Wednesday, October 26, 2011

an almost really grown up blog.

i'm going to start out this blog by saying that on monday night, i went to a drag show.

this was not my first drag show. this was my second drag show, and i liked it more than the first.

i will also say that i really really enjoy drag shows, and on that note, i am dressing in drag for halloween. if this just altered your opinion of me, that's perfectly acceptable. drag queens are beautiful and i admire what they do. a lot.

this has absolutely nothing to do with the gist of my blog. i'm just throwing that out there because by god, i love drag shows.

this blog is about me being a real person.

if you've read my blogs, you've heard this before. i honestly don't even remember what i said constituted being a real person. something about living on your own... or taking care of a house... having a job? maybe? something? anyway, this is a different type of real person.

this is me jumping feet first into my future and screaming and flailing. it was an adventure.

in my education class, EDC200, we're the people the education department is trying to weed out. they throw at us this gigantic teacher ed program application and all kinds of dates we have to turn stuff in by. they give us a dated book full of cases where teachers screw up and get fired. they tell us everything that goes wrong when you become a teacher.

their goal: to scare us. the ones who survive, those are the true teachers and get accepted into the teacher ed program.

seven weeks into this course, i am true teacher waiting on acceptance. but i knew this forever ago. so now it's just looking through this dated book a cases. my book is so old that one of the cases deals with people not understanding how computers work. i mean, really. let's update, people.

there is a second aspect to my weeder class: teacher placement. each of us must venture out into the world of middle school or high school and observe and help out a classroom for twenty hours. this sounded like a lot until i realized that i needed forty hours after christmas.

after contacting my unknown placement teacher and alerting her that i would be intruding on her spanish classes every tuesday and thursday from nine until eleven, i prepared myself. i went to the business office and got a nice, cute little nametag that says Ms. Hollenberg on it. i spent a long time deciding what clothes to wear. i packed my bags the night before.

i knew for a fact that i should've woken up the circle of life or pumped up kicks. those generally lead to good days. i instead decided to wake up to an unknown kate nash song that had a bouncy, happy beginning. but oh, how it dampened my day.

literally.

it was cold and rainy yesterday morning when i bounced out of bed at seven thirty-four with kate nash banging something cheerful on her piano. i speeded into my bathroom, excited as ever to find... that my hot water heater had broken. i shivered in my towel on the cold tile floor for a while, thinking that maybe the hot water would magically come spurting out of my showerhead, but it never did. i, of course, had no time to wait. i had to shower shower shower so i could eat eat eat then i could leave leave leave to go teach teach teach.

so i took a terrifically quick shower that was very reminiscent of antarctica.

i then shimmied into my dress pants, couldn't button the three decorative buttons in a timely manner, pulled on my yellow shirt, then my plum colored cardigan, strung on a pearl necklace, and pinned my little nametag pin. my dress pants, however comfy and professional, are long, even for my incredible leg length. this meant it was going to be a day for heels to keep my hems dry. i was praying to god that my placement teacher wasn't short because when i wear heels, i am six feet tall.

i grabbed my gigantic purple purse and headed out into the rain under my bubble umbrella. i clacked my way through breakfast, then clacked my way to my car, where i discovered something lurking under my seat that looked suspiciously like my brother's taco bell from a few nights ago. and i headed through the cold rain to alma high school. i had vague directions and a foggy windshield. and i was terrified.

after almost going through the DO NOT ENTER part of the parking lot, i creeped around the building, trying to see where the office might be located. i had a background check to turn in and administration to alert. so i found what looked like the office and parked between two old beat up trucks.

i scurried as quickly as i could through the wind and rain in my heels and strode right up the office door. of course, the office wasn't an office; it was a gigantic art room. like, seriously, the art rooms at my high school were never that big, and my high school was at least TWICE the size of this one. the doors by this art room were locked, so i set back into the rain (without my umbrella) with my glasses all spattered. i had no idea where to look for a door next, so i just began to half-run ungainly around the building.

i located a kid who looked like a senior. he was standing outside of a door with one foot barely propping it open talking on a cell phone. i smiled like the chesire cat at him in my little teachery outfit and he shrugged and let me inside.

now i was in the maze of an unknown high school in what looked like the music wing.

i walked loudly with my purse swinging, trying to figure out which way to go. i found a long hallway and a nice kid in a tie, and i instantly accosted him. he told me to go straight and when it forked, go right and i'd run into the office. so my large heeled feet when straight and to the right.

and straight and to the right. and straight and to the right. and straight and to the right. you get the point.

i entered the first office i came to and told the secretary who i was. she smiled ever so sweetly and told me in a voice like honey, "oh, dear, you're in the wrong office. you want the office three doors down."

this freakin' high school had four offices. all next to each other.

i still had ten minutes. i set off... you guessed it. straight and to the right.

i caught that secretary on her way out. she wasn't nearly so friendly. she told me my placement teacher's (mrs. johnson) room number and sent me in the right direction. now i was wandering down a loop.

i located mrs. johnson's room. it was across from the auditorium and near a boys' bathroom. i hadn't run into a girls' one yet. if need be, i have no issue going into a men's bathroom to do my business. when you gotta go, you gotta go.

i had five minutes to spare, so i huddled awkwardly outside of her door for a moment. i didn't want to be early, and now i was downright terrified; what was placement going to be like? what was mrs. johnson going to be like? what level of spanish did she teach? and i was extemely unnerved.

her class was screaming.

i knocked and was let in and on a vocabulary game being played by a very loud spanish one class. i sat down in the back and a kid instantly began to ask me about my socks, which of course, were brightly colored and didn't match anything, least of all themselves. i tugged my dress pants down and watched as the class commenced to play tortuga. that's turtle in spanish.

in a nutshell, i'm really not blogging about placement. i'm blogging about how i got to placement, and i've had a lot of blogs like these. blogs where i describe my ridiculous life in some ridiculous situation.

i will blog about actual placement later when i've done something concrete. so far placement has been like this.

1. go through a lot of shenanigans to get there.
2. observe for two hours.
3. get promised that later you'll be leading games and tutoring kids.

when i get to the point where i begin to actually teach, i'll get back to you.

then it will really be a growing up blog.




post script: my placement teacher is short. i am now her awkwardly tall assistant. i think i'm done wearing heels.

Monday, October 17, 2011

a blog about kip.

what do i do on a monday when class is cancelled and i have an ear infection?

well, first i take care of important things like emailing important people and singing bon iver very loudly in the shower (and praying my suitemates aren't home to hear me).

then i sit down and blog.

i think it's high time i blog about kip.

if you read my last blog (the picture one!) then you semi-understand. if you didn't, well, you have no idea who kip is.

that's perfectly acceptable. i, in fact, am the only person who truly knows who kip is, and there are still so many things about him that i simply don't know because he won't tell me. he's a rather guarded person.

here is my disclaimer at the beginning of the blog, because i will wander away and likely take you with me. remember this important piece of information if you retain anything from this blog.

KIP IS NOT A REAL PERSON. he is a fictional character in a book that i wrote when i was sixteen. repeat that. kip is not a real person. kip is not a real person.

that being said, he's one of the realest people i've ever met. he is ridiculously human.

i have this annoying and unfortunate habit of talking about kip like he's an actual human being. people ask me why i named my computer kip and i'm apt to say, "oh after my friend kip, he lives in california" and i launch into our friendship. there are at least a dozen people out there who believe that kip is a living, breathing human being beginning his freshman year of college in los angeles. if you are one of those people and you are going "what the hell" right now because i told you that kip was real, i truly apologize.

i'm not lying to you, at least not really. i don't mean to lie. but kip is so real to me and he has such a special place in my heart that to me, it's not a lie. to my warped novelist mind, kip is a living, breathing human being that ages, has a life, goes to school, is allergic to dogs, hates hospitals, and solves braille rubik's cubes.

that's the fun part about kip. he's NLP.

an easier way to say NLP (and to have normal people understand you) is to say totally blind. the NLP stands for no light perception.

kip is not one of those blind people with coke bottle glasses and a dog. kip is one of those people who cannot see a single thing or detect light of any kind. kip is helen keller blind, stevie wonder blind, ray charles blind. and he's allergic to dogs, so dogs are out and canes are in.

have you ever been in a cave? i personally have been in several caves, and on every single cave tour, they shut out the lights for a bit and you sit in absolute, all-consuming darkness. the last cave i toured we sat in that darkness for a good ten minutes, and the entire time i was thinking about kip, because that is his entire life. in my book, kip forever remains fifteen. that means that he has been blind for twelve years. according to my mind, kip is nineteen and therefore has been blind for sixteen years.

in ninth grade, when i was fifteen, i wrote my first finished full length book. it topped out at 336 pages, and i honestly don't want to talk about it much because it's a gigantic piece of crap. i say that about all of my books, but hey. when i started writing that book from the perspective of a girl named aileen, i knew nothing about the book whatsoever.

i did know one thing. damn it, aileen was going to have a fifteen year old brother named kip and damn it, he was gonna be blind.

see, kip isn't even the protagonist. aileen counts her story in the first person (present tense) and has a strong love for kip; she's the overprotective older sister. her whole life she's worked around her brother's disability and she's very defensive of it. kip is perfect in every way to her, and she will do anything to keep him from getting hurt. in the book kip is the deuteragonist (that's the secondary character). he has plenty of action. you get to know him very well. you understand the intense bond that he has with his sister that reaches far beyond the moon. if there is one thing that i am proud of in this book, it is the bond that i created between the two of them, because i have never known anything stronger than that.

when i finished the book, i promptly became to depressed. kip had grown on me like a friend who had moved away and didn't write. i missed him. i missed everything about him. i missed his cane, his sunglasses, his curly hair, his perfect blue eyes that didn't function, his wit, the polite way he asks for braille menus at restaurants. i missed his hopes and fears and dreams, his determination to one day live on his own, his independence, his love of literature, and his unwillingness to give up when solving braille rubik's cubes.

so i did the only thing i knew how: i wrote a semi-sequel. from his perspective.

let me tell you, writing a novel in first person from the perspective of a blind person is not easy. or fun.

i spent a year of agony writing that book, and honestly, it's a piece of crap just like the other book. i don't like it. i don't go back and read it. i wish it didn't exist. i spent an entire year of staying up too late trying to crank out a sentence. i put myself in "kip situations" in which i would blindfold myself and attempt to do something ordinary, like doing my laundry or showering. i am a pro at showering blindly. i've also gotten into the habit of climbing rockwalls blindfolded. it's honestly a fantastic experience. you should try it sometime.

for a glorious book, i was finally in kip's mind, and as soon as i got in there, i realized it was the last place that i wanted to be.

kip is one of the most insecure people i've ever encountered. he is extremely independent, walking to the library by himself and cooking meals. he is everything that i respect, but he is just so vulnerable. he absolutely hates the fact that aileen would do absolutely anything for him and often wishes that she would think about herself for once. he constantly worries about being able to live on his own. he frets about college. he desperately wants to understand why he got stuck with his disability, to go back to those first three years of life where he could see. he does not remember those years.

but he's strong enough to understand that he is blind for a reason. he does not dwell on it. and he understands that now there is no going back. he is comfortable in his blindness and if there were a way to cure it, he would opt out. he knows his sister through her voice, the feel of her face, her different pairs of shoes, her footsteps. he does not know her face, and even though he wants to, he knows that if he were to see again, he would not recognize it. that would devastate him.

every single day of my life i wish that kip were real. he has a talking computer, and i envision myself sending him emails and him responding back. i picture him sitting in his room with his braille rubik's cube. he solved it the first time in a matter of days and he's slowly improving. i picture him tapping his way around his house, perusing the braille section of his library, and walking to school. i understand his hopes and fears and dreams.

he is so real to me. he is a part of me. and i love him to death.

i have now officially blogged about kip, and of course, i feel like i haven't done him justice. sometimes i think that kip is a more complicated person than i am. i'm pretty damn complicated and he's not real. so that's really saying something.




post script: if you honestly want to read my book (i suggest you don't), you can let me know. it sits on my computer, gathering dust and generally being terrible.

post post script: i have compiled kip's thoughts on life's basics (taken straight out of my book), if you are truly interested.

on aileen: Aileen is the most selfless person I know. The only person she truly cares about is me, and I feel absolutely horrible about it.

on being blind: Self-pity leads to destruction. and The view never changes.


on seeing again: I spend my life in a cave without a light. And suddenly I have light all over the place, an entire new sense I’d have to explore and learn to use. It would be disorienting. I'm much more comfortable being blind.

true dat, kip. true dat.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

those are my shoes, this is my life.

this blog is going to be all kinds of stuff about me. potentially.

trust me. if you're one of my regular readers (i feel like i don't have those, honestly) then you know a decent amount about me. for those of you who have never read my blog before, well. hi.

here we go. my life in descriptive pictures.


meet emily, our protagonist. she is a twenty year old education student at a small liberal arts school called alma college with hopes of being a spanish and literature teacher. this is her sophomore year. due to back injuries, she has had to leave her family, the alma college swim and dive team, for a new family: the south campus RA staff. she has recently joined the sorority gamma phi beta and is an active member in active minds, the only group on campus devoted to ending the stigma against mental illness. in her spare time (if it arises) she reads stephen king, blogs, and goes to the park. and of course, watches copious amounts of criminal minds.

enough with that.
this is me happily standing in what allison would call "the birdy position" on lake michigan. i like this picture, but i do not feel like it is an accurate representation of me for one small reason. i believe that in this picture i look like i'm five foot two. i am, in fact, five foot nine. with big feet. my mother is five foot two.








this is my boyfriend. his name is jacob. he has an afro. he's six foot four and writes poetry. he makes me happy. he also wears cardigans.








this is my refrigerator. i named him voldemort. (one cannot simply name their fridge voldemort, but i can. i can also simply walk into mordor.) he does have two other name tags that have my name on them, but the real name tag, the one in english, that one has voldemort on it. i thought about crossing out the "pleased to meet you" and replacing it with "avada kedavra" but my handwriting just isn't that good and it's already stuck on there for good. voldemort is a hipster fridge. he even has a sticker with the hipster essentials poster on it. he mostly houses muffins and dr. pepper. the top of him says "emerson" and i'm thinking about gettting magnets and putting "ralph waldo" up there.



note that my dorm is velociraptor free.
i pretend that my residents understand spanish. one of them is a german major (i'm not sure how that applies to anything i'm saying right now) and one of them is in my spanish class, but other than that... well. no spanish for them. i still act like everybody understands spanish and i put my whiteboard in spanish with my whereabouts. i finally got the good idea to make a nice brightly colored poster of all the spanish to english translations. it made me feel productive. and i got to write using colored markers as a bonus! also, my bathroom has "EL BANO" smack on the door in dark letters, but i was too lazy to take a picture of my bathroom door. (emily esta en su cuarto literally means emily is in her room. for the record.)





remember when i impulsively bought a cello?

yeah, me too.

this is estlin. that's e. e. cummings estlin. he and voldemort hang out a lot.






i am a busy person. i am compulsively busy.
i have a dry erase calendar, a daily planner, a phone planner, and a monthly planner on my extra desk.
i am busy busy busy busy busy and i love every minute of it.
if you participated in my june go! challenge, then you know this. feel awesome.



miscellaneous things. we all have them.



my toms came in the mail. :)

this should not need an explanation. it is fantastic and is over my bed.

this is atticus. he is my pet cactus. he is not named after atticus finch. he is friendly.













i got a little kid shower curtain. :)












and lastly, this is where the magic happens, the magical blogging.

this is kip. he's named after my friend kip, who's an eighteen year old NLP (no light perception) blind kid who solves braille rubik's cubes. i could lead you on and pretend that kip is a real person, but he's really not, he's a book character. but i've never related to a book character more than i've related to him. ever. so i pretend that he's real. i honestly don't think it's weird.


this is kip the laptop. it's a crappy picture, but i am a blogger, not a photographer. that handsome boy (um. man. he's thirty-one.) is matthew gray gubler and if you remember correctly, i like him quite a lot. if your vision is good, it's not tricking you. the middle sticky note does indeed say I LIKE VOLDEMORT HUGS.






i'm not really sure how to end this. this was an awkward blog. it involved me wandering around my room with my cheap touchscreen camera taking pictures of my stuff.

honest to god, i was in the shower about two hours ago and i was standing there running shampoo through my hair and lamenting about my spanish homework when i thought to myself, oh snap, i could write this really neat blog about myself in pictures with captions and people can really get into my life.

well. i don't think it worked out too well. it's not what i was dreaming up in the shower, certainly, and i honestly feel like me blogging about other things, like the lion king, harry potter, and my room flooding, gives you a better impression of who i am.

i am glad that you read my blogs. that you stick with me. i really am. because i'm still new at this.

it's just something that i love to do.




post script: if you understand the reference in the title of this blog entry, you are my new best friend and i love you. very much.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

hula hooping to spain.

i always blog at inopportune times. like when i'm actually supposed to be rewriting my article summary for spanish.


that entailed me putting my microsoft word into spanish (mexican spanish but argentinan was tempting) and to install the spanish spell check. now microsoft word alerts me when my number and gender don't agree. or when i need an accent.


so far my spanish article is looking something like this:


Personas llamadas “coyotes” ayudan los inmigrantes viajar a través de la frontera y ayudarles a encontrar trabajo una vez que lleguen en EEUU. Según el articulo, “…cuesta unos 400 dólares o el equivalente a un par de semanas de trabajo de los ilegales en EEUU.” Muchos de estos inmigrantes son jóvenes y estudian en las universidades. Muchas otras trabajan.


beautiful, isn't it? 


yeah, i didn't think so.


while i'm sitting here in the library with my new toms shoes (i'm so friendly!) and my awesome aluminum water bottle when i really could be outside enjoying the sunshine if i had time, i am blogging. and oh what a joy blogging is.


today i woke up early and worked out for the first time since i injured my back. they say that it takes time for exercise to become addicting, but i'm ready to work out again. i don't think this is normal.


to keep myself from napping after my early morning work out (i consider eight to be early for a thursday) i proceeded to take a nice, long, shower and wear my striped white and blue shirt with my striped white and blue bow. once i had my bow pinned in exactly where i wanted it, i grabbed my study abroad packet, a notebook, and a pen and headed to the library basement where the ACP office is located.


here is what i know about ACP, and as an RA, i should know a lot more. it stands for academic and career planning. they help you with resumes and real world stuff. internships. study abroad. interviews. getting jobs. graduating on time. planning your whole entire future because that's why you're going to college, to get yourself a better future with lots of debt later. it has extended office hours, which means it closes somewhere around... ten o'clock at night (my college is the most sleep deprived campus in michigan, that's a legitimate fact) and that you don't need an appointment.


so i walked in feeling cute and clueless. i walked up to the lady at the front desk and said, "i'd like to talk to somebody about studying abroad."


she smiled and said, "what do you know?"


when i said, "nothing" her face fell and she said something along the lines of, "i don't know if i can help you."


i perked up and said, "well i want to go to spain!" and then we were rolling.


i did not actually sit down and discuss studying abroad with a nice lady in an office like i had planned. instead, this nice secretary gave me a packet and said that here at alma college, we have a six step process. steps one through three need to be completed by a certain date, because steps four through six become international and there's communication between us and the foreign country. one step at time. each step comes in a nice manilla envelope and you just turn them in one at a time, it's nothing to worry about.


she sent me away with directions for step one and a list of alma approved study abroad programs.


i instantly went back to my dorm room, propped open my door and labeled it "emily está... un su cuarto! dice hola!", dragged my laptop over to my bed, and sat up there going through the approved study abroad program sites.


in my gigantic packet that i got the other week that i showed to my mother, there was this fantastic program in madrid. madrid is cool. madrid is the capital. it's MADRID. who wouldn't want to spend a winter semester in madrid? it even had literature classes for me. but was it pre-approved by my college?


nope.


from there i looked at what i needed to do to get a program approved. that involved writing a detailed, well-thought-out essay about why this program is superior to the other programs in said country, what i would do to make this program approved, and all kinds of other hoops. that plus everything else i needed to complete for step one before i could move onto step two. i think my stomach fell to my feet when i realized that maybe madrid wouldn't be an option. i might've had the time, but i joined a sorority two nights ago.


time is of the essence. i'm not sure if that's the right phrase. but it sounded legit.


i began to research a winter semester in oviedo. it sounded nice. i began to get excited. then i clicked on "courses you will take in oviedo" and it went on and on about economics and sociology.


hello, my name is emily, and i'm an education major so i can teach kids literature and spanish.


goodbye, oviedo.


the only other pre-approved program in spain was segovia. so i clicked on that.


it began to look happy. i would go in as an intermediate/advanced spanish student! i would live with a host family and be within walking distance from the university! i would take literature and spanish culture!


then i quickly realized that everything for applying for this was for winter of 2012.


let me lay that out for you. winter of 2012 starts in january. this january. that's in two months.


DO PEOPLE REALLY APPLY THIS LATE TO STUDY ABROAD?


to study in winter of 2013, which is NEXT winter, meaning we get through this winter, spring, summer, fall, and then winter, i thought i was applying late. can you really get all of this done, get approved, and get shipped off to france or something when you decide two months beforehand that you want to study abroad?


sheesh.


i began to panic. i needed things about 2013 NOW. i was applying now. what if the courses change? what if it wasn't approved anymore?


and i found some stuff on a nice handy PDF file... that wouldn't load. either my dorm room internet was taking another gigantic poop like usual or my adobe flashplayer needs some serious updating. i'm in the habit of closing those windows upon opening up my computer.


i sent a long and harried email to my mother explaining that i was researching study abroad opportunities and how i was scared out of my mind even though i was only look at step one out of six. when i was done emailing her, i checked out the education program that argentina had in rosario. perfecto! education!


it was only in the summer. i cannot afford any of that. i gotta work in the summer to make money to study abroad in the winter. and pay for my ridiculous expensive private college education.


after i tossed out argentina and settled for spain, i spent the next twenty minutes memorizing anyone lived in a pretty how town. you know, with up so floating many bells down.


i guess the point of my blog is this: i've gotten up, been productive, and freaked myself out with study abroad.


i am going to study abroad.


i'm not going to take no for an answer. i'll find a program that tailors to my education major needs. i want to spend four months in spain taking classes and being immersed in the culture and the language and having one of the best opportunities of my life. because i'm worth it. i really am and i will tell myself this until i get there.


i am growing up so quickly.


wish by spirit and if by yes.

Monday, October 3, 2011

are you banging pans?

i should probably blog about this tomorrow night. or better yet, wednesday, when i've had an insufficient amount of sleep that will undoubtedly be more sufficient than what i've been getting.

one word: RECRUITMENT.

my freshman year of college when all my friends went through winter recruitment to join a sorority, i thought, thank goodness i'm not them. there are a variety of reasons for this.

1. it was the height of swim season. i wasn't even doing homework because i was focused on my sport.
2. i don't have enough cute party dresses, and of the ones i do have, they are not warm enough for a michigan february.
3. i've never been fond of hors devourers. (who decided that that was pronounced "or" "dervs"?)
4. it sounded like a bunch of crap, dressing up and going to things called "spreads" and "desserts" and spending all of your free homework time at sorority houses with girls that you didn't know wearing uncomfortable shoes.

greek life was not for me.

then suddenly there was this fall recruitment meeting for upperclassmen and i was like, mmmm sisterhood isn't sounding so terrible. so i went to the meeting and got ridiculously excited and realized, heyyy GREEK IS FOR ME.

i was so excited i called my mom, jumped up and down like a rabbit, and said, "I'M JOINING A SORORITY I'M SO EXCITED OH MY GOODNESS."

responses.

my father: that's great! when's recruitment?
my mother: are you sure? i know i was in a sorority but i don't want that influence your decision. are you really really sure? this is a big decision. can you afford it? do you know which sorority you want? what brought this on? have you talked to your brother about it?
my brother: HELL YES!!!!
my grandmother: now emily. i distinctly remember all of last year how when we asked you about sororities that you claimed, very vehemently i might add, that you did not feel like you were the type of person to join one.

thank you, grandma. i changed my mind.

so yesterday was fall recruitment. that entire week of crap with uncomfortable shoes and dresses and freezing your ass off in february and getting invited to spreads (or not getting invited and knowing that a sorority didn't want you), they crammed all of that into one day, and that day was yesterday.

as someone with general anxiety issues, i spent an hour on friday night freaking about my outfit. when i figured it out, i tried it on saturday morning. it looked terrible. after freaking out some more, i finally found something decent to wear.

sunday morning dawned dark and early: seven thirty wake up call. i was woken up by the beautiful NYANTS INGOYAMA BAGITHI BABA of the lion king broadway, which to me, promised a good day. when i really need good days, i wake up to that. while listening to the brilliant soundtrack, i shimmied into my business skirt and honest to goodness, put on makeup.

this is a rare occasion, my friends.

recruitment is a lot of walking in awkward clothing. i am already five foot nine. i do not need to wear hells to accentuate anything. so i was smart and wore my three dollar walmart polka dotted flats.

breakfast in jones auditorium was very reminscent of RA training: bagels, mini muffins and hugs. the best way to spread the cream cheese... paste it on with the back of a broken plastic spork. we sure were classy.

we were then divided, us upperclassmen awkward girls in skirts and dresses, into groups based on the color of our nametags. i lamented that my name, EMILY, in bright green writing, was in much better handwriting than i can ever hope to achieve. i was paired with four other girls, and i knew all of them but one. perhaps today was going to be okay.

it was very cold crossing the street to sorority row. we were going to alpha xi delta first, and based on the stereotypes that i had been accustomed to, my least favorite sorority. i shivered and skittered across the street to the second house with my group, trying not to trip over myself and really unsure of what i was getting myself into. the looks of blank terror on everybody else's faces were telling me that i wasn't alone.

then there was the noise.

each house was filled to the brim with the ENTIRE sorority, not just the girls who lived in the actual house. and boy were they excited.

as we neared AZD, there was screaming. screaming screaming and chanting chanting and then pounding pounding. these girls, dressed in their yellow shirts, were banging on the windows of their house and crashing pots and pans together and simply hollering and screeching. and then we got sucked into the house.

before i could even blink, about eight pairs of hands grabbed me and screamed, EMILY EMILY COME IN HERE and i was forced into the living room where about twenty screaming girls were perched on the furniture. i was shoved onto a sofa with lauren and then these twenty screaming girls began to talk all at once, shaking our hands, asking us where we lived, what we were involved in, AZD was the best house, and would we like food, dear god there's so much food, we absolutely had to eat it and be good guests.

then somebody whisked me upstairs into a room with a name and i sat on somebody's bed where more smiling maniacal girls were pumping my hands and asking me all sorts of questions and going on and on and on.

and so it went. room to room to room, new girls, same shirts, more handshaking, lots of smiling and laughing. internal terror. in every single room there was food that was shoved in my face, and in the basement i astounded half of the sorority with my lion king knowledge. if they give me a bid, i know it will be because of that.

we all went back to jones after forty-five minutes of this, skittering in the cold and holding ourselves. we were terrified. we grouped and whispered about the houses we had been to.

there were four more.

and so it went, house to house, each breaking at jones to huddle and discuss what we liked, what we didn't like.

five houses. three and a half hours. back and forth, pretty girls crossing the street and being mobbed by insane sorority girls all wearing the same shirts cheering and cheering and screaming and banging pots and seeing if they wanted us to join their sisterhood.

it was so overwhelming i thought i was going to die.

after i had been to all five houses, i had four hours to go back to the houses that i liked. there was one that i particularly enjoyed, and i spent a good three hours there playing party games and getting to know the sisters. there was another house that i liked too, so i spent the remaining time there eating cookies and bashing on twilight. (in that house, harry potter is a way of life. i appreciate this.)

i was too tired and too excited to eat dinner. i collapsed on my boyfriend's bed and took a fifteen minute power nap, had a seizure of greek life excitement (it truly was scary) and then realized with horror that i hadn't done ANY of my homework over the weekend and i had to get it all done in the next four hours before i turned the campus yellow for suicide prevention week.

i should be writing this on wednesday because tuesday night is bids bash. here's how this goes down.

if nobody calls me, that means that a sorority wants me. if somebody calls me and says, "hey, sorry, you didn't get a bid", then i'm probably going to curl up in my bed and cry for a little bit because i am too damn excited to join a sorority to be told no.

if nobody calls me, tomorrow night i meet with the rest of the recruitment ladies in a lounge. i select a small bag with my name on it and inside is my bid(s). i have an hour to decide which sorority i want to join and then i sign the bid.

after that we all cross the hall and have a big gigantic terrific party where i'll scream I JOINED THIS SORORITY and all my new sisters will scream something that will sound like SDLJFHGLJSDHFJLHSDJHGSLD WELCOME EMILY and they'll make me put on a shirt and we'll take pictures forever and ever and ever and i will end up being in a frame in somebody's bedroom in the sorority house.

i know which sorority i want to join. and i'm pretty sure they're going to give me a bid. actually, i think they have to because it's the same sorority that my mother was in back when she went to my college and dominated the field hockey team.

greek life. recruitment.

i am really too excited to breathe. i still have to get through the rest of my day today (four classes down, one to go, RA inservice tonight) and then through tomorrow (getting up early and doing more suicide prevention, going back to sleep, doing all of my wednesday homework) before bids bash.

i. cannot. wait.

so maybe greek life is for me after all. it certainly seems like it is.

i also have this distinct feeling that next year, when sophomores go through recruitment, i'm going to have a hell of a fun time banging on the windows of my sorority house and clanging pots together and screaming. screaming is kind of my thing.