My favorite article of clothing and how it represents me

For any of you who know me, you know almost every day I wear a pair of Adidas joggers. I have a couple different colors and styles and they are pretty much the only pants I wear unless I am forced to do otherwise. I love them, I feel like they are stylish and comfortable, they were popular in the 90s and now there is another rise of the fad of Adidas track pants. I also love the color black and although now I have other colors the classic style is a nice sleek black that I really vibe with.


The style of Adidas track pants I wear are originally designed for soccer. They have a zipper on the side of each leg that goes from just below the knee to the end of the pant. This is for soccer players to put on or take off their shin guards. Although soccer isn’t the central factor to my identity it is a really important aspect of my life. I have been playing for as long as I can remember and I am an avid women's soccer fan. The first pair of Adidas pants I got was probably around 4 years ago when for a gift my parents let me buy something from my club soccer website. I chose the blue Adidas track pants with my number “24” embroidered on them.


I would wear these new pants as many times as I could, my mom would tell me I needed to dress nicer and wear things like jeans more often. Here’s the thing, I don't really like jeans they have to be a very specific fit and even then I would take a jogger over denim any day. So, once I started wearing my joggers there was no going back. Since then I have made them a central part of my wardrobe.


Adidas track pants are seen as comfortable and athletic/soccer related. I would like to believe that I exude some sort of a welcoming feeling and anyone who knows me well knows I love soccer. Another thing is that they have become iconic on me if you asked any of my friends about my typical outfits I am sure all of them would include Adidas track pants.


Overall my relationship with Adidas track pants is long and pleasant and I am glad I have them in my life.

A word I like, vibe

I really like the word “vibe” I think it encapsulates the inexplicable feelings you feel after interacting with someone. The word feeling is too vulnerable and makes it seem super subjective and simply based on how your feeling, this may be the same for vibe but I don't really see it that way. Vibe is less emotional and it really just is the indescribable feeling I get from something.

The word vibe comes from vibrations as if all things have these vibrations that come off of them that are indicative of the intentions, mood, and more. Vibe for me has usually meant something along the lines of after an interaction with someone I have picked up on something. If someone I know well has weird vibrations it probably means something wrong. If I meet someone new and after an interaction, I feel like they had good vibes that probably means I have the feeling we are going to get along well. More recently the word vibe has become much more prevalent in pop culture. Since it is currently pretty popular it’ll become uncool to say eventually, when this day comes I will be sad. Something else that makes me sad about the word vibe is that it isn’t very respected because everyone just sees it as a joke when I think there is actually something to it.

Vibe is also just a fun word to say. There is a V as well as an I that you really pronounce so it kind of a fun word to say, and it's short so it is really easy to say. Vibe is also good if you don’t have proof of your feelings. Vibe doesn’t require you to have a bunch of examples with physical proof to say something about it. I could have just exchanged a few words with someone and still have good vibes about them. This could definitely be used in a not so great way by jumping to conclusions or judging someone without actually knowing them.

A vibe you get from something doesn’t even have to be from a living thing, it can literally just be the vibe you get from a place. A dark cold room might give off a scary vibe. A park outside on a nice day might have more of a chill happy vibe. I like using vibe to express my feelings in a way that isn’t super serious, I could say I am getting bad vibes but it wouldn’t inherently be taken in a negative way like if I said I didn’t like the place.

So overall I just like the vibe of the word vibe.

My Favorite Place :)

The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign is my favorite place around here, it may not be the most concise answer but it’s my favorite part. I have lived here my whole life so I can’t really even imagine what it would be like to not have a university nearby, especially in the Midwest. There are a bunch of much smaller rural towns only 20-30 minutes away from here and if we didn’t have the University of Illinois we would probably be very similar to them. Most of the more urban things we have are due to the University and its students creating a business. Also, I would not want to live in a small rural town for many reasons so having the University makes it feel like a bigger city, especially due to the size of the U of I.

I live here because my parents work at University so it’s always been a big thing for me. Since I was little I would come to my parents’ office and walk around the quad. On top of that I go to Uni high where every week I'm walking down the engineering quad and Green St. This place is really like my second home, I know my favorite places to study, where to go for food, and where to go when I just want a break.

It is also nice having sports teams.
I play soccer and I have for a long time, I love playing it and I think a lot of that is due to the women’s soccer team at the U of I. From a young age up until recent years, I went to every single soccer camp the U of I offered. Because of my being able to go to the camps I have met so many of the players and actually gotten to know the head coach. Especially when I was young, seeing these female D1 college soccer players felt like I was hanging out with celebrities. Whenever a player would visit some of my club team practices to help coach we would all go crazy asking for autographs. The closest pro women’s soccer team we have is the red stars in Chicago, so being able to closely watch and interact with some really high-level players helped me see that I could play soccer.

As I am going through the college process it has become more clear that U of I is one of my top schools, I get a discount because my parents work here and it's really good for the majors I want. I used to dread the possibility of staying here near my family for another four years, I would literally count down the months until I would be leaving. However, recently I have become a lot more at ease with staying here if I can. I have talked to close friends who go here and I have realized that the campus kind of makes me happy. It wasn't until last summer where I worked all day in North Champaign so I pretty much never came to campus, this was in stark contrast to my past summers where I would do plenty of camps on campus. When I came onto campus after not being here for a while I felt an unexpected feeling of joy. So although I have had my ups and downs this place has played an integral part of my life and overall it has been pretty good.

The best advice I ever got "PERL"

      Although I am not sure this is the best advice I have ever gotten it's definitely in the top 5. “Position early run less” a soccer coach said to my team and I once, PERL. It meant that strategically when you are on the field if you think about where you need to be and get there before the last moment you will have less running. This really spoke to me as I hate running. For example, to apply this in a game I need to do a couple things as a defender. One thing I need to do is be capable of my marks, although I may not need to be constantly marking them I have to know where they are so as soon as they start coming my way I can easily get to them.

     Another thing I need to do is keep in mind what the attacking team has done thus far when trying to score a goal, is it playing it out wide or doing long balls over the defense. I also need to communicate with my fellow defenders as where we are in relation to each other is vital in terms of offside calls and recovery. Defending tends to have the least amount of running aside from the goalie, however, there is still a lot of sprints. Often times once the other team has hit their attacking third every defender should be sprinting back to help, however there are ways to minimize these gross sprints. By using the aforementioned tactics you are in a better position to not be beat by the attacker which in turn means not having to sprint back.

     So, this advice is great on the field but what about off the field? I didn’t realize how applicable this advice was for regular life. The general idea behind ‘Position early run less’ is that you are planning (Position) ahead (early) which leads to less work and stress for you (run less). Whether it's a small event, a big test, or a trip planning ahead can help so much. For example, traveling is always stressful, but if you plan ahead it isn't necessarily as stressful. I think if you already have a good idea of where you are going and what you are going to do while you are there as well as where your staying that's a lot less stress than just arriving and having to figure everything out. Also planning what you might be packing ahead of time helps you make sure you remember everything you need and not be freaking out right as you are about to leave for a trip. I think a similar sentiment can be applied to schoolwork. Although it could be debated, english papers written the night they are do aren’t always of the best quality. Planning ahead by doing prewrites, outlines, and various drafts helps a lot.

     I do believe that there is value and fun in the idea of spontaneity and seeing where the day takes you, however, we have all been in positions where planning ahead would have helped with stress and more. I got told this a long time ago and in the moment I never would have thought I would have remembered it but I still do and I think it will stay with me as it reminds me to think ahead to help myself distress. :)

What I want to change about Uni.

I would love to change Uni’s academic culture. By that, I mean how we talk about and handle grades, tests, presentations, etc. I think as a senior applying to college I see very often this unhealthy view of how we need to prepare and act around academics. It’s no secret that Uni students are stressed but, as Dr. Majerus pointed out to our utopias and dystopias class, there is healthy stress and unhealthy stress. Healthy stress is the stuff that motivates us and makes us do our best, the butterflies in our stomach before a game or performance that help us work hard. Unhealthy stress is the stuff that makes us lose sleep at night, set unrealistic goals, and overall leave us unhappy. I see a lot of the latter here. At Uni there has always been a big element of comparing grades, you knew who were the smart kids in your grade for each subject since subbie year and they would seem as if they were on another, unattainable level. Even in the application process to get into Uni, among the people I knew you were pretty much defined by your SSAT score, even though essays were heavily taken into account, all that mattered to the other kids was the score. Don’t get me wrong I am happy where I am happy at Uni, but I have never once felt like the smartest person in the room (not that it matters or can truly be quantified), I’ve honestly never felt in the top 10 even. And I know I am not the only one to feel this way. I believe there is validity to the side of the argument that says you need people better than you to push you, however, I believe that this needs to be complemented with a culture that promotes you to believe you can do what you want. I never felt that if I studied all night I would be as smart as someone else, I always felt like I was just born more stupid.


I think this also ties into the conversation about what being “smart” even means. I don’t think someone's level of intelligence solely relies on test scores or grades, despite what we seem to hear everywhere. When you are considering a college the first thing you look into is average acceptance rate depending on GPA and SAT/ACT scores even though we have to write essays we sort of get the notion that unless you have a lot going for you if your numbers aren’t high enough you’re not going to get in. I personally believe the largest indicator of intelligence is critical thinking but we can save that for another blog post. I think throughout the years at Uni I have noticed a change there is less direct asking about grades and scores yet there is still a large percent of the student body who compares themselves. This is a dangerous mentality, often it doesn't prepare you for inevitable failure in life. If you define yourself by the number of A’s you have you are setting yourself up for hurt. There is an element of pushing yourself to your best but at what cost.





As much as I had to complain about something without trying to provide a solution, I am really not sure what to do about this. In my Utopias and Dystopias English class last year we talked extensively and voted on the idea of not using grades and just going to a pass or fail system. Although this sounded cool when everyone learned it wouldn’t positively affect our GPA’s we voted against that and decided to remain with the usual grading system. Even if Uni was to stop using grades I am not sure that would help. Once we apply to college we would need to prove ourselves to that school through more tests and even more pressure on those tests. I guess this indicates that this issue is way beyond Uni. Even if we didn’t have grades teachers would still have to mark if we made an error and I think you would still find us comparing ourselves in some other way. There definitely does need to be less emphasis on defining yourself by your grades. Feel free to leave any suggestions in the comments.

Fun Times with Fun Friends

This photo was taken on self-timer on July 20th, 2019 in Custard Cup at 10:30 pm. This was after we had met around 5:30 for dinner at Olive Garden, because who doesn’t love pasta, and after we had walked around TJ Maxx for a good hour and a half. TJ Maxx is where we made the wonderful purchase of matching yellow hoodies with the words “DAYDREAMER” on them.

Originally the night had started out with just the plan to see each other and eat some dinner. We all met at Olive Garden, I was super excited because these were some of my favorite people and I hadn’t seen them as much as I wanted over summer. Gloria and Kat had both just graduated and were getting ready for college, which meant I wouldn’t get to see them every day in the Uni halls, so I knew this might be one of the last time we all got together and had a good time for a while. We eventually all arrived to olive garden and were catching each other up on how our summers had been thus far and what was new. As soon as the waiter walked over we immediately asked for as many breadsticks as we could have (He only brought one basket the first time but eventually caved and started bringing us more). Part of the reason I love these people is that I rarely talk to them without ending up crying laughing, and that's great. When we were ready to order Kristine asked if the dessert lasagna with layers of chocolate cake and frosting had noodles in it. This led to everyone laughing uncontrollably and barely being able to order our food. After spending a few hours talking and eating we decided we were going to go to TJ Maxx since it was just across the parking lot from Olive Garden. We all started our TJ Maxx trip by cramming into the bathroom because pretty much everyone needed to pee. We made our way slowly through the aisles of the store picking a lot of items up even though we knew we weren’t going to buy them. When we got out of the clothes sections and more into the decoration stuff we just went crazy. Kat and Glo were sitting in the middle of the aisle with planners all around them trying to figure which one to get Samaia, Kristine and I all split up and almost every 30 seconds would call out someone's name so we could find each other.

As we were on our way to check out a couple of things each of us grabbed we came across these intense yellow hoodies in the middle of the men's section. At first, we saw 2 or 3 and thought it would be fun to put them on and see how they looked but we slowly realized there were enough for all of us and we all found sizes that worked for us. It seemed like the perfect thing to symbolize and remember the night. It’s hard to say if we would have bought them had we not been full with pasta and walking around TJ Maxx for over an hour. We all bought them and put them on. To end the night we decided to go to Custard cup and get some ice cream in our matching hoodies. As we waited in line we got plenty of stares someone asked if we were all from someday camp, to which we replied no, we are just great friends. After finishing our ice cream we decided we needed photos to remember this night. We refused to let anyone take them for us, we insisted on using the self-timer. We took so many photos and everyone had me laughing so hard, we were taking photos for like 20 or 30 mins. This photo is my favorite just because everyone is doing something funny and weird. You got Kat super enthusiastic with her leg in the air, Kristine not ready for the photo still trying to tie her hoodie, me fighting air, Samaia representing the mental state we were all in, and who knows what Gloria was dong. Every time I see all the photos we took in my camera roll or see the hoodie in my closet I smile and am reminded of the great friends I have. :)