Weekly Goals #33

Happy Monday, dollface! It has been so long since I've made weekly goals because of my blog break towards the middle of the month. On the subject of that blog break, can I just say that it was exactly what I needed? I felt a little guilty taking a break + I think those of you who are bloggers understand the feeling of not wanting to let your readers down. But at the heart, blogging for me right now is a hobby, and I would be crazy to let a hobby take up valuable time that I didn't have during exam week. So thank you for allowing me to feel okay leaving the blog for a bit + thank you for welcoming me back!

Last Week's Goals:

(Otherwise known as, the goals I made more than a month ago and haven't followed up on.)

1. Finish my review book + exam prep. Done and done! Well, my exams are over so I sort of have to be! But I do feel like I ended up spending enough time reviewing...even for that devil of a class, European History! I feel pretty confident that I did well on all my exams, but I won't get my scores until July 7, which sucks a ton. Hey, at least by that point I won't care if I don't ace 'em.
2. Finish reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. You know what? I didn't do this, and I'm totally okay with that. This book sounded super interesting: old bookstore, mystery, crime. But you know what the first hundred pages were about? This random guy's computer programming. Whaaaa?! I just wasn't interested. I'm a big believer that if I'm 75 pages in and still not interested, it's not a good book for me. 

This Week's Goals:

1. Make a to-do list every morning + actually get things done. As of last week, I'm officially on vacation! This week (until my graduation on Saturday--yay!), I have almost nothing planned. I plan on spending this week exercising, cleaning, organizing, practicing calligraphy and generally doing productive things. But I'm totally one of those people that spends their first week of vacation lounging around eating Cheetos. Except I'm too broke to spend money on Cheetos. So I'm hoping that this goal will help me actually do stuff--even if it's fun stuff!
2. Read at least 15 minutes a day. During the school year, I really just don't have much time to read. So when summer rolls around, I have the time, but I'm not in the habit. When I was at the beach with my boyfriend H last weekend, I started a book that I've wanted to read for ages called When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish. Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds. 

What are your goals for the week?!

Blog Post Organizer (Printable!) + Genetics 101

In the last few months, I've started getting more organized with my blog. I've been keeping a place in Evernote for post ideas and using Google Calendar to plan posts ahead of time. But what I haven't found a good way to do is organize my ideas for a post ahead of time. Usually when I come up with a post idea, I'll have a couple phrases, bullet points, or pictures in my head that I want to make sure I include. But I tend to write only a proposed title, like "blog planning" in my Evernote. Then, when I go back to write it, I have no idea what I intended to write about.

I made this printable to suit my own needs, but I hope it will help you as well! You can print a bunch of these pages and make a binder of them. Whenever you have an awesome post idea, just pop it on one of these pages with a couple tags to help you organize it and a couple notes on content. When you're ready to write the post, just work through the page and remember to promote it on link-ups and social media. Then you're all done! How about that?!

I also use the tags section to help me organize my post ideas by category. Here on Call Me Sassafras, I blog about design, positivity, productivity, music and science. On every planning sheet, I'll write a broad category along with my other tags. Then I sort them out between those five categories. So when I'm getting ready to crank out a post, I try to look at what I've posted recently. If I've posted a lot about design, I'll look under another category for a post idea. 

That's about it! Feel free to use and share as you please, lovebugs! Just right-click on the image + click 'open in new tab' for the big ol' file. 

I hope that helps y'all organize your blog as much as it has helped me! Now, I get to do my favorite thing everrrrrr--share a science bit! :)

Today, I want to share a little bit about genetics. For every trait that you have (think eye color, blood type, etc), you have two pieces of information called 'alleles'. Each allele is part of a gene. Alleles can be either dominant (shown as R) or recessive (shown as r). In most genes, if you have an R allele and an r allele, you will show the dominant trait--the big R wins out and 'hides' the little r trait. If you have RR or rr, then you will show the respective trait. You get one allele from your mama and one from your dad. This is why you may look more like your mom or your dad but still have the same amount of genetic information from both parents.

So for example, pretend that brown eyes are the dominant trait (remember that's R!) and green eyes are recessive (r!). Pretend that my dad is RR and has brown eyes and my mom is rr and has green eyes. I would have to be Rr because I get one allele from each parent. But, the R allele is dominant. So even though I would be born an Rr, I would have brown eyes like my dad. 

Isn't that cool?! Over the coming days, we'll be talking about genetic disorders like Down syndrome and sickle cell anemia. It's gonna be cool, guys! 

Peace out, nerdballers.