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Blog mooshkilah

GUYS.  THE TIME HAS COME.

Yesterday I was trying to upload a picture to a blog post.  And Blogger was like, did you think you could live here for free forever?

I guess after almost three years (three years!) of regular blogging, you will eventually run out of free photo storage.

It's funny because yesterday morning I tweeted:

Sometimes I am like, blogspot is so 2009. And then I am like, oh yeah, that's when I started my blog.

I've been thinking for awhile that it's time to move this blog to a different place.  I've obviously proven myself to be a devoted, albeit sometimes melodramatic and un-serious blogger.  I deserve more!

These days, blogger is for 28-year-old newlyweds who write run-on sentences and post pictures of their lawn with captions like "Harold is so excited about how much the grass has grown since June!!!!" It might be time to vacate these premises.

I honestly don't know what my blog's MO is.  I think my audience comes solely from the fact that I update regularly.  Who are you and why do you read my blog?

Anyway, at a date in the near future "I am an aspiring... something" will be moving to an undisclosed location.  Don't worry- I'll disclose it when it exists.

A word on the title: when I picked it I was 17-years-old and I was like GUYS I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING WITH MY LIFE AND THIS IS A REALLY BIG PROBLEM I SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW RIGHT NOW I'M SO AIMLESS.  So I picked that title.  Now I'm older and wiser and totally aspiring to be a journalist (I think- unless my year as editor kills all love I have for this field.  Which is possible).  Anyway, I'm keeping the title.  Because 1. it's my thing and consistency is key.  And 2. as Valerie says- "you go through a lot of phases."  Two weeks from now I'll be an aspiring sword fisherwoman (jk- that was last summer.  It just sounds SO COOL.  Listen to this).

So, the blog will be moving.  Until then, picture-less posts will be popping up here whenever I feel the need to write about something.  Which, let's get real, is basically every 3 hours.

Personality traits I've surmised from your writing

Convoluted sentences say to me: I am so complex that my fragile psyche cannot fathom the idea of splitting my thoughts into more than one sentence.

Semicolons say to me: I'm so pretentious.

Dashes say to me: I'm also fairly pretentious.

Too many commas say to me: I am so in tune with my breathing while I write. I do yoga every morning and hike mountains and eat only raisins, kombucha and hummus.

Oxford commas from journalism majors say to me: My education is teaching me literally nothing.

An article that is entirely quotes says to me: Look, I did the research!  Aren't I great?! (editor's note: no.)

Putting punctuation outside quotation marks says to me: I am a moron.

Wednesday summary: classifications

Dad called me in the middle of class today.  So I called him back while I was walking home.

Me: Hey, what's up?
Dad: I just wanted you to know that I posted a picture of you on facebook, and Roxana Saberi liked it.

I tried to brag about it to my roommates, but no one really knows who Roxana Saberi is.  So I started making brownies instead.  In the midst of brownie making, Valerie and Denali starting talking about being spacial people.

Honestly, I've never completely understood the idea of spacial thinking.  My brain is so far opposite of spacial thinking that I'm not even sure spacial thinking exists.  When I look at a sheet of music, I see letters.

Meanwhile, Valerie and Denali are talking about the amazing things that spacial people can do.

Me: What? I have no idea what this means.

So they explained it to me, and I still don't get it because my brain works in words not pictures.

I've never been able to figure out what kind of a person I am in regards to spacial, visual, etc.  No one ever talks about people who read music in letters and think in paragraphs.  So I asked.

Valerie: Dude, you're an auditory learner.  You remember things without taking notes.  You like listening to podcasts.
Denali: Uh, you like lecture classes.

So, tonight's revelation: I am auditory person.  I spent 20 minutes washing the dishes and thinking about what this means.  My thought process was something like this: I never have to take notes again!  I'm probably a language learning genius!  I can sit in class and not pay attention and still learn everything!

We moved our couch into the kitchen recently, and so the floor of our living room is now entirely covered in sleeping bags.  Denali has basically lived on the floor of the living room since last Thursday when we made this change.  I brought this up to her.

Denali: Dude, I'm just a floor person.

We are just into classifying ourselves these days. 

3.5 months in.

I've been back for three and a half months now.  Which is almost as long as I lived in Amman.  And a third of the time I was gone.

The last three and a half months have flown by without much to remark on.  I spent most of the summer fitting back in and pretending I wasn't a disaster.  I don't think I fooled anyone.  School has been going on for a little over a month.  We finished putting together issue no. 6 of The Sun Star last night.

Life keeps going on.

I read a lot of study abroad blogs.

I like watching the posts go by in this order:

1. I LOVE IT!  
2. Um, do I love it?  Now I'm confused and foreign.  
3. JK, totes love it again.
4. Now I'm leaving... FEEL ALL THE EMOTIONS.

I've done the whole moving to a foreign country and being a laughably foreign student (twice) so I kinda connect to these stories.

I wish there were more returned-from-study-abroad blogs.  So I could keep tabs on how I was doing.  As far as I can tell this is the order:

1. Whoa. America.  Hot water.  Cool.
2. I miss ALL the things.
3. I'm actually pretty lost and heartbroken and upset and NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME.
4. Ok, I'm so busy, I don't have emotions to expend on this anymore.

If you studied/lived/served/danced abroad and came home, let me know how you're doing.  Let me know that I'm not crazy or that I am crazy or that you just miss the way your roommates would cheer you up with horrible movies and hookah or that you hated everything and you're happy to be home or something.  Tell me something.

My life on Sundays

Actual text conversation.

My roommates made a bet on what time I would get home last night.  Everyone lost.  I came home later than the most adventurous guesser.  So that happened.

An open letter to campus music creepers

Dear person using my iTunes library,

I know you're out there.

I know, because when I tried to quit iTunes, iTunes said "Someone is using your iTunes library! If you quit now, they will lose access to your music."

An iTunes library is pretty personal.  What character judgements are you making based on my iTunes library?

What do you think of my iTunes library?  Did you just load it to look for incriminating songs?  If so, you should know that I'm not embarrassed by having 7 Aly & AJ songs.  I do have a lot of T-Swift, but I'm not really embarrassed by that either.

Did you decide to creep on my iTunes library because you secretly have a crush on me and you want to know what song to serenade me with when you decide to throw rocks at the window that is so conveniently located next to my bed?  If so, WHO ARE YOU?  You've pretty much already won my heart.

Did you just load it because it's called "EMOTIONAL CELERY! Mondays, 4-6 p.m. on KSUA"?  We're you impressed enough to decide to tune in on Mondays?

I wonder what's in your top 25 most played playlist.

Sincerely,
Elika

On editing and keeping moving

Last week was the I-think-I'm-starting-to-know-what-I'm-doing-with-the-paper week.  It was fabulous and I literally skipped around campus and I baked cheerful cookies and listened to music that could best be described as sunshine music.

It made me feel hopeful and happy and like I'm starting to learn how to fold in the corners of my life abroad and fit back in to the greater sphere of life at home.

This week has been the who-are-you-kidding-you-are-so-not-equipped-for-this week.  Mountains of typos have cracked the windshield of my rosy glow and melodramatic reporters are grating on my nerves.

Now that I'm five issues in, I actually had a chance to sit down and have a comprehensive budget report that means something.  And I've always known the Sun Star has no money.  But we really have no money.  It's kind of depressing.

I'm starting to realize being editor is basically a life of deciding which battles you want to fight.  And proofreading.

---

I'm sitting at my desk listening to the Shins seriously researching journalism internships in Shanghai right now.

It's an itch-- this travel thing.  All I want to do is go places and write and keep going and keep writing.

I bruised my knee yesterday, trying to move on.

(I actually bruised it in broomball.  But that was a poetic ending, right?)

This conversation just happened

Valerie: Not to be a hipster, but I'm glad The Shins aren't as popular as Mumford and Sons.

Elika: Not to be a hipster, but when things get really popular you think about them differently.

Valerie: Because of the hype.

Elika: I like that Shins fans are pretty low-key about their love of The Shins.



KSUA has changed us.  Pretty soon we'll be making documentaries about how disastrous our room gets every few days.

Baking obsessed

Us Cutler 204 girls are a bit baking obsessed as of late.  Apparently when you grow up after your freshman year in the dorms where every Saturday night is a party and move into your own apartment, you entertain yourself with flour and sugar.  It's so... domestic.

So far this weekend we've made:

Cranberry-chocolate chip bread
Pumpkin bread
Pumpkin bread muffins
Zucchini brownies with chocolate-peanut-butter frosting
Baked pumpkin seeds

Also, on the list to bake today and tomorrow tentatively:

Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Pumpkin cranberry bread
Pumpkin chocolate chip bread

Not to mention, we make our own bread.  So there's a bunch homemade wheat bread filling up cabinet space waiting to be turned into toast.

And Ashley's mom sent us a lovely care package full of chocolate chip cookies and peanut-butter cheerio bars this week.  The peanut-butter-marshmallow-cheerio bars are already gone.

So yeah, apparently I won't be losing that falafel weight.  But at the moment, I'm ok with that.

Also, come visit us!  We'll feed you baked goods.

Emotional Celery attends hipster gathering

Art roundup for Sept. 21, 2012

What is it about poetry that connects humans at the most fundamental of levels?

Sometimes, when I am exhausted and sad, I spiral into a black hole of reading thought catalog posts one after the other, thinking that "this one will be better than the last."  They never are.

Yesterday, I read a horrible list called "Some Tips On How To Be A Better Person."  It was satire, but it was sort of misguided.  This was from the first entry on the list:

Poetry used to be a giant “LOL WHAT?” for me but then I discovered poets who actually made me feel things and then I was like, “Oh.”

It's amazing that high school english teachers never beat the caring out of me, because somehow, there's poetry out there that makes me feel things still.

I haven't been as avid of a podcast consumer since I've been back in the states.  In Italy, I had at least an hour a day of walking to and from class when I just plugged into Radiolab and Indie Feed.  And in Jordan, the bus ride to school took ages, so I consumed This American Life then.  At home, I don't have those pockets of time so I'm super behind on all my public radio and podcasts, which means I haven't gotten my spoken word dose lately either.

Every Monday, Valerie and I air a poem at 4:44 p.m. on Emotional Celery.  And, honestly, I've run out of things to play in fear of having the spoken word moment of the week be purely the Sarah Kay moment of the week.

So I've been catching up a little.  Here are a few awesome finds:

"Unsolicited Advice to Adolescent Girls with Crooked Teeth and Pink Hair" by Jeanann Verlee

This poem starts out lighthearted, but quickly picks up speed.  The ending is SO powerful.

TedxConcordiaUPortland - Anis Mojgani - Equal Parts Science and Magic

Anis Mojgani is one of my favorite poets.  Right up there with Sarah Kay.  This is an awesome TEDtalk with some lovely poetry woven in.  It makes me wish I could weave poetry so easily in and out of my life.

Suheir Hammad - What I Will

I first heard Hammad's poetry when I was in Jordan while discussing non-violent resistance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  It's stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks-awe-inspiring.  If I can grow up to make half as much sense as Suheir Hammad, I'll be happy.

Other things I've found lately I love:

SoulPancake has a youtube channel.  They're constantly putting out content, so I'm not an avid consumer.  But what I do watch, I generally love.  My favorites are the Art Attacks.  Mostly because I LOVE TIME-LAPSE VIDEO!

DIVERSITY Timelapse Photoshop by Nan Lawson - Art Attack

There's so much fabulous art out there in the world!  I'm constantly inspired and humbled and all those good adjectives.

A little closer to home, one of my reporters wrote an awesome investigative piece this week.  Watching him get so excited about chasing this story and helping him through it pretty much made my week.  You can read the story here (at this point in the night it's gotten 46 recommends on facebook, which is amazing).

Finally, here's a nice picture to finish off the night:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63002274@N05/5857382105/

Re: Is college worth it?

Is College a Lousy Investment? by Megan McArdle

My roommates don't think it is.  I do.

Newsweek's cover story this week finally shed some realism on the omgALLthedebtz hullabaloo that dominates the media at the beginning of every semester.

A couple of my favorite excerpts from the article:

"These days an increasing number of commentators are nervously noting the uncomfortable similarities [of the emphasis on the importance of a college education no matter what] to the housing bubble, which started with parents telling their children that 'renting is throwing your money away,' and ended in mass foreclosures."

"Effectively, we’ve treated the average wage premium as if it were a guarantee—and then we’ve encouraged college students to borrow against it. The result will be no surprise to anyone who has made the mistake of setting his or her teenager loose in a shopping mall with a credit card and no spending limit. Eighteen-year-olds demand amenities—high-speed Internet, well-upholstered classrooms, world-class fitness facilities—and in order to stay competitive, college administrators happily provide them. Then they raise the tuition for which the 18-year-olds are obediently borrowing the money."

[editor's note: TRUE.  I pay a $65 fee for my wireless internet, and I expect it to WORK, damnit!]

"Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college."

"Caplan notes that work also builds valuable skills—probably more valuable for kids who don’t naturally love sitting in a classroom... Heckman would like to see more apprenticeship-style programs, where kids can learn in the workplace."

Again, I reiterate that I don't feel like hanging around doing homework is giving me any practical skills.  Honestly, I'm the kind of girl that would thrive under an apprenticeship and with a library card.  School just isn't my MO.

Obviously a lot of people disagree with me.  But I think we should start examining the approach we have right now, because it's definitely not working for everyone.

blink&you miss it

Fall in Fairbanks is the kind of season that runs by at warp speed.  Blink and you miss it, take a nap and when you wake up you're well into winter.

Just days ago it was pleasant fall and now it is biting, ominous chilly fall.  Weeks ago it was summer and sunshine and oh-my-God-it's-so-hot-I'm-dying temperatures (i.e. 75 degrees Fahrenheit--so I have a low heat tolerance, sue me).  I semi-seriously joked all summer that I wished it was winter.  Now it's almost winter, and I'm kicking myself for sweating the summer away.

To be honest though, I've missed the snow.  Anyone who spent a modicum of time with me last year can attest to my weirdly large love of Alaska.  I'm not particularly into winter sports or cold weather activities, so it doesn't make sense to me either.  But I've heard from rom-coms that the truest loves make the least amount of sense.

Really, I've moved around enough to know that my soul belongs in the snow.  Or in Jordan.  Or, to be honest, a large number of places.  But I'm making a concerted effort to stop writing about my aching wanderlust, so this thought ends here.  (Per Valerie's feedback, "no, I mean, your blog is still good.  You should just stop writing about how much you miss Jordan.")

I keep meaning to stop when I'm walking through the woods to get back home.  The leaves are turning more yellow every hour and the ground coverings are a brilliant red.  But there are articles to edit and math homework to finish and lunch to eat and reading for classes to blow off and the internet to surf and lap swim to make it to and a radio show to put together and texts to guiltily not answer (sorry, guys), so I keep walking.  I tell myself that one day my life will calm down.  It might.

I'm writing for writing's sake.  It's been a challenging few months since I've been home, but the one thing I can do is put one word after the other.  Sometimes I forget that, but I'm trying not to these days.

It's nearly 2 a.m., and tomorrow morning will be the beginning of another day that passes in September bringing with it a few more fallen leaves.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD

10 Reasons My Dad Is Awesome, a list.

Zayn and Dad in Haifa.  June 2012.

1. After I got my bright green springfest sunglasses and wore them around, he thought they were so cool he got bright green sunglasses too.
2. He tumbls, tweets and instagrams under the name "dadman9."
3. He catches on to the things I say and starts repeating them as much as I do (like "womp womp" and "bloop bloop bloop!")
4. He is kind of a hipster.
5. His main feedback for the Sun Star is "Why isn't there a mobile website?  Hello, we all live on our iDevices now!"
6. Sometimes when I call home looking for guidance, we just end up talking about kefir.
7. He decided he liked John Mayer last spring, and sent me John Mayer lyrics in Arabic such as "stop that train" (قف هذا القطار) on facebook.
8. I got my curly hair from him!
9. He iMessages me pictures of kefir when I send him pictures of potato tadiq.
10. He gets unabashedly excited about weird things.

Happy birthday Dad!  I love you!