Always Have a Back-Up Plan

Anyone who has been lucky enough to drive in Japan knows the incredible courtesy of drivers. Other drivers don't hesitate to let you out of busy intersections or pull out across traffic for right turns, unlike drivers in Jersey that usually don't like to let you pull out for left turns. Fortunately for me, I learned how to drive in Japan. Unfortunately for me, I have now returned to the States, where drivers tend to fall more on the opposite side of the "politeness spectrum."

It's the last week of summer. I'm already back at school. I'm cringing at textbook prices, questioning if I really want to be taking the credits that I am and trying to figure out when, exactly, I'm going to sleep this semester. I'm starting a new chapter in my life. Things are changing, like they always are. I'm saying goodbye to yet another summer.

Many times in college we have events that make us question our faith. Growing up in a predominantly southern christian town at a public high school where the teachers were pretty open about their beliefs and most students were involved in a church, or at least claimed to be Christian, it was really hard to be faced with opposite views this first year at a public university. I have never had a reason to question my faith, until questions were posed to me that made me discover a new level of faith. When a professor who has their Ph.D. and seems to have worlds of knowledge, but they clearly disapprove of what you believe, it can rock your world. It seemed like all odds were put against me as three of my professors and classes were challenging what I believed about literally everything. The very foundation of who I am. This semester instead of feeling farther from God, I feel so much closer and more in awe because of these classes that were put in place to rattle me, but proved to rattle me into a deeper level of amazement with the world around me.

Last summer, I took a week-long trip to Paris. A close friend from high school invited me to stay with her in the apartment she was renting for the summer. I spent my week touring, exploring, dining, and shopping—all the expected wonderful things. But there was one day that showed me what I had never understood about that clichéd magic of Paris.