The Perception Check.

I know a lot of people that hate their job. They don't get paid enough, they work long hours, their co-workers suck, they don't get paid enough, they hate what they do, their boss is the spawn of Satan, they don't get paid enough, etc.

I think we know which one of these complaints I am guilty of making.

For the most part, I enjoy what I do. And note to any of you that makes any of the aforementioned statements of discontent...stop bitching. You have a job.

This past week I was informed I was being a 'Negative Nancy.' This annoyed me. First, because my name isn't Nancy, but mostly because I hate cliches. But it was true. Bad week(s) tend to bring out the side of me that is angry that the beer is only half full.

[I. Hate. Cliches.]

I understand that everything is relative to our own experience and therefore we are limited in what we consider to be real problems. In fact, to account for this conditional state, we have added the term "first-world problems" into our vernacular as if this compensates for us whining. Although not as bothersome as the incorrect and overuse of the term "epic," this phrase is still starting to become problematic for me. I'd never use a term like that in say, the title of a blog. 

What snapped me back into the realization of my pretty swell life were three things (in order of occurrence):

(1) A reunion with some of the best women on Earth. How our lives led us to be in the same place, at the same time, so we could be apart of each other's stories, is so fantastic.

(2) An assignment I gave my students on their identity that is blowing my mind.

(3) Having story time with my niece. I do the reading, she does the page turning. Backwards, forwards and back again...I'll read these pages forever to her.

All of these is a blog in itself, but I'm going to talk about #2.

In an intercultural class I teach, I assign an Identity paper to my students. They're challenged with picking two of their many identities (ie: age, sex, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, race, etc) and writing about the ones they consider to be the most influential in their lives. They must talk about their experience, a historical event within this culture, and stereotypes they've dealt with. Two of these papers shattered my heart.

[Paper #1-An Indian Woman:] "This paper was really hard for me to write because I don't feel like I have an identity." She goes on to explain that she was arranged into a marriage to someone she didn't love by her parents and her husband controls everything; including what she "likes" or is "interested" in. Therefore she feels like nothing is just hers.

I try and live my life on the basis of originality. How terrible it must and does feel for her to have nothing be your own; feeling you have nothing to separate you from another person. She goes on to explain that she did love someone at one point that validated her, but this man was from a lower class and was unacceptable to her parents.

[Paper #2-Korean Woman:] She is a lesbian that can't come out to her parents because in Korea, homosexuality is not an option. She said she felt comfortable in the states because this lifestyle was acceptable. In reading that, I immediately wondered if we were living in the same times as this is a constant point of political contention. But for her to make that statement, I realized that hers was a much different reality. And it was. If she were to come out to her parents, she would be disowned by her family.

There is literally nothing I could do to have my parents disown me. I haven't tried [all that hard] in finding ways, but there is too much love there for me to ever fathom this fate. 

From knowing these stories, my perception changed. Just like my friends stories intersecting with my own, I believe these women are sitting in my classroom for a reason. Maybe just for opening my eyes to another reality or for me to at least have been an outlet where someone would listen to their stories. How liberating words can make us feel; even if you're the only reader of them. I write to myself all the time.

I'm not saying that it isn't valid to be upset over things that happen to us just because somebody out there has it worse. Because frankly, things are crappy sometimes. What I am saying is that we all need to expand our limited perception and consider what somebody else may be going through if only to serve them with a smile or to hug someone we care about a little tighter.

I try to make people laugh. I have one student that comes into class everyday and his face is always so stern. He volunteers quotes from Nietzsche, will ask an occasional question, and is a very intelligent student, but his face is full of stress. I make it my goal in the two and a half hour class that I have with him to make him laugh at least once. If I get him twice, well, then I think I've done my job as an educator. Or maybe just as a human being.

A Tale of a City.

Chapter 1:

I’m 18. I’ve just stepped out of the mundane, judgmental halls of a homogenous high school. Everyone dresses the same, wants to act the same and wants to not be seen as different. I never had daydreams of being a wallflower. Freedom came to me in the form of an 8x8 dorm room cell infested with Ladybugs on the 7^th floor of Bloss Hall at Oregon State University, shared with my best friend. I guess that whole thing of Ladybugs being good luck had some sort of truth to it, and we had a ton.

In those four years of Undergraduate, Oregon State gave me friends. Lifelong friendships birthed in walks at halftime to and from the stadium, neighbors made in dorm room hallways coming back from midnight snacks or the country store and from proximity of sitting next to someone repeatedly in class and being forced out of awkwardness to say, "So is this class in your major?"

Barbecues were a weekday staple when afternoon classes let out Spring afternoons and friendships were strengthened around marinating chicken and steaks in the classiness of front porches and yards. And on some special Fridays when the sun was really out for the day, we may have taken a personal day to go to the beach 45 minutes away.

[This was one of those days]

Oregon State gave me the world. My international experience was confined to the landmasses that we share on the North and South ends of our country. Before I went to college the “world” always seemed to be something I could only touch with my hand by lying my palm on a globe while it spun in its circles. That was the extent of my orbit. It wasn’t a tangible place; somewhere my feet would ever be able to touch upon the soil of a different nation. I’m not one for being fond of being wrong, but I’m so glad I was on this one.

[Those are my Pumas. On Left. In Greece]

[It gave me this sunset]

Oregon State gave me employment. From Student Orientation, to a Liberal Arts Ambassador, to working in the International Office to speak to students about going abroad (seriously, I’m being paid for this??) and my coveted position of a tour guide. Yes, I wore an adult men's medium Orange polo that perpetually faded with every wash and sunbeam that touched it, and I wore that thing proud. I love that I know the intricacies of the behind-the-scenes of OSU. I feel like it’s the inside look you get when you click on the extra features on a DVD.

[Fun Fact: Betty Crocker went to OSU and it was also where the Maraschino Cherry was invented.]

Oregon State gave me love. And oh, did I fall. Down that Rabbit Hole, I did fall and I couldn't seem to find Alice's hand to grasp onto.

Chapter 2:

I’m 22. I’m at CH2M Hill Alumni center searching for a future in the rows of employers represented by booths and cardboard signs. People are shoving their business cards my way and I’m reciprocating with smiles and an elevator speech of why my 4 years of education makes me better than the other nervous college student behind me who has an almost identical speech prepared.

I interviewed. I convinced myself that sales would be right for me, why wouldn’t it be? The only thing I’ve ever dreamed of doing was to write and there’d surely be writing involved there.

Then came my Department Chair with an opportunity to not only get my Master’s Degree, but on a full scholarship while teaching courses as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. Up until this point, I had never thought about a Master’s Degree. No one in my family had one, why should I? But thinking back to the row of party-pumps turned interview-attire at the career fair and showing me the very real nature of my competition while trying to discern why I was special, made me think that maybe this isn’t a half bad deal.

My aforementioned Best Friend and I roomed for all four years of college (and we remain Best Friends which is some sort of wonderful with the ways that roommate situations can go). Now I was on my way to living alone for the first time in my life that wasn’t a weekend that she’d be away for. I was very much the independent gal who didn’t need a friend in tow for every outing, but being alone had its whole other reality.

So here I was, still at OSU while most of my friends had departed (except for a selection in their 5^th year :) ); it was time to make new friends with a new cohort.

Chapter 3:

Thesis defended. Master’s degree on the bookshelf as that is the only place anyone will ever see it. No one asks to see those things. Leave OSU for the corporate world only to be back a couple years later. This time as an educator.

I’m 26.75 and I am driving to Corvallis for my last time in the foreseeable future. A thought like this is kind of inconceivable being that I have been making this journey three times a week for about a year and a half. It’s a part of my routine, and I’m a sucker for those. As I’m taking Exit 228, the violin sounds from one of my favorite songs by The Verve “Bittersweet Symphony" comes on. No truer words have been spoken.

I made a special route today to drive by Bloss Hall. And by Reser Stadium. I drive by the shop where I got my nose pierced for the first time while bored during a snowstorm that shockingly shut down OSU for two days. And a few front yards where I convinced myself I could smell barbeque even as the rain splashed onto the street making it close to impossible for any flame to burn. I drove by the dirtiest shanty of a house I had ever lived in and could not fathom sleeping in today. In fact, when we viewed the house the first time, there was a dead bird in the living room. We took it anyway. Completely different meaning to Put a bird on it.

I walk out of my last class I'll teach there and find myself in front of the Valley Library. I pull out my camera despite the rain and take a picture, even though I can’t imagine the day where I forget what this gorgeous building looks like and the way I feel so small walking down its infinite aisles of books which now includes my own work (actually, I’m not sure if they printed it or if it just exists online).

[I know it looks dreary, but you can smell the Cherry Blossoms, I promise.]

Chapter 4:

The U-Haul will pull away with my brother at the wheel and my dad following behind. My mom and I wave from my new home, surrounded by daunting cardboard boxes in the living room behind me. She’ll help me unpack, clean as she has always done and make some food to sustain what will be a busy week, but this time I’ll put her on a train back home (and she’ll all-too-soon end up in Barbados) and I’ll be alone. Left to figure out on my own devices what this freedom means in a new city, 9 years later. If a place like Corvallis could show me the non-textbook version of the world, love, teaching and friendships, I wonder where I'll find myself on these new city sidewalks. But that's another tale I suppose I'll have to tell.