Family

I am going home this weekend and I am totally stoked! I finally get to see my family. I am not just talking about my mom and dad. Im talking about my three uncles, three aunts, five cousins, and papa. My papa is my grandpa and he is the reason my family is so close. He has put together "family dinner" for years and years. When I was little it was every friday but, now that all the cousins are older and have social lives, we have it every sunday. I absolutely love it. My family is so amazing and I have so much fun with them anytime I am with them. Now that I am in college I do not get to go to the dinners as often. I have not been in so long and I finally get to this weekend. I can not wait to catch up with all of them. I consider my cousins my best friends/sisters and my aunts and uncles my other parents. I am so grateful for my papa because he made sure we stuck together and stayed close. My family has made me a better person and given me so much confidence and personality. I honestly, do not know what I would do without them. That sounds cleche but its the truth! My family members are my favorite people in the world and I am so happy that I get to go home this weekend and see them! 

Stressed Out

Transitioning from high school to college was a bigger struggle for me than I thought. The responsibility has increased so much for me and I have to do everything on my own. Although, I love the freedom, the work load can get a bit heavy at times. I am learning to manage my time and making sure to get all my tasks done. I did not really believe people when they said it would be a lot harder. Now I see what there talking about. I just need to stay focused and make sure to write down all my assignments and then do them ahead of time. Sometimes I feel like I do not have enough time in the day to get everything done and it really stresses me out. I find myself staying up till 2 in the morning doing my homework. I was never really taught how to study in high school so tests are very difficult for me. In the past month or so I have learned a lot about school and responsibilities. Im hoping to get everything figured out so I do not have to be so stressed all the time! Im sure I will get into the swing of things eventually. 

Crossroads

I have found many songs that I might want to use for my crossroads assignment. I am really torn and confused on which one to pick! My first pick is a song by Lauryn Hill called Zion. In this song Lauryn sings about getting pregnant. She has to choose whether to keep the baby and be a mother or loose the baby and be a singer. Lauryn knows that both of these decisions will change her life and take her down two totally different paths. Lauryn chooses to keep the baby and sings "I chose to use my heart." Now she is a mother and sings about her baby boy Zion. My second choice is a song that my mom used to listen to and I have grown to love. Tracy Chapman sings Fast Car and in that song she is telling a story of her life. She is trying to make the decision whether to leave her life now and venture off into something new and exciting or to stay where she is and live like that forever. Tracy is curious and wants to leave the life she had then to "be someone." Tracy is willing to take any new path just to get away and start new. She is not sure which path to take but she knows she wants to take one to start new and fresh. For my third pick I chose a Dave Matthews Band song called Typical Situation. This song is a bit more complicated to explain. Dave is trying to show that people do not except people that are different. Dave is explaining that many people try to fit in rather than be themselves and although it can be a hard choice the excepting one is to try to be like everyone else. He never says to be yourself literally but you can tell through his words that he wants you to see that you do not have to fit in even though people make you believe you should. Choose what you want, not what other people want. I like this song because Dave makes a very huge point without singing it directly. I am very torn between these songs and although they all make you think about different paths to take in life, I still do not know if this is what I want. There are so many songs in the world that it is hard to think of as well as choose one. 

Ishmael Beah

I really enjoyed listening to Ishmael speak. I feel like it brought even more reality to the story because I actually got to see and hear him in person. I really enjoyed Ishmael's book even though it was extremely gruesome. The only part of the book I did not like was the ending because I was so interested in knowing the details of his life after he got away from the war and moved to New York City. At first when he started speaking he simply retold the book and made his long story short. I was really worried he was not going to tell about his life after the book. Luckily he did! I found out that Ishmael went to high school in NYC and it was very hard for him to accommodate to such a different life as well as deal with all the kids asking him questions about his past. He learned to deal with things by keeping his past out of his life and only after two years of high school he went to college where they told him he needed more education before he would be excepted. He finally got into a college and it was in Ohio. He received a graduates degree in political science. In college, Ishmael discovered his interest in writing. In his second year of college he took a creative writing class and because of that class he decided to start writing about his horrible past. His professor helped him. During that time Ishmael had no friends and he was very depressed because it was hard for him to look back at his past life since he had been hiding it for so long. Ishmael stopped writing many times but the suffering children back home pushed him to continue on every time. When he finished the book it was 500 pages and many publishers tried to get him to cut it down to just the story of the war. He refused. He finally found a publisher that wanted to publish it his way and it took three years to do this. Ishmael had a hard time dealing with the media but most of the time he would laugh it off. Through reading this book Ishmael wanted the reader "to discover your own place in this world" (Ishmael 2009). When he said this it really made me think about my place and others as well. Ishmael is an incredibly deep and wise person and is only twenty-eight years old. He has been through more things than most people will go through in there entire lifetime. I am so happy that I got the opportunity to hear him speak and finally relieve myself of the questions I've had since I finished the book. Ishmael has made me so much more grateful of my life and so inspired to find my purpose in this world. 

Being punished without punishment.

A majority of my childhood was spent with my sister and grandma. Sissy and I were always at grandma's house having sleepovers so mom and dad could have there own time. I loved it. When we were with grandma, any wish we had, was granted. Grandma would always cook our favorite food/dessert, play our favorite games, watch our favorite shows, and so on. I am the youngest so the treatment for me was intensified because I was the baby. My sister being the most loving person I know, felt no jealousy towards grandma's extra attention on me. I on the other hand craved the attention and always wanted the spotlight on me when grandma was around. I could basically get away with anything, and being the immature child that I was, I took full advantage of it until one sleepover when I took it too far. 

It was just a regular sleepover at grandma's house. Our day usually consisted of playing with bubbles in the backyard, pretending to be waitresses on the porch, dressing up in grandmas clothes and heels, playing the card game old maid, and "helping" grandma make her homemade peanut butter fudge. As usual I was having a great time. It was after dinner and we were watching grandma's favorite show that she never missed, The Lawrence Welk Show. That show always bored me so that night I decided to be a hairdresser and give grandma a new style. While sissy and grandpa sat on the couch, I stood behind grandma in her sofa chair and styled away. I completely brushed out her usual soft curls and started putting in braids and pony tails. I was obviously pulling a little to hard because she politely asked me to stop and told me she was getting a headache. I was not done yet. I continued to do it and she then told me in a little more stern of a voice to stop. I didn't want to. I walked around to the front of the chair and said something smart, she said something nice back of course. I was mad because I was not getting my way so I slapped my grandma. Immediately after I slapped her I realized I did something horribly bad. I think she could tell in my face that I was horrified. I couldn't believe what I had just done. Of course my sister was yelling in my ear, but my grandma just sat there. All she said was, "Kelsey, don't do that." Thats it. I also heard a few more words from my grandpa saying, "you can't hit your grandma, there is no reason for that so cut it out right now." I was so confused and so many emotions were running through my mind. I was upset because I knew that what I did was incredibly wrong. I was also trying to be stubborn because it would of hurt my pride to admit that I did something wrong. I didn't want to be wrong. I was mad that all my grandma said was "Kelsey, don't do that." I wanted to be punished. I wanted to get in trouble so bad, but I didn't. I said sorry to my grandma and when I said it out loud the apology didn't seem sincere but inside I was screaming for forgiveness. Even the next day my grandma made my sister promise not to tell my parents what had happened the night before. My sister told them immediately and I got in big trouble from my parents, but it wasn't good enough. My grandma never talked about it again.

I still think about that sleepover all the time. I still feel guilty till this day. Now I see that silence was my punishment and that saying nothing hurt more than being yelled at. I was to confused, angry, sad, and guilty to realize that my feelings were punishment enough. My grandma knew that what I did hurt me and she let me deal with the punishment on my own. I learned my lesson even though nothing was said.

Homework actually inspired me....

This week I was assigned to read and take notes on chapters one and two in my speech class. So far, everything I am reading is pretty common sense and very boring. As I got to chapter two, with my eyes almost completely shut and my hand cramping like crazy, an old saying caught my eye. The book did not say who wrote it but the quote read, "If I tell you who I am, and you don't like who I am, that's all I have to say." I have never heard this before even though its an "old saying" but I really like it. I feel like this quote says so much in so little of words. For me, this is one of those quotes that I read over and over again and still find new meaning from it every time. I feel like for anyone, it makes them think about themselves and who they are to other people. When I first read it, I thought about how I sometimes do or say things to make other people more accepting towards me. Then, it made me think about who I should always try to be; myself. It's hard for me to define myself. I feel like a person is too hard to completely explain. But thanks to this quote, from now on, I'm going to try to be myself around everyone and if they can't accept who I am then I don't need them in my life.