A New Chapter

I never blog anymore. I got really into it for a while and I think I stopped because I was bored and running out of things to say, plus I don't think anyone was really reading it. I don't care either way...

I am beginning a new chapter in my life. I feel like I have come to a point in my life where I really need to stop and refocus everything I've ever thought. Well, maybe not completely but for the most part. I am in the process of an entirely new self discovery and trying to change in new ways and for the better. I am trying to experience life in a more positive way and really find out what I want to get out of life. I want to find my purpose and meaning to the world.

I recently broke up with my boyfriend, a decision that came about over too many issues to fully explain. The main reason I think is because when I got out of college I felt like I was on a path. A path to live the everyday life that people are "supposed" to live. I had to get a job, find someone to marry, and have kids, then live happily ever after. I wanted all of this until I had it. I then began to feel like I couldn't breathe. Like every single part of me was being stripped away. I didn't know who I was and I didn't know how to find myself. I felt trapped. Trapped in a life that I didn't know if I wanted.

The good thing about this new chapter I am about to enter is that I still don't know what I want out of life. I still don't know who I am or who I want to be. The difference now is that I have an entire world of possibilies placed before me. I can do anything in the world that I want to do and no one will ever hold me back... I think that is the best feeling in the world.

One year with Kraft

It's official... I have now been a working girl for exactly one year today. I actually made it and I have to say that it feels amazing. The funny thing is, this is the longest job i have ever worked consecutively. There were no breaks, no summer vacations, no stops between school. I actually did it. When I look back to last year, I remember how absolutely excited I was. I was nervous and in complete awe of everything. I had worked so hard to get here that I was practically speechless. It has been a good year though. Slightly stressful, slightly confusing, but completely worth it. I learned a lot and I still have a lot to learn. I feel that I grew up a bit this past year, but I still have a lot of growing up to do. I have had some amazing experiences and met some amazing people as well. Here are some of the things that I have been up to this year... One thing I can say is that a year goes by FAST... I mean really fast, I don't think that I ever remember school going by this fast. It feels like just yesturday I was starting out. Where has the time gone? I hope that next year doesn't go by so fast because i'm not all that sure I'm ready to grow up yet. I still feel young, I am young, but i'd just like it to stay that way. All in all, it was an amazing year, and I only hope that next year will be just as amazing if not more. I am so grateful to be where I am today. I think that I have worked hard to get here and it only shows that hard work really does pay off. Thanks to everyone that helped get here.

i was "that girl" again

I'm the first one to admit that I have been "that girl" many times in my life. Now in case you're confused, "that girl" is that completely wasted ridiculous girl at the party. Well, shes been retired for over a year now and I have to say, she came back this past weekend........ And I LOVED it. I'm not gonna lie, I really did. I guess I sometimes just miss that lifestyle especially when I was reliving it with my best friends in the world. Thats what I love about them the most is that I can be "that girl" and its okay. I can be more myself around them than anyone else and its completely acceptable. Because being myself is sometimes a bit crazy and I've learned to realize that maybe not everyone can handle it. I've definitely learned to tone things down a bit this year, but its nice to act that way sometimes and not care because i know that no one else really cares either. Or maybe they do, but at least they can handle it. I was reading a blog posted by sara http://vagabondsara.blogspot.com/2007/10/odyssey-years.html . After reading this I realized something about my life this past year that i've been missing. I'm missing that so called odyssey years because I jumped so fast into the rest of my life. DOn't get me wrong, I'm completely satisfied with the life that I have and the job that I have. I wouldn't give it up, but I feel like I missed out on those years. The years to extend the college lifestyle in an adult world. The years to travel and see things. The years to experience life without worrying about anything. I feel as though I may have missed out on those years to explore and figure out what I fully want out of life.

I was depressed about all of this (missing plattsburgh and my friends and the odyssey years) for about 30 mins until I realized that I'm not missing out on anything. That I already semi know what I want out of life and I that I can still experience these things, with the career that I have. I may not be able to do everything that I wanted, but at the same time I don't have to grow up completely either. I can still live life to the fullest and work hard at the job that I'm in. I can learn to balance out my work life and play life and I can explore the world at the same time. I can do all of the things that are spoken about in the article while still staying focused on my career and the rest of my life. I can do all of this because I'm still young enough to do whatever I want. So, maybe I don't want to be "that girl" every weekend or every night, but I can still enjoying spending time with friends and making new ones along the way. I can still enjoy travelling (maybe in smaller more spaced out time frames than I'd hope) I can still do it.

I have no regrets in life, I have no regrets about the life I have chosen. I also realize that my life is not over and from past experience can tell me that the future is completely unknown and completely unpredictable. I can do whatever it is that I want in life and what I want in life may change tomorrow. As long as I'm happy with where I am, I think things are going to be okay. I may still feel like a child trapped in this very adult world scratching to get out, but I guess I'll just have to take another trip up to plattsburgh or to visit my friends to get a break from it all. I do miss plattsburgh and I do miss my friends and my old life, but I'm absolutely loving my new life and my new friends that I have right now. No complaints in this department...

another year

i thoroughly enjoyed 22. it was a good year for me and i have to admit that i'm sad its ending. yeah, so it started out a bit rocky, but thats just part of life. all in all, i enjoyed being 22. i enjoyed saying i was 22. i enjoy the number 22. Everything about being 22 was just simply great. its like still young enough to get away with so many things, but old enough to do whatever you want to do. And so many great things happend this past year. I got an amazing job that I absolutely love, I went to Japan, I met some amazing new friends, and I got to visit and spend time with some old friends as well. I went to the west coast and saw san fransisco. I rode my bike across the golden gate bridge, 22 was an amazing year!! 23 is that much closer to adult hood. I mean yeah i am an adult now, but i'm still a young adult, still fresh to the world so its ok, it lets me get away with a lot of things. The older you get the more mature you have to become. The more responsible you have to become. and to be honest.... I'm just not so sure if I'm ready for all of that. I'm still in kid mode and I'm not sure that I'm ready to leave it. But I guess I have to right? Because, thats just part of life. Thats what happens, we get older, we get wiser, and we enjoy the journey as much as we can. I'm sure that 23 will be just as great of a year as 22 was. Actually, I know that it will!! So enough venting about turning 23.... I'm ready and its going to be great, so here we go...................

San Fransisco

its been a few weeks since i got back, but its been a crazy few weeks as well. San Fransisco was amazing. I fell in love with that city it was absolutely gorgeous there. After a long flight plus spending the night in LAX airport, I quickly found my way to lacy's house, took a shower, got ready, and headed off in search of the Bart. It wasn't too hard to find, I had a map and when I got a bit lost a nice man showed me where to go. I walked with him there and found out that he used to live in Saratoga Springs!! very exciting! I soon found out that it was "spare the air" day, meaning all public transportation was free. I headed into the mission for a good mexican lunch. After that I hopped back on the bart to embarcadero and jumped on a cable car. I had somewhat of an idea of what i wanted to do today, but no set plans. I rode the cable car all the way up California street and finally decided to get off, otherwise I would just be riding that all day. Now, I had studied the map of San Fransisco before I left, but I didn't have a hard copy since it was too big to print out. I knew that Lombard street was close to where I was so I started to walk in the direction that I thought it would be. All of a sudden bam there it was!! It was really neat I took some pictures, walked down it, took more pictures, and then stood there trying to plan my next move. I knew that I wanted to go to the golden gate bride, but I didn't know how I was going to do this. Should I just walk across it? But that would be a long far walk just to simply get to the bridge. Maybe I should take a cab? How much would that cost though? I started walking in the general direction while I contemplated what to do. All of a sudden I stumble upon a bike rental shop!! PERFECT!!! So I rented a bike and off I went. Now, I hadn't rode a bike in about 10 years, but its true when they say its just like riding a bike, I got on and a bit wobbly at first, but I was off!!

Now, for those of you know don't know, I have this mild obsession with bridges. I absolutely love them, so riding a bike across the golden gate bridge was pretty much a dream come true. I was in heaven!! And it was sooo beautiful. There wasn't any fog at all, it was completely clear and beautiful. I rode my bike across to a little town called sausaleto. This was such a cute town, I wanted to move there!!!! I tried to catch a ferry back to san Fransisco, but missed it and since the next one wasn't coming for an hour, I decided to simply ride back. I then headed toward fisherman's warf to check it out and then back to oakland to get some dinner with lacy. All in all, it was the perfect day!.

Day 2 started out awful. Lacy dropped me off at the Bart station on her way to work. Getting on the bart I then realized that I forgot my ticket to Alcatraz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I went back to lacy's bart station, walked all the back to her house, called a cab, thinking it would be faster since it took about a half hour for me to walk there. Only to realize that it took the cab a half hour to get there!!! But, needless to say I made it and alcatraz was awesome!! I highly recommend anyone take this tour if they ever get a chance, because it was very interesting. After that I went down to peir 39 to see the sea lions, went to giradelli square for some chocolate, and had lunch at this cute little Italian restaurant. I was super tired today so I went shopping for a bit and then headed back to meet up with lacy.

Day3 was just as good as the rest. We started out going to Castro for some lunch, then headed to haight ashbery (which has some awesome shops!! too bad I ran out of money by now!!). We then stopped in golden gate park, relaxed a bit before heading to see the full house house!! Totally cool, its called postard row because its one of the most photographed spots in the city and has been seen in numerous movies and tv shows. After that we went shopping and headed into Berkely for some dinner. We then went to this prett rose garden and you could see the san fransisco bay from there and it was soo beautiful. We went back to play cards and lacy dropped me off at the airport... It was an amazing trip and an amazing city I highly suggest anyone to go visit it someday!!

Exercising your mind

Creativity can either be born in you or you can work at it. I always thought that there are either creative people or uncreative people. I always felt that I was one of those uncreative people. This can be challenging, especially when I am in a profession and trying to work my way up in a profession that needs a lot of creativity. So why did I choose this? I like the field that I am in. Even though I never felt too creative, I enjoyed what I was learning and looked forward to being a part of it.

I have learned that creativity can also be learned, its simply called exercising your mind. During the three day seminar I just attended, our instructor would start the class, as well as after every break with a contest. We were paired up with one other person and he asked up various trivia questions from a game called mind trap. An example of a question was this.... Forward I'm heavy, backward I'm not... What am I? I'll let you think about this for a minute....
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Give up yet? The answer is a TON... Forward its heavy backwards its N-O-T. My partner and I (also the two newest and youngest members of the group!!) did not ever win a prize in this game. At the beginning of the seminar no one was getting any of the questions right. By the end, people were getting more and more questions right. The point of this game was not to simply entertain us in the middle of our intense workshop, but to simply exercise our minds. These types of questions forces you to "think outside of the box." The more and more you work on activities like this, the more you creative you will become. I also learned another technique of creativity from someone who was an artist. I was talking to her one day and I said, i wish I was creative like that. She told me different things that they would do in her art classes to practice creativity. One was they were told to come up with some type of object, for example and apple. They were then told to draw and apple 100 different way.... for example it could be a picture of a simple apple, apple of your eye, apple tree... etc. The point of this exercise is that within those 100 drawings that you made there should be at least one original idea.

My new goal, is to work on these types of exercises. I think that it will not only help with my creativity, but like I said, it will help me to learn how to "think outside of the box" so that when a problem arises I will be able to think on my feet and act quickly. I'm hoping that with all of these new techniques that I have learned, that I actually apply them to my job so that I can improve.

is college teaching us anything?

A little over a year ago I graduated from college after 4 years. Soon after I began my life in the work force and here i am today. Right from the start I felt lost. I felt like i was in a completely different world, unable to understand what was going on around me. I am in what is known as the "real world," quite different from what college is. The lessons that i learned in college could not always be put to use in the real world. College did not prepare me on how to deal with dsr's and customers. It did not prepare me on how to deal with working towards a sales goal one month and a completely different one the next. It did not prepare me to know what to do when a customer is out of a product that is no longer in stock and needs to get some now. I have felt so many times over the past year, that college has simply not prepared me for many of the situations and challenges that i have been faced with this last year. I expected all of this. I expected that the lessons we learn in the classroom are going to be somewhat different when being applied to "real life" situations.

Little did i know, however that even the lessons that i learned in school can be somewhat outdated and incorrect. This entire week i have been taking part in a customer oriented selling workshop seminar. It is to "refresh" the minds of the older sales rep as well as teach the new sales reps the ways of selling. I was excited about the class because you can always learn something new, and especially being in a class with others who have had much more experience than me. Now, Kraft has not done the best job at offering any type of formal training, so when the opportunity arose, i jumped on it. I was also interested, because since i did just come from college and have taken similar classes in college i felt prepared. I was used to the classroom and homework and exams so I thought this class would be a great refresher for me while gaining knowledge from the other experienced sales people at Kraft. Only a few days into the class and I am utterly shocked at what i have learned. I have learned more in the past few days that i did an entire semester at my sales class in college. Not only that but the techniques that I have been learning in this class are completely negating the lessons and techniques that I originally learned in my college class. Apparently, the lessons that I was learning in college were 'outdated' and more of the old school style of sales. Times have changed, the customer has changed, and therefore our sales skills must changed. This would be fine if I attended college 10 years ago, but I'm talking 1 year since i took this class, it shouldn't be this outdated. I thought that coming right out of college and into the job that I have would give me somewhat of an advantage because I just left school and learned these lessons and skills and have fresh ideas. Apparently, what I learned in school were not "fresh" ideas, but old ones that are outdated and not practical anymore. This slightly disturbs me because, why go to school if everything you learned there, you are simply going to be told that you learned the wrong way of doing things. The one class that should help me the most in my line of work has actually hurt me, since it taught me the wrong skills.

What are students learning in college today? I'm beginning to question if I learned anything useful that can be applied to the real world. I'm beginning to question if I learned anything at all. I'm beginning to wonder why so much money was spent on an education that is teaching me the wrong skills. So what is the answer to all of this? I'm not sure, but here is my guess. College cannot fully prepare us for what we are going to be doing with our lives after. It cannot predict what type of job we will be in and what type of situations we will be faced with. College can only give you the platform of which to learn by. It can only give you the basic fundamentals to your degree of study. College can give you a glimpse into what the "real world" might be like, but it cannot tell you exactly what it will be like. That is one of the biggest lessons I have learned this past year. I have to take the skills that I learned in college and be able to use them with the new skills that I am learning today.

I just spent three whole days in an intense workshop concentrating on Customer Oriented Selling. This class was there to give you the skills to use when going out into the "real world situations." Like college, it cannot give you exactly what is going to happen, it can only give you the skills to know how to handle different situations. The class was intense and definitely hard at times. We learned the material and then did role playing with video cameras and then discussed what was done right, what was done wrong, and what can be done to improve yourself. At the end of this course, however there was no final exam like in college. That is because the final exam is the actual work. Its going out and making the sales call and hopefully being successful in the process. Its taking the skills that were just learned and applying them to real life situations. The instructor was amazing. I had never had a better teacher in my entire life. He helped me immensely. He taught me the skills that I need to learn and pointed out the skills that I have to improve at (one being listening, I did everything that I was supposed to, by the book- asking questions, but he told me that I was not listening to my customer. I was simply moving on to the next question on my list) That is something that I am going to be working on over the next few weeks active listening. At the end of the course he asked for everyones opinion. And the general consensus was that it was hard, painful and he replied- Thats good because learning is painful. Learning is through experience and if the experience is always easy, then what exactly are you learning? Overall I am happy that I took part in this workshop. I look forward to the many more Kraft training sessions that go on especially with this teacher. I felt that he was able to understand not only my needs but everyones needs. He was able to understand what everyone needed to learn and how they needed to learn. That is one of the many mistakes that teachers make, they have their way of teaching and that is it. They don't understand that each student learns in a different way and that you have to be flexible to adapt to their learning technique.