Community Spotlight: Nicki Jones

I am so excited for all of you to meet Nicki Jones, the first of my community spotlights!  She is a chatty lil lady, so grab a snack, sit back, and take a few minutes out of your day to get to know a member of our Flagstaff community.  Read on and take a peek into the life of someone who once was a complete stranger to you:

My name is Nicki Jones, I am 24 years old. I am a Latter-Day Saint of 6 years. I have been married to my best friend for three years. I have my AA in Performing and Cinematic Arts (Eastern Arizona College), a BS in Theatre Studies (NAU) and I am currently working on a Masters in Secondary Education Certification (NAU). I am from the north Phoenix area originally but I have moved around a lot to places like: Thatcher, AZ; Valencia, CA; Florence, Volterra and Guissano, Italy; Ketchikan, AK and Flagstaff, AZ. I love the colors yellow and red, but not together. I always have a craving for spicy Thai food (no, I am not pregnant) and chocolate, but not together. I also have an affection towards dancing and singing, but I can’t do either very well. My dream is to one day teach high school theatre and I have a strong desire to live in Hawaii and become absorbed into their culture someday too. Also, I am a little weird and sometimes eccentric, sorry, can’t help it.

What does a typical weekday look like for you?

Well, I work two part time jobs equaling a total of about 30 hours of work a week. I absolutely LOVE one of my jobs, and the other….well, let’s just say that it ends at the conclusion of the semester and I can’t wait. Ok, so, I work a lot. Oh, did I mention that I am a full time graduate student at NAU right now? Who’s idea was this?! As a result, I spend as little time doing school work as I possibly can because I am trying to juggle it with my home life (cleaning the house, spending time with the Hubbie, etc.) too. So a typical weekday looks like this: Get up at 6:30 in the morning, get ready to go to my first job together with my husband (he only has one), work for 4 hours at NAU, then come home, eat lunch, get ready for my next job. Most of the time when I have a day like this, it ends up being a 12 hour work day. Sometimes, I try to make time for myself by doing yoga….or the dishes. Whichever. By the time I get home late at night, my husband has been watching TV all night waiting for me to come home and sometimes, he makes me dinner, sometimes, I cook. That’s pretty much a normal weekday for me!

What would you say is the one thing in your life that takes up the most of your time?

Work and school. I will be totally honest, I can’t stand my classes and the busy work I am given takes up a lot of my time.

What worries do you have in your life?

I worry about EVERYTHING!! Just ask my husband! It’s probably because I watched way too many movies and too much television as a child, but I worry that when my husband goes off to work every day, that he will get in some sort of terrible accident and I will never see him again. (Ok, so I am letting my crazy out a little here, bare with me!) I also worry about drive by shootings and someone stealing my mail. I worry that my husband will leave me because I am a very needy wife. I worry that I won’t be a very good mother- I worry that I will turn out like my mother (or mother-in-law). I worry that we will be up to our eye-balls in debt for our entire lives. I am constantly worrying about losing that job that I absolutely love because I am just not as good as my boss thought I was going to be when she promoted me. I worry that I will never be able to realize my future dreams as a high school theatre teacher. I worry that if I ever do get my dream job, that I will freeze and not know what to do…….yeah, I worry about a lot of things.

What is important to you?

The number one most important thing to me is my Temple recommend and my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I have lost both at one time in my life, and it was so painful that I never want to feel that way ever again. However, my husband and our relationship is also very important to me. I know that some people, if their spouse dies before them, are encouraged to re-marry for a number of reasons. I know that I will never remarry if that unfortunate event were to happen to me. He is mine and I am his. I don’t ever want to be married to another. He is my world and my home. Wherever my husband is, I am home. And that’s that. I also think that hard work and determination is important to me. I have never done anything or gotten anywhere in life without those ingredients. I also believe that being someone to look up to is important to me, that is one of the reasons I want to be a teacher. I want to be a good example to my students. 

Do you think you live in a kind community?

Do I feel that I live in a kind community towards myself? No. And I say that because I am constantly ostracized for my beliefs at NAU (work or classes). I have very “traditional” values that are not really accepted in such a liberal community such as NAU. Don’t get me wrong, I chose to come here. But I figured that everyone would just leave me alone and not make fun of me, pass judgments or make snide comments because of my beliefs. I figured that because I don’t do that to others, then others won’t do that to me. How naive. On the flip side, do I feel my community is kind to others? Yes, I do. We are a very “green” community here in Flagstaff, and I can appreciate it- mostly. I think it’s great that the community is doing its part to help save the planet. Yeah for Mother Earth! woo.

What are some examples of kindness you have given or received recently?

Um, I offer people rides home from work so they don’t have to walk in the dark………….. I don’t know…..I don’t know how to answer this question. I enjoy being kind to people on a regular basis. My favorite thing to do is to make sure I say please and thank you. How often do we forget to actually thank someone? I LOVE giving genuine thanks because it lets that person (or those people) know that what they have done makes a difference. And, I figure, I appreciate being appreciated, so why wouldn’t everyone else? I have received many acts of kindness recently. For example, Shawn (my husband) did all the dishes for me while I rested and took care of myself yesterday because I wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t ask for my help and did not say anything. Just did the dishes. And this morning, he started doing the laundry without me asking him 

Tell us one confession of a time you could have been kinder—whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

To this day, I still feel awful about the time where I got mad at a server at a restaurant. We had taken my mother-in-law out to dinner for her birthday and our server must have been new but he kept on forgetting things like our food, utensils, napkins, etc. When he finally brought our food, but no utensils to eat with, I mentioned it to him. He apologized and said he would get them. I then said something along the lines of “great because instead of just looking at my food, I would rather eat it, thanks” in the most snarky tone of voice possible. How rude of me!!! I couldn’t believe it! Where did I even get the guts to even say something like that out loud?! Needless to say, I felt terrible and wasn’t able to enjoy the birthday dinner after all. I think we gave him a decent tip to maybe try and make amends.

Can you think of a time when you relied on the kindness of strangers?

Yes I can. When I was living in Italy, after I got my TEFL certificate, I was moving from Volterra to a small town 30 minutes north of Milan called Guissano. Anyways, I had to pick up and move all of my belongings, which luckily fit into two suitcases and a couple of bags. In order to get there, I had to take three different trains. It was about a five hour trip overall. Well, like any really old train station, Milano Centrale is nothing but stairs-lots and lots of stairs. And I was having a lot of trouble getting all of my luggage up and down those stairs in order to catch my connecting train. Every single time, some guy would see me struggling and I had no idea what he would say to me in Italian except I recognized the word “mano” meaning “hand” and I would always say “si, perfavore”. The kind strangers would help me either up or down the stairs with hands full of luggage and then would just walk off after I said “grazi”. And that was it. They didn’t ever expect anything in return. But I will never ever forget how helpful they were to me that day.

Discuss a time you observed someone being inconsiderate to another.

Ok, this may sound like I am ratting out someone, but I am not. I am just answering the question. So earlier this semester, as part of my job here at NAU as the Theatre Department Public Relations and Marketing Coordinator, I am required to ask for volunteers to help put up posters around town to advertise for our shows. Anyways, I asked the cast of a show to help and I got four volunteers. One of the volunteers was all gung-ho about doing the work, that I didn’t think I would have problems. Well, come to find out, this person didn’t do any of the work I asked of them while the other three fulfilled their jobs completely. I kept trying to contact this person and I never got a response about their progress. I know for a fact that this person never did what I asked of them and therefore, let the entire production down. Who knows how many more people would have come to see the show if this person had done what I asked of them and just got their posters out to the community? I feel that their actions were completely inconsiderate to the production over all, especially because this person did not communicate with me at all.

Finally, tell us anything else you can think of that is important to know about you as a person.

Um, even though I have a lot of stressors in my life, I love life. Life is never as bad as I think it is. I live by many mantras but this one I will share: “you are never fully dressed without a smile” (cheesy, right?....I have always loved it!) I am also grateful for the ability to be here on this beautiful Earth at this time. 
  

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And there you have Nicki!