Ideas for a birthday during quarantine

This blog has come late, but I figure better late than never! Anyway, my birthday is April 23rd and I'll be 20 this year. A birthday, especially a day you become another decade older, should be about what you want, but since everything is closed, options are so limited this year that I personally don't find mine worth celebrating. For those who will celebrate, however, I have ideas to celebrate during quarantine.

1. Host an online party through Skype or other online video chats. Your friends can still sing you Happy Birthday and you may still talk to them on your birthday. Perhaps if another friend had a birthday during this time, you can have a bit of a celebration for them as well.
2. Utilize online shopping sites, such as Amazon. Places are closed because of the virus and some places, such as Walmart, only have specific parts of the building open, which further limits what you can expect to recieve or get for someone else. Try looking at what's on online sites and see what might interest you.
3. Just celebrate after this passes. Even though this will feel like a long time, quarantine will eventually end. When it does, try seeing when different places open and just do what you want to do then. This can make it truly about you even though your real birthday has passed.

Let me know if you have other ideas to celebrate a birthday at this time and stay well!

My absence

I have not posted a blog entry in over eight months. I have revisited this blog and edited my posts, but I haven't made a new entry. I had a long job search for about a month after my last post, then I took on two jobs and went back to school in January. I quit one of those jobs in March, but then the coronavirus popped up. I now plan to get back into blogging now that I have the time for it. Looking forward to it!

Why "Never give up" is bad advice

When you were in school, maybe you saw posters about never giving up. Maybe you were encouraged to always achieve your dreams, achieve this big goal, or become this type of person. I think that a better phrase would be to try everything. Let me explain.

1. Not giving up might get you nowhere. I tried to get a job in a town about 25 miles away (I live in a very rural town) and the town was a small one. I went to EVERY retail and fast-food place and applied. I got interviews but not really a job. I got a job at one food place, but due to a company financial issue, I lost that job after only a week. Then, I got hired at another place, but there were too many things for me to learn in too little time. I realized that I simply could not get a job in that town and would have to look in a city farther away. I spent over a month looking for a job, but if I had stuck with jobs in that town, I still wouldn't have a job. I also think if I hadn't wasted my time there, I'd have had a job sooner and would be able to achieve a financial goal sooner than I will actually be able to. (It's affordably living on-campus at college)
2. .A situation could be made much worse. As ashamed and stupid as I feel about this, I heard in 2017 that one of my favorite Youtubers (who was only a teen) had terminal cancer. I tried posting comment about bullcrap cures (like go to this hospital, try juicing, etc). That makes a cancer patient feel like they gave up too easily and could just make one of the worst situations possible even worse for this. Again, if I hadn't wasted my time in that town, I'd have been better off financially.
3. Even if you can obtain a goal, it can lead you to too much stress. I finally found two jobs and, still thinking I could reach the financial goal I mentioned (living on campus). I ended up working seven days a week for five weeks. While I learned the value of a day off, I pushed through thinking it would enable me to live on campus. By the time I arranged days off with my managers, I found that was not the case. Even if it was, would I have the energy to study once I got back to school? Probably not. I think the best thing for me to do was wait a year to live on campus and relieve stress now.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't try everything to pass a hard class, get rid of your cancer if you have it, or your other goals, but the moral is to be realistic because if you're not realistic, you're just going to be disappointed. 

Trick or treat throughout middle school and stop in high school

Many kids wonder how old they should be when they stop trick or treating. Laws often ban anyone over age 12 from doing so, but usually they are not enforced. Even if there are no specific laws or it is not enforced, a kid and parent know eventually they have to stop trick or treating. I went trick or treating when I was 13 and in 8th grade, but not when I was a 14 year-old freshman in high school. Why did I stop then?

1. To get it over with. I thought not trick-or-treating was going to make Halloween a sad night (and I will admit that, at age 19, I sometimes feel like I will miss out on something), but then Halloween actually comes and goes and I don't have that feeling. This will be my 6th Halloween without trick or treating (and this year, I will probably be working that night anyway, as I have 2 jobs and have had 7 day workweeks for a few weeks now, though I'm trying to find a weekly day off).
2. To put aside childish things. I have not grown up quickly. I believed in the tooth fairy and easter bunny until I was about 10 or 11, but I believed in Santa until I was 13. My mom says whenever I verbally questioned it, she would somehow convince me to believe in Santa again. (Now I try to treat everything she says with skepticism.) I found less interest in trick-or treating through the years. When I was 9, I was an evil nurse, but I became a regular nurse because I was too lazy to mess my hair up in a way to seem evil. When I was 11, I was grateful, but showed less gratitude than I should have. When I was 12, I wondered if I was too old, and when I was 13, I really only went because I had not yet worn a non-returnable costume and I didn't want it to go to waste. No one said anything, but I felt embarrassed. Then when I was 14, I went with my family to get pizza and I saw trick or treaters, but it was nice to not be trick or treating myself.
3. You have a bad name. If you live in a town where you may not trick or treat after age 12 and the law is enforced, you could be arrested for trick or treating. However, if you legally can go one or two more times, do so because middle schoolers are still kids. In high school, you may be juggling extra ciriculars and AP classes anyway, which may not give you the time and energy to go trick or treating.

Now, I think making it illegal for teens to trick or treat is too far (especially since it seems to be inspired by other laws they break, such as vandalism, but if they're going to break higher laws, why are they going to care about age restrictions), but there does come a time where trick or treating needs to stop. Trick or treat throughout middle school and stop in high school.

Good things about being right handed, but left eye dominant (or vise versa).

Only 10% (approx.) of people in the world are left handed, but about 1/3 of people in the world are left-eye dominant. This means plenty of people are right-handed and left-eye dominant, although some people are left-handed and right eye dominant. I fall into the former category, so I can only assume people who fall in either category experience what I do. This makes some sports and activities hard (for example, we had a unit on archery in PE and I tried a left-handed bow for my better eye, but my left arm was just too weak to pull back well enough. I switched to a right-hand bow and my glasses were able to help my eye enough to do the sport.) However, there are good things about being cross dominant.

1. You are more flexible about which side of the road to drive on. I have noticed I tend to switch which eye I look out of when I look in the rear view mirror and I switch between using the interior and exterior mirror. If your home country drives on the right and you are right handed, while using your left hand will feel weird, you will have an advantage over others because you are on your dominant side either way. (For instance, in the US, I am on my dominant hand side, and in the UK, I would be on my dominant eye side.)
2. You might become better with your non-dominant hand or used to using your non-dominant eye. My right eye has much weaker vision than my left eye (I wear eyeglasses), so as I said, I had to choose whether to use my better hand and worse eye or my worse hand and better eye to do archery (and I chose the former, as I usually do). However, you might decide to try using your non-dominant hand more often and you might become better at using that hand than you would be if you were not cross-dominant.

Sorry to be blunt but I will finish this later

Preschool/ages 3 and 4, and Kindergarten/age 5/6 memories

I am going to make a few posts about memories from being in school and being little. Instead of one long post, I will break it into smaller post.(By the way, I still remember my birthday cake was a blue Spongebob-themed cake when I turned 2!)

(I don't remember much about being 3 anymore. I used to have several memories of being 3, but 4 is when my memory really starts now. Also, I can't tell you my first days of these years in school anymore. I had been asked to write about it as a book question about my very first day of school when I was in the fifth grade, but I had long forgotten by then, so I just described the classroom and a few things we did.)

Age 3/FYP: I remember that every day we would have circle time and sing. I remember singing "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?", "Happy and you know it", and "The more we get together."

Age 4/SYP: Our preschool was a really small school that had two preschool classes, two teachers, and two assistant teachers. Our classrooms were connected by a really small bathroom that had stalls but no doors, which I always thought was weird. Our preschool would only occasionally, as far as I remember, go outside to the playground. I wondered why we didn't go more. I remember our teacher, in gym one day, asked us to walk fast, which I thought was running. I was really confused by how it wasn't running, so I kind of just ran.
I also remember that we had an activity to use small blocks to make a colored pattern of our choice, but I just could not figure out what that was.
Finally, I remember that a girl named Brianna was like a parent to a lot of us. I never fell asleep for naps (which my teacher told my mom, and my teacher said she would tell me it was okay as long as I was quiet and wasn't cranky afterwards, which I always complied to.) Brianna would always wake up and whisper to me to go to sleep. I don't think I was distracting, but I don't know if my being awake distracted her or if she just wanted me to sleep. (I think the latter is the case because I was always quiet for nap time.)

Age 5/Kindergarten: When I was in kindergarten, our classroom was connected by a door to a kindergarten classroom, however, there was no bathroom or hall between our classrooms. One day a kid named Juan was yelling, kicking, and crying and he got switched to our classroom. (Today I wonder if he was abused because he would get restrained and carried to the office. Once I saw two teachers carrying him by his arms and he yelled, "Stop! You're hurting me!" The teachers said, "No we're not!" "Yes you are!")
We had a behavior chart on our side of the door that I just described. At the end of the day, an assistant teacher would ask us what our color was and color in a box that was our monthly behavior chart that we would take home for our parents would see. You would start the day with a green card. If you did one thing wrong, you got a yellow card. Two things wrong got you an orange card. Three things wrong got you a red card. You would also, twice a day, get skittles. Each time you were on green, you got two skittles during that time if you were on green, one if on yellow, none if on orange or red. I was worried I would forget my reason for changing color, but I was ALWAYS on green and I ate four skittles a day in kindergarten. The kid I described was always on red. One time I went back there just to see if I had all the card colors because I never changed it.
Finally, we also had "Star Student of the day". A student would be the star of the day and get to take a stuffed animal (a jaguar, which was our school mascot) home for the day. I forgot mine the next morning!

Those are my memories for now. I will start a series until I get through all the ages and grades.

Why girl scouts should have vests rather than sashes

A decision girl scout leaders make is what kind of uniform the girls should have. I am not going to talk about a tunic, as I did not have one, but I had a vest as a brownie and a sash for every other level.  (I was not a daisy because there were no girl scouts in my area in kindergarten, and when I was in first grade, only kindergarteners were daisies.) There are good things about wearing a sash. Since sashes only go on one shoulder, they are easier to get into and out of. If you wear cute clothes, they will be more easily seen with a sash as the sash takes up less room. Taking up less room may also mean that you will not grow out of the sash as quickly as you would a vest.  Also, while I don't know if I agree with this, some people think sashes make girls look more mature than a vest. However, there are reasons I still suggest a vest.

1. More room for badges. Being a brownie was very different from the rest of my girl scout experience. We had vests as a brownie and sashes as a junior. When I went to my new troop, I became a cadette and we had sashes then as well. A sash may be less bulky and take up less room than a vest, but a vest has more room to be able to hold badges. (I think we earned so many badges when we were brownies that we couldn't fit them all on our vests! A sash would have never held as many badges!)
2. Cheaper long-term. If your girl does not grow enough to need a new size, then, as said, there are more room for badges, so you will not need to get a bigger uniform as your girl earns more badges. The vest is more expensive at first, but you may not need as many vests as you would sashes. 
3. Vests hold the trefoil pin. If you wear a sash, the uniform code is to wear the sash and put the trefoil pin on your shirt rather than your sash. This will poke holes in any shirt you wear with the sash. However, if you wear a vest, a vest will hold the pin and you will not have to either wear the same shirt or have multiple shirts with holes.
4. No sliding around. A vest might be bulky and harder than a sash to get into and out of, but a sash will slide around your body and you will have to adjust it all the time. Vests stay in place for a longer amount of time than sashes because they wrap around both of your shoulders, but sashes go on top of one shoulder and they do not have much retention. 
5. Less confusion. If you wear a sash, you might forget whether the uniform is left shoulder to right hip or vice versa. If you wear a vest, you might forget what patches go on which side, but at least you are unable to make the mistake of putting it on backwards.

I hope this helps. Happy Scouting!