Be gentle, its my first time...writing a blog ;)

Hi this is Melissa repping the 562 haha. Well, this is definitely an interesting feeling... Honestly I never in my wildest dreams ever imagined I would get a blog. Wait, can someone virtually pinch me or something? This might be a strange dream caused by one too many carne asada fries... or too much pepto bismol :/ Anyways, here I am, 4 weeks before embarking on the adventure of a lifetime...going to live in Madrid and the rest of Europe for 3 months. I can remember when I would write on my hand the number of days left til my departure and the number was so high...164 days and now its less than 60 days. I cannot believe how fast time flies. Life is so short so why not have fun traveling the world. I have gotten a lot of criticism from people telling me to focus on finishing school first and taking only the classes I need to graduate and saving the traveling for until after. My perspective is that when an opportunity like this comes knocking, you have to take it and run. This chance may not come again. So many people have also told me, like my professors, that they wish they could have done something like studying abroad in college and that they would go back in time if they had the chance. People go to school, they get caught up with the little things in life, get married and they have children and they never get a chance to travel because they got preoccupied with so much. Life is supposed to be an adventure. Who cares what the societal pressures are? I used to have this staunch belief and mentality that I had to finish up in exactly 4 years, meaning since I graduated from high school in 2008, I HAD to graduate with my Bachelor's degree in 2012 or else I would be a total failure. I was constantly plagued with these negative thoughts; they were eating me alive. Finally, i realized that spending another year at the community college was NOT going to kill me because I was going to do something worthwhile like study abroad! I mean, the world is going to end in 2012 anyway haha, jk. I think about all those students who killed themselves in school to finish in 4 years and they look back without having any memories to last a lifetime. College is about having fun is it not? I Lordwilling will be able to remember this experience for the rest of my life and its okay if I finish 1 year later. Everything is for the best! Now I will leave you all with a quote by the great Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.Dream. Discover."