Senior Portraits

My roommate Tess asked me to take her senior portrait so she can include a photo in her graduation announcements. Always ready for an opportunity to use my camera for something cooler than snapping random pics for my blog, I was excited to help out.

It turned out to be an absolute blast. We headed over to the rose garden on campus, which is a great place to take pictures. The roses are all gorgeous and in bloom. You can kinda sorta see 'em behind Tess's beautiful face.

After having so much fun with this photo op, I'm trying to convince the rest of my roommates to let me take their senior portraits for them. Just for kicks, even though I don't think they think they need them. But they do. I have beautiful friends, and beautiful friends need to be photographed. It's like the law of nature and stuff.

Maybe if I can't find something to do with my life after this teaching thing ends in a couple years, I'll just become a professional photographer and take pictures of married couples and babies.

Love it.

Bam.

That's the plan.

I Want to Be an Ex-Pat

I am currently entertaining the idea of running away to Europe after graduation. I don't know where I'd go, but I'd use the money I've saved (to buy a car) on a one-way airplane ticket, an apartment, and putting up flyers about tutoring "with a native English speaker." Bam. I'd have a place to live, a job, and a little bit of extra dinero to tide me over until the tutoring started taking off.

About one-eighth of me is entirely serious about this plan. It's feasible. I know someone who did it. And if I could just make my student loans disappear, I'd probably be almost one-fourth entirely serious about this plan.

The future is stressin' me out, and the only thing I really want to do -- with all my heart -- is travel. Get out of the States. Live and breathe a different culture. Learn a new language. Write and take pictures.

I'm too impatient to wait a few years to do this. Darn financial limitations. Why do you exist?!

Amen, Sister

Yes, ma'am. I couldn't agree more.

Seriously though. It amazes me that a five-year-old girl can put exactly into words what I was trying inarticulately to describe to my roommate Madison the other night.

"I don't care if I marry you. I don't care if I marry another man. I care... if I do something that's special."

Someday, I will have a personal library...

... and it will look like this.

Yesterday's Turn of Events

7:30 a.m. -- Wake up. Immediately remember that today is the day I hear back from Teach For America (TFA). Burrow further down in my covers for a second, working to calm my roiling stomach.

8:00 a.m. -- Go to the gym. A rather infrequent event that I hope to turn into a regular Tuesday/Thursday routine. It feels amazing to just up and run for a while. I need cardio back in my life.

11:00 a.m. -- Meet someone at the Student Film Production Club (SFPC) equipment closet to check equipment back in. SFPC responsibilities are officially back in full swing.

1:30 p.m. -- Report to work at National Scholars Office. Pick up kid at the Honors College and walk back to the north end of campus while trying to convince him that OU is awesome.

2:30 p.m. -- Back at the office, I log in to my email address. I've been on edge all day, but I'm not expecting to hear from TFA until the late afternoon, so I don't expect anything.

I'm not emotionally prepared for the first email that greets me.

Losing My Zen

The fastest way to lose all this great inner peace stored up over the break is to start thinking ahead toward the coming semester. Then the illusion of "Oh, I'll have so much free time to be creative because I'm only taking twelve hours" comes crashing down, revealing the behemoth of extra-curricular activities and responsibilities to which I've already committed (and conveniently tend to push into the back recesses of my mind).

Grrreeeeaaaaattt.

I can feel my zen deflating like one of those helium balloons left out in the cold too long.

It's funny, because I do this absolutely every single semester (you'd think I'd know better by now). I start by simplifying my upcoming responsibilities in my mind so they feel manageable. And once I've drawn myself a comforting black and white picture, I look at that and only that -- until a couple weeks before the semester starts. Then, when it comes time to write goals and make plans, all the nuances of all the little things that I'm also committeed to flood in. And I freak out. Stress out. Freeze.

This freezing business is dangerous. For example, I'm starting to get important emails again. Important emails that I really should have replied to today (or yesterday). I should not leave them for tomorrow (or Monday). But the sub-zero-ness of stress has taken me over, and I can't respond.

Or wont.

It's a slippery slope.

My refusal to rejoin the world of the working is just the first step, I imagine. I'll probably progress with alarming swiftness to more dangerous things like running traffic lights, not voting, and stealing purses from old ladies.

Save me from myself!!!

Anyway, instead of doing my work, I continue to blog and read memoirs and take naps. I live in denial that I only have a week and a half until classes begin. Of course, once they do, I'll be kicking myself that I didn't start on all these projects earlier.

Which I really should. Really really really should.

Maybe I should take up yoga. Get some of that zen back. Except instead of chanting "Om," I can slip in a couple extra syllables and say something like "Don't streeeessssssssssss" and "Dooooooo yoooooooouur wooooooooooorrrrrkkkk."

The last one has a nice calming drone to it.

Resolutions for 2011

I love this time of year. It combines so many of my favorite things -- writing lists, looking forward, making plans.

I've compiled my newest set of New Years Resolutions. For the year 2011. Never thought it would come.

2011 has always been this far off, imaginary time. The year I graduate from college. Those four digits have been on applications and resumes (and even a red baseball cap gathering dust in my closet) for the last three years, always distant and abstract. But now it's here and it's real and it's kinda freaking me out.

And because the make-up of the next year is hazy at best, my resolutions are also fairly vague. They'll solidify as we creep into the new decade, I'm sure.

I hope.

I mean, right?

Anyway, here, my friends, are my resolutions for the new year (and in part, the new decade).

Readjusting Expectations

Coming back to my hometown always takes an adjustment. The city (does it really count as a city?) never seems to change -- same streets, mostly the same businesses, mostly the same people-- and yet it all feels different.

There's now nothing to do.

I have no idea how I managed to stay entertained in high school.

Also, the house I grew up in has since been sold, so when I'm here I stay in a new place with different smells and sounds. I know it doesn't seem like much, and I guess I'd have hoped that by the time I was getting ready to graduate I wouldn't need that traditional "home" feeling anymore. But I still do. And it's not there anymore. A bit sad, in a way.

But I'm not saying that I completely dislike the challenges of a new place. They can be fun. For example, as I've stated before, setting up a new kitchen is really a blast.

And I love organizing other people's stuff. I get this strange satisfaction from looking at a mess and transforming it into a comfortable, livable space. Clutter stresses me out.

So, being the great guy that he is, my dad has pretty much given me free reign of setting up and organizing his apartment. Currently sitting on his kitchen counter is a running list of all the things he needs to get his bachelor pad in good shape for after I leave.

I think that if all my other career ideas don't pan out, I'll just become a professional organizer and have people hire me to organize their lives.

I'm reluctant to admit I can think of only a handful of careers that sound like more fun. Writing, producing, and wedding planning are some of them. I think I'm officially adding professional organizer to my list of potential life paths. The more the merrier, right?

Back on the topic of adjustments . . . The other thing about coming back to Billings is that people move or change, or both (which is good). Very few people have stayed the same, even if it sometimes feels like this town is in a constant state of stagnation.

So the list of people I make a point of seeing every break keeps getting smaller and smaller, until I'm at the point where I only see three or four people (though those three or four are very special to me). I spend the rest of my time at coffee shops, writing and thinking of home. Oklahoma is home. Temporarily, at least.

Then I'll move and make a new home.

Sorry I keep talking about this. It's been on my mind a lot lately. I've termed it "the plague of the petrified soon-to-be college graduate." Catchy, right?

I'm looking into trademark options as we speak.

Writer Reality Check

I love this blog by Kristen Lamb. So great. It's all about things to expect when you become a writer, including not having anyone take you seriously. It also talked about how important it is to take the word "aspiring" out of your vocabulary (Don't try. Just do.), and that it's okay to spend all your time watching movies and reading books, because it's called research. Brilliant. And inspirational.

However, at the beginning of the blog, she says she is talking to those people who just decide one day to become writers. And my first thought when reading was... Does one really just become a writer? Is that realistic? As if one day you wake up and say, "By Jove, I think I'll write a NY Times best-seller today!"

I don't think it works like that. Sure, you may suddenly feel the heavens align when you don't have the urge to kill anyone after writing that one-page poem in your fifth grade unit on Edgar Allen Poe. You may realize you don't have a complete aversion to creative writing like your friends do. Papers aren't the devil.

But I definitely didn't have that eureka moment when I realized that I wanted to be a writer. I think I just kinda became one. I started blogging in high school for the local paper, and it was a fun way to express myself. And then I kept it up in college because it was a good way to keep my parents in the loop.

Perhaps, though, there is a moment when you think, "What if I did this forever? What if this was my career?"

Now that is a moment. A clearly defined moment. For me, it came as I was sitting in the library last semester, writing a blog about growing up in the country, and I realized that I enjoyed blogging more than anything else I was doing all that semester. I enjoyed it even more than my film classes. And I had a pretty consistent following on my blog, so somebody had to enjoy what I was saying. Maybe that is translatable into longer fiction pieces?

I still don't know if what I have to say is interesting or even if my particular "voice" (or whatever) is transferable to fiction. And I haven't even finished a novel yet (though I'm still trying!). So I can't necessarily just up and quit everything, graduate with a B.A. and move to Greenwich Village to become a self-involved, beatnik writer who meanders through Central Park without shoes, writing poetry for free to the tourists passing through. As much as I'd like to.

I guess I need to get a big-girl job, whatever that will be. And writing will be on the side.

For now.

The Waiting Game Begins

Yesterday was my final Teach For America interview. Everyone keeps asking me how it went, and my answer really is, I'm neutral. It wasn't terrible, but I don't feel amazing about it. I guess that's a pretty decent place to be about those sorts of things.

All in all, I'm just glad that that part of the process is over. I'm ready to just sit and wait (until January 18th). Thankfully I'll have Christmas in the middle to distract me. So excited!

Teaching for America, by Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman has to be one of my favorite writers of all time. His opinion articles for the New York Times are always insightful and dead-on.

And this article is no different.

In it, he talks about how everyone agrees that there is something wrong with our education system. But he offers at least one potential solution, which has been proposed by the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

We need to raise the importance and prestige of teachers in the United States, in order to recruit the best and brightest for the position.

Duncan’s view is that challenging teachers to rise to new levels — by using student achievement data in calculating salaries, by increasing competition through innovation and charters — is not anti-teacher. It’s taking the profession much more seriously and elevating it to where it should be.

Even here at OU, it feels like people look down on those in the School of Education. It (wrongly) has the reputation of being an easy major, for those just looking to get an MRS degree.

What is wrong with this picture?!

Educating our youth should not be seen as an easy job. Not everyone can teach. It takes skill, patience, and endurance. Don't ever let anyone tell you that teaching is anything but difficult. This summer I worked with people who came back every night from teaching, exhausted and scared that they weren't making enough of a difference in their kids' education. Teaching challenges even the smartest people, and our society should reward it as such.

I can't wait for the day when public schools only accept those from the top one-third of a graduating class. Or for when people stop believing things like, "Well, teachers get the summer off, so we shouldn't really pay them much." Or even just for the day when I don't get doubtful expressions when I tell people that I want to teach. By wanting to become a teacher, I will not be settling. I will be making a difference.

Is there a doctor in the house?!

Why yes, there is.

My awesomely-intelligent roommate Valerie was accepted to OU Medical School this week. Sha-BAM!

For kicks, I am going to start calling her Dr. Miller. Especially when we are around other people. What's love without a little embarrassment?