Criticizing the "Norms" of Society

Humans are truly fascinating animals. Unlike almost any other animal of our kind, humans are born with essentially no knowledge of the world and without the ability to take care of themselves in any way. The factor that makes humans so interesting is that we learn almost everything we know from the world around us. That being said, humans are extremely malleable, but this malleability lends itself to the possibly of "molding" people to have unswayable ideas which many times blocks the ability for society to progress and better the lives of the people living in it. 

I see the inability to get past certain ideas that have been so deeply rooted into society all the time and I would be hypocritical if I didn't say that I see it in myself as well. Coming from an American, white, middle-class family, there are many privileged ideas that I have that are the result of my environment and my family. In thinking about many of these ideas, it had never really occurred to me, and still doesn't at times, that not all of these ideas and norms are necessarily correct or true in any form. After looking through the same lens for 18 years, it honestly is hard to see and understand things from other perspectives, however without criticizing or maybe even just taking the time to understand the things that we have just began to consider "normal" in our society. 

I think its important to think critically about these norms because the way we do things is not necessarily going to be the way that others would do the exact same things. Take for example, capitalism. The United States has had a capitalist economic system since it's independence from Great Britain and honestly, since then, not many things have changed. My parents raised me to believe that the United States was the best country in the world. The only country with complete independence. Not until last year, did I take a moment to think about these broad statements that I found completely engrained in my brain. The thing is, looking from an economic standpoint, yes, the US is pretty well off, however have we ever taken a moment to think just about the quality of life in the United States in comparison to other parts of the world? The answer is no, and the reason is that we as humans don't always naturally question the things that we have been taught growing up, we consider them facts. So after I began to think about this complete "independence" that my parents had always assured me that I had, just based on the fact that we live in the United States, I began to think about some of the effects on society that capitalist systems can present. With such a high focus on the economy, many times we completely forget about social and environmental issues that are also important factors that determine our quality of life. So is the US still the best country in the world if we often times forget 2 important factors that affect our lives in such large ways? Maybe, maybe not, but the great part is that its an opinion and NOT a fact, so you get to decide.

The point here is that not everything we hear and see everyday in our environments is necessarily the best, most productive, or most satisfying way to do things. To really move forward in society we need to find the root to the basic issues that we find ourselves having everyday. So be progressive and think outside the box because progressive people are the people that will keep our country and possibly the world afloat. 

The Life Decision Blues

Recently I have been completely fixated in an inner battle of what I want to be for the rest of my life. I have always wanted to be a doctor, honestly it has to be one of my very first memories. It has become part of my identity. I have always been quite a nurturing person, which I think lends right to such an occupation. So it makes sense that as I have begun to question following my life long dream, I have had many problems making any type of decisions about my future.

In the consideration of many other occupations, I have begun to feel almost as if I am drowning. I am drowning in a world full of opportunities and from bird's eye view, that seems like quite a nice problem to have, however it from my point of view it seems as though the walls are closing in on me and I am left wallowing in all of these crazy decisions that will affect the rest of my life. Normally, I feel as though I accept defeat well. I know and can accept my weaknesses and I am quick to get over those types of things typically. However, I am quite literally stuck on this and so I have to assume that the world in which I have grown up in has something to do with my figurative state of mind.

The thing is, no one ever told me that I should be a doctor. I was never attracted to the idea with visions of money. There was just always something in me that was so attracted to the medical field. As a child, most of my punishments had some correlation with being caught watching surgery on the discovery life channel. Which is quite the opposite of what one would expect from a young child. However, in recent years I have begun to doubt my life long dream. Maybe its the intense amount of work that has scared me away or the intensity of the student body or just the intensity of it all in general (I don't work well with intensity). However, should I really give up something that is so tied to my identity just out of fear? I really am not sure. I do know one thing. I find this to be such a big dilemma because I never want to be disappointed in myself in the future. I don't want to look back and look at my accomplishments as failures. I don't want to fall into some rogue job that will never fulfill my search for happiness and most of all I don't want to change the dreams in which my entire identity has been built upon.

So I want to leave this post open. I hope that this prompts you all to look deep within yourselves and find closure in similar choices. I think a huge component of our individual happiness is living life in the moment as opposed to the future. So should I leave these choices to the universe with the hope that everything will turn out alright in the end? Or should I focus on the future and focus on making the right choices today in order to ensure myself happiness in the future? I'll leave this question up to you. What would you do?

Why we actually do need feminism

Why we don't need feminism
So this week I wanted to do something a little bit different. Recently I have been seeing a lot of these anti-feminist blogs and I just wanted to share a few things about why this makes my skin crawl.

So here's the thing, feminism has been shown in a horrible light for the past several decades. Some women have taken on feminism and basically gone way overboard. They have created political lesbianism so to speak. They are women who disagree with patriarchal values and believe that the only way to dissolve these values is to change the system altogether. However, these are not true feminists and this is where people find misunderstandings.

The point is, feminism is not a giant male hate group. In fact, we are just the opposite. The definition of feminism is to create EQUALITY for EVERYONE. Just because women are now allowed to vote doesn't mean that we are truly equal. We need to look at the world through a critical lens. We need to form educated opinions.

I think for the good of everyone we need to get behind this movement. We need to stop oppression. Not just for women but for men as well and I strongly believe that feminism is the answer to these societal woes. The truth is, we are not all equal, but we can change it and I have the confidence that we will.

The Strength to Continue On

With the craziest part of the semester underway, I have decided to step away from my usual type of blog post to give myself and hopefully all of you some hope and strength to carry on to the end of this semester. Sometimes I find myself doubting that there will be an end to all of the madness of everyday life. My mom always says that college is like drinking from a firehouse. Although, it is a very odd simile to say the least, it has started to take on new shape and new meaning as the days go on. College is a completely different experience. We have thousands of assignments thrown at us, essays to write, problems to practice, lab reports to complete and thanks to my bad luck (I'm sure I'm not the only one with this issue) they always seem to be due on the same day. Then on top of all of that as if we weren't stressed already there are exams every week. I can honestly say that there are weeks were I feel as though I am treading in all of the work I have to do, with my head barely above it all of course. But the thing is, in the moment it is so hard to forget that these little details are not really what's important. What's important is the fact that we are here to learn. We are here to create a database of knowledge in order to go on to do bigger and better things. The truth is, that B on the test you got last week is not the end all be all. We have to begin to take college on not as a competition to earn the highest grade, but a competition with ourselves to work the hardest that we can and learn as much as we can from this amazing experience. Not everyone has this opportunity, and I don't say that to make you or myself crazy, but it's important to keep in mind. Knowledge is the most powerful weapon, we just need to learn how to acquire it. Just remember, knowledge is not measured by your GPA, its measure by the effort that you put into it.

The Value of Family

Today, due to some of the events in my life that have taken this place this week, I really feel the need to talk about family and how important it is to not take your family for granted. The thing is, growing up in a small suburb on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, I never would have thought that I would meet teenagers struggling through such difficult times, most commonly issues within their families. I have spent so much time thinking about how lucky I truly am that I have grown up in such a warm and loving home. However, I can not say that for most of my friends. I have spent a lot of time pondering why I have had such luck. Why did my best friend need to struggle under the weight of her family's issues when I had such an amazing and loving family that supported me through my most difficult friends. It wasn't until recently that I realized that I could change anything that my friends were experiencing. No good deed would ever fix the troubles that I have seen a lot of people face. However, through a lot of soul-searching I realized that there were only two things that I could really do, I can support my friends to help them through their hard times and not ever take what I have for granted because the truth is, not everyone has what I have, and more likely than not, not everyone has what you have either.

The truth is, no one lives a perfect life. No one has the perfect family. We all have obstacles that we have to overcome. For instance, my mother has been sick with a neurological disease since before I was born. I have watched all of her triumphs and failures and after a while it becomes truly difficult to watch your parent's physical state decline so rapidly. I watch her struggle through many everyday things, but the amazing part is, she has never once lost hope. She really is the most inspiring woman I have ever met and I love her more than any words could actually describe. With such an aggressive disease wreaking havoc on her neurological system, she has quite a lot of trouble completely seemingly menial tasks. So from a very young age, I helped around the house and did some things that many kids my age would never even think of doing. However, I never examined the differences and this is the key. In fact, I think I began to value my family more than many of my peers did because I realized that we needed to support each other to get through the hard times. And so I can tell you all: everyone goes through dark periods in their lives. Life is hard and often times cruel, but we are all given a really amazing gift in this life and that gift is family and they should never be taken for granted. 

Modern clichés: the downfall of originality

There is no doubt that we are drowning in a world of modern clichés. There is a cliché about just about everything you can think of and the truly terrifying truth of this is the fact that many clichés are really harmful to the way society functions and most people don't even realized that they exist. So for this reason, they are almost impossible to evade. People no longer ask questions, no longer inquire about why something is the way it is and I firmly believe that we need to resurrect the curiosity in society. We need to encourage originality in order to find happiness ourselves, but also for the good of society.


To give you all an explanation of what clichés really are I will turn to the dictionary definition of the word cliché. According to google (clearly the most reliable place for education on almost any topic) the definition of cliché is "a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought". Unfortunately our world is full of just that, unoriginal ideas. Naturally as humans we want to conform, we want to fit into a specific group in order to label ourselves as something and to find this group we must give a part of ourselves because let's face it, no one is exactly alike. The problem with not encouraging people to unique can be seen in many different forms. People conform to ideas about love, assuming that everyone must feel a very specifically defined emotion in order to consider something love. We conform to ideas about beauty, assuming that all women should either be a size 00 or as of lately, a women with a size 00 waist but a huge tush. Whatever the cliché may be, you can pretty much assume that it is harmful to those with the intention of fitting it perfectly because all humans are different - I know you've heard this 100000 times, but it might be the truest statement ever said.

We need to break through the cage that these clichés have created and accept ourselves as who we are as human beings. I know for a fact that this is not an easy endeavor. Even though, I absolutely hate clichés, I also find myself hopelessly trying to fit them. Until I really began to love and respect myself and understand that my quirks are what make me, me did I realize that I didn't need to fit some prototype of who I should be. So I challenge you all to break free from these overly used ideas about what or who we should be and we need to get on with enjoying life, a life without barriers.

The truth about love

An epidemic has been sweeping the nation lately, an epidemic that has begun to completely deplete any sort of meaning from the word "love". And the saddest part is that none of us even notice it. Instead, we are actively encouraging and feeding this phenomenon. We are constantly being socialized through all facets of the media that love is an unconscious choice, but also something that we invariably need in order to flourish in life. This is extremely true about women of today. We get so caught up in the constant search for the "perfect" guy that we allow the true meaning of love and happiness to slip between our finger tips.

Once again, I speak from a place of understanding in saying all of these things. I spent almost all of my high school years either in worthless, harmful relationships that I assumed were making me happy or pursing those worthless, harmful relationships because I had come to believe that somehow my self worth was connected to the attention I got from guys. I look back on these moments of my life with tears in my eyes. I look back and wish that I would have not fallen into the trap of harmful social norms that once completely ruled over me. I wish that instead of looking for happiness in others I would have looked for happiness within myself. However, I don't want to sketch my life as a sob story and I certainly don't feel as if dwelling in the past will help you in the future, but I did learn some extremely valuable lessons from some of these darker moments and thats what I want to share with you all.

I feel as though I mention this in almost every one of my posts and there is good reason for it. It is so extremely important to learn to love yourself. Although, this concept seems kind of odd, to really love and respect someone else, you truly do have to love and respect yourself. A lot of times we settle for someone who doesn't meet our standards. We settle for the love we think we deserve, but I'm telling you all right now that every single one of us deserves someone amazing. So I urge you all to first, love yourself, second, determine your standards (don't be afraid to set them high) and find people that meet those standards, and lastly don't stalk love, don't obsess over it and I promise you that your perfect partner will come along (trust me, I know from experience). 

Under-aged and Over-privileged

We’ve all seen it thousands of times: 18 year olds that drive by in their oddly luxurious cars, adolescents with their designer purses and clothes, elementary school-aged kids with all of the newest, hottest technology. Although, these things get attention and seemly make people happy, more than ever we are seeing the reprecutions of our extreme capitalist society as they begin to affect people in mostly negative ways. So it makes me think, what kind is the image of money that we are portraying to people nowadays, and how is it affecting adolescents.

I have to be honest, the first day of college I was astounded and quick frankly a little alarmed at the amount of young college students driving around in $80,000 vehicles. And I wasn’t gawking at them because I was jealous. In fact, I’m perfectly happy with my car that has wracked up far more years than I have on this planet. What truly disturbed me was the fact that there were willing to gift such young beings such valuable objects. I began to wonder how this phenomenon has begun to affect the youth of today. It’s really not that hard of a question to answer. Just look around you. More and more, adolescents are being given things that are slowing taking away the true definition of success. How can we learn what success really is if we have never had to make the effort to experience the fruits of success, they are just handed to us unearned and furthermore, how can we learn to appreciate the small aspects of life is everything is handed to us on a silver platter?

The phenomenon I am truly getting at has everything to do with being over-privileged and under-aged. People are loosing the ability to be grateful. Just as I said, I see it everyday and I am sure you all do as well. I even find myself complaining about trivial things from time to time, but as of recently I have been catching myself in these moments. However, I have to admit that I was once a semi-entitled kiddo as well. I grew up always wanting the newest ipod, I was about 8 when they first came out and I absolutely had to be the first to have one. I then was always on the quest to convince my parents to buy me a phone (because “all” of the other kids at school had one). As I got into middle school I became obsessed with clothes and already knew how to slip my mother’s credit card from her purse and purchase things online. Even into high school my entitled tendencies continued with makeup and hair products that I just really couldn’t “live” without, but then something changed. I got a job and learned that making money involved long hours of hard work. I then began to realize the amount of work my parents put in to buy me the things that I spent my life longing for.  And so it really hit me: I had to work hard to make money to be successful, success couldn’t be handed to you in the form of material objects. And with that, I became thankful for the things that I was given and thankful for everything in life.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression about the definition of the word success. I have learned the true definition of success in the past few years, but luckily the word “success” has a vague definition. The reason for that is YOU get to determine what success means to you. I believe that the first step to getting over this over-privileged mindset is to be thankful for all of the things you have been granted in life and realize that not everyone is as fortunate as we are and the second step is to stop assuming things don’t have to be earned. True personal success lies under all of these complicated layers of entitlement that we have built up. We just have to break these barriers down and find it for ourselves. So I challenge you all, what is your definition of success, and if you don’t have one, go find it.

Money is the anthem of success - not happiness

There's no doubt that money runs this world and I would be foolish not to acknowledge that fact. Money has wound its way into every part of our lives and has even become to define what we believe as true "success". And true success is bounded to the concept of true "happiness" as well, which is where this image of money takes a dangerous turn and becomes a harmful obsession of gaining wealth instead of discovering contentment within ourselves.

The problem is that the adolescence of today is being socialized to believe that the road to happiness is paved with dollar bills. Our capitalist society is flawed in that way. Today kids are taught to judge others not by who they are, but by how many things they own. Although, the things being introduced to society are revolutionary, we need to look at them and question the impact that they have on us as human beings.

I cannot pretend as if all of these same thoughts and opinions about the link between wealth and happiness haven't once been in my mind as well. I've lived a large portion of my life with the belief that if I didn't study hard enough, if I wasn't the best in my class, if I wasn't every teacher's favorite student, and if I didn't strive to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or any other highly payed individual then I would never be truly happy in my lifetime. And I spent every dime that I ever made working, as a waitress, on pointless things that made me happy for the moment, but in the long run only made me yearn for more objects to sustain my state of fabricated contentment.

I spent the past year as an exchange student in Lloret de Mar, Spain, a small town about an hour North of Barcelona and among the many things I learned during my eye-opening adventure, I learned that this happiness that I was always looking for in things apart from myself was truly inside of me my entire life. For the first time in my life I was forced to live with without the people that I had come to love and depend on and the personal belongings that I thought defined me. I learned probably the most valuable lesson in my life and that was that I was in control of my happiness and I was the only thing that was standing between that happiness that I so longed for. I saw that all of the objects in my life, though important in some ways did not hold as much weight as I had always believed. And so I want to reach out to all of you and share this valuable lesson. Do what you really love in life and make yourself happy because although money and objects may seem as though they bring these things, the effect is only momentary. So be yourself and join me on the path to true happiness.

Representing ourselves through the clothes we wear on our backs

So, lately I have spent a lot of time pondering, or maybe a better phrase would be fuming over the ways people choose to dress themselves. Frankly, I am completely for free expression and unique ways of dressing so I don’t want to allude to this being a negative thing. However, I do want to let you all in on the reason that this particular idea came to mind and the reason that I just can’t let it go.

About a week ago, I went out one night with a group of friends to a party at a frat house, like any typical college student. As we approached the neighborhood of frat houses, I became more and more flabbergasted by the swarms of scantily clothed women in dangerously high heels who for the majority, were all outrageously drunk. And for the next few days I actually felt this sort of anger mixed with embarrassment for these ladies and after spending a lot of time fuming over this all, I have finally come to a conclusion on the subject.

Self-expression is beautiful, but it is exactly that: SELF-expression. The reason that I found myself so angry and embarrassed over a bunch of half-naked girls was because they were doing the opposite of expressing themselves. They were scantily clothed to please others not themselves. That night I was almost embarrassed to share the same gender with this group of girls. I felt the disrespect that they had for themselves, it was obvious, almost hovering over their heads for everyone to see. I have realized that this is sort of an epidemic. They were dishonoring themselves as human beings, sending out the signal that they were sex symbols, not intellectual beings.

I can’t act as if I have never participated in this epidemic. I have spent the entirety of my life, until about the last year, dressing myself in order to please others, in order to fit, and in order to feel valued as a human being. I spent thousands of dollars buying garments that would show my economic status. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and wore clothes that showed too much skin in hopes of attracting attention from my male peers. I fawned over clothes that I thought would change people's perspective of me. But then in the past year I have realized that in acting this way I was truly doing myself a dishonor. What I have finally learned is that I was letting other people shape who I was and I didn't recognize that person in the least.

So all I have to say is this: we are who we are and we are all different. We should never let others define the value that we have especially not by the clothes we wear on our backs. Be proud of who you are and do things because YOU want to do them. We may not be able to change each other's views, but that isn't important. You are the change you want to see in the world. It all starts at an individual level and you need to make the choice to love and be who YOU are.

Cheers to new beginnings

So here's to starting something new! I have spent much time pondering what I wanted to include in my blog and in the end I decided that I wanted to create sort of an all encompassing realm of eclectic blog posts that all have the common goal of explaining my journey to discovering who I am and accepting who I am. I am hoping through these blog posts that I can continue to learn about myself, but also help others to find themselves as well. I will be posting on random occurrences in my everyday life, the trials and tribulations, and relating them to this journey of mine. I just can't wait to get started!