Becoming Aware of Your Weaknesses

"What is your greatest weakness?" seems to be a question that arises often during an interview and one that kind of freaks me out a bit. 

I've been doing a lot of personal evaluation over the past couple months. I've been focusing in on what I want in life and which path I want to take to attain it. One thing is for sure, I'm not perfect and I have certain areas in my life that if I take the time to strengthen will make me a stronger more confident individual.

My answer to this make or break question is that my writing ability is my weakness. This may come to the interviewer or yourself as a surprise, but it's true. Yes, I'm in the School of Journalism at UW-Madison but I struggle all the time with grammar and word choices. 

The fact that I know it's my weakness, makes me work that much harder to not show the world my struggle. To enhance my writing ability I've started this blog, designated a notebook for my most frequently misspelled words and new vocabulary, edit my work all the time and write often.

Facing my weakness head on and admitting it has empowered me to make a change. I just came across this quote:"Our strength grows out of our weaknesses." -Ralph Waldo Emerson. I hope one day I can look back upon my life and see that my ability to write was my talent. I love to talk and engage with the world. My spoken words will one day be forgotten, but the ink and type that have and will spring from my hands will last long after I am gone. 

I encourage people to critically evalutate themselves and make a change. It feels good.

 

Greater Appreciation For Life

By the grace of God I'm feeling healthy and I have a full stomach to prove it.

The past 48 hours have been amazing. I've been able to eat and drink liquids without fear of severe cramping. My body is finally healing. I received several phone calls and messages from friends and family members who have been praying for me...and I just want to let them know that God has answered.

This has been one of the hardest months for me, but has given me such a great appreciation for life. I've decided to give up alcohol completely and will be seeing a dietitian to ensure less flair ups and hopefully stay in remission for many years to come.

Accepting the Things I Cannot Change....Hard!

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference."

These are the words to the famous Serenity Prayer. Acceptance seems to be such an easy task, but it's really quite frustrating for me because I am an avid believer in change.

I have recently realized that my inability at times to accept situations and people have hindered my ability to find complete happiness.

I'm struggling right now to accept that I have a disease called, ulcerative colitis. I was diagnosed 4 years-ago with this inflammatory disease of the colon. The disease is treatable but there currently is no cure. My disease has come out of remission and restricting the amount of food I can intake. The cramps and bleeding are so severe that at times I feel that I might die or pass out from the pain. The mix of fatigue, low nutrition, sleep deprivation, drugs, stress and fear added up yesterday and I balled. The moment one tear fell, they simply rained down my cheeks. I'm in a battle against myself...mind vs. body and the body is winning.

Through my tears and fear I realized that have to accept this disease, otherwise I will stew in misery. For me to get better I'm going to give up solid food for one week and then slowly reintroduce solids into my diet. This is going to be a hard task but one I must do before or if I am to enter the next phase in treatment. Which would be going into a hospital for an infused drug called Remicade. The side effects on this drug are scary and it would be something I would have to maintain.

As for my trouble with accepting certain actions from people, I would have to refer to the man I am newly dating. We dated for three year during college but ended things shortly before he graduated because I was craving more from him. An important aspect of developing acceptance is learning to avoid craving. I craved more affection from him and longed for it, which unfortunately craving made me unhappy with the relationship. The longing created an unhappy form of dissatisfaction, which made me reject my relationship and blinded my ability to see just how good we had it. I and him have discussed both of our problems in the relationship and are making a good faith effort to incorporate affection and realistic expectations into the relationship. Only time will tell if I and him can truly accept and grow together.

So this is where I am. I'm going to keep on living and being happy. Life is good and God is great.

Please place me in your prayers, this is one of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my life.

Thank you.

Tummy Trouble

In the path of my busy college girl life I've come to a large obstacle...my deteriorating health. Over the past three weeks my digestive disease, ulcerative colitis, has taken a turn for the worst. The cramping pain from my intestines shredding because my immune system is fighting itself has forced me to limit the amount of food I can take in. I've been managing to get by eating one meal a day or in some cases like yesterday, only a snack. My Dr. keeps putting me on new drugs but nothing seems to be able to fix the problem. I'm going in next Monday to have some tests done, which means they are going to do a colonoscopy. Yeah, not the most exciting procedure but at least I get to sleep for the operation.

The lack of sleep, amount of drugs, pain, financial costs and worry about what is going on has started to take a toll on me. I'm trying to stay positive and busy but have some fear about my future well being. I've had great friends who have comforted me over the past weeks. I'm in no need for sympathy, just prayers if possible. 

I know I'll get through this and I'm not going to let my disease get the best of me. On the brighter side of this disease I'm down to 120lbs....so I'm ready to show off my beach body whenever winter decides to get  a move on. 

Economic Uncertainty for Some, Optimism for Me

Applying for jobs is a full-time job! I’ve been a busy woman lately, managing to balance my job, course work, personal life and keeping my eye out for prospective careers. The job hunt has been actually quite fun. I find myself scrolling through hundreds of job opportunities and daydreaming about what life could be like with certain companies. Some nights I get so excited that I can’t shut my brain down…forcing me to put the idiot box on to distract my thoughts.

So far I’ve underwent two job interviews and I’m feeling confident in my candidacy.