Practice What You Teach

After several months of planning/secret keeping I got to fly home on Tuesday and surprise Amy at her senior Pops Concert! Tuesday was a quite stressful day of traveling. My first flight got delayed half an hour, and I thought I only had 20 minutes to make my connecting flight, which ended up getting delayed an hour. I was freaking out that I would miss the concert, but thankfully I made it with plenty of time to spare! My dad was waiting at the airport with a sandwich from Potbelly's! Then we headed over to the high school! I passed one of Amy's friends in the hallway and asked where she was, and he told me she was in the auditorium with Mrs. Van Slyke and a couple of her friends. I walked in and she just screamed, "WHAT THE?" then ran up and hugged me. The look on her face was absolutely priceless. She was SO surprised! Then Mrs. Van Slyke goes, "Wait is that Sarah Freeman? You're not supposed to be here!" Then I waited out in the hallway while Amy went...

Life is so great right now. SO great. For just so many reasons! I love spring term! -I LOVE my classes! LOVE them. I'm just taking two, which is great and both are for my major. The first class I'm taking is all about how to incorporate students with disabilities into our classrooms. I'm learning SO much and I just love the class! The other is Instructional Design, basically how to design a curriculum which sounds super boring, but my professor is incredible! He presents the material in such an interesting way, and everything that I'm learning is going to be so useful in my future career! -For my class on incorporating students with disabilities, I am doing practicum, which basically means going into a school for a few hours a week and working with kids. My hectic schedule gave me only two 2 hour windows during the week in which to complete this assignment in a first grade class at Wasatch Elementary, which is across the street from the BYU campus. It has been SO mu...

I love that we have a day set aside every year dedicated to mothers. I have been blessed with the most amazing mom, as well as so many amazing women in my life who have loved me and supported me. I wouldn't be where I am today without them. My amazing mom has been on my mind a lot this week, and I started to think about all of the things she has taught me. There's honestly too many things to name, but here's just a few: 1. My mom taught me how to be selfless. My mom literally thinks of everyone else in the world before herself. She's always doing something for someone else. She sincerely cares about the people she loves, and I want to be just like that. 2. My mom taught me the importance of family. When I first left home to come to BYU, I thought the things I would miss most were the big events. What I actually miss most are just the little moments we had as a family. I still remember that almost every night, my mom set a trend where one by one our family would gath...

This past week has been a whirlwind of final exams, working a grand total of 35 hours, saying good-bye to one of my best friends who's heading home to submit her mission papers, and the beginning of spring term. My roommate Alyssa and I decided that we wanted to stay at BYU for spring semester to work and take a couple of classes. Our apartment complex turned from being packed to capacity into somewhat of a ghost town. Allow me to paint you a picture with absolutely terrible quality, shoutout to my old and outdated phone, but to give the thing props, it did survive being dropped in the snow this winter...twice: Yes, that's the parking lot of my apartment complex, which for all of fall and winter semesters was constantly packed with cars and is now deserted. Don't be fooled though, spring term has already been an absolute blast so far, despite the smaller number of people! We've already made some awesome new friends and I'm looking forward to meeting even more peo...

I've titled this post "A Semester of Growth," because that really is what this semester has been for me. This growth has come through trials. These trials weren't necessarily huge in the grand scheme of things, but they were trials nonetheless and they were hard. Tonight after I finished writing in my journal, I flipped back to the beginning and was reading some of my past entries. I started writing in this particular journal in January. I was having a really hard time. A few of the entries are SLIGHTLY dramatic, and while I do admit I had a good laugh over them now nearly 4 months later, at the time what I was going through was really hard. As I lay reading in my bed, I thought about what had changed that got me from that point to now, when I really and truly am so happy. Not that I was unhappy before, I just was really struggling. I realized that there were so many things that got me through this particular trial. Phone calls to my mom where she just let me talk and...

Finals week usually stresses me out more than it should. I usually have several stress-induced break downs and am pretty miserable until it ends. I normally stress myself out over a grade that won't even matter to me anymore a week later. I don't know why, but I'm just not anywhere near as stressed this time around. Maybe now that this is my fourth finals week, I've learned a thing or two about putting things in perspective. Or maybe it's because so far, this finals week has had so many bright spots, that I have barely had times to be stressed! -I've had the chance to work a lot of extra hours! Which may not sound like a positive thing, but I honestly really love my job, mostly because I work with really great people and they make it fun! Yesterday, business was slow for a little while, so we played an intense game of I Spy. We basically all came up with the hardest things possible and it was great. It got really heated. My favorite part was when my co-worke...

Today was my last day of winter semester classes. Which means I have officially completed two years of college. Well technically there's still finals, BUT STILL it's crazy! It's strange, because it seems like time is flying, but at the same time I still feel so young! Which brings me to something that my D&C teacher told our class today that really hit home for me. She was talking about how we're in the phase of life where we have to make lots of important decisions, and as a result we put so much pressure on ourselves. I definitely have found that to be true in my life, ever since my senior year of high school when all of these decisions start to creep up on me. I find myself constantly questioning whether or not I'm doing enough and if I'm good enough. My teacher then went on to say that all we have to do is be righteous, and the Lord will guide us towards the plan he has for us. I felt a feeling of peace, and just knew that what she was saying is true.  L...