Cloud Nine Compliment

I just got back from my electricity and magnetism lab. And I'm the happiest I've ever been all summer.

I know. It sounds like an oxymoron. But tonight was special.

My professor is from somewhere in Africa. I've inferred that he had a very challenging and strict education there. It shows in how he teaches, and his expectations of us. 

He has been particularly hard on me sometimes. He has stood over me while I'm working a problem in class and watched me work. It's intimidating. He will ask me to calculate stuff for him in front of the whole class. He was even pretty harsh toward me and humiliated me in front of everyone the other week for getting a wrong answer to a problem we worked in class. 

But tonight he really redeemed himself.

I was finishing up the lab with my lab partners. My professor casually walked over and asked me what my major is. 

"Mechanical engineering," I replied.

He smiled. "Mechanical engineering? Go for it," he said. "You can do it." And he patted me on the back.

First of all, I never expected him of all people to compliment me. Second, that's one of the best compliments I've ever received in my life.

It means a lot to me because this is a tough major. It's very easy to doubt yourself and feel inadequate. You feel it most when you get a bad test grade in a difficult class. You feel it when you don't understand something at first and feel lost in class. You feel it when you compare yourself to others who you know that this is definitely the right major for them. 

And it doesn't even end there for me. It's another level of challenges being a girl in engineering. You feel very singled-out and isolated. Like the elephant in the room. The odd one out. And you may be able to do what all the boys can do, but you still face opposition in quiet ways. Unfortunately, there are also still people out there who don't believe girls can be engineers. That engineering is "a man's profession". So you feel that pressure also. 

But for someone with a Ph.D. to recognize my abilities and tell me that I am good enough to be an engineer, to be what I want to be, is moving. This class has been challenging, and that makes it even more meaningful. It makes me feel like I can do this, you know? It's really easy to wish I was in an easier major with more girls. But I love mechanical engineering. It's what I want to do. And now, I finally have someone who has verbalized that he believes I am capable of achieving what I want. 

I'm on cloud nine. I'm not here often. But when I am, it changes me for the better.

Musing #1

There is a pizza place in the mall that I work at. I love pizza, and it's decent pizza. Not the greatest, but it's convenient and will satisfy a craving.

I hate going there though. I dread it. And if I do decide to buy pizza from there, I have to put my most arrogant, business-like expression on my face.

Why?

Because I know otherwise, I'm going to get hit on.

Isn't that sad? That in order to be treated like a normal human being, and not be objectified, I have to be someone I'm not usually.

I hate that the employees think that's acceptable. I hate that society thinks that's acceptable.

And to all the dickheads who say "just take it as a compliment": compliment or not, it's completely unwarranted. I don't want your opinion on my looks. I want you to treat me professionally and not as a piece of meat to say uncomfortable things to. That's all. Why is that so goddamn hard?

Why is it so goddamn hard to be treated with respect as a woman?

Good Bosses

This weekend at work was a lot of fun. We had very few customers relative to every other Saturday and Sunday due to the 4th of July weekend. Which was freaking awesome. Awesome for my introverted nature--not for sales.

What made it a lot of fun was that I got to work with a former manager of mine. This was the manager who trained me a year ago. She started working at another location shortly before I left to start college and worked at my store this Sunday. 

I love this manager. She's so upbeat and optimistic. Almost never says anything negative. She is absolutely amazing at her job and continuously demonstrates the epitome of "above and beyond" in her work. She shows appreciation for my work and makes me feel like I'm good at my job (which isn't always the case, but I appreciate it regardless). She treats me like a best friend and lets me do office work and stocking in the back, something typically only managers do, because she knows I enjoy that. She lets me make my job likable. Ahhhh. Too bad she doesn't work at my store anymore.

I was so happy on Sunday with this manager that I got to thinking about what makes her such a good boss, and what makes a good boss in general. Good is a subjective and relative term, of course, but I feel like good managers have a couple of common qualities. 

Above all, they need to trust you, and you need to feel that trust. I feel like that's so important because one of my past managers definitely didn't trust me much. I'd catch her eye across the store and I could tell she had been watching me very closely, making sure I was doing everything right. It gave me such an uneasy feeling. I never felt like I was doing anything right, and dreaded working with her because I constantly felt like a victim. 

Another big quality I feel that a manager should have is the ability to be relatable. I am happiest and work best under my managers who make me feel like their friend, or at the very least, an equal. It's also another way of showing that they trust you, in a sense. My boss at my old gym always threw around the superiority act with all of her employees. She was only relatable with a few of them, and got extremely cocky with the rest of us. Sometimes she'd tell me to do something, and then would add, "I can make you do that because I'm your boss." Geez. Okay. I was going to do what you told me to do anyway. No need to be so damn pretentious. 

Oh and another thing. She almost always forgot to pay me. So as if it wasn't awkward and painful enough for me to tell her she hadn't payed me, she wouldn't just apologize and pay me. She would, without fail, take a second to say something that insinuated that I was lying, before reluctantly paying me. Uggh. You don't fully appreciate direct deposit unless you have ever asked your boss to pay you.

Anyway, my final good boss attribute is knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and responding to both appropriately. I made so many mistakes the first few months in my job, and my manager I worked with Sunday was always particularly tactful when addressing them. She never made a big deal out of my many mistakes, but she was also serious in a nice way about them. She knows how bad I can be at getting customers to sign up for the store card, and sometimes lets me get away with it and pushes me a little harder at other times. She also understands how introverted I can be, and she trusts me enough to let me work in the back at times, probably because she knows I can work faster when I like what I'm doing. 

I guess a great bonus quality is praising your employees from time to time, too. I understand that you shouldn't need praise to do good work, but it really makes for happier and more confident employees. I am very rarely told I do a good job, and if I am, it's from the customers of all people. Managers telling you that you did something really well makes you feel like you're appreciated and valued. To me, that's critical for employee satisfaction.

From my small experience in the working world, I realize how important it is to have a good manager. Your manager can really make you love or hate your job. I feel like it's good that I'm figuring this out now before I take more serious positions in the future, and maybe before I become a boss myself.

Summer Activities

Remember when I tried writing a post every week like clockwork? Yeah...it's been a month since my last one...

I don't really even have a good excuse. I'm attending community college right now for one class and I work on the weekends, but there's still plenty of time. Time that I just end up using to nap and binge watch PewDiePie.

Anyway, I thought I'd update what I've been up to since my last day of freshman year.

First, I went back to work in retail. That first week back was rough. I got yelled at by at least one customer each day, and I struggled to catch up on all the new information that had compiled in the past 5 months since I was last working. But I've been working again for over a month now, and I feel much more confident and on top of things. And I've been with the company for over a year now. It's strange how comfortable it feels, considering how I wanted to walk out on my first day a year ago.

And I realized how far I had come, too. I was helping train a new associate the other week and I had to teach her all the things I do automatically with very little thought--all the ways we fold things, the system for processing shipments, the formula for communicating with customers. Watching her struggle to grasp everything reminded me of how I felt a year ago, and how much I have actually learned. Recently, on a crazy weekend, I had about 100 clothes to fold and put back on the floor, and a customer looked at me in awe and said "You have a hard job". Which I greatly appreciated, because anyone working in retail doesn't get enough credit for everything they have to do. Thankfully, I have amazing coworkers that I love working with and make the job fun at times.

The other thing I'm up to these days is my summer general chemistry course at the local community college. Why the community college, and not my actual university? Because the same class at my university would cost $1100 more. Yeah. No joke. So I thought I'd take one for the team (more like my parents) and take it at the community college. I was told everything was easier at community college anyway, so I just assumed it would be a breeze.

The class itself is all good and easy. But I dislike the community college. I don't have that comfortable feeling of anonymity and being ignored like I do at my university. I could go days without talking to anyone if I wanted to. It was great. 

Here at community college, though, people try to make eye contact with you when you pass them. And try to talk to you. And hit on you. And even have the audacity to ask you for money. 

Okay, so she only asked me for 50 cents. But still. It was weird and I didn't like it.

I've tried all kinds of my usual tactics to dissuade people from trying to talk to me. Not looking at anyone, wearing sunglasses, not wearing makeup, and having the bitchiest look on my face have all failed to work. I'm out of ideas.

Oh, and yesterday, they had army recruiters on campus. All I wanted to do was make a beeline to the Subway, eat, and go to the lab. I was passing by one of the recruiters, completely soaked from the pouring rain I just walked through, hungry, and with the best "don't talk to me" face I could pull, when he suddenly said,"Hey, can you do my a favor?" 

Me, being too nice for my own damn good, asked "What?" 

"Smile for me."

Dickhead.

I gave him an uncomfortable, sarcastic smile, and he proceeded to try to talk me into joining the army. Well I haven't really considered joining, but I wouldn't if the army was full of douchebags like you I thought. Me being too nice again, said "Well, I'll think about it" and walked away, completely annoyed and feeling victimized. 

Ten minutes later, I sit down to eat, and there he is again, just smiling at me. Like he's trying to get me to smile. "Did I talk to you already?" he asked. "Yes, I think you did," I replied sarcastically. "Good, I hope you're still thinking about joining us." Seriously man, do you not take hints???

A stranger telling me to smile doesn't sit well with me at all. I don't care if you're a soldier or whatever. It's so condescending and creepy. No stranger has the right to tell me to smile. Why on earth would he think he had that kind of authority? It's very upsetting to think that I'm just supposed to be someone who smiles. That I'm not supposed to be expressionless and antisocial. I'm supposed to smile. Because he said so.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I've been up to so far. I did go bowling and out to eat with my friend group from college and it was great. There's something about driving a little faster than your parents would like with your friends. It just felt like summer. So cliche, I know. But I'm just glad to have a group of intelligent friends to hang out with.

So far this summer hasn't been bad. It's frustrating when I'm in class, but outside, it's been pretty positive. 

I will keep you updated.

A Varied Collection of Photos From My Freshman Year

My freshman year of college ended about two weeks ago. I had planned this post months ago, but I think I was so mentally exhausted from the semester that I couldn't bring myself to do it...for two weeks. So here you go. One year of some random things I captured during freshman year.

The first of many squirrel pictures to come

A giant lobster/crab during Halloween in the library

 A squirrel with a baby squirrel that remotely resembles the Loch Ness monster. To me at least. Nobody else I've shown this picture to has found it amusing.

 A GREAT close-up of a squirrel in a tree. No joke, I was like two feet from it. 

 A beautiful day on campus that I barely got to enjoy because I had to take a computer science midterm that I ended up nearly failing. But so did everyone else in the class, at least.

Brainasaurus Rex. "No leg day; Brain day only" It's funny because it's true. I went from spending 15+ hours in the gym every week as an athlete to 15+ hours per week in the library as a weak, exhausted engineering student.

 I carved a Deathly Hallows pumpkin at a Halloween party. It got 4th place in the competition.

This is a gear component of a fan that my team reverse engineered. I don't really know why I kept this picture. It just seems remotely artistic.

Sunset. Another attempt at being artistic. But I really do like this photo. It was a beautiful evening.

Reading the story of my life *lol I'm so funny*

My favorite piece of artwork I've found on campus yet. I love it. For some reason, it's in the math building. Before I steal it, at least.

Another engineering project: my team and I designed a truss for a bridge. A truss is a support system of components that help reverse the direction of force exerted on a bridge. It was a massive project, and was very rewarding to spend many hours in the lab doing calculations, coding, and designing it using CAD and see it come to life. It was laser cut out of balsa wood and tested for its maximum force, which ended up being 12 pounds. 

A duck that took up residence in one of the reflecting pools. It always swam away from me. ):

 Same duck, different location.

And finally: a snake in the garage after a long day.

These pictures don't really do my freshman year overall justice. It has to be the second best academic year of my life, second to only kindergarten. It was hard initially--I knew nothing and nobody. But I've done so many cool things, made good grades, and made some friends too. In the spring semester, I definitely connected with a lot more people and experienced a real feeling of camaraderie in many classes. This past year, I basically accomplished everything I wanted to. And more. 

I'm so excited for sophomore year and everything new that will come with it. 

Long Term Drives the Short Term

I just got back from a special lecture my university hosted. It was special as in I paid $20 to attend it.

Jokes aside, this was a very special lecture. It featured Hugh Herr from MIT, double amputee turned engineer/researcher/entrepreneur. He talked about bionics, which is the field of applying biology to design and design to biology. It's a field that I've been very interested in for a while, as I originally was a biomedical engineering major. He, among other sources, inspired the topic of my rhetoric research paper last semester on the ethics of advancing cyborg technology.

Anyway, he lectured about his own research in the field and how it's advancing. It is incredible what is being done. Paralysis, hearing, blindness--almost every disability you can think of has radical research underway that is counteracting these effects. I can't tell you the exact specifics, because he used a lot of jargon he didn't bother to explain, so I only understood about 20% of what he was doing, but even then it was truly incredible.

About 3/4 of the way through the lecture, I teared up. Why? Because what he is doing is so enchanting. It reminded me why I want to be an engineer: to advance technology to benefit humankind. To improve lives. To save lives.

As a student, you tend to focus only on the short term. On the class you're in right now, the difficult homework you're working on right now. The test you have next week, the classes you have to register for next semester. There's just so much stuff that needs to be done in an incredibly finite amount of time that you can only afford to expend your energy on the short term.

So as you sit in your mechanics class with your incoherent, half-dead professor droning on about something that you stopped paying attention to 20 minutes ago, you lose sight of the long term. You forget the fundamental reason why you are in that class. You become bored, worried, and completely unenthusiastic. All you're focused on is getting an A (or just passing) the class. You forget the amazing things you can accomplish with what you're learning.

But sometimes you get a glimpse of what inspires you. Very rarely, you see the big picture again. It rekindles that passionate fire inside you that almost got burned out. And it makes everything seem worth it again--that you can face anything you're dealing with now in the short term, because it will be really, really worth it in the long term.

This has only happened to me twice in my short college experience. Once, of course was tonight. The other time was during a lecture given by a faculty member in my engineering club on fluid dynamics research. It was fascinating what was being done. And again, I felt that fire being ignited, reminding me that that impending computer science test was really not part of the big picture. This feeling truly gives you a sense that everything will be okay if you focus on your dreams.

I feel like this is the key to not getting burned out. I need to continually see the big picture--see it in its entirety, its beautiful, mesmerizing, inspirational self. In essence, I'm going to use the long term to drive the short term.

The Makeup-Confidence Theorem

Ever since I was 6 or so, I always wanted to wear makeup. But back then, it was those cheap, completely shit sets that you'd see in the fucking grocery store or something that I wanted. You know, with the nail polish that smudges together when you try to use it, or "lip gloss" that is essentially tinted glue. There's just something so enchanting about those sets as a little girl though...

Anyway, I've been wearing makeup for about 7 years now. It started out completely minimal--literally just powder. I don't even think it really changed my appearance; I just wanted to believe it did and so it did (total placebo effect right there).

A few years later, the heavier makeup comes in. The foundation, blush, eye shadow, lip products...basically everything I ever wanted to wear, I had. And it was amazing. Like most kids, I struggled with pretty bad acne for a while in my early teens, and makeup helped so much with how I felt about myself. Also, I've kind of got this blushing problem that my friends like to say is adorable, but in reality it just highlights how shy I can be and makes me uncomfortable. Makeup gave me this courage that I needed to feel confident enough to talk to people, a kind of insurance that my flaws would be camouflaged.

The problem, however, is that this feeling is addicting. Makeup becomes a mental crutch of sorts: you believe you need it to be yourself. You feel like you can't be yourself if you're not wearing it. It's strange, I know. But for years I felt there was no turning back to the no-makeup days. So I wore makeup almost every day, because it gave me confidence that I needed.

Well now that I'm in college, I find myself tired and not giving a fuck about things more often. So there have been a few days, probably 3, that I have not worn makeup to school. Maybe I wasn't as concerned about the prospect of not wearing makeup as I usually would, but it was still kind of scary. It's like taking your first step after being on crutches; it's terrifying and you don't completely believe it will be okay.

Guess what? Those days were almost exactly like the 362 other days I don't wear makeup. Nobody said anything. Nobody asked if I was feeling okay. The difference was that more people talked to me. And people opened up to me more so than usual. Heck, some strange guy even asked for my number on one of those days. And yeah, I blushed, but it was much more okay than I thought it would be.

It's odd, because once I stepped away from the mirror thinking "Oh God I'm not wearing makeup today; this is going to be bad," I forgot about it. That courage makeup has given me was still there, even in the absence of the very thing that gave it to me. And honestly, I just realized that people really don't care as much as you think. Your friends, if they are your friends, will not care either. One of those days was during the end of finals week last semester. I was sitting and talking with two friends after we all had an exam that day; all of us weren't wearing makeup. It was such a raw moment; I felt like we were all being completely honest with and accepting of each other, you know?

Makeup can be a barrier if you let it be. But in my eyes, it gives you confidence, and that's a huge positive. It completely changes how you face the world. That confidence, I've found, also carries over to when you don't have it. And that's even more valuable. It shows that it's all truly within; that you don't need external things to change who you are on the inside. Makeup sometimes has a negative reputation these days because of "feminism" saying it's bad because you're putting on makeup for other people. But, at least in my experience, it's really for yourself.

I'm not going to completely stop wearing makeup or anything. But I think it's been an important revelation to truly accept that it's okay not to wear it. You will still be who you really are, makeup or no makeup.