Head in the clouds, feet on the ground

  Hey everyone! Thankfully, this week hasn't been as busy as past weeks. I think I got the majority of what needed to be done out of the way already, so I was able to take some time to rest and handle other important things in my life. With all luck, I'll know where I can intern in the fall! Fingers crossed! We were going over parenting this week, reviewing effective and ineffective parenting techniques. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and different lifestyles, so it can be difficult to say that -blank- is the correct style of parenting. At the same time, children are different, even within the same family, so there's really no end-all parenting tricks that hold the answers to all of parents' questions.  One thing I want to address is the idea of choice. Even from a young age, children are faced with choices every day, from what to wear, who to talk to, how to behave, and other perhaps minor things. As they grow older, they are faced with bigger and more conse...

  Hey everyone! I might've mentioned before that the semester I'm in is quickly coming to a close. There's 3 to 4 weeks left. What a strange semester this has been. There's been unexpected changes and obstacles, but there's also been great opportunities for growth and connecting with others. There's still time left, and I still aim to post on this blog from time to time once the semester is over but I'll still be sure to transmit all I can about what I've learned from this class til the very end! This week our focus was on Finances and Fatherhood, two things that I consider to be very close related. One thing stood out to me the most and I want to address it first. Someone in the class mentioned that far too often, someone judges their worth as a Father by their ability to provide financially. This makes sense, as it's easiest to see how much a man is providing by their income. It's an easy benchmark. I do feel, however, that a man's ability ...

 Hey everyone! Weeks are really starting to fly by now. I've had a lot to do in recent weeks, as the semester I'm in is quickly starting to conclude. Lots of projects that happen to coincide with one another. It gets pretty easy to let things stack up, and I'm struggling against letting these things accumulate. Easier said than done, but for sure I've got my work cut out for me right now. Many people do, so I hope everyone's able to get things done.  Anyways, onto what was discussed this week. We spoke a lot about communication this week. To set the base for what I'm wanting to share, here's what we focused mainly on: 5 Secrets of effective communication (EAR) 1.        Empathy – The Disarming Technique – Find the truth in what the other person is saying. 2.        Empathy – Empathy – Try to see the world through the other person’s perspective. 3.        Empathy – Inquiry – Ask gentle que...

Hey everyone! Well, this was an interesting week to be sure. It had it's ups and downs. I was under the impression that I had a week and a half to prepare, rehearse, and polish a presentation that was worth a lot of my grade. Turned out I had two days. That didn't go super well... but there's a chance for me to redeem myself with the next and final presentation coming up in a couple of weeks, so I'll be sure to do my best and learn from this mistake. Otherwise, I'd say it was a good week! Very busy and very rewarding in many cases.  Also I bought a longboard so that's cool.  For this post I want to focus on something that my dad always told me: A Dean never says they can’t. I would say that I can’t tell you how many times I heard that as a kid but that would be breaking the rule so I won’t. My father oftentimes told me that whenever I told him that there was something that I couldn’t do, something that was difficult for me to do. You know what? He was always rig...

Week 8 – Expectations Hey everyone! Gotta be honest, this has been a great week. I’ve had some very productive days this week, and I’ve spent some great times with friends and family. Recent events and developments just have left me pretty happy, got to be honest. Hope you’ve all had a great week as well, and I’m sorry if you haven’t. Now, onto this week’s material. I’ll be honest with you upfront; it deals with sex and intimacy in marriage. If you’re sensitive about that, then feel free to gloss over this week’s post, but I really do hope you’re comfortable talking about that at this point. We talked about physical intimacy for the first half of the week. Class this week did an excellent job informing me of some key differences between men and women pertaining to this subject. For example, men and women are very different in the moment when making love. Men are a lot quicker to go through the motions of arousal, plateau and climax, whereas for women it takes a lot longer to go t...

 Hey everyone! Well, I can at least say that this week was better than last week! For one, I haven’t been sick all week so that’s definitely a plus. Also, I had a major change in time budgeting which has proven highly beneficial. I was working an early morning job up until now, and though it did help an awful lot, I felt that I struggled more than I should to keep up. Quitting that job was a tough decision. After all, you can’t just wish for money to appear… or can you…? I’m looking at you IRS. I know I submitted my tax return forms this year. For sure though, a much better week this week than last. Not a whole lot happened, but I had a lot of fun throughout the week! Anyways, onto what was shared this week. We only had class once this week, due to the holiday on Monday. Did enjoy that day off, was super nice. We spoke a lot about dating, courting, and marriage, specifically in that order. The topic was about the phases of dating, and how there’s definable phases. Very intere...

Hey everyone! So if you can't guess by the title, or by my own life's experience, I definitely paid a lot of attention this week. I mean, what young man my age who isn't married or dating someone wouldn't want to learn about dating, am I right? As always, I definitely feel that I learned a thing or two this week. Before I get into that, as I usually do I'd like to update you guys on how I'm doing. I feel that this helps keep my soul in what it is I'm talking about. Otherwise this would just be doing homework , which can be easy to feel like sometimes. This week has not really been one of my better weeks, if I'm being honest. I felt a bit under the weather , and that much has been frustrating to me. I feel like I'm a pretty social person, so when sickness or other illnesses come and interrupt that, I have a hard time typically. So this week has been a lot of staying at home rather than going out and not doing much. Can't say it's been the ...

 Hey everyone! This week was probably one of the slowest weeks of my life. I work early mornings and man. It was hard to make it through these weeks. I felt super unmotivated during work and in turn, during classes. I don’t like being tired in class and falling asleep so I’m pretty sure I’m going to change things up in order to avoid that feeling of perpetual tiredness. It also makes me feel super unmotivated. Definitely want to change things up. Anyways class this week was interesting. We spent the first half of the week on the differences between men and women and the second half on homosexual attraction. To be honest, I want to focus on the first half. Not because I don’t want to talk about the second half, but I might have been half asleep, maybe even ¾ asleep during all of it. (Professor if you’re reading this, sorry.) I think I’m starting to understand myself a little better through this class. Our first half of the class talked about some key differences between male a...

  Hey everyone! Before we get into what it is that I had prepared for today, I wanted to just give a quick update on myself for you guys. I’m here at the end of the second week of the semester and I’m doing pretty good! There’s a few adjustments that I need to make to my schedule, but overall things are going good. I do miss my family a bit. My sisters and brothers back home make many efforts to reach out to me, which I appreciate. The issue is that sometimes I just don’t have the time to spend with them, being that they’re so far away from where I am. It can be rough, but I know that what I’m doing here is worth the difficulty. Anyways, I want to start today’s actual blog post with a disclaimer or two. First off, my views do not wholly represent the views of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though I am a member of the church, I am not authorized to speak on their behalf in any way. If there’s any differences of opinion you’d like to voice about my posts, feel f...

Lemme introduce myself. I'm Caleb! New to the whole blogging scene. Truth be told I was asked to make this blog as a part of a course I'm taking in my studies. Even so, The idea seems pretty cool to me!  I've used social media for a long time now, like a lot of people have. I will admit though that this is very different. Feels a lot more like a journal than a post on Instagram. In that way it feels a lot more personal, ya know? As mentioned I started this blog for a class that I am taking this semester, called Family Relations. You can probably guess what the class is about. I myself come from a family, as many do. I've got a wonderful father and a wonderful mother, as well as a good number of brothers and sisters. Truth be told, they're a lot of the reason why I'm actually taking this class. I want to understand more about them as my family. My professor has taken time to explain what the class is about, and I'm pretty sure that I'm very much looking f...