SO I decided for creative purposes, I'm moving Next Step over here:

http://ashmactakesontheworld.tumblr.com/

Enjoy!

My first attempt at photojournalism

I'm taking a lot of hands on classes, one being photojournalism. I was very intimidated going into this class. I thought it was all about taking pictures of things we liked, but then when class started, our teacher started takign about all these concepts that I never heard of before.
For our first assignment, we had to take photos using 7 different concept. Of course I still had my sorority bs to deal with so I didn't start this project until 4 hours before it was due. I walked around campus to see what I could find and they didn't turn out half bad. Check it out:

Necessary Evils: Recruitment Week

I've been absent for quite sometime and not because I wanted to, but I because I had to. There are somethings in life that I refer to "necessary evils." Since being back in the states, my life has been full of them. I thought that starting a new job would be the worst of them, but I was wrong. I'll give you two words.

Sorority. Recruitment.

If you want 50 girls to tell you how awesome you are and blow sunshine up your ass, go through sorority recruitment. This week filled with songs, parties and never-ending questions like, "what's your major?" and it gets really old really fast. Especially for the person who has to organize it all, which of course was me.

If I knew what I was getting into beforehand, I would have run as fast as I could away from it all. I wasn't originally supposed to have the VP Recruitment job. While I was in Spain, the original VP, to put it nicely, went crazy and got kicked out of the sorority. Her replacement wasn't that great and ended up not making the grade requirement (you need a 2.75 gpa, so it's not like it's hard). So out of all the other girls in the house, I was the only who met the three requirements.

1. Live in the Sorority House
2. Make the grade requirements.
3. Have gone through both sides of recruitment.

Lucky me.

My biggest obstacle that I had to overcome was my lack of attention to details. I'm more of a big-picture kind of girl. Recruitment is like on big party and I had to be the party planner. Caring about what color of napkins to use, decorations to hang and painting the scenery for skits was just a little too much for me. I kept asking myself, "What damn difference does this all make?"

You see, our chapter has a big problem with retention. We'll start off the school year with some great girls then as the year goes on, girls start to realize that this isn't something they wanted or they felt mislead by what was said to them during recruitment. We spend so much time practicing songs and worrying about "how cute the house looks" but if the girls don't stay around, what's the point in all of it.

I feel that this was a test from God to see how strong I could be. It was an incredibly stressful eight days. Half way through I caught a cold and barely had a voice. Before the first day I startd to cry becasue I was so frustrated and I felt like I was failing. Then pulled myself together and remembered one of my leadership principles:

Don't cry over something that won't cry over you.

In the end, it wasn't going to matter how things looked, but as long as we got great girls. Fortunately things did work out. We made quota for the first time in years and the girls who have joined the house are pretty bad-ass. Now that the hard part of my job is over, I can focus on more important things.

On a side note, tomorrow is the first day of school!!

Why Restaurant Work is Always Ghetto

So the last time I posted I was going through a lot of drama and it went from bad to okay to things not being good to fine again, and that's where it is now. Things in my life have started to settle down and I'm starting to have a consistent schedule.

Credit

I started working at Cracker Barrel last Monday and let me just say, there's no better motivator to go to school and be successful like working in a restaurant. I'm working with some pretty cracked out people at this place.
For example, the girl who is training me is in her 30's with three kids, 1 eleven-year-old and 2-eight-year-olds. She then goes on to tell me that her boyfriend is 47 and has two daughters, the oldest being 21. He also has a granddaughter who calls her grandma.
Creepy.
Then there was a girl who was telling my trainer that her grandma wants her to leave her terrible husband, but the girl doesn't want to becasue she has five kids with him! She then goes on a tangent about how her grandma had 7 kids, but gave 5 up for adoption because she couldn't feed them.
What... a great role model. It's sad how those vicious cycles repeat themselves.
Then there is the girl who's pregnant and left early yesterday because she's having baby daddy drama. Need I say more.
It's people like this that are the reason I've been asked by everyone if A.) Do I have any kids? and B.) Are you married?
The answer to these questions are both no. I'm here for at the most two years until I finish college and go on to be a success in something other that waitress. Not saying that it's beneath me, but I could never do this as a career.
I foresee many more ghetto stories from work in my future.

What would you do?

Credit

 

Right now I need advice from anyone who reads this blog:

How do you deal with a friend dating another one of your friends?

Here’s the deal: This week I met up with my friend, Henry, and some other people at a bar downtown. There was another guy there named Tom, who I recognized because he’s very involved in Greek life, but I have never formally met him.

We talked for most of the night and it was nice getting to know a new person. At the end of the night, as I was saying goodbye to everyone, Henry says, “Ashleigh, can you give Tom a ride home, so Raquelle doesn’t have to drive everyone around town?”

This seemed justifiable to me so agreed and Tom and I left. What was interesting though is that Tom lives only two minutes away from Henry. Weird. However, the drive was uneventful. We said our good-byes and that was that.

The next day some of my close friends and I got together for our friend, Jon’s, birthday. Everything was winding down until Michelle randomly asked, “How was your drive home?”

“It was windy.” Of course being myself, my mind went straight to the weather.

Henry: “Did Tom try to make a move on you?”

“What? No he was a perfect gentleman.”

Now I was on alert. Did this Tom guy have a thing for me? Were my friends trying to hook us up and that’s why they asked me to drive him home? I had so many questions but I shrugged it off as nothing.

Boy was I wrong.

Thursday night, Henry, Adam and my cousin, Gabbi, (HAG) had a party at their house, and of course Tom was there. As soon as I got there it seemed like he was paying quite a lot of attention to me. We talked a lot about Greek life, school and my travels. After a while we both were getting quite tipsy and one thing led to another and all of a sudden we were making out in the closet room!

Making out in the closet room turned into making out at his house and me spending the night (we kept it PG people. Don’t let your mind to the gutter). It was fun and it was nice to have a guy pay attention to you who wasn’t some creeper in a Spanish club.

I saw Tom the next couple of days when we both hung out with our friends; everything seemed fine to me and not awkward. Then everything fell apart Saturday night.

There was another party at HAG’s house and things went from fun to horrible in a matter of seconds. Out of nowhere Henry asks me “The next time you get involved with one of my friends can I have the right to say ‘I don’t want this to happen?’”

Not only did this shock me, but also it really hurt me. I thought that Henry was trying to encourage something between Tom and I, but apparently he specifically asked Tom not to pursue me. I got very upset, started to cry and walked out of the party. Even though Henry tried to apologize, I was too drunk to accept his apology. All of a sudden everything started to snowball and we started fighting about all sorts of issues that were coming out of the woodwork. Eventually Henry just went to bed, and I laid in my cousin’s bed until I was sober enough to drive.

The next day, I was still really upset and decided to go to my parent’s house for a few days. It’s been two days and I still haven’t heard anything from Henry. I feel like I shouldn’t have to apologize. I don’t know if anything is going to go further with Tom and if it does or doesn’t, I don’t see how it would be awkward as long as Tom and I stay cool about the situation.

What do you think?

Is Henry justified or is he being over-bearing?

How should I approach the situation with Tom?

It would be nice to have some feedback because like the little guy above this the more I think about it the more confused I get.

HELP!

Unexpected beginnings

A lot of new and exciting things happened this week for me!

Drum roll please

(insert drum roll)

I MIGHT HAVE A JOB!!!

Today I had to call Cracker Barrel back to see if they wanted to have a second interview, and they told me to come in tomorrow at 2! The manager made it sound like it was just a formality and that new worker orientation started later next week. I assume he wouldn’t tell me that if they weren’t seriously considering hiring me. I sure hope they do though because I haven’t really been super serious about finding a job this week, and if I don’t get this then I’m screwed.

I also had another unexpected event happen to me this week. I got a text message from my sorority’s president about helping out with recruitment.

SCENARIO:

Sorority President: Hey Ash, now that you’re back I was wondering if you would like to help out with recruitment.

Me: Yeah that sounds fun

SP: Well how do you feel about a larger role in recruitment?

Me: Umm… sure why not

SP: Okay. How doe Vice President of Recruitment sound?

Woah! That was not what I was expecting at all. Basically what my main job is to get as many girls to want to join our sorority by any means possible (okay not ANY means, because we could get arrested). It’s actually a job I never saw myself doing. Either way I’m super happy to almost be employed and to have another leadership position in a house that I absolutely love.

On another happy note, I bought a new swimsuit! I know I can’t afford to even buy toothpaste at this point, but there are times in a girls life when the only thing that will make her happy is buying something new and let’s be real here…

It was too cute to pass up!

What My Resume Should Actually Say

Work Experience

Receptionist at the Math Department

Since it was a work-study position, I didn’t really do anything. I answered phones and said hi to people. Sometimes I had to fill the copy machine.

Receptionist at the Library 

This was a little tougher job.  My old boss was really uptight and didn’t let me do my homework like a regular work-study student. My duties included watering plants, entering useless data entry into the computer, mail sorting and any other ridiculous job that evil woman wanted me to do.

Waitress/Hostess at a truck stop restaurant.

This is a job I would not wish on anybody. I served disgusting diner food to perverted, old truckers who thought that it is okay to hit a young gal like me. People would get mad at me if the cooks did something wrong and we were usually understaffed because no one wanted to work there

Carhop at Sonic 

I made drinks and milkshakes form 4 p.m. to midnight and when I got really good at that I delivered orders to cars. I wasn’t good at the box order so I would usually mess up a whole order. I did date the manager, who is seven years older than me, which is against company policy, but there’s an unspoken agreement between my old boss and I that he never tells possible employers about that.

Skills

·      Fluent in English and sarcasm.

·      I know a little bit of Spanish but people have to repeat themselves at least three times for me to fully understand what they’re saying.

·      I am an ex risk manager so I know keep people safe, but I can’t make decisions for them so I feel it’s a useless skill.

·      I’m super cute!

·      I play a mean clarinet, but my tennis skills are sub-par.

·      I have a high alcohol tolerance, but I have little knowledge of alcohol.

·      When it comes to driving, I take after my dad, which means I’m a badass.

·      I have a lot of “that’s what she said” jokes up my sleeve.