Posts

College

Now that the end of my college process is approaching, and there’s only about a month left for me to finalize my applications (ahhhh), I’ve been thinking a lot about what going to college is actually going to look like. College, in every aspect that I’ve thought about it up to this point in my life, is a place that you get to. An aspiration, a motivation for working hard in school, something to stress about. It’s not a place that you actually are. But as January 1 st looms closer, my thoughts about college are less about ACT scores and supplements and more about the next four years of my life. One thing I’ve realized that shocked me is that this is (probably) the last year of my life that I’ll be fully living at home. I’m sure I’ll be back for holidays and the summer for the next couple years, but it won’t be the same. I’ve gotten so used to the house that I’ve grown up in being the place that I live: various aspects of my childhood still scattered around my room, my parents b
2 comments
Read more

I love Harry Potter

In honor of the new Harry Potter movie coming out later this month, I thought I would write my blog post on how much I love the series as a whole. I started reading the Harry Potter series when I was pretty young, maybe in second or third grade, when reading about the dementors in Prisoner of Azkaban was still scary enough to give me nightmares. Even now, years later, the books still hold an aspect of magic (haha get it) to me that brings me back to them all the time. Not only has Rowling created an incredibly vivid wizarding world, with schools and creatures and spells, she has woven a story of friendship into that world. Reading it as I’ve gotten older, I also appreciate the societal problems that she discusses in the books, like the problematic appearances of “pureblood” wizard superiority, and the violent, hateful actions of Voldemort and his followers. Although there is a lot of fantastical stuff in the wizarding world, the conflicts that Harry and his friends face, and their
7 comments
Read more

be nice to yourself

Some of the feelings/experiences I’m describing in this blog post most likely apply to a lot of people reading this. Uni (while I love it) is an intense, stressful place to go to school at times. I wanted to write this blog post to be honest about how I have struggled, and how it’s okay to ask for help or not do everything right. The perfectionist in me often tries to hide the times when I’m struggling. Not only do I like to do everything well, I like to seem like I’m also succeeding without much effort (yes I know this isn’t a good mindset to be in.) This put tons of pressure on me, and made me feel kind of isolated at times. However, this year I’ve started to change my mindset. First semester senior year has been hard for me so far. On top of the pretty substantial amounts of homework we’re assigned in our classes, there’s also the ever looming college application deadlines to meet. Not only is it a ton of essays to write, each essay seems like it could make or break my fut
4 comments
Read more

A Girl's Best Friend

Image
A happy, post-bath Polar We got my dog Polar the weekend before finals my subbie year. My brother and stepdad were both out of town that weekend, and my mom was busy taking care of my little brother, so for the first 3 days he stayed with us I spent basically all day and night with him. We had a lot of bonding time that first weekend and I fell in love with his goofy personality and calm demeanor. Polar is not your average dog. First of all, he weighs at least 130 pounds which is a lot bigger than the average retriever. He has a huge head and body, but proportionally really short legs. I’ve had people tell me that he looks like a sheep before. He also hates going outside, going on walks, or getting in the car. He, however, loves exploring our yard and carrying around whole trees that we’ve cut down, or trying to take logs out of the burning fire pit (he’s not the smartest dog). He's always super excited to take a bath. Polar also loves his big sister, Lily. Lily was m
Post a Comment
Read more

Donut Lake

Image
Mohawk "Donut" Lake For those of you who haven’t heard me rambling about hiking, or the seen the many mountain pictures on my Instagram feed, I love Colorado. I’ve gone at least a year for as long as I can remember so I have many memories of hiking adventures. But the one that stands out the most to me is Donut Lake. Our expedition to Donut Lake took place one summer in Breckenridge when I was around 12 years old. My younger brother was less than a year old at that point and couldn’t go on long hikes, so one day my older brother and I went for a longer hike with just our family friends Justin and Sheena. Justin and Sheena were barely in their thirties, tons of fun, and two of the people I looked up most to in the world. I was so excited to go hiking with them.   The morning of the hike, we devoured a dozen donuts between the four of us, drove up to the trail head and got started. The hike was supposed to be an easy two mile walk up to a series of lakes. The first
4 comments
Read more

life is a maze

I was hanging out with my five year old brother tonight when he asked me if I wanted to do a maze in his coloring book. At first I said no, but when he insisted (“There’s enough Katherine! We should share the mazes), I agreed. He handed me the book and a blue crayon to do the maze with and sat down next to me to watch. At first I didn’t use the crayon at all: I studied the maze—starting at the end because I heard somewhere that makes it easier—until I was sure that I knew the correct path before I started actually drawing on the page. My little brother was so confused why I didn’t start right away, and then impressed when I completed the maze correctly “on the very first try!” He had no idea that I had actually plotted out my path beforehand, so when it actually showed I would be perfect. All of his mazes were abstract compositions of crayon lines, trailing back and forth countless times until he found the end. Now I wonder why I so naturally decided to take the approach I did; w
5 comments
Read more

Amanda

This summer my grandpa and one of his cousins organized an Ahlgren family reunion at a beach state park in Connecticut that he and his family had always gone to when he was a kid. My parents divorced when I was little so for a long time I didn’t really have a strong sense of family. I never experienced the big family get togethers and vacations that some of my friends told me about. Our grandparents would visit, or we would visit them, but for the most part my family was thinly spread out around the country so I would go years without seeing my uncle or my cousins, and at the same time my immediate family, while all in the same town, was divided between two houses. The reunion was the first time in at least 8 years that all of my close relatives (at least on my dad’s side of the family) would all be in one place. Although the Saturday of the reunion was rainy and 60 degrees—not exactly the best beach weather (but I still swam!! Who am I to pass up the ocean)—still around 100
3 comments
Read more