A Day in the Life of Me, "That Girl" + Realistic Annotations/Reflections
- May 6, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: May 10, 2022
Here's a quick look into my day living life as "That Girl". Except, everything in RED comprises of events and details that I didn't want to originally reveal. Completed on Friday, May 6th, 2022.
Wake-Up Routine
TIP: Wake-up before 9am for a healthy and productive morning!
In actuality, I let my alarms ring from 7am until 8:30am. I woke up just to take this screenshot and went back to bed. I would estimate that my actual wake-up time was around 9:15am. This was because I couldn't fall asleep the night prior and ended up getting around 5-6 hours of sleep. Because I didn't sleep well, I was not in the best mindset in the morning and contemplated pushing back the assignment for another day.
As someone who "hates mornings", however, a 9:15am wake up time is still earlier than the vast majority of mornings that I have.
Most of the "That Girl" videos that I watched for inspiration included a picture of what time they woke up (usually around 5am) as well as a lengthy self-care morning routine. I tried to emulate that with this blog post.
Once I woke up for the day, I made my bed! I then headed over to the bathroom for my daily routine:
Cleanse face with cleanser and water
Apply toner
Moisturize
Put on contacts
I really only ever make my bed if I have company coming over, but I found that I actually enjoyed this part of my "slow morning routine"
In my room, I carefully chose my workout outfit and changed out of my pajamas. I prepped this outfit the night before to find a workout outfit that would fit the "that girl" aesthetic. Because I felt the pressure of following an aesthetic, I took about 8 photos of my outfit laid out in different lightings before finally choosing this picture for the blog.
Once I applied my makeup, I was good to go!
These two photos I chose were the "best" out of 17 photos that I took before being satisfied.
Breakfast and Quick Workout
I headed to the Ikenberry Dining Hall for some breakfast staples. While I was there, I ran into a friend.
TIP: Never skip breakfast! It's important to have a well-balanced start to your mornings.
This was actually the first time that I got breakfast all semester. The dining hall usually closes for lunch by the time I am awake.
On the Menu:
Cantaloupes, Pineapple, Strawberry Yogurt + Nuts, Oatmeal + Almond Slivers, Walnuts, White Raisins. and Brown Sugar, English Muffins + Peanut Butter, and Almond Milk
As a nutrition major, it often irks me that the vast majority of the options offered by the dining halls are not nutrient dense foods. These foods are the result of ignoring the more popular deep-fried breakfast options and choosing a-la-cart options.
We then decided to head over the Activities and Recreation Center (the ARC) for a quick 30 minute run on their treadmills.
I tried out the viral Tiktok "Doja Cat Treadmill Strut" playlist. You start out at a speed of 3 and increase the difficulty with every song!
I actually found that starting the speed at the 3rd setting was a bit too intense for a warm-up. So, I started at 2 and worked my way up from there!
I usually don't work out on the treadmills because I take group fitness classes at the ARC. However, due to the proximity to finals week, very few classes were being offered and none that fit my schedule for today.
It was a nice surprise to run into my friend in the morning as I usually don't see her too often. It was honestly pretty energizing to wake up "early" and work out. By the time I usually wake up (around 11am), I had done more today than previous full-length days.
My friend and I also rented out some badminton rackets for a round of volleying.
It had been a long time since either me or my friend played badminton (3-4 years!), so we actually spent most of the time figuring out how to play badminton before we both had to leave for our respective meetings.
Productive Meeting and Smoothie
I headed back to my dorm (Wassaja Hall) for a quick Zoom meeting at noon and picked up a mango smoothie from the Caffeinator on the way.
I ended up only drinking about a quarter of the smoothie because I forgot about it while paying attention to the Zoom meeting.
Lunch + Downtown Champaign
After I wrapped up the meeting, I met up with two friends at the Bread Company for lunch!
TIP: You NEED to try their Baked French Onion Soup!
I was so full from eating breakfast (I usually never eat breakfast) that I couldn't finish my lunch. It was still really good though.
After, we drove to downtown Champaign and visited a few places:
The Literary- read some books and drank some chai tea lattes
Plant Mode- perused through some plants
Suzu's Bakery- tried out Japanese-inspired baked goods
We actually only spent a minute or two inside Plant Mode taking pictures for this assignment. Everything inside was too overpriced to buy and we would all be moving out of our dorm rooms/apartments soon.
Group Study Session
TIP: Studying with friends keeps you motivated and on-track
After saying my good-byes, I headed back to campus to meet up with a couple other friends for an anatomy finals study session.
Although I did have fun during the group study session, there were a few details that I purposely chose not to share. I was an hour late for the study session and got lost in the rain because I couldn't find the entrance to the information sciences offices. My phone also died. I usually avoid studying with friends because I always get distracted and am unproductive. At this study session, all I did was download notes and chat for ~1.5 hours.
My friend let me borrow her phone charger, but she accidentally forgot it with me. I had to drive to her place to drop it off later.
Winding Down for the Day
Once I got back to my dorm, I ate a quick dinner at the dining halls and set-up the projector for a quiet night-in.
A part of my day that I purposely didn't mention at all was that I was on duty. I didn't include it because I thought that my RA job didn't fit the carefree aesthetic of "that girl" and RAs often have a bad reputation.
Being on duty meant that I had the Wassaja Hall duty phone and was "on call" all day. That means, if I received a call, I needed to get back to Wassaja ASAP and deal with the incident. I got lucky all day and wasn't called for an issue. However, I got back to the dorms after my study session and was a bit late for my 7:00PM duty round.
Around 9PM, I received a call on the duty phone when I was exiting the shower. It was my boss telling me to go down to the 1st floor of Wassaja because a resident was leaving piles of feces in the hallways. When I got there, I cordoned off the area while my boss called for maintenance. Safe to say, that doesn't exactly fit the "that girl" lifestyle.
I was in bed by midnight and slept to the sound of rain hitting the window.
Since my last duty round is at 1AM, I wasn't able to get to bed until after the round was completed. However, I was so tired after the long day that I fell asleep almost immediately.
Ultimately, I felt that although I was definitely a lot more productive than most other days, I was hyper-aware of maintaining the "that girl" aesthetic and documenting my every action. I also felt as if I was un-prepared to actually follow the lifestyle. Although I had scoured "that girl" material online, I was unsure of how to actually follow the lifestyle, as there was no nuanced"that girl" tutorial. The "perfect" life of online was a lot different from my actual day and there were definitely unexpected occurrences that I had to deal with (i.e. running late all day, spending lots of time on attempting to take aesthetic pictures, the incident in Wassaja).
A few takeaways:
Staying mindful of a healthy lifestyle is something that can help create better habits
There will be unexpected occurrences, but that's okay
Things don't have to be perfect
Photography is hard! Rely on your friends for better shots.
Thanks for keeping up with me all day!
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