Accepted!

Oh how I have been waiting for that 8 letter word.

     After bible study tonight, I checked facebook (naturally) and a kid that I had interviewed with let me know that statuses for grad school were up! My heart was beating so fast as I typed in all the required information to log in that I have been plugged in probably over 100 times in 2 weeks. I was so excited to scroll down and not see the word "pending." I didn't know how to express my excitement, so I was jumping up and down and screamed to my roommates and then started making phone calls. I decided to go down to my clubhouse to work out some to get some of the excitement out. About 30 minutes in, I hear all this knocking and it scared the sillies out of me. I got welcomed with this: 

Moriah, Meghan, Kate, Josh and Chris surprised me with this. How stinking sweet!

   

     I can't wait to stay in this town, and grow closer to the people here. I took a leap of faith signing my lease, looking for a GA job and not having a plan B before I knew if I was accepted into graduate school or not. 

         " For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and
           not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. " Jeremiah 29:10-12

                      Sometimes I like to think God and I are on the same page :) 

Sophomore Year!

     So sophomore year has been one of my favorites! I would say each year got better and better, but this year had so many new changes. To start off, I moved into my very first apartment! It was really a God thing how great it all worked out. Sarah and I had no idea who we were going to live with, until we heard Melanie and Ali were looking for roommates. Since they played tennis and we played volleyball, we were acquittance's but didn't know each other all that well but it fortunately worked out awesome. We moved into a brand new apartment, and have lived together for three years now, and I really couldn't ask for any better (or cleaner) roommates. 

It has changed a little since this picture, but this has been home for 3 years!

Sarah Melanie at I at our annual convocation. 

    What's really cool is we all came in together as student athletes at the same time and now we are all graduating together at the same time. 1005 til I die! (our apartment) 

   This was the year we got a new coach, and ultimately a new program. Sarah and I were so nervous/excited to start fresh. Along with a new coach, came new players. I don't think he could have brought in a crew that got along better. We all spent an incredible amount of time together, and I literally have thousands of pictures with these girls from sophomore year alone. Figuring our what pictures to post really tests my ability to make decisions. 

This was one of our very first hang outs outside of volleyball. As you can tell, we got very close pretty quickly. Luckily, we don't all look so baby anymore. 

Me, Parker, Lauren, Hannah, Bethany and Hayli

One of the first pictures in our new updated locker room!

I had to put one up of Parker's "long arm". Such a talent. 

    Needless to say, I had such a fun time with these girls, and even though they were freshman, I felt like it was my freshman year all over again! 

   So another huge part of not only my sophomore year but of my time at college was meeting Michael. He was my first "real" boyfriend and we dated (on and off) for two and half years. He played football, so we used to see each other around, but I guess we really first met at the pool. He ended up living a few apartments down from me for 2 years. 

This was our very first picture together ever! We actually didn't end up getting a picture taken of our faces for quite some time. 

We decided that God really wants us to grow individually, so we are not together now but Michael is still one of my closest friends. It's so cool to see where God has taken us; both together and not together. 

   I have to say freshman year was pretty smooth sailing. I really started to feel independent living on my own, declared my now major ( psychology), got an awesome new coach/program and met some great people. Couldn't have asked for anything more. 

Easter Weekend

First of all, Happy Easter! I love this holiday. 
    "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him, because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over Him. For in light of the fact that He died, He died to sin once for all; but in light of the fact that He lives, He lives to God. " Romans 6:8-10
    I love knowing my Jesus has risen from the dead, just as he said he would. If it wasn't for today, there would be no such thing as church. Not only has he saved my life, but so many others. I love me some Jesus!
    So  my good friend from school, Moriah, came home with me this weekend. She is from North Carolina/Virginia so she had never been to Alpharetta. Friday we went to the Good Friday Concert at Verizon Amphitheater. Louie Giglio was the speaker, and Chris Tomlin lead worship along with Christy Knockels and Kristian Stanfil (cutie). It was so powerful to worship with over 12,000 people.

    I was so excited my younger brother Cameron got to come as well! 

    Because it was so crowded, we didn't get to sit with all our friends but we got to meet up with them afterwards. Alicia and Stephanie are my best friends from high school that go to UGA, and Jacob and Tyler are fellow Eagles at Georgia Southern. 

Nothing like a little late night Waffle House and Fellowship. Nice and cozy in our spacious booth.

    Saturday Moriah and I got a solid workout from my friend/trainer at Lifetime Fitness. Moriah also got introduced to the steam sauna, which we both love. After our 4 hour adventure   to lifetime, we hit up the mall. Compared to the "small" in Statesboro, it is so refreshing to shop at somewhere with more than 8 stores. We felt so spoiled. 

     My Grandparents treated us to dinner at the Club. It was so yummy and I love spending time with them. I am so lucky they live so close and have been such a huge part of my life. 

So full from our three desserts but such a beautiful evening!

    This morning Moriah, Cameron, and I went to Easter service at Northpoint Community Church. I didn't think it was the best Easter service, but it's always such a cool experience to hear Andy Stanley speak and worship on such a large scale. Tonight we had a mini Easter dinner at my apartment. I made chicken wrapped in bacon, green beans, mashed potatoes, cream of corn and brownies for dessert. My friends Michael and Chris and roommate Melanie all ate together. Forgot to take pictures of our family meal time. 

    Some exciting news had happened this weekend: one of my roommates, Ali, got engaged! She went home to Tennessee for Easter weekend and her now fiancé, Nathan, proposed!  They have been dating for 5 years now, and are so perfect together. Selfishly, I am so glad he proposed this weekend because now we have 3 weeks to talk about wedding plans before we graduate. Melanie and I decided to have some dorky surprises set up for when she gets home tomorrow. 

  Her new name last name is going to be Miller, so we made her a sugar cookie in the shape of an "M." We aren't the most creative.. but we made do with what he had. And just to note, I wasn't the one who thought "future" was spelled "futre" 

     We had some extra window snow spray from Christmas, so we decided to graffiti our own door. 

    Ali is my first close friend to get engaged, and I am so excited this stage of my life is approaching. I can't wait to attend all these weddings! Congrats Ali & Nathan :) 

Freshman Year

     As I have mentioned so many times before, my undergraduate college career is ending very soon. So I have decided to reflect on my college experience year by year throughout the next few weeks. It will be hard to put one year in a blog post, so I will do my best to not keep it too long and boring. I am going to go ahead and jump into Freshman Year:    
     About March of my senior year in high school, I decided I was not going to play volleyball in college and I was just going to attend Georgia Southern because I loved it so much. A month or so later, my club team played in a volleyball tournament called the Big South Qualifier in Atlanta. It was there I met the coach at that time, Nicole McCray, and the rest is history. I came in with 8 freshman, all of us so nervous because we had heard coach was "tough" but did not if that physically, mentally or emotionally. Turns out, it was D: all the above. 

This was our first "hang out" as a team. From top left: Sarah, Flavia, Laura Beth, me, Gorana, Jenn, Christy, Biannca, Michelle, Mae.

   This group of girls, plus some, went through so much this season. It was definitely draining, but I would say we all learned a whole about ourselves. Saying that it was a tough year would be an under statement, but I would not have traded it for anything. 

      This was the "Fantastic Four". Me, Marissa, Christina, and Sarah. We all planned to live together our sophomore year, but Marissa transfered to University of Maryland and Christina transfered to Tennessee State. And Marissa does have posters of Guitar Hero and Rock Band on her wall. 

    As a freshman, my coach gave me the option of living with teammates or someone of my choice. My best friend from high school (Alicia) was also attending Georgia Southern so we decided to live together. I could write on and on about our time living together, but then again those times may had only been fun/hilarious to us. We lived in a standard dorm-that was 40+ years old-called Winburn, and it was quite the experience. We were the last people to live there, so we got to do whatever we wanted to the room. 

      So we decided to go to Wal-Mart late one night, and paint our room blue. This was us mid-paint. Funny story about this: it took 8 hours to paint our room, and I had a game the next day. Due to the fumes/late night, I slept through my alarm. We had our pre-game meal the next morning at I-Hop, which is why we were 10-21, and my coach called me and asked where I was when I didn't show up on time. As her phone call woke me up out of a dead sleep, I told her the quickest lie I could think of; my car battery died. She never found out and I never got punished, therefore our blue room was totally worth it. 

     The final product! And yes, we slept with our beds side by side. And my desk was on the opposite side of Alicia's and sometimes we would get so distracted when we studied we would pull out the pink curtain (which was our closet) so we couldn't see each other. Then we would make paper airplanes with notes on it and send it to each other over the curtain. Yes that really happened. 

    I would sometimes nap before practice and poor Alicia would come home during the day when it was bright and sunny out in order to find our room pitch black and me napping. I can still picture her throwing her head back and stomping to her desk in disappointment. I was also an early bird and she was a night owl, so much of our time in our room was trying not to wake each other up. 

     You would think living with your high school best friend in the smallest living quarters when you have the complete opposite schedules would break your friendship, but it did the exact opposite for us. In that entire year, we never had one fight. It was such an awesome time, but Alicia's heart was set on UGA. So she transfered her sophomore year. 

For the most part, this was the crew our freshman year. Lots and lots of time spent together.

     If I were to sum up my freshman year in two words, it would be Learning Experience. I learned so so much about myself, others, school, volleyball, everything! I would say the transition from high school to college went pretty smoothly for me, although I did gain 14 pounds. That was partly due to the heavy lifting, but the Ben and Jerry pint-nights didn't help. It's so fun to reflect on how Gods hand was moving in my life without me even knowing it at the time. His plan is perfect, and at this point I was so wrapped up into my life I didn't even realize he was there. He definitely had my back this entire year and I am so grateful for that. 

The Start of Something New

    So my weekend started out on Friday with my interview for graduate school at 1:00. I was a bundle of nerves, considering it was my first interview ever. I was the first candidate, and I sat down with two of the professors in the program. I figured it was going to be the typical interview questions (what are you strengths ,what are your weaknesses etc.) but no, they were tough! Here is an example of one of the questions I got asked:


   Respond to the following statement: I can explain how factors such as poverty, powerlessness, privilege and systemic oppression have influenced the current conditions of at least two ethic or identity groups. 


  I sure hope I pretended what I was talking about well enough.. Then from 5-8 we had a counselor education pre-admission seminar. It started with a meet and greet and dinner (vegetables and a packet of M&M's, yes I was disappointed) and then we broke up into concentrations. We sat in a circle and discussed different counseling topics, which wasn't bad at all. We went over course scheduling and that was about it. They say it shouldn't take more than a week to find out if we got accepted or not. Fingers crossed!

First interview!

      On Saturday, we had our end of the year banquet. We had it at R.J.'s Steakhouse, which was pretty cool for Sarah and I because that was where our very first banquet was in Summer '07 with Coach Nicole McCray. Sarah and I came in with 8 freshman, and from that class only 2 of us survived all 4 years. So it was definitely a special day for us. Coach had some really nice things to say about us seniors. The banquet was really well put together, with yummy food, good pictures, and most importantly, our SOCON Championship Rings! We have all been waiting impatiently since November to receive them, so was the absolute high light of the day!

All of us sporting our new bling. 

Mom and Dad came down for the banquet

Sarah and I with our SOCON Rings and our Scholar Athlete Rings( Student Athletes that graduate with above a 3.0 get these) So proud!

With Coach Chad 

    Saturday night my parents and I went to the Statesboro Rodeo at the Fair Grounds. It was so so fun, and such good people watching I might add. Deep down inside, I want to be a true country girl, so I was taking notes. The night was full of laughter and windy- dirt in the face, so I loved it. 

We ran into Brittany and the Brennan's, so I got to ask my dumb rodeo questions to the true country folks 

Mom and I with the Steers, and my all time favorite cowgirl boots

     This morning we went to Statesboro High School because Connection Church moved locations in order to seat everyone at one time. It was so incredible. I loved being able to see everyone all together to worship. Brandon rocked it like always. After was a pot luck which I love love love. Connection Church really has the family feel to it and I look forward to every Sunday.I am so lucky to have found a church that means so much to me. It has been such a good weekend with my parents ( although they got their car towed for parking in the wrong spot in my apartment complex, oops) and I am really trying to cherish every last undergrad moment because time is flying. Unfortunately, I still have plenty of work to do tonight. This blog really is going to become a fun distraction though :)  

First Post!

     So.. I decided to jump on the band waggon and start blogging. I have never been much of a journaler, or even a writer, but I figured blogging would be the best way to start, and help hold me accountable to update it on the regular. 
     The purpose of my blog is really selfish: I want to be able to reflect on blog entries later on in life. But it's also so people can keep up with the life of Lindsey. I am not married, and don't have babies, so I was wondering what I would possibly write about? But I am graduating in one month from today. That is 4 weeks. 31 days and I will be a college graduate. I am really looking forward to the next chapter of my life, but oh so nervous for what's to come. 
     Hopefully after tomorrow ( my graduate school interview), I will have a much better plan for what the next 2 years are going to look like. But let's be honest, God is laughing that I think I have a plan. So let me rephrase that, I am so excited for what he has planned for me. Through this blog I am going to share the road God has paved for me, all the exciting advertures on the way.