Best Year Of My Life

The title of this is very scary for me to "say", but is also one that makes me very happy. If you know me, you know that high school has definitely not been my most favorite experience. One girl in newspaper always looks at the rest of us astonished when we complain about school because she loves it, and she doesn't understand how we don't. 

Senior year has been the best year of high school for me because of a few different reasons. 

I'm Happy. I can honestly say that I'm genuinely happy for the first time in a long time. I have my amazing family, who have been there for me no matter what. I have also met some amazing friends and rekindled some friendships from back in elementary/middle school.

I'm Involved. I'm not huge on school spirit, I'll wear my spirit wear on the occasional Friday and participate in a few spirit days but I don't go all out. I have found my own outlets to plug into and get involved in at school and they have made all the difference. You don't have to be a cheerleader or in StuCo (unless you want to be) to be connected to the school. The one nice thing about going to such a large high school is having a lot of clubs and extracurriculars open to me. This year I'm on the newspaper staff, a DECA member, and a part of the Timberland READ Club.
READ Club Christmas Party
I've Minimized My Stress. I've come to realize over my past four years in high school that the stress I put on myself isn't worth it. I've given myself this year to breathe a little bit and enjoy my time and friends. It's funny because last semester I had my highest GPA ever, yet I was the least stressed out.

I'm Traveling More. One of my biggest passions in life is traveling (thanks dad). This Thursday I'm heading to LA with my friend Megan and I cannot wait. We've been planning this since the beginning of the school year and I honestly can't wrap my head around the fact that it's already here. In mid-March I'll go on a small trip to the Lake of the Ozarks (still Missouri but it still counts as traveling) for the Missouri DECA State competition. At the end of March, my family is going to Florida for a cruise. Finally, I will *hopefully, fingers crossed* be going to Florida again to visit my friend Natira for my 18th birthday, in July.

I've been wanting to write something like this for a while and I believe I'll be expanding upon this post as the school year continues to unfold. Hopefully you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in my next post.

Until next time,
Taylor xx

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DECA State Bound!

So I've been a little M.I.A. recently and I just thought I would update you on the craziness that is my life currently.

 If you follow me on social media you'll know that my DECA partner, Bethany, and I qualified for DECA State on Wednesday. Districts was held at the St. Louis Mills Mall. Bethany and I competed in two events- HTOR and HTDM. We worked on our HTOR project from September until December, with a presentation over it in class in January. HTDM was our "back up" event because we knew HTOR was going to be a really full event as well as a very competitive event. We placed third in HTDM and qualified for state!! The entire time I didn't want to get my hopes up and was thinking we weren't going to make it. The moment our DECA advisor called our names up on stage, Bethany and I freaked out. However, when we heard we got third, we thought only the top 2 made it to State so we assumed we didn't qualify. After we got off stage we figured out that we did and then had a second freak out/celebration. 
HTDM stands for Hospitality Services Team Decision Making. According to the DECA website, HTDM is described as "marketing and management functions and tasks that can be applied in hotels, motels, lodging services, related convention services, and related food and beverage services." 
Bethany and I will be heading to the Lake of the Ozarks to compete in mid-March and I'm so excited. We've worked super hard all year long to prepare for competition. It's also really exciting because what I'm doing in DECA is similar to what I'll be doing in the future.

 I wanted to say congratulations to any of the other DECA State qualifiers, too!

 Until next time,
Taylor xx
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