People...

baffle me sometimes. I don't understand how some people do the things they do.

I lost my phone yesterday. It was my own fault, really. I left it inside my jacket pocket as opposed to my pants pocket during the bike ride home. It was an easily preventable mishap - which is why I was as upset as I was. I biked back and forth over the route I'd travelled to get home only to realize that it was really gone.
This is not the part I don't understand.
Someone found my phone. She answered when I had my roommate call. She answered my phone, said hello, and promptly hung up. My roommate and I decided to giver her the benefit of the doubt in thinking perhaps the phone's reception cut out. So, we continued to call and periodically stop calling in case she was trying to call us back.
Nothing.
I and my friend have come across a plethora of lost items over the years. I cannot think of one instance in which the thought 'Oh well, it's mine now' crossed any of our minds. This recent experience of mine actually brought a similar instance to my rememberance.
Two of my friends and I were inside a Barnes & Nobles in Baton Rouge when we found a Palm Treo (an expensive, palm pilot remake) underneath a chair cushion. We spent an entire hour inside the bookstore, plotting and scheming, trying to come up with ways we could return this phone.
"Should we turn it in to lost and found?"
"Should we call the last number and see if someone can come get it?"
"Should we leave it here and hope he comes back for it?"
These were the questions we immediately came up with. It seemed a natural reaction to the situation.
This is what I do not understand:
How can something so natural to me as the desire to return an item to its rightful owner differ so dramatically from person to person? Is common decency such a rare thing?
Of course, I don't really beleive it is. I just don't know what would drive a person to keep an item that is obviously lost and do nothing to return it.
The way I see it, though, I am blessed to not understand such circumstances. I am blessed to have no idea what desperation would lead a person to that. I am blessed to be able to replace my phone with only moderate inconvenience. And I am absolutely blessed with the greatest bunch of friends I could ask for.

My roommate texted my phone after we were sure someone had picked it up.
"She is crying and freaking out. Please return her phone. She really really needs it. Really. I will buy you candy if you return my friend's phone."
Another of my friends decided to take it upon herself to make the person regret their doings:
"You are going to hell for stealing a mentally challenged girl's phone she got from charity."
Of course, that's not true, but it made me laugh, and I can't imagine a person who would not be affected by a message like that.

Since my phone has been missing, I have been offered rides to anywhere I need to go by classmates who know I have no car and, recently, no way to call for a ride home.

I have friends who have given up great portions of their time to aid me both in replacing my phone and have allowed me the use of theirs so I could contact sources and still make deadline.

My co-workers and bosses have been more understanding and helpful than I ever would have expected.

As trying and inconvenient my life in general has been since not having a phone, it has brought me to the realization and made me better appreciate that the people I have in my life are present and they care. I am a truly blessed human being and I am eternal grateful for what I have been given.

To the person who took my phone: I hope it has somehow benifited you, and I pray that it will be the last thing you ever wrongfully take. I pray that one day you will realize that you've wronged me and vow never to do so to anyone again.
And while I am still just a little bitter and cannot honestly thank you, I do appreciate what I have much more and that is thanks, in great part, to you.

Weather or not...

It's cold out.
I am not a fan of cold. Typically, I cringe at the very thought.
Not today.
I find myself enjoying it in an interesting way.
I don't particularly like being outside but I like breathing outside.
It's like...inhaling a form of crisp longevity as opposed to the oppressive humidity with which we have been stifled of late.
It's like inhaling life, inhaling change.
And I am embracing it.

Preparation for Life in the Real World

That's what they say college is.
A time of practice, in a sense, so we don't go out into the world unprepared.
I don't believe it.
I do not believe that life in the real world entails quite this amount of insensitivity.

Perhaps, in reality, it does. But I personally need to believe that once I escape this practice stage of college, I will be free of deadlines that coincide with tests, that coincide with projects, that coincide with essays, that coincide with (take over, destroy, ruin the prospect of) life.
I need to believe that when I leave this place, I will leave behind me the days spent trying to accomplish more than can be done in a 24 hour span and the nights spent shedding useless tears and genuinely dreading waking up in the morning.
I have no illusions of "real life" being easy. I expect stress. I expect to be overwhelmed at times. I expect life to come at me full force with no hesitation and no regrets.
What I do not anticipate is having all of this attacking me from five different angles at once.
I do not expect to have to finish an art project whose date of completion has invariably been moved on the day of my math exam for which I am ill prepared while playing phone tag with contacts whose calls I only miss because I'm in class and whose input I must obtain before I can have any hope of making deadline.
I could be wrong.
All this and worse could very well await me outside of this institution. In which case, I honestly don't know what I'll do aside from taking part in some serious prayer.
For right now, though, for the sake of my own sanity and well-being and for the sake of those poor souls who have to put up with me on a daily basis, I am choosing to believe that this will not always be my life. That this "preparation for life in the real world" is not so much real world preparation as worst-case-scenario preparation.
I am choosing to believe that this, too, shall pass.