Category: Uncategorized

Panic.

Exams are coming.

However far you run or blissfully ignore them, there is no way to escape their presence. You can see them in the steady stream of students swallowed by the library doors. You can see them in the coffees, the Red Bulls, the drawn tiredness of students who studied too long into the night. I can feel them now, as I hurriedly type. Should I be studying? Probably. Even a temporary respite feels like a betrayal. I won’t fail, can’t fail now, there is too much on the line. It is the culmination of weeks of studying, papers, endless reading assignments. So, I keep my eyes open, even when they yearn to slide shut. It may be 2:00 in the morning, but I don’t care. There is a strange adrenaline running through my veins. The type that only comes from absolute dread as I sense the monster approaching ever closer. I should have known when I first discovered the operating hours at the UGLi. I should have known when there were two therapy dog sessions within one week. I should have known after midterms. But the characters in a horror story always run into the abandoned asylum despite every glaring warning sign.

So, run.

But you can’t escape.

I hope that this gets easier because the tests certainly never stop. I thought the spelling tests in third grade were the biggest challenges, until I confronted the SAT. After approximately seven SAT study guides, there was AP testing and endless college applications. Tests are the perfect representative of a society that has grown more scientific, calculated, and objective. They are impartial, uncompromising, which is why we put so much faith in them. They give us clear black and white answers instead of relying on undependable humans to judge intangible qualities. They play on our need for approval. They are proof that we are talented, worthy, valuable. Unfortunately, they are also temporary bandages, a solution in disguise, because there is always another one. Although, tests may try to rank our best qualities, but I don’t think they bring out the best in us. I look around and hope that no one is judging me when I turn my back. I measure my conversations carefully in case that it is more than a conversation. It is a subtle paranoia that scares me as much as any haunted house.

It can’t be stopped.

I still wish I had a chainsaw.

So why do I keep trying to live up to these arbitrary standards? Like a trained seal, I keep jumping through the hoops for the treat that never seems to come. I know the answer that I’m supposed to give, the one that has been ingrained in me. It’s for the knowledge, the joy of learning. But ever-growing pit in the bottom of my stomach seems to disprove that theory entirely. I am perversely glad for the lack of clarity though, only to prove that life is not a test with clear rights and wrongs. I know I should be studying right now (Or at least sleeping….it is 3 am in the morning after all). My brain is gasping as I race to the finish line. This tortuous cycle is almost over. I’m glad we’re here together.

I collapse into sleep.

Peace.

As 2017 quickly approaches I’ve started to see my friends post their #yearinreview2016 videos on Facebook or post their #2016bestnine collages on Instagram. I haven’t made my own versions of these, but I did start to think about this past year. I didn’t think I had a specific favorite memory of 2016, but when I looked at my Instagram profile today, I realized I did. Although this year was an exciting one- the end of senior year, graduating, traveling, starting college at UMich- my most fun and exciting memory is from the Bastille concert I went to in September. The concert is captured in photographs on my Instagram profile in three pictures, all of which capture the brief five minutes that the lead singer spent walking through the crowd near my seat, featuring my uncontrollable hysteria.

Chill on the Hill is an annual “alt-rock” music festival held in Sterling Heights by radio station 89x. When I first learned that Bastille, my favorite band, was going to headline the show only three weeks after releasing their latest album, Wild World, I knew I had to go. So I bought three tickets, told my friends they were coming with me, and started counting down the days.

As more information was released about the bands that were also performing I was pretty confused. Pierce the Veil? The Used? Good Charlotte? I had heard of these bands but had never listened to them. Bastille stood out in stark contrast to almost every other band on the lineup.

When we arrived at the venue it was immediately obvious that someone had made a mistake in booking Bastille for this festival. From the music to the people in the crowd, it was definitely not their usual scene. But that didn’t bother us. The small Bastille crowd, pouring rain, and freezing temperatures (it was crazy cold for September) made it easy to sneak a seat in the front row. It was a perfect view, and the general admission pit in front of us was almost entirely empty.

We remained seated while The Used performed, all the while trying to figure out a way into the pit, which had plenty of room for three more people. When we saw security aggressively remove several barricade jumpers, we decided it was best to be happy with the upgrade we already managed to get. And I was later so thankful that we did.

Bastille finally took the stage with the venue at approximately only 50% capacity. I didn’t mind, of course. I had a great view, room to dance, and was completely absorbed by their performance. When they started to play Flaws, a popular song from their first album, I forgot about the ritual that coincides with the song. At almost every Bastille concert, the lead singer, Dan Smith, walks into the crowd while singing Flaws. It couldn’t even process what was happening until my friend was shoving me towards the aisle. Had we been in the pit there would have been no way for me to reach him in the crowd. The usual gigantic mob that swarms around him while he makes his way through the venue did not appear, and I was able to stand right next to him. He stopped in the aisle and sang, allowing my friend to take several pictures of him, me with him and the background, and my favorite, a video of my reaction afterward. As he proceeded to walk back to the stage I went from hysterically screaming to hysterically sobbing in a matter of seconds. It was one of the funniest, most embarrassing, and most emotional moments of my life, and it took me several songs to recover.

I ended up with an insane cold the next day, a result of 3+ hours in the cold, rainy weather, but it was worth it. It was definitely one of my favorite moments of 2016, and I can’t wait until next year when I’ll be able to see them again.

Why do I bother analyzing anything? This isn’t a statement meant to suggest that I am jaded or questioning my choice in academic subjects. Instead, I’m genuinely curious about who the analysis is even for? Ostensibly, it’s first and foremost, for me. But the problem is that I don’t really care about the majority of content I analyze. I’ve read countless novels, excerpts, poems, magazine articles, short stories, essays, and have seen countless (well not really, I am still young after all) films, paintings, installations, buildings, photographs, sculptures, and on and on and on. But only a fraction, of this mass of creation I’ve been and continue to be exposed to, do I actually have any stake in. I can only be so emotionally and intellectually invested across a never-ending spectrum of art. Yet I still analyze.

Perhaps I do it for the grades. Good grades are important right? This semester, I took some pass-fail classes and found myself unable to just…sigh…let it go.

“I don’t really want to try in this class. I just want to pass…but I don’t want to turn in a shit paper…as like a self-standard.”

Is that what this is all about, the fiction that I’m smart? I don’t consider myself an intellectual. Instead, I classify myself as an ignoramus of many subjects, trained to be able to craft some sort of bullshit concoction in a reasonable amount of time so that I can at least extend the illusion for one more minute, hour, day, or paper. Maybe that is just what analysis is – an improvisational act meant to assure oneself of their perceived academic prowess. Then there is the argument that my self-critique, or self-analysis, acts as some vague form of the imposter syndrome, believing myself to be incomparable to great artists that preceded or proceed me. Of course there are my contemporaries as well. Students who I believe are genuine. Genuine what? I’m not sure; perhaps that is why they appear to be such fetishized versions of truth.

I know the truth I seek, or imagine, is nigh untouchable by mankind. But nonetheless I like to believe that there are people out there who get it. Perhaps not consciously, but in some inherent sense, whether they realize it or not, are free from the question of why do I do “x”. I think this freedom may exist. Nah.

Wow, isn’t this the best thing to be thinking about during finals week? Also, isn’t it great that this is not an original thought and my own perceptions aren’t enlightening in the slightest? Only adding to the mire of collegiate babble that suffocates every coffee shop and dorm. I imagine that everything I write now, academic papers included, is followed not by an empty “Oh, that is interesting!” but a candid, “Ya, I get it.” Perhaps I shouldn’t turn in my final paper. Maybe it will be liberating. But I probably won’t cause I’m a coward at heart. That is one thing I’m certain of.

 

Can you find all Christmas song titles and references in this real dialogue I had at the gas station today?

“Hey man, Happy Holidays. just the gas?”
“And a coffee, please.”

While waiting for the machine to give out the coffee:

“Are you driving home for Christmas?”
“Sure! I can’t wait to see those faces. What about you?”
“No, I won’t be home for Christmas.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, my Mom told me: ‘All I want for Christmas is you’, but stepping into last Christmas wasn’t too holly jolly for me.”
“Man, I wish it could be Christmas every day! How come you don’t like Christmas?”
“What Christmas means to me is: I must be Santa.”
“You must be Santa?”
“I must be Santa. For the kids in our community. Plus, the weather outside is frightful.”
“It is but that just makes the fire so much more delightful. Aren’t you dreaming of a white Christmas?”
“Yes but when I was Santa last Christmas one kid accidentally hit me in my jingles… If you know what I mean.”
“Right in your sleigh bells?”
“Yes, so the entire twelve days of Christmas my true love gave to me an ice pack under our Christmas tree.”
“Mary’s boy child Jesus Christ. That sounds intense.”
“It sure is. The only thing rocking around the Christmas tree for me was pain.”
“So it was a blue Christmas for parts of you?”
“Yes… Do you know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t know you… Why am I telling you this? I just bought some gas and a coffee off you and now I’m telling you one of my most intimate stories? Why?”
“I know why.”
“Tell me… why?”
“Do you know it’s Christmas time at all? This is the most special time of the year and thank god it’s Christmas, because that is when you miss your family most and that is why you had to tell a stranger about your feelings.”
“Wow… Christmas is coming…”
“Yep.”
“All through the night…”
“Yep.”
“I better go tell it to the mountain.”
“The mountain?”
“My roommate works out.”
“Oh, yes you should. Maybe he’ll even spend Christmas with you.”
“No, he’s spending his Christmas in Harlem.”
“Well, tell him anyway.”
“I will.”
“You can let your sleigh bells rock.”
“Ehm…”
“Go on a one man sleigh ride.”
“Ok, see you.”
“Merry Christmas!”

Next week we’ll see how well you can track Christmas movie titles and references.

 

PS: Remember to be the weirdest you can possibly be!

Let me introduce you to the three main styles of pole dancing: sport, exotic, and artistic. Sport typically requires the strongest dancers, as you may see them performing flag poles and other maneuvers that require ridiculous strength endurance. Exotic pole may be the first style that comes to mind when you think of pole dancing. It embodies an extravagent approach with a promiscious flare. Lastly, artistic pole describes a story delivered through graceful and elegant movements. This is the style a friend and I learned in the Intro to Pole offered at aUM Yoga.

Upon entering the studio, we removed our shoes out of respect and cleanliness and received a friendly greeting by two instructors. One of them named Sylvia, who has been practicing pole for three years, led a full class of beginners to understand the basics of artistic pole dancing. After a warm up, we tested our strength, creativity, and discipline once we came into contact with the pole. We applied wash clothes with alcohol solution and a sticky spray specifically for this sport to our hands to help fastened your grip to the pole. Besides keeping your hands in place, this dance requires an immense amount of strength smoothed with grace over the intensity, making the mastery of these moves in the first class nearly impossible. Overlooking the Ann Arbor nightlife on South University, the studio captured an atmosphere of both light and fun as well as expressive and determined.

Different types of music allowed various approaches to finding our rhythm as well as our voice through dance. Upbeat songs surged the energy through your muscles and encouraged you to harness your power with an fast paced tune. Slower songs seeped into your core and inspired you to discover a dormant art within yourself.

Her words “no two people dance the same” reinforces the concept that we all interpret the world in a unique way. What you may see as the color blue may differ from my perception of blue. Either way, it is still blue to both of us. Understanding this different can be a frustrating process. This is why there is conflict in relationships, government, and religion. No two people are the same. Even if they are genetically identical, the core being offers something that makes them special.

 

Please note that these images were taken after one class of experience.