Wear Black Nail Polish.

Its the third week in January. It is also the point where optimistically made new year's resolutions begin to fall away as people fall back into old routines. I'm sure on December 31st you really were going to start going to the gym every day but that was before you actually had to go to the gym everyday. I'm one of those people who despite hopes and vain promises never keeps up with my promises. That's why I only made one resolution this year; wear black nail polish. Its always intimidated me because I didn't think it was something I could pull off. On one end of the spectrum I was afraid it make me look like I was trying to be "punk" and mysterious. I was also afraid of the chance that people would think that I was trying too hard. I'm five foot four with a style thats a mix between preppy and indie, black nails aren't something that I associated with myself. So I've always strayed away from total black opting instead for gray or navy, refusing to fully commit.
New years is a time for change. I had a partyto go to this ear and i planned to wear a black dress, black shoes, why not have black nails as well. What exactly was holding me back.I decided to crack the plastic seal on the bottle of "midnight sky" and took the leap. Nail polish is superficial and in the longterm its meaningless. However as soon as i painted my nails i felt an immediate attitude shift.  Black nails made me feel strong.Each time I saw my hand I felt confident, powerful. It stopped mattering to me what other people thought and it actually made me happy. It started to get me thinking about other times I've let my decisions be influenced by my fear of judgement. Many times I've refrained from saying something or doing something because of the way it would make others see me. I've missed out on several opportunities because of my fear of judgement.  If something so simple as the color on my fingertips makes me happy, why wouldn't I embrace it? Why not just say yes to what makes me happy? So my new year resolution is to do what makes me happy, even if its as basic as black nail polish.

Benefits of the Extra X

Girls like to complain about the struggle of their gender. I would be a hypocrite if I said that I don't often participate in these pity parties. However there are many benefits of femininity that tends to be over shadowed by period pain and the amount of time it takes to just wash our hair. One of the true blessings of being a girl is often disguised as a burden; makeup. We tend to take for granted just how helpful make up is. Sure it can take a while to apply but no one is forcing you to wear it and that magical mixture of powders and gels can change everything. If a guy has a flaw there is no way of hiding it. That chin zit has to be worn loud and proud. With the right mixture of foundation, concealer, and skill, pimples can be covered and blackheads erased. If you think you have small eyes, add mascara. Winter suck out the California tan you worked so for over the summer? Bronzer is now your best friend. We might say we hate it but honestly I don't know what I would do without it. The next benefit comes in really handy especially if you're like me and tend to overthink everything. When it comes to dating the truth of the matter is girls aren't expected to ask the guy out. I can't even ask the waitress for an extra napkin so how could I ask out the person I like.  I would like to give a big round of applause for the guys who like a girl and actually have the courage to ask her out because I would be way too afraid of rejection. While there are many more blessings in disguise I could talk about, but the last one I want to address is crying. I like to think that I'm a strong, independent person but the minute someone my favorite characters dies in a book, I melt into a puddle. The thing is I'm allowed to be like this because I'm just fitting into the female stereotype yet it is still considered socially unacceptable to cry. "Men don't cry", "Just man up", "Be a man". I'm fine with being able to hug my tissue box and wipe away the smudged mascara. I think that a lot of the times the small things get overlooked in life and we tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positive. I myself am fluent in English, sarcasm, and negativity but we need to stop focusing on the things that make our lives more difficult. It is important that we also see the silver lining and that we reap all the bonuses that come along with having that extra X chromosome.

Is Our Generation really Post Racial?

Recently I had to give a speech for my gifted and talented class. My question to address was "Is our generation really post racial?" based on an article by the New York Times. I feel really strongly about this topic and I feel like I should share my opinion. I feel like we as a society have come a long way since the 60’s. We have passed the days of segregation and race specific laws, however, I don’t think we can go as far as to say that our generation is post-racial. Post-racial is defined a society or time period in which discussions around race and racism have been deemed no longer relevant to current social dynamics. I’m not saying that we are still racist and stuck in the ways of pre-civil rights movement, but race still plays a part in our lives. To be post-racial we would have to live in a color blind society where the color of a persons skin is barely acknowledged let alone plays a role in our decisions. Individually, we may not take race into consideration. I don’t think any of us say, “ew, I can’t talk to him, he’s Asian”. But if you look around at the different “groups” at school, you can often see an unintentional separation of races. On a grander scale, there is the University of Michigan. The population of students attending the University of Michigan are primarily White and Asian causing some of the African Americans to feel isolated. African American enrollment in the University of Michigan dropped from 6.2% to 4.6%. This is nobody’s fault but it goes to show that racial separation is still present and still has an effect. On the other hand, there is Howard University with a 64-82% of the student body being comprised of African Americans and only 5% of the student body being White. So this goes to prove that the separation goes both ways. I don’t think that our generation as a whole is actively racist but race remains as an underlying factor in part of our lives. We aren’t racist but we’re not post racial either.

Older not wiser

      I never understood why people were afraid of growing up. What is so scary about being able to do more of the things you want to do. Even though there would be more responsibility surely it can't be that bad. How could something so exciting be "scary". Now I'm not a little kid who looks at a high school student like an alien creature. I realize now that its not the fear of getting older, its the fear of being older.
       When you're younger nobody expects much from you. You're expected to be your age and that's all. When your parents leave you with a baby sitter you expect the sitter to be able to handle anything. Whatever emergency that could possibly happen would be easily taken care of. However now I'm the babysitter and I realize I have no idea I'm doing. If someone gets hurt the best I can do is apply a Band-Aid and hope the parents get home fast. When you're younger you assume that you'll figure it all out when you get older but the scary part is when you realize you're older and you're still waiting to figure it out. When you reach a certain age you're supposed to have a plan. When you're six you don't see any issue because you'll have time before you have to figure everything out. The scary part is when you're sixteen and you still don't know what you're doing yet everybody still thinks its their job to remind you to figure it out.  The scary part isn't getting another year older, its realizing that you're not any wiser.

Stream of Consciousness

Tomorrow will be six months since the last time I've blogged. Every single time a write a new blog post I end it by saying something like "I'm going to try and blog more" but since its been six months since my last post its pretty obvious its all just empty words. I've decided to give up on promises like that. I feel like every time I tell myself I will do something I just feel to pressured to actually do it and I panic and get nowhere. I've struggled a lot with choosing a path. I'm a very indecisive person. I like to think about all the options and consider what I'm missing out on and that's just when I'm trying to find something to eat after school. I hate being stuck in one topic, one category. I tried making this lovely internet footprint into something like a diary; I was never good at keeping a diary. In one of my school classes, we do something every Monday called a Stream of Consciousness where you write whatever is going on in your head. Its my first period class so the only thing I'm thinking about is usually how much happier I'd be laying in bad watching movies in my sweatpants. However the idea behind a Stream of Consciousness isn't a bad idea. There is no set direction, no parameters to follow, you can't get stuck in one topic when all you want to do is write about something else. That's really all I want this blog to be. I want to write about whatever I feel like writing. Its not a fashion blog. I'm not going to write a response about every political issue on the news. Its a blog where I can do something new and write about it. If I'm going on vacation, it can go on the blog. Maybe I want to write a short story, that's fine. If I want to have a nerd spasm and write about the book that I'm currently in love with, I'm going to write about that to. It's the glory of a Stream of Consciousness. Maybe I'll keep updating this blog every couple days. Maybe it'll be another six months until there are any signs of life on here. I don't even know whats going to happen and I must say, I think that's the most interesting part.

Dedicated Wolfie

Do you remember when twilight came out, how the entire year everything was vampire or werewolf related. Literally we ended up with Twilight, True blood, Vampire Diaries, countless teenage vampire books, spoofs galore and everything was just so corny you just tuned it out. At least that's the way I dealt with that horrifying stage in pop culture. Don't get me wrong I don't have anything against you if you like that kind of stuff but it just was never my cup of tea. So when Teen Wolf on MTV premiered I wrote it off as a stupid show that would end up being just like Twilight and I never gave it much thought after that. That was until on of my friends started fangirling about it. She convinced me to watch the first episode. I decided to watch the first episode, and it all went downhill from there. It took me three days to watch seasons one and two. I literally could not stop watching it. Now every Monday night 10:00pm I'm sitting on the couch having a fangirl attack watching the Teen Wolf opening. I finally understand what its like to have a TV addiction. Its a blackhole and honestly, I'm loving it.

Looking Towards Later

Well as I said in my first blog post, I started this blog as part of a school project. I recently did my presentation for the class so technically the assignment is done and I could just leave this blog as a sad unused site. But I honestly spent a lot of time working on this so I feel like letting it all go to waste would just be a shame. I also kind of enjoy the idea that I can post my words/thoughts/experiences/whatever else I want for the world to see so I'm going to try keep posting. I'm also going to try to post more frequently.

So for my presentation I showed my class this blog but I also created a PowerPoint about some of the things I want to do in the future. I really wanted to include the PowerPoint here but I have absolutely no idea how. Instead I'm just going to list the things I want to do.

• Visit a "Nutellaria". Yes I am talking about the delicious chocolate hazelnut spread.
• Learn how to drive
• Ride in a hot air balloon
• Watch every Harry Potter movie in 24 hours
• Go to Budapest, Hungary
• Visit the Trampoline bridge in France
• Go to Venice, Italy
• Sleep in a heated glass igloo hotel room in Finland to see the northern lights
• Put my name and the name of someone else on a lock and put it on the lock bridge in France
• Participate in a paint fight.
• See same sex marriage legalized in all 50 states.
• See great white sharks in a shark cage
• Walk on the Walk of Faith on Tianamen Mountain in China
• Go para sailing
• Have someone use my words in a quote
• exchange a book at a book exchange booth in England.
• Have someone notice my writing.
• Ride an elephant.
• Learn fluent Hungarian.

There you have it. If you don't know about some of the things I mentioned I would suggest doing a quick google search (or another search engine, I don't discriminate).  There are a ton of other things I would like to do but for now I feel like this is a sufficient list. Fingers crossed to getting all these done one day.