{"id":5033,"date":"2021-11-22T10:11:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T15:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/?p=5033"},"modified":"2021-11-22T10:12:32","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T15:12:32","slug":"grateful-and-thankful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/2021\/11\/22\/grateful-and-thankful\/","title":{"rendered":"Grateful and Thankful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5039 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-3-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Friends of Juliana\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-3-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-3.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/>Ah, November. The time of reflection, gratefulness, and turkey. Once a year every year, Americans gather together with their loved ones to reflect on their lives and all the things that they are grateful for. This is wonderful &#8211; focusing on the positives in your life rather than the negatives is important, and we as humans don\u2019t practice thankfulness enough throughout our everyday lives. This week, I\u2019m going to do my own self-reflection before I\u2019m sitting at my Thanksgiving table.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>1. My Friends<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5040 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-2-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Halloween Juliana and her Friends\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-2-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-2.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/>As cliche as it sounds, I\u2019m extremely thankful for all of my friends this year on Thanksgiving. When I came into URI as a freshman last year, I was a completely different person than I am now. I always struggled with feeling a sense of belonging in my hometown, and after growing up there for 18 years prior I was tired of feeling left out or like I don\u2019t belong. From the first day of college (literally &#8211; we all met within the first week), I\u2019ve never felt that feeling again.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Being surrounded by supportive people is something that is so important, and to say that I\u2019m lucky enough to have a huge group of people surrounding me and lifting me up is so amazing. They keep me entertained, give advice, and have fun with me, and I never feel more like myself than when I\u2019m talking to them.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>2. My Family<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5041 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-300x230.jpg\" alt=\"Juliana's Family\" width=\"300\" height=\"230\">Again, another cliche, but it is true. Outside of my immediate family, I have a big, fat Italian family full of cousins, aunts and uncles that definitely add a lot of spice to my life. Being away from all of my family when I\u2019m in college is definitely hard, but FaceTime calls and social media help keep us all up to date. Being from a large family like that is like having your own little village of people behind you at all times. And when we all get together we\u2019re so loud and have so much fun, with inside jokes flying around everywhere.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>3. Ram&#8217;s Den Chicken Tenders and Fries<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, here\u2019s a less serious sappy one. Ram\u2019s Den chicken tenders and fries are my absolute go-to meal. Nothing hits better than those chicken tenders when you\u2019re running from class to class and you haven\u2019t eaten yet today. Rams Den chicken tenders have gotten me through so much. They\u2019re the most loyal thing in my life, and I know that they\u2019re never gonna let me down. This year on Thanksgiving, this food is at the top of my list. I don\u2019t know where I would be without them in my life.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>4. The University of Rhode Island<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5042 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/Thanksgiving-Blog-4-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"Campus at URI\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\">This is somewhat of an umbrella term for all of the things that I just mentioned, but I really am thankful for URI and all of the opportunities that it has given me to grow as a person and as a student. I feel like I\u2019ve been challenged in all of my classes that I\u2019ve taken so far in my career and I\u2019ve had the opportunity to get involved and to grow through all of the extracurricular activities we have available to students. Even as a sophomore, I don\u2019t feel intimidated by the thought of my future and my career because of the experience I\u2019ve gotten here at URI.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There is so much to be grateful for this year, and reflecting upon the positives in my life is uplifting. Let me know in the comments below what you&#8217;re grateful for this Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4949 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1178\/unnamed-14-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Headshot of Juliana\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\"><em>Hi! I\u2019m Juliana and I\u2019m a sophomore Communications and Journalism student from Brookfield, CT. I can\u2019t wait to continue my passion for writing as a blog writer for InsideRec! Outside of Campus Recreation, I\u2019m also involved in Greek Life, the Good Five Cent Cigar, and URI 101 mentoring. In my free time, you can find me watching the sunset in Narragansett, sitting on the quad with my friends, or in the line at Dunkin\u2019 Donuts. I\u2019m looking forward to writing more blog-style posts and giving advice from my own experiences!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, November. The time of reflection, gratefulness, and turkey. Once a year every year, Americans gather together with their loved ones to reflect on their lives and all the things that they are grateful for. This is wonderful &#8211; focusing on the positives in your life rather than the negatives is important, and we as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4096,"featured_media":5039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2021"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4096"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5033"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5057,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions\/5057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/inside-rec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}