semester recap

I'm not going to lie, this semester was hard. It wasn't even that all of my classes were super hard. Each of them just had so much work and assignments and I was overwhelmed. Some weeks I literally didn't have enough time to do everything I had to do. I barely had any free time which was really annoying. Once I was done with my homework, studying, and golf practice or workouts it was like 9 pm, so I never had anytime to go out and do something fun, or really to even just hang out and watch tv with my roomates. I'm hoping and praying that I don't have any more semesters like this, which may not be very likely since I haven't taken any of the hardest science classes yet. I'm hoping that what made it so hard was just the combination of classes I had. Three of them were major classes- one of which was five credit hours so I had it every day of the week (I honestly don't know how I made it through that one haha)- and one was an honors gen-ed so it was a lot of work and harder than normal gen-eds. Usually gen-eds are fairly easy and don't require as much work outside of class as my major science classes, so I think this semester was so hectic since four of my classes were hard when usually you only have two or three hard classes and one or two gen-eds.

Even though my schedule was super crazy, this was still an awesome semester.

Our first golf tournament this semester was in North East, Pennsylvania which was right on the coast of Lake Erie. The course was absolutely beautiful. This picture is the view of the lake from number 13 that was so beautiful. The only bad thing about playing right on the lake was that it was so windy and would randomly start raining every once in a while. We were talking on the way home and apparently at one point it was raining on the side of the course closest to the lake (which of course I was on haha) and not the other where some of the other girls on my team were. 

The first picture is from our tournament in Owensboro, KY. We played at another really beautiful course here, but man was it hot and so hilly. I think at one point the Weather Channel app said it felt like it was in the high 90s because of how humid it was. And about the hilliness, one of the holes required you to literally hit your drive up a (probably) 60* hill. The challenge wasn't just getting your drive to the top (which I of course only did during our practice round), but then you had to walk up the hill, not to mention while pushing or carrying your clubs. Needless to say, I thought my legs were going to fall off. On the first day of the tournament I had two holes left and they called us in because of an impending storm, though nothing actually ever happened so we were all pretty annoyed. If we would've just kept playing we would've been done with our round by the time we even went back out after the delay. We played so well both days. We beat our team scoring record the first day and then ended up beating the record we had just set the day before on the second day of the tournament by a couple strokes. It was so awesome and one of my favorite tournaments of my college golf career so far. 

The second picture is from a tournament in Columbus. This tournament definitely wasn't one of my favorites. I didn't play great either day and the weather was awful for the first few hours of the first day. But the team ended up breaking the record we had set just a couple weeks before so it was pretty awesome and exciting! 

Being away from my friends is always really sad, so it's super nice when we all get a weekend off and can hang out. This night we went to BJ's in Boardman and got some dinner and pizookies. If you've never had a pizookie you have to try them immediately. They're basically a giant hot cookie with ice cream in the middle. They have so many different flavors like a regular chocolate chip cookie, triple chocolate chip, peanut butter, and my favorite: the monkey bread which is basically dough with a ton of cinnamon and sugar on it. It's amazing. 

I definitely had a ton of coffee this semester. I always had so much stuff I needed to get done everyday and so little time and energy to do it. I'm also pretty much always tired. That's not even an exaggeration. No matter how much sleep I get, I will still be tired throughout the day, and all I want to do is just sit and do nothing and read or watch netflix. This isn't always bad because relaxing and reading a good book is nice and good to do, but not when you have like five assignments due the next day and you've finished none of them. So I always needed just a little boost of energy to get me working and focused until I got what I needed to do done. One of the girls I live with and I would go get Dunkin every once in a while and we were laughing one day (the day of the photo) because it was so cold outside, probably like twentyish degrees, and we still got iced coffees haha. 

On the last Friday of the semester there is always a Christmas party in the dining hall. Everyone dresses up and eats good food, and then there's some fun things to do around campus that night. For dinner we had salad, chicken, steak, mashed potatoes, broccoli fettuccine, green beans, a ton of bread, and a ton of different cookies. 

There are always the best sunsets on campus. Especially from the hill up by the dining hall. I guess that hill is the highest point in Stark County, so you can look down at Canton and see the sunsets so well. It's always annoying how early the sun sets in the winter, but it was nice to be able to watch the sunsets as we sat and ate dinner. I took this picture one night on my way into my dorm building because I thought it looked so pretty behind the trees. 

While we were home for Thanksgiving break, my friends and I had our own little "friendsgiving" which was so much fun. We all brought some type of food, so we had ham, green beans, cheesy potatoes, and pumpkin cake, and then we just hung out and watched a movie and played some games. It was a nice break from school, especially since it was the week before the last two weeks of the semester which are always so hectic. 

It started snowing while I was packing up my car to go home for winter break and it looked so pretty so I had to take a picture. I'm so torn with my feelings about winter because I love the snow, but I hate the cold haha. I also hate how hard it makes traveling when the roads are freshly snowed on. It normally takes me about an hour to get home from school, but this night it took almost two. It took me almost forty minutes just to get out of Canton and onto the highway. It didn't help that I left at five, so there were so many people out driving home from work, and it had just started snowing a lot all at once so the salt trucks hadn't had much time to prepare and get the roads salted and plowed before everyone started driving on them. But eventually I made it and was finally home. 

Now I have a whole month off and I'm so excited for it. I've honestly been kind of bored so far. I went from having a million things to do every single day to having literally nothing. I've been reading a lot and watching The Crown, Gilmore Girls, and Christmas movies with my mom. We will be going to North Carolina with family for Christmas and I'm really looking forward to that. We went last year and it was so much fun. I am planning on making a couple posts about our time down there and how/what I pack for North Carolina in December so look out for those posts soon.