College

Posts from my rediscovery of this blog during college. Oh, the early-twenties wisdom I will share…

Selecting a Library For Optimal Productivity

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I have learned that I cannot do homework at home.

It’s just too hard to focus in a place that I associate with relaxation and hours of catching up on Hulu Plus. And I don’t want my apartment to become a place that I solely associate with homework, because then the stress and anxiety will just follow me home. So I decided to do the typical student thing and go to the library.

But I don’t like my on-campus library – half the shelves are empty, and the study carrels are carved up with generations of initials and crude drawings of genitals, and someone’s cell phone inevitably goes off and someone else is always laughing and it just doesn’t feel like a library. The other campus library, for engineering and science majors, though not actually exclusive to those areas of study, is little better.

The Honors library, on the other hand, is just quiet enough, with cozy window seats and cushiony armchairs and soft lighting. But it’s also incredibly small, and depending on the number of strangers in there, it can feel a bit like you’ve intruded on someone else’s class, which makes it difficult if you want to study with a friend. We can’t all have study partners like Elle Woods when she’s cramming for her LSATs.

My third and final option, then, was the public library downtown. This required driving, which was just as well since I left my laptop at home and would have had to drive home and back anyway. Off I went, laptop in tow, and I settled into a comfy chair in a back corner of the library surrounded by windows and the pleasantly gray day outside and I read my homework and made my discussion post and worked on my resume and just like that I had done everything I needed to do except go shopping.

Lesson? Libraries are magic.

Feminism at the Mechanic’s

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As I’ve already told you, my car broke down a few weeks ago. I chronicled the stress of the experience in the previous post. But now that I have some emotional and temporal distance from the incident I’ve thought about it more and managed to identify one contributing factor to my general anger at the situation.

I realized that part of my stress came from the fact that, subconsciously or otherwise, I had been conditioned my entire life to believe that if I, a lone female, entered a mechanic’s place of business, they would think me gullible, naive, and an easy target. Somewhere deep in the dusty file labeled “Car Stuff” in my brain, I had noted that if I ever needed to visit a mechanic, I should take a friend – no, a male friend – with me so that he could lend me some credibility. Mental images of scruffy men in oil-spattered coveralls elbowing each other and saying, “Heh heh” played over and over in my head. So I obeyed my socially conditioned impulse and took my male friend with me.

I have no idea where this lesson came from. It only just surfaced now, so I don’t remember if my dad or my mom or some well-meaning authority figure once told me that I should never go alone to a mechanic’s “as a girl” for fear of getting swindled. I asked my boyfriend about it, and he expressed surprise that I would ever feel that way. He had no idea what I was talking about. My female friends, on the other hand, yelped, “Exactly!” before I had even finished describing the situation. None of us could figure out where we’d learned it, but there it was – something in the air of the society we live in had taught us that we as females would not be respected as clients paying for a service in a traditionally male-centered industry. And we believed them.

When the mechanic initially only directed questions at my male friend, I resented it. I butted in to the conversation as if to say, “I’m here too.” Of course, once the process got under way and I became the real client in that I had to approve all the specific repairs and ordering of parts, everyone was perfectly nice. They explained each problem they found without condescension, gave me reasonable estimates, and bantered with me each time they called. Needless to say, they were not, in fact, rubbing their hands with glee at the chance to rip off some clueless female. They were skilled professionals performing a task for which I paid (or rather, my dad paid) a reasonable price.

And yet, even after this, I wonder if I’ll have the confidence, when I’m in a new city on my own, to waltz into a strange garage without a male friend at my side. It’s funny (in a sad kind of way) how deeply sexism runs.

Car Troubles

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So my car broke down this Saturday.

Well, it didn’t so much break down as start shuddering like crazy and need an absurd amount of acceleration to climb the hill to my apartment complex with my roommate and I cheering it along the whole way. I got it into a parking spot, turned it off a little more violently than I probably needed to, and promptly dragged my boyfriend out to look at it. He couldn’t find an obvious problem besides, well, the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light on the dash, but we obtained a sensor thingy that informed us a cylinder was misfiring. Which can apparently mean several things. But it’s a start.

So then it was Sunday, and I called my dad, who will actually pay for the repairs because I am a broke college student and the vehicle is not actually in my name, and there were no mechanics open because it was Sunday, so I just caught a ride to church and sort of pushed it to the back of my brain.

So then today came, and I realized several things. One was that I had to walk to work for the first time this year, a feat which ended up only taking me 20 minutes and was actually probably the most peaceful part of my day.

Another realization was that I now had to select a mechanic, get someone to tow my car to said mechanic, and inform the lovely people at the mechanic’s of what was going on. Somehow.

My natural instinct was to ask advice. Normally I would defer to my dad, who would take the car in wherever he chose and return it to me in a few days good as new. But he is on the other side of the state. So I asked my boyfriend, and my friend who’s good with cars, and my boyfriend’s brother, and our neighbor who had given me a ride to church. They all had varying levels of expertise, of course, but I trust their judgment and knew that they would genuinely care about whether or not my car continued to function.

The problem is that every time I came up with what I thought was a workable solution based on the information I had, and then shared it, someone would pipe up, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” No, I didn’t know what I was doing, but everyone seemed to have a different opinion on how I should resolve the problem, and since I had asked for their advice, I felt like I had to take those opinions into account.

I have spent today in this weird chasm of conflicting feelings. As much as I told myself I am a 20-year-old woman who can navigate situations like these just fine on her own, I was, in fact, dependent on other people’s advice. Ultimately my dad had to call our insurance company to get a tow truck for me (because yes, I legitimately never thought of calling them to deal with this) and even then Lightning ended up being the one who told the guys at the shop what was going on with my car. Not that I really minded, but I hated being the stereotypical girl who needed to be rescued from car troubles. Despite my desire for independence, I couldn’t seem to stick with the choices I kept making.

This is the first time my car’s ever been undriveable, so I suppose I should just look at this as a learning experience. Hopefully the next time this happens, if I’m interning somewhere on the other side of the country, I’ll have the presence of mind to call a damn tow truck, arrange my own transportation, and inform the mechanics myself of what’s happening with my own car.

Exercise Gives You Endorphins

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I hated P.E. in high school.  I never went to the gym or even made it around my neighborhood for a run.  But when I got to college, I decided to take advantage of the closeness of the student rec to try out some fitness classes.  And even though I felt like throwing up after my first Zumba class, I kept going back, every week, until 2 years later I knew the choreography almost better than the instructor.  My friend, the Southern Belle, and I took the front spots in front of the mirror and even downloaded the songs to listen to at home.

This year, after our beloved Zumba instructor graduated, the Southern Belle and I have decided to try going to yoga instead as a way to stay in shape and do something active.

Although we came up with this plan last semester when we heard our favorite instructor would be leaving, I didn’t feel a real urgency to start going to classes when this semester began.  I wasn’t doing anything super active, despite my frequent dance parties to my Zumba playlist in my kitchen (thank goodness I live on the ground floor – there’s a lot of jumping around involved), but I didn’t feel out of shape or anything either.  I still don’t think of myself as having a physical side, a result, I suppose, of all those years of despising P.E. and all it represented.  My default setting is, “I hate moving.”

So imagine my surprise when, after making it to a demo week yoga class, I felt the difference.  My muscles, sore from sudden use, nevertheless felt stronger already.  The moodiness my boyfriend had so patiently endured for the past two weeks suddenly evaporated.  I even walked a little taller as the Southern Belle and I made our way home.

They say college is a time for getting to know yourself; I guess I’m still finding out, however slowly, that I really do feel better when I’m active.

In Possession of a New Planner

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Every year, I make myself wait until August to buy my planner for the upcoming school year. This is partially because the planners don’t actually include dates before August of the current year, and partially in order to fend off back to school stress dreams (less successfully than I might hope).

I love the cleanness of a new planner, the neatness of its blank pages, the promise that this year I will be more tidy, more organized, more prepared. Conversely, I also love the well-worn beauty of last year’s planner, filled with scrawls and margin notes and satisfactory crossed-out items. Some people keep their journals or diaries from past years, and I do that too. But I also keep all my planners.

Rereading them reminds me of stressful weeks where I nevertheless came out on top, triumphant presentations, get-togethers with friends, etc. They make me nostalgic for the school years past.

Once, while we were moving, I found my mother’s planners from her high school days. I loved poring over her slanting cursive, puzzling out what her personal shorthand meant, wondering which assignments had stressed her out the most. As I cram each year’s planner on my shelf, I can picture my own kids finding them someday and wondering about my life in high school and college.

Yes, there is a certain amount of nerdiness to this pleasure in buying a new planner. But I have always been one of those kids who couldn’t wait for the leaves to turn and the pristine notebooks and fresh crayons to fill my mother’s shopping cart. We used to plan those back to school shopping trips for weeks in advance, highlighting and quantifying every last thing on the school-supplied lists and jotting in our own requests at the bottom. Because my sister, “Bird,” and I often had the same items on our lists, half the pleasure lay in dumping the purchased supplies out on the living room floor and divvying them up. A box of markers for Bird, a box of markers for me. Three newly sharpened pencils in Bird’s pencil box, three for me.

Now that I’m in college, my yearly planner is all that’s left of the clean, crisp school supplies that marked the end of my summers.  Maybe it’s a little strange to be so excited about an organizational tool.  But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go color code all the events for August in my pretty, shiny, new toy.

Thoughts on Recent Hashtag Controversies

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You can learn a lot on Tumblr.  Or, if you’re like me and still don’t have a Tumblr, the Tumblr stuff that makes its way to Pinterest.  For someone who sucks at current events (I still don’t know who/what/where Benghazi is), it can be quite an education in social justice issues plaguing our world.  The most popular posts tend to contain multiple viewpoints, usually quite reasonable (in my opinion).  But the quality of these posts is not the point.  The point is a particular issue and my personal experience with it.

My sister, who just got a Tumblr, showed me the #YesAllWomen hashtag a few weeks ago, and I started reading some of the articles, blog posts, and general responses it’s generated so far.  Some of them were inspiring.  Some were repulsive.  Some were just dumb.

But others were frightening.

Not frightening in that I suddenly felt threatened by some idiot on a commenting power trip saying he would rape every woman who subscribed to these ideas (although there were comments to that effect).  Frightening in the sheer number of men who truly believe this isn’t their problem.  They went on the defensive, creating the hashtag that #YesAllWomen was responding to.  The reigning sentiment seems to be, “I’m a nice guy.  I’m not going to rape or assault anyone.  I’m not bothering you.  So my part is done.”

My response to them, in words frequently attributed to Albert Einstein, is this:

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

 

I, myself, was reminded just how incredibly lucky I am a few weeks ago.  Like many girls in our society, I grew up believing that I was not sexy enough, and that failing or succeeding in this regard was incredibly important.  (This was not my parents’ doing – they were wonderful – but it’s hard to ignore society on the word of two grown-ups who don’t seem to be doing too well in the way of love themselves.)  Now that I’m in a relationship, I’m still struggling to let go of seeing myself that way, even subconsciously, even though my boyfriend initiates conversations about consent and making sure I know he does not believe he deserves physical pleasure from me, whether we “usually” do it or not.

This cultural double standard (which cheats boys too, by the way, but that’s a topic for another day) affects all of us.  Those of us in relationships, those of us who are single.  All of us with our varying beauties, inner demons, sexuality, beliefs, education, experiences, etc.  And I’m only just starting to learn how many people don’t seem to know that.

I wish I had a more conclusive way to end this, but I don’t have a solution.  I don’t have any ideas.  I just know that it’s important to think about these things.

An In-Between Girl at an In-Between Time

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I like school. It is what I am good at. I like it even better now that I am in college and can live at the place where I receive education. I understand how to operate within the boundaries Life At School.

Summer vacation, however, is a transitional period from one school year to the next, during which I have no idea what to do with myself. It used to be enough to simply hang out at home with my sister, go for walks, do a few chores. But now, Young Adulthood means that although I “deserve to relax,” although I “earned my vacation,” I also “shouldn’t waste the whole summer doing nothing” and should probably “be productive and make plans.” The problem isn’t that I shy away from a summer job or that I dislike work. I know what do in those situations. The problem is that when I’m casting about for a substitute structure to replace Life At School, conflicting advice hits me from all sides – and because I am no longer at school, where my decisions are my own, I am expected to once again take these mentors’ opinions into account.

I guess that’s the funny part of this point in life: I can make decisions about my own career path, nutritional habits, sleep patterns, sex life, etc. while I’m away. But when I come home for summer or spring break or winter break, I hover somewhere between having to ask permission for everything again and “You should be able to do this without us by now.” During the school year, I know what my role is. During the summer, I can feel like everything from a guest to a little kid to a grown-ass woman to a high schooler to an intruder within the space of a day.

College is wonderful in that it allows us to take baby steps away from home as we practice becoming self-sufficient while knowing we have a soft place to land. But it also has the admittedly obvious side effect of making those who leave and come back chafe at the remaining restrictions of their old life. I want to return home, but don’t know where I fit in anymore. I’m not at school, so I can’t act as I do there, but neither do I want to relinquish the of control and self-assurance I learned while there.

Perhaps this discomfort is the push meant to send me out after college, extending my baby steps into larger strides taking me to a new apartment, new workplace, new life.

But that doesn’t make me any less squirmy and bored this particular summer.

The Banning of “Kindergarten,” or, Acy Doesn’t Like New Things

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When I was six or so, my parents had to ban the word “kindergarten” from our household.  I kicked, screamed, cried, and basically had meltdowns every time the word was mentioned in the months leading up to my entrance into “real school,” so they finally just decided to stop mentioning it.  Ever.

I mention this as a benchmark for the first time my irrational dislike for anything new made me inconsiderate to those around me (to a point beyond normal toddler tantrums).  And I mention this because at lunch today, while discussing an exciting summer opportunity that just became available to me, I found myself complaining more than celebrating.  I complained about how people at my university were asking for press releases so they could put a blurb about me somewhere on the website.  I complained about how when my family and friends found out, they were going to ask me all sorts of questions.  I complained about how I would have to take a huge chunk out of my summer to participate in this Exciting Thing.  I complained about how I wouldn’t know anyone at the Exciting Thing, or even really what all was involved, and how I felt like at any point they were going to email me and say, “So sorry, so awkward, but it wasn’t actually you who got the Exciting Thing but the other girl with similar contact information and a vastly superior resume.”  And I would be half-relieved.

My boyfriend pointed out that some of those complaints bordered on being selfish; he said, as nicely as possible, that my reluctance to publicize the Exciting Thing could be construed as dismissive of it, as saying that it was so easy to obtain the Exciting Thing that I hadn’t thought it worth mentioning to others.  

My sister pointed out that the Exciting Thing is “one of those things you apply for, not something you actually get,” meaning, of course, that it’s one of those things that you meet the criteria for so you send in the forms and letters and essays and then you twiddle your thumbs and wait for the rejection email that doesn’t sting too badly because after all, you spent the whole time you were filling out the application telling yourself that it’s a Nationwide Competition for this one Exciting Thing, and only a Select Few can get it and, nice as you are, you are probably not one of those Select Few.

 

However.

 

I somehow got it.  And now I have to deal with that.  Because, as evidenced by this post’s title, I do not like new things.  I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.  

Preparing for my first high school dance?  Almost called all my friends and cancelled the plans we had already made.

 Starting my first job?  Stayed up all night worrying myself sick.  

Heading off to my freshman orientation for college?  Went nearly distracted with half-baked schemes to change my mind and take a gap year (or five).

First week of college before classes started?  Subsisted entirely on Goldfish and coffee with powdered creamer and Skyped my best friend from home for eight hours straight, never leaving my dorm room.

You see the theme.  When I am faced with a situation which involves uncertainty, in which I have no experience, I freeze.  I look around for the nearest exit.  And sometimes I do actually try to bolt.

This Exciting Thing, attractive and impressive though it is, has set me off on one of those phases.  I recognize the signs: I’ve thought of emailing them quietly and telling them I’ve changed my mind, then covering up with my family and friends; I’ve thought largely about the downsides, like not seeing or talking to my boyfriend for several weeks, as opposed to the aspects which drew me to apply in the first place; I’ve imagined scenarios in which none of the other Select Few like me and I am ostracized and miserable for the entirety of the Exciting Thing; I’ve avoided telling others about it in case I do chicken out.

As I’ve gotten older, regardless of the degree to which a thing is new, I still have this same reaction.  Perhaps the ability to identify this behavior and tell myself (however unconvincingly) that I’ve always survived before can be counted as progress, but at this particular moment, as I view furthers emails regarding the Exciting Thing and cringe, all I can see is how far I’ve regressed.  Yes, it’s ungrateful and a bit selfish and maybe even kind of hypocritical (I wasn’t exactly forced to fill out the application, after all) – but I’m scared.  

So I’ll try to hold in the complaining (despite my boyfriend and sister’s niceness about my Dislike of Newness) until I can face the Scary-But-Admittedly-Exciting Thing like any other fear.

 

Oh, and kindergarten?  Dashed away from my mother’s side on the very first day, calling, “Bye Mom!” over my shoulder.

On the Approach of Dead Week

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I write this on the Sunday before the headlong downhill rush into finals, the workweek spoken of with trepidation on college campuses.  Legend has it that Dead Week was so named for the deserted nature of the campus, many classes supposedly being suspended in favor of allowing students to fill their waking hours with studying and frantically pulling off final projects.  Now, of course, with half the classes having “one last exam” or “having the final paper due this week so you won’t have to worry about it during finals,” the adjective in Dead Week refers more to the students themselves.

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I, dear readers, like many of my university fellows, have honed the necessary skill of procrastination (hence this post).  Despite having two video projects, one research paper, and one lengthy story accompanied by an analysis of my own writing style due in the next week, I choose instead to sit and manipulate pretty colors on a blog I had utterly forgotten I had. 

But how else am I to spend my twenties if not misusing time and making up for it later with a quad shot from my favorite coffee shop? 😀

Who am I?

I’m a twenty-year-old undergrad with a surprising lack of student debt, looking forward to decorating her first apartment next year and preparing for a career.  But all that matters to most people is that I’m a creative writing major and thus doomed to a life of unemployment – at least according to them.  (If you didn’t catch the Lizzie Bennet Diaries reference(s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs&list=PL6690D980D8A65D08.  You’re welcome).

Why should you care?

Well fine, if you want to be that way.  I think I’m hilarious.  And occasionally profound.

What’s this blog about?

Oh, a little of this, a little of that.  Haven’t really decided yet.  I’m a college student – focusing is not my strong suit.

Shouldn’t I be getting back to my homework now?

Shhhhh…