Thanksgiving

Ok... this one's kind of hard. My family is British, so we don't exactly have traditions or anything for Thanksgiving. What used to happen was that our neighbors would all come over and my parents would have cooked the whole traditional meal and what not. But since we moved we don't do that anymore. Now it's just a small traditional meal among us. We don't do anything crazy or interesting. We just follow the playbook, say what your thankful for and eat turkey. That's it. So... this year we're going to England. We're going to go visit relatives since we didn't visit over the summer. I doubt we'll do anything on Thanksgiving but then again we may. It will be fun either way, I love going there. It's a really beautiful country and I kind of associate it as my actual home, even though I was born and raised here in the U.S.

Leadership

My strengths as a leader are that I'm determined, can play off other people's strengths, and can be pretty organized. My weaknesses are that I'm shy, have trouble keeping people's focus, and I can be lazy (but when your a lazy leader, you can just hand off all the work you have to do to someone else). I've learned of these strengths and weaknesses only recently, as I have become the president of the USC Metal Club. I had to get everyone organized together so that I could actually make the club official (all the stuff is ready to be turned in at this moment). I hope to make a difference on campus through the USC Metal Club. Uniting all the people interested in metal will be awesome and will hopefully churn out some really awesome bands from musicians meeting each other in the club (almost everyone in the club so far plays an instrument). Also, we can probably educate some screamo scene kids on what metal really is (they are a huge problem at local shows...).

Mentoring So Far

So far, mentoring has been pretty good. My student can talk to me about how school is going and what not. We play a lot of games together, which he seems to really enjoy and helps him relax. For the most part, I let him choose what to do and I try to engage him in conversation about school, though it is kind of hard to get him to talk about it in detail. Saying goodbye will really be tough. Today actually, I told him our next meeting will be our last and he seemed really upset about it and asked if I can continue mentoring. I didn't plan on doing it but now I am considering doing so. I signed up as saying I was interested in continuing but ultimately it comes down to my schedule next semester. If it doesn't work out though, I'm sure we can handle saying goodbye and moving on.

Spirituality

Religion, faith, and spirituality are all different. Religion is more organized and has rules to follow. Faith is the belief and trust you have in someone or something. Spirituality is the understanding of your conscious. I have had past experiences in this, especially in middle school, however they were negative. Long story short, I had friends that were extremely fundamentalist. The South reflects religion and some faith, however many people go to church or respective place of worship because of tradition rather than wanting to go. The South is a fairly traditional place though. USC doesn't reflect this so much, at least in it's students. I have met many atheists and agnostics here, a lot more than in high school. It's refreshing to me at least, because I knew a lot of people who were die-hard-religious.

Relationships

Pretty much the only new relationships I have formed here are new friends. Though I still hang out with friends I knew before coming here. All my friends though, new or old, are helping me through my first year. One of my friends whose a junior helps find where things are and how to deal with certain things. However two of my friends that I regularly hang out with are leaving next semester, so I will have to find other people I can regularly hang out with, since my many of my new friends are usually too busy all the time.

Since college, I haven't spent much time with my family, even though they are close. I run into my sister on campus once in a while, but I rarely see my mom. But I see her tomorrow. My relationship with my parents is good, I think. I'm really independent of them, I don't need them check up on my school work or anything like that.