Hug A Diabetic Day

Today is Hug A Diabetic day.

I've long been a supporter of this day because, well, who doesn't like hugs? But I've been thinking about it. Thinking about people like Erik and my parents who, on a frequent and regular basis, actively support my diabetes and do what they can to make my diabetic life easier. Out of those three people, Erik was able to give me a hug today. And he would have anyways, because he doesn't need a day to do that.

It made me think this day is a lot like those stupid statuses people post that sound scandalous but are really something to do with being feminine and are therefore somehow supposed to raise awareness for breast cancer. We know about breast cancer. Everybody knows breast cancer exists. This is not the kind of awareness that we need. You have not accomplished anything except maybe gotten a few people to think you were talking about sex. Congratulations. Now you can go about your life thinking you did something good for breast cancer when really you didn't do ANYTHING.

I think Hug A Diabetic day just enables people to feel like they support diabetics when they've never done anything for them. And it's completely okay if they've never helped me with my diabetes. It's probably not because they didn't want to, it's because I would never let them. I let very few people in to my diabetic life, and for good reason. It's a hard life, full of me pushing you away and telling you I've got control when I've no such thing. I'm going to be angry at you. I'm going to tell you I did something when I didn't. I'm like an addict. It's messy, it's not fun, and I only let people in that I know care enough about me to not run away as soon as I treat them awful for trying to help me.

Please don't be mistaken, I appreciate those friends who acknowledge how difficult my diabetes is and like the opportunity for a public display of affection. This is not an attack on you, but rather a redefining of how I view this day. I know your intentions are good.

So today, I would like to thank those three people who really, truly, support me as a diabetic. Erik, Mom, and Dad: you are immeasurably helpful, and I'm glad you ignore me when I get moody, get the juice when I'm low, and get the tester when I'm being a brat. If it wasn't for you three, I would be so much worse off. I owe you my life.

Hug A Diabetic Day

Today is Hug A Diabetic day.

I've long been a supporter of this day because, well, who doesn't like hugs? But I've been thinking about it. Thinking about people like Erik and my parents who, on a frequent and regular basis, actively support my diabetes and do what they can to make my diabetic life easier. Out of those three people, Erik was able to give me a hug today. And he would have anyways, because he doesn't need a day to do that.

It made me think this day is a lot like those stupid statuses people post that sound scandalous but are really something to do with being feminine and are therefore somehow supposed to raise awareness for breast cancer. We know about breast cancer. Everybody knows breast cancer exists. This is not the kind of awareness that we need. You have not accomplished anything except maybe gotten a few people to think you were talking about sex. Congratulations. Now you can go about your life thinking you did something good for breast cancer when really you didn't do ANYTHING.

I think Hug A Diabetic day just enables people to feel like they support diabetics when they've never done anything for them. And it's completely okay if they've never helped me with my diabetes. It's probably not because they didn't want to, it's because I would never let them. I let very few people in to my diabetic life, and for good reason. It's a hard life, full of me pushing you away and telling you I've got control when I've no such thing. I'm going to be angry at you. I'm going to tell you I did something when I didn't. I'm like an addict. It's messy, it's not fun, and I only let people in that I know care enough about me to not run away as soon as I treat them awful for trying to help me.

Please don't be mistaken, I appreciate those friends who acknowledge how difficult my diabetes is and like the opportunity for a public display of affection. This is not an attack on you, but rather a redefining of how I view this day. I know your intentions are good.

So today, I would like to thank those three people who really, truly, support me as a diabetic. Erik, Mom, and Dad: you are immeasurably helpful, and I'm glad you ignore me when I get moody, get the juice when I'm low, and get the tester when I'm being a brat. If it wasn't for you three, I would be so much worse off. I owe you my life.

For The Love of Money

I've always been really opposed to bribing kids with money to get good grades. I was never bribed monetarily, though in junior high and the very beginning of high school, my mother enticed me with getting my ear cartilige pierced in return for getting nothing but A's (no A-'s) for two semesters straight. Took me awhile, but I got there. There was no compensation for getting what my parents still considered to be "good" grades, it was only the perfect grades they were going to reward. Besides, most of the kids I knew who were bribed were the kids whose parents were eager to see C's. The students getting straight A's are self-motivated.

Or, well, so I thought.

Since getting on this whole Princess kick lately, reading about it and re-watching the movies, and spending a LOT of time thinking about it, the law of unintended consequences reared its ulgy head. Feminism (to me, I suppose I should clarify) is about empowering women to do what they want to do and be who they want to be, to not feel the need to fit in to a mold or any "gender role." However, when telling girls that they could be anything, it's almost as if we've told them they have to be...everything. A study from Girls Inc. published in 2006 details what they call the "Supergirl Dilemma." Girls still have to be thin and pretty, but now they have to be smart and successful too. Instead of releasing them from the old chains of gender roles, we've expanded those roles to be more demanding.

Anecdotally, I completely relate to this. My friends and I did not simply "want" to go to college and be successful, we were going to. And we spent a lot of time talking about our physical flaws and dieting. And, well, me to a lesser extent (at least from what I remember) but most of my friends talked about partying to be social, and getting along well with everybody, and a few even still clung to the idea of "popularity." You had to be smart, pretty, fun to be around, well-liked by all, the president of every club you joined.

So when I think about girls aiming to get the best grades and be perfect, and not necessarily doing it for themselves, but doing it because of external pressures, it made me mad. What good is that? Teaching our children to be the best they can be for others? Don't we want them to be happy with themselves, to be truly self-motivated, to be what they want to be, and not what they think others want them to be and expect of them?

That's when it hit me: pay them.

Sure, it seems cheap (ethically speaking, of course) for kids to do well in school for money and not "for the joy of learning," but I'd want my kids to do well in school for their own personal reasons and no one else's. I don't want my daughter to go to school and get good grades and think that her reward is one small step on the road to perfection. I don't want her to do it to please me, to please her teachers, or to compete with her friends, I want her to do it to please herself. And perhaps that lesson will be learned in getting good grades for completely selfish and tangible reasons. She won't kid herself into being happy because she made me happy, she'll be happy because she can go out and buy another k'nex set. Or Legos. Or makeup or whatever my daughter will be in to.

I don't want my daughter's happiness to hinge on the happiness of others. She shouldn't have to please other people before herself, it should be the other way around.

Disney: Actually Empowering Girls?

I've been on a Disney kick lately, ever since ABCFamily showed Snow White and Aladdin back to back. It's been a really long time since I've watched any of the Princess Franchise movies, and watching Snow White (1937) and Aladdin (1992) together was incredibly....eye-opening. Ever since declaring myself a feminist a few years back, Disney has been sort of the enemy, the culmination of a society that thinks women should do nothing but find love, get married, and stay in the kitchen. Also be well-behaved and serve her husband. And certainly at one point in time that's exactly how women were portrayed to young girls in these movies.

But not anymore.

In Aladdin, Jasmine is a very aggressive, out-spoken young woman. She has dreams of seeing far off places beyond the palace and declares that "IF she gets married, it will be for love." She rejects her father's commands and tells men off for treating her like a "prize to be won." A far cry from Snow White, a bland, pretty woman with a sing-songy voice who doesn't seem to actually have any intelligent thoughts. Of course, the evil, cunning witch is a woman, but I suppose that's the price you pay for intelligence when you have a vagina: sin.

The difference was so striking, I went back to some other movies to see what they were like.

Pocahontas follows the beats of her own drum. Her father suggests she marry a warrior, but that doesn't seem right to her. She doesn't know what her path should be, and she's still searching. When she meets John Smith and he seems ignorant to her ways, she teaches him, unafraid of having an opposing view. She stands her ground against her village and the Englishman and opposes their violence, speaking up against literally everybody.

Mulan seems to not be able to do anything right. She'll never make a good bride, she speaks to men when not spoken to, and is overall exactly the opposite of what anyone expects of a well-behaved woman. To protect her father, she goes to war in his place even though she will be killed if they find out she's a woman. She stands up for what's right and stands up for all of China. At the end, the Emperor praises her courage and heroism. Despite having initially hidden her gender, she stood before all of China a woman, and a hero.

Of course, in all of these movies, the woman finds love, but it's secondary, an afterthought to the real goal. Mulan doesn't go to war to find a husband, she goes to protect her father and prove herself. Pocahontas finds love in John Smith, but in this love she finds the power to protect and save her people, and ultimately decides to stay with them, when she could have skipped off merrily with her new boyfriend. Sound a little different from the cliche' waiting for a man to sweep her off her feet kind of story?

I was actually planning on watching these movies and counting the number of times a sexist or anti-feminist ideal was spouted, testing the idea that perhaps these movies aren't as bad as I thought. Halfway through Pocahontas I realized I had nothing bad to say about the movie, and about 20 minutes in to Mulan I was convinced she might be one ofthe strongest female characters written. These are actually good movies, with wonderful female characters for young girls to look up to.

It was a pleasant surprise, and I'm glad I returned to these movies. I'm really starting to think all the amazing animation and story-telling are wasted on the youth, because I did NOT appreciate these movies before now.

Gettin' the A

I love how college really isn't about getting the A. Well, for some people it is. But those people will always exist. I mean for the professors, most of the students, and most importantly, employers. I get the impression that everybody wants you to do well, and obviously it would be great if you got an A, but it's not necessarily what they're looking for. They're looking to see what classes you've taken, to see if you've challenged yourself, to see if you have skills they're looking for and skills maybe others don't have.

I can't help but feel like I'm winning college.

I was reflecting on the electives I took this year. Medicinal Chemistry for my advanced chemistry elective, and Business Issues for Engineers for my engineering elective. Medicinal Chemistry really educated me about the pharmaceutical industry in ways I could have never predicted. I got a really great understanding of what goes in to discovering a drug, improving a drug, getting it patented, and how things like intellectual property and health care affects the industry. I am so uber prepared for my internship this summer and I feel like I lucked in to it.

And then of course Business Issues for Engineers (from here on out referred to as BIES). I didn't even know there was such a thing as an "income statement" before this class, and now I can read it and understand what my impact as an engineer is on every line. I understand things like how companies choose customers, how they decide how much money to spend on advertising, how to analyze how they're doing financially, how to analyze the industry.

I got a pretty weak B- in Medicinal Chemistry, and I'm looking at something similar for BIES, but I really don't care. I struggled through the classes because the information was so new to me, but I think it's going to be invaluable to the rest of my career. I'm more prepared than other people who took easy classes and got A's, that's for sure.

I can't help but feel like employers get that, too. Here's hopin' anyways!

Passion For All Things Reslife

ResLife has taken over my life. Any of you who have ever known an RA are not in the least bit surprised by this realization. I'm at the point now where I'm so invested in my residents and my staff and my programs that it's all I can think about. And talk about. And sometimes I want to talk about or do something else, and reslife shows me how wrong I really was. No I didn't, I still just want to OBSESS OVER RESLIFE.

GAHH.

I was really upset by this, and other things, the other night, and spent a long time talking about it to Erik. When the conversation died down, Erik wanted to talk about something else because HE HAS A LIFE. I didn't even know how to react to something not reslife related. It didn't turn into an argument, but we both left with hurt feelings.

It's left me wondering a lot. I think ideally, wherever I end up for a job, I'll have as much passion and interest for that as I do for my RA position. But is it going to be so bad that I can't talk about anything else, also? What kind of implications does this have for my relationships with people outside of my career? Is this a bad thing? Should I just only be friends with people who are in the same idustry, so as to avoid boring them to death?

I know it seems like I'm blowing this out of proportion, but really I'm just thinking it to death. It's my, perhaps twisted, way of being introspective.

The Devil Wears Prada: An Analysis

I read an interesting article about The Devil Wears Prada from a feminist point of view. She brought up similar questions that I had when I first saw it, but I have a different idea about why this movie came to be.

For the record, I love this movie. In fact, I own it. If you just sit back and watch it for it's entertainment value, it's great. You really can't go wrong with Meryl Streep.

Anyways, in case you haven't seen it, the basic plot is that Anne Hathaway is a journalist and she can't get a job, so she takes one as assistant for the editor of a high fashion magazine. It's not the industry she wants, it's not even really doing something she wants to do, but she needs a job and experience so she takes it. And she gets sucked in, starts to not hate her overbearing, sometimes cruel boss. She spends a lot of time at her job, skipping out on a birthday party for an emergency. She ends up getting an assignment to go to Paris that her colleague really wanted.

The moral of the story is that she was wrong to do all those things and when she found a new job, she went around to everyone she wronged and apologized.

The argument is that she did nothing wrong, other than to have career aspirations and doing her job well.

The writer of the article argued it's because society doesn't think women should care about their career, they should only care about falling in love and making babies. That's part of it, sure. I mean, that's definitely the underlying cause of the problem anyways. But I don't think it's something quite so insidious as that.

I think women, in general, don't know what it takes to have a successful career.

The movie was geared towards women, it was based on a book geared towards women. At no point was a man ever thought to be the audience for this story, so I don't think you could reasonably blame men's preconceptions of women for the story being successful. I think it's that most women would look at the main character and think she'd done something wrong. She spent so much time at the office! She left the birthday party!

And the one that really gets me, the backstabbing.

She worked hard, and proved she was more competent than her colleague. She never tried to make her colleague look bad, or unfairly did anything to her, really. Her boss watched their performances, and decided that she was the better choice for going to Paris.

That's what happened.

And yet somehow, you think Anne Hathaway's character did something wrong. That's what really hurts women in the workplace. If you would turn down a pivotal assignment that could make or break your career because "someone else wanted it and you didn't want to hurt their feelings" then you don't DESERVE a career. She didn't do anything wrong! She just did her job, and proved that she was the better employee for the position. If she'd set out to make her colleague look bad so that she could go, then yeah, she'd be at fault, that's a pretty skeevy thing to do. But that's not what happened. Why should she try to undercut HERSELF though? She should own her accomplishment and be proud of herself, not wallow in pity for her friend who is a lousy employee. That's not her problem, that her colleague's problem.

And if her boyfriend really didn't like that she was so focused on her job, maybe he should dump her and find a girl out there who doesn't have career aspirations, because it sounds like that's his real problem. He's the problem in that relationship, not the other way around.

Overall, the main problem is that women I don't think have as many career-driven aspirations as men do, and why could that be? Maybe most careers are dominated by men, men they would have to work extra hard to convince that they belong. Maybe it never occurred to them they could enter those fields. Maybe someone actually told them those careers were for men.

I don't know why it is, but that's the real problem.