Category: Blogust 2018: The Series

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

With college coming around the corner (or already came) and public school starting in just a couple of weeks, many of those people who fall into the routine of going back to college at the end of the month already know what’s to come: another school year, another year of papers, finals, classes, grades; all that jazz. Some of you guys might be ready to go back and just become more productive once again, and some of you may already be dreading the thought of being busy with school. Whatever the emotion is that you’re feeling, you still are returning to a place of familiarity, comfortability, and acknowledgment. As a former college/grad student, getting back into the swing of things took some time, and yes, I did experience a form of anxiety returning back to that routine, but it wasn’t anything that left me wondering what was going to happen. In other words, it didn’t leave me uncertain about my future for the upcoming year.

Like you guys know, I graduated grad school this past May without the intention of continuing my education further. No PhD’s for me, honey. What that meant for me was that I’d go through the summer celebrating and getting the well-needed break I deserved knowing that when it all ended, I wouldn’t be returning to my college as a student. I am not forced to adapt to a lifestyle I never experienced before: working a full-time job, making money, paying bills, pretty much being an actual functioning adult. As I sit here and write this post knowing that next week I will not be starting my first day of classes like I’ve done for the last 6 years of my life, I realized the uncertainty and anxiety was more than just normal worries.

I’m currently dealing with a real-as-fuck “culture shock.”

Continue reading “Day 19: How I’m Dealing with “Culture Shock”.” →

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

As the months pass on by, trends are created and become viral much more quickly than (sadly) an actual cause that can help save or cause a change in society. I say this with disgust over a certain “trend” that I came across social media one day, and that trend is the “skinny legend” trend.

According to Urban Dictionary, the term “skinny legend” originated on social media, used to describe a fandom’s “fave”, or person that is worshipped in a certain group of “stans”.

A phrase used by a social media sub-group called “stans”. It is commonly used to refer to celebrities such as Mariah Carey who are glamorous and talented, no matter their weight. It is also used ironically to refer to cute animals, people, objects etc. Twitter trolls use it often in their memes.

It’s meant to be something ridiculous and stupid, yes, and the community who came up with the trend didn’t intend any harm by creating it, but no matter how you look at it, those who see it for the first time are going to think the obvious definition of it: someone who is skinny and iconic. And that’s when a harmless trend then becomes harmful.

A lot like the “triggered” trend that was circulating on the internet in the last two years, “skinny legend” holds that same discriminative aura. Those who will use the term “skinny legend” will use it in every conversation, talking about good-looking people who are society’s definition of “legends” and “iconic”. I mean, what fat person is going to write #SkinnyLegend on their caption knowing half of the social media community will look at them sideways? It’s a trend that makes it so being pretty and good-looking an exclusive club for skinny people, which yet again is going everything against those who aren’t “blessed” with being skinny.

Am I reaching? Maybe. Do I feel salty? Maybe. But I could care less about feeling included in a trend such as “skinny legend”. While its original concept was okay and passable of being a decent good meme or whatever, it still leaves way too much room for people to misuse the term. They will be people using the word for its literal meaning: BEING A SKINNY LEGEND.

So please, don’t just use it because you hear everyone else saying it (which I bet 9 out of the 10 times it’s being misused in society) and it’s the new black. Don’t call out your skinny friends and say “damn girl you’re a skinny legend”. Don’t even idolize your “favs” by calling them that either because, again, the made-up meaning of that trend doesn’t make sense in the first place and celebs are human beings too. The fact that the word “skinny” had to be added to that trend already insinuates that skinny equals perfection and beauty.

It’s 2018, cut the crap.

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

In the last decade, I got to do some amazing things and had the opportunities to work and perform on various creative projects. I performed on Good Morning America, I performed at Carnegie Hall twice, and I was a part of the winning ensemble in the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Competition. All these amazing memories and opportunities stemmed from being a part of my high school’s most prestigious choir, Performing Choir. I was a member of PC for three out of my four years of high school, and I honestly wouldn’t trade that experience for the world.

But that’s a different story for a different post.

After I graduated high-school and started college, projects like that never really came up. I was busy getting “gen-ed” requirements out of the way in college, and I was too shy to join some sort of club while being there. By the time I was a junior, I wanted to utilize my time better and start doing things to build up my resume. I had tried once to get an internship before my junior year started, but that’s an experience that wasn’t good at all. 

By the time I was on my winter break, I had found myself wanted to get an internship to get the feel of being a part of a production company, whether it was for the theater or for film. After looking, I found one for a company in the city called Poetic Theater Productions. They were looking for two production interns to assist them throughout their winter production season of Poetic License. This was now the third time I got called back for an interview and the first two didn’t go well. To say the least, I was immensely nervous for this interview.

hen I arrived at their location, I was greeted by the person who was going to interview me for the position. With a copy of my resume in my hand, I handed it over and allowed the interviewer to review my resume for a minute or two. Because I had participated at a non-profit affiliated with the company, a lot of the questions I was asked had to do with my experience there. The conversation honestly came naturally, and when I left the interview, I had felt really good. A couple of hours later, I got the email saying I got the job.

It was nerve-wracking going to work on my first day. I was there trying to get the hang of working a 10 to 4, and my first day was me and this other intern literally getting paperwork done for the actors participating in the two productions the company was running. By the end of the week, I had gotten assigned to work on the production entitled “Dijla Wal Furat: Between The Tigris and The Euphrates” The play was written by playwright Maurice Decaul, a former U.S. Marine officer who witnessed the Iraqi invasion back in 2003. Although the play isn’t a direct memoir of his experience, the play’s world is around that time period of the invasion and the Iraq War in 2003. The play shows you both stories of the spectrum; the Americans who are fighting to safely return home to their families, and the Iraqi people who are trying to survive on a day-to-day basis.

I can’t lie, it took a couple of readings before I actually understood everything that was happening, but by the time I got into rehearsals for the show, the actors seriously brought this script to life. Now, I’ve worked with a lot of student actors in my day, but to see those out of college with degrees and that actually belong to agencies and just working as professional actors… it was crazy seeing how talented these people were. For a show that only had 8 characters, these actors made it feel like a 20-character project, in all honesty.

Once the show dates were coming closer and closer, rehearsals got crazy intense. I wasn’t making it home until late at night, doing my school work at all crazy hours in the morning, and even sometimes during rehearsal breaks during the week. My weeks consist of me taking my three classes two days a week, running to the city and getting ready for another rehearsal. As tiring and stressful as it got, I still was able to be present and as helpful as I could when I was working. I loved doing what I did.

When showtime came around, I was in charge of mainly two things: controlling the soundboard during the show and making sure all the props and costumes were placed back in their appropriate areas after the show. Putting heavy fake guns in a bin and having to recheck if every little prop was in place was time-consuming, but as the shows kept going, the job became a lot easier. For the last night of the “previews” (which was really just a period for us production people to tweak certain things before the actual show dates), I invited my partner to come and see the show, and surprisingly he enjoyed it very much! It felt good to share with someone who knew me the work I’ve been doing for the last month and still have a good time.

The last day of the show was a bittersweet one; we all got dressed up for the last show and we had possibly the biggest audience that night. By the last show, doing this every other night felt like something I was supposed to be doing for life. I didn’t mind it either; watching the same show over and over again and enjoying it as if it was my first time doing so. But, the season was now coming to an end, which meant the shows were closing and my time with Poetic Theater Productions was coming to an end as well. I don’t even remember being all that excited for my little paycheck at the end of the season. I wasn’t even doing it for the money; I was doing it for the experience and it was an experience I wouldn’t ever want to replace.

I’m glad that my first job was something that I absolutely loved doing. It wasn’t no fast-food joint or retail; it was something that I saw myself (and even still see myself) doing as an actual job. Of course, once the production season was over, college was a lot easier since I was able to now just focus on school and not my job at the same time.

But I do miss it.

If anyone who I got the pleasure of working with during my time at Poetic Theater Productions is reading this, thank you so much for making my first experience in the theater world one to remember! You guys made me feel like I belonged, which I never seem to feel like I do anywhere and allowing me to be myself while working on such an amazing production was all I could’ve wanted coming out of an experience like this. To the production team, actors, directors, stage manager; literally everyone who worked on this production: thank you for everything, three years later.

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

It’s officially the middle of the month, and two weeks since the start of Blogust! How are you guys enjoying it so far? Personally, writing for the blog has made me feel more productive than I felt since I graduated grad school, so it feels good to be back and writing new content for you guys!

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but this summer has been hard and stressful for many of reasons, and I honestly didn’t have the energy to sit back and write when things were happening.

There were a lot more lows than highs this past month alone and I’m very glad that I get the chance to make things better for the remaining days summer has left. Although it’s not going to help solve every bad thing happening, it will at least give some of these issues closure, or further progress to get that closure.

I haven’t been around on the internet a lot this past summer because I honestly needed a break. I needed a break from seeing everyone’s posts about random things, and I was tired of putting on this facade on my social media that I was this happy ass person who is on the right path to recovery and “coping” with my anxiety.

As a matter of fact, it was the opposite.

As more issues rose, my anxiety did as well, which led me to do more coping and controlling it. I was tired, nevertheless. I was tired of the random anxiety episodes I was having whenever I was out, I was tired of worrying about other things out of my control, and I was tired of believing that things were just getting worse and worse as the days go, even though it felt like that.

In June, my family and I found out that my grandfather on my mother’s side was battling lung cancer. By the middle of July, we were given the news that the cancer was beginning to spread to other organs of his body and that he roughly had two weeks to a month left to live. Three days after that phone call, we had gotten the call that my grandfather passed away that morning, which was extremely difficult knowing I had a therapy appointment that same day. That following weekend, my family and I went to visit my grandmother in Pennsylvania, which you can read the travel diary for that trip here. To say the least, I did a lot of reflecting on my life and life in general on that trip, and here I am, now reflecting on the entire summer and what its taught me about life.

Despite the bad things, some great things happened as well! My partner moved into a new, beautiful apartment in Downtown Brooklyn (the weekend nights are absolutely beautiful in that area). I’m immensely proud of him and all of the blessings that came along his way; in no way shape or form did he see something like this come and personally, it still feels surreal to me that he owns his own apartment. Hard work and passion gets you places, and honestly, he’s been my motivation to do more for myself.

Also, my sister and I took some trips to the Sunset Park pool this summer! The last time I went to the pool was 10 years ago with some of my junior high school friends at the time. Because the community has grown tremendously since then, I’ve been worried that the pool was always going to be packed, which hindered me going all these years. My sister dragged me out the house one afternoon and we went and now that’s all I wanna do for the rest of the summer! It was so refreshing to go swimming again and catch some sun; it’s been years since I got the chance to do so!

Although a lot has happened thus far into summer, I do hope that the things I’m struggling with don’t hinder me from enjoying what’s left of the season. Normally, I would be getting myself ready for a new school year, so it honestly feels weird that this time around, I won’t, and that’s going to have to get some getting used to. Hopefully, that leaves me with some time to be productive, learn new things, and have some fun despite all of the negative things happening in my life. Not every day is going to be a fun and productive one, but at least I can get every other day to feel like that.

We’ll see how the rest of the summer treats me.

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

With the college school year coming in a couple of weeks, it feels immensely weird not getting ready to go back and start a brand new school year at my college. For the last 6 years, I’ve been returning to my college and two degrees later, it’s now my time to say good-bye being a student, which is frightening.

Over the summer, I gave myself the well-needed break that I was yearning for back when I was wrapping up grad school, and I did, but now that the summer season is almost over and people start returning back to their lives within the next month, it was about time I got myself together and start making moves looking forward.

Although I told myself I was going to let myself take a break, I knew it wasn’t going to last long. I found myself looking for jobs as early as the middle of June, and since then I’ve been applying to different types of jobs left and right.

One thing the majority of the people have a misconception of (even actual grad students pursuing their master’s degrees) is that you’re automatically going to get hired to any job you apply for because you have a master’s degree. While it heightens your chances because it makes you “stand out”, the reality of applying for jobs while having a master’s degree is pretty much the same as having a regular degree: it’s pretty much the same. 

Being a person who’s never had a real job before yet has the education credentials needed is literally a blessing and a curse. That “must need a bachelor’s/masters degree” requirement is never an issue for me, but that “and [blank] years of experience” is what pretty much either makes or breaks the deal. I chose to focus on my studies than get a job while getting my degrees, but it sometimes feels like a lost opportunity that I didn’t take advantage of at the time. So, finding jobs is even harder if you don’t have the work experience: while you need that shitty job to get work experience, your degree makes you over-qualified for the job, and most of the time, companies will let you go or not even consider you because they don’t want to pay you the money you actually deserve.

Also, the reality of the job hunting process is exactly what it is: a process. You’re not going to get hired at the first job you apply for, you’re not going to get an immediate interview once you send out your resume, and you’re most likely going to get rejected even if you make it as far as the interview stages of your process. Having a master’s degree doesn’t save you or make the process easier for you, it only does that in the long run, years after you got that damn degree.

Having a master’s degree is an accomplishment that I still sometimes forget to celebrate and acknowledge. You work extremely hard to get that piece of paper, so you best to believe that whatever jobs you’re looking for, they recognize hard work when they see it. But, that not always the scenario and in reality, more people are getting master’s degrees than ever. Millions of other people are on the same page as you. That, honestly, shouldn’t even matter and it shouldn’t discourage you. Take every opportunity for what it is, and take every experience as a learning lesson. You’re not going to be unemployed for the rest of your lives, not unless you allow yourself to give up. Yeah, I’m still searching and hope that my process progresses sooner rather than later, but I know when that one job hits, it will land, not because I have my master’s, but because I’m hard-working and driven.

As my partner’s been telling me: you gotta get your feet wet!

-Liz. (:

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

A couple of weeks ago, I read some old TNTH posts and came across one that I wrote last year entitled “First Tattoo: Story + Meaning”. I was very fortunate to get a first tattoo that I really cared about and never had second doubts getting it. The story behind it was one that I wanted to explain because “home was us” wasn’t a common phrase like “stay strong”. In other words, I had (and still have to) explain to everyone what the story behind the tattoo is.

Since then, I’ve got another tattoo (only took me three years to do) and the story and meaning behind this one are much more simple than the first:

On October 6th, 2017 around 12:30ish, I got my second tattoo.

Even before my first tattoo, I wanted something that would be in a typewriter font for as long as I could remember. To me, they looked clean and carried such a writer’s aura that I know I wanted to have whatever word that I was going to get. Coming to a word was hard; I wanted to get a word that meant more than just one thing. I wanted something that represented who I was as a 23-year-old grad student growing up. I played with many different words that I thought was the one, and when I got to “write“, I didn’t hesitate to choose that word.

Despite common belief, I didn’t get the tattoo to symbolize that I am a writer. I got it because of where I was (and currently am) in my life. During my first year of grad school, I began to feel this division between those in the program who were “readers” and those who were “writers”. My MA program was predominantly a literature program and I felt like I was in a place where I felt misunderstood and constantly put down because I wasn’t like the majority of the students in the program. One class I had my first semester in grad school taught me a lot about writing and the writing universe I never knew about because of literature is the one that is always deemed “more important”. For the past two years, I worked on my thesis with the professor who taught that same class, and as of now, my thesis is completed, passed, and archived at my college’s library. That thesis even allowed me to speak at my college’s graduate conference in early May about the same division within student writers in college classrooms, and for once I felt proud and just as important being a writer. It’s a label I don’t think I’ll ever scratch off, no matter what type of job I get and where life takes me. I write because it is my way of speaking.

I got this tattoo to remind myself that all I gotta do is write whenever I am feeling or thinking something that I cannot put into words properly. I’m not the best speaker; I’ve dealt with a speech impediment for most of my life and it’s sometimes hard to express good ideas verbally. I feel like ever since I started to use writing as a form of expressing myself, I was able to reach out to an audience much more efficiently than just speaking to them. A lot of the ideas I had for school papers of creative pieces would be so intricate that explaining them out loud didn’t give them the justice it deserved. I use writing as my form of expression, and I take it very seriously because it has not only gave me a platform to express myself but it in a way saved me from myself. It saved me from being in my head on restless nights. It saved me from making extreme decisions out of pure emotion I was feeling at that moment. It saved me from saying and doing a lot of things to myself. It gave me a reason to live, in all honesty.

So yeah, I wish the meaning of my second tattoo was just as interesting as the first one, but this experience was a lot less nerve-wracking than the first! This time, I went to get this tattoo alone on a Friday, autumn afternoon (one in which felt like it was still the middle of the summer) and went to the same tattoo artist who did my first one (which btw if you’re in the Bay Ridge area, I highly recommend Matt at Brooklyn Ink!) It took him a while to get his station set up because I was one of the first people to even enter the shop that day so in the meantime, we spoke about random things like college, the commute to CSI, how that bus is forever crowded (the bus stop is down the block from the tattoo shop) and the reality of people wanting word tattoos to face them so they can personally read them, which I find hilarious. I mean, a tattoo is a piece of art on your body, show it to the world! Anyway…

I had also asked my tattoo artist if it was alright if he touched up my first tattoo. Like I said in my first tattoo story, I was 20 and wasn’t really careful with my tattoo during the healing process, so it was extremely patching for three years. He kindly touched it up, and had asked me the actual meaning of my first tattoo. When I told him, the other guy in the shop at the time chimed in and said, “You’re a fan of The Killing? Bro, how great of a show was that shit?” 

When I say I thought I was the only other person in the world to like The Killing… it was amazing to find two other fans of the show! It was honestly the second time someone had asked me what the tattoo meant and actually knew what the hell I was talking about. After the touch-up, both of my tattoos were now wrapped up, and I left to go home. I was really happy to have a second tattoo on my body; I honestly thought I was only going to have the one for the rest of my life…

… but let’s face it, getting a tattoo is addicting, so see you guys for the potential third story in the future. 😉

-Liz. (: