Pure Simplicity

I’ve been meaning to do this, for awhile. To dredge out my feelings for this…, I don’t even know what to call it. I didn’t hate high school and I didn’t have a bad high school experience. In fact, it was great. Would I go back? Never. Not a chance. High school was just another stage in life. But not one that I’d willingly revisit. I didn’t like the people within that school nor did I like much of what it stood for.

Caesar Rodney High School isn’t a bad school. It’s mediocre. The problem with this is that there are a lot of people with ridiculous potential but with no one to push them. Generally, those kids that succeed are the ones that reach their potential by pushing themselves. You also have students that reach their potential through the inspiration of others, having someone there to help them to recognize their potential and to reach it. *Reaching your potential either way is amazing, needing help takes no credit away from it; that shouldn’t be read as one type of person being lower than the other. For me, I reach my potential physically, in terms of working out/being in shape, when I have someone there motivating me. I envy those who can do it of their own accord but we can both potentially reach the same levels, just with different motivators.

There’s no ambition at Caesar Rodney High School. That’s a general statement, so it doesn’t apply to everyone. But, there’s untapped potential. And I think this stems LARGELY from student/faculty interaction. A lot of people don’t understand their options or aren’t being realistic. I would almost say that the education about post-college decisions at Caesar Rodney High School isn’t too far above the levels of what I’ve seen through interaction with West Philly high school students. Everyone automatically has this idea that college is expensive. Well, yes, it is. But there are a ridiculous amount of opportunities to receive money but they’re not recognized. CR needs to improve the guidance counselor/student relationships. Maybe by changing the name of guidance counselor more to advisers. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but guidance counselors always had a negative connotation; I mean, who wants to tell everyone that I have a meeting with a guidance counselor. For the most part, during my time there, the guidance counselor was associated with discussing problems that students are having at home or behavioral or things along those lines. Guidance counselors were not really associated as being a highly sought after or helpful resource. I spent quite a bit of time with the guidance counselor, but I mean, I really didn’t give a shit what people at that school thought about me either way and I definitely needed my guidance counselor to help with the college process. It should be mandatory that students meet with guidance counselors. College is automatically written off because most kids don’t understand the meaning of filling out a FAFSA or other alternative ways to afford college. The thought automatically goes to student loans. Most kids in DE don’t know about this: there’s a scholarship that you can get just from submitting your college GPA to the DE Higher Education Commission. That’s it. Send in your GPA and you receive money.

This angers me. I really wish I had the words or the accurate tone to express how disappointed I am. The CR staff is comprised of some really great teachers; I know from experience. And these teachers have the ability to present a lot of knowledge to students. But, a lot of them are constrained by priority focus. The priority focus is, and will continue to be until it’s reformed, for students to pass the DSTP (Delaware State Testing Program). The DSTP is used dually as a way of testing teacher performance in the classroom and as an assessment of CR. During my time at CR, I was a part of the Middle States committee; the objective being to set benchmarks for the school to reach in order to become (or renew, as in our situation) an accredited secondary learning institution. The first four benchmarks are DSTP focused; seeing 5% increases in the numbers of students meeting/exceeding the standards. The only problem: the DSTP restricts the ability of what teachers can teach. It penalizes students, like myself, that want to learn about things outside of what the DSTP curriculum calls for.

I come from a completely different world than most students here at Penn. I’m the only person from my class that even got into an Ivy. And about 1 in maybe 15/20 that got in (not just applied) to a college in the top 25. Note: my graduating class had about 450 students. Do the math. Our top ten was comprised of wonderful students, all of whom are doing great things with their lives. I know that everyone has their college preference and some people, unfortunately, get rejected. This is not to detract or bash anyone, it’s to take a hindsight look and consider the possibilities (I know there’s that one idea about how easy it is to look back and say how things could have been, but these were things that I was feeling throughout the entire process and even still now).

I think, what bothered me the most about CR, was the lack of recognition for everything that I put into that school. I was, literally, everywhere. I was sports, academics, after school activities, outside volunteering for CR, representing our school at events. I put in work. Period. But I never felt the level of gratitude or sense of the school being proud of me that I think that I deserved. It’s dumb. I’m in college, I know and this happened so long ago but it is going to affect my future. I could give a lot back to that community, even now. But do I desire to? Not at all. Why should I? Administration-wise, after I got into Penn, I only remember one person of higher standing in my district that actually congratulated me. She was on the School District Board and a Penn alum herself. Other than that, nothing. I’m not the type of person that needs congratulations or praise as a means of feeling accomplished but you know, after you bust your ass so much for something, it’s nice to hear it in the sense of genuine appreciation. Especially when I accomplished what I did coming from that school. A school where the reading level of some students isn’t even at the high school level. Their math skills are extremely sub-par and behavior is an ever-present issue. But, ignoring all of that, I took the best resources that I could out of that school and pulled myself to where I am. My teachers were amazing and they did express their genuine excitement and feeling proud of me. I did receive that from them and it means more than words can say.

My high school experience summed up. I walked away with life-long friends, learned a lot from some amazing teachers, learned a lot about myself and my abilities when left to my own devices. But would I go back? No. Do I want to contribute anything to that school? No. I wish I could be a resource for the other students at that school that are just like young Simone, and it’s unfortunate that I feel this way. But sometimes, you just have to walk away from some things without looking back.

I might have an obsession with my body movements.

When I walk down the street, I hardly ever walk looking up. It’s not from feeling intimidated or feeling insecure. It’s because I take every step deliberately. I don’t like the idea of not knowing where my foot is going to land next. Even when I am looking up, it’s mainly to survey the ground in front of me to avoid any potential pitfalls (even the literal ones).

One of my mother’s favorite books as a child, which she still has a copy of, is about this vain young girl. She spent so much time looking at herself in her handheld mirror, and as a result, ended up walking into a giant hole (with coal at the bottom? something along those lines). She ends up trapped down there, gets all dirty and ugly, etc etc etc, and eventually realizes that it’s not all about looks. That’s not the part that I took away from the story. I took away the part of always watching where you’re walking and that’s exactly what I do.

I also know what every bite of food looks like before it goes into my mouth. I can’t absent-mindedly (fuck that word because firefox says it should be mindlessly and merriam-webster says mindedly) eat food. This stems from being terrified at what could potential end up in my mouth. There are FAR too many horror stories about people biting into sandwiches and finding disgusting things for me to even take a chance on that happening. So, I survey every bite of food on its journey from my plate to my mouth.

So what does this say about me? Besides that I’m weird. Overly cautious? Likely.

It’s funny. In class today we were talking about a price costing system that puts an individual cost on each feature of a product in order to reach an expected cost for the whole. Well, the general idea, applied to myself, would be that it’s probably best to think about me as a bundle of individual features. It’s hard enough to describe me as a whole and I think that that’s important to remember. It’s not that I can put on a different face for different people or pretend to be someone different depending on social situations. It is literally that I’m multi-faceted. I’m a really hard person to peg-down and people close to me are still surprised to learn about some of the things that, literally, make me…me.

In general, I think I’ve been missing music from my life. It’s funny. I go through phases where I’m obsessed, it’s everywhere but then I kind of fall off the bandwagon, rediscover it, and then everything seems right in the world again.

1. Simone, where’s your head been lately? In the books. Thinking about the future and what I need to do to get there. Reading the newspaper/Watching the news. Improving daily habits. Purging my life of people that don’t belong. Summary: making myself a better person. Identity crisis included? Maybe.

Easy to see how everything got jumbled together. It’s wasn’t an overwhelming jumble, just a take a step back jumble and collect yourself before moving forward. But identity-wise, my foundation is locked. I wouldn’t change it either, I’m proud of the traits, qualities, attributes, everything that I have at my very core. Are there faults in there? Of course. But no one’s perfect. And I’m not the type to spell my faults out to someone else. Because, what I see as faults, others might see as benefits; one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I pride myself on my genuine and realistic outlook on life; yes, it has its pessimistic moments but I think that having that reminder in the back of my head is what helps me to remember what the important things in life are.

2. Where’s your head right now? In a really great place. Sometimes, after having a great day, that feeling lingers. I don’t let that feeling linger, I purposefully take it forward with me. Why should having a great day be restricted to 24 hours? Nothing says that after those 24, that feeling needs to stop. I’m approaching a 48-hour high right now (figuratively, not literally). What exactly has made everything so great? I couldn’t tell you. How do I know it’s been great? I walked down Walnut Street cheesing my ass off and I didn’t care. In fact, I felt bad for everyone walking around me. The people that passed by with frowns, I felt bad that something was plaguing them so much that they weren’t able to relate with what I was feeling. Granted, I’ve been the person with the frown face; honestly, no one can ever be happy ALL of the time. It doesn’t happen. Everyone has a breaking point, even if only temporary. It’s the ability to bounce back. When it rains, it pours right? Well, go find an umbrella.

3. Why are you literally asking yourself these questions? Self-reflection. I internalize all of these things. So everything mixes together. Broken down into Q&A format, although it seems a little weird (or maybe a lot weird) gives additional perspective. When I’m given a question in real life, I really have to think about it so that I can give a thorough answer. When everything is internalized, it doesn’t have to make sense. And that makes everything hard to understand and hard to put into words. Hm, interesting thought there. See, I struggle with talking about my “feelings” or sometimes with explaining myself. Generally, I just have to find my voice first and everything goes from there. But sometimes, when there’s a lot to say, trains of thought overlap and what ends up coming out of my mouth is either a mass of incoherence or…nothing. And then I sit there, forcing myself to find the words, and the trains of thought derail, start crashing into one another, and shut down.

Solution to that problem: Thought I was onto something for a moment but then my mind digressed. It’ll come to me someday, no need to rush it.

So what did that seven-day hiatus do for me?
1. Allowed me to focus on everything else that needed to be accomplished
2. Reminded me why I blogged-for myself. You know, I normally have a lot to say. But I’ve been struggling to say it. And I think it might be because I’ve largely said everything that I’ve been wanting to get off of my chest for awhile. Life’s in a relaxed state of lull and nothing has really been dynamic. Which has been nice for awhile, but I’m ready to move beyond this.
3. There are however things that I did want to touch on during my time away which I’m just going to list here as a personal reminder: social persona, wharton eating my soul (but actually), pretension (is that the noun related to being pretentious?), ambition, high school (this one’s been a long time coming), growth and purging the past.

Maybe I’ve been getting too much sun. Maybe my creativity has been stifled by the ridiculous amount of schoolwork that I’ve had lately. Maybe I’m just at a complete loss for words.

My mind has gone astray. Which is unfortunate because there’s so much built/building up in my mind to say but I can’t seem to find the avenue. 道路的发展赶不上汽车的增加。Well, google translate won’t translate it correctly, but it’s basically a fact that we learned in Chinese: their traffic jams are the result of road development not being able to keep up with the increase in the number of cars. Fits perfectly.

That being said, I think I need a break. Actually, I really do need to give myself a break. I’m running my body into the ground again, I can feel it. Despite the fact that I did nothing over Spring Break. I’m an odd person. Note: running my body down, not my spirit. I don’t think that I could stay in a bad mood for 24 hours, or even a quarter of that. I’d stay awake 24/7 if I could; some of the best moments occur on random mornings at six o’clock. You never really know. But, my body just can’t agree with that.

After this week of midterms, I think I’m going to take a hiatus. Maybe a hiatus from technology. Not completely, just, wean myself from my dependence on my laptop. For someone that loves the world so much, I spend way too much time inside.

Sometimes what I write scares me. There are quite a few blogs just sitting as drafts. Why haven’t I posted them? Not because I care what people think. Not because they’re deep, dark secrets. No, it’s because it scares me. Because I’ve written things down, re-read them, and it’s not what I expected to happen. It’s not what I expected to be thoughts that would come out of my brain/heart/soul/whatever. And if I haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that, you know, that may actually be my perception of the world, then I’m not ready to share it yet. Maybe I’ll come to terms with some of them soon, maybe I won’t. Maybe some will never see the light of day, or at least not until I’m 60 years old and suddenly gained the meaning of life, right?

I’m a smart girl, I am. I’m also a girl that knows right from wrong, and very well so. I’m critical of the actions of others and yet, last night and another night recently, I did something that I’m terribly disappointed in myself for doing.

It annoys the hell out of me when people say something along the lines of “My car’s in the driveway but I don’t know how the hell I got home…must have been a good night”. Now, I don’t know when drunk driving became a symbol of a good night but a.) that’s ridiculous and b.) it scares the hell out of me that people can have that mentality.

But, I’m disappointed in myself for having done it, twice. Most kids would look back and almost be proud of themselves for having driven home drunk; I’ve heard people discuss their drunk driving techniques before. I couldn’t be more disappointed in myself. I could make up a slew of excuses: I’m just so used to sleeping in my own bed as opposed to my friends’, it’s just down the street, blah blah blah. But, at the end of the day, I still did it and I’m still not happy with myself regardless of the outcome, regardless of the fact that hey, I did it, and I’m still able to be alive and to sit here blogging about it. Too many sad stories and stories of lost opportunity exist for me to be doing things like this; putting my life in a balance to be directed only by unsteady hands on a steering wheel and a severe lack of judgment.

I went running today. I almost never workout at school, I don’t know why, because I’m weird I guess. But there’s something about running around my neighborhood at home that just makes me feeeeeeel free? That’s probably the best way that I can think to describe it. It’s so different being home than being in the city. It’s the suburbs of a town with a population of 226. Granted, it’s considered to be a part of the Dover metropolitan area which, in 2008, had a population of about 40k. When I say small town, farm town, I’m not kidding. It could be worse, but that’s bad enough for me.

After I finished, I cam back and laid down in my driveway, half out of exhaustion and half out of habit. Yeah, I’m weird, I know. I absolutely love being home and just laying down on either the deck or driveway and just looking up at the sky. You can’t do this in Philly: a.) people will think you’re weird, b.) it’s West Philadelphia, shit happens, c.) you can’t see the sky like you can here.

I really, really, wanted to take a picture but didn’t have my blackberry with me and this was one of those moments that if you interrupt or when it ends, it’s over. You can’t get it back. It’s one of those moments when you’re scared to change anything; the angle of your head, the sounds that you hear, the thoughts running through your mind. Nothing about your wants matters, it’s just about allowing yourself to be lost in that moment for a little bit, for nothing else to matter. And that’s why I take these moments. Because time is literally almost standing still. 

Looking at the sky, whether it’s the blue skies during the day or the stars at night, is my way of keeping myself grounded. Funny, right? Most people look at the sky and stars as a reminder of possibility; you know those movie scenes where someone’s looking at the sky and it sparks a look at the future, dreams, blah blah blah. If I need to look to the future or my dreams, that’s when I look inside myself. The stars and the sky, for me, remind me to not worry so much. To relax. That I’m a part of something bigger, in a good way. That nothing can ever be as bad as it seems. And in those points in time where nothing bad is happening, it’s a reminder to revel in those moments.

Now that I bring up the topic, I remember where I went through a phase not too, too long ago where I was convinced that I was psychic. It was probably more along the lines of predicting that VERY likely events were going to occur but still, it was nice to think that I had some sixth sense that was working to my advantage. 

I was having lunch today with my littles (twins…oh dear, I sound like a parent…that’s even scarier). But, so one of them was talking about how she’d gone to a psychic. And now, I’ve always wanted to go to a psychic but been too scared. I really don’t know what it is but I’m convinced that there’s something terrible that is going to happen in my future. I’m not talking about the bad things that you generally expect to happen in cycles, no, I’m actually talking about some ridiculous unforeseen tragedy. That’s reason number one that I can’t bring myself to actually go.

Reason number two: Do I actually want to know? I know that not all psychics talk about your future; some are just able to read characteristics about you and give you general advice on overcoming that in the future. But, if I did go, would I be able to stop myself from the temptation of asking “What does my future hold?”. I largely think in the short-term; hell, I mean, I don’t exactly believe in all of the 2012 theories but sometimes, when I find myself thinking past that date, I wonder if I’m wasting my time (well, that’s not cynical at all)…or, maybe that wonder comes from me just taking the easy way out (hm, maybe that’s what it is, really).

Maybe I just don’t get the big picture about the future. Maybe I’m missing something. I do realize that all of my actions now will lead to either positive or negative consequences in the future, that’s a given. But I think that I’m just so terrified of reaching some point in the future where I look back and wonder, what happened to all of that time? I want vivid memories. That’s what it is. I want to be able to remember myself feeling the creation of memories at the time when it’s actually occurring. I want memories to translate into an almost exact replication of the initial moment in time. I want to remember everything about it: the environment, who I’m with, what I’m feeling, what they’re feeling, the emotional and physical sensations, the meaning. I know a person can’t literally time-travel, but I want my memories to be able to do it for me. I don’t want the vague “Oh, I remember this one time, I was with one of my friends at this restaurant, and it was one of the greatest days of my life”. But why? What made it so great? I want the memories that could take hours to describe because every, single detail seems equally important.

I think my perception of time is really fucked up. Actually. I can’t ever seem to figure out how I want to define it. Whether looking forward and looking backward is actually a good thing.

I wonder: “If I were given a timeline, that was completely blank, no labels on the axes at all, no definite start or ending point, where along that timeline would I put myself?”

Uyghur.

I knew there was a reason that I was really going to enjoy my Mummies of the Silk class. And, I suppose that it’s pretty evident based on my post topics from the last few weeks.

On Tuesday, I almost skipped class. I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep, Professor Mair wasn’t going to be there so attendance wasn’t going to matter, and I had a Chinese quiz that I hadn’t studied for. But, I couldn’t bring myself to do it because well, we were having a guest lecturer and I thought that it would be rude. Also: I would like to take this time to pride myself on having gone to EVERY single class this semester and being on time, including the 9 o’clocks that I have Monday to Thursday. Holler.

Our guest lecturer drove in that morning from Washington D.C. He’s a good friend of our TA’s named Alim Seytoff. He’s of the Uyghur American Association and was there to talk about Uyghur culture and history from a Uyghur perspective. Background: Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group residing largely in East Turkistan; however, by decision of the PRC, it is no longer called East Turkistan and is instead called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Basically, Uyghurs have been residing in China for a very long time but are still seen in the eyes of their fellow Chinese as foreigners. The Uyghur culture has been largely suppressed, where even Uyghur schools must be conducted in Mandarin or another Chinese dialect as a means of making the Uyghur language obsolete.

But the point of this story is about Mr. Seytoff. He hasn’t seen his family in over twenty years. This is not by choice. By embracing his cultural roots and working to fight for the rights of fellow Uyghurs, Mr. Seytoff was blacklisted by China as his actions were deemed to be anti-nationalist. These actions were simply speaking out in an attempt to increase the rights of the Uyghur people. When Mr. Seytoff came over to the United States, he wanted to bring his parents but they were never allowed to obtain passports (I use the word allow on purpose). Even when his mother was in the hospital, Mr. Seytoff could not return home. She passed away not long after. His sister, a teacher in Xinjiang, is constantly harassed about her brother’s “anti-nationalist behavior”. You could clearly tell that it pained Mr. Seytoff to talk about all of this, but he just kept repeating himself and saying that these were personal sacrifices that you just HAVE to make sometimes to be able to do the right thing. Because, if he wasn’t one of the ones working for the rights of the Uyghur people, then who would?

It breaks my heart. Actually, it almost ripped through my heart to hear his story. It was only a brief moment where you saw his demeanor break but sometimes, that’s all that it takes. It’s sometimes easy to forget that there are people like Mr. Seytoff in the world. That, while some people are gaining off of the oppression of others, there are people out there sacrificing their gains to help those oppressed. I know that, deep down, as much as I would like to be able to say that I could do what Mr. Seytoff has done, I know that I can’t. I can sacrifice A LOT but I do have my limits. And that’s largely why I think I was so touched by what Mr. Seytoff was saying and the sacrifices that he’s made. I think I’m a person that will go to great lengths for others (actually, I know that I am, which can be unfortunate sometimes). And so, when I find people that will go even above and beyond my threshold, they deserve a very deep and appreciative nod in my book.