Today’s Assignment: publish a post you’d like your ideal audience member to read, and include a new-to-you element in it.
Today I’d like to talk about someone that I care about a lot– my sister Carly.
Me and my sister Carly (left).
Carly is 17 years old. She’s three years younger than me (I’m 20). She is beautiful, talented, and works really hard at her job as an ice cream scooper and in school. She has a lot of friends, gets along with mostly everyone, and is an amazing singer. She knows how to do winged eyeliner (which to me is pretty impressive considering how little I know about makeup), how to access her bank account and how to do a K turn while driving. Carly’s also almost done with her junior year of high school (tomorrow’s actually her last day).
She’s just entered the period of her life where all anyone ever talks about is college (I’m still in that period, and I can confirm that it’s the worst). Right now, the only questions that people are asking her are along the lines of:
- Are you done with the SATs?
- Have you visited any colleges yet?
- Where are you thinking about applying?
- What colleges are you interested in?
- What do you want to study at school?
- What do you want to do with the rest of your life?
- !?!? college !??! your future !??! LIFE !?!?
Which are all pretty terrifying questions for a 17 year old, if you ask me. How are you supposed to know what to do with the rest of your life when you don’t know all that it has to offer? I went through the same thing when I was 17, except I didn’t have an older sibling to walk me through it all.
Carly texted me last week and asked me about preparing to apply for college. I’d made the mistake of assuming that she knew what she was doing, which is what I think a lot of parents do who aren’t Type A and on top of things (even though I am Type A and usually on top of things). I just have to say this– no 17 year old knows what they’re doing, especially when it comes to this stuff. Carly and I made a list of what she needs to do before the end of summer and what I can help her with, which includes registering for SAT2s, writing her college essay, finishing up the common app, and coming up with a list of five colleges she’s planning on applying to.
Working on all of this stuff with her made me realize that she’s grown up a lot. Before I moved out of my mom’s house and went away to school, we weren’t all that close. I mean, we were close, but not as close as we are now. I love her so much and every day I find new reasons to be proud of her. But we used to fight all the time about stupid things like clothes and friends and responsibility. My senior year of high school she was in the ninth grade, so I would see her literally all the time. I tend to be a bit overemotional and excessively needy, so I was afraid that I would embarrass her or something in front of her friends.
Me going away to school has made us a lot closer. We text most days and video chat all of the time when I’m away. When I’m home, we make a point to see each other, whether I pick her up after school or visit her at work on the weekends. She is my best friend, and I love her. She’s just in a scary and tentative period in her life right now, and she still has a lot of growing up to do.
This is tough stuff, people! Have any of you had similar struggles with the college application process?
For today’s Blogging 101 post, I chose to write about my sister and how she’s dealing with having to prepare for college because it’s an example of the type of thing that I usually try and write about on here. I wanted to show you guys that this is who I am and this is how I write, if you haven’t read through my posts and seen that already.
Yes, of course I’m going to write about books and movies and pop culture, as promised. But I’m in the middle of reading a book so I can’t write about it yet, and the last movie I saw was Love and Mercy a couple of days ago and I feel like I still need the time to process it before I write anything about it, if I decide to write anything about it at all. 🙂
I kind of cheated with my new-to-you element– I added a photo to my post, which I’ve done before. But I did add a caption to it which I’ve never done, so that’s new I suppose.
I hope everyone’s having a fab day.
Amanda Under Construction 
Your sister sounds like a wonderful person. Sisters are awesome. My two are my best friends. The good thing about sisters is no matter how much you used to fight over silly things, they’re there unconditionally. It’s great growing up when you arrive in that period in which you don’t fight any more, at least hardly ever, and you just end up with this amazing friendship which will last forever. 🙂 Loved this post!
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Aw thank you, for your compliments and for reading my post! Carly is wonderful, and I agree that sisters are awesome. It’s great that she and I are at that stage where we get along. How old are your sisters?
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Mine are 24 and 20. I have two brothers as well, BIG FAMILY 😉 they’re 19 and 14 🙂
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Oh wow that is a big family! How wonderful!
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Su
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Sorry! What I mean to say is…
What a cute picture Amanda! Haha. I somehow posted my last comment prematurely. It’s been one of those days, forgive me!
You are soo right about many things in this post. When I was 17 I thought that I was going to go to nursing school at UNCW and then join the US army as a nurse. Let me tell you what I really did… I went to UNCW, I quit the nursing route for business, I graduated with a marketing degree, and now I’m a medical device rep selling IUDs. Not what I would have predicted but I wouldn’t change a thing!!
So happy to hear you and your sister are best friends! That is the best kind of friendship. I’m sure she looks up to you!
– Caroline
http://www.sweetcarolinebompbompbomp.com
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Hi Caroline!
Thank you so much! We took this picture on by the Hudson River right during my Thanksgiving break from school last year. 🙂
Thank you for sharing– I’m going to pass your story on to Carly. Your experience is so valuable and really shows that you never know what your path in life is going to be like– and I’m so glad that you’re living it up!! xxx
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Awesome topic to blog about! I can definitely relate, but with my brother instead. I’m 23 to his 20, so we are a little more removed from that situation but he’s transferred once so it still comes up.
Despite everything, we’re still in it together so-to-speak. Will definitely be checking out future posts, so keep it up!
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Hi Eric! Thanks for checking out my blog and reading my post. I’m glad that you can relate to this topic as an older sibling too, and as an older sibling whose brother has had to deal with applying to school!
Looking forward to reading your blog posts! 🙂
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Amanda, you two are adorable. Really good post. Please, please, please, continue to encourage your sister to explore her options in college. That’s what those first two years are for – exploring “general education requirements” like history, philosophy, physics, literature, art. You never know what topics could catch your attention and change your life! Besides, she can always major in something “practical” and minor in something off-the-wall! 😉 Good luck to both of you!
Oh… and @sweetcaroline – I went to UNCW, too! What a small world!
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Oh my gosh thank you so much! 🙂 I’m definitely going to encourage her to expand her horizons at school. She is passionate about so many things and is such a smart girl, and exploring those subjects that are gen eds will really help her figure it out and help her focus on what she wants to do. For a while, she wanted to be a professional actress/singer, and she loves participating in plays, but she put that aside because it didn’t seem practical. For now, I’m just encouraging her to do what she wants to do and be happy. Thank you so much for your advice, I’ll be sure to pass it on. ❤
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See, that’s the thing… you just never know what the future holds. Maybe someone is desperately seeking, I don’t know, a physicist who can sing. Or an historian with acting chops so she can do educational videos. You just never know, so follow your passion!
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What a gorgeous photo of the two of you. You are very lucky to be such close sisters it could easily have gone the other way given how close in age the two of you are. Good luck to your sister getting into the university and the course that she wants.
You’ve written this so well – the honesty in your writing just continues to flow :).
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My relationship with Carly is really important to me, and a lot of the time I think that we were lucky to have been born so close in age to each other. I’ll be sure to send your good wishes along to her. 🙂
Also, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you complimenting my writing. Thank you. ❤
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It’s so great that your sister has someone to support her and that will ask her “how are you?” instead of “where have you applied?”. I also am the oldest and had to figure out the application process and what program I wanted to apply into. It’s hard work! Your sister is lucky to have you :).
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Thank you Juliette! I love my sister very much, and what you said means so much to me. ❤
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Amanda, this is so sweet! I wish I had a younger sister to mentor and cherish.. or an older one to help me with everything and give me advice! Instead, I got stuck with an older brother who still teases me. LOL. I love him but I don’t think I could handle Eddie all the time, so it’s good that he moved to Europe.
Wonderful post. I look forward to reading more!
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Thank you Emeline! And thank you for reading my post. 🙂 I feel like sibling relationships are special because you feel comfortable enough to tease each other, even though it’s not welcome all the time. Hope the reading went well yesterday, I’ll see you this week at Writopia! xx
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