After the Hurricane

I pitied the people of New Orleans.

I was 16 when I stepped off the plane at Louis Armstrong airport, my suitcase filled with work clothes, respiratory masks, heavy-duty boots, and thick gloves. We were there to try to make a difference and help the city recover ten months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. I expected a ticker-tape parade. Instead, we were greeted by a white 16-passenger van that transported us to the church where we would be sleeping in a warehouse full of cots for the week. There were four showers for over a hundred women to share, and there was no air conditioning despite the late-June humidity.

I spent the week sweating in houses that smelled of mildew and had warped walls and floors. The residents had packed up and fled so quickly in late August that there were still magazines, purses, photographs, and children’s toys strewn about the floors. When the floodwaters from the breached levees receded, they left homes marked with brown water lines that nearly reached the ceiling. In one house, the bathtub was filled with murky brown, congealed goo, which had once been floodwater that never drained. Garbage trucks roamed the streets picking up old refrigerators, which had to be duct-taped shut because the contents inside were so vile. You could smell the trucks before you saw or heard them coming.

I pitied the men, women, and children who had lived in these homes. Some were living out of stark white FEMA trailers in front of their property. Some were still in evacuee shelters in Texas, having lived on cots and shared a few showers 40 times longer than I had. I wondered if they complained about their back pain and the lack of sleep they got in the mornings the way I did.

One day, I met a woman who lived down the street from a house we were working on. She was a Southern Belle 30 years later, the type of woman who I could imagine singing in the church choir and echoing the pastor’s words with, “Praise Jesus!” She was loud, friendly, and proud of her New Orleans heritage. She stood outside her FEMA trailer in a housedress with a scarf tied around her head and told us about her experience—being evacuated from her home, then returning to complete and total devastation. The whole time, she reminded us that it could have been so much worse.

She had survived. She had a roof over her head, even if it was a tin roof temporarily provided by the government. She was back in her hometown, helping it recover—thrive, even—after destruction most of us couldn’t imagine living through. She was helping to rebuild a city that was stronger and better than before, and she was still proud to live there.

That’s when it hit me—I pitied the residents of New Orleans, but they didn’t pity themselves.

The beginning of the end.

It has been 7 years and two months since I graduated from high school....and it has been 3 years and two months since the time that I always expected to finish college. The plan was simple: go to school, do some homework or something, blah blah blah (the middle part was always a boring grey area in my teenage plans for the future), graduate, get a kickass job, and live happily ever after. This also comes from the teenage mind that thought that it was of the utmost importance to get married by 21 at the latest so that I could start producing babies by 22, but that's a story for another day. The point is, in my mind, college was supposed to be easy: a quick stepping stone leading to a successful future.

It most certainly was not.

My college dreams seemed rock-solid in high school. I was dead-set on getting a degree in photography from Northern Arizona University, moving to New York City, and pursuing my dream of being an editorial photographer. I let a naysayer deflate those dreams, though (which admittedly weren't that solid, seeing as I let one doubter change my life plans.) I ended up at community college after high school with a 2-year scholarship and no idea what I wanted to do. I declared my major as creative writing, then switched it to psychology, then flip-flopped back to writing. I dropped out after an unsuccessful first semester--a combination of fear of change, lack of direction, and a generous pinch of laziness.

I returned to school after a semester off because I was under the impression that this is what I was supposed to do. I thought that getting any degree would instantly make me successful and happy. Another few major changes--business! No, music! Wait, journalism!--and a transfer to Arizona State University left me feeling still unsatisfied and directionless, and I dropped out again after a couple of failed classes with the sense that I would be stuck working in retail forever.

It was during this confused period that I found my passion for linguistics. Honestly, I had always loved language--I remember being so excited about my 4th grade grammar lessons that I would constantly correct my mother's conversational speech in the car on the way home from school (sorry, mom!)--I just didn't know that linguistics was a thing that I could study and pursue as a career.

Going back to school wasn't an easy step--I had to work my butt off for two more semesters at the community college and get straight A's to prove to myself that another transfer back to the university would be worth my time and money. And I've spent three semesters now at the university doing the same. I retook the courses that I failed on my first attempt at ASU in order to raise my GPA, and I loaded up on 15 to 18 upper-division credit hours so that I could graduate within my desired timeline, all while working to pay my bills. It has been a tough few years, but it has been worth it. Full disclosure (and this is a big, scary step for me to admit my prior failures) I managed to raise my GPA from a 2.08 to a 3.40 in the span of three semesters. I may be ashamed of the fact that I let myself fail the first time around, but I am so. damn. proud. of the work that I've done to make up for that, the hard-fought 4.0 semesters, and the fact that in December I will graduate cum laude.

Next month I'll start my final semester as an undergrad. The busy last three semesters have paid off, so that this semester I'm only taking three classes--two of which are online--and an internship. Part of me wishes that I could just stay in school forever, spending the whole day on campus, doing homework outside under a tree, and having study sessions with the friends I've made. Another part of me is excited to finish my degree and get out into "the real world." The biggest part of me is terrified of having my security blanket ripped away. With every semester-long break from school came the belief that I would eventually go back, so really this December will mark the official end of my education for the first time in 21 years.

I certainly hope that this isn't my last semester of higher education--soon enough, I hope to be back in the game in pursuit of my Master's degree in Linguistics. Right now, though, I feel that I owe it to myself to pursue a career that would make teenage-Kellie and present-day-Kellie proud. Regardless, present-day-Kellie is proud of what I've accomplished so far. Here's to the future.



Side note: I'm back! The last time I posted in this blog was 4 years ago, shortly after the first failed attempt at ASU, for a little perspective.

Mornings aren’t really my thing…

To anyone who has ever slept within a 3-room radius of me, the following sentence is the understatement of the year:
I’m not really a morning person.
Let’s be honest, sleep is my best friend. Once I’m out, anything is possible in the realm of weird sleep habits. I tend to sleep so heavily that I carry on entire dream-related conversations with myself, have the type of dreams you’d expect of someone on acid, and sometimes unconsciously resort to violent tendencies. I wish I could say that was a joke, but I once literally kicked a girl off of our shared hotel bed on a church trip in high school.
I’ve woken up after countless sleepovers to find friends hovering over me and laughing, having watched me for who knows how long as I ruin my reputation as a poised, graceful, unflawed person—because everybody thinks that of me when they first meet me.
So it’s just my luck that I would be offered an awesome job—we’re talking good pay, great benefits; a real solid career-type job—with just one catch: the shift begins at 4:45am. I weighed the pros and cons for a whole 30 seconds before accepting, because there’s no way I could justify passing up this job. And so began my brand new, shiny 8pm bedtime.
I’m a week and a half in and so far, so good. It turns out that when you stick to a good sleep regimen and don’t take mid-day naps unless absolutely necessary, the alarm clock is actually on your side. I’ve gone from setting four alarms in 3-minute increments to just one, cleverly placed across my bedroom so I have no choice but to get up and shut it off.
It hasn’t been without its downfalls, of course. I now have the bedtime of an 80-year-old grandma, which severely cuts down on my booming mid-week social life (NOTE: this is a lie) and there are no Starbucks nearby that are open on my early morning drive to work, so I have to resort to the slightly stale generic coffee from the cafe in my office building.
But you know what? I couldn’t be happier with this crazy early morning shift. Sure, I drive to work before the sun is out, but I also finish my shift while most workers are only a few hours into their days. I have time to run errands or just relax at home. I get to go to the gym before the crazy after-work rush. I even get paid shift differential, totaling up to the equivalent of about 3/4 of a tank of gas each paycheck—not too shabby.
So I guess this is my new ‘grown-up’ lifestyle. Excuse me while I go sip champagne and eat caviar, because that’s what adults do.

Tarnishing the Noble Image of Sparky the Sun Devil

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I started the semester off feeling optimistic, but suddenly the weight of the end of the semester came crashing down on me and I was buried in a pile of papers, presentations and final exams, not to mention uncertainty about what next semester would bring.

I applied for transfer to ASU in the end of October. It took a while for my transcripts to get sent, so my application status changed on My ASU to “pending/in process” on November 15. I checked the status every single day—on some days, I would check back multiple times, just in case—and for 3 and a half weeks, nothing changed. I tried contacting ASU, and all they could tell me was that I should be hearing back soon. Then Monday came, and my status changed to “In Review.” Suddenly I felt like my application was going to be denied. Why? That’s a great question, seeing as ASU has pretty low requirements—a 2.5 GPA will guarantee admission and they boast a 95% acceptance rate. Somehow, though, I convinced myself that they had filled all of the openings for transfer students, and I was doomed to spend another semester at Paradise Valley Community College, which might just be the death of me.

Clearly I was wrong :)

I have a tendency to have extremely high expectations at the beginning of the semester and watch them spiral downwards in a fiery tailspin as finals come around, but I’m still going to say this: I think things are going to be great at ASU.

The second I started writing for my journalism class—really writing, with research and interviews and the whole nine yards—all of the doubts that had been floating around in my mind disappeared.

I’m not in denial—I know it won’t be easy, and I’ll still have days where I weigh the pros and cons of dropping out and becoming a hermit. But I love writing, and I love my major, so I am going into my time at ASU feeling completely optimistic.

That is all :)

Will you kindly remove your hand from my face?

There are two middle-aged women that sit at the same table as me in my anthropology class. They’re very friendly, if not a little outspoken and awkward, but in general I enjoy them because it’s nice to not be the only person in my group talking during our group discussion time.

Today in class, one of the women popped a Tupperware out of her backpack. Inside was an entire brick of jack cheese, which she proceeded to unwrap. She then pulled a knife (a knife…like what you stab people with) and began slicing the cheese into cubes. I expected her to transition into a Julia Child-esque monologue in which she would explain the origins of Jack Cheese and then show the whole class how to make a grilled cheese sandwich with it. Nope, she just cubed the cheese, put it back in the Tupperware, and slipped it back into her backpack like there was nothing strange about it. Still confused, I glanced at the other woman to see if she had reacted at all. She hadn’t—but that was probably because she was busy clipping her fingernails.

Did I mention this was in a public place, not over the garbage can in her bathroom at home?

I was so disgusted, I probably would have excused myself from class if I hadn’t been 2 minutes away from giving a presentation. I immediately remembered my trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC a few years ago, where I came across a girl clipping her toenails on a bench in the middle of the Auschwitz exhibit and had to walk quickly in the opposite direction and keep myself from thinking about the toenail clippings that were surely sprinkled on the floor like confetti.

I don’t know what the deal is, but some people just have no common courtesy or perception of public manners. I don’t care what you do at home. Feel free to leave your toenail clippings all over the couch, eat food that you dropped on the floor, and slurp your soup as loud as you like. As long as I’m not there to put up with it, I don’t care. But please, guys, can we all show a little more consideration toward the people around us when we’re in public?

Last Friday I was at a concert at the state fair. There was a teenage girl sitting next to me, and halfway through the show, she decided to put her sweater on. So she flung her arm out, barely missing my face, and proceeded to take up all of my personal space to put her arm in the sleeve. I was too shocked to verbalize my annoyance; I simply looked from her to my friend and back again with the “would you believe this girl?” look, hoping she’d get the hint. Spoiler alert: She didn’t. She just wielded her arm around my head until she had finished putting the sweater on and then turned back to the concert as though nothing had happened. That time, I didn’t do anything about it. Looking back, though, I wish I had turned to her and said, “excuse me, will you kindly remove your hand from my face?”

Maybe this is purely out of selfishness that I’m asking for this—after all, if these things didn’t affect me, I wouldn’t be nearly as passionate about it. But this is something I think everybody can agree upon. Cube your cheese before you go to school. Remember the concept of personal space. And for goodness sake…stop clipping your nails in public!

Things I Love This Week: 10/13

• I want to start this week off with some really great news: After 69 days, 21 of the 33 trapped Chilean miners have been rescued [as of 12:45pm]. That still means there are 12 men trapped down there, but this is very happy news for their families and loved ones—they’re on their way out. Be praying for the rescue workers as they work hard to get them all out safely, and for the miners themselves. You can also watch a live feed, which shows the rescue efforts from the surface as well as a camera that is inside the mine.  [MSNBC]
• As it turns out, it’s slightly illegal to block off a freeway in order to promote your music. Take note, future musicians. [Today Show]
• New York Magazine criticizes this season’s new network sitcoms, including NBC’s Outsourced (which I firmly oppose…really? A show about a call center in India? Lawsuit waiting to happen.) [New York Magazine]
• This is quite possibly the best cake ever made. [The Daily What]
• The Fug Girls (of GoFugYourself.com, a fantastic website) have made a slideshow & commentary of the worst men’s hair in pop culture for their NY Mag column. It’s so bad, it’s almost good. My favorite? Voldemort, of course! [Vulture]
• Want to dress your pet up for Halloween? Check out the pop culture inspired pet costumes on Flavorwire. I personally plan on dressing my cats up as Lady Gaga and Elton John… [Flavorwire] 
• TLC recently premiered a TV show called Sister Wives (Sister Wives? Really?!) and the family is now being investigated for polygamy. Well done, guys. Well done. [Newsy]
• In case Ed Hardy’s bedazzled shirts, trucker hats, and a plethora of other unnecessary items aren’t enough for you, Christian Audigier’s house is up for sale. It could be your …for only $8 million. Upside: He’s throwing a Rolls Royce Phantom 5 into the deal. Downside: I won’t be your friend anymore if you buy it. [Curbed LA]
• I am a nerd, so most of these posts have the obligatory Harry Potter reference. Here’s a pretty cool scan of the spreadsheet JK Rowling used to plot out The Order of the Phoenix. So much planning…nerd sigh. [Slash Film]

Things I Love This Week: 10/6

• Flavorwire has a gallery of 10 of the world’s most eye-catching offices. I want to work in the Google office…they have a slide. A slide! [Flavorwire]
• A few old Wendy’s training videos have popped up on Youtube, in which they use made-up R&B songs to teach employees how to pour drinks, serve chili, and grill burgers. I like the one about how to serve cold drinks…but don’t miss the video on grilling in which the trainer wears a sequined shirt and gold specs… [Youtube]
• Did you drop some food on the floor? Figure out if it’s still safe to eat in this flowchart [MyConfinedSpace via BuzzFeed]
• Apparently in Saudi Arabia, where modesty is of huge importance, Mariah Carey is often photoshopped into less revealing outfits. Check out a few examples from throughout the years… [Jezebel]
• Vanity Fair has a feature on the woman whose photo was made into the cover of Vampire Weekend’s newest album, Contra. Apparently she had no idea…fascinating (opinion: She should not fight it. That’s kind of a big deal, I’d just brag about it for the rest of my life) [Vanity Fair]
• A writer for Jezebel decided to pull a stunt at New York Fashion Week: She dressed up a doll in the same outfit she wore and carried it around all day. People loved it…people believed it. Amazing. [Jezebel]
• Fast Company ponders whether or not companies should allow their employees to take powernaps. Answer: Yes. I like sleep. [Fast Company]
• For those of you who are still excited about yesterday’s massive storm (we skipped lecture and talked about this instead in my geo class today) here’s some photos, and also a bit about the two tornadoes that touched down in Bellemont this morning, just outside of Flagstaff [AZ Central]

Okay, one last thing: I am trying to expand the websites I check for my weekly posts, so if anybody has some interesting/entertaining websites they’d like to recommend, let me know!