Spring Break & Internships!

Ah!  I haven't updated in awhile!  So much has happened over break!  I stayed home for a few days (Friday through Tuesday) which was really great to relax and hang out with my great friends from high school.  I feel so lucky to have such great friends in my life, and I know that there's a lot of people who weren't so lucky to have so many wonderful people as friends from high school.  We had a lot of fun, and I spent way too much money in just 4 days.

Then on Tuesday afternoon I hopped on a plane and got to Tucson, Arizona where my dad lives around 10pm (12am EST).  I was so exhausted I went straight to bed, which was about 11:30pm by the time we got home.  I slept until 10:30 the next morning.  It was awesome.  Wednesday was great.  I got to just hang out with my sister Britni and my cousins Gemma and Hannah.  We played mini golf, and went to dinner with my dad and stepmom, and the best part was that it was about 75 degrees outside!  I even wore flip-flops!

Then on Thursday, I got to hang out with my sister all morning, which was nice, but perhaps a bit too short seeing as I woke up at 10am again.  People in Arizona like to get up early and go to bed early, but people in Michigan like to stay up late and sleep late.  See they need to utilize that time in the morning before the sun rises, especially in the summer where it's too hot to go outside by 9am.  That doesn't work for me.

Then at 1pm, my cousin Gemma picked me up so I could get to my interview at the Fox Theatre downtown.  While I was in the car, I had a phone interview with the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville!  Sharon, the lady I talked to was so nice, and the internship sounded so great to me.  I really hope that I get that one.  I think I can learn a lot from them and help them out a lot as well.

The Fox Theatre was also really great.  The theatre has a great historical aspect to it, which I love.  It is also a great option, seeing as I can live at home and probably get a part-time job!  The people that I talked to there were so nice, and I would love to spend the summer in Tucson as well, with my family that I don't get to see very often.

Also, the high on Thursday was somewhere around 88 degrees.  Just wanted to rub that in.

Friday morning, my dad, stepmom and I woke up super early and got in the car to head to San Diego for the weekend.  I don't know what it is about San Diego, but I am always instantly relaxed when I breath in that ocean-fresh air.  It's also so refreshing to see a city where every morning is cloudy and foggy, but by 10am the skies are blue and the sun is shining.  Something that certainly never happens in Michigan.  If it's cloudy in the morning in Big Rapids, you can bet that it'll be cloudy all day.

On Friday afternoon, I had an interview at this little venue just outside the Gaslamp Quarter called 4th and B.  Where exactly is that?  Well, it's at the intersection on 4th street and B street.  Real tough to find, let me tell you.  The lady I spoke with there (her name is Natalie) was super awesome, and it sounded like another great internship!  She didn't have a lot of time, but it was so nice to talk to her!  There was just one problem.  The venue is 21+, and I am only 20.  My birthday is in January.  Turns out it isn't legal for me to work there.  Maybe next summer on that one, I guess.  Still great interview practice.

Then Friday night we were on a hunt.  Of the NCAA playoffs type.  To find the USC vs Arizona game. So we went to the Hyatt right down the street from the marina where my dad's boat is at.  Well, it turns out they don't get that channel (it was on FoxSportsNet), so we finished our drinks and appetizer and left.  We knew that the Hilton had a Fox Sports bar, and they would definitely have the channel, so we walked about 10 minutes over there.  Well, it turns out, there was a private party going on at that time.  Thwarted again.  At this time, we debated yelling to the people on the giant yacht if we could watch it with them since we could see the game through the window, but we decided not to.  We finally got to watch the second half of the game, and Arizona won (woot!).

I crashed hard again that night.  At about 9:30pm.  I was so tired.  and I sleep like a baby in that cabin on the boat for some reason.  It was awesome.  The next day, we took the boat out in the morning.  Man, that tsunami made the ocean swells crazy!  I had never seen the waters so rough before!  It was awesome out there.  Then we watched Arizona lose to Washington (bummer), even though they could've won the game.  It went into overtime, and was tied up at about 7ish seconds left in OT, and Washington had the ball.  So they bought a few seconds and made the winning shot.  Also, something was wrong with those announcers.  I think they would go gay for Isaiah Thomas.  That's all they talked about.  Derrick Williams is pretty awesome too, no?  We ended the day at Pizza Nova, ate way too much buttery garlic bread, and crashed again.

Then I got up early Sunday morning and flew back here.  And now Monday is over, and I wish I could go back on break.

Oh well.

I hope I get some phone calls or emails this week about internships.  I am anxious.

-AK

Generation Love

 This post is not about any professional matter of any kind.  It's about something so much more important than that.

I was on Tumblr last night, and my friend had reblogged something.  Huge font.  Automatically got my attention.  A girl named Taylor had just posted a suicide note on her Tumblr page.  The post that was getting reblogged was asking for help.  They wanted to find someone who knew this beautiful 16 year old girl and try to stop her before it was too late.  That's an automatic reblog, to me.

After I reblogged the post, I read the suicide note.  Talk about depressing.  I just felt so helpless to this girl in England, and I wanted to stop her.  I sent her a message on Tumblr, and started following her page.  I wanted her to know that people do care about her, including me who is a total stranger and that someday she will look back on this and be glad that she didn't do it.  She has so much more to do and to be.

I went to bed fairly depressed about this.  I woke up this morning at 6:30 and went to work.  I was studying for a test, so I didn't really go online.  I eventually decided to check my email.  Well, I got an email saying that Taylor followed me back on Tumblr.  Highlight of my week.  And a lot of cool stuff has happened this week.

Someone apparently interrupted her before she could even start swallowing the pills.  Today, she had over 1,600 messages, most of them from complete strangers.  She is saying that she will never consider suicide again, and she is doing her best to respond to each and every message that she received.  This makes me so happy.  I hope she does well in life. :)

If you want to feel a little extra happy today, here is her blog:
http://ihopesomebodyhears.tumblr.com

I came across a preview of a song this past week, which is off of YouTube now, but the song is entitled "Generation Love."  Here is the chorus:

"They call us Generation Lost
Or Generation Greed
Or the connected generation to the plasma screen
Or a generation why enough is not enough
Or maybe they'll call us
Generation Love"

I think this is a good start.

Thanks for reading <3 AK