On the Future

The average score of accepted applicants is 396.

The national average is around 400.

Beat it!

So happy!

Going to grad school!

On Smoking Cessation

I'm not proud of this, but I'm not embarrassed by it either. It is what it is. They're my decisions and I own each and every one of them, for better or worse.

I was fifteen when I smoked my first cigarette. I was really bad at it. I used to snap them in half with my nervous, clenching fingers. 

I've been an on-again-off-again smoker for the past eight years. Sometimes I am a heavy smoker, sometimes I'm a non-smoker, sometimes I'm an ex smoker. But I'm still a smoker. 

Every time I put on perfume, I'm reminded of what K's mom once said to us: "Perfume hides a multitude of sins." I can't smell the Cool Water perfume I loved so much without thinking of those days when we used to sneak around and try to pretend we weren't smokers. 

This gas station used to sell me cigarettes. The lady at the counter would tell me I was beautiful and give me chocolates. I really enjoyed the slight ego boost. 

I met my roommate in college by asking her if I could smoke with them. I'm grateful for that. Without her, college wouldn't have been the same at all. 

I quit during the cancer scare in college. I quit hard. I gave up a lot of things so it would go away, and cigarettes were of course the first. I stuck with it. I was doing really well, for many many months, until the night I came home to find my laptop missing. I went to 7-11 and smoked an entire pack of Marlboros while sitting in the kitchen in my apartment.

I always told myself I'd quit for real when I graduated from college. And I did. 

Then I went to South Africa. There's no way to escape the cigarette smoke there. People smoke in their beds, in their living rooms, over tea, while dancing at the club. 

I'm not exactly a chimney, but I really enjoy them while I'm drinking. 

I've been really realizing that I need to stop sooner rather than later. I obviously don't want to be a woman smoker (eek, this woman business is complicated). I don't want to be a mom who sneaks cigs behind the garage when the kids are napping (I'm sure they exist?). 

I'm not dating/dating (whatever) a boy/man-thing [haha, I would seriously love to see his face if he knew I was referring to him as a boy/man-thing] who really hates smoking. He's nice because he's a good reason to really quit. Last night, he kissed me and then pulled away and said, "You've been smoking, haven't you?"

Maybe. (I'd had one like four hours earlier because I thought I wasn't going to see him and could get away with it.) I didn't lie to him. 

And I know that you need to "quit for yourself" but at the same time, I usually need a good push. It's not that I fiend, it's just that they feel so nice. Having never smoked, you might not understand. But it's the same feeling as sinking into a hot bath after a long day. It's like coming home to fresh melted cookies. It's like waking up in someone's arms. Actually, all of those things are better than smoking. 

So I'm going to have to learn how to live without them. And I will. Not for him, but for me. 

Anyway, this article reminded me of it and made me want to blog about it.


From ThoughtCatalog.com:

When It’s Good To Give Up

SEP. 30, 2011


By STEPHANIE GEORGOPULOS



I started smoking when I was 14. I used to say things like, “I’ll quit when I’m pregnant,” as though that was an actual plan, as though I could count on my addiction floundering just because there happened to be two of me growing instead of one. I made similar excuses over the course of my ten-year love affair with nicotine, none of which made logical sense but all of which allowed me to poison myself on an hourly basis without remorse. I wanted to poison myself.

But then, much to the shock of just about everyone who knows me, I quit. I didn’t chew gum or feed nicotine through my pores, I just abandoned the one constant in my life, the one companion I’d had for the past decade. The one-year anniversary of my quit date was this week. I don’t think I’ll go back.

It’s true that nicotine is addictive, it affects your mood, it changes the way you make decisions. It’s easy to point out that cigarettes are ‘the bad guy,’ the way they empty your wallet and yellow your fingertips. This is a negative habit that most people will commend you for giving up.

But we could stand to give up more often. Maybe there are no instructional pamphlets or illustrative posters to point out each and every one of the things we need to rid ourselves of, but there they are – lurking in the shadows of our subconscious. They are the people who make us feel like our lungs are in a vice whenever we see them. The humanization of our bad habits, walking and breathing and telling bad jokes.

Some people just make you feel bad. The way you can wake up smelling like some half-rate casino and think to yourself I don’t want to do this anymore, you can feel that way about people, and the worst part is that you can’t extinguish them, you can’t smother their head into an ashtray or make them someone else’s problem.

It’s in our nature to not want to give up, especially not on people; fragile, harmless people – we all just mean well, don’t we? Don’t we all just want to be happy? Don’t the things we do to achieve that happiness, the things that tear us apart from one another – aren’t those the things that make us similar? Aren’t people inherently good? Maybe. But what does it matter if that goodness is not reserved for you? What if all you extract from a person is negativity? How do we justify allowing ourselves to feel badly because someone may or may not be redeemable?

We don’t always recognize when someone is bad for us, but sometimes we do. Sometimes we become all-consumed by the disgust that’s bred from this idea that we allow hate to affect us so deeply. People create art because of it. It can drive us; it can turn us into something we’re not. And even though it’s ugly, it’s addictive. We become addicted to toxicity.

And in that case, it’s good to give up. It’s good to fight against the cancer growing inside of us by neglecting to feed it. We have to starve it into submission, forgo the efforts that help it grow. The brooding and the anguish, bury it. Extinguish whatever it is that’s making us feel badly and worry about ourselves. We need to quit allowing something that’s decidedly negative to drive our actions, our moods. We need to quit poisoning ourselves with vitriol.

The thing is, there are people who don’t make us feel terrible. There are people who listen to us and care for us and make us smile. They loosen the vice around our lungs and help us breathe. They are the fresh air. They alight us in ways a carcinogenic never will. Whatever energy we devote to a toxic situation, we take away from the people who deserve it – the people whose goodness doesn’t have to be assumed; their goodness is just there, in plain sight. They are worth quitting for.

On #OccupyDenver, #OccupyWallSt

It started here yesterday, a show of solidarity with those who have been gathered in New York for 12 days, protesting nearly everything, but agreeing on only one thing: We are the 99% vs the 1%. 

(Read this for more information: 

https://occupywallst.org/

and read this just because: 

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/  )


I love the idea of protests. I think that we haven't done enough of them in last twenty years. I think that a lot of hope can be fostered, and a lot of information can be spread. 

That said, I agree that protesters are often ill-informed and easily distracted away from their original purpose. 

I haven't decided where I stand on these protests - I'm not sure that they're focused enough to actually be making specific demands, but it seems like they've gotten only more organized since they started. I like that they've got the resolve to stick it out, and I fully support a more vocal movement from the citizens of the US. So I guess I'm behind it.


If you're on twitter, check out #occupydenver or #occupywallst for up to date information on what's going on. 


And as always, if you're protesting, write a lawyer's number somewhere on your body, drink plenty of water, and do nothing to disrespect or disrupt the marches/protests. Be respectful, peaceful, and wise.  

Occupy Wall Street Protest: 12 Days and Little Sign of Slowing Down

By: NATE RAWLINGS

Topics: NATION, NEW YORK, OCCUPY WALL STREET, POLITICS, PROTEST, U.S.,WALL STREET

A protestor looks in his bag in Zuccotti Park, where demonstrators against the economic system have been gathering since September 17

Michael Nagle / Getty Images

Nearly two weeks ago, an estimated 3,000 people assembled at Battery Park with the intention of occupying Wall Street. They were an eclectic group, mostly young, some with beards and tattoos, other dressed in shorts and sneakers; a few even wore suits for the occasion. But nearly everyone was angry at what they saw as a culture of out-of-control greed. They didn't succeed — at least not geographically, forgoing Wall Street for nearby Zuccotti Park, just around the corner from Ground Zero.

News outlets put the crowd there at several thousand, but that seemed to overestimate its true numbers. When I visited the park on Sept. 17, I counted backpacks and sleeping bags, trying to differentiate the tourists and casual marchers from those who were in it for the long haul. I came up with about 200 people.

(MORE: Police Use Pepper Spray on Wall Street Protesters)

Over the past 12 days, however, those numbers have grown. On a late-night visit to Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, the fecklessness and disorganization reported earlier in the New York Times seemed largely absent. A protest that began in utter dysfunction has given way to a fairly organized movement with a base camp for its most stalwart members, now numbering more than 300 people, who have slept in the park for 12 nights straight–and who say they intend to stay.

Perhaps no incident galvanized the protesters more than their march north to Union Square on Sept. 24. Police arrested nearly 80 people whom they say were blocking traffic, and video of a penned-in female protester being pepper sprayed by a police officer went viral on the web. The protesters have posted the video on their website and a picture of the woman adorns the board at the entrance to the park, at what's now become the groups quasi-official information booth. At small table, posterboards lay out the schedule for the day, which includes marches down to Wall Street for the stock exchange's opening and closing bells, each followed by a "General Assembly" where the various groups gather to discuss their goals, their current status and what might come next.

The park has become a semi-permanent home, complete with a medical station and a distribution point for food and water. The protesters have organized themselves into committees to remove the garbage, roam the camp to enforce a ban on open flames (an evictable offense in the eyes of the NYPD) and engage with the people in the area. A couple of pizza joints, a Burger King and a deli have let the protesters use their bathrooms; some have even donated food. In the middle of the park is a media center where protesters send out Twitter updates and live-stream the latest news on their website. At 1 am Wednesday, more than 3,000 people were sending in questions while a young woman in a yellow poncho answered them on a live feed.

But while "Occupy Wall Street" has become more organized, its demands haven't coalesced into a coherent message. The only thing its various constituent groups appear to have in common is a deep-seated anger at inequality in this country. For them Wall Street symbolizes that unfairness, but the groups have other concerns as well. Many want to redistribute wealth; others want to enlarge government social programs. Some are protesting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Daniel Levine, a journalism student from upstate New York, said he was taking a stand against the controversial method of natural gas extraction known as hydrofracking in his hometown – but also noted that the practice can bring jobs to economically disadvantaged regions.

Just as it lacks a single message, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement has been defined by the absence of a clear leader. Participants say that is by design, and point to the committees that have sprung up to tend to the daily needs of those camped in Zuccotti Park. It isn't clear that they want a single leader, and many think the movement is better of without one. “It's kind of cool how it's growing organically,” one said. “People just need to give it time and it'll come together.”

Assuming organizers can keep the protest on the good side of the law, all indications are that it will continue for a long time. A sign by the information booth held a wish list: hats, gloves, tarps, and warm clothing. On live streams on the website, organizers answered questions about what supporters could bring or send. If last weekend is any indication, the numbers could swell this Saturday as supporters come in from out of town. For those who eventually leave again, Levine hopes that they take the skills they've learned back to their communities to continue to protest for whatever cause they support. "Every person who's been here more than three days can completely organize a protest in their hometowns," Levine says. "This is the most productive homelessness I've ever seen."

Read more:http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/29/occupy-wall-street-12-days-and-little-sign-of-slowing-down/#ixzz1ZNxdcB2p

Views On Parenthood (from 23)

I'm wholeheartedly certain that when I'm 33 and I read this post, I'll have a good laugh.

I think it might have something to do with being adopted, but I crave the opportunity to someday create new life. I want to feel it growing inside me, to see my facial expressions replicated in my offspring, to watch my features merge with someone else's and become an entirely unique human being. I love the idea of nature vs. nurture. My mom used to say that when I was little, I'd say something and she'd turn around expecting my birth mom to be standing there, because I sounded so much like her.

However, as I get older, I'm less certain of this drive to procreate. Maybe it's the fact that I might not have health insurance after I turn 26. Maybe it's the fact that we might be living in the end times (I'm just being facetious, mostly). Maybe it's because I'm totally afraid I'll mess up my kids. Maybe it's the fact that I've realized that eventually they're not babies anymore. And then they get emotionally complex and smelly. Ugh. Puberty. 

I once had a deal with an ex-boyfriend that I'd take them from birth to age 4. He'd take them from 5 to 18. I really like this plan. 

Regardless, I'm just not sure it's worth it. Kids are expensive. They're annoying. They're ungrateful. But on the other hand, they're so cute. They wear little shoes. (It's the shoes that get me every time. Adorable.) The looks on their faces when they discover something new are precious. Their giggles are universally uplifting. 

However, I think that financial drain aside, it might be one of the most beautiful things I'll ever do (if my eventual marriage can sustain the blow that is the stress of child-rearing). 

It really hit me when I went to the Barney! Live show with my favorite family (I realize this is on the internet, so it's entirely public, but how embarrassing is it that I missed Slightly Stoopid and Shwayze to see Barney?). The girls were so happy, and somewhere inside my cold, dark, hardened heart, something cracked. I was filled with this strange sense of inner warmth. 

The mom told me that experiencing things with them for the first time is three times what it is to discover it yourself and that parenthood is all about gathering these little moments. 

I don't disagree. 

Apparently the return on investment as far as emotions and experiences go is incredibly high. 

Mom always says that the steps to child-preparedness are thus:

1. Get a plant. 

2. If you don't kill the plant, get an animal. 

3. If you don't kill the animal, you can get a kid. 

I had a bamboo plant once, if that counts. 

And Carlos, despite probably having used up 8 of his lives, is a very happy cat. An expensive, spoiled, rude, but adorable cat. 

I've got years before I'll have to worry about the proper techniques for parenting, but to be honest, I'm not that scared. 

Or maybe I am. 

The only thing I worry about is losing me. I don't want to lose my life to babies. I want to be fun. I just want to dance. I don't want to lose the things I'm passionate about. I don't want to give up everything to raise children. Did you know that kids who are raised in houses with two working parents are more resourceful and resilient? So that's reason to believe that it'll all work out.

I taught one of the twins how to swing the other day. She knew the basic pumping motions, but I showed her how to lean back and lean in and pretty soon she was flying above my head. I was filled with anxiety (what if she falls? is she okay?) but this wonderful sense of accomplishment (look at how happy she looks! she's really doing it!). If that's what parenthood is all about, I'll take it.

On Fertility Rates in the US...

And yet they still want to stop providing family-planning services to our citizens? I vote free birth control for everyone! More sexual and health education! More paid paternity leave! 

At the very least, let's educate our citizens about what having a child really means, not just from a "don't-have-sex-because-Jesus-won't-like-it" standpoint, but from a "kids-cost-way-more-money-than-you'd-think" standpoint. Let's put the economics of it into focus and hope that maybe that will hit home with some of our impressionable young people. 

Also, we need to be more supportive of our working parents. We can't all be the Cosbys and magically have great careers yet be home in time for dinner. Let's realize that it's a sacrifice and one that we should support - for the future of our country. Paid maternity leave. Better daycare options. Safe places to pump breast milk at work. 

As a society, we need to step it up. Granted, we don't want everyone having kids just because they can, but we need to better educate prospective parents about their options. 

Knocked Up and Knocked Down

Why America's widening fertility class divide is a problem.

By Sharon LernerPosted Monday, Sept. 26, 2011, at 4:14 PM ET

Are we experiencing a national fertility crisis?Since the average American woman has 2.1 children, you might think we aren't experiencing a national fertility crisis. Unlike some European countries whose futures are threatened by low birth rates, Americans, on average, produce just the right number of future workers, soldiers, and taxpayers to keep our society humming. Our families are also, on average, comfortably smaller than those in some developing countries, where high birthrates help keep women and children severely impoverished. But here's the problem: Because the American fertility rate is an average, it obscures the fact that our country is actually more like two countries, which are now experiencing two different, serious crises.

You hear about the "haves" versus the "have-nots," but not so much about the "have-one-or-nones" versus the "have-a-fews." This, though, is how you might characterize the stark and growing fertility class divide in the United States. Two new studies bring the contrasting reproductive profiles of rich and poor women into sharp relief. One, from the Guttmacher Institute, shows that the rates of unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women now dwarf the fertility rates of wealthier women, and finds that the gap between the two groups has widened significantly over the past five years. The other, by the Center for Work-Life Policy, documents rates of childlessness among corporate professional women that are higher than the childlessness rates of some European countries experiencing fertility crises.

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Childlessness has increased across most demographic groups but is still highest among professionals. Indeed, according to an analysis of census data conducted by the Pew Research Center, about one quarter of all women with bachelor's degrees and higher in the United States wind up childless. (As Pew notes, for women with higher degrees, that number is actually slightly lower than it was in the early 1990s—but it is still very high.) By comparison, in England, which has one of the highest percentages of women without children in the world, 22 percent of all women are childless. According to the new Center for Work-Life Policy study, 43 percent of the women in their sample of corporate professionals between the ages of 33 and 46 were childless. The rate of childlessness among the Asian American professional women in the study was a staggering 53 percent.

At the same time, the numbers of both unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women have climbed steadily in recent years. About half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, with poor women now five times more likely than higher-income women to have an unplanned pregnancy, and six times more likely to have an unplanned birth, according to the Guttmacher Institute's recent analysis of government data.

Across the reproductive divide, there are other serious problems. The declining fertility of professional women ought to be sounding an alarm, highlighting the extent to which our policies are deeply unfriendly to parents. Low birthrates in Europe have inspired a slew of policies designed to make it easier to simultaneously work and parent, yet here, because our overall birthrate is robust, we've had no such moment of reckoning. So while Germany recently responded to the fact that its birthrate had slipped below 1.4 children per woman by making its paid leave policy more generous, allowing mothers and fathers to split up to 18 months after the birth of a child, the United States still has no national paid leave law in place. And while Denmark, France, and Sweden provide good subsidized care to the vast majority of their populations, we still have no decent childcare system.

If our overall fertility rate is at replacement level—if we have enough young people in the pipeline to do all the jobs that will need doing going forward—does it really matter so much if some women are having more kids than they are ready for and some are having fewer? Unfortunately for women on both ends of the economic spectrum, it does. Poorer women suffer when they have unintended births—as do their children. Research shows that women with unplanned pregnancies are more likely to smoke, drink, and go without prenatal care. Their births are more likely to be premature. Their children are less likely to be breastfed, and more likely to be neglected and to have various physical and mental health effects. Then, reinforcing the cycle, the very fact of having a child increases a woman's chances of being poor.

This lack of support makes for not a little unpleasantness in the lives of working parents. Consider the harried existence of professional parents, as described by the Center for Work-Life Policy report:

They are working longer and harder, shouldering new responsibilities for aging parents, and striving overtime to provide their children with all that they, in many cases, had lacked—a smooth path of success and both parents by their side. The costs are steep and include anxiety and exhaustion.

If this is the job description, it's easy to see why women would skip the interview.

At the same time, there's little question why poorer women are having more unintended pregnancies. Only about 40 percent of women who needed publicly funded family planning services between 2000 and 2008 got them, according to the Guttmacher Institute. During that same period, as employment levels and the number of employers offering health insurance went down, the number of women who needed these services increased by more than 1 million.

The fact that our extremes seem to almost magically balance each other out is only part of the reason we've failed to recognize these problems. The other part is that we've applied a distorted notion of choice to both trends. Certainly many professional women opt out of motherhood because they want to—and because that choice is now less stigmatized than it once was. And many women in all income brackets come to embrace an unexpected pregnancy as a happy accident.

But as much as we'd like to see our decisions about pregnancy and childbirth as straightforward exercises of individual will, or choice, there are clearly larger forces at work here, too. "Whether it's the lack of services and education you experience because you're poor or the corporate pressure because you're successful, the broader society's organization of work and support completely affects something as personal and intimate as whether you have children," says Wendy Chavkin, professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia. "These latest numbers show how the macroeconomic trends are lived out in people's personal lives."

With growing poverty rates and political attacks on already inadequate family-planning funding threatening to drive the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women even higher, and little effort being made to address the pressures driving other women away from having kids, it's easy to imagine how these forces could push professionals and poor women further apart. Still, in their own ways, both are struggling with the same problem: an untenable "choice" between children and financial solvency. At this point, it may be the only thing they have in common.

On Moving Very Slowly

The American Dream is a bunch of bullshit.

We all know that, but do we really know it?

No, of course not. The idea that upward mobility exists and that some day I too can own a house that has a four-car garage if only I work hard enough is cemented in my mind.

Blame the media, blame optimism, blame whatever.

We watched as tiny little bungalows morphed into giant, sprawling houses with three-car garages. Those giant homes became the norm. Suburban settlement at its finest. You've made it.

For the record, I dream of owning a tired, old house and turning it into something magical. I love old wooden floors that creak and leaky faucets and the idea that so many people have lived there before you. I love the cramped rooms, the feel of warm rugs on worn floors. I want that. My only requirement is a sweet bathtub.

But at the same time, I'm threatened by the idea of never having enough.

What is enough?

To live, to love (and to be loved), and to breathe in every beautiful moment that I can find.  But also to someday have a garage (not four!).

For the next month, I'm going to try to implement small changes that will hopefully make me a bit more optimistic about my current situation. Lately, I've been wallowing in the pit of despair that is these months and I feel as though my wallowing is only making it worse.

I'm determined to be a little bit more hopeful, rather than so exhausted. So we'll see. (Start taking bets now about when I'll have my next "oh my g-d, what am I doing with my life" miniature meltdown)

Also, for the record, I am super awesome and got a raise at work! Friday was yearly reviews. I was terrified. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I was a really well-behaved child or the fact that my generation was super coddled, but either way, I don't take criticism well.  (My wonderful lady-boss popped into my office on Friday morning and told me not to worry, and after that, I didn't. She really made my day with that.)

My boss offered me a 5% raise. I requested more. He came back with an offer of 12.5%. Of course I took it.  I was so proud of myself for being super calm and absolutely realistic and logical about the whole thing.

Baby steps, dear world. I am taking baby steps. But at least I'm moving.