A Thank-You to the Good Guys: How "The Bachelor" Got Me Thinking about College

A Thank-You to the Good Guys: How "The Bachelor" Got Me Thinking about College

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

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You know by now that I'm a big fan of The Bachelor franchise of shows, & this week's episode did something the shows have never really done before: address sexual assault. One of the contestants, Caelynn Miller-Keyes, got emotional as she told the bachelor, Colton Underwood, about her rape. I was glad to see the show give Caelynn's story the time & seriousness is deserved, & like everyone else watching, I was absolutely devastated by her story.

It's a story that is horrifying, heartbreaking, & all too familiar: Caelynn & her friends we drugged & assaulted at a fraternity house, where she was raped on a couch while onlookers cheered for her abuser.

As I listened to Caelynn's story, I cried - not just for her & her friends but for the fact that this happens, period, to women the world over. And that it happens so often that it is no longer surprising, despite the fact that it is never any less horrifying.

In fact, it's become so unsurprising that I found myself thinking back with surprise about the fact that I was not sexually assaulted in college.

As a sorority girl at Ohio University, nearly all of my male friends were fraternity brothers. My sorority sisters & I spent tons of time at one fraternity house in particular, where one of the brothers was my friend's longtime boyfriend from high school. Soon, we were friends with nearly all of the brothers, & we went to lots of parties there, plus lots of just-hanging-out nights, both at the fraternity house & at the off-campus houses where some of the guys lived.

They were our friends - & they were also our protectors. When we got drunk or passed out or didn't totally remember the evening (note: I do not drink like this anymore), they let us sleep on couches or they slept on couches or kicked creepy dudes out of parties or walked us home. They took care of us - without taking advantage of us.

I remember one time, in particular, when a sketchy guy from one of my classes showed up at a party at the fraternity house, uninvited; he'd heard me tell someone else I'd be there. When I mentioned it to one of my sisters, she told one of the brothers, who very quickly asked the guy to leave - even though he barely knew me. He was polite but firm, just a, "Bro, you need to leave," kind of thing. And just like that, everything was OK again.

There was another time, when my little sister got too drunk at the frat house (ah, Greek life), & I knew I needed to get her home. I couldn't manage her myself & couldn't get a hold of our designated "sober sister," so the guys tracked down their sober brother, who picked up my little, buckled her into his car, & drove us both home. He helped me get her into her dorm room, then left - nothing but helpful & kind.

But every time I read or hear a story about college experiences like Caelynn's, I think: My friends & I were so lucky - but it so easily could've gone another way. And for so many women, it does.

I just keep asking myself: How did we know so many good men when so many are so not? I feel so thankful that they were good men, who took care of us rather than hurt us - but it turns my stomach to know that so many women haven't had that college experience. And how backwards is it that I feel surprised to have had such supportive, kind male friends? That should be the norm - but we all know it's not.

It's been nearly 15 years since my time at OU, & I don't know most of those guys anymore, even on Facebook - but I still think about them a lot. In an era of #metoo & #timesup, I wish I could thank them for the way they treated us, & especially for the way they didn't treat us. Because of them, I got to grow up trusting men - & that's a right that so many women are simply not afforded.

Good men, rise up - & please know that your goodness is not going unnoticed. Thank you.

If you are struggling in the aftermath of a sexual assault, please know that you are not alone. Contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.

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Here's What Happens When an Introvert Chooses a Party School

Here's What Happens When an Introvert Chooses a Party School

Friday, March 25, 2016

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Like nearly every other 17-year-old on earth, I had grand plans of reinventing myself when I went off to college. Though I enjoyed high school, I wanted more out of college. I wanted to be one of the cool girls, to be admired and looked up to by the people who were, well like me in high school.

I wasn't necessarily popular growing up, but I wasn't unpopular, either. I was perfectly average, well-liked enough to be elected to student government but not quite well-liked enough to be invited to parties. I was happy, but I still hoped college would propel me up the social ladder.

When I began considering my college options, I quickly decided on Ohio University, which had the best journalism school in the state. It was also the biggest party school. Year after year, OU was named to national lists of the country's top party schools, and those rankings weren't lost on me: I wanted to get a good education, but I also wanted to let loose a little.

Read the rest on Seventeen.com.

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Emo Kids Forever

Emo Kids Forever

Friday, December 18, 2015

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A friend send me the link to "This is What Early 2000s Emo Kids Look Like Today," & I obsessed over it for a little bit. The nostalgia was strong with this one. It's like Dashboard Confessional started playing a soundtrack to my college years as I read.

It took me back to the first day I decided I had a crush on Dave, who would become my boyfriend in the fall of my senior year of high school. He was in my Spanish class & one day wore a shirt to school that read, in big block letters, "EMO IS AWESOME" - but no one else knew was emo was yet, so Señora Olivera asked him to explain it to the class. When words failed, he brought a Jimmy Eat World album with him the next day for our whole class to listen to.

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How a Podcast Creator Inspired a Podcast-Hater to Recognize Her Inner Storyteller

How a Podcast Creator Inspired a Podcast-Hater to Recognize Her Inner Storyteller

Friday, September 11, 2015

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"No pressure: Who listens to podcasts, anyway?!"

Those were the words of NPR's Sarah Koenig, whose name may ring familiar - & whose speaking voice certainly will - if you've ever listened to the podcast Serial. As the first podcast to go viral, Serial has been downloaded by more than 99 million people in every country around the word except for North Korea & Eritrea. Its success is even more incredible, considering its creators' doubtfulness that they'd ever reach the  300,000 listener mark.

As far as who listens to podcasts, well... not me, really. Try as I might, Serial is the first & only podcast I've ever liked. But 99 million people can't be wrong.

When a friend asked if I'd be interested in seeing Koenig & Serial co-creator Julie Snyder speak at Case Western Reserve University on Wednesday, I couldn't have been more excited. As an unabashed true crime fanatic, I was positively thrilled by the prospect of hearing all the behind-the-scenes, cutting-room-floor details about the Adnan Syed case.

Except that's not what it was about at all.

Sarah & Julie (can I call them that? I feel like we're friends now) discussed the case, of course, but their talk wasn't really about Adnan or Hae or Jay or the streaking Mr. S. No, their talk was, at its core, about authentic story-telling - finding the hook, teasing out the most interesting bits, bringing the audience in. It was about two radio nerds who sometimes have bad ideas like the rest of us (they told us about the failed podcast they tried to make happen prior to Serial) & who worked really hard to do something new & different with a project in which they saw serious potential.

They talked about the intense, grueling investigatory journalism that went into gathering all of the proper pieces of this one big story. They talked about how Sarah had to become a character herself in order for her to connect with the people she interviewed, & for listeners to connect with her. They talked about how they navigated the murky moral implications of turning a real-life murder into news entertainment. They talked about how it felt to be on the receiving end of both enthusiastic obsession & heated criticism.

And through it all, they were real. They were normal. They were me, just... you know, super-successful & working for NPR. They were humble & relatable & funny, & listening to them explain how they created Serial - & what it meant to them, personally - reminded me of why I wanted to be a journalist all those years ago.

Like every high school senior of the class of 2002, I wrote my college acceptance essay about September 11th. Specifically, I wrote about how I thought I'd wanted to major in journalism but wasn't sure until that night, when I watched as reporter Ashleigh Banfield, still shouting news reports into her microphone, ran down a narrow alley as a building adjacent to the Twin Towers fell into a pile of dust & smoke & rubble on live TV.

I went to journalism school, but today, I am not a journalist. I never was, really. I worked for my (award-winning!) college newspaper, the Daily Kent Stater, & I like to think I was pretty good at it - but I wasn't really made to be a reporter. As a junior, I had a stress-related breakdown & abruptly quit my position as administration reporter, the staffer who interviewed the university president & other such difficult characters. Reporting hard news gave me hella anxiety before I even knew that anxiety was even a real thing, & I knew I didn't want to do it professionally.

I still thought I'd become a journalist, though - a features reporter, maybe, or, on the days when I dreamed big, a magazine editor. Even if I wasn't cut out for breaking news, I was still made to write. It's the only thing I've ever been good at, & it's the only thing I truly, madly, deeply love. (Except for tacos. I truly, madly, deeply love tacos.)

Some days, I get down on myself about where I ended up - or, more specifically, where I didn't end up. I'm a social media manager at a nonprofit, & although I love my job, I am decidedly not a journalist. I am not what I was supposed to be, what I promised myself on September 11, 2001, that I was going to become. The only thing I've ever really wanted to be when I grow up, even now.

But these two wildly successful NPR personalities pointed out that they never really set out to become wildly successful NPR personalities. They set out to be storytellers, because they've always been storytellers, & they happened to tap into a medium & a method that worked out really, really well.

Maybe I'm never going to be Sarah Koenig or Ashleigh Banfield. Maybe I'm never going to be a journalist or even a "real" writer. But like them, I have always been, at the very least, a storyteller, & listening to Wednesday night's talk reminded me that there are a thousand ways to tell a story well, so long as you're committed to telling it at all. And I am.

So thank you - yes, you! - for being here, for reading my stories, for making me feel like a real writer even on the days when I am, in fact, "just" a storyteller with a navel-gazing blog instead of a front-page byline or my name on a masthead. Thank you for believing in the power of my words, even when they're not changing the world. And thank you, Sarah Koenig & Julie Snyder, for reminding me that maybe they still can.

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How Can You Run When You Know? #WeAreKentState

How Can You Run When You Know? #WeAreKentState

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

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In the early 1970s, not long after the May 4th shootings, my parents met at a house party at Kent State University, where they were both students. When I was born in 1984, they still lived within the Kent city limits, in a tiny house across the street from Stoddard's Ice Cream. I may have been born down the road at a hospital in Akron, but in every other way, I got my start in Kent.

In the early '90s, I began attending day camp at Kent State for Kids, held on the KSU campus. My dad dropped me off at camp on his a way to work each morning, & I spent my days in "classes" that I'd chosen out of a booklet designed to look like a course catalog. I took archery & swimming & miming (?!) & Korean in the same buildings where my parents had attended their college classes - & where I would later attend my own. I wrote poetry while lying on the May 4th memorial with my creative writing class, which produced my first piece of "published" writing.

Later on in the '90s, my mom returned to Kent State to pursue her masters in library science. I remember waiting in line with her at the registrar's office & begging her to let me spray paint the giant rock at the front of campus, a college tradition that seemed like the ultimate in adulthood to my childlike understanding. "Maybe when you're older," she told me. In 1997, when we hosted my bat mitzvah party in the Rathskellar, a bar at the student center, I again begged my mom to let my friends & me paint the rock as part of the celebration. I was unsuccessful in my plea; I have still never painted the rock.

In 2001, when I was applying to colleges, I lied & told my mother that I had sent in my application to Kent State. I had not. (Sorry, Mom.) I loved Kent State, but it felt like my childhood, not my future. I had no interest in attending a college I'd known so intimately for my entire life.

And in 2005, when I decided I couldn't stay at Ohio University for another second, I moved back into my mother's house & began attending Kent State University, just seven miles down the road. I felt like a massive failure; it seemed seemed like the ultimate embarrassment to have transferred to the hometown school, the school my parents went to, the school half of the population of my high school went to.

It didn't take me long to realize it was one of the best decisions of my life.

I graduated from Kent State in 2007 with a Bachelor's of Science in News. Most of it was earned in Taylor Hall, the journalism building - the building whose parking lot paves the area where the unthinkable happened on May 4th, 1970. Each year on the anniversary of the shootings, I joined Kent State Hillel in placing rocks on each of the blocked-off spots where four students died. These days, Taylor Hall is the May 4th Visitors Center, dedicated to preserving the memory of what happened that day & why - what it meant for the school & the country & for history.

On my last day of classes at Kent State, I called my mother in tears: "I'm going to come back," I promised. "Maybe I'll get my masters here, too."

I never wanted to go to Kent State - but I have always been Kent State, intentionally or otherwise. Today & every day, I am proud to call myself a part of a university that carries so much history & still has so much pride - & oh, yeah, this degree is pretty nice, too. I am a Kent State alum from a family of Kent State alums. And #WeAreKentState.

This post was written for #WeAreKentState, a Facebook event asking Kent State supporters to wear blue & gold today. It was organized as a show of pride in response to Urban Outfitters' recent decision to sell a "vintage" KSU sweatshirt that appears to be splattered with blood.

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Odd Girl Out: On Being Weird & Sad in College

Odd Girl Out: On Being Weird & Sad in College

Sunday, October 28, 2012

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If I ever want to have a good bout of being emo & just generally make myself feel really shitty – because, you know, sometimes you want that?* – all I have to do is reflect on my sophomore & junior years of college.

Being as helpful as it always is when it comes to comparing our lives to the lives of others while simultaneously checking in on people who’d rather we forget all about them, Facebook has upped the emo ante, making it even easier for me to click through to see the faces of the people who bring back the harshest memories.

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Journalism Is a Terminal Condition (Plus, a Pretty Cool Giveaway)

Journalism Is a Terminal Condition (Plus, a Pretty Cool Giveaway)

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

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This post is generously sponsored by ValueMags.com, but, as always, all content, wit & wisdom is my own.

I'm a counter. I'm forever look back & counting how long it's been since X, how many years since Y: almost 16 years since my father died, almost 10 years since I graduated from high school, almost one year since I began dating Nathan, just over one year since I left my first (awesome) post-collegiate job. Sometimes I look back through my old Xanga sites just to see what I was doing on this day five or six years ago.

Graduation day! (Please ignore my facial fatness.)

This summer marks four years since I graduated college. It seems impossible that I've been gone for that long, that I've only seen one of my best friends a handful of times in that period. Sometimes, it seems impossible to believe that I'm not a journalist as planned, that I don't write professionally, that I'm not a reporter or an author or a grantwriter or a blogger (the "real" kind, you know...). Instead, my life took a path I never expected, sending me into the worlds of religion, communications, politics & all sort of other things I never planned or trained for.

My degree is in Magazine Journalism, & if there's one thing I miss from college (aside from the friends & the youth-granted permission to drink like a fish), it's working for student media. In college, I wrote for the student newspaper, a respected & award-winning campus daily, & eventually held the position of assistant news editor, which I actually preferred to reporting. I also copyedited for a campus magazine called The Burr & was the managing editor of Fusion, yet another award-winning campus publication, this time a glossy quarterly focused on sexual minority issues. I spent most of my time in the newsroom or on my laptop, doing what I liked best: writing, writing, writing.

It was 9/11 that cemented my decision to major in journalism. Cliche, I know. But watching the second tower fall as a chipper blonde newscaster reporter looked on in horror but never lost her composure, I knew what I wanted to do. What's sort of ironic about this is that my real goal was to work for one of two publications, Family Circle or People - neither of which, of course, was likely to report on anything quite as emotionally heavy as 9/11. I was sometimes embarrassed of this ambition, like when I took a summer class in DC with political wannabes & intellectual types who wanted to change the world. When I announced my career aspirations to the class, I consoled myself by telling myself that even head honchos need relaxing reading material.

Obviously, I do not work for a magazine. Or a newspaper. Or any other sort of legitimate, professional media. Instead, this blog is my primary outlet, along with a few side projects I contribute to with some regularity. I could be more proactive than I am about seeking out writing opportunities - and I could really stand to reconnect with my old magazine habit instead of just day-in, day-out blog reading. Don't get me wrong, I like you guys, but my life is a better place when Glamour is involved.

It's fitting, then, that a representative from discount magazine site ValueMags.com recently asked if I'd like to host a giveaway to my readers. As someone who used to subscribe to upwards of 10 magazines (sorry, Mother Nature), my answer was a hearty "yes." So in commemoration of my almost-four-year graduation anniversary & in recognition of my deep & abiding love of magazines both trashy & heady, I present to you a simple but rewarding giveaway: Comment on this post to be entered to win a magazine subscription of your choice. And yes, that includes everything from the usually-a-billion-dollars People to specialty publications like Tropical Fish Hobbyist Magazine.

Go forth & indulge in casual reading material, friends!

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