Pregnancy: The Hottest New Trend

I love kids. Maybe I should specify... I love other people's kids. I am no where near ready to love my own kids yet.

Recently, I went to see my brother, his wife and my two wonderful nephews. It was the perfect time for a last minute trip because it was the same time as my youngest nephew's birthday party. We went to a gymnastics facility, and all of the kids got to run and play in the foam pit... the adults may have jumped in as well, but that's neither here nor there. I played dino-opoly with my older nephew and read my youngest nephew his night time story. It was fantastic bonding time, and I am so glad that I was able to see them.

Another bright side to visiting my nephews is that I don't need birth control until 2012.

As adorable as children are, there is no denying that they are a major life changer and time commitment, and being a parent is the hardest job in the world. Kids change your life, and as magnificent as that life change is, I believe I would like to wait another ten years before making that change.

Every few weeks, it seems that someone I'm friends with on Facebook is now pregnant. When I was younger, I can remember teen pregnancy being such a taboo, however I cannot count the number of times I read congratulation notes on people's ultrasound photos every week. I have found myself constantly asking myself why there are so many young parents, and ultimately, I've come to only one conclusion: MTV's 16 and Pregnant.

Logically, one can come to the conclusion that MTV can not possibly feature every pregnant teen on their television show, but teenagers don't think logically (I certainly don't always). There is no denying that MTV and the media has glorified teen pregnancy far too much.  In fact, I'm sure that soon you will see "MTV Pregnancy Tests" on the shelves at your local market. Instead of a plus sign for pregnant, it's a dollar sign (Side note: this is not a real product, don't look for it).

Last night, my friend came to my house to eat dinner and watch the new Harry Potter movie with my mom and I. After the movie, my mom got up and out of nowhere, began showing my friend my baby photos. I was of course embarrassed and glared at my mom while she bragged about how cute I was, what an adorable child I was and that I only got cuter as I got older. What is it about being a parent that makes you suddenly have the greatest knack for embarrassing your child? It's like the second a new person comes over, Parents open the door, greet the person and immediately begin showing them their children's baby photos and commenting on how small your naked butt used to be, all while ignoring the fact that the child who has been out of diapers for a good 17 years is in the corner having a stroke.

After getting over my initial embarrassment, I realized that it's actually kind of sweet when parents show off their children to their friends, other family members or the new UPS guy. Instead of looking at the photo of their child and seeing the degree they didn't get or the job they turned down on the other side of the country because they had a baby too young, they only see the child that they raised showered in love.  When I see my brother and his wife with their children, there is clearly no regret surrounding the births of their two sons.

I find it so important to live the life you've been given and not rush all of life's joys into the first twenty years of life. I've got a good sixty or so years left to live and I don't want all of the fun stuff to happen to early.

Update

001 Well it's been about thirty years since I've written a blog post, however I am alive. Barely. I recently had walking pneumonia and I'm just now getting over it. FINALLY. I thought I would never be healthy again, but I am slowly returning to normal.

002 I have been relatively busy while I've been sick and feel rather accomplished with myself. I have purchased my plane ticket to Argentina and leave Feb. 1 for three months. I haven't exactly decided what I want to do with the blog while I'm there, but I definitely will be keeping up with it and posting photos and videos throughout the whole trip. I am thinking about doing vlogs once a week to show what I'm up to down there and keep things interesting. If any readers have any ideas of what would be fun to do on here while I'm traveling be sure to comment on this post or message me on twitter.

003 This semester is my busiest semester yet, therefore it will be hard for me to do daily blogs. I'm taking twenty credits this semester with three spanish classes, a french class, history and dance class. While also doing school I'm working on saving up for the trip and planning things in advance while I'm there. It's rather hectic, but I promise I will be blogging more than I have been.

004 I'm going to write a real blog post now with jokes and laughter and thoughts on life, but I wanted to fill you all in on my current happenings. I may do this more... who knows.

Is There a Major for "Student"?

If I had the choice, honest to Bible, I would be a professional student. When I say this, people always ask me what I've been smoking because people are supposed to hate school, right? WRONG. You are wrong. I love me some school.

When I first told my friends I was looking at graduate schools, they all had the same reaction: Ew. I truly am so excited about the prospect of getting more education. I love it! I like knowing things. It makes me feel accomplished and special. I constantly find myself asking questions about things and what better way to get the answers than school? (or I suppose wikipedia if you really are short on time and can't afford to take a class just to find out how to survive the zombie apocalypse - side note: this is a real class at my friend's university and I almost transferred just for this class).

My issue is that I want to know everything about anything that remotely interests me. If I had infinite time and infinite monetary resources, I would probably have degrees in four languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian), acting, film making, forensic anthropology, creative writing, dance, and sociology. All of these things are the best things in my mind and I want to know about them. But I don't want to pay for them, so I suppose I will just be another ignorant american who doesn't have forty degrees.

Europe is always besting me.

I am currently in the process of changing my major for the fourth time. I am a first semester sophomore. I'm told this is normal, but I feel so strange and awkward every time I change my major. When I entered college, I decided to be a Liberal Studies Major. This was partially my way of selecting undeclared and partially me being interested in the program. However after a semester of people asking me, "What is Liberal Studies?" and me being unable to come up with an answer, I decided I should probably change majors. It was at this point that I decided to get a double major in Spanish and French. I went through the process and got approval from those two department heads, however I still needed to get a signature from my current department head who also happened to be my Honors Humanities professor. I kept chickening out of asking him to free me from his major that cannot be defined and finally decided to just stay a Liberal Studies major. I tore up my change of major sheet and continued with my spring semester. However, again within one month I decided that being to chicken to get my sheet signed was also a really pathetic reason to have a major in something, so I went through the process again to do a Spanish and French double major. This time I did it. I entered my second year of college as a Spanish and French double major (here comes another however). However, now I am working on dropping my French major for an Acting/ Theatre major (I don't think I'm going to do a BFA so it'll be called a theatre major). I also have decided that I'm about 90% sure I'm going to grad school because a) life outside of school scares me and b) I would then be the first person in my family to go to grad school. Win.

One might look at my changes of majors and think, why the variety? Fine arts and foreign language? Well, here's where I am right now: I have wanted to be an actress since I was a small child. I first did a play at age six (I peed my pants on stage... but that's another story) and consistently did community theatre and high school theatre for the rest of my life. When I was first entering college, I had all intentions to do a theatre/ acting major, however I got a lot of mixed feedback from it and decided to do Liberal Studies. For the past year and a half, I have always gone back to the idea of doing this major, and finally I am saying, "why not?" This is what I love and I want to do it. I also keep thinking about myself in an office setting or doing a typical career, and it just doesn't go well together. I am too snarky, too spacey and too hands on to be in a typical career.

Plus, I like to play pretend and dress up.

I really do think that if there was a way to be a professional student, I would do it. I would totally love to get paid for going to classes and learning stuff. I could be like one of those know it all things!

Is that a real thing or am I making it up?