unless you're new here, you probably know that i go to alma college in alma, michigan and i'm a senior wrapping up my fall semester.
if you're new, hi, i'm emily and i'm a senior at alma college wrapping up my fall semester.
moving on.
i could go on and on about how much i love alma college. and i do. all the time. to people that i know, to people that i don't know, to people that actually go to alma college with me. i can't shut up about alma college.
i love the campus. i love the professors. i love the classes. i love my major. i love the chapel. i love the organisations. i love the opportunities. i love my multiple jobs there.
I LOVE ALMA, OKAY?
but there is one thing that i don't like about alma college, and it's a certain mentality that a lot of students seem to have, and this mentality kinda goes like this.
student one: omg i have this paper that's due and it's sooo long
student two: dude did i tell you about my huge-ass project that's going to take me all night?
student three: bitch please i have three projects and i'm the president of an organisation.
student four: EVERYONE SIT DOWN DID I TELL YOU THAT MY RESEARCH IS ABOUT TO CURE CANCER... ON JUPITER
and i just kind of stand there like, are you furreal right now?
but i'm not going to pretend that i didn't have that mentality, because i totally did. i used to be that person that was like, "hi i'm emily and i'm taking nineteen credits and i'm on the EC of this committee and i hold this position in this club and i have a huge paper due and by the way i'm a resident assistant and did i tell you that i'm trying to study abroad and single handedly end the patriarchy?"
it's gotten really annoying.
my friend ray wrote a pretty good article about this mentality in our newspaper, the almanian. it was basically like, "HEY ALMA, CALM THE EFF DOWN, YO."
it's taken me about... three years to be able to say no. because when you come to college and when you're someone like me who was over-involved in high school and just generally likes to do everything, you join all the clubs.
but what happens when you join all the clubs is this:
pretty much.
my senior year i'm pretty much in the second stage of this progression, which is where i sit in my room and i say to myself, "holy shit i have to do all the things and i seriously cannot."
there is one word for why i seriously cannot, and that word is ANXIETY.
emily's life with generalised anxiety disorder is definitely a fun life. and the past three weeks have been kind of... well, they've been pretty shit awful.
sometimes when you have crippling anxiety, like mine sometimes is, you can't really do anything. getting out of bed is a gigantic victory. going to class is like climbing a mountain and once you're actually in class sitting with people, it's really hard to concentrate because you feel like you're drowning. going to clubs and meetings is almost out of the question when you are so exhausted from just interacting with people that you're ready to sleep for a week.
my last two weeks have been like this, and it's been super tiring. but i'm getting back from it, seeing my therapist regularly and talking things out, figuring out where my anxiety is, and what i need to be doing to remain a functioning human being in society.
but part of that is realising what exactly is triggering my anxiety and working out strategies to dealing with it.
if we avoided everything that was triggering to us, we would never come out of our rooms. which i have done. and hiding in my apartment all by myself and being afraid of everything outside is not how i want to live my life. so when the new alma cafeteria is really fucking scary, i work on strategies for going there for meals.
new cafeteria, which we call saga. it terrifies me.
where i'm really going with this post is the fact that for my own mental health and wellbeing, i made a super big decision, one of the biggest decisions that i've made in my nearly three and a half years as a college student, and that was the decision to leave something, not join something.
it's very common knowledge that i'm in a sorority called gamma phi beta. my mother was in the local version of it when she went to alma. my cousin was in it in orange county, california. and i joined it my sophomore year.
this is my brother and i about thirty seconds after i joined my sophomore year.
no. we are not twins.
on friday, i signed a very official piece of paperwork that said that i, emily hollenberg, would no longer be a part of the sorority gamma phi beta.
it was something i'd been thinking about for seven months, so since last march. it wasn't like i woke up one morning and said, "wow, i think i'll leave my sorority today." this was a long and ongoing process that began with a very strange incident involving a mojito, a viewing of mulan at the service learning off campus house, and a formal dance. (you can ask about it. i'm not going to tell you.)
over the summer, when i got back from my month-long adventure in england, my anxiety sort of took over things that i used to have control of, and i took a gigantic step backward in how i was handling my life with GAD. it made me re-evaluate a lot of different things, and not just what i was involved in at school and what triggering things were for me.
it made me think about how i am as a person, what i am capable of doing as a person, WHO i am as a person as well as how i am, what i want to do for the rest of my life, and what i need to do for myself.
saying no is very hard for me. i'm a leader and a doer. i want to do everything, i want to lead everything. it's extremely hard for me to step away from something that i feel passionately about.
i am very good at telling other people that they have the right to say no, but i am very bad at telling myself that i have the right to say no.
coming back to campus, instead of feeling a sense of relief at my first sorority meeting surrounded by my fifty-three beautiful sisters, i felt nothing but terrifying social anxiety. i couldn't figure out exactly what was happening, just that i needed to go back to my apartment and decompress. every single meeting i felt like i was drowning. at the last business meeting i attended, i was focusing so hard on not crying out of anxious terror that i honestly don't remember what was discussed.
when you have anxiety, you learn a few things.
1. if things make you really anxious, you should leave the situation and work on ways to go back to the situation to deal with the anxiety properly. you cannot spend your life avoiding everything that makes you anxious.
2. if things that you used to love make you really anxious, you should probably talk to someone about it.
so i went to my therapist, confused and not really sure what was happening. because my sorority should not make me anxious.
but it did. and there was no getting around the fact that everything about it made me anxious. every facebook notification in the secret group. every email. every event that i had to attend. every time i had to go to the house. every time i had to be in a large group of my sisters.
i kept seeing my therapist. we worked on strategies. and it just wasn't working.
last week i had a list of things involving my sorority that were coming up. the idea of fulfilling these obligations made me so anxious that i had a complete breakdown in my apartment and spent some time anxious vomiting. which is worse than regular vomiting, trust me on this.
it was then that i decided for my own wellbeing that i could no longer be a part of the organisation.
it's very hard, leaving fifty-three sisters that you love and support and that love and support you. but what comes with love and support is actual love and support, and when i told our president that i needed to leave for my own wellbeing, she loved me and supported my decision.
last night my chapter found out that i "dropped my letters", which is the term for leaving a greek organisation. i have not spoken to any of my former sisters directly since, but i haven't felt any animosity. i wrote them a letter explaining why i was leaving and how i needed to take care of myself, and the best way to do this was to leave. i can only hope that they'll be supportive.
i stand by my decision. it was not easy, but i stand by it.
at one of the last meetings that i attended, we received a personal bill of rights. i was unable to hang it onto my wall because it somehow ended up in the communal kitchen trashcan of my apartment, but i remember most of it. and most of what it said finally made me realise that i have the ability to take control of my mental health and wellbeing and that nobody can stop me from doing that.
my name is emily and i'm taking control of my life by saying no.
i'm learning that no is a complete sentence, and that this is something that i need to embrace. no. is. a. complete. sentence. and it does not need to be followed by an explanation.
it feels really nice being in control of my life. i kind of feel like a superhero.
like batman.
this batman cat is for my former sisters of gamma phi beta, who are obsessed with cats, and consequently, obsessed with batman.
(but seriously. you should see the dark knight rises posters that some of these women have. holy shit.)
i want to start this post out with an apology for not writing in here more often, dear readers. there are a few reasons for this.
1. college. i don't need to explain more.
2. i have another blogspot blog for my class and it's like, eighty million percent of my grade and since i want to be a professional blogger when i become a big kid and all that jazz, i devote a lot more time to it.
this blog is not very professional. it never will be. when i go to get my big girl job as a professional blogger, i'm going to show the people hiring me my class blog.
i mean, i suppose i can show them this one and be like, "look, i can be unprofessional on the internet!" but that probably won't help my cause.
but anyway, there's my apology. now we can move onto the point of this post, which is...
I WATCHED A SCARY MOVIE FOR THE FIRST TIME
that's right.
a quick preface because you're thinking, "what the crap, emily, you're twenty-two and a half or something like that and you've never seen a scary movie? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU WEIRDO."
yeah, i think that too, it's okay.
but it's like, halloween time. and halloween is my favourite holiday EVARRRRR (even though jesus being born is like, the highlight of my life because i love jesus) and it's really fuggin' hard to celebrate it in college.
i mean, you can go out to the frats and dress up and dance with all your friends.
i don't do this for a number of reasons.
1. i don't have friends.
2. JUST KIDDING. but maybe not.
3. i'm poor and coming up with costumes is hard.
4. i do that weird thing where i'm a resident assistant? and i have to leave places with underage drinking. which is
5. ALL THE FRATS EXCEPT PMA.
so i don't go out very often because normally some drunk freshman comes in and i roll my eyes and go, "ughhhh really" and go back to my room and watch disney movies.
this year a small opportunity presented itself. it did not involve dressing up, which was sad, because i'm going as hipster queen lear.
that's right, folks. HIPSTER QUEEN LEAR.
i will wear a prom dress. probably six inch heels so i am impressively six foot three. a crown because queens wear crowns. and a sign that says, "chronologically speaking, my husband went mad before hamlet."
GET IT? GET IT? JAAAAA?
(i already have the hipster glasses. because i'm a hipster that needs corrective lenses. so i wear hipster glasses everyday.)
the opportunity that presented itself last wednesday did not allow me to dress up as hipster queen lear, but it allowed me to do a little bit of celebration of halloween. the PMA house was having a horror movie/event/thing that day and it started with meeting there to go to terror on 27, which is a horror house weird thing on highway 127, a highway that allows us to leave alma to go back to civilisation, like lansing.
one of my best friends, adam, loves shit like that. so he was like, DUDE EMILY LET'S GO
and i was like, HELL NO BRO YOU GO DO YOUR THANG AND I'M GOING TO WATCH THE DARK KNIGHT RISES AND EAT MAC N CHEESE ALONE IN MY APARTMENT.
which is exactly what i did.
after terror on 27, everyone was invited over to the PMA house to watch the shining.
me: i want to go but i hate being afraid and i hate scary movies.
adam: you should go anyway. i love the shining.
me: I HAVE TO CUDDLE WITH YOU THE WHOLE TIME
adam: that can be arranged.
me: IF I GET SCARED YOU HAVE TO SPEND THE NIGHT IN MY ROOM
adam: that can also be arranged and you do realise that all of campus thinks that we're dating.
me: it's not true friendship unless someone thinks you're dating. do you have any idea how many random people think that hannah and i are a lesbian couple when go out to lunch together?
but seriously, the whole campus thinks we're dating and it's pretty great.
HEY ALMA, WE'RE NOT DATING. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.
so after i finished the dark knight rises and my mac n cheese, adam texted me at about ten thirty and he was like, WE'RE BACK and i was like, OH BOY and i grabbed my jacket (which is actually his jacket) and i ran to the PMA house and burst through the front door.
and i was confronted with an almost empty chapter room.
normally when PMA has movie nights like, seventy people show up, which is always super crazy. so sometimes you end up cuddling with people you don't know on bean bag chairs.
but there was pretty much no one there and i found adam on one of the numerous couches. and by numerous couches i mean like, there are thirteen. so i climbed up onto the couch, which was a literal climb because it's on risers and is probably five feet off the ground. and then they started playing the shining and i was terrified on the basic principle that it was the fuggin' shining.
if you don't know the basic premise of the shining, it's a stephen king novel from 1977, and that should tip you off right there because STEPHEN KING. anyway, it's about this gigantic hotel and some bad shit happened there awhile ago and it's full of ghosts and whatnot, and it's closed during the winter because of snow. so they hire a caretaker to just kind of... live there during the winter. and this dude named jack torrance and his wife wendy and their seven year old son danny move in and take care of it while jack works on his novel.
jack becomes possessed by the devil or something weird like that and slowly becomes mad. and danny, who's really cute, becomes possessed by his imaginary friend tony, and let me tell you, that's the scariest part of the movie because his mom is like, hey danny let's eat dinner and danny speaks in this weird voice and he's like, "danny isn't here right now mrs. torrance" and i was like, WHAT THE WHAT and wendy is like, WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY FAMILY and it culminates with a bunch of blood flowing down a hallway and some weird visions of dead girls and jack tries to murder everyone with an axe.
you know, here's johnny and all that.
"I MADE A WHOLE IN THE DOOR WITH AN AXE SO I CAN KILL YOU, MY DARLING WENDY!" - jack torrance's inner monologue
i'm sure you've seen this. if you haven't, there it is.
it wasn't all that scary, to be honest. there's a point where there's a beautiful naked woman in a bathtub and jack makes out with her and she turns into a really nasty old hag covered in sores and laughs this terrible little mermaid ursula laugh, but i pretty thoroughly hid in adam's hair during that part because i didn't need to see that.
honestly, the scariest part of the movie for me was the word TUESDAY, which sounds ridiculous.
the movie is broken up into chunks. so like, OCTOBER. TUESDAY. THURSDAY. ONE MONTH LATER. and the way the movie really works is through the totally dissonant and creepy music, and its lack thereof. (you know how sometimes you're watching a scary movie or TV show and then you're like, oh my god where is the music shit is about to go down? yeah that's totally a thing in this movie.)
so there's this creepy swelling music and you know that something bad is going to happen, like those dead girls holding hands in the hallway or something, but instead the screen goes black and it says TUESDAY and it appears with this loud hammer-like sound and i screamed.
and then everyone commenced to make fun of me because i was afraid of the word tuesday but i cheered when jack axed a dude in the chest.
it was very comforting being entangled in adam (i mean that quite literally, both of my arms were crossed oddly and we were holding both hands and somehow our feet were crossed in each other's) and having him whisper in my ear what was about to happen in the movie so i didn't shit myself or cry or both. because we all know that that probably would've happened to me.
it was also kind of awkward for other people that insist that adam and i are dating when we're not. so adam and i are entangled on this couch and we look like a third stage couple and i'm hiding in his hair and he's squeezing my hand and people are looking at us like, what even is your relationship
and to that we say INTENSE FRIENDSHIP.
back to the shining.
i live tweeted it. obviously.
i think this is the best of the live tweeting.
i had better tweets, but they really weren't appropriate to put on this blog (which let's you know they were bad), one of them being, "damnit mr. grady, unlocking the pantry and shit" because REALLY THAT WAS THE CLIMAX OF THE MOVIE. IF MR. GRADY HADN'T UNLOCKED THE PANTRY THERE WOULD BE NO AXE STALKING.
the shining is psychologically scary. like, it's kind of confusing because it doesn't really explain itself. you just have to go along with what's happening and realise that jack is going insane and that's why he's trying to murder his family with an axe and his wife is screaming and holding a knife and everything has gone to hell. but it's after the movie is done that you're like, well gee my life is scary now.
adam and i went back to his room to grab some things so he could spend the night in my room and keep me from wetting the bed and i was pretty much terrified of every single hallway on campus. because when i blinked, there could be dead girls covered in axe wounds.
AHHHHHH.
long story short: i wasn't that scared during the movie, but boy was i scared afterwards.
me: i'm scared.
adam: why. i'm here. i'm manly and shit.
me: no you're not. I JUST LOCKED MY BEDROOM DOOR FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.
adam: you don't lock your bedroom door at night? what is wrong with you?
i mean, i lock my entire apartment door. but my bedroom door? nahhh.
i have decided that i want to watch the shining again. i know everything that's coming, including the word tuesday, so i probably won't jump and scream and embarrass myself in front of a bunch of guys.
new goal: watch the shining again (hopefully without having to be entangled in someone) and then i can ANALYSE IT.
because, you know, that's what i do with things when i like them. i analyse them. which my parents think is super weird.
aaaaand it probably is weird. BUT WHATEVER, I LIKE IT.
there might be a possibility of me going out somewhere as hipster queen lear. that would be sweet.
i'm trying to dress adam up as edgar allen ho.
who looks like this.
that's not adam. but i'm seriously trying to get adam to wear one of my black dresses and to get a stuffed raven or something. and it's gonna be awesome.
i'm not really sure how to end this.
soooooooo
HALLOWEEEEEEEEN WOOT WOOT!
be safe this halloween, kids. no dying.
(also, if i do dress up as hipster queen lear and adam dresses up as edgar allen ho, i PROMISE i will put up pictures.)
we've reached the moment, kids. the really big moment in my life.
MY SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE.
yeah, we're technically like, three and a half weeks into it. which i think is very telling, because i haven't had time to blog about it at all until now.
(you're assuming that i have time to blog about right now. ha. haha. hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. I DON'T.)
i feel like my year always starts super awkwardly because in michigan it's like, illegal to start school before labour day, so i started on a tuesday. which meant that on monday i spent most of the day watching orange is the new black and crying over fictional women in prison.
and then sometime on monday night, after my staff meeting, i was like, well shit, i should probably look up my schedule. emily's schedule: tuesday english senior seminar, 11:30-12:50.
that was it. and i was like, whaaaat?! because last semester i had THREE hour and a half classes in a row with a small break for lunch and that royally sucked.
so on tuesday i woke up and i was like, FIRST LAST OF SCHOOL EVER UNLESS I GO TO GRAD SCHOOL BUT I PROBABLY SHOULDA FIGURED THAT SHIT OUT A LONG TIME AGO.
(my mother is always telling me that i have plenty of time for grad school. but all my friends are like, WHAT UP IT'S TIME FOR THE GRE and i'm like, OH HELL NO THAT'S NOT A THING and people are like, omg what grad schools are you looking at and i'm like, SORRY I HAVE TO PEE TALK TO YOU LATER.)
so on tuesday i woke up and did the finding nemo FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL thing and i ate poptarts in my apartment and put on a really cute skirt because it's probably my last first day of school ever and i'm trying to be really classy this year or something, and you know what?
PANTS ARE HARD.
long live skirts and dresses. pants are really fuggin' hard most days.
(you think that women wear skirts to be adorable. and this is true. hell, i'm wearing a dress i bought in london right now because it's really cute and i love it. but i also woke up this morning, looked at my skinny jeans, and decided that i was NOT gonna get my ass to fit into those today.)
my senior seminar is kind of my main class, because it's senior seminar for english. it's nothing but senior english majors. it's the last of the required english classes. there are thirteen of us. we all know each other very well. most of us went to england together last may. we're all very comfortable with each other. we sit at a big table in the library and drink coffee. our professor is my thesis advisor.
what's our class about?
sucess and failure.
mostly failure.
after seminar, my sigma tau delta ladies and i get lunch together and we talk about the woe of the english major senior thesis. and last week it was pretty much like this.
DO WE REALLY HAVE TO TALK ABOUT FAILURE ALL THE TIME IN A SENIOR CLASS? I MEAN, JEEZ. WE ARE NEVER GOING TO AMOUNT TO ANYTHING IN LIFE.
the last book we read was about a failing writer who was poor as dirt and he was literally starving and he slept with strange women and had awkward grandiose complexes and eventually, after FINALLY making money and not starving, he throws his book into the desert.
it pretty much demolished my dream of being a professional writer in any field whatsoever.
my tuesdays generally consist of talking about failing people. today we talked about paula spencer in the woman who walked into doors. she's an alcholic irish woman who was severely beaten by her husband. (i thought he just hit her. boy was i wrong. if you ever want to read a book and vomit, you should read that one, because i almost vomited last night.) and then my professor was like, is her life successful? and we're like, UH, NO.
on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, i have an eight thirty political science class, which i will definitely blog about later. it's about the american political system. we're learning all about the american founding right now and having this huge debate about whether or not we were founded on christian principles.
it's very interesting, but it's also very hard for me to care when i know that i want to move out of the country.
at twelve thirty i go to chorale. sometimes i eat lunch in the new cafeteria, which also deserves its own post because of how intense it is, but sometimes i just make lunch in my apartment. this usually means that i make macaroni and cheese. kraft style.
picture this. i'm in business professional clothing. as in, i am wearing a business skirt, tights, a dress shirt, a large scarf, my sorority pin, earrings, and high heels. i am also straining my monster university macaroni and cheese in my shower.
THE SINK WAS FULL. IT WASN'T MY FAULT. I WAS RUNNING LATE AND I DIDN'T WANT BOILING WATER EVERYWHERE. SO I STRAINED IT IN MY BATHTUB. IT MAKES SENSE.
(this, i feel like, is the true essence of college. I AM AN ADULT.)
after that, i sing in choir. on friday we got new music, and guess what song it was?
YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS.
i got the music. looked at it. and promptly burst into tears in front of the whole choir.
my last class is digital rhetoric, which is directly after choir. i wasn't sure what to expect and we went around the room talking about why we were here.
"i'm emily, i'm a senior english major and writing minor. this is my last writing minor requirement and i want to be a professional blogger."
to which my professor says, "THIS IS THE CLASS FOR YOU."
in this class, i have another blog. it's far more professional than this one. i don't say bad words like shit and ass. (who said those were bad words, anyway?) i capitalise everything properly. the posts aren't ridiculously long. it's highly professional.
and i made a pen name.
i went through a lot of angst making that pen name. like, SERIOUSLY. ANGST. i was in the library for a good two hours on babynames.com freaking out. and of course, i live tweeted the entire thing.
i came away with the pen name beckett c. marsak. which is very different than ermintrude pirate/peaches/rocket marsak.
i've already promoted it on tumblr and facebook and twitter and such, but my professional class blog is here. it's about how beckett (i) deal with anxiety and how i'm working on moving to england and becoming a professional blogger there.
i can't forget about my senior thesis! on my gigantic white board i have a lot of stuff written down: things i need to do, people i need to see, emails i need to send.
i also have this.
accurate.
in the corner with a big cloud around it, it says YOU ALWAYS HAVE YOUR SENIOR THESIS and it's so true. i'm writing a novel for my senior thesis. i have 85 pages of it written. i've shown 15 of them to my professor. this week he wants me to print off all 85 pages, split them into chapters, and mess with the chronology. his favourite character is one he's only met for like... a page and a half.
every friday night, my english ladies and i hole up in the library and work on our theses together. katelyn and i are the only one doing creative ones, so everybody else is like, ALL THE RESEARCH! but that doesn't mean that we don't do our own research.
i have had a tab for shady grove's intrauterine insemination information open on my browser for a good week and a half.
i know.
also, shady grove seems pretty legit. so if you're on the east coast and you're interested in artificial insemination, i'd totally look into them.
you know, this is just my classes, everything i've been writing about. i haven't touched on being the president of a student organisation. my sorority. the movie nights at PMA. my involvement in chapel. the RA stuff. (like the penis email. that circulated around campus pretty quickly.)
OH, I ALSO GOT A BEARDED DRAGON.
his name is hamlet. he's cuter than you.
he's really sassy. he sleeps standing up. you can read about how i bought him from my (beckett's) perspective in my other blog.
it's my senior year. i've spent it running to classes, being president of an organisation, staying up until three in the morning reading novels, getting new pets, freaking out over pen names, straining my macaroni and cheese in my bathtub, crying in choir, and stumbling into my apartment really late at night and wondering why i haven't been there all day.
it's been grand. and i think it's only going to get better from here.
plus, i went to my senior audit and i can graduate on time while only taking two classes next semester, HOLLA.
gonna get that bachelor's degree in english.
i am leaving here with a degree. or this could be a thing.
a magical thing is happening right now at this very moment.
well, two things are happening.
1. i am eating a wildberry poptart and it's pretty much the best poptart i've ever had in my life and i am very excited about it.
2. I HAVE A WHOLE HOUR OF FREE TIME AND I DON'T NEED TO BE DOING ANYTHING VITAL.
i'm at RA training. that's why this hour of free time is so absolutely joyous.
i don't think i've blogged about RA training. i've blogged about aspects of RA training, but i don't think i've actually sat down and been like, "wow i want to blog about all the shenanigans that we get into at RA training that no one knows about".
so now i'm going to. WOOT.
I MOVED IN AND LOCKED MYSELF OUT
if you were unaware, i am a senior and a third year RA. i'm also a female. that means that i get to be in wright hall, which is the apartment style dorms. i live with my fabulous SRA katie and two other girls who aren't here yet, which is just as well because katie and i have shit everywhere.
THE WHOLE APARTMENT IS COVERED IN STUFF.
so on saturday we moved all my stuff into my room which is on the west end of the apartment. and i'm moving from a large and spacious double into a single. so i'm trying to cut down on all of my crap. i haven't found room for my TV yet. while my mom is putting my clothes away in my closet which is now about three times as small as what i'm used to, my dad and my brother and i are running things from the storage closet in my old hall on the second floor, across the parking lot, into my dorm, up the stairs, and into my apartment.
so in the other dorms that aren't apartment style, to lock your door you have to actually lock your door. so if you're late to class and realise that you can't physically lock your door, that means that you left your keys inside and then you say some words that aren't really approriate and you grab your keys and move with your day.
my apartment door (and my bedroom door inside my apartment) locks itself behind me. so halfway through moving in and i locked myself out of my apartment.
when you lock yourself out, you whine to the RA. i am the RA.
i found another RA and got the master key. the master key didn't work. (also, when we put in a work order to get a new one, all they did was oil it. that oil consequently got all over my hands when i had to key into the laundry room at midnight. FOR A LEGIT REASON.)
so then i had to track down katie and my hall director, willard, made fun of me mercilessly.
then i had to run to walmart. and i'm like, morally against walmart. which sucked.
BUT LOOK I GOT ALL MOVED IN AND STUFF.
(the england is strong in this room.)
THEN THERE WERE LOTS OF PRESENTATIONS
RA training has a lot of presentations. like, you don't think that RA training is that hard, but it's two weeks of like, eight in the morning to midnight stuff. every day.
ERRRRYDAY.
and then you'd think that we'd get sundays off, but NOPE, sunday is one of our longest days because sunday has the most boring presentations. i should be more generous because my fellow RAs give some of those presentations and they work hard on them. and they make them interesting. and they're fantastic.
but there is just no getting around that hearing about what facilities and management does for the third time is boring as hell.
but even though we sat through like... seven hours of presentations on sunday and it was really boring and we knew that lots more were coming, we managed to make it a fun time for south staff.
so we went to coldstone, made inappropriate jokes about the sweet cream ice cream (we are not mature.) and then we had a super smash brothers tournament at willard's.
me. cas. john. on a team. against willard.
he kicked our asses.
so i gave up and went to play bullshit with the rest of my female staff members, and i won both times and i thought that katie was going to rage quit on me. legitimately.
CAMP HENRY IS ALWAYS THE BEST (AND GOOD FOR FOOT SLICING)
on monday we always go to camp henry, which is like a cool leadership summer camp on lake kimball. and we have five stations that we rotate through as a staff. and since willard is the hall director with the most experience, he makes the schedule so we don't have to kayak in the morning when it's cold.
way to go, willard.
our group leader was this awesome guy named david who was from london, and i was like, i totally spent three weeks there and he was like, well that's nice i totally grew up there and i was like, i love london and he was like, i like bandana tag and that was pretty much the end of that conversation.
we did play bandana tag. which was fun. and willard got really into it and i'm pretty sure i'll be playing it again sometime before training is over because willard misses it.
after we played that and this weird dodgeball game in a hunger games arena called gaga, we went to the low ropes course. i swung on a rope swing, which was kind of a big deal because rope swings freak me out. all eleven of us balanced on a seesaw and nobody got hurt (unlike last year) and then we did that thing where you have to fit everyone through a spider web. so you're like, lifting people up and funnelling them through between pieces of rope and stuff like that.
well we kind of took cas and flipped him over backwards over the entire thing and caught him on the other side and i may have screamed the whole time.
after that we did this huge jacob's ladder. which was fifty feet tall. and it looked like this.
if you can't tell, those huge beams are about five feet apart.
I CLIMBED THE WHOLE THING.
i didn't realise how high it was until i was sitting on the top like, aww yeah i'm a bamf and i'm really out of breath and then i looked down and it was like
HOLY MOTHER OF PEARLS THIS IS REALLY HIGH GET ME DOWN RIGHT NOW.
after we climbed the ladder, we went to archery. last year i missed all the targets and shot them off into the woods. this year they had barricades so you couldn't do that.
guess who shot all of her arrows over the barricade and back into the woods?
archery is not my friend.
after that we went kayaking, which is totally my thing. i love kayaking. it makes me feel closer to god. we all went out onto kimball lake and through a tunnel onto a different lake and we rammed into each other and tried to tip each other over and it was a good time. on the way in, our instructor told us that we could "accidentally" tip ourselves and swim the kayaks in.
i tipped myself. stepped on something and it hurt. then my foot sank ankle deep in silt.
i pushed my kayak in. foot still hurt. walked across the beach. left a trail of blood. found some other RA staff members. they noticed the blood. cue panic.
it turns out that camp henry doesn't have a first aid kit and i was like, "well that's strange" so i sat on a picnic table while taylor poured water all over my foot and dug into my cut with a q-tip. and it hurt through my whole entire foot so i could only walk on my tip toes. and it bled the whole way home and barbara was like, wow that's probably infected so she took me to her room and went into lifeguard mode. she cleaned it off and then scrubbed it out with disinfectant wipes and then attempted to cut the extra skin off with scissors.
obviously, while this was happening i was hugging a pillow with my eyes squeezed shut and when i wasn't making terrible noises of pain, i was yelling words that would have made my mother hit me with a frying pan.
i still have gauze all over the bottom of my foot and it's all taped up. and it's still bleeding through the gauze. and it's thursday. (my foot is also still swollen.)
BATTLE WOUNDS.
YOU KNOW NOTHING JON SNOW, AND NEITHER DO I
tuesday was another long day of presentations. like, a RULLL LONG DAY. we were in the CSO, the centre for student opportunity, and we sat through three hours of presentations from them.
which was helpful and not boring because i hadn't heard it twice already. the CSO is pretty new.
here's what i got from it:
1. they have a lot of sub offices.
2. a lot of the sub offices don't apply to me because i'm too old for internships and i have my major and stuff.
3. IPHS and the IPHS institute are different?
4. FREE SWAG.
then i sat on a bag full of thumb tacks, but that's a different story.
the thing i most took away from the presentation was the last presenter, laurie. she was there for the new students, like the freshman. her basic message was, "if you have no idea what you want to do with your life, come talk to me!"
my name is emily, i am a twenty-two year old senior, and i need to make an appointment with laurie.
it was that night that i decided that i was going to make my bulletin board about big kid life. and of course, game of thrones. all of my residents but like... two are seniors. so i made a bulletin board called "real life is coming". (see what i did there?)
this is my favourite part of my bulletin board.
well, that's the whole thing.
ignore the fact that this is sideways. my phone is stupid. but it's the best slide. just tilt your head or something.
ALSO, YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THE TROUBLE I JUST WENT THROUGH TO TAKE THESE PICTURES OF YOU. I LITERALLY STOOD UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS POST TO TAKE THE PICTURE AND MY APARTMENT DOOR SHUT BEHIND ME AND I WAS LOCKED OUT AGAIN. SO I TEXTED KATIE AND RAN TO THE STUDENT LIFE OFFICE, GRABBED HER KEYS, RAN BACK, UNLOCKED MY APARTMENT, GRABBED MY KEYS, RAN HERS BACK TO HER AT THE STUDENT LIFE OFFICE, AND NOW I'M HERE ALL SWEATY AND OUT OF BREATH FOR YOU, READER. FOR YOU.
i did meet the new chaplain while i was run/walking. so that was neat.
I PRESENTED ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH
about halfway through the summer barbara and i decided that it would be a good idea to present on mental illness, so we brought it up with the hall directors and they graciously said yes.
to know about my struggle with my mental illness called trich, click here.
to know about my struggle with generalised anxiety disorder, click here.
to represent the statistical 350 students at alma that struggle with mental illness, we made 350 yellow ribbons. 20 of them were purple to denote the statistical 20 people attending the presentation that were struggling.
we got up early and spent an hour taping them to the chalkboard in SAC 113 and covering them up so no one would see them. then after our first session, roommate mediation, the hall directors informed us that we were moving venues.
i legitimately cried. i was already nervous as hell and now we had to move all the stuff.
so willard, bless his heart, brought us lunch and we spent another hour moving all 350 ribbons and putting them in dow L1 while everyone was at lunch. then we somehow managed to eat jimmy johns without puking.
(we had just come from a two hours presentation about campus violence and sexual assault. which is always hard. and we were nervous. puking was totally in the realm of possibility.)
the first part of our presentation was just to have the RAs look at all the ribbons. and then we shared our own stories.
obviously because of the links i just gave you, i've talked about my struggles before. i've talked to lots of small groups about trich, but not a large group of people that i'm close to and that i work with.
i've never given a public presentation on my anxiety.
i was terrified.
but i managed to get through the whole thing. everyone was very receptive. they were very interactive with the group activity that we did, and we had a great discussion about hot button words and not using mental health terms as adjectives. (that weather is so bipolar! they didn't have a dress in my size and i almost had a panic attack!)
we had a greater discussion about why it's important to talk about mental health because nobody does. and we talked about creating a safe environment in our halls for students struggling with mental health issues.
the support that barbara and i received for sharing our own personal stories with the group were overwhelming. i spent most of the afternoon crying. it was terrifying, it was wonderful.
I GOT A NEW LIBRARY CARD
this morning i had the morning free to finish my bulletin board and my door decs. so i allowed myself to sleep in before i set to work making my games of thrones magnicifence.
it's not magnificent. my board is ugly. you can say it. UGLY BOARD.
hannah came over. we spent all summer on the internet fighting the patriarchy. i was excited that she was here. and i was like, "let's go to the SAC lab and print off my stuff!"
we go to SAC. awkwardly run into dr. aspinall who i haven't seen since i left england. and he's like, "you made my whole summer because you loved york so much" and inside i was like "i don't have you for a future class so i didn't really spend much time thinking about you" and i actually said "aw that's so sweet i really did love york" and then we found out that printing lab was locked.
the hall directors' office was closed. so was the library.
so hannah and i got in my ghetto van and drove to the public library, a place where i had never been in alma.
we applied for library cards to use the printer. we had to give the lady our driver's licenses and she was like, "oh you're not from michigan, i need your social security number" and i was like, "say what" and she was like, "do you want the card or not" and i was like, "fiiiine" and i felt skeevy.
the alma public library cards are really pretty. i actually took the time to put four of the ten letters of my last name in the signature instead of just the h and the scribble, it was that pretty.
we get on a computer. download my bulletin board info. click print.
it's one dollar per page.
i pay the lady seven bucks in cash. watch as my bulletin board comes out of the printer. and hannah says, "you'll get reibursed for this, right?"
ha. haha. hahahaha. HAHAHA. AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
NO.
we drove back merrily and taped the bulletin board up. we hung out for a while. we talked about my cactus who sits in the window sill of my room and you can see him all the way from the chapel.
we fought the patriarchy.
(GOAT SCREAM GOAT SCREAM) TROUBLEEE TROUBLEEEE
this afternoon we had some fun RA sessions before some serious stuff this evening, like the game of life (which i've blogged about before) and the privilege exercise that makes me feel like an asshole for being a middle class white female. we started off with an inclusion/exclusion activity and the past two years i've always been in the excluded group.
this year was no different. i have that luck.
after that we talked about balance and boundaries and that's always fun. because i have no balance and no boundaries and i laugh.
then the new RAs went to their own session and we went to a returners session called staying motivated.
we were in the lab room in dow where my brother's spider research from the past two years is being carried on by a senior named adam. so there was a bunch of spider sex on the board.
i am not kidding. my brother spent two years studying spider mating behaviour.
HORNY SPIDERS.
so we all settled down and katie and barbara are presenting but barbara was doing something important, so we started watching videos on youtube.
and we watched the goats screaming like humans video.
(along with the trouble goat scream.)
so THAT was awesome.
once we were done laughing our asses off, barbara came in and we started their powerpoint.
and the ironic thing was, we were in a presentation about being motivated, and i think every single one of us was about three hundred percent DONE and no one was paying attention and barbara got sassy with us.
which we totally deserved.
then we flew paper airplanes for a while as a really cool metaphor about being a motivated RA.
oh, and we watched kid president. and marie and i were sitting next to each other and tweeting all the good quotes from it to each other like "NOT COOL ROBERT FROST" which i wrote on a piece of paper to hang in my room but marie wrote "pshhh" on it and ruined it.
and we spent a lot of time hitting each other with paper airplanes.
IN CONCLUSION
i wanted to write this post because throwing paper airplanes at marie while watching goats scream at people made me laugh and i wanted to do more than tweet about it and put it on facebook.
it's a pretty popular status.
but in conclusion, RA training isn't just us sitting through boring presentations and watching videos of screaming goats and stuff.
we have hours of staff time where we bond and share our stories and cry and laugh together. we team build. we learn how to take care of each other and take care of our residents. we laugh and sing and scream and cry and learn about a lot of really tough shit, like how to deal with suicide and depression and what to do when we are too overwhelmed.
we talk about privilege and diversity. we get uncomfortable.
but we also build each other up and play games and have skipping contests and eat lots of ice cream.
i wouldn't trade being an RA for anything, i wouldn't trade my staff for anything, and i wouldn't skip RA training for the world.
(even though i get no sleep and i get hangry a lot.)
I LOVE RA TRAINING, OKAY?
here's a cute picture of me and barbara while i was getting the cut in my foot scraped out at camp henry.
guys, it's been so long since i've blogged that when i clicked on my little blogger icon, it was like, WHERE YOU BEEN, LOG BACK IN, GURRRL.
it's been that long.
this post is going to be like, the mother post. the post of "the rest of emily's summer, which is really a month and a half because that's how long it's been since emily last blogged". so let's just dive right in, yeah?
EMILY GOES TO OREGON FOR A WEDDING AND SOME LAKE STUFF
so on july eleventh i was sitting in my room on tumblr and i just kept thinking, mannnn i need to pack. because my cousin picks me up in an hour and then i'm off to oregon with her, my uncle, and my grandma for my second cousin kyle's wedding, and have i actually decided on what i'm going to wear to that wedding? because i have like, eighty dresses.
it's twenty. but now it's seventeen because i got rid of three of them today.
so like i always do, i packed literally an hour beforehand and i managed to remember my pull n' peel licorice because i do not leave the state without pull n' peel licorice. and then my uncle is pulling up and my grandma's in the front seat and she's yelling at me that i didn't answer my phone and somehow we fit four suitcases and two carry-ons in the back of my uncle's car and we're rolling to indianapolis.
TO OREGON AND BEYOND!
and yes, that's my badass avengers backpack. it'll come in later.
so we drive to indy, which is always a boring drive, minus the nestle bunny from hell that's about halfway between indy and fort wayne.
and i mean. it is a nestle bunny. from hell.
it is NOT okay at night. i mean, even during the day it's not okay. but at night it fuggin' glows, man.
we have a quick dinner at panera, which is never quick because we're with my grandmother. i love her with all of my heart, but as you will soon learn, my grandma can be very irritable, and she also can't walk very well because her feet have neuropathy.
so anything that we do with my grandmother is slow.
we spent the night at a pretty legit hotel that jessica (my cousin) found and we decide to swim in the pool even though it's outdoors, it's freezing, the sun has set, and there are about fifty sorority girls wearing strange dresses having some sort of secret meeting in the pool area.
i don't know why you'd want a secret meeting in the swimming pool part of an airport hotel, but there you have it.
the next morning we leave the hotel at four thirty. which means we got up at three thirty because my grandma had to do her make up. we get to the indy airport at like... five. dragging our luggage and stuff. we get my grandma a wheelchair. i'm handling two suitcases and my grandma's suitcase i swear has more stuff in it than my entire house has and all i can think is... starbucks.
we get starbucks.
we're atractive at five in the morning.
my grandmother scoffs at my huge starbucks and then we're boarding a plane and we get priority boarding because my grandma's in a wheelchair. awww yeahhhhh. perks.
our flight to denver is pretty boring. two and a half hours. i sleep against the window until some nights comes on my ipod.
have you ever noticed that when you purchase a song, it's like, EIGHT TIMES LOUDER THAN THE OTHER ONES?
so i'm listening to my top 25 most played and some nights is number five. number four is florence and the machine dog days are over and i'm just like, half asleep and then suddenly
SOME NIGHTS I STAYYY UPPPPP CASHING IN MY BAAAAD LUUUUUCKKKK
so that happened.
we had an hour layover in denver where my grandma sat in her wheelchair and ate licorice with me even though it was only seven in the morning. while we were chowing down i look over at the bar next to us.
there's a dude. at the bar. at seven in the morning.
THEN. THE FLIGHT TO PORTLAND.
we're in a small-ish plane. jessica and i don't get to board with my grandma so we get seats way in the back because we're flying southwest where everyone just kind of... boards wherever. we're way in the back.
all of a sudden the southwest flight attendants come on the PA. it's some guy's birthday, his name is mike. and they're like, SING OR DIE, but really it was more like, "everyone sing mike happy birthday so we can take off to portland!' so we all sing him happy birthday. it turns out that mike is this really attractive guy sitting behind jessica and they present him with this huge botle of champagne. but it's hard to see him because he is so embarrassed that he has crawled under jessica's seat.
after they present him with the champagne and he's crawled out from under jessica's seat, he starts drinking it. at eight in the morning.
then, while the flight attendants are doing the final check of the plane, we hear barking and a woman screaming.
THERE IS A LOOSE DOG ON OUR AIRPLANE. THERE IS A DOG. WANDERING AROUND. ON OUR AIRPLANE.
and this wasn't even the best part about the flight. our flight attendant was absolutely insanely hysterical.
"smoking is prohibited in all lavatories. if you break a smoke detector in the bathrooms, there's a thousand dollar fine, and if you could afford that, you'd be flying delta today. smoking is permitted on the wing; if you can light it there, you can smoke it there. in the case of a cabin pressure change, please use the oxygen mask. put yours on first, then help your husband. if there is a chance that we need to do a water landing, then we are probably lost."
when we landed she said, "welcome to the bahamas! unfortunately, it looks a lot like portland, oregon."
now, portland is one of my favourite cities. in fact, it's probably my favourite city in america. so i was stoked.
unfortunately, we drove straight through portland and south to salem, where my second cousin's family all lives. and we got to our hotel and i crashed.
my parents got the hotel after driving down from washington state around two hours after i did and my mom showed me all of their biking adventure pictures and we all took showers and got ready for kristin and kyle's rehearsal dinner barbecue... thing.
kyle is the second cousin, by the way.
so my WHOLE family and by that i mean my great aunts and great uncles and my other second cousins that are kyle's first cousins and my cousin and my uncle and my grandparents, ALL OF US, squeezed into rental cars and we went to this old cool barn mill place for the barbecue dinner and it was pleasant. we all got little name tags that said "hi i'm kyle's..."
my dad wrote "hi i'm kyle's first cousin once removed in law" and my mother hit him.
hanna is my second cousin. i don't see her very often, but we have a lot in common. we both go to a small school, we're both vocal feminists, and we're all about world peace. so hanna, jessica, and i kind of snuck off into a different part of the barn mill place.
and walked straight into a wedding reception.
we were polite and signed the guestbook.
the next day my parents and i took my grandpa's twenty year old truck, big red, to downtown salem and we walked around. it was super neat and fantastic. we saw a huge national guard shindig going down at the capitol, we ate at a very scary malaysian restaurant that had really good spinach pie, we went antiquing, we found the river and a motorcycle rally, and walked through willamette college.
SALEM PICTURES? SALEM PICTURES.
THEN IT WAS WEDDING TIME.
i was stoked. i'd been waiting for this wedding for like, two years. seriously. we all had been. so we all took showers and got fancy.
then my mom was like, "emily i can see your underwear through that dress" and i was like "why do bad things happen to good people" so i had to wear my backup dress, the one i didn't really want to wear.
then we crammed in the back seat of my great uncle's rental car and we drove out of salem to a beautiful vineyard for kristin and kyle's wedding.
i think i could get married in an oregon vineyard, don't you?
we sat in the second row and i took the greatest picture of my grandmother in the history of existence.
i mean, that's my mom. and her mother.
CHECK OUT MY GRANDMA'S FACE, YO.
that look on my grandma's face was pretty much permanent the rest of the trip.
kyle and kristin's wedding was short, sweet, and beautiful. when kristin walked down the aisle, kyle cried and then i cried because let's face it, it was such a beautiful moment.
and the guy who married them was also totally one hundred percent HOT.
all in all, it was a ten minute wedding. and it was absolutely gorgeous.
ALL THE TEARS.
then the reception started. awww yeahhhh.
the food was delicious. we managed to squeeze most of the family at a round table and we all enjoyed the espressor bar. the dinner music was absolutely perfect. and by perfect i mean it was like, mumford and sons and regina spektor and florence and the machine and bon iver.
it was so perfect that i actually stopped eating to go find kyle and congratulate him on his musical tastes. to which kristin responded by hiking up her huge wedding gown and saying, "that's my taste in music."
i wish i could do the evening justice, but it was honestly a blur of good food, great music, family, and dancing.
it was pretty awesome.
the next day myself, my parents, my grandparents, and jessica and her dad had a nice hotel breakfast and then we loaded ourselves into big red (my dad and my mom and me all squeezing into the front) and the rest of us into our rental cadillac, and we headed for the oregon coast.
if you want to know what sitting in the front of the truck was like, it was like this.
and this.
my mother is a most beautimous creature.
after driving for an hour, we found the oregon coast. you'd think it would be like, AHHH THE PACIFIC OCEAN. SO WARM AND SUNNY AND GORGEOUS.
uhhhh no.
it was more like, AHHH THE PACIFIC OCEAN. SO IRON GREY AND FREEZING AND WINDY AND FOGGY.
i was wonderfully reminded of england. and also of how freakin' cold england is.
but eventually the sun came out, so that was legit.
IT'S SUNNY! BUT STILL FREEZING!
we drove down coastal highway 101, which was absolutely GORGEOUS. like, seriously, you are legitimiately driving down the pacific coast. it was fantastic.
and of course, we went to the aquarium in newport.
i love aquariums. i love sea creatures. so for me the aquarium was this big thing of me being like
OMG OTTERS
OMG OCTOPI
OMG FISH
OMG STARFISH
OMG SHARKS
it had one of those underwater tunnels with SHARKS AND THERE WERE SHARKS AND I WAS VERY HAPPY OKAY.
after spending a good three hours at the aquarium, we continued down the oregon coast and eventually turned off to go to eugene, a large college town where we were spending the night. eugene is home to one of two voodoo doughnut shops in the entire country.
i have been to the one in portland. jessica wanted to go. we decided to go.
when we reached eugene, there was nowhere to park and i could hear my grandma complaining (like she'd been doing for the past four hours) all the way from the other car, so we went to our little seedy hotel ten miles out of eugene and my uncle filled up the cadillac with gas and took me and jessica to voodoo doughnut.
and that was where the fight happened.
the three of us were sitting outside of the famous doughnut shop and admiring how many homeless people eugene seemed to have and we were watching a homeless lady play the ukulele and sing with her friend and her dog. (well, he dog wasn't singing. and all the homeless people had dogs. it was rather strange.)
her dog wandered into the street and she dragged it back and began to hit it. like, no joke, she was beating up her dog. and i was going to say something, but this lady stopped walking and was like, "uhhhh what are you doing?" and then they got into this HUUUUUGE argument and it eventually ended up with this crazy barefoot lady yelling "GO BACK TO PORTLAND YOU FUCKING YUPPIE"
and that was when we decided to leave.
we got up bright and early the next day for a four hour drive to crater lake national park where we had a cabin. the drive was rather boring, but my mom and i ate licorice and had coffee and we talked about all kinds of things and we reached the park in no time. we drove down a nice straight road and we pulled over at a picnic stop with a little sandy slope. so we climbed up the slope.
what was on the other side of the slope?
MOTHER HUGGIN' CRATER LAKE, THAT'S WHAT.
to learn about crater lake and how it was formed and whether or not it has mutant fish in it, click here.
we had a picnic lunch and jessica and i peed in the woods because bathrooms in national parks aren't often found, we went to the rim village and took lots of pictures and took a few small hikes and drove most of the way around the lake before settling into our cabin, which was like, a thousand years old.
i mean, a hundred.
that's jessica.
after settling in and having a nice meal, all of us except my grandma drove back to the rim for a sunset hike that hiked up one of the mountains to a fire safety cabin place. and i took about eighty million pictures. and the ranger who guided our hike was super cool and pointed out all kinds of super legit plants and stuff and i asked him how you become a ranger because that's what my brother wants to do and then we just stood at the top of the tower and looked at crater lake with the sun going down.
PICTURE MONTAGE
so that was pretty dope.
the next day we spent the morning driving around the other side of crater lake and looking at phantom ship (the thing above is wizard island) and we went to the highest point from the lake.
which looked like this.
that's phantom ship.
basically, if you haven't been to crater lake, oregon...
YOU HAVEN'T LIVED YOUR LIFE PROPERLY. BOOK THOSE PLANE TICKETS, BRO.
after a picnic lunch, we split ways. my parents and my grandpa clambered into big red and spent another day at crater lake (and then drove three days back to indiana) and jessica, my uncle, and my grandma got in the cadillac and drove six hours to portland to spend the night before we flew home.
portland is still my favourite city.
ahhhhh nothing like a nice instragramed photo of portland.
we stayed at a hotel that had a TV in the bathroom, which goes against my sensibilites as someone who has five TV channels total (and a VCR) and i stayed with my grandma, who was very happy that we weren't off roading it in a cabin.
at twelve thirty in the morning someone knocked on our hotel door. so of course, i jumped out of bed like a ninja and it's this weird dude standing outside and he says something that sounds like, "sjdghkjsdfhgsdkjhgdsg."
and i'm like, "bro say what?"
and he's like, "I HAVE YOUR TOWELS"
and i'm like, "WE DIDN'T ORDER ANY TOWELS"
and my grandma is like, "GO THE EFF AWAY I AM AN OLD LADY"
and that was pretty wicked.
in the morning, while i was getting ready, an old couple kept trying to key into our room. and jessica heard then and came outside and was like, "why are you trying to get into my grandma's room?"
and they were like, "this is obviously my room" so i stuck my head out of the door and said "obviously not" and i think i almost gave the woman a heart attack.
after an interesting breakfast in which i'm pretty sure the waitress put a picture of my grandmother in her mean girls burnbook for rudeness, we went to the portland airport and i got my giant starbucks. while i was sitting there drinking it and reading paper towns for the eightieth time, i noticed a little boy next to me with curly blond hair. he was whispering to his mom and she said, "why don't you ask her?"
little boy: do you like spiderman?
me: he's my FAVOURITE superhero!
little boy: me too! he's on your backpack!
me: yes he is! why is he your favourite superhero?
little boy: BECAUSE HE CAN CLIMB ON WALLS, DUH.
the flight to las vegas was totally and completely boring. jessica was really excited that we were landing in vegas. i was excited because i'd never been to nevada and it checked another state off my list.
let me describe the vegas airport.
hilly. bright. obnoxious. loud.
slot. machines. are. so. loud. and. i. wanted. to. burn. them. all. to. the. ground.
but while i was buying lunch, i saw an elvis impersonator, so that was cool.
we flew forward in time back to indy and landed around eleven at night. the guy was the pushing grandma's wheelchair was really into medieval fantasy and we had a pretty hardcore conversation about game of thrones. we reached the hotel by midnight to get to our car and we found...
a gigantic sparkly birthday card on the windshield. i shit you not.
i made it safe and home in bed by four. and got up for work at six thirty.
all in all, OREGON ROCKED AND ROLLED.
EMILY GETS READY TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL BY WATCHING PEOPLE BEHEAD EACH OTHER (and other such nonsense)
it's august. i mean, it's halfway through august. the ides of august. which means i've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything i need to get done... done before i go back to alma on saturday.
i've gone to the bank about eight times in the past two weeks. the bank tellers keep noticing and commenting on how i wear different shoes each time.
i FINALLY got estlin fixed (estlin is my cello). i had a minor breakdown in the parking lot picking him up yesterday because there were a lot of cars in the parking lot and i wasn't mentally ready to deal with people. i had spent all morning getting ready to simply go to the music shop, and i didn't want to deal with more people than i had to.
when i finally got out of my van and got estlin home, the first thing i said was, I MUST LEARN THE GAME OF THRONES THEME
this is me attempting to be cute while playing estlin.
so the game of thrones theme sounds like this. if you didn't know. actually watch the video too because it's badass as hell.
IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND I HUM IT ALL THE TIME WITH MY MOTHER.
well the music was like... super hard. and cray. ya know. so after an hour i kind of like... curled up underneath my bed.
i've found reasons to go to target about six times a week to buy stuff like new shoes and picture frame hanging devices that i can't remember the name of, i've been baking furiously with hannah who is now my wife, i've been absolutely refusing to pack until the last minute, and today i went through my closet to get rid of old clothes.
i found a really pretty dress that i wore to a wedding seven years ago and it fits. unlike my junior year prom dress, which i put on the other week to help with stress because i wanted to feel pretty and all bridal-ish. man that zipper did not want to zip up and it significantly lowered my self-esteem.
i also found a hooker dress and i'm saving it. for something.
i've also been furiously getting my poetry portfolio ready to submit to a national poetry contest. i was up until one this morning getting it ready. i finally submitted it today and i didn't puke.
GO ME.
(like, if i win this poetry contest, i get a bunch of money and my own poetry book. so that'll be neat. and not at all terrifying.)
i still have a list that's like... eight million things long that i have to do.
number one on that list is to finish the last two episodes of season two of game of thrones.
I MUST I MUST I MUST.
so we got my dad the second season for his birthday. i have eight days to watch ten episodes. and i've been live tweeting them mercilessly. so just stay away from my twitter. i don't know why you would want to follow me anyway because i tweet about pointless nonsense all the time. there are still two hundred and seventeen of you valiantly following me, and i give you the maddest props EVARRR.
there are so many more things for me to do. like, i need to clean. and do my laundry.
and actually pack up all my stuff to actually move into my apartment in actual alma in actual michigan to start my actual senior year off with actual RA training.
thinking about this is making me need starbucks.
um... i'm sorry about this post being really long.
but i took a really badass vacation.
and i've been spending a lot of time watching game of thrones and avoiding my real life responsibilities. like blogging.
see you on the other side of RA training, bro.
this is me saying bye to you.
post script: when i submitted my poetry to the poetry contest, i had to write a bio for myself and i'd really like to know what you think of it.
Emily Hollenberg is an aspiring poet, novellist, and professional blogger, an English literature major, and attempted world traveller. In her spare time, she enjoys reading Harry Potter over and over again, attempting to play the cello, and watching The Lion King. Her poetry and short stories have been featured in See Spot Run Magazine and her poetry was chosen to be presented at the Sigma Tau Delta English Honourary's 2013 National Convention in Portland, Oregon. She hopes to one day be as cool as her Tumblr page.
I AM NOT KIDDING. I SUBMITTED THIS. IS IT GOOD OR...?!
