In blog number seven I am going to write about how difficult the transition from high school to college is. You always hear “college are your glory years”, “college will be so much fun”, or “college will be the best time of your life”. In my honest opinion I have not experienced any of those things thus far. High School was the best time of my life. I was friends everyone, I played every sport, I did UIL, FFA and anything else you could imagine. I had high school made for me. I had the best group of friends that are still my best friends. We were doing stuff together every single weekend.  I always had plans whether it was school related or not. I loved all of my teachers and had very close relationships with most of my teachers. I did not have to work although one summer I did chose to work to have extra money. Since I have moved to College I work a full time job and am a full time student. I have no free time for hardly anything. I barely even have time to eat. I have a couple of friends up here but it is definitely not the same as my high school friends. I am stressed out with school and money 24/7. I miss my family so much and while working so much and always having so much homework I can hardly ever find a weekend to make that 3 ½ hour drive home. I honestly did not think college was going to be this miserable for me. I thought I was going to come to college and have the best time of my life but I do not feel like that at all so far. I feel like it is difficult to enjoy myself up here when there is always some sort of homework I could be doing. I get through it though because as hard as college may be, life will be even harder for me without a college degree. Nobody in high school warns you about all of the difficult things which is super annoying. I am getting adjusted but it still is not a very good adjustment. I have had a very hard time transitioning. I think next year might be a little better for me though because my best friend of 12 years from back home will be moving up here so it might be a little better with her up here. I honestly wouldn’t have made it this far without prayer, and that’s how I’ll continue to get through it until next year.

In the interview it is mentioned how many kids graduate with an extreme amount of student debt. I am so thankful that I will not have any student debt. People always assume that going to college is the only way to be successful. I strongly disagree with that. My bestfriends dad did not go to college and he makes denchers and they have two houses, more vehicles than they need, three boats, six jet skiis and more than you could imagine and there is only three members in their family.
 I am in the battle with my mom right now about how I do not think you have to go to college to be successful. I think that there are many ways you can be successful without a college degree. It may help you out sometimes to have the degree under your belt but I personally do not think college is the only way to be successful. You can get many certificates, and license without going to college and be extremely successsfhll. Sometimes having money doesn't mean success. In my opinion being successful is being happy with life. I think success comes from being proud in where you are in life and being content.  I think some people's idea of success could be being a stay at home mom and they could think that they live such a successful life. Money is not everything in life. It is a necessity but it is not everything.
 I'm not saying people don't need to go to college because it is very helpful and needed in most situations. I'm simply just saying that college is not for everyone.

In my personal opinion, I feel as if technology is a huge distraction in today’s society. I agree with Mr. Stills wife. I cannot stand when I go to the movies and the person in front of me is on their phone. It is as if the big screen in front of them is not as important as the little screen in their hand. I think it is very rude, because everybody in the movie theatre paid money to go into the movie with full intentions of watching a movie with friends or whomever and instead is now being distracted by the person on the third row with their brightness all the way up. 

  I hate when I go to dinner with friends or family and they are constantly on their phones. It is one of my pet peeves. It is like people cannot get off their phones long enough to even hear how some one’s day went. I absolutely cannot stand it when I am telling someone a story and they are just staring at their phones the entire time. 

  Another big point into how technology is a big distraction is that people cannot even stay off their phones long enough to drive from point a to point b. About 2 months ago I was driving on the outskirts of Huntsville headed home for the weekend when the guy behind me rear ended me because he was on his phone and he hit me so hard it caused me to hit the car in front of me. The guy behind me did not care how endangered his and many other lives were. All he cared about was that funny meme on Facebook, or how he had to reply to his group message. I had whiplash and a concussion and couldn’t even get out of bed for over a week. I was thankful that that is all that happened to me but it could have been a lot worse, but it is the fact that his phone could not wait until he got where he was going. 

Texting and driving is a huge problem in our generation. I think everyone is guilty of it at some point, whether you are at a red light, a stop sign or just stuck in traffic most people have at least done it at some point or are going to do it at some point. My point of this is that our cell phones and technology have taken over a huge part of our lives so much that we cannot even put them down while we are driving.

As of June of 2016 I have been working at a daycare/preschool. It is conveniently right across from Blinn College. When I started at my job it was only because I wanted weekends off, did not want to work late, and I love kids. Little did I know that this job would show me what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I am the lead teacher in the afternoon and I seriously love my job more than anything. It honestly does not even feel like a job to me. I love watching my kids learn new things, and accomplish things they thought they could never achieve. I have such a strong bond with each and every one of my kids. I love each of them more than they could ever imagine. My job has taught me  over the past few months. My patience has grown tremendously. When I first started every little thing drove me crazy now I can tolerate pretty much anything.  I have learned to think before I speak. Working at a preschool has taught me more than just how to deal with children. It has given me so many life lessons. The money may not be crazy good but even at a young age I have learned that money is not the most important thing in life. It is a great thing to have but it is not the most important thing.

   I truly have a passion of working with kids. I have three nieces and a nephew and I am so in love with them. They are the best things that have ever happened to me. They are kind of what made me want to work at a daycare because I love spending all of my time with them.  I think working with children has always been a passion of mine. I love everything about my job. It is like I am an adult all-day every day except for when I am at work. I get to play with them, and color with them. It is honestly the perfect job for me. It has shown me that I want to major in Early Childhood development. I want to one day own my daycare/preschool to run things my own way but I have to get up to that point first. I want to move somewhat close to my hometown and run a very large child care center.

              Last week I was not in class due to the wonderful illness of Strep Throat. I unfortunately did not get to take Major Exam 1. I am kind of disappointed that I did not get to take the exam because I had been studying the vocabulary and the material in class for quite some time now. I feel like not taking the exam on time is actually a disadvantage because now I have to take it at the end of the semester and the information will not be new and right on my mind. I feel like it will put me behind because what if the next exam has information on it from the first one. Everyone may think I got lucky by getting to miss out on the exam but I would have traded any of you places. While all of you were taking the exam I had studied for I was lying in bed with a 102.6 fever going on my 3^rd day without eating because I could not hold anything down. So I will talk about how that was my first test since being moved out. It was a test for my mom to see if I could take care of myself and still get stuff done while I was what felt like dying. When I got sick in high school my mom was literally like my personal slave. She would take off of work and literally nourish me back to health. She made sure I ate and made sure I was taking my medicine on time. So this time I was all alone. I went to my very first doctor’s appointment by myself, went to the pharmacy by myself. It was her way of testing me to make sure I could be an adult. I had to try and eat, take care of my dog, take medicine and manage to rest all by myself and she thought I did okay but personally it was so difficult and I just wanted to lay in bed and sleep the whole time. So I may have not taken the Major Exam 1 in Mr. Stills class Thursday but I was still taking some other sort of test.

As many people know, I am from a very small town. Words do not exactly have the same meaning to us as they might for other people.In my little hick town, most people just make up words. It is probably the most illiterate place known to man. I got used to it the older I got. I never really knew that I had an accent or used words in funny phrases until I moved to College Station. My meanings of words has changed tremendously in the past four months. When telling someone "bye" someone from my hometown might say "I'll holler at ya",but in College Station people would probably think that was a joke. If I am going to the grocery store and I need a shopping cart I would most likely say "will you grab me a buggy" and people from the city have no idea what a "buggy" is. If I went to school one day and was telling people that me and my mom got into an argument I would say "me and my mom got into a knock down drag out last night". I said that in front of my boyfriend and he honestly had no idea what that meant because he is from the Austin area. If I needed to go to the store my friends would say "its just down yonder". If someone looked really nice for church on that Sunday everyone at church would tell them "that is some nice get up. If I was going out with my friends that weekend you could guarantee that it was going to be a "hoot and holler". If I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing I was "piddlin" in something. We also greet people by saying "whacha say dah". Even the educators back home use "yall","aint"and "gonna". We also do not pronounce the "g's" at the ends of words, we pronounce them as lovin,fixin,dancin,muddin,and ridin.

     Living in an area like College Station has made me realize honestly how ignorant some of those things sound but when you hear that stuff your entire life you do not even realize that other people would never even think of saying something like that. I am very proud and happy to have been from that small town but so thankful to get out and widen my horizon of vocabulary. Words are starting to get a whole new meaning to me and it is so interesting to me to find new ways to say things. I am very thankful to have gotten out of that one horse town and to educate myself so I do not sound like a redneck my entire life.

I am Haleigh Belt. Although I was raised in Texas I was actually born in California. I have grown up my whole life in a little town in Southeast Texas called Colmesneil with a population of about 550 people. My graduating class had a total of 21 kids in it. The kids I started kindergarten with are pretty much the exact kids that I graduated high school with. I could never wait to get out of that little drama filled town but now that I am 3 hours away from home I sure do miss it. Growing up in Colmesneil was something amazing. In high-school I was involved in all sports, including volleyball, softball, basketball, track and I was a cheerleader. In volleyball I was our main outside hitter and a blocker. In Softball I played shortstop and centerfield and could also hit from the left and ride side. In basketball I pretty much played wherever my coach needed me. I could play a wing and make outside shots or if he needed me as a post I also played down low and was a post. In track I ran the sprint relay, both hurdle events and did pole-vault. In Cheerleading I was a captain my junior and senior and also made All-American Cheerleader my senior year. I strongly believe that sports has sculpted me into the person I am today. It has made me a leader and given me strong determination to reach my new goals, as I was always trying to meet new goals in my sports. I was also involved in FFA which was one of my favorite parts about high school. In FFA I did many speaking events. I did one called Radio Broadcasting and another called Poultry which is where you judge chickens. Now that I don’t have sports to keep entertained 365 days of the year I have started working out a lot and that has taken up all of the free time I have. I really started working out in high school because to play as many sports as I did I had to be in the very best shape. I have gotten more serious about my working out since I moved to college mainly so I do not gain the so called 'freshman fifteen". I really enjoy working out and buying all my clothes and shoes to workout in. I try to work out every single day and if I can’t get to it one day then I just do a harder work out the next day. I love working out it is probably my favorite hobby right now. I read sometimes here and there and I really hope to start reading more I am very cliché when it comes to my reading. I like to read sappy love novels. I mainly prefer Nicholas Sparks books. I also really like to shop. Some call it a hobby but my dad calls it an addiction. I spend pretty much all of my extra money on shoes, make up and clothes. I could spend all day every day in a mall if my bank account could handle that. I probably own half of aggie land outfitters. I also really like to spend time with my best friend and boyfriend. I pretty much spend all of my free time with them.