November 21:Happy Birthday K

Happy Birthday Kristen!! I can't believe she's 16 now!  On Second thought, I'm very happy she's 16! 
Our relationship has been...well rocky, she was bossy and I didn't want my YOUNGER sister bossing me. 
So that resulted in a lot of......"heated discussion" Daily. Hourly.  Especially if we were around each other for more than a couple of hours. Thank God for separate rooms. We've since moved on a forged a great friendship. :)


Love you K!!! 

Last Christmas in Gatlinburg TN

Taking my own advice

As the "eldest" of my five siblings, I find that it is I whom they look to for advice and wisdom, when faced with lifes little trials.

Ha.

And I, in turn, also offer it it too them with humbleness and gratitude that they found me worthy of such wisdom.

I WISH.

The thing with siblings is, that we had the misfortune of living together. Hear me out Mom! What I mean, is they have the insiders scoop on what irritates you, what you know or don't know, and if your information is credible or not. So when it comes to offering advice to my younger siblings...the the likelihood that they will follow my pearls of wisdom, is well nil. But I push forward undeterred by their open skepticism.

My sister (18yo) and I were talking about school, she's in her third semester and is pretty sure she's got it figured out. *patronizing smile* Our discussion morphed into talking about her English teacher and how she felt she wasn't really going to put much effort into his class, because he wasn't putting much effort and would probably grade mediocre work high. Alarm bells went off in my head.

If I have learned one thing after three years of college, its that college is about YOU, what YOU want to do, what YOU want to learn, and the teachers are just pieces of the puzzles to get you too that point. So if YOU don't put 100% into the class, it doesn't matter if ONE person gives you an "A" for a mediocre piece, YOUR work reflects on YOU. You all heard me complain about Photog Teacher 1, I didn't feel I could live up to his standards, so I JUST did the assignments, I followed the letter of the law, not really caring. However when it came time to show my pieces in front of the whole class.....it quickly hit me that people weren't seeing my thoughts about the teacher, but my lack of effort. And I can admit it was bad, I really put no effort into doing my best, and was just trying to get an A.

Guess what.

It didn't work.

So you better believe I was cringing when sitting in my photography advisors office, and seeing him look at the "C" glaring from the screen.

I have since realized that not only do my actions reflect on me, but on my family, my job, my church, my friends, GOD...... People who know only me, are going to judge the above groups on MY actions. That brought me up short, and made me realize what I had to do. I've put extra effort into looking neat in clean, keeping my house and car a certain way. Because its NOT ALL ABOUT ME.

Don't worry, it took a while for me to actually start caring what people thought about me, don't get me wrong, I've always cared about my appearance and dressed nicely...but now its taken on a different dimension. I'm reppin a whooole lot of people. Little ol' me!!

So now as I enter Studio Photography 1, I know have to suck it up and take my own advice. I get the feeling that I'm really going to dislike SP1, I just do, I hate the "fakeness" of studio photography, I hate taking  "staged"photos. BUT. I am going to do MY BEST. FOR ME.

{A bad job of "Photoshopping" :)}

PS - None of you studio photographers take that personally, I'm speaking for me myself and I.