Homesick Student Season

Hello Aggies!


I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend!


I would like to share with all of you a reflection of mine. As a student where home is over 8,000 miles and despite having a year under my belt at NMSU, the feeling of homesickness starts to kick in right away. Obviously after years of living with your parents, living on your own is still a huge new adjustment. Almost everyone is feeling this way a little bit, even if they don’t always say it. When you are having a low day and wish you had the comfort of home to cheer you up, you have to find some things to temporarily replace that while at school. After a month of being away from home (Yes, I am feeling it already) and developing your own life, again. Nothing replaces family and close friends, but you can still get that homey feel when they are no right here with you.  Here are a few things I researched and personally do that help me cope with all the homesickness:


Get Involved:
Make new friends! Being with other people is one of the best ways to start feeling good about your new environment. Even if you don’t know anyone very well yet, consider joining a club or organization. It’s not too late to check-in Corbett and see what clubs you can join that interests you!


Skype
It can be very refreshing to get off the phone with your family and begin seeing them in person. Skype allows you to chat and interact with your parents, siblings, or even see your family and family pet/s….. We have a rabbit!


Print Plenty of Pictures
Decorate your bedroom with pictures of family and friends that show your best memories with them. My friend gave me this scrap book to flip through when those moments are kicking in but it always makes me feel better.


Write Letters
Yes, cheesy, but, there are not many times you receive mail in the dorms or at your apartment. If you begin writing friends and family, it keeps you excited when the letter is coming. Oh, plus, it helps with your writing skills!...... I can’t wait till mine arrives. ;)  


Get Ahead in Your School Work
To consume more of your time, get ahead in your studies. Even if you are just sitting around watching a movie feeling lonely, make some note cards for your text the next week. This will put your mind on something more beneficial than feeling down.


Find Local Home Cooking
It is nice to have some home cooked food. I am trying to hone my own skills in cooking my native dish…. Hey, I might even post the recipe soon! Anyways, all college students get sick of having the same old campus food ever day and night, so it is nice to have a homey meal that reminds you of your parents.


I made one of the most difficult decisions moving half way across the world from everything I love and hold dear to my heart, to gain the skills and knowledge that I need to pursue in order to reach my dreams. After spending a year here at NMSU, I realize that coming to this school was the best decision I made. So, if your feeling a little homesick do not worry, it happens to everyone. The feeling doesn’t last forever and soon you will be back to normal! Let me know if you have any thoughts or comments. Have a great rest of the week!


Live. Learn. Thrive!


And……….


Go Aggies!


-Aggie Albert

Time to get settled.

The first few weeks of the semester are always different than the rest of the semester. Professors seem to do a bad job at giving students an insight as to how the rest of the semester will be during those first few times the class meets. Of course, it's not until after the add/drop date that you find out that your Professor is a homework Nazi. It seems like between syllabus days and the first few weeks not having a lab or just introduction to labs (the typical "lab safety" days with no actual lab involved), students think that the semester is going to be much easier than expected.

But don't let these professors fool you. Before you know it you will be bombarded with homework assignments, quizzes, lab reports and exams. My suggestion to all of my fellow Aggies, is to get in the habit of getting things done from day one. If your professor says your homework on the first day of class is to read the syllabus, then do that. Get a feel for every little task or assignment that is required from you for that class. Go into each semester with the mentality that you will have much more work than you expect so you can budget your time wisely and decide if you will have enough time in your life to take on that work load. Some weeks will be more hectic that others, but you always need to make sure you can fit all of the work that needs to be during those busiest into your schedule.

Stay strong Aggies, this is the time of the semester to make an impression on yourself and your professors. Prove that you are a hard worker and you are responsible, it will only help you in the future.

Peace,
Carley

A gift!

Hello there Aggies, welcome back! I hope you are all as excited about school as I am. Starting since about 5th grade (I wasn't a fan of the preschool years) up until this day, the first day of school has been a thrill! I love the anticipation of what's to come; new friends, new professors, new classes, oh and my favorite part, the smell of clean polished floors in every building. ☺ Not to mention the satisfaction to know that each semester is a step closer to see the light at the end of the tunnel (not that being in college is like being in a tunnel) but you know what I mean. Backtracking to my freshmen year, I'll be hones, for once as the first day of school got closer; I panicked because I knew it was going to be a challenge (boy! It was!) Surprisingly it's been four years since!  I have learned so much that if I could share every single thing with you I'd never finish this blog (lol) but I would however, like to motivate you all as you proceed with the semester with some of the little life lessons that I have learned and hope that will be useful to you too!

  1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
8. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
9. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
10. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
11. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
12. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
13. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
14. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
15. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
16. Always choose life.
17. Forgive everyone everything.
18. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
19. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
20. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
21. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
22. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
23. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
24. The best is yet to come...
25. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
26. Yield.
27. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

High Gas Prices and Even Higher Pressures

All of us have known a time where the everyday stresses of life just overwhelm us. Whether it’s waking up late, the high gas prices that just don’t seem to go down, or just a day where nothing seems to go right. As college students we have all those things as well as, the always uncertain chance of if we’re going to  receive financial aid help in the following years so we can actually get through school, or getting through that class that has been the most challenging thus far. Sometimes it just seems as though all these issues are going to consume us never to come out on top of the game. Even in these trying times of high gas prices and so many other uncertainties presented to us on a daily basis, we just have to keep trudging on and hope for the best. So I began this week with my own piece of inspiration, then followed the rest of the week with quotes by great men…Which is why I figured I’d continue the pattern so here’s todays and the last one for the week: “Difficulties are opportunities to better things; they are stepping stones to greater experience. Perhaps someday you will be thankful for some temporary failure in a particular direction. When one door closes, another always opens.” Have a great weekend Aggies, and always know that even in trying times you can get through them, sometimes you just need that right piece of inspiration. Hope you all enjoyed this week’s blogging.

Always,

Aggie Girl Hannah

Kites On the Wind

Alright Aggie Blog Followers, I know you all probably think I use quotes as topics of my blogs far too much, but seriously they have helped me through some tough times. So I hope that if they can help they can possibly help someone else no matter what the situation. In this case the quote just happens to be about wind in light of the “wonderful” windy weather that graced us with its presence today. You know when you’re trying to go to class and you have to walk head on into the wind? Yeah everyone knows that feeling, it’s torture and kind ruins your day. Well if you think about it people throughout your life have certain expectations for you and where THEY want you to go. Coming from a small town I know I’ve had to deal with people expecting me to do one thing with my life, and when I changed the dream of what I wanted to become they automatically judged me on giving up…It’s not giving up it’s moving on past some challenges to figure out where I want to go. Winston Churchill once said, “Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.” Now stay with me on this…In life people prove themselves to be like the wind pushing against you trying to get you to certain things, but in all honesty sometimes a person has to challenge themselves and go against the expectations of others in order to achieve their full potential. So when the wind pushes you one way keep on trudging along because you’ll get to the place YOU want to be not where it wants you to go. It’s up to you Aggies to fly as high as you possibly want to go, just don’t be the one to be blown away.

-Aggie Girl Hannah

Signs Along the Road

Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, once said, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” For some reason when I found this quote it really made sense to me. I mean if you really think about it all of us enter college with no idea where we’re going to end up. Some of us may think we have a plan that has no holes in it and it will work out just like it sounds…Well, I’ve learned in my time here that those plans can change in an instant, or at least in my case, in a semester. I started college in the Pre-Vet area of study thinking, yes, this is how it’s going to work out: I’ll graduate high school with my Associates, get my Bachelors at NMSU in Animal Science, then I’ll head to vet school probably Colorado State and become a large animal vet specializing in horses. NMSU should take about 2 years seeing how I got all my pre-reqs done, then another 4 years for vet school…I thought I had it all planned out and that was going to be my life. Well, life had a different plan for me and turns out Chemistry and I didn’t get along and I refused to put myself through that torture for however many semesters I needed to get all my required courses out of the way. Well now I’m in my 2^nd year here at NMSU (the so called year I was suppose to be done), and I still have 3 more semesters after this one. So I’ll actually end up spending 3 and a half years here studying Animal Science within the Equine Industry. What I’ll do after this I’m not real sure, maybe get a job with a racing commission, or maybe just maybe I’ll end up in Kentucky studying racetrack management. The future is a little hazy for me, but in all honesty I would rather not know exactly what I’m going to do after this, because I know that some of the best road trips are the unplanned ones taking you down roads you never would’ve imagined. So if there’s a possibility that something’s just not working out for you, read the road signs because at some point you’ll end up just where you wanted to be without ever knowing. Enjoy the drive of life, because you never know where the trip will take you J.

-Always,

Aggie Girl Hannah

Life Lessons

ALRIGHT AGGIES!!!!! It’s time to wake up walk down the I-Mall and make it through yet another week, but WAIT you’re in luck we only have about 3 more weeks left before Summer so smile it’s a good day. I know you’re probably thinking that I am in way too good of a mood seeing how it is Monday, but I woke up at 5:30 this morning feeling pretty dang good so I’ll try and spread my happiness to you all J. So obviously I woke up pretty early, which kind of led me to leaving my house for work earlier than usual. That small change in my morning process actually allowed me to stop at Starbucks where I just happened to get the best blueberry muffin I’ve had for a while. But anyways that beside the point and topic of this blog I’m trying to get to...As I was driving up University Avenue today I was in the process of passing a truck on the road so I sped up and then was able to get around him and proceed to slow down. As I realized what just happened I put it into words to live by...SOOOO here it is brace yourself because it’s pretty deep and thoughtful ;) …Life lesson infinity and beyond-In order to slow down one must first speed up. I know, I know you’re like in awe right now and no words can even describe your amazement. Well anyways just in case you’re having trouble applying it to life I will explain. It seems as though when we’re growing up that our lives become faster paced than when we started, and as it gets faster we finally get to slow down after our prime years of life. This can also be seen in our schooling years we get more and more rushed as we move on through school, but once we’re done we’re done and we can somewhat breathe. So if you’re a new applicant to NMSU and think about how much you still have to do, just remember that at some point it will slow down and your stresses will ease. So just remember my little piece of advice and it may just help you get through the rough daysJ. Have an awesome Monday Aggies.

-Always,

Aggie Girl Hannah