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Aqua Down My Face Because Aqua Broke My Heart

You probably know them by their hit song “Barbie Girl.” “c’mon Barbie lets go party ah ah ah yeah” (really, though, that song is only one small part of their collection, and hardly indicative of what they have to offer). They are Aqua, the band which produced what has, over the years, become my favorite album. They have also become notoriously hated throughout most of my friend group (by that I mean Elizabeth and Pomona. Pomona doesn’t read my blog so I can say whatever I want here. Wasps are overrated). In the few times I have tried to play Aqua for all to enjoy, the speaker has been forcibly removed from the room while others cover their ears and/or try to beat me. But here’s the thing—I don’t blame them. Everything in our nature as educated, sophisticated, mature (or aspiring mature) people tells us to REJECT Aqua. On first impression, the bubbly bouncy Eurodance beats that swarm into your ear canals will make you positive that your brain tissue is halving itself with every passin
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Relationships: A Cringe-fest

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My very first blog post was about my embarrassing scholastic bowl debacle. Indeed that moment ‘twas a cringe heard round the world. But, as some of my avid readers will remember me saying (by that I mean just Elizabeth. Hi Elizabeth), that moment was hardly the most embarrassing in my history, but the rest were just too painful to discuss. Well, I’ve gotten over that pain so here’s another one. Once upon a time, boys had cooties. Elementary school boys for the most part were just immature little adrenaline junkies who laughed meanly at everything you did. Thus I saw it as my responsibility to bite their heads off whenever possible. Come to think of it, I was a downright bully. I don’t think I should be blamed for that though—I didn’t have any brothers, so how was I to know that boys were human beings with actual feelings. Anyways, middle school rolled around. At first nothing changed. Boys continued to annoy me and I continued to glare at them until they never looked me in t
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The Fourteen-Hour Thing

I was in a piano lesson lately, and at one point my teacher launched into a story about her college days. There are individual practice rooms on the second floor of Smith Memorial Hall, and she told me that when she was practicing for her major recitals, she would go up to one of those rooms in the morning, practice for fourteen hours, then go home and take a nap before coming back. And here I thought one hour counted as a long practice time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Anyways, I got to thinking. Fourteen hours? I mean, I knew my piano teacher was intense, but that comment raised her intensity to a whole new level. My immediate thought was ok, a fourteen hour work day is illegal. That should apply to playing your instrument. What beasts are we fighting with?  My second thought was, dang. I guess that’s what passion is. I mean, isn’t that what we are all searching for? Something that we are willing to spend fourteen hours a day pursuing, something that makes us willing to go without sleep and ph
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Surgeons and Dead Guys and Gender Biases (except maybe not)

Have you ever heard this riddle? “A father and son are in a car crash. The father dies. The son is rushed to the hospital, but right before he receives an operation, the surgeon exclaims, ‘I can’t operate on that boy, he’s my son!’ How is this possible?” The answer to this riddle is that the surgeon is the boy’s mother . (Highlight that when you’re ready). I was maybe seven when I first heard this riddle. Nine years have passed since then, in which I have developed ideas of gender norms that I did not have at seven. Unfortunately, this means I did not have a chance to ponder the answer to this riddle at a more mature point in my life, so I have no idea whether I would have guessed that the surgeon is the mom. Up until recently, I actually assumed that most people had heard this riddle as well. I was wrong. I came across an article that sparked my interest. In the article, it mentions the results of an experiment done pertaining to this riddle. Several groups of around 100-2
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Emmett Till's Head

Emmett Till’s mom’s name was Mamie Till Bradley. To quote Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents, "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy." The devastation caused by racism is something that must be remembered. The lynching of people due to their skin color was a horrible reality, and there is so much one could say about the “vulnerabilities of American Democracy.” These are, without a doubt, topics worthy of discussion. As a blogger, I have the opportunity and right to share my view on such significant topics. It is a necessity in preserving countless sorrowful stories from becoming simply pages of text in a school book. But that being said, I do not know what it feels like to be discriminated again
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The Cereal Development

My mother is a remarkable person. She is super smart (“almost a genius” in her words). She graduated almost first in her high school class in China . Also, she reads medical articles for fun. She is talented too—I cannot count the amount of times she has begun a sentence with “I used to be truly excellent at x” (insert some field of mathematics, science, or physical prowess). She is strong willed, hardworking and very mature. She has a cavernous plethora of wisdom and experience to dole out on almost any situation at hand. She conducts herself with confidence and a lot of self-discipline. Plain and simple: she knows how to do things right and does them right. But, like, she’s been eating cereal for dinner for the past two weeks. Not just cereal— cocoa puffs. I have no idea what to make of this development. I cannot pinpoint exactly why it bothers me so much, but I have some hunches. 1.       The role swap. She is a whole full grown woman. She should be lecturing me about t
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Failing: A Lifestyle

"Variety is the spice of life." Let's talk about spices for a second: I know nothing about spices. So let's discuss variety. Variety is intimidating--there's such a large variety of variety that it can seem like there is infinite variety, but as far as I know variety is finite. Still, addressing all the possible varieties of variety would require a variety of blog posts (insert various drum riffs). We're narrowing down now to one type of variety that I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in: the variety of ways you can fail. Let me be clear: this post is not a self deprecating post. This is a sharing of my wealth of knowledge on a subject that I have a large amount of experience with, experience that grows in a linear pattern on a daily basis, and will hopefully provide some wizened advice that will help you cope with your own inevitable collection of failures. For example, just look back at what I have written so far. Almost everything before this point has
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