GREETINGS!!!!
Soooo to kick off my very first blog post, I thought I would share some insight as to what I am doing with my life and why I am here, doin what I'm doin. Here ya have it, the behind the scenes and reality of THE Kailey Jackson's life ... (like I said, it's fun pretending I have a billion fans reading this post about me ..HA)
At the beginning of this year I was living in Fort Worth, Texas going to Texas Christian University (still a frog at heart). For those of you who do not know, TCU is a private liberal school of about 10,000 students located in one of the cutest, most interesting, and entertaining places you will visit. I loved basically every moment I had at school. The academics were of course difficult, but the professors were amazing, and you could not beat the class sizes! (My biggest class was 30 people first semester). Here I began my studies in interior design, joined the sorority Phi Mu, and met a handful of the most incredible, loving people I have ever met!!
Going into college, I had NO clue how much my opinions about basically everything would change. Getting into Texas Christian was such a blessing, and as cliche as it sounds, I am a firm believer that we are placed in areas temporarily sometimes, just so we can have our eyes opened to certain things we would have otherwise never been aware of. Being thrown into college, away from my small hometown, and loving/influential parents, pulled me in a billion different directions, tested my faith, and really made me question who I want to be and what I want to do with my life. SIDE NOTE: This may sound EXTREMELY dramatic, but most college students can testify that nearly everything you are taught to not do while living at home, quickly becomes a social norm and is not judged in anyway whatsoever. That kinda freedom sounds pretty nice, right? In some ways it is, in some ways you really have to watch yourself and be sure you keep yourself rooted. For me, this was all overwhelming, fast paced, and confusing at first, but I eventually realized a lot, not only about my surroundings, but where my heart was and what I was longing for.
I realized how important my faith is, what it means to have true friends, how to nurture my creativity, my passion for seeing the world, and money management <--- shocker am I right. Towards the end of the semester I began to get this gut feeling about things. Something did not seem quite right. My emotions and stress built up, and one day while on the phone with my mom talking about the quality of my college experience I was getting, my education, finances, and some other random things, I got mad and spouted off "I am transferring and going to the University Arkansas!" Um what? What is Arkansas? I literally don't even know where that came from. I was heated and it popped into my mind and it flew out of my mouth. After that, the conversation was basically over. I tend to say outrageous things when I get overwhelmed so this was taken very lightly. (Keep in mind I only applied to Baylor and TCU and stubbornly refused to look at public schools when applying for college, so anything public was completely off my radar and very foreign to me). After our talk, I was curious to see why my mind had led me to say Arkansas, so I looked up the University and did a little research about the interior architecture program... to my surprise it was very impressive and offered a very prestigious education for design. From that point I told myself I would keep an open mind about things and decided to take a trip to Fayetteville just to check it out. I honestly loved it. I was very surprised to see how much I liked it, I felt so at home there.
After some truly God-Sent moments I was confident in moving forward with potentially going to school there. I applied as a transfer student, got accepted, received a crazy scholarship, and confirmed my admission all within about a week. What a whirlwind lemme tell ya!!! There have already been so many opportunities presented to me that I do not think I would had ever had in Fort Worth (as much as I love my frog fam). So here I am, about to transfer into a University 10 hours from home, knowing barely anyone, nervous/excited, but most importantly, trusting that there is a special plan for me. Although I am super bummed I am leaving all of my best friends, I stand firm knowing that if it weren't for me having trusted my instinct to adventure somewhere else, I would had never had this opportunity and these doors open for me. There are so many things laid out for me and I am truly excited for what the future holds! So cheers to new adventures and trusting your gut!!!
xx Kailey