The University of Tampa

Yesterday was the first day of school at my alma mater, The University of Tampa, and at Austin Community College, the school Luke is now attending. While he is not big on photos to document big moments, and his parents did not have to move their baby boy into a dorm for the first time, I still saw many move-in photos from UT on social media over the weekend and it made me a bit nostalgic.

Since graduation in May up until the first of August, I was not working. This was not such a strange feeling because I’m used to having the summers off. As a student for the last 16 years of my life, I’ve gotten used to being busy as can be from August to June and then being a carefree kid in the remaining months. I knew this wasn’t going to continue to be the case however, which is why it was still scary even though it felt normal.

Now that I have been working for about a month at this temp job, I feel like I am back into a routine, much like the same routine I have known since I was five. The problem however, is that a) since this is a temp job, I am very likely to get thrown out of this routine very soon and b) even if I can keep it permanently, come May/June, I’m going to be ready for a three month break that isn’t going to come.

Even while I feel that I am back into the routine, the amount of free-time that I have when I get home from work has been weird. When I was younger, homework was no big thing for me; I finished it within an hour of getting home from school and then I had the rest of the night to go outside and play with the rest of the neighborhood kids. As I got older, this playtime went away. In high school and even middle school, my time at home was to be spent on homework and studying- there was no time for dilly-dallying (I still dilly-dallied… at the cost of my proper sleep schedule).

Then I got to college and found a ridiculous amount of free-time again. I went to classes for four (or less) hours a day and then had the rest of the day to do nothing as I pleased. I started to get bored so when I found an organization that I liked, I latched on and didn’t let go for my entire four years at UT. By the time I graduated, I think I’d spent more time in the Student Productions office than in my own rooms on and off campus. It was there that I’d found a love for event planning, so it just made sense that I was going to spend every free hour I had in the office. Even if I wasn’t exclusively working on programs, I found a way to make myself busy.

Now this temp job has me up at 6:30 am and home at 5:30 pm with nothing to do until I go to bed around 11 pm. With Luke working nights, I’ve been alone too, some nights unsure of what to do with myself. Recently, I’ve been crafting, working on ideas for this blog, and other personal projects. This has been a lot of fun, but I’m still missing something (and need more money) which is why I’m so excited that I’ll be working at Ulta.

This will hopefully be taking up a lot of the free-time I spend doing little to nothing at home, in an environment that I love. Ulta is a store that I’ve wanted to work at since I could work and, though it is part-time and at a pretty low wage, it will be something to keep money coming in if I don’t make this temp job into a permanent one. I still have my fingers crossed on that though.

And now, just to reminisce, the first photo taken of me at UT. I’ve used it a lot to look back at the times, but it’s still definitely one of my favorites.