Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.

I'm a working girl! I'm about to jump into my fourth week as the Communications & Marketing intern at the Greater Des Moines Partnership. Three weeks in, I feel like I have a good idea of what my summer in this position will look like, and I definitely think I'm going to learn a lot this summer!

Ever since accepting the position — and especially since starting the internship — I've been thinking about all of the internship experiences I've had in the last few years. My internship experience actually dates back to senior year of high school, when I landed not one but two internships for the year. I thought it would be fun to take a little stroll down internship memory lane and highlight the positions I've had.

My junior year of high school I applied for a program called School-to-Work. School-to-Work allowed seniors to take a term-length careers course and then enter the real world as an intern with an organization related to their career goals for the rest of the year. I was so excited to see my name posted on the instructor's window announcing that I had been selected with less than fifty other students to participate in the program, out of over 100 applicants.

Look after my heart—I've left it with you.

Happy Valentine's Day! Ah, the day of love. I love love, don't you? Love in any form just makes me so happy. Today is such a beautiful day: the sun is shining, I'm done with classes by noon, and it's a day to celebrate love! While it's important to celebrate love every day, many people take the opportunity to do it even more today, so why not join them? I want to celebrate my valentines—yes, all of them because a girl can't have just one valentine! There are so many things in my life that I love, and I want to recognize those things today.

{Now Playing: Spotify's Valentine's Day Love playlist—When did they add Ariana Grande and John Legend's version of "Beauty and the Beast" to Spotify?!}

Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

2016 was...interesting, to say the least. Many people hated 2016; granted, a lot of negative things did happen this year. A large number of influencers and artists passed away, an election divided our country, and violence and hate continued to tear our world apart. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat it: it was a tough year for a lot of people. But I've never been one to focus on the negative. I always try to see the positive, especially in difficult situations, so I'm looking back at the positive highlights of my own 2016.

—To start 2016, I started this blog! It's been so much fun to do, and I have some great projects in the works for the new year.

—My nephew and godson turned one, and I got to spend another incredible year watching him grow and learn. He also said my name for the first time this year (both as "Rah-Rah" and as "Sarah")!

—I got to go on two amazing trips to New York City. The first was in April with Ed on Campus during which we visited a number of magazines and got to visit with editors. The second was in July for Her Conference, which featured great speakers and workshops. During this trip I also bonded with three Her Campus Iowa girls, and they are now some of my best friends.

She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.

It is a time to refresh! There are many reasons to let go and relax a little bit right now, which always helps me to feel refreshed. While I'm not the biggest fan of change, as you know, endings and beginnings can be good and exciting. I've got three exciting and refreshing changes happening right now, so I wanted to share a little bit about them with you.

The semester is over

Another semester at the University of Iowa has come to an end. It's hard to believe that I've finished five semesters at Iowa and only have two left. Having only two semesters left technically makes me a senior, and I've got many mixed emotions about that.

This semester went by so fast, and it may have been my busiest semester yet. While I took fewer semester hours, I also had an internship this semester. Logging on and working during those set hours during the week meant there was less time during the day to do homework, which meant I was doing more of it at night. Overall, my internship was an amazing experience, and I'm so happy that I did it. It's hard to find internships to do during school, so being able to do it remotely worked out perfectly. I didn't post much of my work throughout the semester, so if you want to check out everything I wrote for Her Campus (nationals) during the semester, you can check out my author page.

Her Campus Editorial Internship

• This Is What Rory Has Been Doing Since 'Gilmore Girls' Ended
• The Internet *Really* Doesn't Want Disney to Whitewash Mulan in the Live-Action Film
• Marc Jacobs Clearly Doesn't Understand What Cultural Appropriation Is
• Lady Gaga Will Release Her 'Perfect Illusion' Video During the 'Scream Queens' Premiere
• There's A New Zodiac Sign That's Messing Up The Entire Calendar
• Teva & Ugg Have Teamed Up On A New Shoe & Now We Have Nightmares
• We Need to Talk About That Huge 'This Is Us' Reveal
• Kim Kardashian Calls Herself a Taylor Swift Fan

Maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays of the year. Of course it's because of the food. Who can resist a Thanksgiving feast?! But as I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the bigger meaning behind Thanksgiving: giving thanks.

Gratitude is so important for so many reasons. Not only is it important to be grateful; it's also very important to give thanks to those around you who you're thankful for. Make your thanks known!

There are so many amazing things to be thankful for, and there are just as many ways to give thanks for those things and people and experiences you are thankful for. This year I am thankful for...

Explore your interests and major to pinpoint what your aspirations are.

Her Campus is one of my absolute favorite things on the planet. It's a publication that has helped me grow as a writer and editor. It's an organization that has helped me develop my leadership skills. It's a brand that promotes just good old girl power. I absolutely love Her Campus.

Last week my relationship with Her Campus developed even further, so I decided that for the blog this week, I'm going to look at the evolution of my relationship with Her Campus.

In a previous post, I reflected on my experiences as a contributor who first joined Her Campus Iowa and my first semester as Campus Correspondent: Editor-in-Chief of Her Campus Iowa. I wrote that post in February, which was a little into my second semester in this position. I'm going to pick up my story where that post left off...

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.

Sunday I moved back to Iowa City, and that day marked a day of a lot of things. It marked beginnings and endings alike.

It marked the end of a great summer.

This summer was such a great one. I spent every day with awesome kiddos. It was my third summer nannying for the Nigg family, so at this point, it didn't even really feel like work. It felt like hanging out with friends or even siblings. And we did some fun stuff! We went to movies and Living History Farms, swimming and hiking, and just hung out. This was most likely my last summer with the Niggs, and it was a great last one to have with them.

I also went on an amazing trip to NYC this summer in case you didn't know! It was full of fun sightseeing, an amazing conference, and quality time with new friends. I couldn't have asked for a better trip. Fingers crossed I can attend the conference next summer!

We need to stop telling women, "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor."

What a weekend! I'm back from my second trip to NYC for the year, and it was so, so amazing. After attending Her Conference, I'm feeling refreshed, motivated, inspired, and confident.

Her Conference is the annual conference in NYC put on by Her Campus. As you probably know, I am the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Iowa chapter of Her Campus. This year was the fifth annual Her Conference, and I am so glad I went! Four of us from our chapter went, and it was such a great bonding experience for us.

The first event of the weekend was Friday night at Rebecca Minkoff's store in SoHo. At the event we got to mingle with girls from other Her Campus chapters across the country. It was fun to look around the store and chat with the other girls. Then we actually got to meet Rebecca Minkoff! She was so kind and so sweet, and it was a great way to start off the weekend.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

Getting Involved

I joined Her Campus in my first semester of college. I wanted a place where I could write but nothing that would be too rigorous right at the beginning of my college career. I considered writing for The Daily Iowan and even got accepted to work there, but three articles per week seemed like a little too much to jump into at first.

Her Campus seemed like a good place to start out writing, and it also seemed like a good place to meet some awesome girls who shared my passion of writing. So I joined.

At first, it was a little outside of my comfort zone. I was going to meetings with girls who I didn't know and who all seemed older and more experienced than I was. Sure, I had a couple of high school internships on my resume, but these girls were in college, and that just seemed like another whole playing field.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.

The wall above my desk in my room at school this year.

Last year, when I was a freshman in college, I was very, very homesick. I spent the first couple of weeks just sad and unmotivated. I missed home and my family and my friends.

Then one day, my aunt sent me a quote: “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Theodore Roosevelt said that. I kept reading it over and over again. I kept remembering it in the couple days that followed.

Then it hit me: I should make a quote wall. I should gather quotes that inspire me and motivate me and hang them up in my dorm room.

So I did it. And I felt better. And that Theodore Roosevelt quote was right in the middle. Not only was I inspired every time I looked at them and read them, but they just made the room so much more cheerful. They turned the blank white wall above my desk into something colorful and bright and happy.