About

A collection of thoughts about nature, life, and trying to achieve my dreams.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Back to School

I've said goodbye to the long hot days of summer, patrolling the interactive salt marsh for signs of spider-crab abuse, and explaining AGAIN and AGAIN that no, the horseshoe crab will not stab, sting, bite, pinch or otherwise harm you with his tail or any other body parts. As much as I love my job at the aquarium, I was beginning to feel burnt out because of how rushed and jam-packed my summer had been, so I am eager to return next summer with a fresh outlook.

So now, as my second week of junior year (yikes!) is wrapping up, I finally feel like I'm starting to settle back into the rhythms of collegiate life. I'm all settled into my new apartment (sorry to all of the Toscanini friends I abandoned, but I really like living in West!), and I've only eaten campus food twice (and those two times were because I went out with people to get food)!

This year is going to be a lot different in a lot of ways, but I'm excited for the changes! I am one of those people who gets bored by routine (which is probably why running/exercising never really worked for me), and I am really excited because all of these changes will help me work towards my independence and my career in veterinary medicine.

The hardest part about the change will be seeing less of people who I am used to seeing almost every day, and budgeting my time so that I do get to spend time with everyone! Does anyone else ever feel like they're spread too thin socially? I'm not saying I think I'm super popular by any means, but I find myself revolving around a few core groups of friends, with some overlapping events, but otherwise all existing in separate spheres.

Sometimes, I feel like more than one person. It's not that I'm fake, or putting on a front when I hang out with different people, but different facets of my personality become stronger or subtler, depending on who I'm hanging out with. I truly enjoy all of the things I do with my free time- from riding my horse, to going to social events, to watching Doctor Who, playing boardgames, or even just roaming around campus and being spontaneous- but I find that I fall into a pattern as to what friend group I do each of those things with. I guess everyone does this to some extent, but sometimes I feel like I don't have the ability to give each friend the attention, time, and friendship that everyone deserves. It's no wonder I don't have a boyfriend right now- I can barely juggle all of the friends and acquaintances that are already in my life!

So if you ARE reading this, and you ARE one of my friends, I'll say it right now- I'm sorry if we don't hang out as much as you'd like, I truly WANT to spend time with everyone, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I do have classes and homework and responsibilities to attend to. There's a reason I named this blog "Far Too Much."

So in that spirit, I'm just letting life take me where it will (which, as of right now, seems to point at Ecuador, Honduras, Ghana, and possibly Costa Rica again in the upcoming year). I just found out that my school offers some anthropology credits in Costa Rica over the winter, and so that might be my plan for the winter of senior year, because I'd love to learn some more about the CULTURE of Costa Rica, being that most of my current knowledge is about its ecological diversity.

If you'd like to learn more about my work in Honduras (and now Ghana), or even donate- every dollar helps!, please visit my fundraising pages:
Honduras
Ghana

You are welcome to make a donation on my behalf (to help with my personal program fee/expenses/fundraising goal) OR a general donation to the entire group, which would help cover medical supplies and other materials needed for the brigades. If you can't or don't want to donate at this time, please consider a random act of kindness just because giving feels so good!

2 comments:

  1. Have you ever heard of Dunbar's number? Its the sociological idea that we can only maintain a finite number (the number is usually accepted to be 150) of stable and loving social relationships, all in.

    That's including friends, family, significant others, coworkers, classmates, acquaintances, etc. That number tends to sound really high to people but to me it sounds low. The idea that we only have time for 150 people is sort of a bummer but if we understand that there IS a ceiling, there can be a sort of zen calm associated with realizing that no one could ever reasonably expect you to exceed that first 150.

    The more difficult question then becomes, who are our 150, how many are in there that don't belong and what do you do about a friend that you love but doesn't deserve your attention?

    Buddhists believe one of the primary ways we can establish whether or not we're living our lives properly is the company we keep.

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  2. Interesting theory, Matt! I've actually always (idly of course, otherwise I probably would have found out about that sooner) wondered whether any actual research had been done on finding a sustainable number of social relationships.

    150 is nothing, especially when we consider the effect of social networking sites (although I'd also venture to say that things like Facebook can increase the number, especially of periphery members/acquaintances) on trying to maintain contact with much higher numbers of people than a mere 150.

    In my usual fashion of not paying attention to societal rules, conventions, and recommendations, I will continue to try and balance all of my social relationships with an also overloaded course-and-life schedule, and everyone else can just suck it up and get over the fact that I like hanging out with lots of people and so I can't be with them all of the time.

    If they don't like it, they can find some person who has 150 or fewer social relationships to uphold.

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