Nike: Write Your Future

This is a commercial for Nike that highlights the atmosphere of the World Cup.

I think it is fantastic.

It does say a lot about our culture and our belief that we have complete control over our lives.

But it is also an inspiration to not give into helplessness and defeat.

He is still good

Almost two weeks ago I graduated from Biola University. Thinking about finishing almost automatically makes me think of where I began.

As freshmen you are generally asked 3 questions:

What is your name?
What are you studying?
Where are you from?

Here are my answers:
Amanda Gayle Wheeler
Accounting and International Business
Sammamish, WA (Seattle)

Freshmen year, everything and everyone is new. When meeting new people you try to find something in common. What are you studying would hopefully mean that you will have classes together. You will need these people to help you study for exams or give you notes when you decided you would rather go to Disneyland than sit through a lecture. If you are not in the same classes, where are you from would give you a chance to talk about home. You can reminisce about landmarks or the local drama. The last option is what is your name. If all else fails at finding a commonality, you can share in the childhood trauma that you experienced because of nicknames you were given. I have heard Mandio (after Mario), the endearing Amanda-Panda, and my personal favorite, A-Man-Da!

Back in freshmen year on the first day on campus, all business majors had to take a Calculus placement test. I was sitting in the room with two thoughts running through my head: "He's cute, Ooo, him too, I hope I have a class with that one", and "why is it so hot in California?!?!" when all of a sudden I hear "Hi, my name is Amanda." I perk up like a meerkat. Name? Someone with my Name? It's almost like an instant bond to share a name. I did not meet that Amanda until Sophomore year, but we made the best of three years of friendship and will hopefully have many more.

Now as a Senior, you are asked 3 similar, yet very different questions:

What is your name?
Because let's be honest, we still don't know each other. At the Business major senior banquet, I sat next to someone I had never seen in my time at Biola.
Who are you studying?
I lived in a house with 6 other girls and it took one of them a good month and a half to figure out that this boy liked her because he would come over to study and then he wouldn't leave...
Where are you going?
College is about results and what you are going to do with you $120,000 education.

Again here are my answers:
Still Amanda Gayle Wheeler
I lack the ring by spring
I am going to Deloitte in Costa Mesa, CA

Many times when we talk about where we are going after college, it seems like the token graduation advice is to say "just trust that God will provide you with the right job to glorify him." I don't feel like I can offer this encouragement because that would be too easy for me to say and fairly obnoxious because I have had a job since November. However there is something else that I feel like I can contribute to this post-grad conversation about uncertainty.

From the outside my job looks perfect, but I want to share a little more about that story.

The theme of my time at Biola has been about learning to submit areas of my life to God. Last year it was about submitting my singleness and still being willing to worship God as the great planner. This year it has appropriately been about submitting my life after college.

You see I am from Washington, I love the rain, I miss the mountains, and I could care less about the beach.

But 4 years ago God called me to California and back in November He said "stay." Yes I have a job, yes it's at the firm I wanted, and yes it's in the field I wanted. But something about that "stay" was so heartbreaking despite the clarity that I was praying for. So by all accounts, my future looks like a 9.5 out of 10. But I still have to trust that in the 0.5 part God planed it as a perfect 10. And despite what I think would be a awesome plan, He knows what's best.

So while I don't feel like I can encourage you to keep your chin up and keep looking for a job, I do feel like I can say that even though you may not be where you want to be, maybe you don't have a job or a significant other, or you are moving back in with your parents or not going home at all, God is still God and He is good, and He is sovereign, and He is a better navigator of our lives than we could ever be.

Graduation

Tomorrow I am graduating from Biola University.
Tomorrow I am finishing my undergraduate journey.
Tomorrow I am finishing my time in the world of education.
Tomorrow I am walking across a stage, shaking a hand, and receiving a diploma.

Tomorrow is a big day!

Tomorrow is Graduation!

Wait, what?

Is is too late to change my career? I mean graduation is in a few days, but it's possible to make a U-turn right?

I just watched a cute little webinar on how the CPA exam is changing in 2011. It was informative and sounded like I could handle it while working full-time. It will be a challenge, but didn't sound too daunting until...

The instructor said that passing the CPA exam is entirely possible if you drop everything in your life. He went on to say that you know you are taking studying seriously when your friends stop calling...

All of a sudden I feel like a caged tiger that is dying to maul the idiots hanging their small children over the railing into my zoo exhibit...OK, maybe not.

But seriously friends, please don't stop calling me! Even if I have post-it notes and note cards as wall paper...

I Will Survive [Biola]

First I was afraid,
I was petrified
Kept think I could never live
On this crazy college ride
But I spent so many nights,
cramming notes to take a test
Then I passed them,
and put studying to a rest
May 29th!
We’re here at last
It’s graduation, flip you tassel,
this went by way too fast
I should have taken more pictures
I should have gone on more GYRADS
If I had know for just one second
That college would fade like a fad

Freshman year, it was grand
Made new friends ‘cause
there was adventure to be had
Then as sophomores, we learned how to be RAs
remember GYRADs
and those early training days
Oh Biola!
I have survived
After 4 exciting years
Its time to say goodbye
I have made some life long friends
Your influence will not end
And I’ll survive
I will survive

Junior year, it got better than I thought
Meg do you remember the ridiculous mirrors we bought
And we spent so many nights
In the office discussing life
We still laugh
Cause we’re such a tight staff
Senior year
The last hurrah
Engagements, presentations, and running from the law
So I have grown in mind and heart
And I have never been too bored
Now I’m ready to face the world
And impact it for the Lord!

Oh Biola! You hidden Gem
Who’d a known that
That I would love you in the end
We’ve had our ups and down now
When I missed my home
Oh, my dear mountains
But now the beach is where I roam
Oh Biola!
I have survived
After 4 exciting years
Its time to say goodbye
I have made some life long friends
Your influence will not end
And I’ll survive
I will survive

Dance the Night Away

Last weekend was one of my housemates' birthdays. For each of our birthdays we try to do something special for them: go out to dinner, throw a surprise party, pedicure pampering, etc. Well, this particular housemate had always wanted to go clubbing. So she did a little research, called a few places, got on a guest list or two and decided on a winner.

So last Friday night, after playing in a soccer game reminiscent of the beginning of the movie The Big Green (I let a goal in by missing the ball with my hands and letting it roll slowly between my legs and into the net...), I ran home and started throwing clothes around frantically looking for something suitable for a club. Unfortunately, my wardrobe consists of two (working on three) types of clothes: Casual, Nicer Casual, and Business. You can't really get down in a pencil skirt nor is a gray men's undershirt super trendy...

But after some debate, a little tape, and an apple to chow on, I was ready to go!

We got to the club a little early, and hung out for a while, waiting for other people to start dancing, because we sure were not going to be the first ones out there...

[Being a 21+ club, the crowd was a little older than college-age. Like I'm pretty sure many of them had babysitters at home watching their children...their 7 year old children...]

Once the dance floor started to fill up, we slide on out there and rocked a modern version of the Macarena, the YMCA dance, and the line dancing I learned back in elementary school...jk...we were quite the dancing circle of single ladies. Let me tell you, our hips did not lie.

Aside from the nightmarish flashbacks to high school homecoming dances, throbbing feet, the inability to wear shoes for the next few days, bitterness toward previously adored heals, soreness in muscles that I was not aware existed, and/or one embarrassing confession I had to make in front of a class today, it was a fun evening of dancing and celebrating the birthday of my housemate.

Will I go again?...only if they promise to play "Spice Up Your Life"...

Progression, Regression, or Stagnation?

Last Saturday, while home in Washington on my Spring Break, I went the Skagit Vallet Tulip Festival with my parents. My dad posted a blog with all the pictures that he took of the tulips - some great shots!

When we were kids, my family would go see the tulips almost annually. Back then it was free (when we went last weekend it was $4 per person...even tree-hugging North Westerns embrace capitalism) and a great place for a family of squirrelly children. There were character cutouts, carnival food, and best of all, any flowers that we accidentally walked on were not ones that my mom had worked hard to plant and grow. While we did not get an entirely free pass at flattening tulips during a game of tag, we sure did not face the full wrath of a green thumb scorned.

On Saturday, while my mom and I were watching my dad play photographer for the day, my mom made a comment about how she thought the tulip festival had expanded. I responded that I remembered the tulip festival to be bigger, more forest-like. But that could also be due to the fact that the last time I was there I was about three feet tall...

The last documented (meaning pictures in our family albums) time that I was at the tulip festival was when I was 5 years old. As a fresh 22 year old, that means it has been (let me pull out the calculator for this one) 17 years since I frolicked through the tulips (You think I'm kidding about the calculator huh?).

This period of tulip silence got me thinking about how my early tulip experiences differed from my current tulip experience.

As a 5 year old, I was very sensitive to the cold, meaning I cried like a little girl (in my defense, I was a little girl) when I was freezing my backside off. Yet I fought tooth and nail to not wear my ugly pink cat sweater with matching hair bow. I was an astute 5 year old; what if I met a cute 6 year old boy? He would not ask me for my number if he saw me in a hideous sweater...

Well, I am happy to report that as a 22 year old, I have abandoned vanity for reason...actually I just left vanity in California (I mean cute surfer boys don't pick up just anyone...). I willingly put on a turtleneck...for those of you who don't know what this piece of clothing is, it is a shirt that silently strangles you for the sake of keeping your neck warm. If I am dead, why does my neck need to be warm?...a fleece jacket, and a ski jacket shell for rain and wind protection. Then I strapped on boots that I had a history of "forgetting at home" for winter camp in high school, and I trudged out the door. I did make an honest attempt at styling my hair, but then I remembered:

Washington spring weather (it may rain at any given moment) + wind = bad news.

A braid and a bun later, I was ready to meet prince charming at the tulips...I mean, family trip! Yeah!

As we walked around the tulip garden arrangements I saw a circular row of tulips surrounding a bench. I posed the question to my parents :

"Hypothetically, if I tried to hurdle the tulips and missed, would we get kicked out?"
"Yes...plus, you break it, you buy it..." was their answer, with some rolling of the eyes.

A 5 year old would just have taken off...a 22 year old restrains herself, but still contemplates it...As we got nearer to the tulip circle, I discovered that the circle was a bit thicker than I had anticipated, making success unlikely for a 5 or 22 year old.

After saving me from certain bankruptcy for having to pay for the tulips that I would have smashed, my parents walked out of the sculpted garden and toward the tulip fields. I trotted along.

Now these tulip fields are like any other crop field. They are long rows of tulips with enough space between the rows for a person to walk without stepping on a flower. Nevertheless there was a sign with strict instructions to:

"Stay on the path. Do not walk down the tulip rows."

Well thank you Skagit Valley. It didn't occur to me how much fun running through a field of tulips would be until you told me I couldn't.

Granted, some of the 5 year olds that I saw at the tulip fields were leashed to their parents, thus effectively nullifying the potential for any mischief whatsoever. But a free-roaming 5 year old would just take off into the fields ignoring the shriek of their mortified and angry parents. They would not care that a sign was telling them no...most likely because they could not read the sign and could easily claim ignorance of the rule...darn you literacy! You have robbed me of all sorts of fun...

As a 22 year old, I had to settle for scanning the fields to make sure the coast was clear (which it never was) of those pesky tulip police ready to peg you with some sort of tulip tromping trespassing ticket.

After a day of considering myself superior to the 5 year old trouble causers, I found a tulip worthy of being photographed with me...17 years ago, I took a similar picture...

(In case you can't see it, the flower names are "Elite" and "Attila")

(Also note: I do believe I loved this cat sweater even though it did not aid me on the love-at-first-sight category...)

The question I ponder now is:

Have I made progress?

Am I regressing?

Or have I not changed at bit?