New Year’s Resolutions: 2016

So, 2016 resolutions. It’s that time of year again (actually, a month ago, but) when we create expectations about the year ahead and promise ourselves that we will be better this time. You can choose to look at resolutions like that or you can try to see them as incentive to actually do something, to actually be better this year.

Even though I like to think about new years and resolutions through the second point of view, I do admit I can create resolutions that I know I won’t be able to follow, but I just can’t help myself. So, this time, I tried ~tried~ to keep them more manageable so I don’t be so disappointed in December when I look back and see that I haven’t done a thing.

1. Put things back where they belong

Okay, pretty self explanatory. But I figured out (I actually already knew this, but ignored it) that the biggest reason my room gets messy is the fact that I take something and never put it back in its place. It just ends up somewhere in my room where I’ll never find it again. So putting things back where they belong will not only keep my room more organized for a longer time, but also help me find things more easily.

2. Apply “less is more” to more areas in life

People say “less is more” in the most various contexts, but I want to apply this to every (okay, not every) context. From Facebook friends, to clothing items, to worrying or planning. “Less is more” is something I want to internalize and I believe it will help me live a happier and simpler life (I don’t know why I’m so into the ‘clean’ and simple look, but yeah).

3. Read

Yes, read. Just read. I wasn’t able to read a lot in 2015 and reading is something I love doing and that I miss when I don’t do it. I feel like it is something I need in order to not alienate myself and freak out all the time. I don’t know, I just love being able to spend hours imagining different worlds, different people, different lives. It’s refreshing and humanizing, and I hope to do it a lot more than last year.

4. Keep in touch with my high school friends

I graduated in the end of 2015 (the Brazilian school year goes from January to December, instead of September to June) and I left the school I’ve been enrolled in for the last 11 years. I started going to that school when I started 1st grade, and now it’s over. I still can’t properly wrap my head around that, but I need to realize I need to move on. I love that school with all my mind and heart, and I’ll miss it. Gosh, I miss it already. But, most of all, I’ll miss all my friends. Okay, I know I’ll keep in touch with a dozen of them, but what about the others 240 in my year? How will it be not seeing them every single day? I admit it’ll be nice not seeing some of them, but, for the majority, I’ll miss them. So, yeah. I just really want to keep in touch with them.

5. Be healthy (not necessarily lose weight)

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t love my body. I’m in the process of accepting it though. I really want to deconstruct the way I think to the point where I can realize that wanting to be thin was imposed over me by society. This resolution is not about losing weight. It is about being healthy, even if it means not losing – or even gaining – weight. I want to not be out of breath for running three blocks and not being able to eat certain food because my metabolism can’t take it. I want to treat my body right, so it can be good for me back.

6. Meditate 

I want to meditate at least once a week. I feel like that’s a good step towards meditating everyday, fact I know I wouldn’t be able to follow.

7. Make time for art

And with that I mean make time for artistic activities instead of just doing homework, working or even reading. I want to just sit and let my mind do what it wants in the form it wants, from writing to drawing to dancing.

8. Enjoy the present

I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this, but I do hope I am. I can be someone who plans a lot for the future and ends up worrying about it a lot too. I want to enjoy the right now more, just focus on what’s happening at the moment. I want to live the present instead of living what I imagine the future should be like.

9. See the glass as half full, not half empty

Be more positive and force myself to see the good side in every situation. ‘Fake it until you make it’ or whatever the saying is like.

10. Be myself

Oh, big abstract one. While I was writing my essays, I wrote one about gaining confidence and how much that was important to me. I used to restrain myself from doing what I wanted and being who I was because I was worried about what people would think of me. I did come an incredible long way, but there’s still work to do. And I want to be each time more like myself in every situation.

11. Let myself feel pain

2015 was a stressful year (I talked about it here). Many times I was on the edge of bursting into tears, but I held the crying back because I needed to be strong, or at least feel strong. Little did I know crying has nothing to do with being weak. Sometimes you just need to feel the pain and embrace it in order to get over it. Just cry if you need to. I want to believe this and allow myself to cry and feel pain without feeling bad about it.

~*~

These are my resolutions for 2016. I hope to be able to follow them, since I feel they’ll be good to me. We shall see.

Love,

Dani.

Starting the new year!

Hello!

I’m a lot happier today than I was in my last post. Since then, I have seen my ENEM (a national test) scores and they are not bad! I might be able to get in a really good school and course (since here in Brazil we choose a course and see different universities, instead of choosing an university and adapting into a course there – which I’ve felt is kind of more like the case in the US (sorry if I’m wrong))! Moreover, I am done with the entrance tests I had for another university. I have absolutely no clue how I did, but hope is the last one to die, right?

Anyways, since I am finally done studying, I can say that I’m on vacations! This is my summer vacation and I already lost one a half month of the two months we have, but, oh well, let’s make the most of the time I have left.

Today was my first day with no studying or doing tests, so, obviously, I had to clean my room. Please don’t judge me, but every beginning of year I just throw random papers, reorganize shelves, clean up everything etc. I still haven’t gone through my closet – and I’m really excited about sorting through my clothing because I always take out a LOT of pieces and I also remember amazing things I forgot I had -, but I have done my desk, my shelves and my walls. Yeah, I took down all the wall décor I had and remade everything. Well, part of it, because I loved the cleaner look without posters and all on the walls.

Entering my room now, after this clean up, is refreshing. I lit up a candle, opened the windows so some air would get in and played some music. The room is a lot more open, clear and brighter, in a way.

I watched a video today on YouTube – I don’t remember which one – and the girl said she loved cleaning and, also, no one regrets taking time to clean. Like, have you ever said “oh, I wish I hadn’t cleaned my room”? Yeah, guessed not.

So yeah. 2016 finally started for me and it started well! I’m so happy right now and I wish I remain this way throughout the year.

Take care, with love,

Dani.

So… I’m here

I don’t even know how to start this post. You may have noticed it’s been over half an year since I updated this blog. I don’t have any good excuse, just the fact that this half year was the craziest one for me.

So… Let’s start from the beginning. My last blog post was in the end of June. July was an amazing month. It could be because it was the last month I could not think about my future (college etc), but the month itself was so much fun. I went to Philadelphia to take a summer program at University of Pennsylvania. It was a Biomedical Research program and it was insane. If I’m being honest, Brazilian high schools don’t have the same infrastructure found in the US (I may be wrong, but, like, my high school is a traditional private school, so, if we don’t have a crazy infrastructure, I don’t think the rest, as a whole, is any better). But I could see that, even for some of the american students, the activities and experiments we had were memorable. That may be because, you know, Penn is an incredible university and, well, universities have more to offer than high schools.

You may not know this about me, but I love Biology, Chemistry and that molecular, genetic stuff (it kind of kills me to talk about it like this, but, for blogging reasons, let’s keep it this way hah). I love studying, to be honest, and spending a month studying what I love was so much fun. In another note, I met amazing people that, up to this day, I respect, love, and miss. So much. I made friends that I hope to see again, truly, because we clicked so fast and had the best three weeks. Ugh, I wish I could go back to July.

But I can’t. After my vacation, I came back and started school again. I have already said this, but I’ll repeat: the school year in Brazil goes from January to December; my summer vacation is December and January, and July is my winter break. So, yeah, I came back and started school in August. This last semester was, well, my last semester of high school (yes, as of right now, I graduated already). So, you know the drill: teachers struggling to give all the content, tests like crazy, stress, nostalgic feelings because you love your school (okay, maybe just me, but I do love it and miss it). More than that, I had double the stress.

I always had the thought at the back of my mind that I wanted to study abroad for college. More specifically, get an undergraduate (and more, I do want a PhD) education in the US. So, I had to send applications this last semester. Now, as I wasn’t sure about this desire until January 2015 (or later), I never really focused on that. I’ve always been a good student, wanting or not to study abroad, so my transcripts were good. I had extracurriculars too, because I do them because I like them, not for them just to look good in my “resume”. But, we don’t have anything like the SATs or even the application process here in Brazil.

Let’s take a pause in what I was talking about so I can explain what goes down here in Brazil: we don’t have applications. We have entrance tests. So, basically, we take a test (or more than one. Like, the first test will select 300 students and the second one will select the 100 that will be accepted into the university) and that is it. Most schools have only one chance for you to get in per year and it is probably the most stressful thing ever. People study for, at least, months. Depending on what you want, it is normal to study a couple of years after high school until you get the score you need to get in.

Anyways. I had to understand better the whole holistic application process. I think I did well. I hope. Because I’ve already sent the applications, so there’s not much I can do now. I did my best, and I can only hope my best is enough. There are some interviews now, and I’m excited for another way to show who I am. But this stress is practically finished by now.

What isn’t finished is the university entrance test. I did not give up on the possibility that I stay in Brazil for my college education. My first option is studying abroad, but, if that doesn’t happen, I’ll probably get my undergraduate degree here in Brazil and then apply for a graduate degree in the US. Anyways, I am studying like crazy right now for the “second level” of the test. I got through the first test and now I just have to be one of the bests from the ones who already are better than others (this was a terrible sentence formation, but I hope you get my point). Sad thing is that, hm, I don’t believe a test can measure the best student. In the matter of accepting students, I prefer the North American process. The holistic application is, indeed, more holistic. But there is nothing I can do about it now, only study my butt off. And I’m trying to.

Today I had a crisis because I am scared. I tried to give the best of me my whole life, but it feels like only this last semester determines my future. I know that in the application for the US universities that is not true in the way your whole high school performance is taken into consideration, but it feels like that, because you write essays, take tests and everything in that last semester. For the universities here in Brazil, that kind of isn’t true either, because all the content you had in your high school years is on the test. But it also feels like it because I had “test preparation” classes (the most common thing here), where we review all the content and everything. It is a terrible experience, trying to review all high school years in a couple of months, and then reviewing the review (what I’ve been doing this first week of 2016, since the test is this weekend).

I am scared of not getting in anywhere. I truly am. I only applied to universities in the US that are better in a lot of aspects than the one I am testing for in Brazil, so those are really hard to get in. And, here in Brazil, is not easy to get in either, and I’m scared that what I’ve studied isn’t enough. I wish I could be rational and believe that I’ll get in somewhere, because, well, there are a lot of options. And even if I don’t get in, my life isn’t over. But, well, I want to get in somewhere this year. I guess it’s my fault that I’m only trying really hard places, but, if I got in somewhere I didn’t want, what is there to celebrate… Right?

I hope I made the right choices. I hope this year is good. I hope I am happy this year, because a lot of things are changing. If things happen for a reason, I hope I did enough to be in charge my destiny. But, if I didn’t, I do hope things happen for a reason.

I truly am sorry for this gigantic post, but, as I said, I had a crisis today and I just needed to talk. A lot. I feel like I have a lot more to say because, even after all this, I still feel like I have a lump in my throat and am about to cry all the time. But, you know, that is life. Moreover,  this is one of the most spontaneous text I’ve written, so I’m sorry if things don’t make sense and I will try to proofread it later. I just needed to get stuff out and write.

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope that this new year will be amazing for everyone. Let the future come and remember that you make your future. Therefore, you can always change it.

Love,

Dani.