DC

Visiting the lovely Courtney Wilkes for a much needed girls weekend out of the city.

Alongside the river in Georgetown watching a rowing competition.

Fire Island: Part Deux

So this summer started off right.

2nd year up to Fire Island with Noel. We met up at Columbia and it was a hussle with grabbing wine, and food for the weekend. I met up with Jeremy to pick up some wine, and whiskey (his favorite). Sadly they did not have Virginia gentlemen’s whiskey.

The day turned out pretty warm but I quickly regretted it after we took the ferry over from Bayshore to Dunewood.

As per usual I wanted to go native, and go barefoot on the Island, and my feet turned out vile as per usual.

Charlotte

Cirque d’Hiver

Richard Avedon. Enough said. 1955, Dior. Paris.

 

I just love this photo. How the model moves with the elephants. A perfect juxtapositions between the texture of her dress, and the roughness of their skin. So contained yet so wild. Richard Avedon, while discovering you in Paris, I fell in love with your work.

My Favorite Coffee Spots in NYC

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We’re in an “Empire State” of Mind

Ode to Harry Potter & Summer

Remember discovering Harry Potter? I certainly do!

I remember walking into Ms. Walkers 4^th grade class and hearing the class bully raving to her about this book “Harry Potter & the Sorcerers Stone”. I didn’t even know he could read. Gasp* But I took his advice, and now 12 years later I have never looked back.

I remember at first having my mother read the first book two books to me before going to bed at night. They were the types of books that you could just never put down. My first grown-up books. Reading Harry Potter was like saying, look at me! I can now read and enjoy a book that isn’t  Cat in the Hat or the Bernstein Bears.

I remember summers at camp and fights with my bunk-mates over precious copies of Harry Potter.I was one of the lucky few to have ordered it online, and usually had it delivered to me in rural Colorado.

I remember walking with my mom through airports, and seeing the book on display in windows, and her making me wait to buy it because it was much too expensive in the airport.

I remember sitting on toilets because I couldn’t put the book down.

I remember the midnight Harry Potter parties at the local Barnes & Nobles, running around with my friends in a cape, wand, and yes, even a Harry Potter tattoo on my forehead.

I remember starting rumors about what happened in Harry Potter.

I remember eating Bertie Botts all you can eat Jelly Beans at 7/11 with my friends, and eating all the disgusting flavored ones, such as booger, & vomit.

I remember waiting for a letter from Hogwarts.

Harry Potter has been such a large influence in my life. The books, and films always came out during the summer holidays. It has been such a fixture in my life, like a visit once a year from a much loved relative.

Summer always meant a bit of Harry Potter magic, and Harry Potter always mean summer time freedom. A reminder during the summer, that this is the time to just let your imagination wander. Now with the last Harry Potter movie coming out, I can’t help but feel a little sad, and maybe a little bit nostalgic. Nostalgic of those moments of magic, and curiosity, and that feeling of never knowing what would come next.

I was babysitting for a little 7 year old boy, who has read all 6 books, and is now starting the 7^th one. What a different Harry Potter he has!

I remember Harry Potter as a  companion who joined me, every summer. A Harry Potter, who always had me waiting, always yearning….

This constant yearning reminds me of my literary hero, Jay Gatsby “who “believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us…it eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster stretch our arms farther….”

And so with the last of Harry Potter coming to an end for the final movie installment, I hold up a proverbial glass for Harry Potter: “Here is this ode to you, for giving me a childhood where my imagination, excitement, and curiosity never had the misfortune to be quenched.

So proud of New York! #TrueLoveKnowsNoGender

Last night the same-sex marriage bill was passed in New York I celebrated and cheered along with everyone else, and suppressed the urge from doing a cartwheel in the bar that I was sitting in, with some of my friends. What an amazing achievement! Already I was thinking off all the weddings that I could now celebrate. It is such a giant step, and now with gay pride occurring this weekend, and some gay friends here from San Francisco for the weekend, I could not help but be undeniably happy for all of them.

Gay Marriage, homosexuality, has never been a big thing for me. Growing up in San Francisco, with very liberal family and friends, I was taught to never judge anyone by their sexuality. But then attending a conservative boarding school, I was suddenly confronted with Middle America and opposing arguments against gay marriage from some teachers. All arguments, which I could somewhat emphasize with.

"Dyke" Parade. Naked, frolicking in Washington Square Park. June 2011

Today’s New York Times, “The Road to Gay Marriage in New York” describes how gay marriage was passed because of “shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed”.

I was touched by the story of D. Senator Carl Kruger, a longtime opponent of same sex marriage who was moved to approve it last night. Over the years, because of his staunch views against same sex marriage, many protesters would protest in front of his house. It ultimately ended in his gay nephew who stopped speaking to him.

Kruger said, “It has now gotten personal” when protesters started calling him gay. But fellow Senator, Sampson, a longtime supporter of same-sex marriage advised Mr. Kruger to focus on his family, “because when everything else is gone, all you have left is family” (New York Times).

But aside from all the babble, these justifications and arguments for or against same sex marriage that are a “forest of mirrors” getting lost amidst the institutions, labels and structure of it all. The only centering point that I can conclude with are my close friends who happen to be gay.

Whatever… “Love is the liberator”.

Productive? Procrastination. 10 things I find myself doing when I should be working.

10. Don’t watch the first two full seasons of any TV show. For me, it’s been Mad Men, and honestly, TV is probably the worst thing to do because of its indefinite end. It doesn’t take up too much of my break time, and while playing solitaire and skipping all the “boring characters” to go straight for the Donald Draper plot lines, I feel great about watching non-stop Mad Men from 9am-5pm while sitting in my university library. Justifying it as somewhat academically stimulating because of the one Marshall McLuhan reference. At least now from my 8hrs of watching TV, I am familiar with the 1950s-60s time period in America…almost as good as reading a history book.

9. Cleaning. And Organizing. From washing the dishes, organizing my desktop, hand washing my delicates (because suddenly I have the time to be cheap and not go to the Laundromat) to needing to set up mouse traps (because I’m paranoid that I have mice). The lure of cleaning and organizing are such productive procrastinators. I have once wasted three hours “organizing” all my clothes which consisted of trying on every article of clothing that I had in my closet, and deliberating on whether I should get rid of it or not.

8. Personal Hygiene: Painting my nails, to toenails. Plucking my eyebrows, practicing my make up, are actually, extreme time wasters. It can be painful plucking your eyebrows painful, time consuming, yet utterly rewarding. Hey! My term paper might not be written, but at least my eyebrow look great?!?!

7. Caffeine runs. Walking to my local coffee shop in Brooklyn. Either Variety or Blue Bottle at Bedford. Both of which require me to primp, because who knows what kind of attractive, intellectual, coffee loving, cutie I can pick up while on my coffee break.

6. Going on a run. Odds are by my 2nd coffee, I am over hyped, and the energy to even sit still becomes impossible. In order to rid myself of this extra energy, the 2mile run around my neighborhood park seems obligatory.

5. Actually going to a library, and getting distracted by every single person that walks past me. And laughing at the guy in the corner who appears to be listening to Justin Biebers new album.

4. Speaking of Justin Bieber. I spent a couple of hours last week catching up on my celebrity gossip, only to see the Biebs and Selena Gomez making out on a beach! WHOA?!?! I thought he was only 12 years old, but the way those two were frolicking on the beach reminded me of some torrid pictures that tabloids usually take of a 40yr old celebrity cheating on his wife with a twenty something year old model on some beach in Italy. Celebrity gossip, or should I say pictures can keep you frozen for HOURS.

Libraries Inspire or Distract me. Not sure which, though

3. E-mails, phone calls, messaging, skype calls. Suddenly calling your mother to discuss the pressing issue of “why my neighbors music choice sucks” and how “stressed I am about not getting anything done” is pivotal.

2. Rewatching youtube videos then tweeting them as I watch them. For example, the Bed Intruder Song or the Like its Quidditch Parody are my favorites. With fun hashtags to go along with them such as #AntoineDodson, #HarryPotter, #love, #and #basically #adding #a #hashtag #every #word #that #I #tweet.

1. Basically wasting my time by writing this article for my blog is another activity that I find myself doing when I need an outlet for creative complaining/whining.

The Authentic Learning Experience

“To be a successful stoner, you just take a bunch of adderall” was the mantra told to me during finals. Okay, so I’m not a stoner, and I don’t have ADHD but during the finals push the option to take adderall can be highly seductive.

For those of you who might not be familiar with it, adderall is know as the “study drug” due to its ability to boost energy and concentration. It can be medically pre-scribed very easily, and I have some friends who have gone into a pharmacy, told the pharmacist that they have trouble concentrating and were prescribed adderall.

Adderall can be used quite effectively, and taking it can give anyone the energy to stay up all night completely concentrated and motivated for writing the term paper in just one night or studying for the end of semester exam.

According the Huffington Post high school and college students who rely on ADHD medication to get through school say “one out of every ten students have tried or depend on ADHD medications to get through their college course work” (“Does Authenticity Matter Anymore?”).

Source: edu.learnsoc.org

Prescription drugs are common on university campuses and students themselves “are weighing the ethical pros and cons” (Inside Higher Education). It can be hard to find something so wrong with medications that doctors themselves regularly prescribe.

In a fascinating profile in the New York Times of Nora Volkow, neuroscientist and head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Volkow talks about addiction. And how America as a society can overmedicate itself. There can be a drug for a drug for a drug.

Volkow states, “the prescription drug problems are particularly challenging because, of course, for these particular drugs, physicians are the nation’s pushers” (A General in the Drug War). Volkow is an anomaly within the medical field because she is arguing how the overmedication of people is causing a disease of addiction within America.

Volkow said relatively few teenagers get their pills from strangers, “many have their own prescriptions, often from dental work, and even more are given pills by friends and relatives, presumably out of other legitimate prescriptions.”

In one study  “non-medical prescription drug users had “significantly lower” grade-point averages in high school and skipped 21 percent of their college classes” (USA Today).

According to a recent blog post in USA Today, students at an “elite West Coast University say it “was amazing, to go from a C+ to an A-, B+ student”. While other students talked of an incredibly smart medical student who was trying to get into medical school who became addicted to adderall.

Research has found that students who misuse prescribed medications are “more likely than their peers to use illicit drugs” (USA Today). For example on the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health 80% of students who used adderall non-medically, also smoked weed. So it was no surprise to me that most of my friends who used adderall also smoked pot.

But the discourse can be easily tackled through its ethical issues rather than the health issues. In 2010 at Wesleyan University they banned “misuse of prescription drugs” because it would be cheating (USA Today).

And for me, just observing all of this, talking to friends who seem to have successful experiences of adderall, to the doctors who regularly prescribe. All I can conclude with is a comment of a friend of mine who said, “I use adderall, but I always feel disappointed after I use it.”

Source: dosomething.org

I really believe that taking it for studying purposes is cheating, and it can disappoint because what if you want to know your full potential? It ruins the authentic experience of learning and achievement. They ban steroids in the major leagues. Why not ban the use of study drugs in universities?