Okay, this is waaaaay overdue! But here it is! My experience going behind-the-scenes at a runway show in Dallas.
Watch and see what it’s like prepping and running a fashion show!
Fashioned for Freedom is an annual event that benefits My Refuge House in the Philippines.
I had this week booked. My schedule was lit up like a Christmas tree. I tend to do that to myself.
But this week, on top of my normally busy schedule, I started a new job that required many hours at the beginning of the week to train, I was stressed out about a couple assignments at school not going the way I wanted, and I had a really cool social media job set for this weekend.
Stylecon is a national convention where bloggers, makeup artists, stylists, etc. meet from all around the country. It’s supposed to have a couple thousand attendees at the Dallas one this year. And guess what? I was contacted to run their social media for the weekend! The Stylecon people looked at my Instagram when I applied to volunteer for the event and decided to have me run their Instagram and Snapchat for the event. You can imagine I was pumped! (This goes out to the haters that think social media is useless…)
Also, I had a friend coming in this weekend. My plan?
Run the social media for a national convention, not miss a single hangout my friends were having (which is a lot, let me tell you), go to an SMU football game with my family, not miss my Friday class, pick up an 8-hour work shift, go to church, and study for a few hours. All in one weekend.
Was I stressed?
Yeah, but what else is new?
Did all this happen?
Pshhh, no.
Times like this, God likes to tell me to chill. Because I think I am Superwoman and can handle everything all the time, and apparently I can’t.
So I got sick.
I tried to shake it off, but after one of my work shifts I decided to lay in bed, and I kinda just stayed there.
I called my mom, who conveniently lives 40 minutes from SMU with no traffic, and she came to bring me medicine. But after seeing that I had a fever or whatever, she decided to bring me home home.
And here I have been for three days. Just lying here. I had to cancel on 9 people in the last two days. And Stylecon.
I was bummed.
But you know what?
I was forced to chill. I needed that. I need to learn to stop.
Being sick shouldn’t be the only thing that gets me to lie down and do nothing. It’s healthy to just sit and breathe every once in a while, you know?
It sucks sometimes, but there are days that I really need to just stop. And breathe. And think.
I’m slowly recovering, and it helped that my best friends risked their healthy lives to visit me and bring me food, but I realized a few things while sitting in bed:
Hope. Heartbreak. Drama. Plot twists. Australia. You can find it all below, in the story of how I came to attend Southern Methodist University.
Today was the first day of school for the semester.
I am attending Southern Methodist University.
If you knew my story, you’d chuckle. When life gets ironic or takes unexpected turns, especially for the good, we tend to chuckle. I am chuckling.
Halloween. October 31, 2014 was the first time I set foot on the SMU campus. Anyone who visits can tell that it is easily one of the most beautiful college campuses in the US. But I also fell in love with the Arts school. Long story short, after my very first college tour, I was hooked on SMU. As a high school sophomore.
When it came time to enroll, I got in. The acceptance rate is 49%, so I pretty much had a half and half chance.
The problem?
The price.
That’s fine, right? I can just get a scholarship!
Totally! I received a scholarship of $30,000!!! Super exciting, right? The problem:
SMU’s undergrad tuition fees are around $50,000 a year. Plus, they require students under 20 to live on-campus, so add another solid $14,000.
I did not have that money. My parents did not have that money. So off to community college I went, kicking and screaming.
The thing is, Collin County Community College actually turned out to be an amazing experience. I had a bunch of friends by my side in the same boat, and made some new friends along the way. I got to help start a Bible study group on campus and soon became its President. Attending community college was one of the smartest decisions I ever made because of how much money it saved me, and it was a crucial stepping stone into adulthood. I was also so grateful for that extra year I lived at home. It really prepared me for moving out.
But what now? What’s the plan? What happens after Collin?
That’s the question, isn’t it. That’s the thing with community college. You feel like you have multiple senior years because in the end, you still have to figure out where to go to school.
With some dual credit courses under my belt, I could transfer from Collin after a year. So I had one year to decide where to go. Sounds like enough time, right? It should be, but not for me! No sir, it was approaching the summer and I still had no idea where I was going. I applied to 7 schools- UTD (University of Texas at Dallas), UNT (University of North Texas), TCU (Texas Christian University), Rice University, UT (University of Texas), Tufts University (a school in Boston), and SMU. I was basically waiting to see what the cheapest option would be, because money.
Slowly, financially things got narrowed down. But they got narrowed down too much. Everything was too expensive. Pretty much every school gave me a decent amount of money, but not enough for me to afford going for three years. Even UTD, the cheapest school I applied for, barely gave me money so it was still pricey.
And then I got the call.
I was in Austin for a Leadership Training week, having a deep convo with one of my girls, when the phone rang. Out of the 100+ students that applied for a transfer scholarship, 25 were being chosen to come in for an interview. One of them, being lil’ ol’ me.
I got pretty much everyone I knew to pray. I had elders in the church on their hands and knees praying for this interview. So you can imagine the stress, huh?
No sleep for Isabel.
Only 10 would be chosen to receive a full-tuition scholarship to SMU for 5 semesters. That’s basically like winning $150,000.
My sister had her driver’s test that morning (talk about STRESSSSSS in the Arcellana family household), so my friend Lacy drove me up for my interview.
(Photo taken right after the interview, when I was feeling pretty good about myself.)
I got the email soon after.
I didn’t get the scholarship.
I read it over and over and over until my tears blurred my sight. “We regret to inform you…”
Why was I crying? I’m not a very emotional person. But I am a very driven person with very high expectations of myself. I’m also a dreamer. SMU was my dream school. I had worked my butt off at Collin so I could just have a shot at this exact scholarship. I worked so hard. And what was it about my interview? Am I just not likable? What did I do wrong, what did they want?
I also didn’t know where else to go. It was June by this time, and I had no idea where I was going to live in 2 months. My mom and I crunched numbers over and over. I would have to go into a lot of debt (which we were trying to avoid like the plague) to even go to UTD, which was not even a school I really wanted to go to.
At one point, I started planning on moving to Australia. People thought I wasn’t serious.
I was serious.
I was already emailing friends out there and figuring out where I’d live. But my mom wanted to try for SMU again. She said we might be able to afford it if I commute the 45 minute drive, since I have some scholarships. So we started negotiating for me to live at home. And that’s when my SMU advisor asked me to come in.
Two weeks after I had received that heartbreaking email and the day before my birthday, I was back at SMU. At the same intimidation building that was fancier than the White House.
I was led into the office of Jennifer Lasagna, and when I sat down she put a letter in front of me.
“I’ll let you read that.” She said.
I did read it. Again. And again. And again. (Actual footage of me that day)>>>
I finally decided that I probably forgot how to read and did not understand the letter. “Wait, what?”
She laughed. “You got the scholarship!”
What a turn of events, am I right? I’ll take that as a birthday present.
As it turns out, I was chosen as one of the 10 all along. This whole time, there were 4 or 5 SMU staff members emailing back and forth because some of my credits weren’t transferring and they weren’t sure if they could accept them yet. (Because of me, SMU is having to change some of their policies on AP transferring credits.) They had to tell me no just in case things couldn’t be worked out.
So there you have it! I was absolutely blessed with one of the 10 North Texas Community College Full Tuition scholarships!
The way I see it, God was like “I’m going to humble you first and make you rethink your whole life and really depend on me. Then I’ll show you my plan. It’s great, I promise. We’ll all laugh at this someday.”
Here’s to hard work paying off, God waiting until the last minute to reveal his plans because it helps my heart, and random life plot twists. Here’s to doors opening and closing right when they need to.
Pony up! I’m a Mustang!
Here it is! The third installment of my Europe Travel Diary 2015! (I know, it took me that long to upload this haha!)
This footage was taken when my family and I visited my aunt and uncle in Vienna, Austria in November. My mom helped me film this, so you’ll see me a lot more in the footage. Hope you enjoy!
Filmed with the iPhone 5c and iPhone 6.
The links to the other two Europe travel diaries are at the end of the video.
Now there’s bucket lists, and then there are reverse bucket lists. Things in your life you’ve already done. But I’m going to take it a step further and present you all with my reverse accidental bucket list. These are things I didn’t think would ever happen until they actually did happen. I think it’s fun to sit down and realize all the random cool things that have happened to you. If you want, think of some from your own life and comment a list!
I’ve always wanted to go to England. I’m kind of obsessed with all things British. So I was so excited to finally get to visit in November! My family and I spent 4 days in London, (including a trip to the Harry Potter studios!!!) and it was everything I hoped it would be. Here’s a little snippet of my time there. Videos on our trip to Paris and Vienna are coming soon!
Watch out, awkward silences.
P.S. I made these up all by myself 😉 you’re welcome
That’s all for now, folks! Let me know if you’d like more, there’s a lot where that came from! Thanks for reading!
The day we got to the camp, the Hope Youth Corps leader told us that we had 5 days until we had to actually run a church camp. There were 30 kids from 2nd to 10th grade coming to stay with us for 3 days, and we were totally in charge. (Obviously, there was adult supervision, don’t worry, but we called the shots.) 22 teenagers were supposed to be the counselors, lead lessons and activities, feed the kids, and we had to plan all of this on our own while doing the 8-hour-a-day blue-collar labor. This was our big second task. Kids.
We thought it was impossible. At least, I did. I was shocked that they were giving all these responsibilities to us. We had just gotten to know each other, now we were expected to run a camp? We were just teenagers!
But we had no choice. We had to pull off this camp for the kids. We each thought of our experiences with church camp and wanted to give someone else that great experience. I was so surprised at what we were capable of. I think the world has such low expectations of teenagers sometimes, and things like this reminded me of how much of an impact we can make with God and each other.
We had a blast those three days. It was great. It felt like one big play date. We got to know each kid and spend time with them, play with them, teach them, talk to them. It felt like a big family at the end of it.
Yes, there were smores. What else would we do in the woods in Alaska?
On one of the weekends when we drove down to Anchorage, we got to climb Flat Top. Being from mountain-less Texas, I had never climbed a mountain before. (The picture above was taken probably when we were a third of the way up. ) I’m not going to lie, it was super hard. But I’m glad I did it. I’ll spare you a cheesy mountain analogy.
What’s a mountain adventure without a motivational speech? This is my friend, Nathan, giving the best mountain speech I’ve ever heard. Yes, he was very intense.
Here’s my friend Lizzy doing one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.
And here’s Peter wearing my backpack. Real men carry Vera Bradley.
Here’s a few of my favorite random pictures from my amazing trip. (Click to view full image)
Thanks for being great, Alaska. ‘Till next time.
Recently, I participated in a mission trip with my church called “Hope Youth Corps”, specifically the Alaska chapter. I flew to the largest state in the US with two of my close friends.
We were trying to take a selfie on the plane, and someone decided to join. I don’t know him. We called him Jorge. Guess he couldn’t stay away from the camera. Anyway…
One thing is for sure, Alaska didn’t disappoint when it came to scenery. Pictures will never do it justice. That didn’t stop me from snapping away, though.
I had no idea what Alaska had in store. I didn’t know it was going to be two of the best weeks ever.
These are some of the 22 volunteers (aged 15-21) that became my family for two weeks. We lived together in cabins two hours away from Anchorage and all civilization pretty much.
No showers, no electricity, no running water, no heaters or air conditioning. We only saw bathrooms on the weekends when we drove down to Anchorage. You know it’s true friendship when they still love you after you haven’t taken a shower in a week. 
We worked hard. The first week, we served with manual labor, building and improving a camp for kids. Blood, sweat and tears was an accurate way to describe my experience. But it felt good. I didn’t realize what I was capable of until I was pushed to my limits, lifting wood and shoveling rocks from 9 to 6. I ached all over but loved it. 
It felt good to do something had for a good cause. We built beds and tables, dug 7-foot-deep outhouse holes, maintained gardens and cleared trails in the woods, built a shed, moved rocks and gravel, and more. And that was only the first week.
The camp we worked on became very dear to my heart. It was a privilege to contribute to it during that first week.
Posting about the second week soon! Stay tuned, thanks for reading!!!!
I wasn’t the only blogger on the trip. Check out my good friends Hannah and Lorena’s blogs! They put up some killer stuff!
Lorena (blogger) : Le Unexpected Traveler
Hannah (vlogger): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVEShNYzk6aS-aJMQ3QPRQ
Hey everyone! Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I don’t think I really posted anything in maybe a year… Whoops! I’ve been mainly focusing on my instagram account, @artsyrosebud, which now has over 1400 awesome followers (link in the menu bar!). I decided to see how my wordpress blog was doing since I haven’t gone on it in a while, and was surprised to discover people have been looking at it. So I figured, why not start posting again? Anyway, back to business. If you can call it that.
This happened a few months ago, but I figured I’d tell ya’ll about it anyway. I entered my drawing- the one with the girl in a sunflower field- in Congressman Sam Johnson’s Congressional Art Competition. The pieces entered were displayed in the McKinney, Texas city hall art gallery. There were 84 pieces in the show by students from all over Collin County.
I didn’t win. I got second place. The first place winner got tickets to Washington, D.C., and her work is being displayed at the US Capitol for a year. I’m trying again next year, but for now second place is great. I got a fancy certificate, a fancy US flag that had been flown over the US Capitol in my honor, and like I said, my work will be hanging at the Congressman’s fancy office for a year. One of my friends joked that I got second because the Congressman liked my work the best and wanted to keep it to himself.
See? Fancy.
I read up on Congressman Sam Johnson, and found out he is one of the few members of Congress who fought in combat. During his 29 years in the US Air Force, he survived 7 years as a Prisoner of War, and 42 months in solitary confinement. He is 84 years old.
All in all, it was pretty successful I’d say. It was a fun night, some of my best friends and my family came to support me. They’re pretty awesome.
isabel notes 
