I remember a few years ago (seems so recent and yet so long ago) when I first started college. I was so excited! I was going to be fashionable, make lots of friends, do fun things, get great grades, lose weight, party, work, and blah blah blah. And, to be fair, freshman year I did do most of that -I lived in the dorms, which makes it easy to make friends. I still dressed like a goth girl, and wore make up daily. I went out at all hours of the night, doing stupid things like walk by myself past midnight in a notoriously bad part of town. I didn't lose weight, and since I didn't study, I didn't get good grades. I did alright. And I definitely partied, if by "party" you mean got drunk on Pabst all night with some guys I wasn't exactly friends with but were fun to drink with. Oh boy, my grades suffered that term!
College is nothing like you see in movies. Not that I've seen a lot of movies about college; not really my taste. But still, we have this ideal that the girls are hot and dress up, the guys are cool, everybody's in a frat or sorority, everybody has wiiiiild parties, big football games, school spirit, rah rah rah, you know the cliches. I'm telling you, none of that is true. This is the first in a We'll-See-When-I-Get-Bored-Of-It series explaining what college is really like for me, an Average Student :)
So, what's it like being a college student? For one, everybody's pretty damn poor. Everyone I know has money problems -student loans, FAFSA (the biggest bullshit you'd ever believe), rent, books, you name it. I don't know ANYONE who can afford to regularly party, do drugs, drink, wear fancy clothes, drive nice cars, go places, buy the most recent electronics, or eat regularly/healthily.
Seriously. College is all about staving off complete destitution long enough to graduate. On a typical Saturday night, if I ask myself, "What do I want to do today?" the answer is something along the lines of "I have 37 cents. Let's stay home and sleep." Right now, after rent and before payday, I have a total of $8.50 to live off of. If I'm going to eat, it's whatever's in my freezer or cabinets
I'm vegetarian, so I don't have to worry about buying that expensive "meat" other people crave. I just buy frozen vegetables on sale, and rice in bulk, so when supplies get low, I can make a tasty stir fry and rice dish. Or I can make just rice and veggies. Or rice and cheese. Cheese is a common college staple, along with tortillas, eggs, milk, cereal, chips, popsicles, potatoes, pasta, butter, cookies, and a huge bag of baking chips. In our house, we thrive primarily on bagels and cream cheese. Two weeks' worth of groceries costs me usually about $30, if I go somewhere cheap like Winco.
Obviously a diet based largely on boxed foods, frozen foods, preserved foods, grease, salt, sugar, and fat is NOT healthy. Hence, the Freshmen 15, the Sophomore 25, the Junior 35, and the Senior 45. At least if you go to Grad School, you'll be too stressed out to eat. Anyway, all this poverty puts the stereotypical college food Pizza out of our range. Sometimes salad is affordable, and when it is, I get that.
Thanks to this poverty, college students LOVE free stuff. Just today, I picked up a half-broken, wobbly old stereo cabinet that my neighbor was giving away. I was stoked! I can use it to store some of my crap. My roommate's mom got us a killer free coffeetable a few weeks ago. Basically, if it's in even remotely usable condition, and you can get it home, if it's free, a college student will jump on that like flies on shit and drag it home. You can figure out what to do with it once you've got it home.
Similarly, I love deals. I will nitpick for the best deals in Winco. I won't buy things I don't really want, or usually need, but I can spend fifteen minutes deciding on which box of pasta gives the most bang for buck. Coupons? Awesome! What I won't do to save 15 cents a pound. Your standards, when you're a poor college student, also take a dive. It usually goes name brand > store brand > generic brand > sub-generic brand. Winco sells stuff that is literally called "Cat Clay." "Cat Food." "Dog Food." It's a plain white or yellow bag with black lettering. For me, I can handle the sub-generic brand stuff usually, although I won't buy stuff that tastes nasty. And I won't buy my pets anything less than store brand.
Being poor as I am, I did get rid of cable, and I'm on the cheapest internet (still expensive). I take advantage of every deal I can. Thrift stores and Old Navy are great for cheap deals. I won't spend more than $10 for a shirt, and no more than $20 for pants. Actually, thrift stores rock in general. So much shit for so cheap! Unfortunately, there are better thrift stores back in my hometown than my new town. Subsequently, I have a hard time throwing anything away. "Oh, clothes that don't fit me? Hrm...I could lose weight! They only have one hole in them." You get it. I make an excuse to keep everything.
The worst part of being a poor college student, though, is the working. You have to work to pay for your life, but working interferes with school. Yes, students who work are better at time management, but my job is infuriatingly inflexible. I can't afford to quit, especially with the promise of full-time employment right after graduation, but I will never graduate if I can't take core classes because they interfere with my work schedule. It's such an annoying conundrum.
But, the upside to this destitution is the creativity that you have to draw from the depths of your soul. You'll find yourself making strange meals that are surprisingly delicious. You'll find some use for the torn up old robe you kept for some reason (it's our bathroom curtains). An old fishbowl is now a pot for a plant. Nothing to do? Let's clean. Let's sleep. Or, let's study. Hate your job? Think of it as the place with free AC or heat. Plus, if you're really looking for something to do, you can go to free school events.
Yes, the college life is a constant battle of being completely broke, getting paid, paying rent, and being broke again. And if you're like me, the poverty will carry on after graduation thanks to a huge debt left by student loans that are only growing interest. Such is life, and college is great training for how to be poor. It's even actually pretty fun sometimes!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
U.S. Education
For a country that claims to value education, we sure don't act like it. We always have enough money to fund war or bailout banks that weren't doing their jobs. We have enough money for the president to eat luxury food prepared by a gourmet chef. Our politicians have enough money to throw huge campaigns and live in luxury. We say we value education, but our students use outdated textbooks, sit in old desks, and lose opportunities in a classroom of 30 kids.
America doesn't value education. We don't seem to understand that a child's proficiency in any given subject cannot be measured by standardized testing alone. And while our ideals are high -we want to be great at math, science, reading, and writing- we do not make that ideal attainable but for the elite, lucky few. Poverty breeds poverty, and those who were born with easy opportunity seem to think that anyone, just anyone, should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Impossible.
Think about it: if you were born to a family too busy trying to work 3 jobs to make ends meet, who never completed high school, in a poor neighborhood, the unfortunate chances are good that you would wind up in an impoverished, overcrowded school. You wouldn't get the support you needed at home or at school to truly achieve. No matter how smart you were, you need someone to guide you. If your parents cannot read, how can they teach you to read? It's a vicious cycle, that isn't easily fixed.
Except, in an ideal world, it is. In an ideal world, our government would spend enough money on schools to pay for textbooks, helpers, and after-school activities for at-risk youth. But, I guess in Utopia, you don't have to worry that someone won't be educated, because it's a fantasy world where everything is perfect.
And it's not even just that we don't spend enough on education. We spend money on the wrong things. No offense to all the teachers out there, but some of you are pretty damn ineffective. You might be great people, you might love children, you might not. But for whatever reason, we should NOT be employing teachers who are unenthusiastic, incompetent, or effective. But, we are. We are. We pay ineffective teachers greater salaries because of their seniority, their tenure.
I don't think that standardized testing is the way to go about analyzing teachers, because even a great teacher can't be perfect in a classroom of 30 kids, or with little money. But our school administrators need to be more involved. Our government needs to provide more funding for our public schools, and each school can then monitor teacher quality. It's not easy, I never said it was. But sometimes the most necessary things are the most difficult, and if we valued education as much as we claim to, we would do the work and overturn the established system.
A system, mind you, of which I and my childhood friends fall victim. When I started high school, we had to fundraise because the science budget for the whole school was a whopping $16. Can you imagine? Less than a month's allowance for the entire school to spend on science. Luckily, I did have a fantastic (and generous) teacher who used his own money to fund experiments and such for us. But is that right? No!
In my school, especially middle and high schools, it felt like nobody really gave a damn. We were the "underachieving" schools, who got low test scores, joined gangs, had babies, did drugs, got in fights, dropped out. Yeah, we did all that. We cared about school more than people gave us credit for, too. We strove to rise above our adversities. Sometimes -often- we failed. There were many fantastic teachers who cared a whole lot about us, who went above and beyond to give us quality education. To them, I am grateful. To the rest, who accepted the status quo, who disdained us, who punished and never rewarded us, and, above all, who prevented us from achieving all that we could possibly have been, I sarcastically thank you.
Thanks for looking the other way when we ditched class right in front of your face. Your apathy becomes you, no wonder you never made it farther than a poor-ass inner city school with a bunch of smart but less-than-motivated kids. We had zero respect for our principal at my high school. She was the worst of the worst, as I recall it. Glad she's retired, probably with a decent pension.
And let me make this clear: my peers and I, we were SMART. We were STRONG, INDEPENDENT, CAPABLE, and yes, even MOTIVATED (when we wanted to be). We had SO much potential, and my classmates more so than I, LIVED UP TO IT. They are doing amazing things. Even the students I did not know, who were the real dropouts, druggies, teen moms, gang-bangers...I don't look down on any of them. I respect the teen moms who went to school while raising their kid, or dropped out to take care of their kid. I respect the dropouts who had to work to help out at home. I understand the kids who turned to drugs because school wasn't engaging enough. I even understand, though not condone, the gang-bangers who wanted to feel powerful after feeling powerless for so long.
I believe, after seeing it with my own eyes, that every kid is amazing. Every kid has the potential to overcome their adversities, to open the eyes of strangers, and to change the world, but only if they are nurtured, encouraged, and supported from all angles. Are we teaching our kids to be scientists, and look at the world with wonder and curiosity? Are we teaching them to be activists, and fight for what they believe in? Are we teaching them to be good citizens and support what's right and condemn what's wrong, to have an active voice? I don't think we are, so what ARE we teaching our kids?
It goes on and on and on. There's a movie coming out called Waiting for Superman, about the American school system. I would highly recommend that you go see it. In fact, pledge to go see it on the website. For each certain number of pledges received, they will donate to a school district. Go pledge, and support our kids. We SHOULD be terrified and outraged by this movie, we need to change what's wrong with ourselves. Please go check it out!
America doesn't value education. We don't seem to understand that a child's proficiency in any given subject cannot be measured by standardized testing alone. And while our ideals are high -we want to be great at math, science, reading, and writing- we do not make that ideal attainable but for the elite, lucky few. Poverty breeds poverty, and those who were born with easy opportunity seem to think that anyone, just anyone, should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Impossible.
Think about it: if you were born to a family too busy trying to work 3 jobs to make ends meet, who never completed high school, in a poor neighborhood, the unfortunate chances are good that you would wind up in an impoverished, overcrowded school. You wouldn't get the support you needed at home or at school to truly achieve. No matter how smart you were, you need someone to guide you. If your parents cannot read, how can they teach you to read? It's a vicious cycle, that isn't easily fixed.
Except, in an ideal world, it is. In an ideal world, our government would spend enough money on schools to pay for textbooks, helpers, and after-school activities for at-risk youth. But, I guess in Utopia, you don't have to worry that someone won't be educated, because it's a fantasy world where everything is perfect.
And it's not even just that we don't spend enough on education. We spend money on the wrong things. No offense to all the teachers out there, but some of you are pretty damn ineffective. You might be great people, you might love children, you might not. But for whatever reason, we should NOT be employing teachers who are unenthusiastic, incompetent, or effective. But, we are. We are. We pay ineffective teachers greater salaries because of their seniority, their tenure.
I don't think that standardized testing is the way to go about analyzing teachers, because even a great teacher can't be perfect in a classroom of 30 kids, or with little money. But our school administrators need to be more involved. Our government needs to provide more funding for our public schools, and each school can then monitor teacher quality. It's not easy, I never said it was. But sometimes the most necessary things are the most difficult, and if we valued education as much as we claim to, we would do the work and overturn the established system.
A system, mind you, of which I and my childhood friends fall victim. When I started high school, we had to fundraise because the science budget for the whole school was a whopping $16. Can you imagine? Less than a month's allowance for the entire school to spend on science. Luckily, I did have a fantastic (and generous) teacher who used his own money to fund experiments and such for us. But is that right? No!
In my school, especially middle and high schools, it felt like nobody really gave a damn. We were the "underachieving" schools, who got low test scores, joined gangs, had babies, did drugs, got in fights, dropped out. Yeah, we did all that. We cared about school more than people gave us credit for, too. We strove to rise above our adversities. Sometimes -often- we failed. There were many fantastic teachers who cared a whole lot about us, who went above and beyond to give us quality education. To them, I am grateful. To the rest, who accepted the status quo, who disdained us, who punished and never rewarded us, and, above all, who prevented us from achieving all that we could possibly have been, I sarcastically thank you.
Thanks for looking the other way when we ditched class right in front of your face. Your apathy becomes you, no wonder you never made it farther than a poor-ass inner city school with a bunch of smart but less-than-motivated kids. We had zero respect for our principal at my high school. She was the worst of the worst, as I recall it. Glad she's retired, probably with a decent pension.
And let me make this clear: my peers and I, we were SMART. We were STRONG, INDEPENDENT, CAPABLE, and yes, even MOTIVATED (when we wanted to be). We had SO much potential, and my classmates more so than I, LIVED UP TO IT. They are doing amazing things. Even the students I did not know, who were the real dropouts, druggies, teen moms, gang-bangers...I don't look down on any of them. I respect the teen moms who went to school while raising their kid, or dropped out to take care of their kid. I respect the dropouts who had to work to help out at home. I understand the kids who turned to drugs because school wasn't engaging enough. I even understand, though not condone, the gang-bangers who wanted to feel powerful after feeling powerless for so long.
I believe, after seeing it with my own eyes, that every kid is amazing. Every kid has the potential to overcome their adversities, to open the eyes of strangers, and to change the world, but only if they are nurtured, encouraged, and supported from all angles. Are we teaching our kids to be scientists, and look at the world with wonder and curiosity? Are we teaching them to be activists, and fight for what they believe in? Are we teaching them to be good citizens and support what's right and condemn what's wrong, to have an active voice? I don't think we are, so what ARE we teaching our kids?
It goes on and on and on. There's a movie coming out called Waiting for Superman, about the American school system. I would highly recommend that you go see it. In fact, pledge to go see it on the website. For each certain number of pledges received, they will donate to a school district. Go pledge, and support our kids. We SHOULD be terrified and outraged by this movie, we need to change what's wrong with ourselves. Please go check it out!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Love
Because you love me, I promise to love myself
Because I love you, I promise to love myself
I love myself because I am strong alone
And stronger when I'm not
And strongest still when all people stand together
Because I love myself, I am able to love
Because I love myself, I allow myself to be loved
There are feelings stirring within my heart
The memory of loss and sorrow and bitterness
Carved upon my heart and my flesh
See me through the hardest parts
And forgive me for moving past the pain
If I am able to do so at all
It's all because I will always love you
And, more than that, because you love me
those are some of the pets I've lost recently. For me, my pets are extremely important. I can relate to animals far better than people, and in any case, when I was upset (especially as a teenager), my animals were the only ones to console me. Once, when I was 13, I'd gotten into a fight with my mom, and I was highly upset. I sat in the backyard with my schoolwork and cried. My dog Takato came and sat in my lap like he always does, licking my face. An important paper blew away in the wind. Toby, my other dog, ran off to play with the paper, but submissive Takato jumped up, growled at alpha Toby, grabbed the paper by the tiniest corner in his mouth and politely brought it back to me.
That was over 7 years ago, now, and I've grown a lot. I've lost all my childhood pets except for the dogs, Toby and Takato. I truly believe that I would not be the person I am today without Pickle's constant affection, tolerance, and dependence, Miss Kitty's grumpiness and possessiveness, Spookie's snotty attitude and cuddliness, Lain's sweet'n'sweetness, or any of the others' natural quirks. For sure, I may not even be alive if not for the dog I had as a small child -when I was a very small baby, my mom and the dog (Harry) were on a walk in the park when some strays came up aggressively. Now, you must understand about Harry: he was the sweetest dog in the world, not a mean bone in his big body. But when those dogs went to get me, my mom dropped the leash and he jumped in between us. How can this deep love not affect me as a person?
Even though these pieces of my heart have passed on, these precious friends have died, it doesn't mean they're gone or forgotten by any means. I thank God that I was able to love so deeply and be so deeply loved, no matter the length of time. Even in death, these lovely friends never resented or shunned me. I have new pets that will never replace the old ones, new friends with their own ridiculous personalities, who need me. I still love all my pets, and adore reminiscing about them. But I am still alive, and I still have a lot of things to learn, and a lot of love to give, and there are so many animals in need of love. So, with the blessings of the past, I step forward unwavering into a bright future undoubtedly filled with love.
Because I love you, I promise to love myself
I love myself because I am strong alone
And stronger when I'm not
And strongest still when all people stand together
Because I love myself, I am able to love
Because I love myself, I allow myself to be loved
There are feelings stirring within my heart
The memory of loss and sorrow and bitterness
Carved upon my heart and my flesh
See me through the hardest parts
And forgive me for moving past the pain
If I am able to do so at all
It's all because I will always love you
And, more than that, because you love me
those are some of the pets I've lost recently. For me, my pets are extremely important. I can relate to animals far better than people, and in any case, when I was upset (especially as a teenager), my animals were the only ones to console me. Once, when I was 13, I'd gotten into a fight with my mom, and I was highly upset. I sat in the backyard with my schoolwork and cried. My dog Takato came and sat in my lap like he always does, licking my face. An important paper blew away in the wind. Toby, my other dog, ran off to play with the paper, but submissive Takato jumped up, growled at alpha Toby, grabbed the paper by the tiniest corner in his mouth and politely brought it back to me.
That was over 7 years ago, now, and I've grown a lot. I've lost all my childhood pets except for the dogs, Toby and Takato. I truly believe that I would not be the person I am today without Pickle's constant affection, tolerance, and dependence, Miss Kitty's grumpiness and possessiveness, Spookie's snotty attitude and cuddliness, Lain's sweet'n'sweetness, or any of the others' natural quirks. For sure, I may not even be alive if not for the dog I had as a small child -when I was a very small baby, my mom and the dog (Harry) were on a walk in the park when some strays came up aggressively. Now, you must understand about Harry: he was the sweetest dog in the world, not a mean bone in his big body. But when those dogs went to get me, my mom dropped the leash and he jumped in between us. How can this deep love not affect me as a person?
Even though these pieces of my heart have passed on, these precious friends have died, it doesn't mean they're gone or forgotten by any means. I thank God that I was able to love so deeply and be so deeply loved, no matter the length of time. Even in death, these lovely friends never resented or shunned me. I have new pets that will never replace the old ones, new friends with their own ridiculous personalities, who need me. I still love all my pets, and adore reminiscing about them. But I am still alive, and I still have a lot of things to learn, and a lot of love to give, and there are so many animals in need of love. So, with the blessings of the past, I step forward unwavering into a bright future undoubtedly filled with love.
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