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Student LifeDec 13, 2016
Finals Week, Told By 'Gilmore Girls'
No one gets you like the Gilmore Girls get you.
13
This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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Lifestyle
10 Things Only Equestrians Understand
Yes, it IS a sport. Yes, I fall all the time. No, I do not ride in jeans with a cowgirl hat on.
1h
322
Barn Pros
Growing up I have always wanted to own a horse. My grandparents own a well known equestrian facility in Georgia, so I have been riding since I was born. A bond between a person and their horse is a bond so strong that it cannot be broken. Everywhere I went I wanted to be around horses, even forcing my family to go on trail rides during vacations. Horses have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember has taught me great responsibility, as well as 14 things that all equestrians can relate to.
1. The looks you get when you wear your riding attire in public
2. Horses spook at anything and everything
3. Your horse deciding to show how disobedient it can be right in front of the judges
teenhorseforum
4. The look your horse gives you after making you fall
Thanks for that.
5. Trying to take a picture of your horse....
Only for your horse to do this.
6. Giving your horse a bath only for them to roll in dirt right after
7. Ponies
The most stubborn creatures of all time.
8. Walking through a tack shop is like a kid in a toy store
Saddles, bridles, and boots, oh my!
9. When someone tells your horseback riding is not a sport
You try sitting on a one-ton animal with a mind of its own and tell it to jump over a 3-foot fence!
10. Having your horse as your best friend, and having it any other way
Horseback riding is something every little girl dreams of doing, and I know it is something I will do for the rest of my life.
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Health and Wellness
To The Burnt-Out College Student, Keep Going
When you're struggling to keep afloat, keep going.
5h
449
College is super hard. Between working, studying, and having a social life, it feels like a struggle to just keep afloat.
I understand. When you feel like your drowning and there's no way to stay afloat I understand that it feels like everyone else is doing just fine. I understand all the frustration, long nights in the library, and that feeling that you want to just throw in the towel. I understand that sometimes it's too hard to get out of bed because your brain is already filled with too much information to remember. I understand because I am also feeling pretty burnt out.
Sometimes picking up a pencil to do homework in the library feels like picking up a car. Sometimes I don't even make it to the library to study because I have no motivation to walk there. I'm in my junior year and my advisor has recently told me I am not graduating on time and basically my GPA sucks. I cried in her office and for two days after that. I work two jobs sometimes seven days a week. I spend my free time in the library trying to submit my homework on time. On my drive to my second job, I listen to a nutrition podcast about what's actually happening in the field. I've been drowning since the first day of classes. Keeping afloat is a daily struggle that I'm getting really tired of doing. But I'm going to anyway.
Everyone in college is feeling burnt out to some degree. Graduating "on time" doesn't happen for everyone. Sometimes your GPA sucks because you have a lot on your plate. Whether it's family issues, taking classes year round, a stressful job, lots of classwork, or just the stress you put on yourself, everyone is feeling burnt out. And I know you feel like you're the only one. Trust me sometimes I feel alone in that too. But after graduation, you'll be thankful for all the stress and anxiety you had in college. When you reach your goals in life you'll look back and be grateful things happened the way they did because you came out stronger.
It's okay to have days that you contemplate dropping out. But acknowledge that and keep going. Break up your work into manageable chunks and keep going. Buy a planner and write down all your assignments and the time they're due so you can time manage better and keep going. Clock into your job and do what you have to do and keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
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Featured
Warnings About College To Incoming Freshmen As Told By Gifs
College is hard, but you will make it through.
13h
534
Wordpress
1. You will have that special "college" look to you.
2. You will feel like an adult but also feeling like a child.
3. You will have classes that are just the professor reading from their lecture slides for an hour.
4. You will need to study but also want to hang out with your friends.
5. Coffee is your best friend.
6. You don't know what you're doing 99% of the time.
7. You will procrastinate and write a paper the night before it is due.
8. Money is a mythical object.
9. It is nearly impossible to motivate yourself to go to classes during spring.
10. The food pyramid goes out the window.
11. You will have at least one stress induced breakdown a semester.
12. Most lecture classes will bore you to tears.
13. You will not like all of your professors.
14. You will try to go to the gym... but you will get too lazy at some point.
15. When you see high school students taking tours:
16. You will try to convince yourself that you can handle everything.
17. Finals week will try to kill you.
18. You won't like everyone, but you will find your best friends sooner or later.
19. You actually have to go to class.
20. Enjoy it, because you will be sad when it is all over.
Health and Wellness
Obsessive Thoughts Keep My Brain Stuck On A Loop And Me Stuck On My Couch
The more I research, the more I worry, the more I get stuck.
20h
591
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Sometimes my brain just starts turning on an idea and it doesn't want to stop.
I don't know if it is related to my anxiety, perfectionism or depression. I don't know why it happens. It's frustrating, it's painful and it stops me from functioning.
I will research whatever I am thinking about for hours, without realizing it, and neglect what I need to be doing. I simply cannot let it go. It's like my brain gets stuck in a loop.
Let's call my obsessive idea X. My brain will worry about X, research X, realize X is a long time away, wish X was closer, wonder if X is possible and then start all over again at worry about X.
Before I know it, I have five or more tabs open on my internet browser, I am crying because I don't know if X is possible, and it is 2 a.m.
I have been stuck for hours. Stuck in my head. Stuck in my worry. Stuck in my idea. Stuck in the fantasy of it coming true. Stuck in worrying that it will only ever BE a fantasy when I seriously dream of it as a reality. I am stuck.
It's especially bad when the thoughts about X permeate into almost every moment. My brain has latched on, hard. I want it to let go. I want to remember that things have a way of working out. I want to remember that X is years away, and I don't have to have every problem worked out, every process understood and every question answered right this minute.
But I can't. I can't release it. I can't get my brain to unlatch itself and move on. It just keeps aiming for whatever X is.
It's painful. It's frustrating. It will leave me crying. I have found myself on my couch, crying, holding my head and begging my brain to just stop. Stop thinking about X. Stop obsessing over X. Please, just stop. Please, just give me a break.
I have found these cyclical thought processes often stem from me being unhappy in one way or another. The more unhappy I am with my situation, the deeper my brain dives into X.
The more I research, the more I worry, the more I get stuck.
It all correlates with something making me depressed. I want to change something. I want to move, change myself, change what I am doing or change how people know me. I feel insecure. I feel ashamed. I feel stuck. So my brain turns to X. And it sticks to X.
Even if X really is something I could do in the future, my brain will pick X apart and find all the worries, all the complicated processes, all the things that could go wrong.
And so I will end up on my couch, with my laptop, for hours and hours, researching X and forgetting about how unhappy I am — until I come out of my trance and realize I am even more unhappy than I was before, just hours later and with more worries.
These thoughts are not jokes. I cannot just switch them off. I cannot just stop thinking about it. Trust me, I want to.
And I never know how long it will take for X to become a goal rather than an obsession.
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Swoon
To The Girls With "Daddy Issues," You Are Worthy Of The Love He Never Gave You
You are not alone.
18 January
6982
This is for the girls who have dealt with an emotionally, mentally, physically or verbally abusive father.
The ones who have grown up with a false lens of what love is and how relationships should be. The ones who have cried themselves to sleep wondering why he hurts you and your family so much. This is for all the girls who fall in love with broken boys that carry baggage bigger than their own, thinking it's their job to heal them because you watched your mother do the same.
This is for the girls who swear to the heavens they are done with men and wouldn't dare consider marriage in fear of themselves and their future children being stuck like they once were — the ones with such rage and anger burning inside of them from years of tolerating the abuse and the ones who have shut themselves off emotionally. And especially to the ones whose hearts long for a father to love them the way it's described in stories and fairytales.
Why should we have to be labeled from the damage at the hands of a man who promised to love and protect us?
Your "Daddy Issues" do not define you. They do not define me.
The anger that burns inside of you that wasn't always there does not define you. It does not define me.
The love we lacked and sought time and time again through empty promises of change does not define you. It does not define me.
I am not going to be a hypocrite and make this letter about positivity and hope for the future and all of that good fluffy stuff because that's all we've ever known. "Act normal"... What is normal for a normal person in a normal household with a normal father? Is there such a thing? Are their families that don't walk on eggshells? "Don't start him up," "Don't roll your eyes," "He's in a good mood so don't mess up the day for us"... These sentences have become second nature to me... Have become part of my identity.
I walk on eggshells, have anger in my heart, and a brain that's trying to understand that the way he acts has nothing to do with me, but his childhood traumas. Part of me is uninterested in marriage and the idea of things being fluffy and sweet, only to turn sour after you walk down the aisle.
I want to love and be loved, but I know I can't do that until I fix myself. I want to heal but moving forward and still living here doesn't help. I want to be forgiving, but I don't know how...
To those who are going through the same thing... You are not alone. I am not alone.
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