This is a test

This is just a test to see how well I write  my thoughts on the computer. Why is it that we write better when it is on paper? I avoided using e-mail for the longest time, since I felt that letter writing was becoming a lost art. But now I think that it serves me well that  I don’t ask for a friend’s address when I first meet them.  Since I hang out with sketchy people (and when I want to exchange information about certain political events, issues, etc), it’s probably a good idea to keep it just to e-mail. I don’t want people trying to stalk me (especially at my parent’s house). Speaking of y parents’ house, I  reflect back to how I  have been complaining to my mother about living in Worcester, and when will she plan to move. She keeps telling me “when the prices in the housing market go down.” I can’t believe how much a jerk I have been to my parents. I  live in a beautiful house, almost a hundred years; I have my own bedroom; my own lap top; my own bike; I have the opportunity to go own trips. I  am a lot more priveledged than my older brother and older sister, and I really resent it greatly that I have been given so much, that I feel that I most be traveling during certain times of the year. I was reading  one of my brother’s letters to my mother, thanking her for the money he gave to him, and pleaded for not to pay any more money claiming that the “heating bills most be very high.” He then sympathized with my mother about the situation in Israel, the Second Intifada. He  loathed Clinton’s  idea that both sides are guilty, and that we need to “find a common ground.”  He said that there is any (the Palestinian extremists) and we need to fight them off. What I have noticed that with Republicans, they have a mind set of seeing the world as “good and evil,” like the war against  good and evil. He went on about how

I keep distracted from writing on here, since all I want to do is look at pictures (photos that  I have taken).

 

 

 Aww the childhood reminiscence. I am listening to Spider webs by No Doubt. This song brings back memories  back in the 90s, when it make me really excited about being a teenager. I wish I still felt that way now. I hate how politics dominates my mind. I think of when I always wanted to go to California. I think that my first trip to England should have been when I was 9 or 10. That would  have been the perfect age. I was obsessed British men, their sexy accents. All of this initiated when  I became in love with John Lennon, after sitting next to his picture at the Hard Rock Café in New York. I remember coming in EXTREMELY hungry to NYC (since all I had to eat was raisins in the car, and I had been driving in the car with my father for 4 hours. I remember being really excited returning to NYC, since earlier that week I went there to drop Sharon off for her accepted students overnight at  Barnard College.

 And then there was the Austin Powers movie. I remember seeing the adds for the movie on the television, and being so excited to see the film. I knew that I needed to see this film, after seeing Mike Myer’s sexy  British accent,

   Something smells like spoiled milk on Hawaiian airlines.  I just came to realize how much I miss being a teenager and a child. Being twenty sucks. There are literally no social opportunities when I go out back home in Worcester, since the majority of the rock concerts you have to be either twenty and 

       I miss that really cute surfer dude that I met at  “Down to Earth” grocery store  out in Honolulu, I really liked his generic surfer voice, and dark skin. I asked him if he was a college student, and told me “Nawww.. I surf and that’s my life.” I asked him if he was Hawaiian, and he told me that

 

 I don’t feel as excited listening to these songs that I am listening to, as I used to. Madonna’s “Get into the Groove”  used to make me soo hyper, wishing that I had a jeep, and while I was listening to it, I would get out of  jeep, in a bikini with a cute boy friend, and  walking out into the sand with a surf board  on some beach in southern California.  

Love is not existant

Why is it that love does not exist?

Why do we romanicize about it?

It felt like it was the one soul thing that I lived for- breathed for— fate for me was destined for it

 You wait hours, days, months, years, lifetimes in that castle waiting for prince charming to arrive on horseback. But don’t dwell on it, because prince charming does not exist.

He only exists in our imaginiation.

The poison apple, consumed. Thoughts drowned…

  She was Edie Sedjewick….only wishing her Andy Warhol would love her……

What is the thing labrynth? The brain decays when hope has given up

 I had to conform to society- trust me, it was not my choice, but I had to in order to get on with my life. I am now a product of this disgusting society. I am not true to myself anymore

 I have lost myself. The leaves keep falling down, foiliating

With you, I felt that I was transcending. I was not becoming drained by this world. I could go to something new. 

Anything and anyone that reminds me of you puts me in complete bliss—every time I see a person that reminds me of you, please know that I  get a lump in my throat

I refuse to succumb to any man, because they are all the same. They are all animals. I never listen to them, because all they want to do is just one thing.

Thinking about reality is committing suicide.

 

The pain of a picture

The pain of a picture 

life smashes into pieces as the heart was thought to be one

but was not 

no more oxygen for me 

I can't think about it

I half smile since I love you

but  I can never let you know that  I love you

no never, since that only scares men off 

no one knows the answers

wish the brain wasn't that vulnerable oh well 

becomming washed up in the ebb and flow of the world

reality becomes choke

the silent, screaching pain that we never wanna hear

My struggless with my learning disability + OCD and how it lead me towards creating a mental health awareness/learning/diability rights

Hi everyone!
So this past year, I (along with two friends) started a group at Hampshire called, the Mental Health Awareness/Learning Disability/Disability Rights group after a number of reasons. Both from personal experience, and to educate the community and the world about an issue that is not brought up enough
I have struggled with a learning disability all of my life. I was diagnosed with nonverbal learning disability in kindergarten, I was held back a year in school because of it. To this day, my parents still do not have concrete evidence as to why I was held back (besides the learning disability) and for several years greatly resented it. Several of my classmates would make fun of me because I was older than them. It was hard to make friends, since I was a year older than them, and was experiencing things that they had not. Whenever I struggled in school, my father would yell and give up all of his faith in me and say, "I don't care-- she can just go learn a trade." (Now having a trade or a vocation is not bad, but it would just mean doing the same repetitive things over and over again). My learning disability, dealt with a lot of developmental issues. I would pronounce words wrong and would need to see a speech pathologist, in which I would be embarrisginly pulled out of class. I don't understand why children with a learning disability should be taken out of class for speech therapy, since it only would hinder me more. The speech pathologist would takes notes on me and evaluate, and I never got to see them. I feel that children should be able to see the notes and evaluations written about them, even if they do not understand them.
But the only other alternative was seeing tutors after school, which I hated, since it took away from my free time. One thing that I would like to do is find a way in which learning disability specialists could somehow integrate their therapies + help for the children in class, so there would not be any embarressment leaving class.

Fastforward to high school. I am an honors student, taking mostly honors courses. I feel pressure to be like my older sister, who graduated number 5 in a class of 300, and got a perfect score of an 800 on the SATs. My goal is to go to a very prestigious college. I am hoping Smith College, Brown (since my father went there), or maybe Harvard if I am lucky. I have never worked so hard in school. I am placed in a special ed class for one period of the day, mostly with inner city students who were probably placed there for behavioral or racist reasons + were not receiving the help that they were getting (all the teachers were doing was "babysitting" them and then sending them to the principle's office-- where were all the psychologists and the real help that they needed?!) . When I ask my special ed teacher what I can do to get into a prestigous college, he keeps telling me "you're the only that does your work. you have nothing to worry about," is the redundant response that I would get from him (mind you half of the kids are making fun of me, calling me nerd and throwing spit balls on my head).
I wanted to go to a prestigous college, since I wanted to be a role model for other kids with learning disabilities, and prove to them that they could go to a good college as well. I was (and still am) hoping to create a learning disability support group/organization to help students with learning disabilities apply to colleges.
It really angered me how there were scholarships for people of minority groups, low income classes, international students, but NONE for people with Learning Disabilities. It angers me how the Disability Rights movement is the least known out of all of the Civil Rights movements. My goal is to get my current school, Hampshire College, to get a scholarship for students with learning disabilities.
Now college-- Hampshire College
School started out pretty well
I was in a wheelchair due to surgery on my left foot. I experienced discrimination first hand-- a lot of the buildings did not have ramps nor elevators. Even my own dorm did not have a ramp or elevator (I usally had to hop in or slide in).
I became vocal about my OCD to a man that I liked, and he found it weird, perceived me as a psycho that I had OCD.

Class-- (what all lead up to it).
My second semester of college, I took a course called "African Americans and the Media." One day we had a case asignment, in which we had to read the cases before class. I have trouble reading directions (it was sent via e-mail) which is apart of my learning disability. I thought that she would give us the cases in class. When I told her that I had trouble understanding the directions, she starts to laugh at me in front of whole class (around 20 some students) and exclaims "How can you not understand?!" I find this totally ironic comming from her mouth, a woman who claims that she is tolderant, and open towards fighting racism, discrimination and oppression, yet she had just done an act of discrimination against me!!!
It was ever since this event that I decided to create the Mental Health Awareness/Learning Disability/Disability Rights group. We are advocating for:
*more universal access
*teach people about learning disabilties and the history about it
*educate people about the disability rights movement
*stand up for those being discriminated because of their learning disability or mental illness

we hope to be doing this semester:


*Create a learning disability/physical disability peer mentorship group for
incomming first years and transfer students have a documented learning
disability or physical disability, and get peered up with an uperclassman who
has a similar disability. Smith College has a program like this, and I hope
that Hampshire can remodel a program like this too someday.

*Have a student/faculty panel on Learning Disability/Disability Rights 101--> I
just need to get the list serves for the SS, CS + HACU faculty + staff

**Bring in Disability Rights activist, Simi Linton. She wrote a book called "My
Body Politic." Here is her personal website:
http://www.similinton.com/

*Collaborate with BAAB, about bringing in mentalhealth/disability rights
activists concerning the condition of people with disabilities in prisons--> I
just e-mail Ada the signer-- I have not heard back from her, but here is the
name of the organization that I am interested in bringing in:
http://www.rippd.org/

Accessibility:

*Short Term goals-- to put all officces in the 1st floor of all buildings
*E-mail Joel about Summer assesment
*Fundraise to get an elevator in buildings that are not accessible to get to
(like the 2nd floor--ex: QCA, Women's Health Collaborative, Spiritual Life)),
such as a bake sale, yard sale, raffle (prizes to a local movie theater,
restaurant,etc) etc.

*Find out how much it costs to get an elevator!!!


Other
*Make Disability Services contain a description of all the different kinds of
learning disabilities and physical disabilities, so people know who is
elgible/leaves less ambiguity

So please come join us for our next meeting on Thursday, October 16th, @ 6:30pm in FPH 106!

Love,
Stephanie :)

Today is St. Francis day!

I did not realize but today is Saint Francis day.

Being not brought up in the Christian faith, this is new to me.

I went to the Food Not Bombs meetup in Northampton (we are trying to rally against having panhandeling become illegal in the town, and the shelters will not let them in-- I'll explain more about food not Bombs and how I collaborate in another post).

Anyways, I see a bunch of dogs sitting patiently with their owners in front a Church. Some of the owners were dressed up casually, while others were wearing their church attire.

Most of the dogs were short-- there were a couple of collies, and a very cute,  little pug (his name was Oliver). 

And then there was the priest- he was dressed in a beautiful robe, and had this really beautiful scarf on that you could tell was stiched and handmade. He seemed like a very kind loving man.

 I then saw him bless each and every one of the doggies, reapeating the blessing:

"May God bless you and keep you."

It sounded really beautiful. I felt like crying. It really made me happy to see someone with so much love and compassion towards all humans and people. This is why I have always had such respect for spiritual leaders, since they all have so much love and respect towards all humans and creatures.

Here is some more info about St. Francis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi