"Who?" asks the owl

So an about me?  I am honestly terrible at these things.

Sitting down and writing a personal statement for law school was super difficult for me.  I ended up writing that about my job, which I think is a good start.

I'm a graduate student at the University of Michigan, and earned my undergraduate degree here as well.  Despite desires in high school to get out of Michigan, here I've been, a half hour from home, for the past 5 years.  As an undergraduate, I started volunteering at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, and as a graduate student, I turned that volunteer position of 3 hours a week, to about 20 hours a week spent with hospitalized kids, hopefully brightening their days as much as they brighten mine.

Despite my love for my job, I know its not something I can do long term.  It's too reactive.  My graduate degree is in public health, environmental health in particular.  In my mind, public health has become synonymous with prevention.  Prevention of health issues, particularly those caused by environmental contamination.  To be honest, my graduate degree is just something I stuck in between undergraduate education and law school -- a gap year of sorts.  Law was always in the plan, but I'm hoping that the master's degree will allow me to focus on these environmental health issues that are of greatest importance to me.

Because of the public health and environmental science background, I think I'm pretty knowledgeable about healthy eating, natural products, and those icky chemicals that might be of more concern than most people give them (lets just toss BPA out there to start).  I have principals for the foods I eat, the cosmetics I use, and the makeup of other everyday products.  Despite my environmentally friendly other habits, I'll be the first to admit that I enjoy shopping.  A lot.  I also enjoy reading (non-fiction and fiction alike.  And especially memiors!), baking (when I have the time!), food shopping, and attempting to teach myself how to crochet (my aunt is amazing at this, and I must have missed out on those genes.  I also failed to receive her red hair or freckles, two things I'll always wish for).

Toss in a full time schedule of classes, law school applications, compulsive Glee and Grey's Anatomy watching, and that job that I love, and it should be an interesting final graduate semester. 

I'm not really sure what this blog will become, which I think goes against all the advice successful bloggers give (have a focus is usually #1, haha), but I enjoy rule-breaking.  So we'll see how this baby goes.

And that was my very very painful about me.  I hope it made sense!

Unofficial Start of 2011

My 2011 Moleskine Weekly Notebook Planner (which I very luckily purchased before amazon no longer had them in stock thanks to a fear-inducing search that only had them available for $80+!) starts the week of January 1.  Which is today.

So I figured, it was a good day to start fresh.  I've always found New Years Day to be a little difficult to start off resolutions.  You've been up late the night before, likely drinking some sort of fizzy alcoholic beverage, and probably don't have the motivation to work out, eat healthy, or be productive.  So today, December 27, when I had little to do, is the perfect day. 

I ate a fiber-ful breakfast (Trader Joe's High Fiber Cereal mixed with TJ's Triple Berry-O's), channeled my inner Black Swan with the New York City Ballet Company Work Out, continued to be a horrendous crochet-er, finished Eat, Pray, Love after having started it years ago, and even used my kiwi scrub on my face, and my waterpik twice. 

To be honest, who knows how long I can keep this healthy eating, exercising, superb personal hygiene thing up, but I think today is definitely a good start.

Oh yeah, and I wrote my first blog post.  I think its a very good unofficial start to 2011 indeed.