Counseloring

This summer, I was a counselor for Upward Bound at UVU, and for BYU Sports Camp. Being a counselor is not as easy as it looks. Especially when you look as young as the participants.

Or when you don't know your way around. On the first day of one of my programs, I got us hopelessly lost on the way to our first class and then we were late.

Also, your coworkers occasionally choose to give you the opportunity to learn how to work with difficult and annoying people.

But hey, it can be something you can add to your resume.
Sometimes, there are days when I forget how to speak real English. On those days, giving a coherent and spiritual devotional is hard.

And waiting for everyone to show up at your "meeting spot" is hard.

But, being a counselor comes with lots of adventures.

The Circle of Life (and Make Up)

Many things, in this world, follow the Circle of Life. We eat the antelope. When we die, we turn into grass. Then, the antelope eat us as dead grass. Therefore, everything is connected in the great circle of life.

Even my cheap cosmetics and somewhat-related emotional self esteem! Maybe you don't get the connection. Watch.

As interpreted by the graph, the general trend is "The more make up I wear, the less my self esteem." What is funny, is that the equation for these graphs is a little bit controlled by both variables. It's not entirely that, X, I wear a certain amount of make up and BAM that's my self esteem for the day, Y. It's more like I have a certain amount of Y, which determines how much X I wear, which reinforces my self esteem, which reinforces how much make up I wear, which in the end, becomes all connected in the big circle of life. Do you get it?
I also want to point out that this graph is accurate, no matter what my starting point of make up is.
Now, I want to talk about how that starting point changes as the seasons change. Another circle, eh??

The circle begins, as most circles, at any point- but in this case the fall. When school starts, specifically. Because of my lack of effort in my appearance during the summer, I am rejuvenated in my efforts to do pointless things, like put on make up.
As winter approaches, I begin to realize that hey, I'm busy. Why do I spend so much time on putting eye shadow and crap on?

As the temperature gets warmer, the day becomes less conducive to makeup. Less and less is applied. If applied, it is promptly taken off after church.

So then, the question becomes, why do I even put it on at all if I only take it off five hours later? That sounds like a waste of time. And it comes down to basically not wearing any at all ever, because I am lazy efficient.

Unless it is a pretty dang special occasion. Or when school starts again. Then I'm not efficient lazy anymore.

And alas, we come back to the beginning of the circle of life.

FIRE!!!!

A little over a year ago, I used to live up in the dorms of New Heritage. One day, my roommates and I stayed up late having a root beer float party with our FHE brothers. I remember going to bed at roughly 2am.

Three hours later...

The fire alarm went off. Now, in these dorms, it's not like a normal house fire alarm that just beeps loudly. It's more like this excessively loud screeching noise, with flashing lights, and really your motivation to get out of the building comes from the desire to get away from the loudest noise ever so your ears will stop hurting.

Having only been asleep for three hours, this is the groggy process by which I came to the conclusion that I needed to leave the building.

Yes, it was real life- my roommate responded. In not-real life, Jane wouldn't have been there. Still half asleep, I jumped out of bed to escape from the fire! Fighting the blood-rush and dizziness and still-asleepyness, I quickly assessed the situation:

1) The fire alarm was going off and making me go deaf.

2) This either meant there was a fire, or it was a false alarm entirely.

3) If it was a false alarm, wouldn't they have shut it off by now?

4) It is probably a fire.

5) This could be the last time I ever see any of my possessions.

Following this line of logic, I grabbed my most important/expensive belongings, and thought ahead for the future just in case I wouldn't ever be coming back.

Not my keys, not my wallet, not my ID... My priorities were slightly askew in this crazy real-life dream. All of these things were grabbed quickly, while all thoughts were processed slowly. 

My roommate and I ran into our other roommates on the way out of the apartment. We ran by the elevator, and remembered that elevators are not safe in fires! So instead we ran down the stairs, and outside.

There we regrouped with our friends. The screeching alarm was barely quieter outside the building. I'm literally surprised it didn't wake up all of Provo. We stood around outside shivering for about an hour while the fire department came and checked out the building, which did not burn down. In any way. Because apparently, the fire alarm is also hooked up to leaky pipes, and what happened was that a pipe exploded in the very stair well that Jane and I had run down. Not that we could tell, there was no water there when we used it, but we heard stories. They finally let us go inside and go back to bed. For some reason the fire alarm stayed on outside for a long time. When I woke up in the morning, I had to make sure it wasn't a dream again by asking my roommates if the same dream happened to them. 

And that is the story of the "fire" that I was in.

100 Degrees with Next to No Air Condition

Once upon a time, I lived in an apartment and paid for my utilities. At the same time, the heat of the desert summer came around, and the temperature hit over 100 degrees. But it's a dry heat. But, it's still heat.
My apartment complex sent out this scary email saying that if we don't watch how we use our air condition, the utilities bill could well be over 100 dollars. Consequently, my roommates and I have been trying to not really use the air condition all the time. And, consequently, this makes our apartment feel... well, slightly cooler than the outside.
Umm... sleeping is hard.

Cooking in the kitchen is hard.

Sometimes the only way to get away is to just take a cold shower... And definitely not a hot shower, because it makes the apartment humid.

Our apartment doesn't have very many windows that actually open, so the best way to let new air in by leaving the front door open. Sometimes, this works, in the heat, if there is a slight breeze. Otherwise, it's a little bit like trying to heat the outside world during the summer.

It does make deciding whose house to hang out easier though...

And then I bought this eleven-dollar fan from Smith's, and my world was changed.

The End.