Why Birthdays are sometimes the Greatest Miracles

Freshman year of college was tough. Sure, I had the classic jitters and everything that comes with leaving home fully -- and rightly so -- but there was a lot more to it than that. I was alone for the first time in my life, and once again, I became the awkward new kid in school. Very few people I went to high school with had come here, and even fewer were good friends.

Thankfully, most of the people were nice and willing to help out the freshies who were on their own, and the music building quickly became a nice home away from home. However, during my first three weeks, I had a break down.

We had just had a voice studio master class, and for some reason I felt I was in way over my head. I could not believe the talent that was coming from my collegues, both upper and lower classmen. I felt that I was by far the weakest member in the entire school and should drop out immediately. (This was also about a two weeks before Nathan and I went on our first date, so I hadn't established a great support system yet. My closest confidants were at least a two-and-a-half hour drive away.) Something in my mind just fell apart, and I went to my dorm to start drawing up the forms to drop out of college.

I found the forms online and saved them to my Mac. If I still felt I was in over my head in the next week, I would submit the forms and go back to Phoenix. Or worse. (Did I mention I was in a really dark place mentally?) I acted the part of the excited freshman, but in reality, I was terrified. I felt I had no one, even though I had already made friends with some of the people in my studio, Choir, and my Honors English class.

Thankfully, Nathan came into my life, and college didn't seem too bad anymore. Sure, I had an awful roommate who kept me up until at LEAST 3 or 4 in the morning, but I finally had someone I felt I could tell my problems to and not be judged. On the other hand, though, my family had just suffered a loss of a beloved grandmother, and we had held a wake for her the week before we met. I wasn't super cheery, but Nathan seemed to make college seem enjoyable again -- or, at least, bearable.

Life seemed to laugh at me though, and the day before I moved in with Nathan in November, tragedy struck again unexpectedly as my grandfather was taken from us. I was beyond upset and didn't leave the bedroom when Nathan set our bed down (partly because I had pulled a muscle in my back helping him and our friend carry his desk, but mostly because I was so distraught.) This began a very long battle with depression that ruined Nathan's birthday, Christmas Eve and Christmas, and New Years for me. I once again contemplated dropping out of college and leaving music out of my life.

I say this now only because it's the truth: had it not been for my caring friends, my loving family, and my supportive teachers, I would not have made it to my 19th birthday yesterday. Had Nathan and my temporary voice teacher not asked me to get (read: basically forced me onto) antidepressants, I would have been far too gone to do anything of real use anymore, and would've given in to that dark temptation. Had I not had my support system, things would have been so very different.

I promise I'm not posting this because I want to have everyone's pity: I want people to take my mistakes and learn from them. I want you guys to know that life may be hard, but you have to fight back tenfold. It's hard to recognize the dangers when you are the one experiencing the turmoil, but a good enough support system can help you discover just what is wrong. If I have learned anything in the past year of my life, it's to keep your friends and family close. You never know what life is going to throw at you.

In the words of a creepy old man in a cave: it's dangerous to go alone. Take this! Only, imagine that it's love instead of a wooden sword. Although, I think it would just be a heart. And it would replenish your health. But then you couldn't attack Ganon.

And there goes the seriousness of this post. Um... Here's a cat.

Hard Work Pays Off: an Open Letter to Desert Subway

To Desert Subway Inc.

In May 2013, I applied for a lot of jobs around and on campus. I needed something that would fill my time and help pay the bills while I stayed in town this summer. Unfortunately, I had no job experience and very few people wanted to hire me because of that sadly crucial factor. However, I applied with optimism and quickly made sure to call and fight for an interview. More sadly, I only got one, but it was close to the apartment and the hours worked with my schedule. I attended an open interview at the Subway across from Campus, and was signing the paperwork for my background checks and drug tests within the week.

Within my first few days working at Subway, I was concerned about working at a minimum wage job, wondering whether or not I'd be able to pay bills and rent. But, I went with it and was thrown head first into the oh-so exciting world of fast food. Had it not been for some unforseen circumstances with my awful ex-roommate and her friends (there's at least three or four posts about that in the future) I probably would have been set for those few months. As it was, though, even with the job I had to sell my MacBook Pro to pay rent.

Within my first two weeks, my attitude began to change. I started working feeling confidant about my progress -- though I did apologize a few times because I felt like I was slowing everyone down. And I was. But, hey, I was new!

I began working mostly closing shifts, and met an amazing woman named Rosina who has worked there for five years now. She had a second job working at the court house and adult correctional facility, and helped with with the in and outs of working at the sandwich shop. However, I couldn't help but feel some animosity between my awesome coworkers (the ones who actually did something, at any rate), and our manager and his boss. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it came across as resentment. Let me just say that I soon found out why.

On the Fourth of July, I was working with another member from a store in Basha's, and this particular woman acted like a child and ordered me around, verbally berating me in front of the customers. I tried my best to ignore and continue working as my closing shift went in. It didn't help she was talking about getting obscenely drunk in front of customers and using foul language when talking to another coworker on the phone.

Oh, and she was on the phone for the entire shift.

I brought this to my higher up's attention, and when he didn't say anything, I brought it to his boss, Nathan. Within the first ten seconds of our conversation, I could tell he was fake. He blew off my remarks about my manager's foul attitude toward customers and the mishaps on my Fourth of July shift.

Once school started, I went from almost 41 hours a week to maybe a shift every three weeks. I tried to ask my manager for more time, but he insisted that he couldn't give me more hours because of my school schedule, but he had my availability for the entire semester. I gave Cameron my availablity schedule as it changed, and I told him what days would work and which ones wouldn't. As the semester went on, he became more and more hostile, giving me less and less hours.

Finally on Monday -- which I told him I couldn't work closing shifts because of my school schedule -- I recieved a very snarky call from my manager about why I wasn't at work at 7:20 PM. I told him I was unable to work Monday close shifts, and I thought he knew about it because that was something I had said from day one. He once again stated that he was pushing for me to have hours, but that it wasn't working out. I told him I would rather someone cover that shift because my clothes were currently being cleaned. As I was hanging up, I distinctly heard my manager say how "that faggy kid doesn't want to work." That was the final straw, and I put in my two weeks.

Desert Subway, I plan on letting all my friends and family know just how horribly you treat your employees and your customers. My coworkers should not be encouraging me to leave and saying how this is the best decision I can make. The management is completely out of touch with how to interact with other human beings. I refuse to support our franchise ever again.

Yours Sincerely

Kevin B.

Former Employee

How Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Leaf Ruined my Life

Hi, I'm Kevin and I'm an Animal Crossing: New Leaf addict.

(Hi, Kevin.)

For the past seven weeks or so, I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf consistently. It's surprisingly addicting. Who would've thought fishing, bug-hunting, fossil-hunting, and paying off loans could be so much fun?! Making my town my perfect dream home has become a part of my daily routine. Unfortunately, something bad happened.

I was with my family for an overnight trip (which, sidebar, would've been much better at a different hotel and without our dogs) when it happened. I was viewing a K.K. Slider concert and decided to take a quick snapshot of the credits and K.K. playing while it happened. It took several minutes before it said "An Error has occurred. Please try again." So, I tried again. This time, the game crashed after a minute. When I booted the system up again, the game was delted. Oh, and not just the game: all of my games that I had downloaded, their saved data, StreetPass and SpotPass data, and any DLC and update data was lost. The card itself was so corrupted, nothing could be recovered.

I called Nintendo about it on Monday to figure out what would happen. At the very least, I hoped I would still be able to redownload the games. I plugged it into my grandmother's computer and tried to format it to no avail. It was gone. My 32 gig SDHC card was now useless. I ordered a new one on Amazon and smashed the old one. It felt satisfying to deal with this. Thankfully, I was still able to download all of my old games.

I learned my lesson and was going to buy another one as a back-up, as well as backing up to my boyfriend's PC. So, since my town was lost, I had to start all over. And I made sure to start from release day by setting the game's calendar to June 9, 2013. It was nice getting reacquainted with the town's humble roots.

                          The beginning of my new town, named Knothole like my first

I hurried through the days until I got to the real life date. It felt good, but my town's museum and shops were still a bit lacking. It kicked my behind trying to get through about five weeks' worth of work through my town. But yes, it finally caught me up.

                      The first time in either version of Knothole when I got a whale shark

Since then, I've had my friends Jessika, Elyse, and Cassie visit while I worked on my town, including a trip or two to the island:

Each moment of the hard work has been really fun. I absolutely love this game, and while I've been playing this game probably much more than I should've, it's been extremely addicting and fun. I'm Kevin, I'm a New Leaf Addict, and that's okay.

                                              Good Night, Virtual Moon.

Oh, and there was the fury of losing all of my other game data including my progress in Fire Emblem: Awakening, but whatever. I got over it pretty quickly. At least it'll give me something to do on my days off for the rest of the summer!

How Glee Club Went Wrong, Part One: The Beginning

In my high school choir, most of us immediately fell in love with FOX's Glee. I mean, I'm sure a lot of you can see why: the glorification of singing pop songs to express our feelings, how we meet people we'd never normally get along with in choir, bonded by our love of music...

Anyway, the point is that it was our dream to be exactly like them. Two of my good friends decided to approach our choir director about making a Glee club for our school. It seemed like a good idea. We had auditions, we sang, we danced, and about 12 of us were a part of the new group. What could possibly have gone wrong with two awesome co-presidents?

The one issue with both of them was how independent each girl was. Auditions was the first example of things to come. One girl had gotten an outside party to lead us on those days, and the other was a bit cross. Not to mention, that dance was exceptionally difficult. I was sore for hours after auditions, and there were pirouettes and moves I'd never heard of or attempted before (or after) in life. However, we brushed it off as nothing and went along with it, knowing that nothing would bother the existence of the DV Glee Club too much.

After I made the club, I actually didn't attend for several months. Halloween was going to be our first performance, but I made it very clear to our leaders that day was not available, since it was my dad's birthday. They agreed I could sit out of rehearsal until such a time when I was needed again, and so I stayed home after school instead, wondering what was going on.

During my first actual rehearsal, only one of the presidents was there, and showed us an idea for a mash-up of no less than five songs that she had prepared. I was skeptical, but I let it pass. I was pretty sure nothing could go wrong.

Right?

Right?

... Riiiiiiiight?

Nope. Dead wrong. As usual.

Our other president led us in the following rehearsal, and at that time we decided to vote for positions, effectively demoting the other leader to VP. Our new VP didn't take the demotion kindly and promptly left when the news reached her. She had every right to be upset, but it was what it was. Our new solo president taught us a quick song for the upcoming Winter Choir Concert, and we rehearsed until we were more or less confidant with what we had. We performed, we were decent, and we congratulated each other on what had gone down. Hopefully, next semester's Glee Club would work out after our reauditions.

How Glee Club Went Wrong Part Two: Division

(If you haven't read the previous post, please do so!)

As much as I hate to admit it now, I sincerely hoped that all of the drama would be behind us. Yes, we were in high school, but I hoped that we could be mature enough to work out something that would be able to work. Of course, this was apparently way too much to be asking of high schoolers.

Auditions this time were much easier. Our former president had choreographed a verse to the Glee version of GaGa's "Bad Romance" (a personal favorite of mine) and we were to just dance. Singing came at a different time -- which didn't totally make sense to me.  But then again, I wasn't in charge. Auditions came and went, and our two leaders decided to do something that I knew would only lead to more problems.

There would be a larger group around 20 people which was more of a beginner club, and a smaller, elite group of 12. The larger group took up a majority of rehearsal, which was about two hours for them, and then another hour for us in the smaller group to work. The sad part about this new system was that there were problems right from the get go.

The leader of the larger group (let's call her BL. Saves time.) was a new girl who had been brought in at the last minute to help us with our Winter Concert performance. She was friendly enough and had a ton of show choir experience. I knew in the long run this would truly benefit us, but I still had misgivings about dividing the group into what were perceived as a better and worse group.

Our president from last semester (SL to save time,) meanwhile, took on the task of leading the smaller group. We had a lot of fun mostly working on Bad Romance when we started, but the smaller time slot was definitely taking its toll on our performing. We were good, but deep down I thought we could be so much better.

Tensions and rumors began, one of which involved me going to our faculty sponsor and telling him how awful we were. (Let me be clear that I did no such thing.) On Valentine's Day, we performed for the school during lunch, and the only performance I felt was worth actually watching was our small group's rendition of Bad Romance, and even that needed some extra polishing before I would've been too proud of it.

While I don't really know the details of exactly what happened, I knew there was a rift between the two leaders that occured during the Spring concert that caused the groups to split off permanently. Spring break came along, and suddenly it seemed like the two leaders were fighting for our attention. Apparently more rumors began, this time saying that SL had quit the club because her boyfriend got her pregnant. It was rude, it was vicious, and I decided at that point that I would support the smaller group from then on.

Unfortunately, we couldn't garner enough support, and ultimately we were forced to disband while the larger group continued to work.