Damn, why the eff is my bio TA so adorable? This an email he just sent us:

"Hey guys,

Did someone leave a small blue umbrella with cupcakes, bowties, flowers, and hearts on it in my section? If not, I'll gladly welcome it into my wardrobe.

To the rest of you, enjoy a week of freedom!"

Oh my lanta, if I wasn't in love with him before, I totally am right now. Okay, to be honest, it doesn't take that much for me to think someone's awesome/adorable. But seriously he's just an awesome TA. Yes, I do find him attractive with his brown hair and skinny build and on the shorter side stature, but he's super smart and sweet and obviously hilarious. Okay, I'm done gushing about my awesome bio TA. Haha?

Anyway, I promise I'm not boy crazy, but I was just going to post about how liberating it is to not like the guy I liked for months. I think due to my lack of experience with boys in general particularly in high school when you're supposed to at least deal with liking a guy you're friends with and him not liking you back, I am learning A LOT about how to act when you act a guy that you actually see and talk to as opposed to when you're just admiring his gorgeousness from afar. Lol. Yeah.

I'd rather not go into details particularly about my past crushes and even this one, but they all ended eventually and I came out rather unscathed. Pride shot, but not a lot of emotional scars. I mean, of course, I still can't really talk to one of my crushes at all because it's so awkward as I liked him way more than he liked me and he was super wishy-washy. Whatever.

For this particular crush, I thought something was going to happen because he and the situation was different from all my other crushes. He was actually friends with my friends and he was definitely pursuing his relationship with Jesus without me and he was really cute and taller than me, but we don't really have anything in common. This is kicking off place for lots of couples, but not for me because I felt bad about not being interested in the same things as him. Like it made me feel BAD. I felt like guilty and all this stupid stuff and I got really upset because an awesome mutual friend was much better suited for him and I got stupidly jealous. I also got really down because I knew that it wouldn't work out for us and it would be an awful relationship if things did because I would have to play catch-up.

I'm still in the process of getting to know him, but I'm just really thankful that my crush on him which lasted months has finally fizzled out. I'm over him--I don't feel bad about liking my pop music and watching my mainstream comedies. I don't feel bad about myself knowing that we're probably never going to be a couple. I feel free and I'm so thankful for that because looking back, the last few months (since October?) have been up-and-down. I'm glad I'm putting that behind me because that was not fun. Another learning experience in the can!

I am slowly learning about the boy species in general and quickly learning about how easily they become an idol and how with each crush, God is slowly helping me figure out which "lucky guy" I will be with and how that journey will happen. I mean, maybe I'm not meant to have a husband, but I'm sure I'll have a few boyfriends somewhere along the line and I'm excited to see how those journeys work out.

Of course, this epiphany happened like a week or two ago which was nice because I haven't been stressing about boys and all that jazz as I've been stressing out about school. At this moment, I am about 23 hours away from finishing my last final of winter quarter!! I am done with 75% of my finals (business stats on Sat, bio and environmental health were today), and I just have ochem tomorrow! I'm totally out of studying, but hopefully, that'll change after I get dinner with a friend soon and get ready for the big final tomorrow!

Also, I'm SO FREAKING STOKED to go to California and feel and see sun AND NANCY!!! I love her and I hope I have a great time and don't feel too awkward. I also hope that The Hunger Games is going to be freaking amazing when it comes out. I mean, my expectations are super high, but I'm still kinda skeptical because it is a book adaptation and whenever I have high expectations, they're almost never met. I'm expecting the worst for The Hunger Games, Dark Knight Rises, and The Avengers. And Snow White and the Huntsman. And Amazing Spider-man. YUPPPPPPPPPP. And Out of Sight, Out of Time which I am so EFFING STOKED FOR. Lolkbye.

The Guys in My Life

Right now, I am sitting in my dorm room procrastinating on my ENV H 452 homework that is due tonight/tomorrow morning. I started it an hour or two ago. Oops.

As usual, I couldn't concentrate on the homework at all even though it's pretty self-explanatory and involves just knowing what PPT to go to and to reiterate. Perhaps I know that I have to finish it, but I don't want to so I keep checking FB, Twitter, IMDb, and Collider every few minutes.

My restlessness this time around stems from thinking about the guys in my life--hence the title of this blogpost. I am so so lucky, and I haven't really realized it 'til now.

My dad is wonderful. It's taken me nearly 19 years to realize this, but he is always there for me and always up to just hang out and talk. He wants to spend time with me even though he's so busy and tired and stressed. He wants only the best for me. He treats me right and tends to spoil me all the time. God was so gracious to give him to me. He's humble and open-minded and hard-working. I can only hope that my husband is half the man my dad is.

And then there's my friends. My guy friends are all pretty awesome. Sure, they are far from perfect, but who isn't, right? I am so lucky that my guy friends are mostly considerate, sweet, legitimately nice guys. They have their douchey and dick moments, but they treat me pretty well. I mean, they tease me all the time, but it's in good jest. I know that they would kick any guy's ass if they hurt me. I'm sure any of them would be willing to walk me home or help me in any way they can.

I think I've only been hurt by one guy in a big way, and that itself is a different story for another time. However, I think that...incident has not affected how I view guys for the most part.

The biggest jerk that I've dealt with was a guy who was wishy-washy with his feelings toward me. I mean, he led me on, but he didn't push me physically or treat me like crap...except for leading me on. Haha. I mean, don't get me wrong--I was hurt pretty bad and got super angry and bitter, but that's it.

The only assholes I've really come in contact with have been through my friends. There is no shortage of asshole douchebags when it comes to my friends. I don't know if it has to do with me or my friends or our personalities or our lifestyles or whatever, but the guys that I meet are usually really nice and kind-hearted and sweet in their own weird ways.

Perhaps the reason that there are so many great guys in my life is to help me realize that if I'm going to blame whoever assaulted me, I need to blame him specifically and not the whole gender. There are awesome guys in this world, and I'm supremely lucky to be friends with some of them.

Best Works (2007-2009)

Although I am editor-in-chief of the school newspaper/newsmagazine, my strength lies with designing a page and "making it look pretty," whatever that means. Below are the "best" pages I have designed for my school newspaper, Altitude. Please note that unless indicated, there is no need to actually read the articles. (I know how busy you are!)

[For the full experience, I recommend looking at the pages side-by-side. Go to the right corner of the PDF>"Continuous-Facing." Or left click on the tool bar>"More Tools...">Page Display>Two-Up. Depending on the edition of Adobe Reader, these instructions may or may not work.]

My best best works are bolded, in case you are running low on time and/or patience.

1) Sophomore, 2007: This was my very first spread design. It looks fairly simple, but I'm quite pleased with it because I designed the "quote" look and Mythbusters-like "busted" myself. http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/sleep.pdf

2) Sophomore, 2008: This spread is perhaps the most visually appealing one I have ever designed. I came up with the "Did You Know" look and designed the recycling numbers.
http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/green.pdf

3) Junior, 2008: A slightly cheesy spread, but I definitely had a lot of fun designing the whole page. The timeline piece was time-consuming, but I thought it turned out really well.
http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/hc.pdf

4) Junior 2008: We did a special election issue, and the layout for the spread is one of my favorites. It has a lot going on, but it was so much fun to design. The wordle, the t-shirt, the pie charts, and the people blurbs each bring something new and fresh to the page.
http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/election.pdf

5) Junior, 2009: How ironic that the "de-stress" spread was perhaps the most stressful to design. After asking reporters to email things that make them happy, all the editors had to narrow down the list to about 100 things. I then had the pleasure of manipulating the 100 things into something interesting. This spread took me hours to finish...
http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/STRESS.pdf

6) Senior, 2009: The idea of "Things to do Before You Graduate" was circulating in my mind since about sophomore year so being able to make it happen was quite exciting. I wrote most of the blurbs under each headline which my friend art-ified. If you look on the right side, there's a more in-depth look of my own high school journey.
http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/15things.pdf

7) Senior, 2009: Originally the sports page designer, I believe that this sports page is my best. It was put together at the very, very last minute, but it turned out much better than I imagined. It's very visually appealing and just "cool-looking."
http://cocokiss457.fileave.com/sports2.pdf

8) To be continued as the year goes on...