So anyway, let’s get to the point. I decided to tell everyone that what is unique about me is that I like to write letters. Yep, the old school kind. Using real paper and stamps. As a side note, I am proud that I did such good job of letting my nerdness show as soon as possible. But yeah, it was one of those weird things to say. Other people said they liked snowboarding. Ohh, unique. I bet you’re the only person who came to school in Colorado because you like to board. So my professor (who I ended up really liking, by the way and still talk to him now) told me he thought it was great that I write letters because it truly is a lost art. I totally agree.

When my first friend went off to college, I asked her to be my pen pal. I sent her a letter right when she got to school on the east coast and she sent me a reply on the most beautiful stationary. I really had no idea they even created such pretty paper just for writing and suddenly, I felt my lined, college ruled notebook paper was ridiculously inadequate. I went to buy my first box of stationary at Target or something and as more time went by, I had collected a dozen or so different kinds of paper and envelopes. I also started collecting more penpals. I started wrting to anyone and everyone who lived outside of Highlands Ranch, or in one case, in Highlands Ranch. I started writing to my ex boyfriend’s friends in Minnesota, my sister, a couple people at Madison and other people around the country that I knew for one reason or another. And I stepped up my game with the stationary also. I started shopping for it at Papyrus. I asked for it for every birthday/Christmas/graduation/everything ever. I have a huge wicker box at school that holds like 25 pounds and well over $1000 of paper.

But a lot of people find all of this very strange. So I’m going to tell you why it’s epic, if outdated.

• So much more personal than email
• Handwriting can tell you a lot about a person. ie- mood, personality traits etc. When is the last time an email told you that!
• Stationary is awesome. Email is white and very, very boring. Or has cheesy backgrounds that lack real art.
• I once made personalized postage stamps on the internet. They were pictures of me and my friends. Or pictures I took. This was probably the sweetest thing ever.
• Even not personalized stamps are cool. Unless you get the forever once. Those are bells. The bells = lame.
• Letter writing takes much more time than like IM or text or anything like that and is therefore more intimate and means more.
• Mail in general is awesome because then you can send cookies and other lovely things across the country or world.

There you go. This has been my little hail to snail mail and it’s amazingness.

Your reality is what you make it. You can sit around having regrets and being unhappy as long as you want to you. Or you can learn to accept things as they are and continue with your life, being as happy as possible. It’s something I’ve been working on teaching myself for several years. I’m one of those people that has a vision for something happening in a certain way, at a certain time. Being a planner and envisioning things for myself has got me a long way in my life, and it’s also led to a lot of unhappiness because of unfulfilled expectations. Until very recently, I was blind to the fact that the reason I like to find fault with CU comes from the fact that until now I had never let go of my unfulfilled expectations.

In my junior year of high school, I told everyone there was no way in hell I was staying in Colorado for school and that as soon as I got the chance I would be long gone from here and on to bigger and better things. I wanted to leave my family, I wanted to leave my stupid hometown and most of all, I wanted to get out of here and move to Minnesota for what seems now, like one of the stupidest reasons to move anywhere. I also entertained the idea of going to Mizzou for journalism school, but most of all I wanted to get to Minnesota. I worked four jobs my junior year of high school because I was convinced that if I worked hard enough and put in all of the hours, I would be able to pay for out of state tuition and would eventually be happy. It was probably one of the worst years of my life.  I haven’t ever been more unhappy than when I was sleep deprived, unable to have time for any kind of life and spent any free time I had writing newspaper articles and trying to do well in school. Ironically, I didn’t get accepted to the U of M. I still don’t know why. My grades were more than good enough and so was my SAT score. It was fate that I didn’t end up there.  Even though I don’t think I believe in God, something is responsible and now, two years later, I can see that not getting in was probably the best thing that could have happened to me at the time.

But, that didn’t stop me from being so upset with myself for failing at my goal to get out of here. I spend the last few months of high school being disappointed in myself for not doing what I wanted to do and blaming myself for not working hard enough. I saw going to CU as a last resort. I didn’t want to move to Boulder to go to the same school as so many of the people I hated in high school. I learned to accept the idea and eventually became excited about college in general, but not as excited as my peers. As I moved through my first semester at college, it was honestly the worst four months of my life. But since I needed to seem happy to everyone around me, I told my parents I loved it, that I had a ton of friends and that Boulder was the best place ever. I meant none of it. I hated where I lived, I hated the stupid people around me and all I did was wish to be somewhere else. All the time. I wish I could get that time back so badly. What a terrible way to spend any amount of time, especially what could have been such a great semester.

To make a long and complicated story short, things were a lot different for me that second semester. I moved to a different residence hall, started over, I reconnected with people I had known and for the first time in way too long, I lived in the moment and I had the time of my life. I met a lot of people. Some of them I still talk to every day and some of them I wish to never see again. But I let everything happen and just went with it. I finally started accepting where I was and learning that it was home. Despite my best intentions, I didn’t end up going out of state and went to the very place I didn’t want to end up. But none of this matters now. Because this is where I am. And yeah, it’s easy to blame a lot of stuff on Boulder and on the school I go to. But it’s a just a scapegoat for general unhappiness that would be experienced anywhere. And finally, after two years I think I’ve finally accepted that.

After the first half of my education, I’ve fallen in love with everything about my college experience. Yeah some of it has really sucked and I still do stuff that makes me cringe and wonder what the hell I was thinking, but all of these experiences, combined with the ones that make me love my life all come together to make one collecative journey that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Anyone who says that CU is full of students who do nothing but party is full of shit and I would love to talk to them about how we know how and when we need to do work and we also know that there is a time to let things go and have a good time. My first priority is always my school work and if I want to go out after a tough week, who cares? We work hard at school and a lot of us do a lot of good things for the university and in general. Anyone who tries to tell me differently will not hear the end of it because I’ve finally realized that the thing I was looking for was here all along, I just needed to see things as they were and let go of my false expectations.

So this post is going to be kind of a hijack from IamPetrie’s latest post, but since summer is a pertinent issue, I’m okay with idea stealing/not being original right now. Let’s face the facts: I’m three finals and five days away from moving out of Sewall and into the H Ranch. I’ve got bills to pay, fun to be had and…no money.

Really, I’m not exaggerating. Like I honestly can’t wait for people to ask me to drive somewhere and I’ll be like, “I would love to, but turns out I’ve got no money to pay for gas.” Or more like, “Lets go grab dinner and a movie.” And I’ll be like, “You may or may not know that those activities are for rich people, unlike me.”

It’s going to be a good time. I can already tell.  This is, of course the option if I do not get a job. If this really and truly ends up being the reality of my situation, this is my life plan for the summer:

Ride my bike to the East Ridge pool daily and spend all day there, just baking in the sun. Then I’ll come home at night (via bike of course, because I will have zero money for gas) and see if anyone is doing something cool in suburbia (the chances are slim, but with the kind of people I hang out with, you just never know what kind of shenanigans they’ll be up to) and do that for a bit before going to bed. And repeat. Daily. Maybe I’ll take to panhandling when the pool gets boring and we’ll find out for reals if the cops actually enforce the panhandling law in Highlands Ranch. I’ll keep you posted. I already have a corner in mind.

Sounds lovely, right? My job search is getting incredibly frustrating and I really just need a job. I have applied to probably about 15 places and all of them have failed to contact me. It’s upsetting and for the first time in my life, I honestly have no idea how I’m going to get shit done. I’m used to having a plan, knowing what’s going to happen etc and right now, I’ve got nothing. Not even a fall back. FML, right?

So tomorrow (let’s get motivated!) I’m going to call my one option that could be a fall back job in Denver working for my friend’s parents (it’s not looking good however) and I’m also going to beg housing and dining to hire me as a summer orientation leader eventhough the deadline to apply was exactly two months ago, yesterday. Glad I’ve really got it together in…life. But I have a good feeling about it. I’m REALLY good at singing the fight song and talking to freshmen.

I guess we’ll see the reality of my summer and what will happen in the next couple days/weeks/months. For now, I’m going to remain optimistic and think the happy thought that no matter what, I won’t be in school, won’t be RAing this summer and will get to see people I have missed all semester.

Wish my job search luck, toodles.

First of all, so you can understand my perspective…I don’t smoke. I never have and most likely never will. That being said, I don’t judge other people because of what they do as long as they aren’t harming other people. So it really doesn’t upset me when people smoke BUT, I’m not a fan of 4/20 at CU Boulder.  My issue with this event stems mostly with the negative image CU already has.  According to people who do not go here, we are students at a stuck up party school that enjoy doing little else than drinking and smoking.  Sure, this can be seen as a great time and I know that a large percentage of undergraduates came here for that reason. However, this image is something we should be working to move away from because it does little more than devalue our degrees and makes people like me, who aren’t huge partiers look bad.

The thing that really pushed me over the edge and made me decide that blogging about this was absolutely necessary was an article in the Colorado Daily about it. The reporter obviously asked several students at the event what they thought. Shockingly not a single one had anything but positive comments about it. I don’t like how incredibly biased the article is. It offers one point of view from students and they all appear to be loving everything about today.  What seems obvious to me, but apparently was not to the reporter is that everyone at the event will like it! Why else would they be there? A balanced article would have been written by a reporter willing to look further for people who maybe don’t love how this makes our school look. I really do not appreciate how only one side of the story was addressed.

Through all of this, I understand that 4/20 is considered a holiday by many people, not just in Boulder. I know that people indulge in pot on this day and I don’t have a problem with that. My suggestion however, is that it not be associated with our University. I don’t like the fact that perspective students can pull up countless videos of Norlin Quad on 4/20 on youtube before making their admission decision. I wish that this event could be moved somewhere else, like maybe Pearl Street. Still the event could be enjoyed by CU students and the Boulder community, but would be less associated with the University.

The Chancellor did a great job of addressing this exact issue in an email sent to all students.  While the administration have tried several tactics in the past to discourage this event, this year they simply urged students to not participate, citing many of the same reasons I have. Awesomely, some kid wrote the Chancellor an email in response to this saying that he was offended by the email. The student states, “The tragedy of the e-mail that you sent out last week is that you have belittled, insulted and devalued a huge part of your student population.” Okay tragedy? Really? It’s tragic that the Chancellor sent an email urging students to not break the law? Get over yourself. See the entire response email here.

Students at CU Boulder are very short sighted on this issue and see only the idea of having fun with their friends on 4/20.  But there is a lot more to it than that. Being offended at the urgency to not participate in such activities on our campus and associating such a thing with our school, and mindlessly enjoying smoking marijuana on 4/20 is all part of what spreads the bad rep this school has earned.  And the only people who can change it are those that won’t even think of the repercussions of their actions.

• pay my phone bill
• pay for car insurance
• buy gas
• get new clothes…ever basically
• entertain myself in boulder

So as I’m sure you could guess, I lack funds to even think about traveling. Once you purchase the airfare (or gas), budget the cost of lodging, food, entertainment etc, traveling can be extremely expensive. But, I’m starting to rethink the expenses due to an article I saw linked on Newser this afternoon. In case you were wondering, I love the Newser. It’s a great homepage for me because it presents a lot of news so I can know about almost everything that is going on by reading no more than two paragraphs. And if I want to know more, I can read the full article.

That’s exactly what happened when I saw the headline Tiny Hotels Offer NYC at Micro-Pieces. According to the article on NPR, a hotel in New York is now offering really cheap rooms, called pods (what a cute name!) for 42$ if you bunk with a friend, or double for a single room. And the best part is, these rooms are actually really nice looking! See:

I’m excited about this because I think it’s just a fantastic idea! When I travel, I send like zero time in the hotel room anyway so this is definitely an amazing idea. Again according to the article, hotels in New York can be around $300 a night if you want one with a good location. So basically, props to the people who thought of this. This room is nicer than my dorm room, which means I would be down with staying in it during my travels.

The first softball team I ever joined had the most insane coach ever.  Me and my best friend used to bond over how much we hated the favoritism he showed his (untalented, snobby, bratty, annoying, dumb etc.) daughter and constantly complained to our parents about his antics. Looking back now, his behavior was hilarious, and quite possibly is what made the whole experience exciting.  But his actions certainly did not compare to this guy.

In a letter he wrote to his team’s parents before the season even started, he used hilariously ridiculous ideas to help get the team in shape and proposed that they would be called the Green Death and would not lose a game. I’ve bolded the parts I find most amazing about this email:

Congratulations on being selected for Team 7 (forest green shirts) of the Scituate Soccer Club! My name is Michael and I have been fortunate enough to be selected to coach what I know will be a wonderful group of young ladies. Chris Mac will also be coaching and I expect the ever popular Terry to return to the sidelines. Our first game will be Saturday April 4 at 10:00AM. There will be a half hour of skills followed by a 1 hour game, so total time will be 1.5 hours. All games will be played on the fields in the front of the High School. Each player will be required to wear shin guards and cleats are recommended but not required. A ball will be provided to each player at the first meeting, and each player should bring the ball to games and practices. There is no set practice time allotted for the U8 teams, but I will convene with the coaches to determine the best time and place. If there are cancellations due to rain, all notices will be posted via the Scituate Soccer Club website, no calls will be made (though I will try to send an email). Attached is the Schedule and Code of Conduct. After listening to the head of the referees drone on for about 30 minutes on the dangers of jewelry (time which I will never get back), no player will be allowed to play with pierced ears, hairclips, etc. We used to tape the earings, but that practice is no longer acceptable. Please let me know if your child has any health issues that I need to be aware of. My home phone is 781 XXX XXXX, my cell number is 781 XXX XXXX, and I check my email frequently. According to my wife, my emails get too wordy, so for those of you read too slowly, are easily offended, or are too busy, you can stop here. For the others……

OK, here’s the real deal: Team 7 will be called Green Death. We will only acknowledge “Team 7” for scheduling and disciplinary purposes. Green Death has had a long and colorful history, and I fully expect every player and parent to be on board with the team. This is not a team, but a family (some say cult), that you belong to forever. We play fair at all times, but we play tough and physical soccer. We have some returning players who know the deal; for the others, I only expect 110% at every game and practice. We do not cater to superstars, but prefer the gritty determination of journeymen who bring their lunch pail to work every week, chase every ball and dig in corners like a Michael Vick pit bull. Unless there is an issue concerning the health of my players or inside info on the opposition, you probably don’t need to talk to me. Coach MacDonald has been designated “good guy” this year.

Some say soccer at this age is about fun and I completely agree. However, I believe winning is fun and losing is for losers. Ergo, we will strive for the “W” in each game. While we may not win every game (excuse me, I just got a little nauseated) I expect us to fight for every loose ball and play every shift as if it were the finals of the World Cup. While I spent a good Saturday morning listening to the legal liability BS, which included a 30 minute dissertation on how we need to baby the kids and especially the refs, I was disgusted. The kids will run, they will fall, get bumps, bruises and even bleed a little. Big deal, it’s good for them (but I do hope the other team is the one bleeding). If the refs can’t handle a little criticism, then they should turn in their whistle. The sooner they figure out how to make a decision and live with the consequences the better. My heckling of the refs is actually helping them develop as people. The political correctness police are not welcome on my sidelines. America’s youth is becoming fat, lazy and non-competitive because competition is viewed as “bad”. I argue that competition is good and is important to the evolution of our species and our survival in what has become an increasingly competitive global economy and dangerous world. Second place trophies are nothing to be proud of as they serve only as a reminder that you missed your goal; their only useful purpose is as an inspiration to do that next set of reps. Do you go to a job interview and not care about winning? Don’t animals eat what they kill (and yes, someone actually kills the meat we eat too – it isn’t grown in plastic wrap)? And speaking of meat, I expect that the ladies be put on a diet of fish, undercooked red meat and lots of veggies. No junk food. Protein shakes are encouraged, and while blood doping and HGH use is frowned upon, there is no testing policy. And at the risk of stating the obvious, blue slushies are for winners.

These are my views and not necessarily the views of the league (but they should be). I recognize that my school of thought may be an ideological shift from conventional norms. But it is imperative that we all fight the good fight, get involved now and resist the urge to become sweat-xedo-wearing yuppies who sit on the sidelines in their LL Bean chairs sipping mocha-latte-half-caf-chinos while discussing reality TV and home decorating with other feeble-minded folks. I want to hear cheering, I want to hear encouragement, I want to get the team pumped up at each and every game and know they are playing for something.

Lastly, we are all cognizant of the soft bigotry that expects women and especially little girls, to be dainty and submissive; I wholeheartedly reject such drivel. My overarching goal is develop ladies who are confident and fearless, who will stand up for their beliefs and challenge the status quo. Girls who will kick ass and take names on the field, off the field and throughout their lives. I want these girls to be winners in the game of life. Who’s with me?

Go Green Death!

Because of this email, the coach has now resigned because parents were “concerned.” Agreeing with the coach,  I would have to question the sense of humor and over all well being of all the parents who were concerned. I would have laughed and thought, “Well thank goodness he’s having fun coaching these seven year olds because otherwise that shit would suck for sure.”

The over-arching picture of all of this is that we are way too politically correct now. Yeah maybe this email was a little bit on the intense side, but come on. Do you think this guy is serious? Obviously not. He has a daughter on the team. Do you think he feeds her red meat? I’m as positive as a First Response Pregnancy Test that no, he doesn’t. This is a JOKE. Learn to have fun. I hope the team has fun without this gem coaching them, and instead has a boring guy who probably feeds the girls lollipops all day everyday.

Further reading.

Moving right along, we have to write a paper.  Keep in mind, this paper was assigned on the first day of class and like the classic procrastinatior I am, I decided to wait until now to think about.  The weight of the paper has really been pushing down on me because the TA keeps building it up FOR NO REASON. It has to be three pages. Double spaced. We have to write about how the book is journalist, provide a summary, talk about the author, etc. She tells us exactly what should be in every paragraph.  Really? This is what our semester long project is?

So I chose to read Into the Wild Jon Krakauer and if you don’t know the story of Chris McCandless, or even if you do, you should most definitely read this book.  We were allowed to choose a book from a list of like 50 that are considered journalist. I chose it because I saw the film last semester and it was absolutely amazing.  It totally captured the essence of who I believe Chris McCandless was, a free spirited young man with idealistic visions in his head that eventually led him to his heart breaking death.

Into the Wild is one of those movies that makes you form an attachment with the main character.  They made him out to be the most loveable guy ever. Also, he was (still is, in real life) exceedingly attractive (played by Emile Hirsch), which never hurts.  So, I was pretty upset by watching him starve to death. But, the great part of reading the book was understanding everything that lead him to all of his (seemingly) crazy actions after his college graduation.

Where am I going with this? I kind of don’t know anymore…but we’ll go with this:

Chris McCandless story is really sad, but extremely inspiring to me at the same time.  Chris was so against the idea of people caring more about money and not enough about each other. He didn’t understand why people did such horrible things to each other and was hurt by how people lost sight of the most important things in the life: the relationships with other people. So, he set off to leave civilization and be with only himself, in what I consider a protest of the problems he saw with society.

Chris makes me want to do something legit with my life. I don’t want to die in Alaska, or be isolated. But I want to find what I care about most in my life and decide what my values are. And I want to live it. Like as much as I can and throw everything into it. Because you can’t have anything unless you have passion for it.

So…thanks Chris McCandless. I’m really glad I read the book and saw the movie. You should too, even if you’re not into the outdoors.  It’s not even really about that, it’s so much more. And…to my JOUR prof, weak assignment. We are capable of so much more.

Highlights from the weekend:

• Visited the gparents.
• Coffee and I Love You, Man with Logan. Fantastic movie, by the way. Highly recommended. I thought it was funny and the awkwardness of the dialogue was amazing. I, after all love awkward. But, a friend of mine recently told me he doesn’t recognize awkward anymore. Apparently it’s made his life much easier. Maybe I should subscribe?
• Honking my horn outside of Sewall to the tune of Jingle Bells for a good five minutes.
• Saturday night with Ashleigh. It consisted of many a photograph, too much texting, some dancing…I don’t even know. Just the two of us. In her apartment. Being 100% ridiculous.
• A conversation with Tim and Dave about how much I hate mushrooms followed by a trip to Noods and Co where I ordered Wisconsin Mac and Cheese and instead got mushroom pasta. What are the odds!

In other news…

• I’m going to get a haircut tomorrow. I’m still deciding how drastic I want it to be.
• My galoshes are two different sizes and therefore hurt my feet badly…ugh.
• I like bulleted lists?
• My replacement straightener should be here in the next couple of days. THANK GOODNESS.
• I think I decided to move away from Colorado immediately upon graduating from CU.

Things I don’t get to do now:

• See Paige, DUHHH.
• Go to the majestic tonight.
• Pretend to be a tour guide at the University of Tulsa.
• Wear my sweet polka dotted golashes with Paige.
• Ride pink bicycles down by the river.
• Shopping.
• Sitting in a coffee house being studious college students.
• Chip and Dale’s (the frat boy charity version of course)
• Finally meeting all the people Paige talks about and gaining perspective.
• Toga party.
• Using my bomb hard sided yellow suitcase.
• Leaving Colorado for the first time in two years.
• Eating at all the places that sounded good.
• A birthday party.
• Hiking up a “mountain”

That pretty much concludes the list. But not only that, I know plenty of hilarious stuff would happen during and inbetween all of these activites. But no. And everything just sucks! I mean, it could be worse. But really, snow, you couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Sincerely,

Kelsi