Category: Observations

Some stuff I have come across while living out of my car.

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Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Eventually.

Seeing as I am currently sitting in my childhood room painting my nails pink and watching the Sex and the City movie, I guess I can’t really proclaim that I am a part of the “real world” quite yet, although the “Graduate of the Honors School” medal and my golden, red, and blue cords hanging on my wall as a result of my Wednesday graduation would say otherwise. However, even though the actual reality of graduation hasn’t really hit me yet, there have been a select few parts of the whole debacle that have squirmed their way into my head.

During my sophomore and junior years of college, I actually wasn’t really sure if I wanted to study abroad. I was afraid to leave my friends and my family, and as silly as this sounds, I didn’t know if it would be worth it to miss out on all the shenanigans of one of my precious last few semesters at school with all the people I had grown to love. It definitely wasn’t one of my deciding factors, but one thing that people (okay, older people) would always stress was, This is the only time in your life you can do something like this. 

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To me, this sounded so sad! So negative! I knew what I was doing– I knew that upon graduation I would be gainfully employed with a fantastic job, traveling the world and writing, basically living the dream– and why not? I was great!

Ha. Ha. Ha. How sweet. I’m actually glad that no one told me what an idiot I was being because it would have really just made me sad before I really needed to be sad. Now I am a graduate, and I’m slowly but surely realizing that yes, I have a nice resume, but so do eight million other people in the world competing for the exact same entry-level job. Not so sweet. I don’t mean to come off too negative here, because I’m sure things will work out eventually, I just don’t think that time will be when I’m 22 and living in a house with my mom in a town with one traffic light and a general store.

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However, being back here, surrounded by lots of other hard-working people down on their luck because of the economy, does make me appreciate the small parts of the world that I have had the pleasure to venture to. I used to silently scoff to myself when people would tell me that they just couldn’t wait to go on their next trip to Point Pleasant or the Poconos. Now, I realize what they were doing. They were doing all they can. With a smile on their face, they’re doing all the traveling that their wallets and their work schedule will allow. Maybe they’re sad they’re not headed to Bali or Vegas this summer, but they’ll never tell you that. They take what they can get and they aren’t bitter about it one bit.

And you know what? I think that this is what a true traveler is. They aren’t someone who necessarily has a bottomless wallet or lives a glamourous life or has their father’s name on their credit card. They aren’t necessarily someone who can boast they have hit every continent.

Instead, they do what they can, and they do it with integrity and dignity. They may be crammed back in their boring hometown where the closest gas station is 15 miles away, and the only vacation they may be able to take will be a three day weekend on their old roommate’s couch. However, this isn’t the point. The point is they’re going somewhere, they’re doing something new, and they’ll be damned if they’re not trying their hardest.

Point Pleasant today, Bali tomorrow.

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The Surreal Life

I feel like I was never there. 

Before I studied abroad, I’m going to assume I heard this statement a lot, although I don’t remember it. The only reason why I’m figuring this is because I’ve said it at least five times in the past week, and I’m not the only one. Every person I know who goes away comes back and says, I feel like it was just a dream. 

Today I saw a friend who graduated a few months ago who went away during his sophomore year of college, quite some time ago, and one of the first things he asked me today was “How was your time abroad,” odd since I came back six months ago and most people don’t casually ask about it anymore. As always, one of my first statements was that the whole thing felt surreal, which usually pours out of my mouth when I try to sum up my experience and I realize that I just sound like a blubbering idiot.

I’ve heard it a lot (as stated before), but my old friend put it in a way that was a little odd to me, more than just “Wow it was so awesome to run around a random country for three months!” 

He said, “When I came home, it took me a solid year to come to terms with what I had done and what I had accomplished. It wasn’t that it was dreamy or incredibly amazing, it was just so surreal.”

He continued to explain that he studied abroad through his community college, not the university that he later attended and where I met him. Obviously, since community college isn’t your typical study abroad outlet, he was the only one to participate in the program that semester at all. The nervousness that goes along with this was only accentuated when the school called him up and said he had been accepted into the program, however, they didn’t have housing for him, and instead, handed him a list of people to call.

When he got to Australia, he called up one of the people on his list, and sure enough, one man had actually stayed home to take his expected call, something unheard of in America, and had space available for him to rent. The 6’5 rugby player also didn’t mind lending the 5’5 skinny pre-med student some clothes when the airport lost his luggage for ten days.

My friend stayed in Newcastle, not Sydney, which is a lot rougher of a town than beautiful and touristy Sydney is since it is a coal-mining town filled with blue-collar workers and some accompanied crime. Him and his landlord friend also housed various couch surfers throughout the semester who cooked for them and took them out on the town, being as thankfully, Australians appreciate the joy and beauty of travel and they don’t mind helping out a fellow traveler in need.

Study abroad shouldn’t only consist of drinking, asking people what the WiFi password is, and figuring out what countries have the best clubs. It’s not an experience that should necessarily mark “the best time of your life,” but perhaps, the most exciting and the most wrought with change. This is what makes study abroad surreal- not the parties and the people you meet who happen to live in your state. Instead, it is the unique life that you undertook for a dramatic, outrageous, and unreal time of your college years.

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The Last Sparkle of Humanity

Humanity is an ocean…

The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest marathon; always held on Patriots’ Day, the third Monday in April. Each year, it draws in 20,000 hungry runners and 50,000 of their closest friends and family, who crowd the sidelines and scream and cheer and hold up their signs and are almost as relentless as the runners themselves. And this year, just before 3:00 pm, it was bombed.

Close to the finish line, two bombs went off, ultimately killing three and maiming close to 200 more bystanders. Throughout the day, 5 more undetonated bombs were discovered, which consisted of pressure cookers and nails. As of right now, no suspects have been named and no one is in custody.

I could literally go on all day about how utterly sick this is. To even gather my words enough to write this was a challenge in itself because, as all other Americans are feeling at this exact moment, I am infuriated, wounded, and let down.

On the one hand, I want to shake my finger at the human race. Regardless of whether this was an outside terrorist attack by an extremist group or an attack, because that’s still what it is, by one of our own, I want to say look what you did. Look what has been created. I want them to see this as a wake-up call, for it all to mean something, for us to say, look at the violence that is impeding our world. 

“Maybe this is what the Mayans predicted, not an asteroid or a solar flare, but the end of what we are. We no longer cherish life, or the other people, or even the earth or the animals or the resources put on it. War, genocide, abuse, senseless mass murder, animal cruelty, gluttony, greed, waste, and lust. Look around you, the end of the world is already here.”

And you know what? Maybe this is true. Maybe the extreme violence that no longer lurks in far-off battlefields, that now has infiltrated our schools, movie theaters, and sporting events, is the true mark of the end of an era; an era in which we believed we were safe when we left our homes in the morning, an era in which we, as Americans, believed we lived in a healthy, safe nation. 

However, as easy as it would be to throw in the towel and say it’s all downhill from here, there is a tiny part of me that believes otherwise. I am so utterly angry at all of this and my brain is so muddled that I can barely even spot that sparkle of hope. However, it’s there. Actually, it’s right here. 

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Now let me make this image a little more clear– this photograph was taken after the bombing. These people, as you can see, are still running. Actually, they are marathoners– running an extra mile and a half to Mass General Hospital to give blood to the victims. These people just ran twenty six miles and their own sparkle inside is telling them, “Keep going.”

All over the place, average people with average lives and average jobs didn’t leave the scene, they went back. They ran towards the fire and the cries and the blood to save those who hadn’t been so lucky. They risked their own lives for people they would never know. This is hope. This is humanity. This is what we stand for; not the evil that floods the headlines and sometimes seems the be the only thing left.

All around us, all over the world, these good people run wild. You will never read all of their names in newspapers and they will never receive big gold medals and no one will ever pat them on the back. Some of them will save lives, while others will give a free loaf of bread or even just let someone cross the street because it’s raining out. These strange people are absolutely everywhere. And they absolutely outnumber those who live to cause pain. 

“Good will always prevail over evil. Every time. Remember that.” 

When awful acts of terror such as this occur, our first instinct is to say humanity is fucked. Which it very well may be. But I have a pretty good feeling that these good people, who hide on every corner, aren’t ready to throw in the towel quite yet either.

…If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. 

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The City of Brotherly Love… and War

Philadelphia is an interesting city, to the say the least, in the fact that besides being the birthplace of America, it also remains a hub of activity and rebirth in the country.

Thankfully, this is a point that remains true as it is the center of the Northeast Regional Honors Conference this weekend, where Honors students from all over the country gather to do a whole mess of things. Mostly, we discuss ideas for our Honors programs, we discuss academic ideas, we talk about life and we run amok around this city, and whatever other cities in the past and coming years that we get the opportunity to be sent of, luckily free of charge for some of us thanks to our generous universities.

What’s really cool about Philly is that it’s a combination of Old City, where our former presidents gathered to assemble this country (whether or not they would be satisfied with the results now is not applicable) and this paired with the People, who today, as a main city in the Northeast, are innovative, not afraid to be themselves, and not afraid of anything, really.

Tonight, this worked against Dr. Lucy Kerman, Keynote Speaker for the NCHC Conference and Vice Provost for University Partnerships at Drexel University. I really hate to put words in her mouth here without too many direct quotes, but I’m going to try to paraphrase her presentation the best I can for argument’s sake and quote where possible. (Audio will be posted when it becomes available).

According to Kerman, universities are not civilly active enough, in part at the fault of their students, their customers, really. It is because of these students that residents in low-income housing are forced to deal with their childlike shenanigans because these “middle class white kids” “stay up till 3:00 am having parties and being loud and drinking” and they live in “converted family homes that now illegally house six white middle-class students.” In part, it is to the fault of these students that crimes occur in the first place because “they walk home at 2:00 am with beers and their iPhones.”

Mad? Oh yeah. Us too. Keep in mind as well this isn’t your 95-year-old neighbor complaining about those damn loud kids interrupting her sleep at 8:00 pm. This is a Vice Provost at a 122-year-old University speaking who oversees about 22,000 students.

Now, let me move onto her basic point, unfortunately hidden behind a singularly faceted utopian “solution” to a problem with multifaceted causes; that universities need to funnel their money back into the community by sending students out to use their skills to help by sending them in to design storefronts, employ low-income residents with “no skills” (good luck with that one), make sure that playgrounds are safe, and improve drainage. Not too shabby, right? Especially considering Drexel, who formed this “universal” model, also received a ten million dollar grant to implement this. Must be nice.

Unfortunately, putting every student into a single pool where all of our mommies and daddies can shell out $57,000 to $60,000 each year (the range of tuition at Drexel University including education, room and board, and meal plans) is probably not the best idea. In reality, who is at fault for students being thrown out into on-campus housing where they “damage” the community? Is it, as Kerman stated, “the investors who buy the housing and charge low prices to attract students” to make a profit or is it because university housing can literally be double what students will pay to live off-campus?

We’re not choosing off-campus housing because we enjoy irritating residents or because we want to run around these particularly dangerous streets, especially in some parts of Philadelphia Kerman was particularly referencing, in a drunken stupor. It’s because we are broke as hell, because American universities have become businesses before places of education, where you either choose a university based on the scholarship you receive or you graduate, unemployed, with 200k in loans. Also, as an FYI, 135 nations out of 196 in the world employ free post secondary education to citizens. America, obviously, isn’t one of them.

An interesting point was also brought up by an administrator who mentioned that yes, 20 years ago, her argument could be a valid one, where parents did shell out money for spoiled college kids. Many of those kids didn’t work multiple jobs or pray that they would even be employed within one year of graduation or even get social security when they hit 65. These weren’t problems then. However, 48 years ago, we segregated schools based on race. Years go on. Things change. I would hope a Vice Provost could acknowledge that in a speech she is giving in 2013, where the financial crisis has cost America, as of now since 2008, 22 trillion dollars.

I’m also a little confused on what the separation is between a student resident in a community and an employed “adult” resident. Legally, what is the difference here? I would seriously love to know. What gives someone else more rights than me to live in a city? Because I’m 22 and you’ve seen National Lampoon’s Animal House too many times?

Also, it must be considered that those coming to universities with comments the most are obviously always going to be those with complaints. How many times has your neighbor said to you “Hey, thanks for not being annoying last night”? Instead, it is the negative that will always be brought to attention over the positive, a very simple logical idea that has been forgotten with a Vice Provost with a Ph.D..

I guess I missed the part where every student in America became a “middle class white kid” (her words, no but seriously) when instead, as I had observed, almost every college student I know works more than one part-time job, literally works 15 hour days when you factor in school, work, and extracurricular activities, and will still graduate with loans they will pay off until they’re 40…. When they will then attempt to send their own kids off to school. Maybe instead of trying to force broke-ass college students who sometimes commute upwards of two hours a day in total to and from college because they can’t afford room and board, highly paid school administrators pointing the finger, as our dear Kerman here, can redirect some of their own dollars to the problem.

As much as I was horrified during this discussion to see a Vice Provost so unbearably out of touch with one of the most obvious problems of American education (the rising costs of tuition and the inability of students to change this business-education model) I also breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a ballroom full of 20-year-olds who don’t even hold a college degree yet up in arms and willing to stand up and face someone who stands tall at her podium with her PowerPoint clicker and ask her how she can expect students to be civilly active when she depicts this “demonic caricature of students,” as Aziz Mama, Monmouth University senior, asked Kerman. They weren’t afraid to say This isn’t right, and you will not offend me and disregard me as another cash cow.

It is this attitude, I think, that envelops and defines Philadelphia; a city that will listen intently to the words you have to say, fight against you with all it has, and vow to be more different and more worthwhile than you ever imagined.

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Live a Life Worth Telling.

I always thought I knew who the winners were.

The businessmen and the lawyers; they were the ones who had it right. Ever since I was little, they were the ones who had it all, with their big, happy families in their cozy mansions with a golden retriever who had a bandanna around their necks. In my head, they came home at 6:00 everyday to a beautiful homemade meal on the table and they spent their weekends on their yachts and drinking cocktails on the porch with their neighbors by moonlight.

Being a middle schooler who unlocked their own door everyday and begged for rides home from track practice, this was the dream. This is what I thought about when I was studying and figuring out how I was gonna pay for school one day; that one day, it would all be worth it.

However, now I’m 22. And I’m not going to med school and I’m not going to law school. Hell, my major is Communication and I spend most of my time palling around in this office and drinking free coffee and trying to figure out which break I can go run at. I may not have a full-time job yet. I may not have a family or a golden retriever and I may drive an ’02 Ford Focus. But I don’t think the businessmen and the lawyers are the winners anymore.

When I was abroad, I met some of the happiest people I have ever known who barely held what you would consider a full-time job. You know what they did? They picked potatos in Ireland. When the season was over, they would take the money they made and then they would go to England and they would bartend in Camden Lock. When it got too cold out, they would fly to Turkey and live in cheap hostels in Istanbul. They always had a backpack on and barely ever wore shoes. They told the most interesting, exciting, and wonderful stories I have ever heard. This is winning.

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Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Getting older, little by little, it is this quote that has much more merit, for me at least, than an endless doctor’s shift or 80 hours workweeks at a law office. One day, some of you will (if you have the time) go to parties and you will say, “I’m a doctor at the local hospital.” Or you will say, “I make $150,000 a year as a lawyer.” And you know what? This is great. But truth be told, for some of us, these figures will never bring happiness. Spending all our daylight hours in little rooms and being tired and hungry and overworked and missing our friends and our families will never, ever, be enough for that beautiful mansion or that red convertible. It’s just not.

Those people, those wealthy, suited, briefcased people are the ones who cheat on their wives, whose children go to therapy because they were always alone. Those are the ones who can count the number of vacations they have been on on one hand because there simply wasn’t time for anyone else.

For some, this will be worth it and they will leave a contented life and maybe make themselves feel like they did something of value for making someone else money. They will not mind that they spent 50 years selling insurance for a faceless corporation. But for me, and many others, we need more. We need substance. We need a life, a story, we need to see a sequence of adventures when the time comes for that white light, not just a series of numbers on a lit-up screen. We need to travel, to see the world, to meet people who are interesting and exciting and to do things that other dream about when they say One day, when I retire. And for this, I don’t mind sleeping late, wearing jeans, and wondering how the hell I will pay for lunch today.

It will always be worth living a life worth telling.

 

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Where to Nest

When you’ve lived in pretty much the same place for your entire life, a funny thing happens… you really start to absolutely, positively loathe it.

And, at the same time, every place I basically have gone ever I have wanted to move to, which I do not hesitate to tell my mother about. Her eyes get glossy for a second before she realizes that I’m probably full of shit, when then she says, “Well that’s nice, honey” before going back to finishing her dinner and I’m stuck there feeling like a little kid who says they want to be an astronaut when they grow up.

However, by no means is New Jersey an unpleasant place, despite the things you have heard me say and the rumors you have undoubtedly heard. (If you want the truth, the reason we make fun of Jersey is because we want everyone else to stay the hell out). In actuality, it is the garden state (shocker) and is full of green forests, beautiful beaches, bustling towns, and life.

Driving down Ocean Avenue to work is always a pleasant reminder of this. Yes, to me, New Jersey may be a little overdone, and I wouldn’t mind eventually finding a new place to set up camp and move on to bigger and better things. At the same time, I try to look at these beautiful beaches as an outsider and that’s when I remember…

This is the most beautiful place in the world. Long Branch

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Sharing the Wealth

Travel is a funny thing. Like a dashing book or an eloquent play, it is rarely the entire story that gets you; the combination of the drama and the passion, or the comedy strewn in with the intricately woven characters. Instead, it’s often a single line that found its way inside you and has no plans of abandonment.

Sometimes (most of the time) I feel like kind of an idiot when people say, “How did you like Italy?” or “Where was your favorite place to go?” and I can only sputter as I try to string together an answer that can somehow sum up the endless amount of thoughts churning in my head. I feel like I talk so much that people just want me to shut up- which is a rare feat considering I’m talking about- subjectively- one of the most breathtaking countries in the world. 

However, once in a while some of my words actually hit a chord, undetected from me until I’m told. I can’t see it in their face and I can’t hear it in their voice, but sometimes, a person will say to me, I went there because of you. And, in turn, this hits a chord of mine more than seeing any photograph or reading any blog post ever would.

Today, my 50-or-so mousy and giddy mother called me to tell me that in November, she will be going to Italy. While there, she will visit the Amalfi Coast (and within it in particular, Sorrento and Capri), Naples (Pompeii), and Rome. Her old college is planning a trip for alumni for an unreasonably good price for a nine-day-trip.

Let me clarify here- my mother doesn’t have a passport. She doesn’t even drive at night. Living alone at her house in the forest, she locks her bedroom door at night, as well as exterior doors. But she told me that when she got the email offer for the trip, she could only think I have to. I have to see what Jenna saw. 

It is words like this that makes me believe that all of my ranting, my photographs, and my endless blog posts are all worth it. If one person out there listens, even it’s just my own mother, it becomes so unbelievably worth it that it feels like a steal.

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Time is of the Essence

Throughout my life, I have been giving my time up like charity. You need me to come in and work an extra shift? Not a problem. You need someone to put the project together for class? I’m in. You need help with your article? I’m on it.

Doing this gave me some great opportunities. I met a lot of cool people, had a lot of great experiences, did a lot of neat stuff. But the thing is… I never enjoyed it. I never took it in, appreciated it, breathed it. I never had the time to.

In Italy, you don’t do this. If you’re going to dinner, you’re not going to be on your iPhone doing work when you’re supposed to be chatting- and not catching up, either, because you don’t need to catch up if you had the time to be already caught up in the first place. Everything you do, you do it because you enjoy it, because time is of the essence, but in a slightly different way.

In America, we do use our time wisely, always; if we at stopped at a traffic light, we’re emailing. If we’re waiting in a restaurant, we’re making a phone call. If we’re at our shitty part-time jobs, we’re doing homework.

In Italy, the Italians also use their time wisely; in the fact that if they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it. If someone is cooking your meal, it’s not going to half-assed and rushed, it’s going to be beautiful and perfect. If someone is going to talk with you, they’re gonna talk with you, not shove you out of the room because they have another meeting like right now. 

Now it may just be senioritis, but this year, I use my time… for myself. Instead of blindly giving it away, I think about what else I could be doing that will make me happy. I don’t want to rush anymore. I don’t want to look at my days and think Yeah, I made it through. I want to look back on my days and say it was a great day not just because it was productive, but because it was fun. 

In America, we are looked at as the worker-bee nation, which has made us into a superpower… but has also made us super worked. For the first time, I’m wondering how great of a thing this actually is.

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Il Dolce Far Niente

I remember my final days in Florence. I remember how as the weeks added up, how I missed more and more having responsibilities, jobs, basically just being accountable for more than just getting on a plane on time. I missed being important to someone, to something.

Well now, here I am. It’s 4:45 on a Tuesday and I have been up since 7:30 am, and after this too-short hour I have off, I will work until 9:00 pm (then I’ll probably go to the bar, which is besides the point).

I miss the days when if I felt like it, I could linger in a cafe for an hour. I miss when I could walk into a museum, just because. I miss when I could meet a stranger and just chat with them for a little, not trying to occupy my mind with what else I had to do that day. At the time, I missed serving a purpose. Now here I am, trying to fit in when the hell I can possibly eat breakfast (which usually ends up being a piece of fruit I eat while I’m sitting at the traffic light on Ocean Ave).

What the hell was I thinking? Yes, having things to do is great. I’m not saying I want to be unemployed, or the worst sin of them all, bored. But with more longing than I have ever felt for any person, I miss being able to be. I miss thinking about the taste of the food that I am eating and thinking about the conversation I am having. I miss the sweetness of doing nothing. Il dolce far niente. 

In America, we hustle, hustle, hustle. We work three jobs and we try to get the kids to soccer, lacrosse, and track and we get to the gym at 6:30 am and we eat lunch at the drive-thru and we take long hours because we really need the money but what is it for, really? What are we working for, honestly? When is the payoff going to come?

You let me know when you find out. In the meantime, I’ll be looking up one-way flights back to Italy.

Nothing.

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Time Commitments

When one (unfortunately) arrives home once again and is greeted by armful by armful of happy friend, one is bound to come across many people who will say, “Yes, I did that too, during my summer session abroad!”

Wait… your summer session? Now, I totally understand if you have time commitments for the semester, financial problems (although from what I have heard, most people spend almost the same amount during their summer session as they would during a semester abroad, but that’s another odd issue entirely), or familial issues, but honestly, it seems to me that a summer session just means this – you got jipped.

If you’re not aware, a summer session tends to run about three to four weeks, sometimes going for as long as six, while study abroad sessions usually range from thirteen to sixteen weeks. Sounds like a big difference? That’s because it is. A summer session is a vacation. A long vacation, but a vacation at that. A semester abroad is an attempt at life.

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I remember when four weeks passed during my time in Florence (I happened to be at Oktoberfest at the time, if I remember correctly) and I looked around and said to myself, What if I had to leave right now? What if at this moment, I was packing my bags and being shipped back off to the Jerz?

At four weeks, one is barely adapted to life in another country, another world. One is still a stranger (and probably is still one at the three-and-a-half month mark, too). Many people subconsciously see this as a good thing- they don’t really want to totally assimilate. They don’t want their own habits to have to change, they don’t want to step too far outside their comfort zone, they just want to see a little bit just in time for them to get homesick and get back on the plane to be greeted by a tearful Mom.

When my own friends left for their summer sessions, a few weeks before I left for my semester in Florence, I was a little jealous. I was scared to go away for so long. Petrified, actually. It was like taking a too-big bite of cake when I should have only had a spoonful and now it was falling embarrassingly out of my mouth and everyone was staring. Even when I first got there, in between the moments of extreme excitement, I thought to myself, What have I gotten myself into? What planet do I live on? 

But just like anything else, we all get used to our new surroundings and we learn to adapt. We create our new selves and new homes, and when it’s time to leave, we will reach for our armfuls of our new friends too.