Hello, my name is Grace Valentine, and welcome back to another edition of the I'm Tired podcast.

I'm your host, Grace Valentine.

I'm an author, blogger, speaker, but most importantly, I'm a friend.

Today I'm so excited to have my podcast, one of my college friends who graduated and then literally right after graduation,

she went on one of America's favorite reality TV shows that's been going on for a very long time called Survivor.

So she went to a deserted island in Fiji. She had to do Survivor games, both athletic and mental and social strategy. And she made it to the finale so everyone welcome

Lauren O'Connell she's awesome hello hi babe I'm so excited to be here I'm so excited

seriously I'm so excited to have you too and there's so much I feel like people still don't

know about you even though you were literally on the show to the finale. Yeah, no, absolutely.

I think that the show shows what's important to the show and maybe not necessarily to the individuals on the show, if that makes sense.

No, that's so true.

So what was, like, the audition like for Survivor?

Because, like, here, I guess we were all in our senior year,

like, go to hormones and stuff, and you were secretly

going through all these auditions. I was. I was. Oh my gosh. Yes. So pretty much I would say I

have a very odd audition process in comparison to other people who have applied to Survivor,

mostly because mine was so fast. I turned in my

application video, I think like a week after spring break senior year, maybe. I think I filled it

over spring break and just sent it in the week after thinking there's no chance. So this would have

been maybe the second or third week of March of 2018. Like, there's no way they'll pick me. The next day, that morning, I got an email from Survivor, and it was a questionnaire. And I remember, like, I was eating cereal, and I, like, pushed my bowl of cereal over, called my mom and dad right away. I was like, oh my gosh, you know, thinking this is crazy.

There's no way they saw it, but they did. So I fill out this questionnaire and the next day,

or maybe the next two days, I'm not really positive about the timeline, but I get a call from one of

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