Dear Fatima...

Hello, Fatima of the future, it's past-you again.

I know, I know, I just wrote to you less than a year ago, but since I haven't received any signs that you time traveled to the year 2012 to communicate with me and give me some answers, the questions and confusion just keep increasing.

So here's another letter to you.

I'm almost nineteen, and I'm finally in college. I know that last time I wrote to you, I seriously had issues with high school, and just wanted to be done so that I could start college. Come November of my freshman year, I'm not so sure I like this better. The adults that I interact with will insist that these college years are the best years of my life! and I'm sure they are! It's just that right now...everything seems confusing and I just want answers.

I went to this networking event yesterday, where alumni came to the U to talk with students, give advice, and serve as connections for us in the future. All of them talked about how they came to be in the professions that they were currently in, and a majority of them followed random paths that they said had a lot to do with luck and being in the right place at the right time.

This. Drives. Me. Crazy.

I'm a planner. It's true. No matter how fun and carefree and free spirited all those "go with the flow" people are, I've always been one that loves to have every detail planned out. I think being in college has intensified this.

Being a planner and wanting a solid foundation makes this "oh you'll figure out a way" mentality seriously overwhelms me. For everyone that I've talked to about being stressed out about picking a major has always responded with "well, you're a freshman! You have a lot of time!" No! I don't think I do. I like thinking of my future career as a destination, and I can't follow the map and take the shortest route if I have no idea where I'm supposed to end up.

Future Fatima...I really hope you found something that you were passionate about to pursue as a career, something that makes you happy but also supports you. I really hope that I stumble across this passion soon.

Love,

Fatima

The curse of the coffee maker.

Coffee makers are a really simple way to make yourself a nice cup of coffee in the morning, right? All you have to do is fill the water reservoir with the correct amount of water, add some coffee grounds to the filter, and turn it on. In about 5 minutes you should have a nice, steaming cup of coffee.

Right?

Um, no.

For some reason, since the beginning of September, I've had some serious issues with making coffee.

First off, there was the problem of me not having the correct coffee maker. When I had been shopping for my dorm things over the summer, my dad said that he had a coffee maker which he hadn't even taken out of the box yet. I said that was fine, I'm not a fan of unnecessary spending. It turns out, that was a 5-cup coffee maker, which is kind of large due to the fact that it was to sit on my desk. I still took it to school, and struggled with figuring out how to work it. Seriously? Who struggles with using a simple coffee maker? Clearly, the answer is "Fatima."

Anyway, my mom decided to get me a single cup coffee maker, which was nice. We returned the other one, even though we had used it, because Target is awesome.

With my new single cup coffee maker that I knew how to use, I had severe issues with the coffee grounds that I had brought to make my coffee with. I had gone shopping with my mom and gone shopping with my dad on separate occasions, and they had both bought me some. Turns out, the ones my dad got me were whole beans, which we didn't realize  while we were shopping. The ones my mom got me were light roast, and I quickly came to realize that my taste buds were not a fan of them.

So, the weekend after that, I grabbed the hazelnut coffee grounds I use at home, so that I could make myself tasty coffee when I actually needed it: at 8:00am on a weekday.

After those problems had been solved and coffee was being made really easily, it just tasted downright awful. Honestly, I don't even know why. It would taste fine when I made coffee at home. It could be the difference in water, or maybe I was adding wrong proportions of milk and sugar, but somehow it would be too bitter and too watery at the same time.

My most recent problem, made apparent on Friday, was that the water wouldn't go through the reservoir. I'm sure it's something I'm doing incorrectly again, but it was pretty frustrating to be running late for class and finding that my coffee maker only made me 1/4 a cup of coffee.

The most logical conclusion is that my coffee maker is cursed.

Reality check.

On Friday, I hit a low point in my thus far short career of being a college student.

Good grief, you should have seen me.
Now, let me begin this story by informing you that I had decided to skip my 9 am class that day. I know, I know, bad Fatima! But what you don't understand is that I live on the St. Paul Campus, and my classes are all in Minneapolis. Yes I can take the campus connector to Minneapolis from St. Paul and it's really useful! It runs every five minutes! as I was told a million times during orientation, but it takes half an hour to get from my dorm to Minneapolis, not counting any walking time.

Which means that for my 9 am class, which I have everyday, I have to wake up at 7.

Awful.

So I hope you will forgive me just this once.

Let's continue the story.
I had decided to skip because 1) I was really tired. and 2) I had to work on an essay outline that had to be turned in for my second class of the day, one at 12:20. See? Even when I skip it's for good reasons...

but. I woke up at 10:30. Which meant I had to come up with a thesis statement and quickly write the essay outline, get all my stuff together for my class, eat something, change my clothes, make my face look decent, yada yada yada, all in an hour and 20 minutes.

This was one of the profund moments which helped me realize how cushy home life is. If I had been at home, I wouldn't have had to mulitask by trying to change my clothes, crack open my first container of easy mac, make coffee, and run upstairs to the computer lab to print out the essay outline, all while trying to make sure I got on the bus on time. My mom would have done some of that stuff for me. Sigh.

You should have seen me...I wore the same yoga pants that I slept in to class...I had my lanyard around my neck...I ate easy mac on the bus.

Hot mess.

Oh well... as the kids say nowadays.... yolo?

I'm sure that I'll get better with time management as I get more used to living "on my own-ish", and that this episode of my struggling will be amusing to me when I think about it as a senior in college. Heck, it's amusing now, too.

It's just a weird change, because most of us are so excited about living semi on our own that we forget we have to take care of a lot of things ourselves and manage our own time, because no one will take that responsibility for us anymore.

What a reality check.