Privilege

The whole concept of someone having "Privilege" is one that always bothers me. I didn't even know that this was a thing until I kept seeing posts about it on tumblr. Things about how "Male Privilege is being able to walk alone at night" and "Thin Privilege is having eating a lot be cute rather than unhealthy". This is so wrong on so many levels it astounds me.

Saying someone has a certain kind of privilege is so prejudiced that is isn't even funny. You are judging someone simply on how they appear to be. How is that fair? Well, it isn't. The people who scream about privilege are making something out of nothing. It isn't male privilege to want sex from his significant other and to get pouty about it when he is denied. That's just guys. They always want sex so they aren't going to turn down a girl when she wants some! Thinking of that as male privilege just shows that you don't understand guys at all. They aren't trying to oppress women! At least not like that anyway. This tumblr pretty much shows everything that is wrong with our society.

There is a post on what is right now the second page of the blog reading:

While visiting a potential graduate school for physics, I asked a faculty member why all 20 professors in the department were male and none were female (as a female, I was simply inquiring why there was virtually no female presence).  His response?  ”We only hire talented people”. 

You are getting offended by that? The fact of the matter is: There are MUCH less women in science and technical fields. Men do tend to be better at it and they tend to go and get the advanced degrees. I'm not saying that women can't be, I know many intelligent and driven women, but men tend to be the ones who pursue advanced degrees in fields like physics. If this school has100 people apply for a position, most likely only one or two will be women. So it seems even more likely that the best person for the job will be a man. Is that sexist? No. It's not. It would be sexist for the school to hire a woman simply because she is a woman.

If you are truly the best, and confident in the fact that you are damn good at something, you shouldn't need special set asides to guarantee you a job or a place at a university. That means you can't earn it simply based on your abilities. That is the most demeaning thing I can imagine! These special women only set asides mean that THEY DON'T THINK YOU CAN DO IT WITH OUT HELP. This isn't equality of the sexes people wake up!

Musical Struggle Bus

One of my sorority sisters and I had prepared this duet thing for a fundraiser that our choir is doing. We had to audition it, but due to both of us being various stages of sick the past couple weeks, we didn't get much time to rehearse. We figured that there wouldn't be many people audition to do something and it would be a breeze, but boy were we wrong. People went all out. So our half-finished duet didn't make the cut. It probably would hurt less if we hadn't wrote the harmonies for it but it was a learning experience.

I feel really bad for my sister. I could tell when we were talking about it that she's never really failed an audition before. She's always been one of the best singers around, but here at UC that isn't really the case and she's not quite sure how to handle it. We aren't voice majors - she's in biology and I'm in history- but the many of the people in Cabaret are good enough to be voice majors. It's just... I don't know. My HS choir director was not exactly tactful if you failed an audition or if he didn't want you in his auditioned choirs. I know this for a fact. He blocked me out of the entire choir program my junior and senior years. I'm long over being hurt by it (ok that's a major lie) but I'm used to failure. As much as anyone can be used to failure, I guess.

My relationship with music is a complex one. It's kind of hard to explain. Both of my parents are singers, not by trade, but my dad was heavily involved in musicals in HS and was in CCM groups (the then equivalent of Chamber singers) back in his day and my mom has an amazing soprano voice. My brother is a decent singer, but he had perfect pitch and was an incredible violinist (and he never practiced). I feel so lacking compared to them. It's not like I suck or anything, but I'm not really anything to be remembered. Yes, I can read music. I can even play the violin some. Singing though... I just always feel like I don't deserve to be here, singing in this group surrounded by all these amazingly talented people who've all had voice lessons and been cast in musicals and have definitely never been told by their HS choir director that they should just quit singing.

He got fired from his job at my high school too. I may have smiled over it but I'll deny it if you ask. It's funny because he now has a job with the CCM prep department as the director of the young men's choir. I ran into him at Feast and he only remembered me when I fell down. Says something about high school me, doesn't it?

Single Woman Living Alone

Housesitting is a very lonely thing. My parents are in Florida for the long weekend and I'm watching the house (and the cats) for them while they're gone. Mostly I sit on the couch, eat pizza, and watch Mad Men on netflix. So it's just like being in my apartment! The only difference is that aside from the cats, I'm alone.

I'm living on my own (no roommates) next year so this is kind of a test drive. It's eerily quiet in here and I jump at every little sound. That will be a little different next year, I'll always be able to hear my neighbors, but it's scary! Maybe I should stop watching so much Criminal Minds and ghost shows but am I really ready to live alone? I may not like being around people all the time, but there's something comforting in waking up in the morning and seeing someone else. Not a relationship kind of someone else, but getting up and hearing people talking in the kitchen or seeing someone else's things laying around.

I've never really thought of myself as the kind of person who got lonely. That's all changing now. You can't be lonely if you weren't used to being around people. This semester I've always been around others. My roommates and their friends, my sorority sisters, and my new friends. Being around all these people all the time is part of why I want my own place to begin with. I'm not much of a people person and I want a place that I can go that's all my own.

Basically: I'm conflicted if I actually want to live on my own because I'm scared. Scared of everything. Scared that my neighbors will have loud sex that I can hear though the walls, that someone will break in and steal my laptop, or that I'll end up like someone in the first 10 minutes of a Law and Order: SVU or Criminal Minds episode.

The Beginning

In an effort to make myself write on a constant basis; I decided to start this blog. Here's to hoping it won't end up like all of my other failed attempts and be left to wither and die in a dark corner of the internet! To be honest, I'm not entirely sure where to begin! I guess even with a blog, the best place to start is at the beginning. In this case, a little bit about me.

I felt like I had a fairly standard childhood. My parents were happy together, my older brother picked on me and I had an obsession with all things magical. This led me to anime (majou shoujou, anyone?), Greek myths and Harry Potter. However, my friends only shared and understood my love of Potter. These are the things that I remember when I look back. My mom calls it "a testament to the resilience of childhood" because many other things happened that shaped me and those dearest to me.

My much older brother gave me chicken pox when I was very young. It was nice because my parents never had to worry about me getting it from school but in retrospect, I think my parents wish I would have just gotten the chicken pox shot like everybody else. Herpes Zoster is a disease that is caused by the chicken pox virus that is already in your system. You cannot catch it. It just.. happens. It's kind of like chicken pox on steroids? Herpes Zoster Opthalmicus is when it presents itself in your eyes. It usually happens in much older people, but I was in the 1st grade. 50% of people have some kind of complication - most often blindness and severe infection. I was in the first grade when my former nurse mother noticed the bumps that had started to form. I was lucky in that the doctors caught it in time and had no memorable complications. I got to miss school for around a month and wear an eye patch like a pirate. I still have the cards my classmates made somewhere...

A few more notable events from that year: I began my long competitive swimming career, I broke my right wrist for the first time, and I met the two girls who would be my best friends to this day 14 years later

2001 was a hard year for many people for many reasons. Nobody was exempt from the stress and the sadness during that time. My third grade class was no exception. In me, the stress manifested itself in a physical way. I had begun to go bald. It's a disease called alopecia areata. You start off losing your hair in tiny chunks and usually it stays in small round spots. Not in my case. I lost a whole side of my hair. My parents didn't make a big deal out of it, they didn't want me to get sick kid syndrome, and instead just starting buying me hats and bandannas. I was the only kid in Brent Elementary allowed to wear hats in school! I had flare ups for many years. It wasn't until high school that I felt confident enough in my management of the disease to cut my hair short. It was a big step for me.

The following years were littered with more broken bones, ER visits and diagnoses (epilepsy and Hashimoto's). They were also filled with laughs, achievements and fond memories. Depression also played a big part in my preteen and teen years. I don't really like to think about those years! They also might be a subject of a later entry. I much prefer to think about swimming invitationals and the first time I finished the mile.

I hope the following posts aren't as me centric as this is. I'm hoping to write about the things that I see in the world around me and the like. This post was to help find a starting point with something that I know rather well - my past.  I find that in order to move on and grow from our past, we need to face it head on.

Till we meet again!
Rachel