You have the privilege of reading this

I hope ya'll enjoyed my David Gray binge this morning. While getting ready this morning I got totally carried away with looking up David Gray live performances, my selection covers some of my favs. A few key are missing. Keep on the lookout in the future!

Warning: This entry will likely be ALL over the place as that's where my mind is now.

So, Crissy put this link in her blog to a video about our body image epidemic and I think its definitely worth sharing. View it here!

Additionally, one of my facebook friends posted this link to provide a humorous (if it doesn't actually happen) or terrifying (if does happen) preview to what life would be like if McCain won the presidency since we all know Palin's a heartbeat away from the presidency in that case. View it here! It's interactive.

So speaking of the elections, I need to vent about the debate last night for a hot sec'. If any of my friends out there who read this actually are McCain fans (to my knowledge I have none, but wanted to put the disclaimer out there) you may want to skip past this. He is the most petty, volatile, weasly, liar imaginable. At least Bush doesn't pretend to know what he's actually talking about. He's just a bumbling idiot. McCain just lies, AGGRESSIVELY, and instigates, and is so fucking out of touch and offensive I just want to scream (and I do, ask Crissy who endures viewing the debates with me). Last night he literally looked like he was going to snap any second. I was talking to my sister about this, like seriously a college freshman in Argumentation 101 would know how to debate better. His facial expressions, laughing, interrupting, etc. was childish and astounding considering this man could potentially be representing and leading our country. Obama is so eloquent and calm and doesn't feed into McCain's childish instigation b/c he recognizes AMERICA DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HURT FEELINGS, TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING ISSUES!!! How he keeps his cool is so impressive, and despite nay sayers who criticize him for not defending himself enough, OF COURSE HE WON'T. BECAUSE THEN YOU'LL PIN HIM FOR BEING THE ANGRY BLACK MAN YOU SOOOOOOO WANT HIM TO BE! Obama brought up the issue of the people at a Sarah Palin rally who said Obama was a terrorist who should be killed, and Palin did nothing. When Barack asked McCain his thoughts on this, McCain basically condoned them, hiding behind his fear of losing any votes and having the nerve to call these people some of our finest citizens. Really?! Even then Obama did not lose his cool. I sure did.

McCain's desperate attempts to try to say that Obama wants to tax "Joe Plumbers" and "Joe 6-Packs" (any relation to each other? Or is Joe Plumber related to Zeek the Plumber, the infamous wonder from "Salute Your Shorts"?) is truly pathetic and Obama replied in such a cool and biting fashion, by calmly basically saying "John, give it up, even FOX News agrees your wrong, and they don't ever support me." The final McCainism that put me over the edge was when he tried to accredit Palin as being an expert on Autism b/c she has an infant with Down Syndrome. WTF?! Apples and oranges buddy, the woman is inept, and those illnesses are so vastly different it's astronomical. Wake the fuck up.

Phew. I feel better.

Okay, on to other things. We completed the White Racism workshop today in my Cross-Cultural Counseling course and it truly opened my eyes to many things about myself I've been suppressing. First, what is ignorance? Is it the act of truly being uninformed and unaware or is it being aware but CHOOSING not to notice? Thoughts are appreciated as I am still trying to wrap my head around this as I realized I don't really know where I stand. Second, last week in class we did a sort of "Archie Bunker's Neighborhood" activity in which people are assigned to different groups under the guise of working on a given project unaware that they are assigned the role of being "privileged" or "oppressed", and are thus treated as such. After this goes on for a bit we come back and talk about our feelings throughout the activity until people realize what was done, and then discuss how it felt to be oppressed or privileged, why we didn't realize what was happening, etc. I've done many activities like this in the past so I knew almost immediately what we were doing, but kept this to myself until other group members of mine caught on throughout the activity. It wasn't until today that I realized that even after my group members realized that we were in the "oppressed" group, neither I or anyone else in my group did anything to change that. We accepted our role and this reality and didn't challenge those who imposed their standards on us and were mistreating us. That is SCARY. Why didn't I do anything? I'm the first one to encourage others to fight for their rights, and will stand up for others when I think they're being oppressed, but when it came to me, I did nothing, I accepted it. I think this stems from my childhood (cliche statement I know). My father was ALWAYS fighting, and it never worked for him (mostly b/c he handled things grossly inappropriately and would get very worked up and offensive and loud and angry), but this memory of him is what I think of when I think of standing up against the system. His behavior was incredibly embarrassing to me, and a waste of energy. That's a problem and I need to work on this. I know this was just a class activity, and I do stand up for myself sometimes, but the fact that I didn't in this scenario or at least try to encourage my group members to do something about it was very unnerving to me. It also got me thinking about why my passion is first year students/Orientation/Academic Advising. I've never dug deep, and just explained it as loving the college environment, and the energy first year students have and what an influence I can make on their future that early on. But it's more than that. In high school I was discouraged by my guidance counselor, father, and many others when I wanted to take AP classes, or apply to schools other than community colleges, etc. This was because I affiliated with the wrong crowd, came from a bad background with uneducated parents, and did not do well my first 2 years in HS. They tried to push me down and keep me where I was, but with the encouragement of my sister and some others, I remembered who I was prior to my rebel phase and recognized how much potential I had and was committed to getting the fuck out of Mastic Beach. While I followed my guidance counselors advice in not taking AP classes (which I would have excelled in as I was painfully bored in my regular level classes my senior year) I was determined to go away to school. When she realized this she strongly suggested I applied under EOP (Equal Opportunity Program- for economically and academically disadvantaged students), as she believed that would be the only way I could get in. I was offended by this and shot that down for 2 reasons. 1. I did not want the stigma and restrictions that being in EOP brought, as I was doing everything I could to go away, be on my own, and leave the Noonan who people viewed as poor (financially) and a poor-mediocre student far behind me because at that point I was very ashamed of all that. 2. I didn't feel worthy of taking someone else who needed that EOP spot much more than I did. I knew that because of the color of my skin, I could probably sell myself in my college essays and my bad grades my first 2 years of HS would be more easily excused (sad but true statement). I wasn't academically disadvantaged, I just wasn't working to my potential my first 2 years, but I stepped up my game and was an A student with a pretty decent SAT score, whereas other students who apply for EOP can't necessarily say the same. Who was I to take that away from them? So anycrap, I got in to every school I applied to, chose Oneonta, and from that point on everyone I interacted with did nothing but encourage and empower me to "be all that I could be". And THAT'S why I'm going in to Student Affairs, and specifically hope to be in Orientation and Academic Advising because no student should have their dreams crushed or be told they can't do something. Let students shoot for their dreams, if they can't get in the traditional way (like many of my advisees now who are applying to our competitive schools such as the School of Business or Pharmacy) I remind them not to be discouraged because there are other ways they can achieve this dream. My goal and passion is to empower students. Through this activity, I realized I need to also empower myself more often.

Okay, this is a super long entry and I definitely had more I wanted to say but I've lost it with all my rambling so if it comes back to me I'll post again. Grey's in 15 minutes, let's hope it doesn't disappoint like the first 2 have.

ps Becky and Josh will be here in a week! YAYAYAYAY

pps I came across this fabulous blog today that just SCREAMS Teresa and Megan, maybe you'll enjoy it too (Crissy I think you will!):
http://www.pinkofperfection.com/

They highlight a book in which 2 best friends living more than 3,000 miles apart but took time out each day to soak up their surroundings and send each other a picture, so it was a daily photo conversation that went on for a year. Clearly I am VERY intrigued by this book. Learn more about it here!