Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Ready or Not

Post #255: Dedicated to: Catch Me; Demi Lovato

I leave tomorrow for 10 weeks in Ghana. Ready or not, I'm going. And I think I'm leaning on the side of the latter. My bag isn't still fully packed, mostly because I'm pretty sure my one big suitcase is well over 50 lbs. And my carry-on duffel bag is full of books, books, and books. You know what this means...more lbs. And that's just the start. 

Oh man. Well. Ready or not, I'm leaving on a plane tomorrow to Ghana. 

(p.s. This is the coolest driveway ever.)

Monday, May 28, 2012

Commencement

Post #254: Dedicated to: Space Oddity; David Bowie


Commencing countdown engines on...

This past weekend I was in upstate New York attending my brother's commencement ceremony. Just the simple procession of graduates into the football stadium took an entire hour, split up by school, starting with the Ph.D candidates, law students, school of veterinary medicine students, then the M.A. candidates, then finally the undergraduate candidates by school, like College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, College of Arts and Sciences... 

After sitting through that, and then trying to find my brother in the massive hordes of black-robed twenty-something-year olds exiting the stadium, I can say with certainty that I am really really really really really really really glad I go to a small college.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

DC & Starkid

Post #253: Dedicated to: We Are Young; Fun


On Wednesday night, some friends and I decided on a whim to go watch Darren Criss and Starkid perform at the House of Blues in LA. It turned out to be a good night, but I do confess, traffic, waiting in line, and waiting an hour for the show to start didn't get me in the best of moods early on.


But goodness gracious, so many screaming teenage girls for this guy. Who was pretty good, I must admit. But still. So. Much. Screaming. And crying, too. It was insane. And kind of just plain funny.


And then later Darren and Charlene Kaye sang "Dress and Tie." Yes.

 And then came Starkid! I loved listening to A Very Potter Musical, live. How insanely talented do they have to be to come up with all of those musicals? The lines, the music, the choreography...I wish I was half as creative [as Clark...]! ;)

Off to Cornell tomorrow (for the first and probably last time) to see my big brother graduate!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Getting Ready

Post #252: Dedicated to: Life is Beautiful; the Afters


Oh man. It has been pretty much a full two months since I've posted...to my very many, dedicated fans and readers (ha), I sincerely apologize. I guess part of me really doesn't think my life is all that interesting, so there isn't much for me to blog! That and this semester was crazy. Crazy busy, crazy challenging, a crazy adjustment coming back from Denmark.

I guess I'll finally admit it to myself – I'm a senior now. A senior. That fact, in and of itself, is crazy.

Now I'm home...but somehow it feels different than before. I used to crave being home; I used to need to be home by the time breaks came around – but now, it's not like that. I would have been absolutely fine staying at school for a few more weeks, months, years? I would have loved to spend more time with my friends, doing whatever. Am I growing up?

Well like it or not, I am, because I'm leaving for Ghana in a short 13 days for ten long weeks. Which I'm sure will go by in the blink of an eye – if and when I get there safely, that is. I've been having nightmares lately every time I go to sleep, nightmares about crazy taxi drivers who kidnap lone female tourists from the airport. What if that happens to me?? What if I get pickpocketed again, or worse – mugged? What if my luggage is lost? What if I'm lost?? What if, what if, what if...I'm terrified! Traveling in general stresses me out...and traveling to an absolutely foreign country by myself, where I will without a doubt stick out like a sore thumb, where I am bound to be overwhelmed by taxi drivers the minute I step out of that airport – drivers who will rip me off and make me pay absurd prices...

Confession: I'm scared to death.

Monday, March 19, 2012

I Am Man

Post #251: Dedicated to: I Wish; Stevie Wonder
Today I led two 1.5 hour tours of very large groups of people in the hot sunshine. I filed, I hosted, I dealt with a couple appointments and meetings, and finally got back to my room, ready to knock out. I was supposed to attend a talk at 4:30, and it was 3:50. Okay, Clara, I told myself. Just close your eyes for 15, 20 minutes, and you'll be good to go. My alarm woke me up around 4:15, but I was still so exhausted. I got my computer out, ready to send an email out to the Humanities Center, asking if the talk was going to be filmed and recorded and in the library so I could check it out and not actually have to attend (read: so I could go back to sleep), but decided against it. So I packed my bags and headed off.

And I'm so glad I did. I often forget about this, but every once in a while am reminded of it: intellectual stimulation is entirely captivating. Being surrounded by people with brilliant ideas and brilliant methods of portraying those ideas is so exciting and intriguing.

Today's guest was Hank Willis Thomas, photographer and visual artist extraordinaire. His talk is in conjunction with an art exhibit going on at my school, called "And The Winner Is..." The entire exhibition basically revolves around a giant skee-ball (Yes, skee-ball. Like what you used to play for tickets and prizes at Chuck-E-Cheese) competition between all 1,920 members of the Haverford community: students, faculty, staff, and guests. It's a truly fascinating project exploring at the entirety of competition and cooperation within a community, and I'm looking forward to playing a few rounds of skee-ball myself!

But back to Hank. Most of his works surround race and images, the notion of "branding" an image, and ideas of representation – how one "race" is represented by another, etc. His talk really made you think about yourself and your own pre-conceived notions of everything in the world. It made you look into yourself and see where you stand in the world, in our society. This is precisely one of the many reasons I love anthropology – because his talk was like a giant, anthropological microscope honing in on certain aspects of present-day culture and yourself as a human in that culture, questioning the validity, the logic, the reason behind why notions of "race" even exist in the world. Why? How? Who? When?

Not that anything ever gets answered, but it's the best feeling in the world to be intellectually stimulated, to have the chance to listen to and meet such artists and get a sense of why they do the work they do, to get a glimpse of their personal history.

I'd forgotten how enjoyable these lectures and talks could be, and you can bet that I'll be attending several more of the Monday afternoon series of artist talks while this exhibit is still going on.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Pencil vs. Camera

Post #250: Dedicated to: Call Your Girlfriend; Robyn

I wish I was half as talented as this guy!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Beautiful Monday

Post #249: Dedicated to: First Day of My Life; Bright Eyes
Today has been a wonderful day. I had to wake up early to head to the Admissions Office for my 9 am hosting shift, but the office was bustling with prospective students and parents who were curious and open-minded, who I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with. I also had a rather large tour group in the afternoon (and only my third tour, ever!) that went quite well – sometimes the thoughts you want to get out translate perfectly into coherent sentences. At the end, a mother and daughter I particularly connected with told me that this was now their favorite school, and I was far better than any other tour guide they'd ever had. Plus the weather outside was (is) fantastic: sun and high 60's all day long.

Suffice to say, it was a great day.

And then I called my mother, to ask her to send me a copy of my passport and some shoes I had accidentally left behind. I was in such a great mood, I told her all about my day and my tour and what a wonderful Monday it was so far, and she tells me (more or less): that's wonderful, but tour guide isn't so much what I'm concerned about; I'm really more concerned about your work and your grades.

Sometimes I really really really wish that me – just me, stripped of all academics – was enough.