On Greek Life

I really like trap, but realized I haven't put any on here, so here's one of my favorite songs that's on the shorter side.

FinD Me, by marshmello
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I've been so busy I completely forgot to record my brief experience with joining Greek life on campus two months ago.

Before applying to any colleges, I had fully intended to go out and join a sorority. Like, I'd ask colleges while touring about their Greek life activity on campus. But then I came to my university, where people in that scene are more like the kinds in the movies  - lots of pretty floral dresses and killer heels and curly blonde hair - and less like the kinds you'd expect. So I forwent an application and, except for one party at the beginning of the year (dragged along by a girl on my floor, and I ended up leaving maybe 30 minutes in), I expected it to be the last of sororities that I'd see.

A different topic - in Biology and Chemistry last semester, I became friends with a girl who coincidentally also happened to be in both of my lectures. She had some other friends in Chemistry, and we all sat together. This semester, one of those friend-of-a-friend girls (whose name is strikingly similar to mine, I thought she was typing my name when she was typing in her contact info) had tried to rush for a sorority, Sigma Psi Zeta, last semester, but there was some mishap with her mailed grades and she couldn't go through. She was trying again this semester, and invited me to go along with her.

We met up maybe an hour before it was time, during which she told me it was an Asian interest sorority - separate from the Panhellenic campus groups - and I understood why she invited me. The girls were really nice, and I met another girl with blue hair there too. But, to be honest, it was too overwhelming for me. I pride myself on being really nice to strangers, but it was hard when I had about 20 different names thrown at me at once and I couldn't even remember who was who.

The next night was themed Canvas and Mock-tail night. We were given canvases to paint on, and told that they would later be donated to either a struggling school or an orphanage (I can't remember which. Somewhere kids were struggling and needed motivation). So, me being me, I started running through all the meaningful Harry Potter quotes in my head. I settled on, "Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."

But I only had a tiny little 4x4 inch canvas, so the quote turned out more like:

I hope whichever kids got it, liked it.

I wasn't really intending to join, I just went along for something to do both nights. This was during a time when I was trying to plan my summer, and as I was really busy I declined to add one more thing to my plate and pen a bunch of sorority events into my already busy calendar. I was busy internship/job hunting, I was getting tickets for my return flight for spring break (which I am on now), I was looking up colleges for studying abroad, I was finishing essays and projects and oral presentations, I was apartment hunting.

On top of all that, I was also planning a month-long trip around Europe with an old high school friend for summer, and I was corresponding with her everyday on whether it was feasible or not, so I was just generally not in a mood to waste my little free time in uncomfortable situations. I ended up skipping the last rush day, and I don't really regret it. I don't think it was big enough yet to create connections that Greek life is famous for, unlike Alpha Phi (the huge sorority my grandmother was a part of, and wanted me to join. She even offered to write a letter of rec. for me.*)

I'm still really good friends with the girl who invited me, and I met a new girl too who's also in the same sorority and the same biology class. I'd like to believe I made the right choice, but since I still have very few friends, I sometimes wonder if I should legitimately try next semester. It's a good gate to many new friends at once, plus their sibling fraternity (I forgot the actual term, I don't think it's sibling) - double the friends all at once.

But I've been thinking, and I'd rather meet people through classes. Chances are interests will be more similar that way, and it's usually only one person at a time. I don't have enough confidence to talk to multiple people at once anyways.

That concludes my brief experience with Greek life.

*I just realized, it was the Romans who placed emphasis on connections and family history and letters of recommendation. Interesting that "Greek" life has adopted that practice. Yes, I know all that from the Percy Jackson books. Sue me for such "credible" sources.

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I FINALLY DID SOMETHING RIGHT.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, I DID SOMETHING AND IT WAS RELEVANT FOR LATER I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF GOOD JOB ME.

In high school, I had this brief thing of researching a new organism every week and writing down a brief summation of what I had learned. Some of the organisms were the sensitive plant, the maned wolf, and the living rock. One week, I went through my list of favorite plants and decided to research welwitschia, or Welwitschia mirabilis. Link takes you to my post with detailed research.

To recapitulate, it's a succulent plant, consisting solely of two leaves, that is considered a living fossil (like the horseshoe crab) because it's barely evolved since it first appeared in the fossil history.

In one of my more recent biology lectures, we just started studying plants - mosses, ferns, vasculars, and up. In the introduction slide, I recognized a picture of welwitschia showing up (along with a horsetail, which I also recognized at it's pretty common near freshwater sources in California)(I just realized I should clarify, horsetail is a type of reedy plant - not an actual horse's tail).

This excited me because this was the exact reason I started studying random organisms - to further my knowledge and know things before they are formally taught. I wasted no time in telling my friend (the sorority one) what that plant was, and since this isn't the first time I've told her random trivia about biology, she said, "I wish I had your brain."

If only she knew, she wouldn't say that.

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Shameless self-promotion about to happen.

This was also done as another birthday gift. Much longer than usual, but I couldn't bring myself to cut out any of the lyrics. 

Songs used: 

Things We Lost In the Fire, by Bastille

Low, by Coldplay

I'm thinking, as long as I keep this hobby up, there's gonna be one of my videos at the end of every post now.  I'm probably going to start posting non-photoshop mashups at the beginning now too. Too much confidence.

Snow Is Like Communism

Better in theory than practice.

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Drop Dead Cynical, by Amaranthe
(R.I.P headphone users)



I really want to see I Prevail this summer, and if I have to drive back out to college three states away to see it with friends then goddammit that's what I'm going to do. But they aren't the headlining group - Amaranthe is. I figured I better listen to their stuff, and I found this GEM on Spotify. I can't stop listening to it.

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I saw the trailer for Chappie way back in January, and I really, really, really, really want to see it. It looks like another one of those feel good movies where humanity prevails and family pulls together and it just makes you smile leaving the theater. However, since I have a lot of homework this weekend, plus a test to study for, I'm postponing watching it. However, I do have some opinions on the topic of AI, and I've been compiling them in a different draft.

It's taking me a while to write though, because in high school a lot of my friends were/are into electrical engineering, and whatever those people are called who focus on building electrical appliances (apologies for not knowing the name, they are very important and key members of our tech-centered society). These friends were mostly all staunch supporters of the progression of AI, and I was always afraid they'd get mad at me if I told them my opinions were slightly different than theirs. Ergo, I'm very careful with my wording and making sure my stance is perfectly clear. Ergo ergo, that takes time.

Chappie is SO CUTE THOUGH. He has these two antennae-like receivers on his head that look like rabbit ears, and the animators use them like animals ears - when there's a scene where Chappie is nervous or scared, the antennae fall back parallel to the ground. When he's excited or happy, they stick straight up. It's almost like personification, but animalification - giving a robot animal-like qualities.

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That makes me think of 6th grade English, when we first formally learned about personification and onomatopoeia and metaphors and whatnot. We were told that whenever an animal exhibited human-like behavior, it was personification. But now that I'm thinking about it, we label a lot of universal emotions as belonging to humans only. Crying, for example. Holding of funerals. When in fact a lot of animals can also do these things (Rats can laugh, for instance - that's one of my favorite links). A happy rock, or a proud nation - I think that's personification. But saying animals exhibit human-like emotions is silly.

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I just shaved my legs for the first time in four months two nights ago. I feel like a beluga whale.

SO SMOOTH

FEEL MY LEGS

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I went to the Downtown Denver aquarium yesterday, as a class trip with my Island and Marine Ecology class (plus the Oceanography class). An interesting thing is that there are so many people at my college that I see dopplegangers of my high school friends everywhere, and consequently I frequently do double takes. I had two double takes on that trip alone.

On the topic of the actual aquarium itself - meh. I guess it's hard to be impressed by an inland aquarium when you've grown up by the ocean and gone to aquariums located on the actual shore, but it wasn't bad. They had a mantis shrimp, which I thought was cool because apparently they can break aquarium glass so they aren't often kept in captivity. They also had Cassiopeia jellyfish, which anyone who's gone to any good aquarium has seen. They're the ones trolling around upside down on the bottom of the tank:

Yeah. Those idiots. Evolution works in strange and mysterious ways (lol evolution is no mystery. It's pretty clear how it works).

They also had three Sumatran tigers? And an animatronic orangutan?

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I live in a single room in my dorm, so I'm often alone. I figured I would go to a friends room (she lives in a different dorm off campus) because she said she needed to study and so did I. Because of the aquarium trip, I didn't have breakfast or lunch until 3:00 PM so we got a 14" pizza. It was delicious.

The cool thing is that her roommate decided to transfer colleges to be with her boyfriend in Texas, so now she has an empty bed. We got carried away and by the time I thought I would leave (around midnight) we found out the bus wasn't running anymore due to daylight savings. I ended up staying the night, and didn't get back until a couple of minutes ago. So basically, I just lived somewhere else for 24 hours. It's kind of weird that you can do that. Even regular sleepovers don't last that long. I like to think that if I had had a roommate, that's what we could've done all the time.

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I found out today you can't recycle plastic spoons or Pringles cans.

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Last weekend we had a huge snowstorm that dropped about 3-4 feet of snow, and it's still on the ground. However, right now it's a balmy 46 degrees out so I'm hopeful that was the last snowfall we'll see. But I still stand by what I said earlier. Snow is much prettier from inside a building. I don't have any snow boots, so I can't exactly go tromping through the drifts like I'd like, and if I counted the amount of times I almost ate some on the way to class I'd have to have an extremely impressive memory capacity. Plus, hot salt smells gross (They scatter salt to melt the snow on pathways, but it gets stuck in boot treads. The first set of doors in my dorm opens to a small room being blasted with heat, presumably to heat you up from the cold, but it makes the salt STINK).

I was walking around late one night though, and the snow was glittering like you'd see in the movies. My neck, nose, and ears were painfully cold, but that kind of snow kind of made up for it.

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I showed the friend I stayed with last night my "album" of compiled mashup songs, three of which were my own. I didn't tell her which ones were mine though, because I wanted her to honestly tell me which ones she liked. I was therefore overjoyed when one of mine, Clock Kids, started playing and she told me she really liked it. I think that's what's given me the confidence to put it up here.

This time the album artwork only took an hour for me to do, but I had to cut out 30 minutes still for it to fit in the music duration. I made it with the intention of giving it to my dad for his birthday because he really likes Coldplay, as the last time I showed him a sped up video he got really excited.

I don't think just one is enough though, so I'm already working on another Coldplay mashup for him, made up of Things We Lost In the Fire by Bastille, and Low by Coldplay.

It's more fun to make up my own album covers than to just crop two existing covers together.

I'm very self critical, so I can hear all the places where I messed up the cues, but it's not bad, especially given the quality of the acapella version of Cool Kids I had to work with.

Songs used:
Cool Kids, by Echosmith
Clocks, by Coldplay

Natural or Enhanced Beauty?

I'd been scanning through the Buzzfeed YouTube videos* as of late when I came across an interesting pair of experiments: Girls who wear makeup going without it for a week, and girls who never wear makeup wearing it for a week. The two videos are called "What It's Like To Stop Wearing Makeup" and "What It's Like To Start Wearing Makeup."

*There are a lot of SJWs in the comments of Buzzfeed. A LOT, most of them unjustified and just looking for an argument. There are also a lot of meninist-like comments too. Generally a lot of sexist people looking to be offended. I try to avoid the comment section when watching Buzzfeed videos.

Basically, the girl who did wear makeup a lot felt very vulnerable and self-conscious without it. She felt like people were judging her more, she didn't believe people who told her she looked good without makeup, and she lost a lot of confidence. The worst part was when someone told her, "You look tired."

Pro tip, don't tell someone they look tired. I wouldn't even tell my closest friends that, and I'm notorious for being sarcastically mean (Though I always try to pair it with a large smile, and I try to deliver the line in a way that it's clear I mean the opposite. I only use these comments on people I know will know it's just my brand of awful funny - I'd never say it to an acquaintance, and I'd never make fun of bodily features). I can't even think of any exceptions to that rule, and I'm the one who believes that there are always exceptions. It's kind of like never asking a girl if she's on her period.

(Never.)

On the other hand, the girl just beginning to wear makeup also lost a little confidence. She also felt like people were staring more, and was a bit uncomfortable with the attention (she also noted that while girls were perceptive of her change and complemented on her new lipstick or eyeliner or whatever, guys noticed something was off but couldn't quite place it). She tried to justify wearing makeup by saying it was for an experiment, instead of just thanking them for the compliment.

However, in the end both girls got used to it in less than a week. The first one decided she felt more comfortable without makeup than she did before, and the second one admitted that, as a girl who didn't wear makeup, it was hard to say that makeup made her feel more confident.

I know people who dislike makeup, and I know people who wear it every day. It's never been a concern of mine what they do - like I would never try to tell them they would look better if they "enhanced their beauty" or went with the "natural look." Whatever they like to do, I go with it (Though I did like to do other girls makeup for them for formal events if they'd let me, because it was fun painting on another person's face for a change).

Personally, I wear makeup to hide my imperfections. I'm not a confident girl; foundation/powder hides my flaws and eyeliner helps my eyes not be so mole-small. But those are the only things I do, and I can put it all on in 10 minutes or less (though I usually don't because I drag my feet in the mornings). Yes, the money I use on makeup can be spent on other things - books, concert tickets, iTunes, food - but that's my own choice. Besides, there are plenty of cheap brands at drug stores; I'm not into the top-notch stuff you see on TV commercials. I could buy two eyeliner pencils for the price of one Five Guys burger - and guess which will last longer?

(I started wearing makeup in the beginning middle school, but only eyeliner for my bottom lids. That pencil? I still have it after eight years, with a good inch and a half left of it. That's how sparingly I've used it.)

If I had better skin though, I wouldn't wear makeup at all. I'd much rather sleep in than slather warpaint on my face. Until that day comes though, I'll use it. Besides, I've gotten really good at winged eyeliner - a skill that took me four years to really master.

However, the people who say "Makeup is bad" purely because it supports the patriarchy's control over women (making them buy things they don't need) and things along that line are the people I have a problem with. There's feminism - supporting women in whatever they want to do, even if they want to be a housewife or a stripper. Then there are the feminazis - those who are 100% against all males (though they claim they want to end sexism); those who get angry at any woman who changes her natural appearance in any sort of way; those who'd get mad at you for shaving your legs. I feel like it would be those kinds of people who'd get mad at me for wearing makeup, and for being so weak and insecure as to not face the world with a bare face.

If makeup makes me happier, if it makes me more confident (a serious problem of mine), why should I stop? Why should I be unhappy to fulfill their skewed utopian world?

I will admit, there are some people who say they wear makeup solely for themselves - they do not wear makeup for other's benefit, and I do not really believe that. I do not wear makeup for myself, I wear it to impress others. After all, I do not put on a full face and then stay in all day trolling the internet, do I? That'd just be a waste of product and putting it all on isn't that fun. At least for me. As I stated earlier, there are always (usually, haha) exceptions.

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Oops, my hand slipped:

I did this about a week ago, a few days after the Owl City one, at the request of a Coldplay song from my dad. I've also started making mashups of my own, but no way I'm ready to post them. Refer confidence problem above.

Link to Wide Awake On Paradise Boulevard (the original name, I took a few liberties): http://youtu.be/Hho9gQccPCI