Tagged: society
I started a podcast!
This podcast is inspired by the following text post I saw on Instagram a few weeks ago:
“You’re not behind in life. There’s no timetable that we all must follow. It’s made up. 7 billion people can’t do everything in the same order. What’s early? What’s late? Compared to who? Don’t beat yourself up for where you are. It’s YOUR schedule and everything is right on time.” Continue reading
9 WAYS TO DETOX DETOX DETOX
source: 2headedsnake
I’ve just been really sick and tired and overwhelmed and homesick lately. If I were still living at home, I’d have gotten over this sickness weeks ago, but lo and behold, it’s still plaguing me. I’m detoxing now…the best ways I know how… Continue reading
4 Ways To Force Yourself to Stay Humble
I’m trying to commit to this in college, and it’s going pretty well so far.
It’s not a complete solution to my insecurity, but hey, it’s a start.
2) Eating by yourself.
Lots of people do it; at the dining halls here, loners eat in front of a TV together. Everyone’s on their phone (this bothers me), and I try to force myself to just sit and eat my food.
There’s no shame in eating alone. Not everyone has the time to wait for a friend…some of us are in hurries to get to class; we just need something in our stomachs. Continue reading
An International Student Speaks Out: “I Like the Cultural Awe”
I don’t like the cultural shock; I like the cultural awe.
The following is an interview that I did with my friend Natalie, who is an international student (class of 2018).
Where are you from?
I’m from Hong Kong. Born and raised there.
What is the most offensive thing that someone has said to you?
A girl…walked by and she was like, “so you and your friends are the ‘Asian gang’?”
It’s not offensive, and it’s the truth, but the way that she put it, it was very stereotypical. Continue reading
18 Truths I Learned By 18 Years Old
1. You don’t understand someone’s struggle until it has happened to you.
Even then, all you have is one personal account. One page of writing, a roll of film, a 7:21 video, even a blog post isn’t sufficient to explain the experience. You could fill a book with thoughts.
2. Some life pursuits are stumps.
They don’t grow, they just get soggy with all of the water you sprinkle.
As long as I live, I will never find meaning in drawing. I can draw, but that’s about it, it will never be anything but an activity to me. We don’t rip the stump out of the ground, but we don’t contribute anything meaningful to it.
3. Peer pressure operates in small ways.
To My Sister, On Her First Day of Sophomore Year
soph·o·mor·ic: adjective: having or showing a lack of emotional maturity: foolish and immature
What a hopeful outlook society has adopted for a high school student’s second year of high school!
Before year 9 you won’t take this advice very seriously because you won’t really know what I’m talking about. Every year you’ll read this letter again and understand it a little better than you did before. And you’ll find out that what I’m saying is true (in some respects, at least). And you will look back when you graduate and regret a little bit but we’re not all perfect, are we?
Last year, around this time, I wrote a letter to my sister, Victoria, addressing the topic of freshman year…since then it’s become one of the most popular and constantly visited posts on this whole blog.
So I’m here to shed a little knowledge about your second year, and I hope my experience might help you along.
My dearest Vicky,
You’re not hot shit. You’re still an underclassman. You will undoubtedly exhibit behavior seen as unjustifiable, unwarranted by the upperclassmen, and next year, you will also see it as such. Continue reading
Man In Line Gets A Boner: Would You Call That Sexual Harassment?
Disclaimer: I don’t intend this blog post to be a blanket statement about people getting erections in public. Oftentimes it’s not personal nor intended. I totally get that. I just think that the details in yesterday’s scenario make it so that this could not have been a coincidence.
Where I work, there’s a grown man who comes in often enough that I recognize him and consider him a regular. I knew his order and always greeted him with a smile, making conversation because I genuinely believed that he was a delightful, pleasant person, but I never (until very recently) took a look at his pants.
How could I miss something so…obstructive??
It turns out that this was not a unique occurrence but rather, a tradition of sorts…
In my mind, I was grossed out. I started panicking. It was disturbing! God damn sir, you’re in freaking public! In gym shorts! There are children at that table! And grandmas!
What even is sexual harassment anyways? Or is this sexual assault, or abuse, or is this all just in my head? I don’t care about some official definition; if something makes me so uncomfortable in my own skin that I get upset at work, it’s sexual harassment to me.
It’s Time to Be Brutally Honest About Instagram
In a Bustle article, a woman de-constructed her Instagram pictures and explained them in two ways: how she hopes they come across, and the actual thought process that accompanied each post.
My interest in this app has waxed and waned over the years, but in my earliest days, when I was obsessed with getting followers and likes, I used to use 30 hashtags (I kid you not) hoping that my posts would trend just a little bit.
I’ve only admitted this to two people so far, so two thousand or so more can’t hurt, right?
I’ve come a long way, mostly abandoning the popular practice of hashtagging, but it’s time to be brutally honest.
I think the way people interact with their Instagrams is important, because this app is a visual representation (or so we hope) of ourselves, in a world where people have become increasingly obsessed with the way they are portrayed.
We care about the number of followers and likes that we get so much that we have websites dedicated to tracking and analyzing all of these things. (Don’t lie, you’ve visited Friend or Follow at least once.)
The editing that the latest updates allow, along with the variety of filters available has basically allowed IG to become our own DIY public Photoshop space.
Isn’t that exactly what social commentaries have been attacking for so long?? Continue reading
Never Just About A Boy: Sarah Dessen’s The Moon and More
This is part of my Summer Reading 2.0 series
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I’ve always been a fan of Sarah Dessen; she puts out a bunch of thick novels dubbed as teenage romance. In my early days of high school I saw them as just that, teenage romance novels. But ever since English teachers started pushing me to dissect literature and find deeper meanings, I’ve started to do that, the practice leaking into my leisure reading. Continue reading
The Difference Between Nobles and Serfs
Since 18 years ago I’ve slowly witnessed myself oscillating between serfdom and nobility, ending up more noble than serf.
Serfs are thrifty and don’t like to waste things and concentrate on those sort of details, because that’s all they’ve ever known. I was a kid and I liked to hoard my Rice Krispy Treats and trade them with my sister and I lived my life bar by bar, worrying only about the next immediate Treat, never more than one ahead. Continue reading
Catherine Zhang 