On Earning Your Masters in Business to Earn Your MRS with a CEO

There's a term that I had never heard before I went to college. Actually, there's a term that I had never heard until I started frequenting TotalFratMove.com. It's a term that I've spent a good portion of my time since then making fun of.

M.R.S.

The term "MRS degree" refers to a girl who goes to college with the intention of meeting her future husband and managing...not much else. Honing her skills in sandwich making, domestic skills, coloring, and husband-pleasing at the going tuition rate (and probably paying (or at least having her family pay) all of said tuition).

She probably looks something like this:

(photo credit goes to Sorostitute Stories, which, while being slightly teased in this post, is actually one of my favorite blogs on the internet)

Any time a girl goes out of her way to do something that really conforms to rigid gender roles (especially if it involves cooking, cleaning, sex, or being in the kitchen), she's working towards her MRS degree.

As someone who loves to bake, I frequently have reasons to crack jokes about my MRS. My second week home for the semester, I sent out a text that said "Earning my MRS, one batch of brownies at a time" after making what was my fourth batch of brownies since I'd been home. When, not long after, I asked for an apron for my birthday, the general response among my friends was that I was working towards my MRS. And whenever I end up baking or cooking or spending an entire night in my room coloring, I joke that I'm earning summer credits towards my degree.

The thing is, though, I'm beginning to wonder how much I really am joking. Clearly, I'm not someone who only wants to go to school to find a husband. But I do love to cook and bake, and I really enjoy taking care of people. And a lot of girls I know are proud to claim that they aspire to an MRS. Not because it's all they want, but because they want to do what makes them happy and the idea of taking care of someone and starting a family makes them as happy as the dreams that brought them to college.

I'm beginning to think there's nothing wrong with that.

Questioning some things,
Rachel Leigh

I think it's pretty rare to be able to say that you've had the same teacher for four classes in high school. I think it's also pretty rare to be able to say that that teacher had a profound and lasting effect on who you are as a person.

I wish I could have been around for his last year teaching. One of my all-time favorite teachers, who taught me for three years of my high school career and helped to shape my views of life, choices, technology, English literature, and the importance of play in learning, is retiring this week.

While I may have graduated last year, I am actually deeply saddened that no future students will have the experience of him touching their lives. Teaching them about the uselessness of Classics majors, how to be "brief but brilliant," to never start a sentence with "however," that all literature is about sex and death, and that a good gifted class reading ends with everybody dying or the Singularity.

He taught me how to say the things worth saying, to really fall in love with the work I was doing, and that sometimes the best projects are ones that you write the night before in a fit of brilliant inspiration. Also, that sometimes everyone decides to kill off their main character.

Remember Elpenor. Sleeping with a sword between yourself and that special someone. The Sick Rose. Childhood's End. Alexander Rybak.

...You will be missed.

Love,
Rachel Leigh

On Marilyns and Audreys

For a few weeks now, I've been thinking about the fact that, in life, there are Audreys and there are Marilyns.

When it comes to classy, ballsy, talented women that are nearly universally admired, there are no two names more ubiquitous than those of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. As a matter of fact, as many of my friends from home will attest, I've earned myself the nickname Audrey F**king Hepburn when I do something particularly "classy" (irony, I use it).

Both women had reputations for being outspoken and honest about what people expected of them and had any right to expect of them. Both have been idolized and quoted and misquoted by girls for decades. But, I've noticed, nearly every girl is either an Audrey OR a Marilyn.

Don't get me wrong. I adore both of them, but there are some key differences that make Marilyn more appealing to some people and Audrey more appealing to others. First and foremost, the fact that Marilyn is, pretty much universally, a sex symbol. On the other hand, the most iconic image of Audrey Hepburn involves an updo, pearls, and her representation Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Plus, I mean, some people just prefer blondes. Though Edward Cullen prefers brunettes. Please shoot me for that reference.

And maybe this whole post.

I believe happy girls are the prettiest.

Believing in pink,
Rachel Leigh

On Words and Unfinished Projects

So a few months ago, I began a post that I never published.

It started a little something like this:

This topic leaves little room to snark, but I was thinking the other day and I got curious, started exploring this grand little series of tubes we call the internet, and found something.

It all began in class the other day:

The title of this post was "On Linguistic Universals" and what I had intended it to be about was the way certain words are nearly universal cognates. I had been thinking about "mom" and how nearly every language's word for mother, or at least its shortened version, is incredibly similar. Mom, ma, mama, mami, mutter, madre...

I started talking to my professor about it, and he mentioned that there's a very similar trend with pa/fa in reference to fathers in other languages. He also pointed out that these universal words are part of the proof generally used to support to idea of a universal grammar.

But the discussion of this idea is less important to this post than why that post never got published. I had been initially fascinated by the topic, but in trying to research my post, I ended up losing steam and so this idea for a post simply sat in limbo for months.

I am disappointed to say that I may never finish that post, but it lends itself to a problem I have always had with this blog. I often come up with an idea for a post and then abandon it before it reaches full development.

Hopefully, at some point, I will be able to go back and flesh out several of my aborted posts in the future, because some of them were actually pretty decent ideas that might help to legitimize my blogging a bit more.

Until then, though, I'll be stuck writing posts explaining why I don't write better posts.

That's kinda metablog-y.

Loving you,
Rachel Leigh

On the fact that it's JUNE and I wonder where all the time has gone

My darling readers:

I wonder if there are still any of you out there. If so: hi. I've missed you. It's been well over a month since the last time I posted anything on either this blog or my class blog for 383. It's been over a year since I started this blog, and I guess I should catch you up on what has changed since this time last year.

I have finished my freshman year of college at the University of Richmond, where I attempted a foray into the Greek system that ended rather disappointingly. I made my share of mistakes as well as my share of excellent decisions, not the least of which included interning for a month at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, getting a job working in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University, and pursuing a degree in pouring things into other things. (No, really, I mentioned to one of my friends that I've gotten to be quite good at that, and they have since decided that this is the real reason I pay tuition and spend nine months of the year in Virginia.) I wonder if that counts as an arts degree or a sciences degree.

My 19th birthday passed this Monday, which means...well, pretty much nothing. 19 carries with it neither the satisfaction of becoming an adult, nor the knowledge that you have defeated teenagerdom, does not legally allow you to drink, or rent a car, beach house, or other item which carries a 25-year-old age stipulation. So...it really serves no purpose. But nonetheless, it happened. Hooray. I am a year older and, hopefully, wiser.

It is now summer, a time in which I am working two jobs in an attempt to afford my textbooks and living expenses during the school year. I spend a few hours a day either doing research on colleges for a local college planning company (who helped me out during my college endeavors) or doing random office tasks at the financial planning firm where my mother works. In the betweenhours, when I am not sleeping, watching copious numbers of videos on YouTube, or working, I've been passing my time catching up with old friends, going on Facebook, and being generally derpy.

And that's...just about my life these days. Hopefully the blogging will be more regular. I've missed you guys.

Still missing you,
Rachel Leigh

On Listening

I'm highly auditory.

I still have yet to learn how to really incorporate images into my posts here because, well, they don't really click with me. I can stare at walls of text and, as long as I can hear the writer's voice, they don't bother me. A lot of times, I actually skip over images, which I know is a dangerous thing to start doing, because it eliminates a lot of important context for the things being discussed.

Why am I talking about this? Well, one of the blogs I follow for my English 383 class (I linked to MY class blog a couple posts ago, go check it out) did a post on learning styles. I feel like auditory learners get passed over in these discussions. Maybe it's because the traditional lecture-style teaching techniques actually work on us. I LIKE lectures. I like the way things sound.

God, if I could incorporate sound into my blog posts without violating copyright, I would. For now, I have to settle for the poetic way the words roll around in my head.

So how do you learn?

Listening,
Rachel Leigh

On "So go on, if this will make you happier..."

Dear Readers:

It is 4 am, and I can't sleep.

I haven't had insomnia this badly in quite some time, and, to be honest, it is kind of throwing me.

Luckily, I have the room to myself this weekend (so I don't feel bad for keeping my roommate up). You want to know the weird part? I can't sleep because I'm happy. Happier than I've been in a while. I would explain the details, but I would probably bore you and/or embarrass myself on the internet, so I'll spare you. The fact of the matter is that I laid in bed for an hour and smiled giddily and couldn't sleep. Then I took a shower and talked to myself and smiled some more and still couldn't sleep. And now I'm blogging because I still can't sleep. I always thought I couldn't write when I was happy because I had nothing to complain about.

I found out that I also can't write when I'm sad (especially not when I'm sad and trying to mask it by keeping myself busy). Things haven't really changed in the situation that made me sad in the first place, except that I found out why it happened. And knowing that has made me happy.

Speaking in broad generalities for the sake of protecting people and keeping personal information off the internet is fun.

I'm really tired. Class tomorrow should be fun.

Happier,
Rachel Leigh

P.S., Watch this video of silly college boys singing the song I'm quoting in the title of this post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V60d4EF3v6g

Oh dear. My lovely, lovely readers.

It's been months. If you're interested in what I've been doing with my blogging mind in the last few months, you should check out my writing center blog at http://richmondrachel.blogspot.com. Hopefully I'll think of more snarky things to talk about. Please don't give up on me.

Love you all,
Rachel Leigh

On Safety

Forgive me for ranting.

One of Richmond's major safety selling points, at least for my parents, was the Safety Shuttle. Affectionately called "The Raper" by U of R students, the Safety Shuttle was funded by a gift from a Westhampton College alumni to protect girls who were walking home alone at night. It only took girls and ran, by phone call, during nighttime hours and anywhere on campus. It say this in the past tense because Richmond has made some "improvements" to this shuttle.

The first of these was the gender desegregation of the shuttle. Which I can kind of understand when it's understood that the majority of assaults on campus first semester were on guys. I never really had an issue with that, but several of my female friends have admitted to feeling unsafe having guys on the same shuttle that used to guarantee them a safe way home. A friend of mine commented that "someone could get on and follow her off and back to her dorm," which is exactly what the shuttle is supposed to prevent.

The most recent "improvement" is the one I have an issue with. Instead of operating on a call-in basis, the Safety Shuttle now runs on a continuous loop around campus from 7 to 3 every night. At first glance, this sounds phenomenal. However, the Raper now only stops at 15 pre-designated stops on campus. You have to walk from your current location to the nearest stop and wait. For a long time. Then you can get on, but must get off at another pre-assigned stop, whereas you used to be able to get dropped off right at your dorm. This leaves a lot of waiting and a lot of lone walking that the old system prevented.

Then, there's the issue of where these stops are. First of all, good luck knowing. I had no idea until I looked it up online and when I tried to call the old Safety Shuttle hotline number, they did nothing to tell me except to refer me online. Second of all, there are a lot of places on campus that the Shuttle used to hit (like the off-campus but still school-owned houses at Bostwick) that are not a part of the new continuous loop.

I actually felt safer walking home by myself than waiting for the shuttle the other night, and that's precisely the opposite of what the Safety Shuttle is supposed to accomplish.

Hoping someone's listening,
Rachel Leigh

On Why Tumblr Has Ruined My Blogging

I love Tumblr and Facebook. That's not even a question. I am an addict of blogging sites, social networks, and internet phenomena. I don't know how to exist on the internet without deeply entangling myself in a web of internet interactions: message boards, Twitter, etc.

The problem with this addiction, though, is that it hinders my ability to produce original content. On tumblr, the ratio of my original posts to endless reblogs of other people's content is probably 1 in 50. On Facebook and Tumblr alike, when I go to vent, as I often do on here, the thoughts are often reduced to one to two sentence snippets of thoughts, rather than developed, lively writing as I hope people have come to associate with this blog.

And yet, those snippets and snapshots of my life and the small chances to reblog the things I've seen and post a thought I had seem to be enough to lead to a sort of catharsis that leaves me without the urge to write a several paragraph blog post.

I hope, my darling readers, that you haven't forgotten about me. Know that I haven't forgotten about you. I stopped multiple times to post on here, and found that I had forgotten how hard it is to share my perceptions of the world without that handy little "reblog" button.

Luckily, since I'm in college and have to turn out papers (and, oh, hey a blog for one of my classes) on a regular basis, I think I'm getting back into the swing of really fleshing out my thoughts and expanding on them. Even if it is just a large amount of pondering and pontification sometimes.

It's good to be back.

Still Tumbling, Facebook Stalking, and blogging,
Rachel Leigh

Good evening and welcome back to another moderately snarky, slightly pretentious, and pseudo-intellectual post.

I've missed you, my darling readers. I've missed sharing my thoughts on life, the universe, and everything.

College was taking over my life, and my internship over Winter Break didn't really want to share me either. But I'm back! With a vengeance! And...a keyboard!

Lovingly yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Exam Week

It's a Sunday afternoon around 12:30 and you're beginning to wonder where everyone is. Campus is completely deserted except for the occasional resident of the city of Richmond who has wandered over to campus to find a place to walk their dog and, for some reason, pay $8.50 to eat lunch in an overpriced cafeteria. You wander in circles aimlessly, stopping to get some food in said overpriced cafeteria (because meal swipes are cheaper than real money) until it gets to be 1 and you decide to get coffee in the library. It is at that moment, as you close in on a line of 30 people that has somehow formed in the 2 minutes since the coffee shop opened, that you realize where everyone is. The library. And then you remember that it's the day before finals begin and you should probably have spent your weekend doing something more productive that screwing around on tumblr, hopelessly refreshing webcomics, TFMs, and Texts from Last Night, or skypeing. Like maybe studying. Maybe.

...Just finished my last major (non-exam) assignment of the semester, which is due tomorrow at noon! Congratulations to ME!

And, to those of my readers who are:
a) Still reading
b) In college...

Happy Finals Week and Good Luck on Your Exams!

Random Thoughts

It's been a while, anonymous readers! Since then, I've found myself wasting a lot of time on sites like CollegeACB.

Why is it that people get so cruel when they're anonymous? I mean, seriously, the UR CACB page is just a bunch of trash-talking (particularly different sororities and fraternities bashing each other) and people talking smack about each other. I guess another major question is why I read it.


On another note: I REALLY love Blaine on Glee. I mean really. Darren Criss is adorable. And so talented. Have you heard his cover of "Baby It's Cold Outside" with Chris Colfer? It's amazing. Plus, I mean, I fell in love with "Teenage Dream." All. Male. Acapella. It's THE quickest way to my heart, I'm pretty sure.

Sorry. I'm just...guh. In. Love.

Lovingly,
Rachel Leigh

On ELECTION DAY

You might remember my previous Election Day post, made back when I was still blogging over at freedomofknowledge.org, a site which is now down for the count. You'll really only remember that if you've been reading my stuff for years. Which means you might remember it if you're Mike or if you're me, but it is otherwise largely unlikely that you will.

Well, it's that time again. Seriously, get out and vote if you haven't already today. I went through the somewhat grueling process of getting an absentee ballot. You can go stand in line for a little bit and vote. It's important. Richmond's having an election-results-viewing-party in the Westhampton Center tonight, so clearly people are taking this seriously. As well they should.

You have a patriotic duty to vote. You have a civic responsibility to vote. And, well, you have a personal interest in voting. You have no right to complain about the behavior of the government if you don't take the time and initiative to go vote. You could have changed things.

So please, go out today. Vote. Starbucks will give you free coffee, I think. And it's pretty cool. And Christine O'Donnell is not a witch, she's just like you.

Also, to our Californian readers, if you're out there: Vote "Yes" to Prop 19! ;)

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween. Happy Election Day!

Politically yours,
Rachel Leigh

New Rule

Gingers are not allowed to say "baller." Ever. Under any circumstances.

A Late-Night Post with No Real Thematic Content

Today, something interesting happened. I was sitting in my room with my roommate at about 4:45 when sirens started going off. Really loud sirens that really confused my poor, innocent brain because I was worried that campus was breaking. After the third or fourth siren went off, I decided to stick my head out into the hallway to see what was going on.

My RA was walking up the hallway, advising people to come into the hallway, close their windows, and not leave the building. Apparently the campus had gone into tornado lockdown. We have TORNADO SIRENS. WTF? Anyway, after promptly texting/facebook IMing several of my friends to get their endangered asses inside to safety, we went out into the hall to join the rest of our building in the first floor hallway.

Apparently lightning hit X-lot. Which is kind of dangerously close to our dorm. My friend told me he hoped it jump-started his dead car battery. I hope so, too. One of the girls on my hall was on her laptop (well, we all were, pretty much), and asked if she would be electrocuted if she left her laptop plugged in. I suggested she unplug it, though my reason was not that she would be electrocuted and shocked to death and die on the spot, but rather because if lightning hit the building and hit her laptop, her computer could very well be fried. But whatever.

After about a half hour in the hallway, the sirens stopped and we were allowed back outside. Just in time for my American Government class, ohjoy.

So that was my exciting day.

Near-deathlyly yours,
Rachel Leigh

40!

This is my fourtieth post on this here blog. I feel like that's actually a pretty decent milestone, though I find it kind of sad that it took this long to reach this milestone.

So right now, my psyche is in a state of conflict, because the solemnity I felt this afternoon after my trip to the Gay Community Center of Richmond for an exhibit on Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals has been contrasted by the music I have recently been rocking out to, courtesy of:
http://www.onlythefinest.org/
http://www.camelbackmusic.com/
http://www.dirtymexicanlemonade.com/

On the one hand, the trip to the GCCR for the Holocaust exhibit was amazing and sobering. Homosexuals were persecuted under Paragraph 175, a law put in place under Kaiser Wilhelm, which made "indecency" between two men a crime punishable by imprisonment (a repeated theme throughout the exhibit was the fact that lesbianism was virtually ignored by this statute). One of the things that I found the most disturbing about the entire exhibit was the focus on rigid, old-fashioned gender roles under the Nazi regime. They felt the need to reinforce the strength and masculinity of the German man, and blamed homosexuality and feminism for the declining birthrate and declining status of Germany in the world post-war. In the Weimar Republic, both the feminist movement and the gay community in Germany made huge strides, and the actions of the SA party in the Holocaust set both movements back decades. According to both the exhibit and the head of the Student Alliance for Sexual Diversity here at Richmond, the burning of the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a prominent sexologist in Germany before WWII, set the gay rights movement back almost a century.

...Paragraph 175 remained on the books in Germany until 1969. Similar laws are still on the books, though deemed unconstitutional, in states like Virginia and Texas today.

On the other hand, the bubbly, upbeat, dance-y music I've been listening to for the last few days (weeks) is making it really hard to maintain the sense of solemn respect I had leaving the exhibition.

Conflictually yours,
Rachel Leigh

On the LGBT Suicides and On Harrassment

I'm sure you've heard about it. Recently, the LGBT community and its allies have been up in arms about the group of 7 recent suicides that were the result of bullying and harrassment that they faced because of their sexuality. As well it should be. When people like Billy Lucas and Tyler Clementi are pushed to suicide by the harrassment they face at the hands of their peers, the community SHOULD be riled up.

I love the fact that people have been so responsive about this problem. Richmond held a candlelight vigil last Wednesday night. There have been huge surges in public service annoucements (including a beautiful project on YouTube called It Gets Better, which features prominent gay figures from both on and off of YouTube letting kids who are facing harrassment and confusion now know that it does get easier). Thousands of people plan to wear purple in honor of the lives that have been lost and in solidarity with those facing similar problems still. I am proud to know that my friends and family have been public about their concern for the problem.

But here's my issue, and the reason I'm posting. This is not, first and foremost, a gay rights issue. Yes, the LGBT community has jumped on this problem because it's clearly a crisis. But when a large number of kids are killed or driven to suicide because of bullying and harrassment they face, for any reason, the crisis is bigger than any one community. This is an issue that comes down to a very basic fact: for all the anti-bullying programs in schools, all the information about cyberbullying, all the discussions of fairness, tolerance, and respect, people are still capable of being so horrible to one another that death seems like a better option than continuing to deal with it.

This should not be a gay rights cause. This should be the cause of every parent, friend, sibling, teacher, and colleague of someone who ever faced harrassment that made their life hard to deal with. Yes, Billy Lucas committed suicide because he was harrassed for being gay. The fact of the matter is that bullying-related suicides are unfortunately common and, if anything, the focus on the gay suicides recently has dwarfed the importance and the tragedy of a lot of other suicides which stemmed from harrassment. My heart goes out to the families and friends of the boys who took their own lives because they were harrassed for their sexuality...and to those of every other harrassment-related suicide. Your loss is something I cannot even fathom, and I hope it never has to happen to anyone again.

--Rachel

Just a Random Update / On When You Shouldn't Be Surprised

Wow. It's been almost two weeks since my last post. Sorry, my darling readers! I have been trying to do better, but clearly I've been failing a little. The last five days have been part of a much-needed chance to relax known as Fall Break. Prior to said relaxation, there were about two consecutive Hell Weeks of a rather absurd amount of work and a mid-term that I felt certain I was going to fail, so the break was definitely appreciated.

What can I say about life recently?

Well, first of all, I've been shown the best possible site to check the weather, which I now use religiously. Seriously, check out http://www.thefuckingweather.com/. It makes my day.

I feel like all of my recent posts have been really UR-centric, which I guess makes sense because it's really my whole life now, but I also feel like it makes my blog insanely boring to read. I really hope I'll find other things to talk about.

A friend and I were having a conversation in the dining hall the other day, because we were watching CNN and a story about a lion in a circus mauling a man. We both seemed to agree that there really isn't a reason this should be news. Lions are fierce, ferocious, wild animals. You really shouldn't be surprised that one (even one raised in captivity) would attack someone. COME ON. They're predators. That's what they do. They attack things. Maybe you should be surprised if someone got mauled by a sloth. I mean, that would be unexpected. They're lazy and they're herbivores, so if one went insane and mauled somebody, THAT would be news. But don't be surprised when bloodthirsty predators decide to be bloodthirsty and predatory. That's dumb.

Carnivorously yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Metablogging (Again)/On Elitists

People who complain about facebook on facebook irritate me. If it really annoys you that people post about their lives on facebook, then what possibly justifies your posting to complain about it? I recognize that you might find the constant status updates annoying. You might be annoyed that I posted a facebook event to try and convince people to come play in the rain with me. You might find it all a bit trite and obnoxious. I respect that.

But if you are annoyed that people post their every thought on the internet and on facebook for you to read, then do not complain about it by posting on the internet for every person you know to read. That makes you look like an elitist, a hypocrite, and just straight up like a bitch. We give as little of a crap about your not giving a crap as you do about the things you're complaining about. I get it. You don't care about my life. So delete your facebook or remove me as a friend so you don't have to read about it. That is of no concern to me. But do not bitch to the world at large about the fact that you don't like to read the bitchings of everyone around you. We are as entitled to post on the internet as you are.

You don't understand why the internet has become a vehicle for everyone to talk about their lives and get attention for it? Aren't you inherently using the internet as a vehicle to get attention for YOUR life and for your elitist viewpoint? Screw you and everyone like you. You are the reason people hate hipsters.

Fuming,
Rachel Leigh