Coming Out to Siri (January 13, 2015)

I'm using an iPhone (not the one pictured) and I'm a few operating systems behind, so I'd like to think my phone will evolve from here. This is surprisingly on point with what many LGBTQ teens face in reality, which is humorous.

Me: “Hey Siri, what if I told you I’m gay?”

Siri: “Hmm. Let me think. OK, I found this on the web for ‘if I told you I’m gay.’”

Me: “Siri, I’m gay.”

Siri: “I don’t know what that means. If you like, I can search the web for ‘Siri I’m gay.’”

Me: “I’m gay.”

Siri: “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

Me: “What do you think?”

Siri: “It’s nice of you to ask, but it doesn’t really matter what I think.”

Me: “This wasn’t easy to tell you.”

Siri: “Who, me?”

Me: “Yes, I just came out to you.”

Siri: “I thought so.”

January 11, 2015: Sunday Night Catchall

Self-care is so, so, so important. Sleep (like my cat!), write, listen to music, eat food ... and if you need support, there is so much support out there, including support from The Trevor Project (1-866-488-7386), 24/7, seven days a week.

My cat, Ché

Awkward transition here, but as The Onion has observed this week, "Mankind Tired of Having to Remind Itself of Good"

Kirby Delauter decided to try to bully a journalist. The Fredrick News-Post responded in a beautiful way, down to the first letter of each paragraph. Nice job!

I was reminded today that for any high school juniors out there, applications for the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) are due on January 20, 2015! I went to TASP last summer, and it was amazing. It’s a six-week, 100% free academic summer program that brings together people from all over the world. (We had people from the U.S., Macedonia, South Korea, China, and Brazil.) If morning bathroom conversations about the merits of communism and charades games with clues like “Platonic ideal” and “existentialism” are your thing, you should apply.

The Rome Statute has nothing to do with Facebook privacy settings, despite what that chain message on Facebook says. However, the chain message did inspire me to post a similar message about the need for Facebook to change everyone's profile pictures to wombat pictures. But apparently it wasn't as catchy as the original message. Darn.

For any writers out there considering querying agents, I recommend reading through this site and doing the exact opposite. Unless your goal is to be forever immortalized on an agent's Tumblr page ...

Write It on Your Heart (January 6, 2015)

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last year, I wrote a blog post called "Denial, Denial, Denial, Denial, Denial: The Five Stages of College Decision Grief." I wrote it as a high school junior watching the seniors around me crumble as they were hit with decision after decision. I expressed my hatred for what this application process does to us. We are conditioned to hate ourselves based on our rejections. We feel worthless when we don't get into X school, but that one really, really annoying kid does instead.

And as someone who just finished "going through the process" (which I know sounds like I'm talking about genetically modified food, not myself), I understand even more how powerful that pressure is. I consumed more mint chip milkshakes in the week before the early deadline than there were days.

But here's the thing: what if we all take a time out? I know January 1 is now out of the way and many of you high school students are done yelling at the error messages on the Common App, but the air is still filled with so much stress about decisions to come, about that one typo you know was still there when you hit "submit" ... but what if we put all of that aside? What if all of you adults out there put the stress in your life aside?

During the craziness of October before the early deadline (when, no surprise, my blogging stopped for a while), I made a list of things I wanted to do this year when college apps and finals were over. I don't want to call them New Year's Resolutions, though. (Freudian slip -- I typed "Near Year's Resolutions" at first -- which highlights why I hate the term, because I only get near my goals instead of reaching them.) I will instead call this a list of random fun things I want to do this year:

1. Learn how to read sheet music
2. Double the amount of time I spend writing (thank you for allowing me to do that, senioritis!)
3. Read more books for pleasure again (goodbye, standardized testing passages!)
4. Go to a random A's game (because why not?)
5. Sleep 8 hours a night
6. Paint
7. Run Campus Drive (3.8 miles)

So what will you do for fun this year? Think of things! Make it about you. No matter how crazy your life is, you deserve to do something that serves no purpose other than making you happy. Here's to a great 2015!

Remembering Reading (October 12, 2014)

I miss reading.

In high school, we "read" for specific repeated words and themes pre-fed to us on sheets covered in course through-lines. Every book margin must be scribbled on with symbols and questions so we can fit an author's words into neatly, perfectly-punctuated quote sandwiches in an essay at the end. We do not read for the words — we read so we can analyze letters that some tired writer decided to throw on a page at 4am.

On standardized tests, we "read" to answer questions about how the test takers see the world. We box proper nouns so we can skip back to them once we see those nouns in the questions following a passage. We underline important verbs to make sure we don't (God forbid) interpret the text differently than the narrow-minded few who wrote the test, because demonstrating our ability to mimic their interpretation is part of how colleges measure intelligence.

This is not what I used to do when I "read." I used to love reading. Books helped me unravel the mysterious web of the world. I'd let words wash over me and transport me to different lives. I could be anything, from a wizard to a girl growing up in the United States in the 1940s.

Books were about living, and learning, and loving.

But apparently this is no longer "reading." Reading is no longer about exploration, or joy, or discovery — it's about mindless conformity to systems. And I don't like this new type of reading. I want to go back to a time when I could read books to explore the world, where a passage wasn't intended to trick me into thinking something "wrong" but was instead intended to take my mind on a journey to a place unexplored.

We are forgetting what it means to read. We are forgetting why we have books.

Now I see what I never thought I would as a child: why so many people say they don't like books. Because I fear I'm becoming one of those people, falling into a mind-numbing system that seeks to remove every ounce of joy and moment of wonder that made books the magical thing they were to me when I was younger.

And I don't know how to change that other than to try to cling to memories of the type of reading I miss: reading that takes me through new lands and into new lives.

Denial, Denial, Denial, Denial, Denial: the Five Stages of College Decision Grief (March 28, 2014)

Source: www.nerdnirvana.org/2010/11/04/personalized-rejection-letter/

This week has made me thankful that I am a high school junior, which is impressive considering how painful junior year generally is. Anyone who is a high school senior or a parent of one knows that this week, many college decisions came out. The air in my school was heavy with dread and disappointment as e-mails shattered dreams. A few happy students floated around amidst the bubble of sadness, but for the most part, students focused on their rejections, not their acceptances.

Why? Why can’t we celebrate our acceptance letters, not our rejection letters? Why can’t we be thankful that we get the opportunity to receive an education at all?

The college admissions process is subjective. Getting rejected from your dream school doesn’t mean you’re an idiot just like getting accepted to your dream school doesn’t mean you’re a genius. A rejection means the person reading your application felt you weren't the best fit for that school. That's all.

An example from my recent life that highlights how subjective awards or acceptances are is that I recently found out I won a national Silver Medal in the 2014 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for Journalism. I also won 3 regional Silver Keys and 2 regional Honorable Mentions. However, those results don't tell the whole story. Two years ago, I submitted three of those pieces to the 2012 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. They didn’t even receive Honorable Mentions. At the time, I felt horrible and like my dream of becoming a writer was slipping away.

But two years later, those same pieces with no new edits won two Silver Keys and an Honorable Mention. Nothing changed except for the people who happened to be judging my work. My “bad” writing suddenly became “good.” I should feel like a better writer now, right? But I don't. Instead, I now realize that judging myself based on the subjective opinion of others is stupid. Those pieces are no better now than they were two years ago. That also means they were no worse back then than they are now.

Don’t attach yourselves to rejection letters. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re worthless. In five years, maybe you’ll get into the graduate school of your dreams. Maybe in forty, you’ll win a Nobel Prize. Maybe you won't but you'll make incredible friends and be with a family you love.

Be proud of trying and remember that you’re smart.