It's amazing how one person can change in the span of one year. It's really not that long of a time period if you think about it. In fact, it's quite fast. I just deleted a whole bunch of entries that I wrote in this blogdrive exactly a year ago. I had just gotten my first job at Hollister Co. and I thought I was the coolest person to walk this planet. I was so childish, so bored out of my mind, so excited about going to college and being in the college arena.

It's amazing how fast time flies.

In that time period, I have experienced so much more than I have ever experienced within my four years at DeBakey. Of course, you experience things differently than when you are in highschool and yes, you are a different person when you are in high school. For me, graduating from DeBakey, going to UH, was a chance for me to clean the slate and start up where I had previously failed to perform well. I didn't exactly accomplish that goal to say the least. I was blindsighted by college life and what it had to offer me. I think it was for the first time a place where it wasn't just about school. It was about having fun also. I didn't have anyone there to regulate the hallways and tell me to get to class or I'd be "tardy". I had classes that didn't even take attendance.

Needless to say, I definitely abused this privilege.

But, in the process of doing so poorly at school, I did meet new people. My sorority, alpha Kappa Delta Phi, the sorority I rushed for, was one of those eye-opening experiences to sisterhood and friendship in the way that I have never seen it before. I have never had something happen to me and have 20 something girls come up to me and ask me if I was okay or if I needed anything. It was quite amazing to realize that you had all these people around you on whom you could depend on. My pledge brothers, from Lambda Phi Epsilon, the brothers in the fraternity, my pledge sisters. You learn so much from them in such a short period of time. It's amazing how you can throw six random girls together and turn them into sisters. It really is a beautiful thing.

I also matured a lot. Many of the petty little things that I thought were cool or were things that "big people" did and whatnot, didn't turn out to be so great after all. The party scene, for example, is fun for the first few times you go. After awhile, it gets old and dies out, that is if you go too many times in a weekend or in a row! Don't think I don't have fun at parties, I certainly do. But sometimes I do miss the occasional sitting at home, doing nothing, watching the television and sitting in front of a good sad movie eating a pint of ice cream. Drinking, is fun when you're not throwing up and stumbling all over yourself. Being the lightweight that I am, it's safe to say that I can't drink that much. I like to drink, I don't like turning red and I don't feel the need to drink to have fun. I can act wild and crazy and hell, I can act drunk to have fun.

But for the most part, I think I can honestly say that what really changed me the most was being surrounded by death. My pledge brother, Jack, died from alcohol poisoning (one of the major reasons why I try not to get drunk or trashed or let Henry do the same either). It was incredibly heartbreaking to see my pledge brothers suffer from what happened and be completely and utterly helpless to do anything about it. I remember Jack when him and his pledge brothers came down from Austin to visit Houston during Asian-American Festival. He had the prettiest eyelashes I had ever seen and he sang "My Girl" to me. It's something that I will never ever forget. And his death definitely magnified the true extent of human mortality.

After that, my grandfather, Lolo Fred, passed away. That was probably the biggest wake up call for me because it didn't affect just me. It affected my entire family. My mother, who is known for not showing any kind of real emotion, cried her heart out and I didn't know what to do. She was so vulnerable when she was supposed to be the strongest one out of all of us. My cousins were a mess, my sister was a disaster, and out of all it, I felt like I had to be the one that was the strong one. But even I couldn't carry that out. It was so hard being strong when everyone around you had fallen apart. Not to mention the fact that it was so unexpected and the weeks we had to grieve were few. I always remember when Lolo Fred said he'd come back for my graduation from college and now he's never going to get to physically see that. I know he'll be watching from up above but I wanted him to be there, physically, so he could hug me and tell me that he was proud of me and that I wasn't a family failure.

Life has been very different. I have fun, I have my days out. But sometimes, in the back of my head, I still have this nagging feeling that I could do so much more, I just choose not to do so. So, this will be the beginning of something new, something different. And we'll see where it goes from here.