10 Things To Do Before I'm 30

So I was laying out at the pool today after a decent run, thinking about how I have been 24 for over a month now, and I am approximately 3 months away from being done with school forever. Then comes the perennial priority of finding a job.

But there's lots of other things I want to do after I finish school as well, and I'm giving myself a 6 year deadline. Cause I feel like life is a whole lot less fun once you reach your third decade. Or at least it's a different kind of fun, and by fun I mean the responsibilities you get when you have to start settling down and growing up for real.

10. Surf in Hawaii
Although I've lived in Florida the majority of the past six years, I haven't ever found time time to take up the sport. I'm already a fan of anything on a board, particularly involving a wake or snow. And it's not like the waves on the Gulf or Atlantic side are that impressive. I guess the closest I got was skimboarding in Cocoa Beach one time.

And I've always wanted to visit Hawaii. It's just one of those super touristy places that you don't care is super touristy and want to visit anyways. I think it would be more fun to live such a laid-back life like the chicks in Blue Crush. And I could definitely eat coconut and pineapple for the rest of my life.




09. Skydive in Australia
Ok I've been absolutely infatuated with the land down under forever. See, my dad would only let us rent videos from the library when my sister and I were young. So there were pretty much two options: Disney and National Geographic (I guess the Lion King kind of counted as both).

Anyways, I generally preferred to watch a cheetah chase and capture a gazelle (even though I still felt a little bad for the gazelle) than the standard singing, dancing princess. So I watched this NG series of videos specifically made for kids, called really WILD animals with this little globe mascot whose name really was something like Globey. I guess the "Wonders Down Under" was the one that started my lifelong obsession with one day visiting what I thought was the coolest place in the world.



Later I became and still am a fan of The Rescuers Down Under and Crocodile Dundee. I still want a koala for a pet. They seem pretty low maintenance, high off eucalyptus leaves all the time.

Anyways, I swore I was going to study abroad there in college, but dual degrees and being president of everything kept me on campus all 4 years. Then I found out I had the possibility of interning in Sydney through MAS, but considering I already have my last quarter all set to intern at Sapient, I doubt that's going to happen.

And the skydiving part? For some reason, pretty much all of my friends that have visited any part of the continent all did it. I want to continue the tradition.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to marry a guy from there just for his accent. I'm just kidding. Kind of.



08. Learn Another Language
I've come to learn that I am definitely in the minority being unilingual in Miami and especially at Miami Ad School. Growing up where I did in suburban South Carolina it's not considered imperative to learn a second language because most people there never leave the state, let alone the country. I only took two semesters of Spanish in high school because (a) it was required and (b) it sounded more like English than French or German.

I also picked up a little Deutsch living in Hamburg for 3 months. Even though most everyone there speaks English, my friend's mom who I had to communicate with frequently since I lived at her house, was not one of those people. She was fluent in German, of course and Spanish. Not so much English. So we kind of spoke a hybrid Gerspanglish. I further improved my Espanol by talking with her nephew who lived in Spain but was at the house a lot since it was summer. He was six. He was already fluent in German and Spanish and starting to learn English.

Depending on how ambitious I feel I would love to learn an Asian language like Japanese or Mandarin, but I will probably end up buying the Rosetta Stone series for Spanish (or just tuning in to Dora the Explorer more often) since I already know a little bit of vocab and it's probably the most useful for me.



07. Become a Better Designer
Thanks to my Marketing major, I spent all four years of college learning about balance sheets, the product life cycle, market research and management strategies. I could do it all, but I always had more fun picking the color schemes for pie charts and designing the Powerpoint slides for the presentations as opposed to the carefully prepared content that we were actually being graded on.

I'd say I'm not that bad of a designer considering I just learned Photoshop and Illustrator a little less than 2 years ago. I'd rate myself about a 6.87 on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being Paul Rand or Chip Kidd or Stefan Sagmeister. I always knew I wanted to be an art director. It just took being a Marketing Major, Communication Major, Media Intern, Public Relations Assistant, Corporate Marketing Intern, Copywriting Intern and student at Miami Ad School for two more years to get there.

Trading in my Cosmos and Elles for Prints and CMYKs and HOWs is a good start. I've also invested in a Wacom tablet and check/comment on several design blogs. Finally, I've vowed never to use Comic Sans or Papyrus or Curlz MT. Ever.



06. Own a Cat
It's a simple goal. I've wanted my own little furball since I graduated college, but it's hard to keep track of myself and my inanimate stuff, let alone a pet when I'm moving every few months. Hopefully as soon as I secure a job and apartment for an extended period of time, this will probably be the first thing to be crossed off the list.

I don't know much about the cat right now, but I know I am adopting it from a shelter or the Humane Society and its name will be Fluffernutter. Until then, I get my feline fix on I can has cheezburger.




I am now exhausted and it's nearly 3 AM so I'll finish part deux tomorrow. (I had a couple hours of sabbatical because one of my friends stopped by to enjoy a comedy buffet of Jim Gaffagin, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny.)