A couple thoughts I felt like typing out

1) As far as I can tell, one of the secrets of being cool is acting like you don't care if you're cool or not--which usually means you need to convince yourself that you indeed do NOT care. I just finished a really fantastic field trip with a lot of great folks. And i know that if I was a freshman taking that same trip, I would've been obsessing every day about whether or not folks liked me, getting depressed about not being social enough, fixated on being included in absolutely everything. But I just chilled on this trip. I just had a good time, acted like myself, and honestly made lots of new friends. bada-bing bada-boom bada SCIENCE.

2) FEMINISM RANT: The problem with the feminist movement is that we expect tolerance from men but give them very little. Instead of working with with them, we blame them, when in fact the problem isn't "the man." It's our culture. So we alienate 50% of the population by blaming them for our oppression. But while we complain about rigid gender roles for women, we still enforce them on ourselves and men. Just think about the term "mom knows best."

Who the hell gets offended by this statement? Maybe just me. The fact is, it implies that biologically women are naturally far superior as caretakers. I would disagree. Sure, women may be more encouraged to take on nurturing roles, but I would argue that whatever parental instinct a woman may have, a man has one as well. Many women have trouble juggling careers and parenthood at once. Sometimes they even leave their jobs to take care of their children. I have no issues with any of that. The thing is, most people see no problem with that situation, and what bugs me is that if a woman stays at work and her husband takes care of the kids, lots of people will whisper things, and begin to wonder if why the woman doesn't want to spend time with her kids, or something like that. Ok, I'm really rambling. The thing is, I think if we want equality and tolerance in anything we are required to SHOW equality and tolerance. So give up the bullshit: resist temptation to pigeonhole gender roles by believing Men being from Mars and Women from Venus, and don't believe Mom knows better than dad because she has an extra X chromosome. Only then are we going to make any progress.

3) One last week of class to go! University of Georgia has invited me to interview there in February! They're going to pay for all my expenses, including airfare, lodgings, and food! WOOO!