summer and PLANS

My last day of classes was on Thursday. I have to say that I am wholly impressed with the amount of work I had to finish on Wednesday night, and with the conscious determination with which I put it all off until one in the morning on Wednesday night. But all that is (more or less) done now. Summer plans include: completing a psychology research project for the Intel Science Talent Search, even though I have no intention of being a psychologist or a researcher or a scientist, reading a lot of things (mainly Crime & Punishment, because that is one of those Books To Read Before You Die and, you know, I might die on my way to Starbucks later, so I better get on that), painting a lot of things, filling out college applications, and collecting a sizable vial of tears shed over college applications (scientific value to be determined). But I ALSO plan to be posting on this blog a lot more often. Cool? Cool. Just another update.

Love,

Ana

thinking about things

It's May and I haven't posted anything since March, so I have no right to assume that anyone will or should read this post. But I turned seventeen and started thinking too much and I felt I had to write about that. It's been two years since I could sing along to Taylor Swift's "Fifteen" without feeling that I couldn't, because it wasn't mine anymore. I got a Snapchat, and it's strange, how no one really cares that their conversations are so meaningless that they don't even deserve to EXIST for more than ten seconds. Then I was thinking about how I've always thought being a teenager was a faded-Polaroid-picture type of existence, a series of toothy instants. But it's not instants, it's hours behind infuriatingly ever-perching, wobbly desks and history textbooks from 1992. Even though there are Polaroids sometimes. I am thinking about what I want to major in when I go to college next year, how I tell people I want to major in Communications, because that sounds very practical and solicitous, when all I really want to do is major in English Literature and read nineteenth-century romances. I am thinking about how in one year I will be a legal adult. Or not thinking about it, because it terrifies me because I don't even know how to make spaghetti because I never thought I would need to know how to so soon. Just an update.

Love,
Ana

bitch

So a few months ago I saw this perfect slam poetry video:

I obviously I really want to ditch all this schoolwork right now and take a train to the Nuyorican. But I also can't stop thinking about the word "bitch" and about the ways in which women are compartmentalized by language. Of course here's the continually frustrating slut/prude dichotomy. But "bitch" really gets me. The word connotes a woman who is aggressive and ambitious and present, but the word is obviously used to degrade those wonderfully aggressive and ambitious and present women. If man is confident-seeming, he’s completing his God-given duty as a member of the “higher sex.” At the very least, he’s definitely not a bitch.

Guys are called bitches when they display weakness – a stereotypically feminine characteristic. So I guess this is how society uses the word “bitch” as both a tool to put assertive women in their proverbial places and shit on girls as weak. But, really, if strong women are bitches, then I can only aspire to be the baddest bitch on the face of this twisted Earth.

On a lighter, less-ranty note, I'm going to be in some lovely Spanish cities over spring break on a school trip! It's my first time in Europe, so my parents are losing their minds. Planning on bringing my camera and pretending to be more cultured than I really am.

blog loving

Just a quick post to let y'all know that I am now officially on Bloglovin' so yay!

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- Ana <3

tips for avoiding awkward encounters

Well shit. It looks like you are in a public place accompanied by no less than three members of your immediate family and you see that really cool sometimes hi buddy that you kind of know from your English class last year. I am here to rescue you, and tell you how to avoid this girl. Not how to speak to her, though. God knows that's too advanced for me.

1. Keep your phone in an easily accessible pocket at all times. (If you don't have a phone, a watch will work just as well.) When you see this girl (likely wearing a Modern Vampires of the City tour tee and accompanied by a large group of tittering city-chic friends, the likes of which you've only dreamed about), pause mid-stride and develop a slight, half-exasperated, half-revelatory expression and "instinctively" reach for your phone/watch. Gee, it looks like you've forgotten to head to your appointment with your neighborhood psychiatrist. Gotta run! 

Bonus: you'll look like you have somewhere totally, like, ultra-important to be.

2. If you find yourself without a phone or watch, Plan B calls for a more visceral response. Upon sighting said acquaintance, duck into the nearest doorway/side street/storefront. Pace yourself though. You were clearly planning on going that way the whole time.

3. This is a last resort. Let's say you and this girl lock eyes. Ugh, eye contact. And it's one of those "I acknowledge your presence but I'm too far away to say hi or else there will be this mutually uncomfortable silence between the greeting and the actual physical meeting of bodies" moments. You will be forced to interact. The trick: squint. When you get to her, say, "Oh, hi Jackie! Oh God I couldn't even see you from back there; I'm completely blind without my glasses. Well, bye!" I may have overstepped my boundaries in giving advice about actual vocalization, but it will have to do.

In all seriousness, you can totally say hi and bye without it being "weird." Your acquaintance won't think much of it, and they probably feel the same way you do, anyways. That way you'll be "that nice girl/boy" instead of "wait, does that person even go to our school?"

Lots of love,

Ana