Happy Thanksgiving!
Just like the title says. Will update with something a bit more substantial tomorrow, but for now, the roomies are trying to talk me into a very early Black Friday morning tomor...er,
today...er, actually in like two hours...so bedtime now? Yes. I think so.
spark of life
Well, I'm officially convinced that no matter what I end up graduating with, I absolutely want to do something that involves cars in some way or another. Maybe you all can give me some ideas to that effect.
It just seems like no matter how hard I try, I'm just a mediocre designer. Photography and writing, on the other hand, come to me naturally and I enjoy them both much more. Why I didn't choose one of THEM to major in will always bug me. To be fair, I didn't really discover my photography skills until this semester, and as for writing? I guess I was so afraid of it not being sufficient to support me in case I don't get married for awhile, and never having time to do anything else besides, or...heck, I don't know.
The only thing that I really got excited and passionate about right out of high school was cars. (Turns out that spark is still there, but I'll get to that.) When I got accepted into BYU-Idaho, I started out just taking general classes to give myself a chance to solidly decide on a major. Since I started during the winter, and am on the fall/winter track, that gave me a whole summer before I had to think about what classes to take next. Most of my best friends are guys, and pretty much all of them are car-savvy, which is how I got so into it myself. They all encouraged me to consider an automotive path, and I was totally for it. I made sure to give it considerable thought, seeing as I'm a girl wanting into a male-dominated field, and I wanted to be sure that I wasn't just doing it because all my friends were doing it, and etc. So I took another semester of required generals to stew over it. When I was sure it really was what I wanted, which was around the time to start signing up for the next winter semester, I talked to my mom about what classes I was signing up for. Hindsight is 20/20, and as much as I love my folks, I regret letting them talk me out of my dreams. Long story short, they thought that going to a private university for such a lame degree was a bad idea, and they didn't think I could cut it in a "man's job." Discouraged, I moved to the only other thing I really had thought about, which was art, and graphic design specifically.
Over the past four years, I've struggled my way through it all, not really finding the passion for it that I thought I would. I had an ephiphany today that, looking back on all my projects and whatnot, the things I really succeeded with and did my best work on had to do with cars. Go figure. My latest project is 50 little information cards, and the concept I chose is 50 must-know cars for the enthusiast and apathist alike. I'm really REALLY enjoying the process, and it's just all coming together so well. I seriously haven't gotten this much positive feedback from my peers and ESPECIALLY my professor in a long while. Probably not since my last car-related project. I obviously still have things to work on, but they are relatively little things. My concept is solid, the design is working and just needs to be refined a little more, and everyone really likes it, whether they are into cars or not, which is the entire point!
So really where I'm going with this is that maybe there's still hope for me to really find something that I enjoy doing, and that I'm successful at, so long as I get to work with cars in some way or another. And who knows? Maybe I'll get to drive some of my dream cars and meet people like Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hamilton, and James May. How cool would that be? ^_^
methods of torture
Ok, so I haven't been able to find a job that will work around my weird class schedule this semester. I survived off of $28 a week helping my aunt with her house and kids for a little while, but I need a little extra to start saving for other things (like getting home for Christmas lol), so I finally resorted to doing what I vowed never to do: donating my blood plasma for money. For first timers, you have to go through a bunch of paperwork and questioning and even a brief physical before you can start donating regularly. You can donate twice a week, and you get $25 the first time and $35 the second time you donate in a week. But that actually changed down to $20 and $30 respectively as of this week. Still, I think it's worth it until I can find something else, and if nothing else, I thought, I should be able to conquer my fear of needles, NO problem. The first two times were a breeze, and I didn't even bruise at all!
Fast forward to yesterday. They always use my right arm because the vein is easy to find and goes the way it should up my arm. So the guy stuck me, which really doesn't even hurt at all, but the blood wasn't flowing, so he pulled it out a little bit until it did. The way it works is they take a portion of your blood, separate the red cells from the white, and then give you back your red cells and repeat the process until they have enough plasma. Well, when the machine tried to give me back my red cells, I could feel pressure and a stinging sensation from the Citrine(or whatever) that they mix in to keep the blood from coagulating. The guy tries to fix it, but he nicked the vein or somesuch on the initial insertion, so that arm was basically screwed (and you'll notice the wonderful bruise left behind in the right picture. It's pretty sore just FYI). I figured they would just call it a day and I wouldn't be able to donate again until my red cells replenished like from a normal blood donation, but they didn't want to cheat me out of my only income and so they moved to the other arm.
After tapping around on my left arm for a bit, they finally found the vein, which hooks a left in my arm before it goes up like it's supposed to, so they had to put the needle in practically sideways. And OMG let me tell you, that sucker HURT! It didn't on the initial poke, but as they kept pushing it in to find the vein, HOLY FRACK no other needle has EVER hurt that bad before. ><; To top everything off, even though the donation process went smoothly from that point, when he yanked the needle out he wasn't careful, and it scratched me after it came out! AND he did it so fast that I also have a bit of bruising in that arm as well. ><;! These guys were definitely not as experienced as the first phlebotomists who took care of me last week.
So much for
overcoming my fear of needles; I think I just may be traumatized for life! xD
Left Arm
Right Arm
