!

A little pain and heartbreak is good for you. It builds character! Living in the moment and processing emotions as they arose actually gave me some space to enjoy my personal journey in dealing with hurt feelings.

By allowing myself to process the situation in the moment, I was able to open my heart and mind up to feel every step of the way. And I must say, I prefer feeling something and challenging myself to process my emotions rather than waking up at 6:47 a.m. and scheduling time to pee.

Now I look forward to what the next challenging situation will teach me about myself. More importantly, I am looking forward to being surprised by where life will take me next!

“The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why we call it the present.”  

Throughout high school, I constantly found myself wishing the days away, and college was often the only thing on my mind. I couldn’t get out of my hometown fast enough; figuring that I would leave for college and never look back.

I didn’t appreciate the value of family, and didn’t understand the meaning of true friendship. I tried to live life according to a mental image that I had pre-set for myself, panicking if something even slightly deviated from my plan. It wasn’t until an unexpected turn of events, beginning a new chapter in my life, and a growth of my faith that I finally realized I am the key to my own happiness, but not the sovereign of my future.

Through many hardships, I have learned to enjoy every moment and not to stress myself out with the things that are out of my control. Back in my high school days, and even into my early college years, I would worry about every minor detail that went awry.

From something as small as which prom group I was invited into, to as big as what would happen if I didn’t get into the school of my dreams, everything just had to work out as I had prepared.

I liked following a set schedule in which every minute of every day was perfectly planned out.

But I quickly found out that life doesn’t work this way, no matter how hard you try. For as long as I can remember, my Saturdays have been spent between the hedges cheering on the Dawgs, while simultaneously admiring all of the cheerleaders below that I aspired to be. Sanford Stadium was the one place that I felt comfortable and completely at home because many of my childhood memories took place there.

I was in for an unexpected reality check when I quickly went from the excited high school cheerleader driving up to see my role models on the sidelines, to being the average college student watching the game from the stands.

Being the planner that I am, I previously had my entire college career envisioned. I would be on the UGA cheerleading team; simple as that…right? Wrong.

One minor accident would send me kissing that plan goodbye.

“Crack.” The cringing sound that still lingers in my head and haunts me to this day. The cringing sound that would end my cheerleading career. The cringing sound that would shatter my dream. 

To this day, I can still clearly visualize the 9-foot tumble out of the arms of my teammates onto the unwelcoming foam mat. I can still feel the excruciating pain shooting up and down the right side of my body, scared to make the slightest movement. I can still hear the hissing silence of my teammates, waiting to take a breath before they made sense of what just happened.

One simple slip of my base’s hand led me crashing to the ground, unexpectedly changing my life forever. From that moment on, I knew that all of the preparation that I had done had just gone flying out the window. My broken leg would cause me to miss UGA cheerleading tryouts, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Thankfully, I got accepted early admission to The University of Georgia without the help of cheerleading, so my hard work, planning, and high test scores paid off.

This was a huge weight off of my shoulders, so I spent the rest of my senior year trying to make the most of my high school experience.

However, I still felt as if I was living a life on a pedestal according to other people’s standards, constantly trying to people-please and caring way too much about other’s opinions. I let my “friends” walk all over me, and my acquaintances influence my behavior. I probably could have fooled you, but I was anything but happy. If I can pinpoint an all-time low in my life, I would definitely have no problem choosing my transition into college.

I was completely lost and felt like I had wasted my entire life looking forward to something that was no longer in the cards. I frequently found myself wandering down memory lane, putting myself back on the sidelines of those Friday night football games or Spring Break trips to Panama City.

I was finally living in Athens like I had always dreamed, but all I could think about was how badly I wanted those high school days back; the youth that I had previously taken advantage of. Those days didn’t seem all that great at the time, but that’s the problem with our memory. It has a funny way of only retaining the positive experiences, and conveniently forgetting the negative.

I was attending the University of Georgia as a freshman, living out the typical “American college experience.”

It was an opportunity that many teenagers would kill for, yet I didn’t appreciate or take full advantage of it. So after much debate, I decided to accept the past and follow a new path, deciding to go through sorority rush.

It started out as a tough adjustment going from my well-known identity in high school to an average, unknown student in college, but I was adjusting better than I thought that I would. Yet even as I started becoming closer to my sorority sisters and meeting so many new people on a daily basis, I still felt lost and off-balance.

I no longer had my “cheerleader” image to rely on, so I had to work hard to develop a new identity, forcing me to get out of my comfort zone and learn so much about myself.

At first, I struggled with finding a happy medium. I used alcohol to fuel my social interactions and mask my awkwardness, proving to be far more personable with the help of some liquid courage. I was becoming very social, but I quickly realized that the friendships that I was forming based on drunken-nights downtown were surface level. They were a large improvement from many of the unauthentic friendships that I endured in high school, but I still felt very alone.

It wasn’t until I took a step back and started caring less about what others thought of me, and more about what I thought of myself.

I became more outgoing, independent, and confident in who I was, without needing validation from others. I’m not perfect.

In fact, I’m nowhere near it. I’m stubborn, but I’ll admit when I’m wrong. I complain at times, but I am always trying to please others. I forgive too quickly, but only because I value relationships too much to let stupid arguments affect them. I can be quick to judge others, yet I know how crappy it feels to be judged. I am clumsy and trip at least twice a day, but I am an athletic person who knows how to get up and shake it off.

I am the definition of awkward, but I am also one of the most social people you will ever meet. I do embarrassing things, but I know how to laugh at myself. My imperfections may not make me flawless, but they make me…me.

Throughout my time at the University of Georgia, I have loved, lost, lived, and learned a tremendous amount.

I have grown as a person, and improved as a friend. I am not the same person that I was four years ago, and I will not be the same person four years from now. My experiences, although I didn’t realize it at the time, have shaped me into who I am today.

I have realized the importance of taking it day by day. College has made me appreciate the meaning of true friendship, where people accept you for who you are. Or they don’t, and you learn to get over it. I have realized that some people have been placed in my life for a reason, some for a season, a few just for now, and others for forever.

I no longer try to impress anyone or live up to expectations. I am not going to stress myself out about the future, or keep living life in the past. I have had more fun in my college years than I ever thought possible. I have made friends that would bend over backwards for me; those who will pick me up from downtown at two in the morning so I don’t have to walk home alone, bring me coffee when I am late-night cramming for midterms at the SLC, or stay awake for hours on end having meaningful conversations when they know I am on the verge of a break down.

I have realized the importance of family and faith, confident in the fact that I always have a comforting home to come to when the stresses of life become too overwhelming. I have a God that will always love me more than I could ever imagine, even on the days that I still struggle to love myself.

So, as I near the completion of my final semester at The University of Georgia (Go Dawgs), I do not know what my future holds.

I do not know the answers to the repeated questions from friends and family members over the break about my plans following graduation. I may not have a set job lined up, or a guaranteed career path ahead of me, but I do know that I will live every day to the fullest. I will not let expenses get in the way of my desire to travel. I will not let others’ opinions transform me. 

So for now, I will focus on becoming the best version of myself, pursuing my passions, and defining my self-worth in the One who truly matters. Everything else will follow. We don’t definitively know our forever. We don’t even know our tomorrow. But we can make the most of our now.  

Each day is a gift, which is why they call it the present.

Lastly, Rachel heads to Australia after graduation … If you would like to support her travels, please feel free: https://www.fundmytravel.com/campaign/hAbjOqJuK5

Being a second semester junior in college, I really thought I’d have my life figured out by now. Truth is, I don’t and I’m slowly learning to be okay with that. For the longest time, I had always dreamed about my life after college.

I wanted to move to some cool new city in a different state with a fresh start. I thought I would have a lot more experience in the field that I wanted to work in.

I thought I’d be in a serious relationship with my college sweetheart. Don’t get me wrong, college has been the best years of my life, but it has taught me that not a lot in life is going to go the way you planned.

Reality has really set in this year because so many of my friends are seniors and are graduating in a little over a month.

I’ve seen them struggle to find jobs, apply to graduate schools. Many already have a job lined up for them after graduation, while some are still figuring it out. Once they’re gone, I’ll be in that position.

My plan for right now is graduate school. I’m stressed about having to take the GRE, completing the applications, and, of course, waiting to hear whether I’m good enough to get accepted to the programs.

Then there’s the whole matter of paying for graduate school, adjusting to a new city, and being successful in furthering my education.

It all makes me insanely nervous thinking about being a real adult. Living on your own inside the college bubble is not the same as truly living on your own.

As much as I long to start a new chapter in my life, I truly don’t feel prepared for it. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I shouldn’t expect to be prepared for most of the things that life throws at me. With a little positivity and a little courage, I know that I’ll be okay.

(Written by Rebecca Lewis)

Well, we were pregnant again. We had an eighteen month little girl at home, and we were well on our way to having two kids. It was exciting and overwhelming at the same time. I was so, so sick; barely able to keep any food down most days, let alone try to play with my busy toddler. It was happening. There was no turning back for us.

We were so thrilled to be having another baby! We love being parents and had always wanted to have our kids close together. It was so fun to start planning for our new little one.

I was almost 20 weeks, the halfway point in a pregnancy. I was headed in for a regular appointment and was feeling nervous. More than usual.

I headed into my appointment, and my doctor started to look for that special heartbeat. Nothing. He grabbed an ultrasound machine. Still nothing. Our little baby had died. I was all alone and heartbroken.

We went through a crummy induced labor and delivery and found out that our baby was a little boy. It was a terribly sad day for us. Something that we never expected. We never thought that we would lose a baby. No one ever does. Loss is always hard. Always.

There is something unique about losing an unborn baby. It’s not just about the baby being gone. It’s about the future. You’re entire future is different. We spent months planning on having a new baby, and now he was just gone. It felt weird.

We had been planning a big family trip in the summer, during which I would be pregnant. That was different now. I returned all my maternity swimsuits and tried to settle into a life that was different than what we had been planning.

There was also some relief. I was relieved. Having a baby is such a financial responsibility and is extremely stressful. We were struggling at the time, so I did. I felt relieved.

And then I felt guilty. So guilty.

All I wanted was to have that baby with me. But he was gone and there wasn’t a thing that I could do about it.

I was filled with so many terrible feelings. I didn’t even know how to start healing. I found a great deal of support in friends and family who had similar experiences. My personal beliefs and faith in God and His plan helped and gave me strength. My husband stood by me. He was broken too, but together we were able to put our world back together and settle into our new reality.

And I know that I would not have survived without my daughter. She is a joy and being her mom kept me going.

A few months later, after experiencing some issues with sleep deprivation and other personal struggles, I decided to talk to my doctor about the possibility of post-partum depression. After a few conversations with my doctor, we decided to try an anti-depressant to help with my sleep. I am so grateful for the help that I had from medication and helpful doctors. I know that I would not be where I am without this.

From my experiences, I have learned the importance of asking for help from those around you.

People are always willing to listen, more than I ever realized. I also learned that I was stronger than I thought. I wasn’t able to be strong every day, but I did my best to chose to be happy for myself and my family.

Ultimately, I healed and overcame this loss because I of the choices I made every single day. I chose my family. I did not want to be lost in a grey cloud of grief, and I knew that I couldn’t be the best wife and mother if I was constantly lost in my sadness. I chose to be happy.

I put on a smile, even when it hurt the most. I chose to remain positive and to remember that the pain I was experiencing wouldn’t last forever. It was only permanent if I let it be.