Orientation

Today is the start of summer orientation for Simmons College's Class of 2017. We are going to ignore the fact that 2017 sounds like a date out of science fiction and proceed to my strange experience interacting with the almost first-years. My strange experience basically consisted of thinking, "Wow. They're idiots. Was I this much of an idiot?" Yes. I was. They don't know anything about college. Nothing at all. One kid (I've relegated them to children even though I was them two years ago) asked if  we had different classes every semester. That question is so high school. In high school you take English for four years with little change in content or approach. Yawn. How did we survive that monotony? Were our brains so narrow? One freshmen was from Arizona and didn't know what snow boots were. I may have forgotten my snow boots at home for a period of time this year, but at least I know the concept.

It makes me wonder why last year I understood those confused little first years and this year I don't. I don't understand why they're all so nervous. Simmons will take care of them. I don't understand why they are so shy. Don't they know that Simmons is the most empowering place they'll ever experience?  I don't even understand what they don't understand. In just a couple moths their lives are going to be so full of thinking and learning that they will look at their past selves like idiots who make no sense. They can't see it yet. There was no particular class or experience I can attribute to whatever growth separated us, the me that went to Orientation and the me that is now, but a chasm has broken between the person I was then and the person I am now. Slowly, over time I've been brainwashed into thinking college is the best experience a person could have if they are looking to achieve personal growth.

I went to the North End with the beautiful little fools to get pastries and stare at a rainbow. One of these pictures I took today. One I stole from Facebook of the exact same rainbow. My transformation over the last two years was caused by the light of a great institution, the university, coming towards me as a lot of different photons from different people and then reflecting off of a million little moments that were all falling in the entropy of time, but when looked at from far away is partly beautiful and partly magic. The change only makes sense as a sliver of a larger sky, but is a good part of that canvas. I'm happy with the rainbow Simmons has given me in the last year because even if it makes understanding first years difficult and it only exists from certain vantage points it makes my bit of sky a little more interesting.

Empathy

I always sort of thought empathy was something you were born with. Well, maybe I knew you weren't born with it, but I at least thought that when kids were two and realized other people had ideas, agendas, opinions, and that you don't always get "your way" they developed empathy for those opinions that other people have. I've learned this summer that empathy grows a lot slower than I first thought. 

I learn a little more about the preschool every week. Last summer I learned to call their students "friends" and when they get resistant that all you have to say is "this is not a choice." This summer I noticed that when the kids kick, splash, hit, take, or generally irritate each other the teachers don't say, "we don't hit. Hitting is wrong," which is my first reaction, but instead they say, "we don't hit. It makes our friend ____ sad." This explanation enforces proper behavior, but also teaches empathy. Most of the kids would still probably qualify as psychopaths when they are five. That might be an offensive way to put it, but at the explanation of "it makes our friend ___ sad" they often tilt their heads to the side and look confused like they'd never thought about the way their actions impacted others. I'm not sure when people get all their empathy. I feel like I have a fair amount now, but I could use a little more.

I don't want to be too empathetic. I don't to feel all the world's problems at once. If I felt each of the 107 deaths of every minute as much as I felt the death of a friend I'd instantly crumple into a ball of sadness and refuse to continue existing in such a terrible world, but I want to remember to be grateful for my life and my health. Empathy gives us the perspective that little kids lack. Sometimes I want just a bit more so I can say (as The Doctor does), "I've never met anybody who wasn't important before." Sometimes when I talk to people I struggle to find why they matter and perhaps, when my empathy grows, I'll be a better human who can really see how special they are. I really hope that my empathy is still growing. It would be fantastic if every person I met taught me what makes them sad so that I could eventually be sensitive to everyone's experience.

Learning English

Most of the kids we work with at swimming lessons are learning English. They speak some other language at home and they are just starting to spend full days with people who speak English. It's not too alarming with the two and three year-olds. Even the most WASPy American ones have a pretty limited vocabulary at two. They learn a new word every day and babble way more than they make sense. Yesterday I taught all my kids the word shallow. So the gap between a two year-old whose parents are English-speakers and whose parents are Chinese-speakers is usually pretty small in my experience,

It is shocking, however, when I get a five year-old who doesn't speak English. This summer is the first time it's happened to me in awhile. His teacher introduced him "This is [we'll call him Oscar] and he is learning English. He should pretty much understand what you're saying, but his first language is French." My first thought was a sigh. It's nothing like teaching an adult English language learner because the kid is much more likely to put himself in some stupid, dangerous situation. It's nothing like teaching a two year-old learning English either because the little ones just do what you say trustingly (whether they know what you are talking about or not) while the five year-olds ask why and how (even if those are the only words they know). It's easier to teach someone who is learning English than special needs, but only barely.

Oscar is always swimming away. He's never doing the drill. He barely improves. It's frustrating for both of us. I want to put away this arrogant American idea that everyone should know English (especially because I don't actually know any other languages), but when the only thing I'm sure we have in common is the word "no" I find a little fury that we can't communicate better. I know he's smart, but sometimes I don't know what to say to even keep him safe in the pool. It's all ok. Nobody has drowned yet, but I prefer the ones with excellent vocabularies if I'm honest.

One word really surprised me last week. After his lesson a five year-old was asking "What's that?" to everything around the pool deck. After we went through the names and various uses of flippers, fins,  pull buoys, and blocks he [we'll call him Graham] pointed to one thing and I notified him that they were called diving sticks. "They sink because they are heavy, right?" I cringed. Two years of high school physics made me abhor the word heavy. I looked at Graham and said,  "Well, if we want to get scientific about it the heaviness isn't really what makes it sink." Graham cut me off. "Is it because they are denser than water?" I... Yes. Denser. I agreed with him.  He even knew what it meant. That's the kind of vocabulary I can speak to. I brought out a rubber duck that was heavier than the diving stick so we had a ten-minute discussion about density. I don't know how you teach your five year-old words like density, but I appreciate it when I find a parent who has figured it out. I know they are all little, but I really respect kids who can use their words.

Stories

I have a roommate this summer who doesn't really know me. She's extremely nice, but it's the first time I've lived with somebody who wasn't my friend. Well, that's somewhat inaccurate. The first few weeks of my first semester of college I had a roommate that I didn't know, but at that point nobody had any friends and we were all surprisingly busy trying to become close to one another so it felt very different. I no longer need this person to like me the way I did freshmen year.

Even considering all that, I can't help but try and come off well. It's because she doesn't know me that I feel pressured to be interesting. Most of the time I think I am good company. I have great stories about the whole heart transplant drama. The tales from my dad's life make him sound like a Timelord who has been at every important event since his birth. Even my brother has had some great scenes to contribute to my portfolio of stories to tell by being so notably intelligent and lazy in the first epoch of his life. I just want to talk to her until she believes I am remarkable, but we don't really have anything to converse about because I'm not really doing anything right now. I'm teaching the kids to swim and hanging out with friends after work, but I'm not ruling the school like I do during the year or really "busy" with anything in particular.

I end up playing a game of "what's worse" with myself. Do I want her to think I sit around watching Netflix all day? I'm watching really good shows like Sherlock and Doctor Who, but she has walked past and inquired about what I was watching to which I responded Doctor Who and she said, "Oh I've never even heard of that movie." Now I feel like I can't watch it anymore because I have to explain it's the most popular drama in the UK that started in 1963. It is a movie too, but I haven't seen the movie because it's such an insignificant part of the overall canon. That would be embarrassing for her. It's completely outside of her box. Either that or the box I'm thinking in is bigger on the inside. Do I want her to think I sit around writing and reading all day? Whenever I assert that I don't do anything she points to the time I spend reading and writing every day. It's a kindness that she considers that productive, but I can't explain to her what I'm writing so she thinks it's a tiny bit strange simultaneously. Unless you've been a beginning writer you can't quit understand, "Well, I'm writing stories about my life, but they are almost all bad so..." Do I want her to think I play games all the time? Gaming is still so frowned upon by people that she doesn't get that at all. She saw my frames per second running in the top left corner of my screen and inquired about what it was and I couldn't explain why I kept track of my FPS. Do I want her to think I'm vapid and spend all my time on Facebook and Twitter having debates in 142 charaters? Just no. Gtfo Twitter.

The truth is I can control what this not-friend roommate thinks of me based on what I display on my computer screen the couple hours each evening we're together. The problem with that truth is that all the things I'm doing right now basically amount to the collection of stories. I'm reading great stories. I'm watching great stories play out on TV. I'm playing games with great stories. It's not socially acceptable to live in fantasy worlds created by writers. Reality is broken as Jane McGonigal would say and I just prefer those worlds that aren't quite real. I hope this roommate doesn't judge me too harshly. If you can think of an activity I can do this summer that would make me a better human and is also "mainstream" leave it in the comments. I could use the help for this in future situations with non-nerds.

Sportsmanship for Children

I'm teaching a lot of swim lessons right now, but my favorite is currently a group of six precocious five year-olds that just love swimming. A few of them I've been teaching for years and a few I met this week, but now that I've reached the conclusion of our first week of summer I can confidently say they all know my rules. They are, however, hyper-competitive despite their daycare preaching that they are all friends who need to help each other because their parents are hyper-competitive. They would rather race than play a game and, honestly, I respect that. Three weeks ago they asked if we could do a race and I said yes. I asked each kid if they were racing and then sent them off to swim down the pool. I was slower than them because I swam at the back with my little friends so I could maintain a headcount (even though they are all drown-proof), but when I touched the wall I heard the winner saying to the others, "I won. I'm the greatest nana" as you would if you were five. I considered this unacceptable behavior.

The next day I had a plan to change it. When they asked to do a race I said, "Sure. The rules are, though, that no matter what happens all you are aloud to say is 'Nice race. Good swimming.'" When I hit the other end I heard one of them (lets call him Benjamin) start with his victory speech and I responded, "What do we say, Benjamin?" His face was sad, but he parroted the correct response. He mumbled, "Nice race. Good swimming" It was completely disingenuous and forced, but that was fine with me.

We talk in the Like Minds Coalition, our community-building diversity and inclusion group, that you can't really change people's minds without first trying to change their behaviors. For instance, you wouldn't walk up to somebody and say, "You are really homophobic. You should stop thinking that way." It doesn't work. What you do is say, "That thing you just said sounded really homophobic even though you didn't mean it that way. You should watch out for that." People can't control what they think, but they can control how they act. Benjamin (and maybe everybody) didn't have an initial sportsmanlike reaction, but I made him do it anyway.

When we did our race this week on Monday and Tuesday I repeated the exercise of starting with the expectation of cordiality because I had a few new kids. Yesterday when I hit the wall I heard Benjamin (who always wins) lean over and say, "Nice race, Oscar. That was really fun. We are really fast swimmers," without any prompting. It made me ridiculously proud. Sportsmanship is important just so people keep playing with you. I was the one who always lost so if I can make a couple five year-olds learn how to win then I'm happy for all the children they are going to beat in the future. It's always more fun to lose to somebody who will force themselves to not gloat.

I know I'm pretty intense with the kids. Day one we swam three hundred yards (which is a lot if you are five) and practiced flip turns. Thursday this week I told them to do a drill (it was just kicking on their side so I knew they could do it) and I sent them off one by one. I did it in an order, though, so that they all ended up catching each other. That was my mistake, but I like to have everybody get a turn to go first. They ended up sprinting and entirely forgot about the drill. I noticed the head of their daycare was standing at the end of the pool observing, but in spite of her I put on my teacher voice (which is awesome) and said, "My friends that was bad. It was not good swimming.  We can have a race, but I will tell you if we are racing. You can do better so we are doing it again." The second time it was perfect. I noted that the woman in charge walked over to my boss and I thought I might be in trouble, but after the lesson my boss said, "Oh my goodness that was so fantastic. We couldn't stop laughing." My experience has been with those little kids is that wherever you set the expectation, they meet it. If you expect sportsmanship they'll give it to you. If you require them to do the drills they'll do it. So I don't mind if I'm a little more intense than my colleagues because my kids end up better swimmers and they love me anyway. I think everybody should get a job where people scream joyously when you walk into the room.

I Think I Live in the Quantum World

Some people get really rattled by their world shaking just a little. It doesn't take much for them to freak out. One bomb miles away, but in their safe country or one bad grade that hardly threatens their academic career and they panic. I like to think I'm a bit more hearty than that. I suffer from the same anxiety as everyone else, but for some reason it doesn't surprise me when something I thought was true isn't anymore. You're expecting me to say it's because my world was shaken when I had a heart transplant, but I think my mistrust of everything started long before this blog.

I won't go into the physics of it here, but a fact is that when you look at electrons or atoms, you can't really talk about where they are. The truth is that in the real world most things don't have an actual, fixed position. Everything we see every day could be anywhere. It is only most likely to be where you think it is. It makes all of matter seem sort of sketchy. Most people have a hard time with this concept. I think I have an easier time than most. People trust their eyes far too much. I don't. Playing frisbee or catch with me is quite the experience. I'm always guessing. The thing isn't there until I catch it. When somebody throws something at me my depth perception isn't good enough to give me a location of the object, only a vague idea of where it was thrown from.

I've never trusted my eyes. I've never trusted the world around me to be stable because things don't exist until I touch them. When there are bombers in my city or extra tests at the end of the semester that come from nowhere I am slightly less surprised than everybody else. I don't like it. I hate change. I resist anything being different partly because once I let go of the known I can't trust anything again, but I'm not alarmed. I just get sad that the atoms I thought were there, the things I thought I knew, really were optical illusions all along.

Boston Marathon Bombing

On the books Patriots Day celebrates the beginning of the Revolutionary War, but really Paul Revere has little to do with why Boston has a holiday the third Monday in April. It has much more to do with the Boston Marathon than the Battles of Lexington and Concord. We call Patriot's Day "Marathon Monday" because that's the point. This year was the 117th annual Boston Marathon, the longest running marathon in the country. It's a day where the Red Sox play baseball in Fenway Park, the people go out to the pubs, and the populace gets together to celebrate itself as a city. For many people it's the happiest day of the year. It's a holiday because the streets shut down so people can show how strong they are. Only somebody with massive mental toughness can run twenty-six miles. That's what Boston's celebrating; since the British were coming in 1775 this has been a city of people who are tough and face the threat. 

I think to be really "from" somewhere you have to grow up there for at least a few years. I didn't grow up in Boston. I'm not from here. When Patriots Day happened in the past I remember being jealous that my mom, who worked with Bostonians, didn't have to go to the office, but I had to go to school. Now I've been here for two years and I get it. I understand this city even if I'm not from here. 

A tragedy is something that is sad because it takes away something sacred. Today was a tragedy because somebody bombed the marathon our city loves. They killed children and civilians who thought they were safe. 20,000 people from 96 countries came thinking their only challenge would be the running, not bombs. The people who were there will never be the same. They will be traumatized and saddened by this holiday that is meant to show Boston's endurance. When a tragedy happens the poets and writers have to be the first to respond after doctors and nurses finish healing the bones. We  remind people that the the acts of today are pieces in a massive human puzzle. The people killed and the people saved are only pieces of a larger story. The individual stories matter, but writers put the whole thing in perspective.We have to tell the truth about the situation. We have to say that it doesn't really matter who did it; violence isn't acceptable if it's one person or a whole cell of terrorists. We have to say that we know there are other countries that America bombs every day. We have to say that it's beautiful that there are eight hospitals in Boston (including mine) and we have the best healthcare in the world even if it's the most expensive. We have to say something about the state of the world when even a bombing in Boston can't unite the country politically. We have to remind people it doesn't matter why it was done because knowing won't undo it.

I live in the hospital district and even now the ambulances and police are trying to contain the horror. I haven't liked helicopters since my transplant because I consider them harbingers of death so, like many, I had a hard day full of bad memories. I'll never be the kind of person who can run toward disaster. My roommate is a nurse and wanted to go help, but I just wanted to crawl into my bed and sleep until the tragedy was over. I think it's important to be a witness of the acts of kindness and the acts of aggression some will try to commit following this horrible Patriot's Day so I won't hide under my pillow. I'll sit here and tell you how my friends were attacked and the only reason I was spared was because I wasn't athletic enough to run or kind enough to volunteer. I'll tell you I'm scared, but I will not lash out in that fear to any person or group. I have practice feeling like my life is in danger, but even you, who maybe has never really felt threatened before, can watch without blaming the wrong people for this event. Please join me in witnessing. That's a good thing to do.

The only other good advice I have for the people of Boston is from one of my life idols Jane McGonigal "Focus visual attention on something highly engaging (like a videogame) and stay up late/sleep less. http://www.livescience.com/19894-tetris-treat-ptsd-flashbacks.html …" so your brain can't convert traumatic images into memories. It's science. It works.

Syltherin

My family and friends have never taken the test, but I feel I can guess what Harry Potter house most belong to. If you don't know the Harry Potter house reputations you are really missing out on something. You should read the Harry Potter books just so you understand cultural references if not for the awesome story and interesting characters. My mom would most likely be a Ravenclaw. My dad and brother are almost certainly Gryffindors. My college roommate Victoria is a Hufflepuff for sure.

I've never told anyone this, but I am a Slytherin. I have been on Pottermore for the lols and I found out this shameful fact. Slytherin is portrayed poorly in the books so I was pretty mad when I found out. Draco Malfoy would never be my friend in any dimension, but I am a Slytherin.  I don't have enough of a disregard for the rules. I'm not quite as rebellious as I should be, but I understand why the sorting hat put me there. I'm not fighting it. Here's some of the traits of a true Slytherin. I think they describe me pretty well, but you can judge.

• Slytherins are ambitious. I've had goals for my life since I was seven and I haven't given up on any of them. Ambitions are different for everyone, but I'm at college taking more classes than you are supposed to, overseeing the student government, making good grades, and working at a job that is twice as good as the norm. That feels ambitious.
• Slytherins are shrewd. I've never truly grokked the word shrewd, but I think my use of the word grok says that I notice the thing around me and take the best bits. Academia is all about distilling what's important and I'm doing alright at college so shrewdness is not my greatest weakness.
• Slytherins are strong leaders. I have done the Emerging Leaders Program, I'm part of Student Government, I love teaching large groups. Trust me, I'm a leader.
• Slytherins are achievement-oriented. I think the only thing I can say to this is that I'm a gamer. A quest log or a list of achievements drives me most of the time. Nobody who loves RPGs isn't achievement oriented.
• Slytherins also have highly developed senses of self-preservation.  Six words. Not sick four years after transplant...
  
• Slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done. If you've ever asked me to decide anything ever you'll know this is true. There was a point when I was nine where I couldn't make any decisions, but I grew out of that into a subtler, but ever-present caution.
• Slytherins are clever. Clever can be defined in many ways and I've never taken an IQ test because I just don't care, but I think I'm decently intelligent. 
• Slytherins have determination. Six more words. Fastest heart transplant recovery ever seen...
• Slytherins are proud of where they come from. I'm not going to cause a war about it or perform a eugenics experiment or anything, but I love my home. I like America even though I think we do evil things internationally. I like Queensbury even though I recognze it's just another little town. I'm proud of my family even though many of them were "just" farmers.
• Slytherins have a dark sense of humor. My favorite joke... (six more words) Could have been a double lung

 So I'm a Slytherin. I admit it on the internet. I'm not ashamed anymore. I'm not alone.

Women's College

This week was women's college week at Simmons.  I'm not in any way associated with admissions, but if there was ever a week they should have been promoting the college it would be this one. Early in the week we had panels talking about everything from transgender issues on campus to women in science and math fields, but the important thing was that yesterday we had Gloria Steinem speaking on campus. The Class of 2013 brought her hear to enlighten us on things.  If you don't know who she is Google that and come back. There are only a handful of people in the world that I would have been more interested in seeing speak. She was brilliant. I laughed a lot. I cried once. I really felt empowered to change the world.

I recognize I've been brainwashed into this reaction, by nature of being at this school, but it was still an authentic reaction. If this were before college I would have thought it was a decent speech, but not totally been on board with the message. Going to Simmons is a really unique experience that has revolutionized my worldview. It's this strange corner of the world that is hard to capture. Why? It's a Women's College. That's not something I would give up or lobby to overturn, but it is rare and I dreaded it when I sent in my acceptance. This place preaches equality, inclusion, and diversity so relentlessly that whether you like the message when you enter or not, by the time you leave you are either a feminist or you hate the place.

I would have been intrigued with Steinem's ideas at any time, but I have grown much more radical since I've gotten to college.  It's hard for me to dislike anyone that says, "Tell stories. Real stories of real women and girls... Every issue that I know about came up by someone telling the stories of their lives.We need individual stories," because what am I doing on this blog if not telling the stories that matter to me?  The other moment that would enrapture and endear any English major was when Gloria said, "I love to think about words, don't you love to think about words?" I wanted to scream out. Yes. I love words so vehemently I can have half-hour long debates about the accent in the word hegemony (is it iambic pentameter or not?). I love words so passionately that I can't go a day without writing some special ones down. Gloria Steinem, let me tell you, is good at words.

The moment that made me cry during her beautifully said speech was when a young lady of indeterminate single-digit age asked what little girls like her could do to make big change like Gloria did. Steinem said that the child should continue to speak up and always remember to say, "That's not fair and you're not the boss of me." That's just good advice. Children struggle with autonomy the most out of any group (I admit I've said "because I said so" to a child) and almost everyone can think of an instance where they were oppressed. I'm a disabled young woman. I'm audacious and brave, but it never hurts to be reminded that I am allowed to ask for a level playing field. I can demand things be accessible. I know that, "the power of the state stops at our skins," but when I am laying in a hospital bed, powerless, sometimes I forget. Doctors shouldn't be allowed to do things to me that I don't want done (which has happened) and I am in charge of this heart and this body now that it's been given to me.

I've always had a good life, but things have improved markedly since I've come to college. In high school I lived on the outside. I was weird. I was the kid that disappeared  I was the sick one that everybody stayed six feet away from. Many teachers were great, but even the club I was the head of I wasn't the star member. I can't explain why, but I felt like a stranger to the kids my age. At Simmons, I'm one of the leaders that people just know. Gloria said that, "people who live in the periphery need the experience of being at the center" and I have that in Boston. Right now professors, classmates, and friends all know who I am and recognize that I have valuable contributions to the world. I am no longer afraid to be noticed like I was in high school. 

At a women's college there isn't competition to be noticed or do better. There is, instead, cooperation to make sure everybody who wants to do something has a chance. Outside, in high school and all the other corners of my life it's terrifying to be intelligent and successful. You have to worry about what people will think. "Only with women would success be an impediment to being liked," but it is. I struggle enough within myself about deserving what I have; sometimes it's difficult to also shoulder the expectations of others. 

I do well, though. I'm not overwhelmed. I'm thriving. This is the perfect place to feel empowered. Here, we are realistic about what women are because almost everybody is a female. There aren't many men around to put us on a pedestal or limit our options. I don't hate or dislike males. I love them. I need them. They are different, though. "A pedestal is as much a prison as any other small space," but there are none around here. If we choose to be part of all the clubs then we have made a choice for ourselves, not because of any outside influence. We have to do all the jobs ourselves from Technology desk help to President of the Student Government. That's empowering. Sometimes I miss seeing men and the element they bring, but I'm always glad that there are realistic expectations of me here. Nobody thinks I can do everything. We all know that, "if you have to do it all, you can’t have it all." We are students first. We are friends second. We run the school third. One event at a time we build a community that shows us how to take care of each other.

Some schools wear down their students, but Simmons doesn't. I have meditated in class before. It's not kind all the time, but it encourages us to be a community of individuals that put our own long-term success first. Gloria and this whole school encourages us to understand how to respect the time we exist within so we can make the future better. "Living in the present is the only time we can be truly alive" and Simmons is alive. Yesterday an awesome lady gave an awesome speech.

Underneath everything Gloria Steinem and I have the same goals. Sure, she's a celebrity that you can Google and I'm just a college student with a blog, but who doesn't "want to be remembered as someone who did her best to leave the world a little better, more connected, and whole." While we were waiting in line I turned to my friend and said, "Someday I am going to do something amazing and five hundred people will line up to hear me speak." I've had practice with my Make-a-Wish talks so I know the public speaking isn't the barrier, only the 'something amazing' is standing in my way. Maybe that something will happen. Maybe it won't. If there ever was a place where I could learn to be a successful woman it feels like Simmons to me.

I Feel Finite

Every once in a while I have a deep burning bitterness about the things I missed in high school. It's not every day or every week, but when people talk about their great teenage parties I feel passionately jealous. It doesn't happen every day or week, but it happens. With only one true friend in four years supplemented sparsely by occasional people who would try to be nice to me without losing their social standing, it was rough. Sometimes I'm mad it was rough. Sometimes I feel like going through social drama, trying alcohol, going to a club, having boys be interested in you, dating, and messing up at life are things that are really important. I never had a sore stomach from laughing with friends, but always from coughing. I missed all of those little moments where your youth feels endless. I never had a high school moment that felt like it would be infinite. I had good times. I came close, but nothing legendary happened. The only story of that era that I could tell to my grandchildren would be how I almost died. I know very few people like high school, but my particular bad experience seems rare.

I recently read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and today I went to the book club. It's a really good book. I loved it because I thought the main characters were likable, it's depictions of mental illness were accurate, and it felt real, but I just can't relate. I'm a good literary critic so I know you don't need to relate to find the redeeming qualities of fiction, but it gave me one of those hatred feelings. Charlie was messed up, but at least he had one infinite moment. He had a time when he belonged. I definitely feel included here at Simmons, but I don't feel that foolish anymore. I don't feel like I can look forward and make all the mistakes I want because there is time to fix it. I feel finite, like my decisions today are leading on in a single time stream that continues forever until I die tomorrow or in ten or twenty or fifty years. I'm grateful for the friends and family I have that love and care for me, but I worry that I might never feel infinite. I might never have a moment where I forget about the people who will remember me and just make the memories.

You can't search for that infinity either, only approach it. I will continue to put myself in situations where I might belong with people who might like me, but it's harder and harder to feel infinite, I think.

Favorite Ball Sport = No.

Having a heart transplant didn't solve all my problems. It did a lot of good for my blood supply, but my optic nerves are still pretty awful. This is a blog post on being disabled. People forget how disabled I am all the time. I tell them my vision is terrible, but because I look pretty normal they tend not to remember. Professors forget to enlarge my tests. Friends forget they can't throw things at me to catch. Even my family occasionally forgets I can't read street signs. I compensate pretty well overall. I can get around daily life quite easily. These are just the couple of things that pose big problems.

Sometimes college can be an issue. I'm in the middle of classes, and I am plodding through. As an English major, I do a lot of reading. My  poor vision means I don't read books in the normal sense. I can't comfortably read anything smaller than 14 point font and publishers typically don't print their textbooks that large. Since sixth grade almost all of my books have been enlarged with photocopiers, large print editions, ebooks, audio books, or pdfs blown up ridiculously on my 23 inch computer monitor (I justify the screen with my vision, but we all know it's for the gaming). I've had great support in high school and college to make alternative study materials possible and it's great, but every semester is a new game of how to get good formats. My favorite is ebooks. My kindle has text-to-speech and I love it. On its highest setting the speech rate is such that most people can't make out individual words, but I've had a lot of practice and I can speed through texts like John F. Kennedy. Normal books I can't scan and I read quite slowly, but I can listen with precision and speed. Last semester none of my books came on Kindle. They were all accessible to me, but I was so pumped when I queued up my books at the start of the semester. I was so relaxed. I was like, "I remember how quickly I can procure information. I wasn't stupid. I was just disabled." I have done well every semester, but it is more of a struggle when the materials are hard to use.

I don't really believe in learning styles like a teacher should. I feel like the evidence behind them is shaky at best, invalid at worst, and that it's best just to present information in a lot of ways multiple times if you want someone to understand. Despite this, I would always rather have a text-to-speech system over a book. I love lectures and hate PowerPoints.  I'm just unsure whether this is due to being visually impaired or being an auditory learner. I have a feeling it is the disabled thing.

Then there is the casual experience. People wave to me all the time and I miss it. They get offended until I remind them I literally didn't see. I think everybody should play catch with me just once in their lives so they can watch me suddenly see the thing as it hits me in the face. I won't see projectiles at all so my favorite ball sport = No.

Then there is the worst of it. I always have to live in a city, or at least until Google gets their act together, (http://www.emilysatrium.org/2013/02/google-should-do-for-me-yesterday.html) because I can't drive. That means all future jobs will have to be urban. It makes me kind of sad because I like trees so much, but I think it is fairly manageable. I just wish I had a choice about the matter.

I'm really grateful for the vision I have. I think my low vision helped mold me a lot when I was little because I had to learn how to adapt and compensate. Even if I could have chosen to have perfect eyesight I don't think I would, but sometimes I wish I could see street signs, blackboards, and balls. Sometimes I wish it wasn't quite so invisible.

Whiners

This post is dedicated to Sean Czarniecki, a man I've never met in real life, assume is not a whiner, and overall seems like a fairly positive person. You asked for it anyway sir.

Whining is my biggest pet peeve. I do it, of course, but sparingly. My issue with whining is that most of the things people whine about are 100% completely in their control and optional. Sean is sorry now that he  secretly and privately whined that I wrote too much in the last 24 hours on my blog. I wrote two long posts, I admit, but it was his choice to read. It would be different if I was an assignment for his job or something, but he must get some enjoyment out of reading the blog or he wouldn't bother.

That whining over voluntary things is an especially rampant problem in video games and other online cultures. If you find an online forum that doesn't include posts by people who say "Thanks for wasting my thirty minutes, jerk" you haven't read all the comments. It isn't the developer's fault that somebody didn't like the content. It isn't even the creator's responsibility if a person spent x dollars and didn't like the content. It's the users responsibility to research something and see if they will like it before purchasing. Games, books, apps, ect all come with descriptions, trailers, and reviews so if you buy something you don't like you have no right to whine about ir.

Same with political elections. If you didn't vote, you can't whine. If you honestly don't care about who your leaders are than by all means skip the election, but no whining. Budgets , menus, and plans are another example. If you had an opportunity to be and weren't part of the progress it is your own fault and you can't whine. Take power where you can get it. Use the little bit of agency you have.

So these are the only times it's acceptable to whine. My friends, I will call you on it.

1. A decision was made that you had no power over and can't change

Nope! You thought there would be more, but there aren't. That's the only one. Otherwise, no whining.

The King

The interesting thing about growing up is that when you are younger you have no idea how the things you are doing and the person you are will create who you will become, but when you are old all of your personality quirks, oddities, and odysseys make sense. One of the biggest fallacies of college is that it assumes you know what you want to do with your life when you are eighteen. It's even worse in, say, England, where you pick A-levels at age 16. I've met very few people of any age who know what they want their future to be. People can make decisions about what classes sound interesting and what will help their careers, but declaring a major is almost always a challenge. I understand that colleges and universities have to have some organizational system, but if you think about majors too much your head starts to explode. I am a sophomore in college. My brother is 23 and has graduated. The two of us are remarkably similar to how we were as children, but when we were small I never would have been able to predict where we are today. I know my childhood self would be proud of the person I am right now. His would too. My third grade teacher was the best and convinced me unshakably that I was a writer. He has been an entrepreneur and programmer within my memory. This is me with a sign for one of his companies. As long as he has been creating companies I have been writing stories. So far, the children of my parents are doing fairly well.

Google and some of the other most innovative and successful companies in science and technology (Atlassian, LinkedIn, 3m) subscribe to "20 percent time" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y) which is the idea that eighty percent of an employee's time should be spent grinding away company tasks like putting cover sheets on TPS reports, coding log-in pages, arguing with managers, and other miscellaneous responsibilities, but in twenty percent of an employee's time they are allowed to do whatever creative project they want to do for the company. It works because people actually work harder when they have autonomy and are intrinsically motivated. Self-direction works really well. If you are interested in what you are doing you actually do it better. More than half of the new products that come out in a year from Google are imagined and worked on in twenty percent time. I want to do things that I think matter.

I hear pretty often that my majors are a bad choice. Sometimes the sentiment is less tactfully put and I'm told, "that's stupid," but it's what I want to do. It's what I've always wanted to do. Writers have the most powerful jobs in the universe. I'd be a great politician, but authors are the politicians' police. They are so powerful that Plato threw the poets out of the perfect society. He saw their truthtelling as dangerous and destabilizing, but sometimes society needs to be destabilized so it can grow. "A King has nothing to fear but a poet," and in some cases the King should be afraid. Sometimes they need to be questioned.

I was not born as a tourist. I am a citizen of this place, this Earth. I am not here just to watch my life and my world change. I am here to shape the lives of the people around me.The only way I know how to do that is through knowledge and information. Writers, teachers, and speakers expel that information so people can be more successful than they were when they met you. I don't have a clue what I'll be writing in the future, but I am fundamentally a wordsmith. Be it video games or the great American novel I need to get my message out because I have the right, as a citizen, to be heard.

I really would rather write books, become a motivational speaker, or, especially work for ArenaNet than just about anything else. Those things I can set as a Plan A, but I will always have to fight Plan B. The problem with Plan B is that it exists as a default future. Unless I put in remarkable effort none of my Plan As will happen. I will just revert to my Plan B, something that will make me happy and fulfilled, but not a genius or a threat. Teachers change the world of their students, but writers change the world of thousands. The dreamers are better off. If you don't set a Plan B your default future is wild success. Being practical often leads to a fulfilled life, but not a heroic life. I am still working on setting aside my Plan Bs and convincing others that I can be amazing, but at least I have a Plan A. At least I'm not still undecided. I know I'm a writer. I love words with their infinite meanings and the way they tell stories, build worlds, and help us to imagine issues complexly.

All Roads Lead to Orr

In Guild Wars 2, the end of the game is called Orr. Orr is a massive land of undead monsters and viscous dragons. No matter what decisions you  make within the game, you end up in Orr battling Zhaitan, the Elder Dragon. The reasons for being there a\re different for each player on each play-through, but every person will inevitably make their way to Orr to defeat the greatest challenge in Tyria.

Sometimes I wonder if life is a little like that. We can make a lot of different choices, but some battles we fight are unavoidable and epic. For me, my heart transplant was definitely a boss fight. I dread the thought, but I acknowledge that I will find myself in the swamp of The Straits of Devastation at least one more time battling dragons. Nobody's health lasts forever.

Since Jeff Grubb first said, "all roads lead to Orr" it has become a meme. It's a viral idea that turned into magazines  blogs, video series, and pictures about how people got to Orr in the game and the ways in which they conquered it with honor and dignity. I think it partly became so big because it resonated with people. I certainly (as seen by this blog) want to chronicle the most epic battles in my life, especially if I think sharing those challenges could teach others how to fight the same baddies. You can ignore the rising brutes in your life all you want, but at some point you will go to Orr.

Adolescents have a habit of looking at something their friends do and saying, "that's not fair" to which their parents and advisers have to stifle the response, "life isn't fair." Of course, the problem adults have is it is true. Life isn't fair. Some people get terminal or incurable diseases far too young. Some people live in poverty. Twenty percent of the people always have at least eighty percent of the income. None of that is the point, though. We all start in different zones and travel different paths gaining more or less experience along the way and finally find ourselves fighting the Elder Dragon. All we can hope to do is have good friends at our side and the right equipment and resources when we get there.

I Choose

I'm in a place now where I am able to choose my friends and it is amazing. I love the friend(s) I had in High School, but the intersection of people who were willing to talk to me and were normal, fun human beings was less than five people. I had choices, but not many. Now I am in a place where there are 1,000 people in that intersection (that calculation was basically everybody here would talk to me, but only two-thirds of them are normal). So now I have a choice.

My relationships are still controlled primarily by circumstance because a computer randomly sorted my best friends and I onto the same floor our first year, but I could have ignored that and chose to hang out with people from class or in clubs. Instead I stuck with Laura, Bruna, and Victoria because I like them.

Today is my roommate Victoria's birthday. Sometimes I have trouble communicating to people why I chose to live with her and why I enjoy her company. She doesn't exude charisma or make any particular effort to be charming, but I find her magnetic because she is unapologetically herself all the time. I often start conversations about her with, "You wouldn't know her" because she doesn't make a massive wave on the campus as a whole, but instead deeply affects the people around her. She doesn't pretend to like people so when she is kind to me and helps me I know it is genuine. I quest in life to find truthtellers and Victoria will look at me and say, "Dude, what are you doing?" when others would only equivocate and pretend not to notice when I am being weird or failing. What more could I ask than someone who is honest with me? She is loyal, trustworthy, and mostly importantly extremely considerate of others feelings without trying to pacify them. She is amazing not because of her athletic ability or intelligence (both of which abound), but because she is the kind of person you want to have around to help remind you what's right.

I've enjoyed our two years and I expect many more. Hopefully your birthday was wicked mint, dude. See you soon.