I don't know if you've been reading the news lately, but it's bad.
The American Red Cross has been working tirelessly to provide relief to flood and fire victims in the Midwest and California, attempting to send aid to Red Cross chapters internationally (to help victims of the earthquake in China and the cyclone in the Phillippines as well as support troops deployed in Iraq), and continuing to provide small-scale relief on a local level to individual families affected by smaller disasters.
And, for the second time in our history (the other time being in 2005, during Hurricane Katrina relief efforts), we're in trouble. $15-$30 million worth of it.
The American Red Cross is a non-profit organization which provides shelter, food, and assistance getting disaster victims back on their feet. No matter how big or small the disaster, the Red Cross will offer as much assistance as they possibly can. For a one-family fire, this means providing shelter until a new home can be found, and vouchers for items to help re-build a household. For larger disasters, this means providing safe shelters and regular meals on-site as well as delivering them throughout affected areas to people staying in their neighborhood.
To do this, the Red Cross relies on donations of money, time, food and services to function. And we're currently operating large-scale disaster relief operations like we've never run before. This means that we don't have enough existing donations of volunteer time, money, or items and services to help everyone without borrowing money. We're literally shuffling volunteers around the country to meet our needs.
Although I have only worked for the Red Cross for two weeks, I am 100% on board with them. We've opened two shelters in the last 2 weeks for victims of the Monterey County fires, and I'll be spending a fair amount of time down there early next week for Mass Care work--handing out meals, working with clients, trying to gauge damage and needs of individuals.
Unlike some other "charity" or "aid" organizations, Red Cross has no hidden agenda and no funny financial finagling going on behind the scenes. We are simply an international and long-standing organization whose aim is to protect and serve those who have found themselves in desperate situations.
After over 100 years of helping you, I ask you to please take some time and help us.
Please. Donate to the National Disaster Relief Fund. Or find your local Red Cross chapter (this is mine) and make a donation there. All financial contributions to the American Red Cross are tax-deductible and they sure as Hell make you feel more useful than sitting around fretting every time a news bulletin comes on. I'm putting in a chunk of every paycheck until things are better, and let's face it, I'm poor as dirt.
And if donations of money are truly financially beyond you, please donate blood. We have a huge shortage at the moment.
Thank you. You have no idea how much even the smallest contribution can help at a time like this.
:: Magali
Despite my frustrations with the occasional class (e.g. RELIGST 151: Indian Devotional Poetry, which I'm trapped in for the rest of the year), generally speaking, I have my favorite academic experiences in Spring. This year it's POLISCI 111D: British Politics. Spring is usually a time of optimism (bye-bye, Seasonal Affective Disorder!) and fun.
But Spring Quarter, while it brings out some of the best in the campus--the weather particularly--and in me, also constantly drives home three of my least favorite things about school.
1. The workload.
2. The gap between our system and theirs.While perhaps no different than in other quarters, the weather makes it seem exponentially worse. Admit Weekend and Spring Show always combine to necessitate a greater number of rehearsals and performances with Mixed Company. Spring Recruitment (read: rush) for Chi Omega eats up another week or so. Big papers and year-end assignments always manage to pile up. And all this just as the breeze is warming up, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing and I can finally nap outside in the sunshine like the cat I must have been in a former life.
3. The caterpillars.It already sucks that our finals extend to June 12. I don't need my friends coming home from their frigid East-Coast climes and loudly enjoying the warm sunshine while I slave away in the classroom with five weeks to go. Sure, I'll have the last(?) laugh in early August when they head back to the beginnings of fall as I enjoy another 5 weeks of summer, but schadenfreude doesn't really apply when they currently have the upper hand.
Don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with bugs, crawling or flying, as long as they don't bother me.* But these creepy crawlies take it one step too far. Dangling down from the trees on spider silk threads, in greater numbers than could ever be necessary to sustain a population. Getting in mouths, hair, clothes, bags. Driving me nuts, and driving away prospective students at Admit Weekend. Though perhaps the most shallow of these concerns, it is by far the most prevalent. Ask any Stanford student about "those @%^#ing caterpillars," and they'll respond with a much, much longer string of profanities.
I mean, it's no Dream Castle, but at the end of the day, fountain-hopping, irresponsibly stealing naps in the sunshine and my upcoming visit to Chicago over Memorial Day Weekend make this quarter well worthwhile.
Oh, and PS: my application was accepted. I'll be in Paris this fall. Ah, que la vie est belle!
:: Magali
*Spiders excepted.
It's been more than a year since my last post, and Stanford life continues to surprise, amaze, baffle, and humble me.
I received my first C last quarter. Well, technically, C+. Econ 102A: Introduction to Statistical Methods, Post-Calculus.
I survived. Dignity bruised, perhaps, but it was not the apocalyptic event I had always anticipated it would be. Like so many others, I have learned to appreciate the beauty in simply passing. Victory tastes sweeter when it's dangerously won. Or perhaps it's just that I value it more, having been so close to losing it?
Regardless, my brush with (GPA) death has, in principle, reinvigorated me and urged me to strive harder, especially now that I can start choosing courses that I want to take instead of feeling obligated. Introduction to the Zoroastrian Religion, for example, and The Roots of Right & Wrong in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
My most recent struggle has been applying for the Stanford in Paris program for next Fall. I spent a month agonizing over my application, only to throw it away and start anew two days before. Decisions come out on Friday, and I think it's a good sign that I happened to remember my Vox just as I am thinking about how best to record my adventures--should they come to fruition--there.
With any luck, in 6 months I'll be wearing a beret and typing this from the posh MacDo' on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (McDonalds restaurants have free WiFi there). We shall see.
:: Magali
The spoken word is a funny thing. It changes all the time, shaped by an innumerable number of influences. Movies, celebrities, current events, friends, family... you get the idea.
Most recently I've noticed a trend toward using internet speak off the screen (or, as I would probably say, "irl"). Several of my friends, and myself, are guilty of this; Courtney says "lol," six friends I could name offhand say "jk," most say "wtf" and a handful say "LJ," "brb," etc.
I am probably particularly guilty of it simply because I find it amusing. But I am definitely not alone in speaking this way. Nor am I the worst offender--far, far from.
Yet my mother tonight decided to fly off the handle when I said something followed immediately by "jk," bemoaning the loss of meaning and expression in modern children. How I'm a shame to the way she raised me and it's "pathetic" that I choose to "dumb myself down" just to be "hip."
I don't understand this. This isn't the first time acronyms have been introduced into semi-everyday speech. "Fyi" has been business lingo since my mom was in college, "rsvp" has been in the English language since time immemorial. So what if "jk" becomes yet another household phrase? Who cares, right?
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely do not advocate eventually turning spoken communication into some bizarre form of chat speak, nor do I think "jk" or "brb" or any other abbreviation really has a place in professional or scholarly work (quite frankly, "fyi" doesn't either as far as I'm concerned)... but in terms of slang? As I discovered while watching Clueless last night, we've had so much worse.
I guess I should get to a point, if I have one (which, for once, I do).
Okay, so saying "jk" and "lol" and "brb" is not the most intelligent-sounding set of syllables ever to exit my mouth. But I don't see how that makes me "pathetic" or "dumb," considering I can be incredibly articulate when I put my mind to it.
Slang is not required to be grammatically functional, it's a form of expression that doesn't need to be validated by a dictionary. That's why it's slang.
How is it that my parents can forget that when some of the stuff they said in college was completely laughable? I just don't get it.
:: Magali
About a week ago, Dean of Freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims came to speak to our dorm about... whatever. First, she went around the circle asking everyone what they liked best about Stanford.
There were a lot of cliche answers: "the people," "the professors," "the weather," etc., but the best answer by far was Andrew's: "Liquid nitrogen on tap."
We all laughed because it sounded kind of absurd, but last night I decided I'm inclined to agree with him.
Last night Ben, Richard, Andrew and I drove Chase's car back behind the Applied Physics Lab with two Nalgene bottles and some towels and proceeded to get a lot of liquid nitrogen.
We brought it back to the dorm where cream, milk and sugar were already waiting, mixed it in, and made ice cream in roughly 30 seconds. And it was delicious. Just ask Julie, Andrew, Ben, Eric, Richard, or Kenzie if you don't believe me.
Second best moment of last evening was probably Andrew and Eric trying to create a burning cross with lighter fluid and matches... in the rain.
God, I love Stanford. Yes, we're all smart... but we're even more fun when we're being stupid.
:: Magali
I am confined to my room until noon tomorrow.
It is a voluntary confinement, but I am still imprisoned and I resent it no less than if it were forced on me.
When I leave my room, it is to eat, attend class, make small talk with my neighbors for a maximum of three minutes, use the restroom, or scream.
Why? Let me tell you.
Today, dear reader, is SLE Final. A twenty-six hour exploratory journey through my opinions about the Oedipus cycle, the Odyssey, the Bible, Sappho, the Greek philosophers, and God only knows what else we covered this quarter. Three essay questions. Six pages. Twenty-one hundred words. Hundreds of thousands of ideas to read and know and understand.
Am I stressed? Maybe a little.
Yet beyond that, I have to admit... somewhere deep down in the back of my mind, I kind of like it. The near-uninterrupted productivity, the deep and focused thought processes I've engaged in, and the knowledge that there is indeed light at the end of this tunnel. And more of this when I come back in January.
...I guess that means I'm a SLEtard after all?
:: Magali
...I realize that I am a terrible person for promising an update soon and then another long period of no text. I also realize that very few people care whether I actually followed up on that promise, but I do.
Believe me when I say that I'm not suffering from writer's block, nor am I so overwhelmed by work that I have no time for blogging. I just can't bring myself to post to Vox right now. I actually can't bring myself to do a lot of things right now.
I'm really, ridiculously frustrated (those of you who read my LJ know exactly what I mean) right now, and it's been sapping the joy out of some of my favorite activities, Voxing included. I intend to break this streak on Monday, however, because my family and I intend to rewatch the Lord of the Rings trilogy today and tomorrow... and my reminisces will, I predict, be many.
De-stressing at home has actually been one of my favorite college activities so far. Is that bad?
Oh well. Off to BevMo I go to watch daddy pick out wines and learn from the master :)
:: Magali
Midterms, papers and other nasty surprises are starting to sneak up on me all at once. Most inconvenient of them.
I think the thing I miss most about high school, grade-wise (aside from the fact that the work was easier) is just the fact that we got periodic progress reports and you always had some idea of where you stood. Here it is very different. Yes, Japanese is very good with giving me scores and numbers very quickly, but I am far too lazy to calculate what my grade is based on my percentages in various areas of the course. And my other two classes will be a giant surprise come the end of quarter, because I have literally no clue how I'm doing. I like to think that I'm not failing, but beyond that... anybody's guess.
Aside from school, though, I've been up to my neck in Mixed Company. Not that I mind: being able to sing, especially with this group of people, is wonderful. My range is already finally starting to stretch back out, and my confidence performing in public has improved exponentially. Great times all around; it's like having over a dozen new family
members,
all of whom are ridiculously talented.
I feel like I've been neglecting this Vox, and I have finally determined the cause. I have tried to make this blog too specific to an area I feel more comfortable blogging about on LJ.
To remedy this, I'm going to just start making this a place where I record my thoughts on college, movies, music, paintings, events... my voice telling the rest of y'all what I think. Which is really what I should have been aiming for to begin with.
Catch you on the flip side!
:: Magali
Oh my stars, I have been so negligent! But, as promised, the Scavenger Hunt entry.
All right, so it is a Stanford tradition that every year, all freshmen leave bright and early one Saturday morning and spend the day frolicking about San Francisco, getting themselves into a variety of awkward situations and, of course, photographing it. The object is to be the team who takes the most photos of the craziest things, thus earning the most points. I am happy to report that my team was in the top 4 for our dorm.
Among the crazy things we are asked to do (each photograph has a point value based on how risque, cheeky, or dangerous it is) were:
1) Get nude in a glass elevator
2) Crash a wedding and kiss the bride
3) Get handcuffed by a cop
4) Audition to be a stripper
5) Try on something incredibly questionable in Victoria's Secret
I have come to the conclusion that it is thanks to the Scavenger Hunt that we have never had a Stanford President.
The day began ridiculously early, as Uzi and the other RAs wanted to give us a head start. We were split into teams, mine comprising myself, Benipcia, Elyse, Andy and Enoch. I only knew Benipcia going into it, but let me assure you we all got to know one another much better over the course of the day. We were there from 10 a.m. til 1 a.m. Sunday morning (though the Scavenger Hunt itself ended at 5 p.m.) and went from Moscone Center to Union Square to Broadway and got very near the Haight.
And now, because I know you're all excited for the incriminating evidence, here are some highlights from the day.
At the Virgin Megastore, "doing it like a virgin." I decided that just in case they meant "rocking out like Madonna in the song 'Like a Virgin'" we would have all our bases covered.
Andy quickly made himself known as "the guy who would do a bunch of crazy shit on camera to get lots of points." This is him getting a makeover.
Eating Dick Tarts at Big Al's Sex Shop! Yes, Dick Tarts... that palatable treat so loved by children everywhere. Oh wait, just kidding, they were disgusting.
And last but most definitely not least: Andy's bare backside, facing the camera, his (we assume) equally bare front side exposed to the world in the Great Glass Elevator. Andy, we salute you. You rock our socks, man.
And with that, I leave you. I hope you enjoyed the Scavenger Hunt recap as much as we enjoyed the Scavenger Hunt. For more photos, check out our gallery in the Scavenger Hunt album.
'til next time, comerades :)
:: Magali
P.S. I am fully aware that the structuring of this entry is awkward at best. Leave me alone :P I'm still learning how to use the insert photo feature.
My second week of school has been just as entertaining and completely new as the first. I was not rolled out for Mixed Company, but ended up being a group member all the same. I attended a frat party. I went on a scavenger hunt in San Francisco (photographic evidence soon forthcoming, I promise!). I was kidnapped by MixedCo and taken to the beach in the middle of the night to sing in the pouring rain, and it was all wonderful.
I wrote my first draft and a half of a SLE paper. I took my first Japanese test. I saw my first SLE film (Tibetan almost-porn FTW). I gave my first presentation in section. I feel like a truly "good" student for the first time in my life.
I also experienced my first bout of pseudo-homesickness. Not because my new friends aren't wonderful, but simply because they aren't my old friends. Luckily I'm going home in two weeks for a weekend, though, and the knowledge of my proximity has been a huge comfort. And whenever I get upset, I pick up my Japanese textbook and study; it's doing wonders for my grades and self-confidence.
Full Moon on the Quad is on Saturday. Expect an amused, if not entirely satisfied entry on my part soon after. Also, I really will do an update about the Scavenger Hunt, with photos, very soon.
I wish I could think of something more comprehensive and/or interesting to write, but I suppose that'll have to wait til next time. Ciao!
:: Magali
