Graduation and Twenty-One

Though many memorable things have happened in the last few months, I have no real desire to recap all of them.  However, two major events happened pretty recently that are worth mentioning. 

First, my baby brother graduated high school!  He was in the top 10% of his class, a leader in JROTC, a lifeguard, captain of the swim team, Lead Altar Server, and took several AP classes.  I genuinely can't express how amazed I am at the person he's becoming.  From the shy little kid who wouldn't order his own food at restaurants and was content to hang out with mom all day or play video games, to the smart, popular, outgoing, kind, funny, high-schooler that he's become, I can hardly believe how much he's changed.  What's really awesome though, is how close he and I are.  We've always gotten along well, but in the past few years we've become friends.  I love hanging out with him and hearing about his life, and he makes time to come visit me and spend time with me when I'm in town.  He's headed to UF in the fall, and though I have no doubt that he'll excel there, I really am going to miss him being at home when I go back. Basically, I couldn't ask for a better kid brother.

The second major recent event is that I finally turned 21! I'm not a big drinker, but celebrating was wonderful.  So many different people in my life came out to spend the evening with me at Jellyrolls-a dueling piano bar at Disney.  I didn't drink a lot, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere and spending time with so many people that I care about.

Always Look on the Sunny Side of Life

I'm doing reading for my Social Psychology class, and right now I'm learning about self-fulfilling prophecies. It's something I've studied before in other psych classes, and it's pretty interesting. Basically, in Psychology, a self fulfilling prophecy is when you have an expectation about a person or a situation, so you alter your behavior (often unconsciously) according to your expectations, thus evoking exactly the behavior or experiences that you expected.

An example:
In one study, school teachers were told that a few of their students had done exceptionally well on a standardized test and that those students were likely to excel academically. Throughout the year, teachers paid those students more attention, allowed them more time to ask questions, and encouraged them to try more difficult assignments. By the end of the year, those students were outperforming many of their classmates. However, no standardized test results were ever actually found. It was the teacher's expectations that the students would excel that helped them do so.

Obviously, not everything in life is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and sometimes our expectations turn out to be true simply because they are true. However, cases like this make me wonder if people who have positive outlooks on life really are going about it in the right way. If we always tell ourselves that every new person we meet will be kind, worth talking to, and interesting, perhaps it will be more likely that they will behave in that way. It seems to me that maybe people had the right idea when they said "think positively!"

Ringing in 2010 in Miami

I had a great start to the New Year! On December 31, I drove down to Miami with Ris, Paul, and Tommy to see Mel and her family. It was a long drive, but we were lucky and didn't hit traffic or run into any trouble (except at Wendy's, where Tommy got yelled at for using the bathroom).
Mel's house is absolutely beautiful and we had a great time celebrating. Her family through a New Year's/Birthday Party (her dad turned 40 on January 1). I had a blast just hanging out, enjoying the fire and the fireworks and just relaxing with friends.
In the morning, Ris and I went to Mass (and managed to stay awake!), then Mel took us on a tour of Miami, which was really cool. Ris, Paul, and I hit the road and headed back to Tampa in the afternoon. We all pretty much crashed as soon as we got back. It was a long two days, but a fun way to ring in 2010!