Monday, February 21, 2011

Like pins in a map

In my high school college-counseling office there is a map with pins and flags in it signaling where all the graduates have spread to attend college. There are a lot of pins in Colorado, a few spread throughout the West coast and Midwest, and there are very few on the East Coast.
            I feel like when I came to college, the opposite happened. The pins were not where we are attending college. The pins signify where we come from.
            This past weekend, President’s day, had me thinking about all the people in this country. A lot of people in my dorm had friends from home visit them. The most interesting thing is that they are not just from these hometowns where we put our pins, but they also go to colleges around the country.
            I met someone originally from Georgia, but goes to school at the University of North Carolina. I met someone originally from Chicago, but goes to NYU.
            We are not just college students in one place. We are college students with different experiences to pull from.
            As I prepare to visit my best friend this weekend in Boise, Idaho, I’m thinking about the places I come from.
            One of my first blog posts was about being fully aware about where I am from. It is important to remember where we come from. Even though this is still true, I now have two places of reference.
            I am a Colorado native and a Boston transplant. I know the beauty of the mountains and the ease of public transportation. I know the sporadic nature of Colorado weather and the convenience of having a city at my fingertips.
            I know what it’s like to be a Catholic school survivor, a journalism student at an outstanding university, a best friend, a daughter and just an average college girl.
            Who knows where I’ll be able to reference in years to come. Perhaps someday, I’ll spin a globe and say, “I don’t just know what that place is like, I know what it’s like to live there.”
            Or I’ll look at a map full of pins and think about the girl I met from there or the boy I met who went to college there.
            Just like the experiences we are, we are the pins in a map.

For my thoughts on Justin Bieber visit my new entertainment blog The Popcorn Critic http://popcorncritic.blogspot.com/

Monday, February 14, 2011

Fill your world with love


“All we really want is love’s confusing joy.” This ancient proverb was written by the poet Rumi and was a tying line in last year’s star packed movie Valentine’s Day. This line is my Facebook status and latest tweet today.
            On this holiday, this quote defines a lot. I love Valentine’s Day. Most people, especially single people, hate this day. But the way I see it, this day isn’t just about love shared between couples. It is a day to express to all the people in your life who make you feel loved that you are grateful for them and you love them too.
            When I was a kid, I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of loving a God I didn’t know or couldn’t see more than I loved my parents. I still sometimes can’t. I love my parents “to the moon and back.”
            They brought me into the world, raised me to be a caring, thoughtful, smart individual, and did it with all the love in their hearts. They are most deserving of my love because no matter what I did or who I was, I was always deserving of theirs. So thank you, Mom and Dad, for all the love you put into my life so in turn I can be a loving person too.
            The next people I want to express my love for are my two best friends of nearly 15 years. Because of Katie and Jenna, I know what it means to make your own family out of the people God puts in your life. They have loved me unconditionally for so long, I would be a bitter unloving friend without them.
Jenna’s love is sometimes tough love, but sometimes that is the only kind we need. She pushes me to be a better person because of the way she loves me.
Katie’s love is a fun love. She knows so much about me and loves me anyway.
I also need to acknowledge Taylor and Ellie, my fun loving friends from high school who show love in their everyday actions. They care so much about making the world a more fun place to live by loving and living in a way that only they can.
My newest love is for Chelsea and Kait, my very best friends in Boston. The way they love those in their lives so fiercely inspires me to feel more about everything in my life. They grasp life with every inch of love that fills them. They deserve my love because we took each other in and made college what we wanted.
Love is what you want it to be. It can be passionate, friendly, endearing or heartbreaking. Whatever it is in your life, make sure you cherish that feeling of wonderful, wonderful confusing joy of love. Fill your world with the love that others give you.
Happy Valentine’s Day!

Monday, February 7, 2011

Super Bowl Blunders

I hope everyone enjoyed the Super Bowl this past Sunday. For me it was certainly an interesting experience.
            Maybe I should start by saying, that even though I don’t particularly like sports, I do watch the Super Bowl. I think the fact that our country puts so much money, time and energy into a professional sport is sad in a way. But it also says a lot about our culture, but I digress.
First of all, this was my first Super Bowl not in Colorado. I can remember most of my Super Bowls. The very American tradition is more about the social gathering to me rather than the sport itself. Ask me who won the Super Bowl in 2007, and I couldn’t even tell you who played in it. But I could tell you where I was, who I was with, what I ate and possibly even my favorite commercial.
This year was still about the social gathering. My dorm threw a party, and unlike the Halloween disaster I mentioned earlier this year, it was actually successful, until half time when everyone left.
We had pizza, wings, chips and brownies, all the foods necessary to make it feel like the Super Bowl. We sat in our dark basement with the semi-quality TV and watched the game unfold. I’m not talking about the football game; I’m talking about the commercialism game.
The most noticeable difference of my Super Bowl experience this year was that I watched it with about 30 boys.
If you didn’t know this already, my dorm building is 15 percent girls and 85 percent boys. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I was watching the game surrounded by predominantly males.
Now one of my favorite things about the Super Bowl is the commercials. These are supposed to be the best ads of the year, right? Well…
Now I truly understand the sexist psychology behind most of the story lines of the commercials. As I sat there in the middle of a room filled with boys and watched the ads before me, I never expected the reaction that erupted.
Take the first ad for example. The kitchen remodel Bud Light commercial received laughs from all the boys in the room.
Do ad agencies know that the Super Bowl isn’t just for men anymore? Hello! It’s not an American tradition for nothing. I think someone is forgetting that half of America is composed of women. We deserve some ads too.
To be honest, the best part of this year’s Super Bowl was not the once again sexist advertisements; it was the fact that Glee came on afterwards.