What have I been listening to?: Now and Later - Sage the Gemini
Hello folks! Winter break has ended and what a lovely break it was. For the first couple weeks, I was mainly just working. Wasn't even that hellish. Then about three weeks ago the main event was that I got my hair cut. Background story, I had been pondering cutting my looong hair on and off for quite a while. But everyone I mentioned it to said I would regret cutting it! Even my own mom said "Well, if you're experiencing doubt, there's probably a reason for that." Well, I finally took the plunge and donated 10 inches. I think I probably had about a foot cut off overall. My hair now falls at shoulder length in front and a bit shorter at the back. Right away in the salon I knew it was a good decision. I have been so pleased with it and have received such a nice response from all my friends upon returning to school. I had been getting fed up with my long hair for a while and feel so much lighter and fresher now. It feels more manageable, and I can still put it up. It's kind of funny that my long hair was with me for such a long time (since about 5th grade) and became almost a part of my identity, but that I now feel much better suited to this length. I think I could even go shorter.
Several months ago, there was quite the news story that erupted just 20 minutes or so from my hometown. A 911 call in the middle of the night from a home in Barron, Wisconsin led police to discover the recently deceased parents of Jayme Closs in their home. Jayme had been abducted and her parents murdered. Extensive police and community search in the following days turned up no evidence or leads. Months passed and the police had zero idea where Jayme could be or who could have taken her and killed her parents. Then, last month, she escaped her captor and he was subsequently arrested and confessed to everything. He confessed to having seen Jayme briefly getting off (or perhaps on) the school bus one morning at her home on his way to work. He had no other connection to her or her family, never spoke to her or her parents, but made the decision to abduct her and hold her captive in his home, about an hour from Barron. What is striking to me is the complete randomness of it all. Had he left for work five minutes earlier, or had the school bus been a few minutes behind schedule, he likely would have never even seen Jayme. Her return was a top news story, nationally. I recall looking at CNN online and Jayme's escape was the first story. It has been several weeks since this news broke, and I haven't heard much about it since.
The semester began this Monday the 28th and then came to quite a halt as the Midwest began to experience historically low temperatures and windchill. Everyone's being quite dramatic about it. We've all experienced extreme cold before. Several states, including my own, have declared a state of emergency over it. I think the only people for which this is a genuine emergency are those who do not have access to shelter and proper weather gear, those unfortunate enough to get stranded somewhere due to a car that won't start, or those who are forced outside due to their employment (farmers come to mind). Classes on Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled, as well as tomorrow's morning classes, but will resume in the afternoon. I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday in the library regardless, and was glad for the couple days to work on law school application related things. I have been working on my resume, which I had no idea would be such an undertaking. I had never had anyone look it over before, and decided to have Career Services at UWRF check it out before I included it in my applications. I received a scanned version back with literally every possible blank space and margin filled with notes and corrections. I had no idea this would be such an endeavor.
I am finding it to be an uncomfortable process, however. Not just the insistent bragging and dramatizing of what seem to be fairly mundane and obvious things, but I also find myself somewhat irritated by the requirement of reducing an experience to a few bullet points regarding what professional skill the experience provided. Take my foreign exchange year in Peru, for example. The formalities of resume writing prompt me to say things like it "Expanded appreciation of cross-cultural awareness" and this bothers me for several reasons. Firstly, I would hope that cross-cultural understanding is inherent to every study abroad experience, and as such it seems obvious and unnecessary to specifically state it. More personally, I find it almost sad to have to reduce my experience to what professional skills it afforded me. I did not seek out the experience (or any of my experiences) for that purpose and I don't like to view them through that restrictive lens. My resume has made my personal history, involvement, and experience look like business transactions for which I have received specific skills and qualifications in exchange for the amount of time and money I paid for the experiences themselves. It just seems incompatible with the motivation and actuality of the experiences, and with my life in general.
Something that is bothering me about this whole resume thing is that I don't think that learning and growth can be so easy quantified and converted into a few bullet points. It's hard to explain, but I think it both trivializes my experience and simultaneously exaggerates it, in a sense. All experience, good or bad, has value because all experience ultimately teaches you something, and I think its more likely than not that this growth is fluid and this knowledge cannot be so easily measured or even stated. A resume seems disingenuous to me in that it forces you to reduce a potentially profound and complex experience to merely what professional skill you took away from it.
It seems obvious to me that of course you grow as a person through your experiences, and I am finding it excruciating to have to appraise this growth in my resume. I have put a strange amount of thought into this this afternoon, and find myself definitely irrationally bothered by it. I think this is because my history and my experiences, particularly my study abroad experiences, and most specifically my exchange year in Peru, were complex and genuinely emotional experiences, with extreme highs and extreme lows. I had the best times of my life abroad and I also experienced the lowest points of my life abroad. These experiences are the most important of my life and I guess that's why I'm particular about how they are conveyed or remembered. I guess I can't really explain it.
Wow, I went on about that way longer than I expected to. I also meant to write about the little trip I made to Florida last week. I decided to take my first solo trip and flew into Orlando on Monday the 21st. I then took a shuttle to Cocoa Beach where I had hoped to do a bit of surfing and exploring. I had been warned that Florida was perhaps not as warm in January as I might expect, and this proved to be true. Arriving late afternoon in Orlando, there was a persistent breeze and as the night approached, I feared I had not packed appropriately. It turned out to indeed be the tail end of a cold spell and the rest of my stay was a bit warmer than that first night. I stayed at a neat airbnb complete with full kitchen, outdoor shower, abundance of soft top surfboards, and bikes available. The host also very graciously lent me her old wetsuit for the week. I didn't end up doing nearly as much surfing as I would have liked due to very strong, persistent winds making for a choppy, rough ocean my first two full days in Cocoa Beach. Even when the ocean calmed on my final full day and I got a proper session in, to call what I was doing 'surfing' would have been a bit of an exaggeration. It had been roughly 9 months since my last surf and it showed. I struggled and wasn't particularly successful, but I am not upset because it was a beautiful evening. That Thursday afternoon after morning storms, the winds died, the ocean calmed, and beautiful, clean little waves appeared for me. I spent the late afternoon and early evening in the ocean, watching from my board as the sun set over the pier, the small grassy sand dunes beyond the shore, and the hotels. I had to come in from the ocean once it became too dark, but it was a beautiful evening that I remember very fondly.
Since I could not do much surfing, I walked miles and miles up and down Cocoa Beach and the main road, the A1A seeing what there was to see. My flip flops (trusty since my Fiji days) betrayed me and gave me multiple blisters on both feet. I visited the famous, multi-story Ron Jon Surf Shop (the original is in Cocoa Beach) on multiple occasions, checked out the Florida Surf Museum (literally just a one-room museum), and discovered a nice, authentic Italian pizza place called Mangia & Bevi where I had a memorable lunch. I read a lot, on the beach and also in the Dunkin' Donuts near my airbnb, where I was surrounded by a lot of retirees. I loved to sit on the beach and watch the surfers who did choose to brave the rough waters, and found myself rejuvenated and exhilarated by their remarkable talent and grace. Once the sun went down, I came in for the night, watched Netflix, read some more, and was in bed by 9, hoping to be up early the next morning to squeeze as much light out of the day as possible. I walked out to the beach each morning to check out the ocean. It was a lovely, peaceful existence.
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| There's just something about an outdoor shower that makes me feel bold and liberated |
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| My airbnb was a mere 2 blocks to the beach |
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| The Cocoa Beach pier at dusk |
I spent a lot time on the beach and near the pier, but never actually went on the pier. Honestly, it didn't look great compared to the Folly Beach pier.
I had some really nice, genuine (albeit brief) interactions with several different folks during my stay that really made the trip for me. The generosity and kindness of my airbnb host, first of all, was very comforting on my first night of a solo trip. The next day, I was sitting on the beach, complete with board and wetsuit, and a woman pushing a stroller paused near me and said, "Wow, you just look so cool! Can I take your picture? Want me to send it to you?" I gushed and thanked her, and she later took a few more action shots while I surfed*, even capturing a shot where I am standing relatively upright.
*fell repeatedly
It was such a kind gesture, and I spoke to her a little bit more after coming back to shore. She was with her grandson, was originally from Mobile, Alabama, and her name was Candy. I remember our interaction fondly.
While the trip as a whole didn't go exactly as I anticipated, it was a great experience and I would return! Usually Cocoa Beach is supposed to be pretty good surfing conditions for beginners, and I think I just had the unfortunate timing of catching a couple bad days. The last beautiful evening I spent in the ocean made up for it, though. Also, I love finishing a trip to the ocean with more prominent freckles than I started with.
Cut to today. After spending an obscene amount of time in the library and in Career Services, I made spontaneous plans with my friends Phil and Noah to go to Olive Garden for dinner. Are there people out there who don't like Olive Garden? I can't imagine it.
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