A DISASTER!

Mistake #1: Postpone doing essential things that needed to be done today by hopping onto the computer and wasting time.

Mistake #2: Trying to make my blog look good like everyone else's rather than let it be my own style.





As a result of these two major errors, I have been punished. The links to all of my favorite blogs were lost, which is the main reason that I have a blog- to read friends' and families' blogs. I also lost any template I had, and any settings I had as well.
You may think to yourself, "Well Camille, your list of blog links hasn't gone anywhere, it's right here and I'm looking at it!"

But ah! that list you see is the result of me slaving away (while continuing to postpone the day's activities) at looking through pages of blogs to find the links to the blogs I remember I had linked to my blog. I copied and pasted these blog links, one link at a time, after much searching and trying to remember who I had listed.

You may also think to yourself, "Camille, your template is lame. You tried to make it look good, but obviously you have failed!"

My response to that is, "YES, I KNOW!"
I thought I had found the coolest template, way cooler than any I have ever had, and it was in the process of putting this on my blog that my blog had a meltdown. As such, I have lost all confidence in my template-putting-on abilities and have reverted back to the infantile stage of the most basic, boring templates which are suggested by Blogspot. Not cool. You might say that I have fled the scene of the blogging template world with my tail between my legs, all hopes, dreams, and confidence shattered.

Despite your critical thinking of my poor HTML-writing abilities, I have a favor to ask of you. If you do not see your name listed on my blog list right now, PLEASE email me or leave a comment on here so that I might again have your publishings in my life. Or, if you notice another blog that was previously listed and is no longer listed, please let me know as well. Or if you were not on the list but would like to be, I would love to list your blog on here, too! I cannot remember all the blog links I had on here, so if you could help me out, I would appreciate it!



This picture reminds me that there are 5 more months until mountain biking season begins again!



Merry Christmas!

Home For Christmas

All but two members of the family (Mike/Emily and Joe/Daniell) will be home for Christmas this year!!!

End of Semester

I made it! Well, I still have 3 finals left next week, but they won't be a big deal.

Here is a report of my classes, and then a report of my extra-curricular things that I also did on a regular basis:

Book of Mormon 121 (2 credits)
This class was way better than I thought. I thought it would be super stressful or something- I have always wanted to study the Book of Mormon in a different way than I usually do and learn things I wouldn't be able to on my own, and I did just that. My teacher was great and always had a big grin on his face. He helped me with some Isaiah basics through Nephi's stories, and I am glad for that.
Anticipated grade: A

SW4300 Introduction to Counseling and Psychotherapy (3 credits)
This class was a 100% theory class, something I was not expecting. We learned about a huge variety of different theories about human nature and therapy, from Freud to Beck and beyond. It was very interesting and culminated in two papers: the first paper was the hardest paper I have ever written and was on my theories of human nature. I found it surprisingly difficult to fill 10 pages with strict opinion about why I believe what I believe about why we are the way we are. My last paper was kind of similar- I had to choose a theory that matched my theories the closest, and then write a big old paper on that one. Unfortunately, I was burned out by the end and the paper didn't go so well.
Anticipated grade: B+ or A-

Book of Mormon 122 (2 credits)
This class was awesome! My teacher was the sweetest lady ever. She has never been married, but is so cool. She reminds of Christie a lot- just a straight up person who is passionate about many things. This teacher was able to bring the class to tears through the Spirit in almost every class, and it was just a great class.
Anticipated grade: A

PSY3800 Clinical Interviewing Skills (4 credits)
My professor was great- this could have been a brutal class. He was incredibly lenient and helpful and understanding. One week he let me take a test early, but I had to go up to the AF Hospital Emergency Room to take it because he was on call up there at the time. He let me turn in things late when I forgot to do them (the class is once a week, so I would often forget about it) and made sure the students learned everything without the unnecessary stress.
Anticipated grade: A (possibly A-)

PSY4600 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3 credits)
I didn't have any real expectations for this class, but learned how to use the manual and practiced diagnosing disorders and becoming familiar with many disorders. What I liked about this class is that much of our homework was to find examples in the media and movies and things, and then write up a diagnosis. Our midterm and final were both to watch a movie in class and then write a full mental status exam, diagnosis, and treatment plan for the characters in the film. Cool stuff.
Anticipated grade: A

PSY3410 Fundamentals of Mediation and Negotiation (3 credits)
This class was intense! It was waayyy too much work for a 3-credit course. We had papers due every other class period, presentations to give, volunteer hours to do, online courses to complete, internet research to do, massive midterm and final, and graded attendance. It was brutal at times. However, I learned a huge amount from this class from the volunteer work, which I will talk about later in this blog. This was not a difficult class, but the sheer amount of work to do was staggering at times.
Anticipated grade: B+ or A-

BESC3100 Career Preparation for Behavioral Science Majors (2 credits)
I liked this class, actually. I had heard nothing but negative things before this class started, but am glad I took it. The first half of the semester we focused on preparing grad school applications, which was fantastic for me. The second half we had guest speakers from different careers in BESC come speak to us. Very informative, and very low-stress, though there were a LOT of assignments.
Anticipated grade: A

SW4050 Clinical Research/Honors thesis (3 credits)
This class was great for most of the semester and the assignments were challenging, but not overwhelming. It was towards the end of the semester, though that I began to really become stressed about this class. This class is cross-listed with my Honors Thesis class, so I am preparing my Honors research using this class but left much of the work until the end of the semester, so it was just a lot to try and do with two weeks left in the semester. My bad.
Anticipated grade: A- or A



I am also the co-president of a club on campus that meets every other week. This club is called NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Our biggest event this semester was co-sponsoring UVU's Suicide Prevention Week. I got to be quite involved in the planning and executing of the activites, and it was a huge success for the school. We had a lot of meetings and things to plan and do, so it became quite time-consuming at times. Luckily my co-president, Denise, is awesome and was way more organized than I am.

As part of my Mediation class, I volunteered each week as a mediator at Mountain View High School. Once a week for a couple hours I would go to MVHS with other mediators and meet with students who were in deep trouble academically, and would work with them. Usually with these kids, it's not the grades that are what is problematic- it's the stuff going on at home that is messed up. I heard some sad stories, but saw a lot of strong kids just trying to do the best they could with what they had to work with. We would sit down (with parents, if they cared to show up like they were supposed to) and talk about problems and then would make goals for each week that the parents and student could work on. Good experience and I am glad I did it. Also, I mediated once each at the Orem and Provo small claims courts. There were some interesting cases, and that was a good experience as well, though not nearly as emotional- at least in a positive way!

I have been working on my Honors Senior Thesis this semester and have most of it set to begin next semester. The title of my study is Survey of UVU Student-Veterans. It is going to be a qualitative study in which about 10 UVU students who are veterans participate in a support group at UVU Student Health Services, run by one of the therapists there. I will interview the vets before the group begins, and then after it ends and find out their experience with the group. So far, I have my Literature Review completed, and I met with the Behavioral Science Department Chair, as well as the Dean review my IRB form (application for research at UVU), and should have clearance to begin in a couple weeks here. This is a huge project for me, and especially hard because not many people do (or are willing to help with) a thesis at the bachelor's level.


These are the things I have been regularly involved with during the semester. Needless to say, I am tired.
However, I am ready to begin next semester with some easier classes! I am really glad I could have this semester, though. I learned a lot about myself, my limits and abilities, as well the thrill of always having things to do and learning to prioritize majorly. Next semester I will be taking about as many credits, BUT they are mostly lower-division courses. It will be okay. 15 more weeks and I'm DONE!

Super speedy quick update

I am going to take about a ten minute break from writing papers to write this. Ten minutes. Ready, go: 5:05 pm.

The last couple of weeks have been CRAZY! Wow. Lots of things have happened, both good and bad. Since I must stick to my time limit tonight, I will not describe the things that have happened. But here is a quick summary:

School, Stress, Papers, Meetings, Little Sleep, Headaches, Family and Not-Family (as in lack of family), Concert, Tests, Laundry, Cleaning Checks.

As soon as this week is over, or next week, I will do my traditional blog on my thoughts about my various classes, hopefully much more detailed than the last one!



End time: 5:15 and 52 seconds

Yuck!

We have a problem with these little buggers (ha!) in my apartment. They are similar to little fruit flies. They are tiny things that fly very slowly and all over the place. They seem to spontaneously reproduce, too. They are incredibly annoying and I have little patience with them. Luckily, I have overcome my fear of killing bugs and regularly kill 5-10 of these each day with my hand. They fly very slowly and predictably.

I searched the internet and found out that they are Fungus Gnats. I read a little bit about them and learned the following:
Fungus gnats are those little hopping bugs you see when you water your indoor plants. They are 1/32 to 1/50 inches with black or gray bodies and clear wings. Plants grown under cover are most susceptible. The larvae feed on dead roots and leaves, but sometimes consume tender new roots.

These bugs have been here since we moved in in August, but were not here at all last year. My roommate Nicole sprays the plants for them each week, and they seem to decrease a little each time, but I still kill many each day in my room alone.
Yuck.

Lucy Anne Williams and Emily Nicole Gillespie

Family series:
Mike
Joe
Tara
Jon

And an addendum:

While I am not directly related to these two people, I consider them to be my sisters in a very real sense.


Lucy Anne Williams

Those of you who have met Lucy know what an incredible person she is. Yes, she is an unbelievably gifted musician which is what most people see, but besides that. Lucy is one of the best people I know and I only hope that I can someday be like her. She has such a strong testimony that radiates through every aspect of her life. She is so close to the Spirit and will follow promptings without hesitation to bless the lives of others. She reminds me of President Monson in that regard.
I met Lucy when she was a freshman percussionist at Timpview and I was a senior. I actually remember seeing her in Miss Henderson's class when I came to Centennial to recruit for drumline during my junior year. Miss Henderson pulled me aside and told me about what a fantastic musician she was and that we needed to have her at THS. I made some phone calls and left some messages later but Lucy didn't seem that interested in marching band or THS, plus she would be gone all summer. I got to know her a tiny bit more during my senior year of school through Fall Band, Percussion, Jazz Band, and Symphonic Band, but she wouldn't talk all that much and tried to stay out of everyones' way. It wasn't until I started to instruct the drumline a bit during Fall Band of the next year that I started to get to know her.
Lucy is so tactful and refined. While I have become accustomed to saying things as they are, I have learned from her that it is very much possible to tell the truth and not hurt feelings. I used to joke with her that I didn't have a conscience and that she needed to be my conscience so I could know right from wrong. Whenever I had a doubt about whatever it was I was about to do, I would literally ask myself and still do, "Would Lucy do this?" and then proceed to make the right choices. I would do this in a lot of areas of life, and I found that I began to make some really good decisions. It wasn't until a little while later that I realized why it was so fulfilling to try and be like her and why my life seemed to be so much better– It was because Lucy tries to be like Christ.
Lucy and I have a long-standing tradition of what we call "challenges." It all started a few years ago when I was just getting to know her. Somehow it came up that I had never read the Book of Mormon. She "challenged" me to read it by the end of the year. Me, being the highly competitive person I am, cannot back down from a challenge. Since then we give each other different "challenges" to do to be better people and we compete with ourselves, in a sense. Some examples of these are challenges in church meeting attendance/involvement, personal study, sleeping habits, social life, schoolwork, and thought processes. We both have a long list of challenges we are working on, and whenever either of us accomplish one, we will celebrate by adding new challenges and sometimes ice cream or a movie. Almost any changes I have made in the past 3 years or so have been from these challenges that Lucy has given me.
Lucy serves others selflessly and constantly. There have been countless nights where I was troubled or having a hard time where I would text or call her and she would be right there to help bear my burdens and offer support, even such that she would lose a lot of sleep, and then she would continue to support me through the following days and weeks. She still does this.

Lucy is a smarty-pants. Who pulls off multiple 4.0's in high school? Not me, and I'm living off of my Honors scholarships! Lucy loves to learn and has integrity that I have not seen before. Who will stay up late and then get up at 4am to finish reading the last paragraphs of a Psychology or Physiology chapter that she won't be quizzed on the next day? Who does that? Lucy does.
We have had a lot of good times- inside jokes, movie nights, secrets, pictures, and notes. We sort of have an inside joke that we are the same person- we think the same, act the same, same height, same interests, and on more than a few occasions we have accidentally dressed the exact same on the same day while going to the same place, embarassingly enough... In fact Lucy brainstormed and made a list of all the things that were different between us. It had 11 items on it. I think 6 of them had to do with food tastes.
Speaking of food, some of the best desserts I have ever had have come from Lucy's house- she makes desserts for her family on Sundays and then I feast on the leftovers. Oh so good. She can and does make anything you can imagine. So good.
I hope that each member of my family as well as all of my friends can get to know Lucy Williams better. Every single person who she comes in contact with leaves as a better person. She is that wonderful.

Los Angeles Temple during Fall Tour 2009


Jon and Lucy Prom 2009


Lucy and Amber on Lucy's 18th Bday


Lucy's Homecoming 2009

Fall Tour 2009

Fall Tour 2009


THS Jazz Pillow Concert 2007






Emily "Beetle" Nicole Gillespie

I hope you all know Beetle by now. She is a truly unique person. Her sense of humor is matched only by her family's, and she always brings a light into the room when she enters.
I met Beetle when I was in 7th grade beginning percussion and she was in the 8th grade concert band. I knew her by name, and that was it. My freshman year of high school I decided to try out for softball and made the freshman team but was then moved to the varsity team. I started catching for Beetle a little bit (she was the pitcher, I was a catcher). She was so kind to me and always encouraged me to do my best, and she would joke around with me. I practically worshipped her and wanted to be just like her. I considered her to be the most popular person in the school (which she nearly was) and I was a nerdy little freshman, and yet she took the time to say hi to me and talk to me outside of softball. Our friendship grew and she encouraged me to try so many new activities. She encouraged me to come to church activities more often and really helped me to come out my shell- I was an entirely unsocial being before I met her. Our deep friendship continued after her graduation and then mine and continues today.

Beetle is a frugal individual who taught me how to save money in any situation. I learned through her that we have pretty much all we need already, the rest is just extra. That lesson came in handy last year when I was able to miraculously live off of ~$50 for about 6 months, largely due to the things I learned from her. She is incredibly resourceful and will find a solution to nearly any problem.
When I hear the word "charity" in church or when I am studying, my thoughts always go straight to Beetle. She was always, always the one to reach out to the confused freshman, the friendless senior, the older lady in the ward, the hopeless teenagers in the school system. To this day I do not know of a single person who goes out of her way more to "find the one". She truly gets to know each person she meets and then deeply cares about them forevermore. I remember so many times during high school where she would call out across the busy hall by the counseling office at THS to someone whom she knew did not have many friends. That's just who she is. She cares deeply about the wellbeing of others such that she has devoted her life to serving them. Two summers ago she saved up and went to Uganda for 4 months to serve people there. She then saved up immediately after she got home to go on a mission, where she is faithfully serving the Lord and the people of Chile.
Beetle has a testimony and is not afraid to share it. She is very bold in sharing her testimony, in a way that reminds me somewhat of Elder Holland- she says what she believes and is not apologetic about it. It was her boldness that motivated me to become more active in church and in school.
Beetle is incredibly creative. When we would be bored on the weekends, she would think of the most random objects and then connect them together somehow and then we would do some random activity around those things, and it was a blast. Just the most random things.
Beetle, like Lucy, has always been right by my side to bear up my burdens during times of trials. I used to stay up late on nights that I was troubled sending messages to her through MySpace (this was just before texting became a big deal in our world). She would be right there with me, and call me when she was concerned. She would bring me huge bottles of Guarana in the wee hours of the morning just to cheer me up. I know for a fact that I was not the only person she did things like this for.

Beetle has a passion for learning. She is incredibly smart. It was through her that I found out about the UVU Honors program, which I live off of now. She is majoring in philosophy (gag... ;) ) and loves to think deeply about things. She thinks about almost any subject from almost every angle. It is crazy how deeply she understands things. This is one reason why I was so excited for her to go on a mission- she understands deeply things of the Spirit and has a boldness in sharing her testimony and loves all she meets.

It was so fun for me when we moved into the Honors housing at Ventana at the beginning of the Fall 2008 semester- she lived just down the hall from me and we frequently visited each others apartments. She would often invite herself over early in the morning to my apartment and start cooking breakfast not only for me and my roommates, but then would invite the entire floor. She creates opportunities for others to meet each other and strengthen friendships and does so without reservation.

Beetle has no fear, it seems. We have done some pretty stupid things that seemed like good ideas at the time. For example, riding a bull 3 weeks after my knee surgery. I think we all know what the outcome of that was... I will spare the bloody pictures, but if you want to see the video of our individual rides, let me know!... It has been fun to find a friend with whom I can actually do dangerous stuff like that with and whose parents wouldn't eat her or me alive. I took her skiing once at The Canyons for her birthday- her very first time downhill skiing. We accidentally went down a black diamond on her first run before I taught her how to stop, and after a nasty crash, she got right back up and we finished the day on the slopes. I don't know many people who would be so adventurous.

Beetle is a social creature. Quite the opposite of me, but so it is. She will carry on a conversation with anyone of any age about just about anything. She is not afraid of anyone and loves to get to know random people in the weirdest ways sometimes. She also has great tenacity in stressful situations. While I was working on the Psych floor at the hospital, she took a job across the street at a nursing home while they paid for her to get her CNA certificate. She despised the job on most days because of her coworkers and the administration and how things were run, but always showed up to work with a smile on her face and just loved the people she worked for, even the ones in the psych unit who were sometimes unkind to her. She would tell me of awful experiences (such as when the diarrhea man would get stuff on her when she would wash him, and the mentally ill patients would yell things at her) with a smile on her face and find humor in each situation. She was so easy to be around.

I keep talking about her in "was's and woulds" like she is dead or something. She is very much alive and sharing her wonderful self with people in other parts of the world right now as she spreads the good news of Christ and the Restoration. I love reading her letters- she has such an optimism and humor about her, especially during difficult times. While I do miss her, I am so glad that she continues to be her true self and enhance her Christlike attributes through serving a mission. I could go on and on about the memories I have of the wonderful friend that she is.


Typical Beetle face- boating Summer 2006 or 2007


Laie Temple 2007

Incredible win at PHS Spring 2006


Venturing blindly into white Wyoming- Winter 2007


Tubing crash faces- Boating 2006 or 2007


Just before Beetle is set apart as a missionary


Hermana Gillespie



I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends. I know with all my heart that with both Lucy and Beetle, we were friends before we came to earth and will continue to be friends in the hereafter.

The Little LaFollette Kids!

Just don't tell them that I am applying to BYU...