Featured, Lists

To the Kids Considering College Out-of-State

It’s a jump: Are you ready? As if deciding which college you’re going to go to in the fall isn’t hard enough, it makes it 20x more difficult when you’re considering a school hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of miles away from your hometown. Take it from those of us that have been there- we know it’s stressful. Make sure that you consider these few things before you start signing papers that you don’t understand. 6. More money, more problems. I know it’s a harsh truth, but it’s truth all the same. Out-of-state tuition is beast that you don’t want to look at in the eye if you don’t have to. Scholarships, whether through the school or through other organizations, are CRUCIAL. Work as hard as you can on them.

Featured, Stories

A Letter to the People That Still Use the Word “Retarded”

I know that you aren’t really thinking about it when you say it. It’s just another insult that you don’t really consider. You think it doesn’t mean anything—that society should stop seeking to be so politically correct all the time. Suck it up and stop being so sensitive, right? I don’t know if you would say the same thing when looking in the face of a Down’s syndrome 12-year old—one who has been suffering through middle school as best as she can, but is still finding it impossible to feel accepted with her disability. Say it to the mentally handicapped adult that is happily walking your groceries to the car with a smile on his face, content with the ordinary that you would find too much of a burden. Say it to the toddler with cerebral palsy while he is laughing alongside the rest of his siblings. You wouldn’t look

Stories

What I’ve Learned From Being Raised by a Strong Mother

It doesn’t hit you until you’re older. You go through the motions of life: you grow up and you move on and don’t put much thought into how you learned to be the woman that you are. When you’re raised by a strong, intelligent, and outspoken woman, you learn things about yourself that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise. You grew up in the real world and were shocked to discover that, somehow, it’s the 21st century and men around the globe still think they can control women. You were never raised in this environment, so that idea is entirely foreign to you. Growing up in a house with your mother as ring-leader made you view women a certain way—an important way. Seeing a woman head a household, head a career, or head of her own life gets you used to the idea of seeing women in leadership; a position that

Featured, Stories

When You And Your Friends Grow in Separate Directions

I think mostly you expect it to be the distance. When you first start applying to dream schools and mapping out how you think your future will look like, you see only the miles that you searched on Google Maps and you cry because you think that those miles will be either the beginning or the end of everything. And you’re almost right. It’s true, the distance matters to an extent. But it’s mostly about what happens within those miles, in those daily routines that you don’t realize are changing you into a different person without you even noticing. You go through life surrounded by new faces with new names and new outlooks on life. And those people make different marks on your life. Meanwhile, the same is happening in your friend’s lives. I know that I’ve spent countless Facetime sessions and weekly phone calls saying, “I wish you could have

Featured, Stories

Why My Party Days Are Behind Me

I was a house party kind of person. Some people love bars, and other people could spend hours in the club—but for me, I loved house parties. There was something fun about anxiously awaiting the weekend, praying for a good party to ‘tequila shot’ your troubles away. You could yell and dance and socialize with people that made you laugh. You would wake up the next morning and laugh over who you drunk-texted. I did it, and looking back now, I’m entirely less proud of my beer pong championships than I was at the time of the victory. I never thought that I would cringe looking back at memories of those days. After all, they were fun: the memories are all a little fonder because I don’t remember a large majority of them. I even assumed that going to college would only perpetuate the cycle—that’s what college kids do, anyways.