AmeriCorps: Part I "Just corn and the sun."

A year and seven months later, I am finally writing a post about AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps NCCC FEMACorps Class XX to be specific. I'm not sure if that's actually the correct order in which to write that, but I do not care enough to verify. This entry is going to veer on the path of long-winded story that you may or may not have already heard bits and pieces of. Not saying it's not going to be good, just letting you know to grab a snack or perhaps an ice cold bevy.

So it all began in August of 2013. I was a fresh graduate of the venerable Johns Hopkins University with absolutely zero desire to be anywhere near a school like environment. Mad props to the people who just kept on going to grad school, if I had tried to do that I would have punched everything and anything. You can't graduate and be a bum, and I wanted to keep my brain active and still be a productive member of society. So I thought, why I don't I do something service related? I had participated in various community service efforts in college, but it was never my first priority - that was obviously school. I was proud to offer my time and services to purely help people as my first priority, not as an extra curricular. 

I initially applied for AmeriCorps NCCC (the traditional track) and applied to FEMACorps as a secondary maneuver. I was admitted into the FEMACorps program, and as was suggested by the organization, I accepted, as to not lose my place, and forfeited my application for AmeriCorps NCCC. This happened to a suspicious amount of my fellow Corps members. FEMACorps is now a three year old program, it seems they needed to boost their enrollment. Sneaky, sneaky.

There are five FEMACorps branches. I was accepted to the Vinton, Iowa campus. This was the first red flag. Iowa. I mean really, Iowa. No offense to the one native Iowan I know who is a wonderful human (Hi, Tanner.) But my trepidation was immediately validated. People from Iowa do not know where Vinton, Iowa is. That was the second red flag. If you are already placing me in a random state, how dare you place me in a small town that people don't know exists. 

FEMACorps paid for my plane ride from Baltimore to... hmm well it wasn't Vinton. I want to say the airport was in Cedar Rapids, but we had a layover in Texas. Who set that foolishness up? The very second I stepped out of the airport and the Iowan air hit my nostrils I began to sneeze. I was allergic to Iowa. 

We then got onto a coach bus (fanciest thing we would see for a long time) and made our way to... okay I want to say Iowa School for the Blind because that sounds more legitimate, but I know the shorthand was IBS because I remember being sad for them because that is an unfortunate comparison, but they wouldn't name the school: Iowa Blind School... okay I just looked it up. It's Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School. I could delete all of that, but I assume the whole stream of consciousness angle is the move for this tale. Anyway, I quickly became buds with this one chick who was also from Maryland, and we had a pleasant little chat through miles and miles of corn. Just so much corn. Do you know how horrifying it is to look out of a window and only see corn and the sun? Nothing else. Just corn and the sun. 

We finally pulled up to our destination. I was sneezing and sweating bullets. August Iowan sun was fiercer than I would have ever anticipated. I then was somehow transported into my lower school gymnasium. There were all these people in ill-fitting tan shorts and hunter green polos smiling at me like they had all just passed around a big ole' chalice of the kool-aid. Yeah the kool-aid, aka crazy juice. 

There was music playing. Too loudly. Too Taylor Swiftly. It may not have been Taylor, but it was something of that nature that caused  me to produce a stank face and give a quick glance to my neighbor begging the question: who will save us?

So it was camp. It was creepy, weird camp. Similar music continued for the rest of the day. We were separated into units and teams. I was Hickory 2. I was 22 year old woman, who had to identify herself as a member of something called Hickory 2. Just let that marinate for a moment. 

We got "catered food" for the first few days but then we had to buy groceries as a team. Catered food is in quotes because it was barely food and should not have been classified as catered. At the end of the second week, my team members and I became agitated, because we noticed that we were eating spoonfuls of peanut butter and ramen for dinner. We were out of food. We were not pleased. We brought this to the attention of our team leader, who basically told us we were shit out of luck. We had used 80% of our budget, as suggested by our AmeriCorps overlords, and the 20% remainder was for emergencies. Apparently me eating a nature valley bar for lunch was not an emergency. Here's the budget breakdown. Each team member was afforded $4/day while at a base location, $7 when we were on the road. So for our 11 person team we were expected to buy enough groceries to last for a full week with $246.40. I don't know if you've ever tried to feed a family of 11, but let me just warn you, this method does not cut it.

My team earned the adjective "bougie" initially because we wanted to eat well balanced meals. We wanted our groceries to consist of things like fruits, vegetables, and you know, things that were actually food and not processed. Sure you could feed 11 people with that meager budget if they're only eating sugary cereals and cup of noodles. But excuse us, we wanted to eat real food. When you eat real food, you have real energy. You have regular bowel movements - yeah I said it, because that's something you want in life. You are generally happier because your body is satisfied. I know there's science behind that, but we won't get into it, there is much to cover.

So anyway, this hoopla over starvation was when I believe my team was labeled as a bunch of bad apples. But even though we were "trouble makers," we were just so good at everything. We consistently won competitions, and though we sometimes could not manage to stay awake through training, we knew our shit.

Let me back track a little and tell you about the wee town of Vinton. There is a Dollar General (that sold wine, praise the heavens), a McDonald's (obviously, because where isn't there a McDonald's), a Subway, this place called Jolly Rogers (allegedly sold pizza... it was never open), some other pizza place, a Mexican restaurant run by the only Hispanic person I laid eyes on in that town, a Chinese restaurant, a froyo place (that had wifi!), a radio shack, and a couple of those creepy shops where the set up is just a yard sale but inside someone's home and it smells like animals because there are guinea pigs just running loose on the ground and the owner only has 4 teeth and isn't wearing a shirt and you knew you should have just stayed on front porch while your silly friends went inside to look at homemade candles made out of don't ask, don't tell.

My heart, Jesus, my heart.

So. As the group of 18 - 24-year-olds that we were, we needed to blow off steam. We frequented the local watering holes, as was our right (for the majority of us). There was one place called Golf. I don't remember much about it, except that I did not like it. I felt like I was in someone's basement. I think a lot of the ceiling was missing, or part of a wall? I don't know, when I think of Golf, I just think unfinished basement. But the true turn up spot was Ron-Da-Voo. Oh yes. That's how it's spelled. Also, please forgive the tense changes in this story, I usually try to be professional about that, but for real, for real, I can't even worry about that as I unleash all this foolishness. Ron-Da-Voo was equipped with a juke-box (like a modern day one, I know you probably assumed I meant the 50's kind because of the middle of nowhere Iowa factor, lol. But also not lol, because why was I in the middle of nowhere Iowa??) Every night that I went to Ron-Da-Voo I put on "Pop That" by French Montana. Please take a moment to imagine the townies as all these youths started to get their lives to some ratchet tunes. They were in shock. But they didn't do anything (most of the time). We out numbered them. We were also probably the main source of income for that whole town.

Walking in "downtown" Vinton literally felt like you were walking on a movie set. 75% of the time I thought that I was being unwillingly and unknowingly filmed for a horror flick, and some monster from the deep was going to burst out of a corn field and take my life. Sometimes when we walked into town I would count the number of people we saw that day. I know, I know, I'm from a relatively large city, but seriously I felt like I was on the set of House of Wax. If you have not seen that film, please watch it, it's hilarious but also kind of scary, and CMM (Chad Michael Murray, don't get cute and act like you don't remember him, jk no one called him that...) anyway, he was in his prime.

Okay so Act 1 summary: we did not have enough food, there were no activities, one of my friends almost got run off the road by an angry farmer and she had to hop into a ditch to save her life, some of my friends got called the n-word in the middle of the dark Iowan night by some angry Iowans, we were told this service opportunity would be like a job, but really it was camp. Camp for juvenile delinquents with stupid rules like "muster."

Um... sorry I'm not summarizing, I thought I was going to, but I didn't. Sue me. But don't because I'm going to law school in a couple months (surprise! - will post about that later) and I will eventually be Ekaette Obot, Esq. and I will counter-sue the pants off you. BOOM. Okay so "muster." For some reason, probably because this program was intended for juvenile delinquents, each team on campus had to gather at 5 in the morning just to say hey, I'm here and alive. We typically had training starting at 8 am. Roll call could have happened there. But I assume AmeriCorps leaders just needed to know they could control every aspect of our lives so they made us get out of our beds to meet in a location that wasn't even in the same building where we slept just so they could take attendance. No one will ever be able to convince me that there was a logical reason behind muster. And I hate that word, and the word mustard because it reminds me of it.

About this training. There was 5 weeks of it. All taking place in Iowa before we would go to our first assignment. We were typically in training from 8 in the morning until 4 ish 5 ish. The training consisted of the following: how to be professional, how to deal with diversity, the history of NCCC, basically things that could have been covered in 1 - 2 weeks but was drawn out for some unknown reason. One time, they added in an extra hour into our schedules, an afternoon slot, to make us all sit in an auditorium and watch a very long youtube clip of military jets flying. And then an old man (high up on the AmeriCorps chain of command) talked to us about team work or something. Then people got written up for falling asleep. It's just like, did you never go to school? You don't show a dumb movie after lunch. People will go to sleep, and that is your fault not theirs.

Sometimes while in training, if we didn't seem interested enough, they would make us do this shakedown thing. Where we all had to stand up, and shake our bodies on a specified count. This might have been entertaining or acceptable if we were seven years old. But to make a group of grown ass adults stand up and shake their bodies because YOU are boring them to death doesn't scream logic to me. The person that made us do this the most was someone whom I can only describe as a mixture of Paula Deen and Professor Umbridge. She had those terrifying drown in the icy blue death of my eyes that Paula Deen has. And she had this horrible facade of sweetness while she was she spewing all the rudeness she could a la Professor Umbridge.

I think one of the most insulting trainings we had was the nutrition training. We had to listen to a woman tell us that we shouldn't eat any grain and that we should stick to coconut and almond oils. AmeriCorps didn't even bother to once-over the contents of this woman's presentation, or maybe they did, and they thought it would be funny to prepare us to adhere to nutritional values we could not afford. If you can tell me why they thought it was helpful to train the Corps Members on how to maintain an organic diet, but they didn't feel the need to coach our team leaders on how to budget and grocery shop for eleven people with basically no money, you get a silver star. Not gold, because even if you come up with an answer, it's still going to be dumb. But yeah I'm gonna keep coming back to the food. Because it's insane. My team leader was the same age as me. She had just graduated from college, just like me. She had never been in the program before. They sent me something the summer before I joined, offering me an opportunity to be a team leader in this program, but I declined because I thought it might be pretty stupid to be a team leader in a program of this nature that I had never been a part of. But nope, here she was, dazed and confused, preventing us from using our 20% of emergency funds so that we could eat.

You know when you go through terrible things with someone, and that brings you closer? I guess that was the one benefit of no food and people smiling at me with crazy eyes all day. Our team was pretty tight. Half of our team were young ladies in college or recently graduated, from the east coast. We were used to things like carrots and hummus, being treated like adults, and the expectation of not being afraid of what may happen to us when we go to sleep at night (I'll delve more into that last point later, don't you worry.) Most of the Corps Members were friendly enough, some were cool, some were not. It's okay, I can say that, that's just part of life. But you see, after our five week training we would be spending the next 3 months, anywhere in America with our team, not with the rest of the people in our program. So it made sense for us to hang out with our team, get to know them, get to like them. But for some reason, the team leaders thought it was strange that we hung out so much. I think they were just looking for another reason not to like us. But it was for the best, if not for the relationships I fostered with the people on my team, I would not have survived the 4 months that I did. Another big bonding point with certain people on team was the belief that if something didn't make sense, we had the right to question it. There are some people on this earth that believe the rules are just the rules. I weep for those people. I weep for them, but we cannot be friends.

As I stated before, even though the team leaders and our unit leader (Thomas - he's gonna get his own section later) thought we were bad kids, at the end of training, our group was designated as DSA (Disaster Survivor Assistance) and we were sent to Colorado to assist FEMA with the flood damage that occurred there. We were so excited to go to state that began with a consonant. We loaded up our 12 passenger van (I think that was the number) with our little red backpacks and pillows. While on the road we had a $7 budget for lunch (we got spoiled!) This usually meant that we pulled up to a fast food joint, because what can you buy for $7 in America? Sometimes we got subway though, so that was a treat. But sometimes, we got to go to Wal-Mart! Which meant we pooled our money so we could buy some fruit, some cheese, some nice bread, maybe some prosciutto~. We had to push it when we could. We stayed in little motels along the way. It took a lot of will power to fall asleep in those sheets.

When we finally got to Denver, where the FEMA headquarters was located, we clapped when we saw the city skyline. We hadn't seen a skyscraper in so long. It was beautiful. It was a city. It was life. We drove past a theme park, we tricked ourselves into thinking we might go there. It's the little things that get you through. Our first week or so in Colorado, we stayed a hotel. A real hotel with clean white sheets and fluffy pillows. We ordered some Vietnamese food. The FEMA training was a little slow at first (half of it was teaching our Reservists ((older people who volunteered and made BANK)) how to use an iPad. But we were getting to our purpose, the reason why we wanted to be AmeriCorps. We were learning how we were actually going to be helping people. Our FEMA instructors didn't speak to us as if we were in 5th grade, and that was truly exhilarating.

But as with all things of this nature,  we did get a little bored. Things were being repeated, old people kept forgetting how to exit programs on their iPads. So instead of zoning out and staring out of the window, sometimes we would do things like research upcoming concerts. Ye was coming to Denver. KANYE WAS COMING TO DENVER. This was a blessing from Jesus himself. Yeezus, if you will. So despite everything that was happening, two girls from my team and I scrounged up our funds to make this dream come true. And it was lovely having that to look forward to. Until it got cancelled because one of Kanye's LED machine thingies was hit in a car accident so he canceled all his shows in that area. When I tell you that my heart broke that day, I really mean it. Like 808's and heartbreak heartbroken. Sigh.

Okay, I literally just now decided I'm going to write this in installments because it's actually going to be impossible for me to get this all out right now. I have a lot of stuff to do. I'm moving to Chicago soon weeeeeeeeee, because.... law school... hehehehehehe!!! Yeah so that wasn't really the greatest ending point, but that's what I'm giving you, stay tuned. The next post will not take 3 months I promise. I'm thinking like later this week. I hope this drama has entertained you at least a little bit.

XOXO,
Gossip Girl

Ha. Just kidding, bye. 

Happy Black History Month!

I have a distinct memory from sixth grade on a school bus, we were on a field trip. The girls around me were talking about the movie Finding Forrester. Only a couple of us had seen the movie, so one girl started to explain the main points. She started by saying, "So there was a man and a little Black boy..." and I remember that striking me as so odd. I was curious as to why it was important that the boy was Black but no racial description was given for the man.

Ever since then I've always paid attention to things like that. From my unofficial research, it seems that people often omit race as a descriptor if the person or people they're describing matches theirs. For example, once a friend was telling me a story about how these girls were being mean and making fun of her. She felt the need to mention that they were Black. She also felt the need to tell this story specifically to me even though our other (non-Black) friends were all in the room. I'm not sure if these mean girls would have been less intimidating if they were not Black... but we all know that stereotype that Black people are scary. I would like to think she was only telling me that story because I am the brazen friend that doesn't put up with bunk, especially from strangers. And I'm sure that was part of it. But part of it was also "listen to what your people did to me," at least that's how it came off.

In that moment I could have asked why this story was specifically being told to me and why sympathy was especially anticipated from me, but as I have expressed before, I'm not one to make an awkward situation more awkward. But it wasn't awkward for her, I guess it was just awkward for me. The brave and sensible option in that scenario would have been for me to address it. As this girl's friend, I think I owed her that, I owed myself that, and I owed it to our friendship. If you can't be honest with those closest to you, then where's the hope?

So despite this, we do live in the age of colorblindness. People do not want to talk about race. I can count for you on hand, maybe both if I'm generous, the amount of times I have explicitly discussed race in depth with a good friend of mine who was not the same race as me. When I say discussed race, I don't mean talking about the gorgeous specimen we deemed "Beautiful Black Man." Okay, see there, the race label was completely necessary. There weren't that many Black men on campus at ye ole Hop. The chances of there being a beautiful White man were higher simply because there were more White men. But this Adonis was easily spotted when he would grace the world by playing corn hole shirtless on the quad at letting the pure rays of Baltimore sunshine beam onto his caramel skin, muscles just a-glistenin'. But I digress, happily, because I haven't thought about BBM in a minute. On the real though, BBM, if you're out there... there are honestly enough clues for you to identify yourself in my glowing review... so hollaaaaa.... My friends and I are notorious for giving people bizarre nick names, like Jubilation and Santa. Most of them are not racially motivated save for BBM and AWM (Average White Man, but that's mostly because his name is so... well... White, like the name Hunter Johnson. His name is not Hunter Johnson, but I just want you to understand).

You could easily imagine that this man's name is Hunter Johnson right? His picture is the first that came up when I searched "average white man." Also, lol, it doesn't even look real; it looks like somebody compiled every White male face on one of those apps, and this was the resulting, all inclusive, average White male face.....

Now I personally don't think that stating someone has a "White sounding" name is that offensive. Friends and foes please feel to correct me if I'm wrong. The only negativity I could even begin to connect is maybe that you come from middle class White America and most likely live a comfortable life, and maybe you say a lot of things that only a square would say. So... shrug, I don't really feel too bad about that. A "White sounding" name means that when you submit your resume 1) Your name is typically easily pronounced on the first attempt and 2) Nobody is trying to guess what you are and so they simply proceed to look at the rest of your resume. 3) You may get the upper hand even if you have an identical resume to someone else's, but your name isn't DeShawn so there's less of a chance that you are... as they say... ghetto. *I'm not saying this happens all the time, I'm just saying it happens*

Okay okay okay. I got super sidetracked. So my point was when my friends and I talk about race it usually isn't in the social or economic or political sense. I'm not sure if we intentionally try to avoid it. I wish that it was something that I could bring up more frequently because it is truly something that interests me. And since I have such an advantageous situation of being friends with people from a plethora of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, I'm sure we could all learn so much from each other if we permeated the barrier of discomfort.

Would it be awkward if I asked my friends if they did anything to observe Black History Month? Sorry I don't know if that's supposed to be all caps, but the answer is yes. Mostly because I didn't "do" anything. I took a few minutes out of this month to read a couple articles on Marian Anderson and Shirley Chisolm. If you don't who they are, feel free to stop reading my blog and have your own little Black history moment. I'm also reading the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, lent to me by a dear friend with whom I'll definitely discuss our reactions and new found knowledge, but I do wish this is something all my friends felt comfortable doing.

When Robert McCulloh announced that grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown, I couldn't hold back my tears. I found myself crying on and off for the next week. And if you know me, you know I'm not one for waterworks. But in that moment, as I heard the news, I wanted to talk to someone. It was pretty late, so my parents were asleep. I texted one friend, but she's bad at that form of communication. I texted her because I knew she would feel the same way I felt. I just wanted some solidarity in my sadness. I thought about calling other friends, but then I thought too much about them saying the wrong thing and having that lead to me being more upset than I already was.

That brings up of the main issues that contribute to why I believe race is not something often discussed in my social circles. The first being that I think people assemble what their friends' and families' viewpoints are on certain things based on little indicators they have pieced together over the years. You make a profile in your head of the people you get to know. You can determine what things they might like and dislike because you are familiar with their tendencies and patterns. Similarly, you may assume that they'll feel a specific way about a situation. You may not like this feeling they might have, and therefore make to attempt to discover what their true feelings are. You brush it aside and ensure that topic is never really brought up, because you're afraid of what the truth might be.

On the other side of that, people don't want to say the wrong thing and offend people they care about. People deliberately keep their feelings about controversial topics to themselves so no one gets hurt. The few times that race has been brought up among my friends, at some point I usually just tell myself to shut up, because I can feel the room changing. That tension and discomfort, it's tangible. I don't usually say things for the sake of someone just being mad at me, 9 times out of 10 it's because I'd like to have an invigorating discussion.

These topics are inevitably personal so we have to careful to be respectful but I think it's important that we bring them to the table. How else do you learn? There are some people that don't have the luxury of being exposed to people of different religions, cultures, political beliefs, races, etc. So for those of us that do have that privilege, we should take advantage of it and educate ourselves. I'm sure that's how we can all learn to be better friends and better people.

So that being said, I vow not to punk out on opportunities to educate or be educated. I'm not going to ask my friends if they did anything to honor Black History Month, but I will continue to ensure that I keep learning about trials and successes of my culture, past and present, and be sure to impart any knowledge when the occasion calls for it. I also hope to impress that I am open and eager to hearing the thoughts of my friends and family. You can't always say what I want to hear, and I can promise the same from my end, but it's so important for us to at least start a dialogue. Race isn't biological, it is a social construct, and whether we want to acknowledge it or not, it is an undeniably pervasive and powerful aspect of our society.

To my friends that have ignored or perhaps simply embraced the uneasiness in an effort to have a enlightening conversation, I applaud you. It's hard not have conversations on this topic without being defensive or guarded. Being socially mature in this arena is not an easy task, but it is one we should all think about taking on. I'm not saying to do this today, these things are not automatic. Let's just all consider easing ourselves into it.

Alright cool. Next post I'll try to write about something that's funny? This one was heavy and the last one... well I can't think of a good word for it, but you know what I mean. More variety to come for future posts, I promise! I don't say this nearly enough, but thanks for reading! Seriously, I still can't believe people read this haha. Additionally, my sincerest apologies for any typos. If this were real life, I would print it and read it on real paper. But this is a blog, ain't nobody got time for that.

Self-image and Selfies and Such

Hello again friends. I hope all is well.

I've started writing a new blog post approximately eleven times this year.......

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about self image and how we want other people to see us. Respect is the major theme in all of this. Respect for ourselves and the respect we think we deserve or do not deserve from those around us. I've been thinking about it mostly in terms of physical image as well as... I guess the most accurate term would be status? I'm not sure about that, I might come up with something better and replace it, but for right now that's all I got.

I can't decide if social media and smartphones have unearthed immeasurable amounts of vanity or low-esteem. The "selfie" mode on my phone is actually called "beauty face," which I find hilarious, but I guess it's a nice pick me up. I really just can't believe we are living at a time where people take pictures of their own faces and upload them expecting other people to tell them how attractive they look. They put some dumb caption like "just me" to feign an air of casualness. Alert: you are not being casual. At. All.

I hesitated briefly writing about this because I thought men wouldn't want to read about it. But then I thought, there probably aren't that many men reading my blog. And if they are, then I guess they are okay with my "girlish" topics. But is this really a girlish topic? Because there are a way too many men in this world taking pictures of themselves at the gym, standing in front of weights they're not actually going to pick up... because they can't...

Admittedly there was a time in my life when I took selfies in a serious nature. This was before it was the phenomenon it is now. And, I was a 14 year old girl. So of course I was taking pictures of my face alone in my room when I got new sunglasses, or when I put on new lip gloss, or when I thought my boobies were worthy of three sassy finger snaps. Because I was a 14 year old girl. Full of insecurities, accessories as one of my biggest concerns, and nothing better to do because I already finished my homework before volleyball practice.

Why are people so anxious to have people they're not even close with confirm their beauty by clicking "like". Cool you got 98 likes on your selfie. You only talk to 4 of those people. What about affirmation from mere acquaintances gets people so excited?

Now don't get it twisted, anyone who knows me knows I am oh so accepting of a compliment. When you see my locs all wavy instead of just straight, it's because I spent extra hour doing my hair that week, so.... throw a sista some praise, and I will accept it graciously, knowing that my arduous labor has been appreciated and admired. But also, I do that because I like the way it looks when it's wavy. It's not just so someone can tell me it's pretty, it's so that when I look at it, I can say "Damngurllll" to myself. Yes, I really do say that to myself.

When a person posts a selfie that's not funny or at least serving as a record as something momentous like new bangs or 11 months growing out her locs then I just do not understand.. (if it wasn't obvious, those are the two non-funny selfies I myself have posted after my teen narcissism years.)  Don't even try to say you're just posting it to post it. You know you would be hella upset if you didn't get your desired amount of "likes." But why though? Who decided that this is the ultimate form of validation?

But I guess validation is better than the alternative. We can just be so hard on ourselves and sometimes, unknowingly, on each other. Everyone has something that they think they can work on, even if they have all the self confidence in the world. Once a friend told me she was surprised that I felt comfortable with my profile picture choice because the other girl in the picture was so gorgeous, and that she wouldn't be brave enough to do the same thing. She caught herself immediately, and told me that obviously I was pretty too. But it was already said. I knew she wasn't intentionally trying to offend me, but it still stung. I felt like I got suckered into an insecurity that wasn't mine.

Similarly, once a friend stated that "we" weren't as pretty as another one of our friends. And I almost said something, I didn't though. I think I just made one of those neutral sounds. Because it's one thing to put another woman on a pedestal and decide that your own looks don't measure up to hers, but to also rope someone else into that defeated mind frame, I don't think that's fair. I guess it's easier to be gloomy with company, but yuck. I just wasn't raised to declare that people are prettier than me. I know there are standards of beauty in this country that people often try to emulate (if possible) and when along comes a peer who seems to embody that standard it is easy to glorify him or her. But check yourself.

These little remarks often go undetected but when they are heard and actually processed, there is serious damage potential. I'm sure reading those little anecdotes may have triggered a memory of a similar incident that you've had, and seriously, my sincerest apologies if I was the culprit. I think it's just something we should be a little more conscious of. Because these interaction are happening with people we actually like. I'm not even going to delve into those classless, unkempt fools we can't stand. Not sure I'm mature enough to approach that at the current moment haha.

I mentioned status before, as another part of self image that we want to be viewed in the most agreeable light. I guess I'm looking at it from a socio-economic standpoint. For example, I've never been to public school, and at times when observing the Baltimore City Public School system, one can understand why my parents didn't let that happen. As an undergrad at Hopkins, when people found out I was a Baltimore native, they'd ask if I went to Poly or Western (public magnet schools). Offended, I'd respond that I went to Bryn Mawr, a private school. Most of my offense did not stem from the fact that they thought I went to public school, but a lot of people assumed that the only reason that Black kids from Baltimore got into Hopkins was because they went to public school so Hopkins just let them in. I'm stating that because multiple informed that that is what they believed, I'm not making this stuff up. I wanted to erase that thought from the jump. I worked as hard as anyone else to get into that school, and nothing was handed to me. Not that anything was handed to the students enrolled through the Baltimore Scholars program, but I just didn't appreciate the assumption.

I actually feel like that whole topic could be another post on its own to be really real. So now I have a jumping off point for my next ditty, or maybe not because my mind can be spastic so I'll probably want to write about something else. I guess this is actually a shorter post, but I have things to do. Like study for the GRE (shoot me in the face). Studying again?? I know crazy right. Too many ambitions over here. Ha. Also, disclaimer, I only proofread this like 1.5 times....

Peace out, girl scouts.