Real Talk: Hypocrisy and Hi-Lo’s

*Additional photos of clothing/accessories will be added to within a week of posting, since I’m working with only one of my closets*

I was a jerk as younger-me when it came to trends that others liked that I found to be beneath me. Not that I’d stop being friends with someone if they were interested in whatever caused me to hipster-scoff, but there would be shade thrown in their general direction.

And for that, I’m a lowly hypocrite, because more often than not, I’d finally come around to stop hating whatever it was that the rest of society embraced long ago. It’s totally science, so at least I’m normal?

The kicker is that this isn’t something that stopped around a given age when I had some epiphany amount what an awful person I am for judging people for their decisions – the most recent example is from January 2014. Aka, I’m a jerk-faced 19 year old, too.

1. Hi-lo’s:

The mullet dress/skirt was what I first dubbed any clothing article that had a higher cut in the front, with the back being inexplicably longer. Much sass was geared at my favourite boutiques for carrying an abomination to fashion.

Then I tried on a mullet dress.

And I looked majestic.

Now they’re a staple of my wardrobe – affectionately called butt-capes – hanging in both of my closets:

2. Floral print:

In early high school, floral print became fashionable. Convinced I would look like wall paper from my childhood, I stayed away from botanical clothing and accessories.

This trend was met with confusion – I couldn’t fathom why person would want to dress like their grandmother’s couch. More of a raised brow than an eye-roll, if you will.

Considering I was less revolted by the trend, I wasn’t as appalled when floral print slowly made its presence in my closets, reaching a point where I would prefer floral to other patterns:

3.  Mary-Kate and Ashley:

Not that gendered toys were anything that ever crossed my mind as a child, but looking back, I’d say I had a good balance between boy and girl toys (kudos to parents on that). Much like a miniature Toys’R’Us circa 2001, my play area was littered with a large collection of Barbies and Polly Pockets, stuffed animals, legos, sticker books, science experiment kits, outdoor sports stuff, bug catching kits, ballet things, educational computer games, video games, Harry Potter, Pokemon and Sailor Moon merch, and an array of  fiction and non-fiction books.

You could categorise me as either a tom-boy or a girly-girl, both worked.

But this isn’t a rant about gendered toys – it’s about my first guilty pleasure.

For those born between early to mid 1990’s, I’d say that at least one thing from the Mary-Kate and Ashley cash cow of merchandise has been a part of your childhood.

That being said, I despised then. They weren’t saving the world, they didn’t have special powers, and they screamed a lot to express as many emotions as possible which is annoying regardless of who you are. To me, they were heavily scripted reality tv with zero substance.

Was that sentence redundant?

I digress.

Then everything changed when my mum’s friend’s daughter brought along her Mary-Kate and Ashley dolls to our house. Since she was younger than me, I played along with her toys so as to not be rude to our guest. I wasn’t pleased, but after I while I realised that there was no basis for my disgust in the franchise, which led to my obsession.

Whatever I could get my hands on, I wanted it.

I was like Squidward, when he finally tried a krabby patty, but with 100% less exploding thighs.

4. My choice of university:

I pride myself on being organised and knowing what I’m going to be doing for the next 10 years of my life. It’s school for the next decade, but that still sounds impressive, no?

There wasn’t any question regarding what university I’d attend once I finished CEGEP; McGill was in Montreal and it was in our family, so it made sense. They teach the program I’m looking to pursue, from ungrad to post-grad – so I was set.

Then I received a small purple booklet in the mail over the winter break this past year.

Gorgeous campus, small class sizes, a program more fit to my future, and loads of school spirit.

I could live on campus but not have to leave the province. Bishop’s sounded perfect.

Full honesty, toying with the idea of being a Gaiter instead of a Redman caused me more anxiety than it should have – but what would you expect when you’ve “known” your next step for nearly five years and it suddenly might change?

In the end, I made my decision to stock up on purple, and I’ll be heading to Lennoxville at the end of August. By no means do I regret this decision, but you have to agree that this one has more impact on my life than deciding to wear a floral hi-lo dress designed by Mary-Kate and Ashley.

2 Years in Review (An Aside)

With having my last CEGEP exam today (or my final final, if you will), I wanted to take a look back at the 29 courses that made up my college studies.

It might not be the funniest post – since each class will be described with a one liner/inside joke – but I’m doing this for my future self to look back on when I’m getting a PhD and whatnot and laughing at my previous course load. Aka, I don’t know if anyone else can relate to the follow commentary/jokes, but here we go:

 

Semester 1:

Intro to College English: Dongs and comic books – because that’s what you should expect when your teacher is essentially Seth Rogan. Also, sorry I didn’t know that a Brontosaurus wasn’t a real dinosaur.

Art of the Ancient Americas: Priding myself for my ability to pronounce at least 20% of the cultural stuff.

Dance: I should have done the Running Man for the choreographies’ freestyles.

Spanish: Las sacapuntas.

Research Methods: Group work is a definite nope – not a fan.

Western Civilisation: Fill a 32-page note book in 13 days: check.

Intro to Psych: Freud. Oh, and messing with the students’ minds. (Thanks for bringing a spider to class)

 

Semester 2:

Poetry: It’s all about the Bible (Thank God).

Fitness: At least the gym doesn’t scare me any more.

Astronomy: Space is very large. Like bigger than the amount of time I spend on the internet.

French: Jesus, Harry Potter, and Angry Lobsters.

Macroeconomics: Funlandia needs to look at their tire production rates. A++ .gif usage

World Geography: Did somebody say TFR?

Sociology: It’s nice to know that middle-aged profs still giggle at the word “duty/doodie”

 

Semester 3:

Liars and Thieves (English): In theory, if we were to approach this through a capitalist lens, could we say that…?

American Century: Good luck getting tea stains out of your notes. Also, why was this class two hours long?

Stress Management: Go on, take a nap in class, it’s cool.

International Politics: Billiard ball model and to-the-death Jeopardy games.

Psych of Mental Disorders: I’m actually pretty normal.

Psych of Adolescent Development: Talk Six still sounds like “toxic” to me.

Social Psych: Researchers really like loud, annoying buzzing sounds.

 

Semester 4:

Blogging and Creative Non-Fiction: Show and tell while you steal like an artist.

Biblical Sex (Ethics): You can get a divorce, but no take-backsies.

Cinema and Media (French): Strategically getting the prof to end class early is always the end goal. Also, seduction must always be grand.

Human Biology: Cue card game muy strong.

Stats: I haven’t been this confused since grade 11 physics. Also, plan C is a myth.

Integrative Project: Lookit, I did a pre-pre-pre-thesis!

Honours Social Science Seminar: An excuse to have bagels. Because Montreal.

 

So there you have it, two years wrapped up in less than 500 words.

Feels like it was that short, too.

 

Stuff That’s Near My Wall: WTF

Want to know why I love ordering stuff online? It’s cause it’s like you’re sending yourself a present, and who doesn’t love that?

I’ve been making online orders for over a year now, usually for books or tea for me or for when I have birthday or Christmas shopping to do.

However, clothing is something that I’m much more hesitant to purchase since my legs are a bajillion miles long (give or take a few inches) and I’d prefer to try something on before buying it.

Because it’s apparently necessary this week to talk about how much time I spend on the internet, you should know that I have wasted more hours on youtube that some people do courting their future spouse. A statistically significant portion of that time has gone to watching Joe Santagato’s videos. Despite my of love clothing, I waited a year after I found out there was Santagato TV merchandise, since I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t making an impulse buy.

Oh, I also wanted to be able to pay for it with my own money, and since I had my first job only last summer, the purchase was  delayed until this winter (I was busy with school and forgot about it).

Over the winter break, I ordered one of the sweaters:

 

Having sent the order to my mum’s house – and then spending the following week at my dad’s – I wasn’t the one to receive the parcel when it came in. When I got home from school the following Friday, switching back to my mum’s house, I was excited to open my order.

That excitement was replaced by confusion when I found two grey envelopes waiting to be opened.

Both had my name on them.

But one was heavier than the other. I started with this one, figuring that my sweatshirt would have been the bulkier of the two.

My assumption was correct, and so I got to opening the next parcel.

For the record, my shirt size ranges from small to medium, depending on the brand.

The shirt in the second envelope was 2XL.

And bright green.

 

WTF indeed.

The irony aside of someone purchasing a 2XL shirt asking where the food is, I still had no clue as to why I was the recipient of this … fashion statement.

Rooting around the remnants of my order, I found the invoice for the shirt. Scanning the sheet of paper, I found the location that it was actually supposed to be sent to.

It wasn’t Montreal.

It wasn’t another part of Canada.

It wasn’t even within North America.

It was supposed to go to Australia.

Clearly the same place.

Hopefully the person who was supposed to get the shirt in the first place has gotten a replacement at some point or another between January and now…

Real Talk: Nerds Versus Geeks

This seems to be a topic that people aren’t clear on, so I’m going to do my best to make it a bit less hazy on the similarities and differences of what it means to be a nerd versus a geek. Since it’s apparently trendy now to hold onto a label that used to be attached to someone you wanted to insult, I’m also going to get into what doesn’t fall into the realm of nerdhood and geekery. And, for the heck of it, I’ll use myself as an example to show how a person can be both.

1. What it means to be a Nerd:
   Know what I think is a lot of fun? School. Not even going to hold back on this one, but I love learning and participating in class. I take the time to learn the concepts and find ways to incorporate what I’ve been studying into my everyday life. Except for physics, since all I understood and retained from that class was that North is not “up”. Not only that, but I pride myself on being someone that can join in class discussions and have something to contribute to the conversation. I don’t consider going to lectures to be a chore, even if they are at 8:15 in the morning. I value education, yo.
2. What doesn’t constitute as being a Nerd:
   Your flannel shirt, high-waist jeans, and suspenders are not representative of your intelligence. Being quirky or having a beard, and wearing a pair of Raybans doesn’t reflect your ability to analyse post-post-modernist reflections of Molière. Can you recite five digits of pi? Can you differentiate between a credible and unreliable source? No – then find yourself a more fitting label.
3. What it means to be a Geek:
   Do you have a thing that you like? Do you know a lot about it? There you go, you can be categorised as a geek. Anything that can be followed or consumed can grant you geek status if you’ve invested enough time into it. Music, books, tv shows, sports (and not just Quidditch), musicals, movies, video games, art, photography, comic books – if you have a deep appreciation for it and have taken the time to learn more about it or participate in it, then you fall into its fandom and can call yourself an X-geek. You can usually spot us by our respective fandom’s paraphernalia. Don’t even get me started on the fan-fics.
4. What doesn’t constitute as being a Geek:
   When you call yourself a Harry Potter fan and have seen two of the movies. Saying you’re a trekkie because the one with the white dress and her hair in the big buns on the side of her head is your favourite. Pretending to like something (while either being clueless about it or straight up hating it) to impress someone. I’m pretty sure that you have something you can binge-watch or happily obsess over. Focus on that instead, because I can guarantee you’ll get more geek-rage than I’m already throwing your way if you say something like my above examples.
5. Where I stand:
   I care so much about school. So much. I’ve had teachers cut me off from answering questions on the first day of class. The difference here, is that I’m studying classes that I want to be in, so of course I’m going to invest time and energy into what I’m taking in from a given lecture. I also love Harry Potter (scroll back to early March if you don’t believe me). I’ve read the books in two languages more than once, I’ve seen all of the movies many times over, and I have all of the soundtracks and other various paraphernalia. You need a Potter Trivia partner? I’m your girl. But I’m also deep into other fandoms – and other media. For example, I will “watch” a movie just for its soundtrack, especially if it’s mostly an original score. Could I tell you who plays what instrument in a given piece from a certain movie? No. Nor would I be able to recognise every instrument or note by ear. I appreciate it, but I haven’t studied it. I also have a strange addiction to binge-watching Let’s Plays on youtube, despite my inability to play the video games myself.

What I’m trying to get across is that you have to work for these titles. It’s not something you’re born into (let’s not spark a nature versus nurture debate about this), but something that is entirely up to you to maintain. So if you say you’re a nerd, I will ask you how quickly you dry out a pen. And if you claim to be a geek, you should know that a tri-force isn’t shorthand for the original Star Wars trilogy.

Internet Hipster (An Aside)

Let’s open with a joke: If someone threw a group of fish at you, would that constitute as you getting schooled?

And now for a moment of honesty: I spend way too much time on the internet.

Alright, think about a number of hours that’s far too large, and then double it.

That’s roughly how much time I spend online.

By virtue of living on the internet, I see memes, videos, .gifs, and shared links within a week of them surfacing. Not to say that I troll 4chan and reddit, but I definitely don’t get my sources from facebook.

This all started back in grade nine, having found memebase.com. I already knew of the cats that can has cheezburger, but the rage comics changed how attached I became to the internet. Picking up on the fact that people would reference something they saw online as inside jokes, I dove into the interwebs so I could follow along.

Now, I’m at a point where I have a ritual that I follow of checking every site when I first get home from school. Or, if it’s the weekend, before I start my day. I’ve given a cute name, even – “doing my rounds” – which boils down to catching up on the sites that I follow up until the last post that I saw, on top of checking emails and school communications.

I think it most appropriate to define this as online-FOMO, since 1) I have a need to see all the posts for Fear Of Missing Out on something, and 2) cyber-FOMO sounds too lame and like something a misguided, middle-aged news anchor would think up and be proud about.

As a result, I end up seeing the same jokes, shock sites, and pieces of “wit,” “wisdom” or “inspiration” over and over again.

And before anyone tells me that I could be doing better things with my time, know that not only do I agree with you, but I do also spend my time on other things. I read, I hang out with friends, I go to church, and I tackle my monstrous pile of homework.

How about another joke: If someone throws a bunch of fish at you, would you called that getting schooled?

Not as funny this time around, is it?

The reaction you have now to Gangman Style is close to what I feel when someone shows me some meme in passing.

I’m not trying to be hoity-toity about what others share with me. And I hope that much has come across so far. I’m just at a point where I’ve found the magician’s guide book on tricks – or spotted the trap door under the clown car, if you will.

If nothing else, this is a very word-y and tangent-y preface to why I probably won’t laugh or have as outrageous a reaction as you were hoping for if you show me an online joke.

And I’m not sure how Canadian this makes me, but I apologise in advance for it, too.

It’s Just Science

“If the explosion of the combustion reaction is countering the upward motion of the piston, wouldn’t that create fractures in the rod of the piston, making it useless?” I answered the instructor of the auto-mechanics presentation I signed up for during Vocational Career Exploration Day, hosted by my school board.

A look of surprise crossed his face. I was right.

I was one of three girls in the room of maybe 40 other grade 10 students. He wasn’t expecting much from us as whole, with the temperature of our room far too high for mid-April, and our being the last group of the day.

He most likely expected even less from the girls. I knew that one wouldn’t be participating since she was tagging along with me to the session, as I’d gone to the first two of three with her.

Next slide.

A video starts explaining how pistons are powered by combustion reactions and that if they overheat, things could get dangerous.

“What would be good way to avoid the engine overheating?” The instructor asks, after having paused the video. English isn’t his first language.

Probably not his second language either.

My hand shoots up.

“You could use a coolant liquid or you could stop the engine to let it cool down.”

He nods. “Yes – usually it’s the coolant that’s okay if you need to keep moving.”

The rest of the video plays out.

I’m half listening, half playing with my name tag/schedule.

Next slide.

“Let’s talk about other side of things – what would you use to protect the engine in the winter?”

My hand’s up before he’s finished asking his question. “Anti-freeze.”

He nods, smiling this time.

Our back and forth routine of theory-question-answer goes on for the remainder of the 50 minute information session.

The micro-lesson finishes up with him offering for someone to come up and try changing a part of the engine that he had off to the side of the front of the room. Having monopolised the theory aspect, I stayed in my spot, happy to see the girl I didn’t know get up to take part in the applied component of the session.

The bell rings, and we line up on our way out, collecting an information pamphlet on auto-mechanic courses, a pen with the vocational school’s information on it, and a set of sticky notes.

The instructor hands off a pamphlet to the guy standing in front of my friend, a smile comes across his face when our eyes meet.

“How you know so much?” He asks in his broken English.

I take the collection of promotional information from the instructor, saying with a smile, “It’s just science.”