6 Steps to Get Through Surprising Stress

What to do when life gets you

Originally published on November 6, 2017

Ah, November. It’s the second half of the semester, midterms are over, final projects are rolling out. And for some, there might be some surprises that will throw you off and send you into a stressful tizzy that will make you hibernate in your room with Netflix and coffee and not want to leave. So what do you do when an assignment suddenly appears, your laptop overheats, there’s a problem at home, or some other emergency surprises you?

1. Stay calm. I’ve found that going into an emotional state does not usually help with immediate problems. The calmer you are, the more levelled your head is, and you can decide what the best course of action will be.

2. Let it out. Once you have a game plan, and a solution, or a partial solution is in sight, it’s okay to get emotional for a little while. Bottling up emotions will only explode more violently later. This method of catharsis is often only temporary, and I wouldn’t let it get in the way of the final solution. By letting out emotions now, the less likely it will come up later when you are executing your plan.

3. Just do it. You hate making phone calls and need to make a phone call? Too bad. (This is speaking from personal experience). Just do it! Do your research as needed. Make that phone call. Get the facts. Take some action. You don’t want to feel like this forever.

4. Go to your support network. If you don’t have one, make one. Go to the people you trust the most, the ones who can make you feel better no matter what. Many people would be able to empathize or sympathize with your situation.

5. If it’s avoidable, don’t do it again. I’m speaking to all the students out there right now who have a history of procrastinating. Some suddenly surprising stressful situations are unavoidable. But if it’s something you can change by just being a little more on top of your game, I would recommend being on top of your game.

6. Learn. There’s a lesson in every tragedy or accident. Maybe there was something you should have double-checked. Maybe there was something different you could have done, even something you would not have thought of before the accident. If it’s something you can prevent, don’t let it happen again and find yourself in the same situation.

I hope nothing big or bad happens to any of you in this semester. But life happens. Last semester for me was an overheated laptop containing many of my long-term projects. This semester is something a little different, a complete accident on its way to being resolved. It still shook me up and I found my way going through all six of these steps. But two weeks later, I’m feeling a bit better. Stay smart in these last few weeks of the semester. It’s not over yet. 

How to Find Inspiration Without Really Trying

Yet another NaNoWriMo article...

Originally published on October 30, 2017

It’s that time of year again for people like me, or someone with an itch to write creatively for once, start to gear up for that caffeine-induced writing contest against yourself known as NaNowriMo (National Novel Writing Month). And though I wrote an article last year about why you should do NaNo, this year I figured I should tailor it more to my experience right now. And right now, I am struggling to create some semblance of an outline so I don’t have a repeat of last year’s utter mess (okay, it wasn’t a mess, but it wasn’t how I wanted it to turn it out).

This year I’m trying something a little different. I’m writing technically with the same characters and world and location and some events of two past NaNo stories, but the way I’m writing the story and hopefully the way events happen will be different. For example, I’m trying a third person narrative style instead of first person, and starting the story in a different place. As for specific parts of the story, I’m still a little stuck. And that’s where something fun called inspiration comes in.

Inspiration can be found in all kinds of unlikely places. I’ve gotten some of my favorite ideas during the strangest times, times when I should not be thinking about stories but something else. I think about what my characters would do in my everyday scenarios, like taking certain classes, attending a concert, going to a meeting, or messing around their room. I read my favorite books and watch my favorite shows to see what I like and what I don’t like. What are my favorite things about them, and what are my least favorite?

My favorite trick of finding ideas is to just get in the right mindset and sit somewhere by myself and just let the ideas flow. I talk to my characters, think through different strategies, and let my typing fingers do the rest of the work of recording my stream of consciousness in a never-ending list of bullet points. I also like reading different writing prompts to get ideas, trying to put the scenario or dialogue in with characters or a world I already know.

Everyone needs inspiration for different things. Artists for their projects, musicians for compositions, writers for stories, scientists for experiments, businessmen for objectives. And for any person who needs to be creative for a large part of their lives, becoming burnt out becomes a real possibility that can happen more and more often.

I hope my little take on inspiration helps some of you find it. I for one am looking forward to tackling NaNo this year. This yearly challenge and annual visit to my favorite world is something I always look forward to.

The Evolution of Glasses

From nerdy tool to fashion accessory

Originally published on October 23, 2017

Glasses are an interesting thing. They’re an aid to help with a disability. Think about it. For most people who wear glasses, they could not function in society without them. They couldn’t read, they couldn’t drive. If they lived 400 years ago, they wouldn’t have survived. Glasses became tools to help people with poor eyesight, well, survive. After some time, they became associated with nerds and other scholarly people due to the eyestrain caused by excessive reading and the subsequent large, thick glasses. Yet glasses have evolved into somewhat of a fashion accessory.

I’ve always been comfortable wearing glasses. I’ve had to since third grade, and mine were always simple, with skinny frames of brown or blue and lenses progressively getting thicker. I didn’t even wear contacts until sophomore year of high school, but that’s a different story.

I got to choose new frames this past summer after about five years of wearing the same ones. I didn’t realize how much frames had changed in those five years. It took me a while to narrow it down to what I wanted because many of the frames were similar to each other, yet completely different from mine. Bigger. Bright colors. Flashy designs. They really stood out on the face and it took me awhile to narrow it down to ones that were subtle and more my style, but still looking like the rest.

I’ve found it interesting to look at older books and read the stories where the people with glasses were picked on, called things like “four-eyes”, frames held up by tape from being punched in the nose. I really didn’t want to start wearing glasses because of these stereotypes, but it was never like that for me. By the time I had to start wearing glasses, it seemed like already there was more of a cultural shift. More people wear glasses, and it is a natural thing. It has even turned into more of a fashion statement, a stylish thing with TV commercials about how awesome it is to get a new pair of glasses (some people wear them without lenses!). That mentality has stuck to this day. In fact, there are some days when I just wear glasses because I want to. I make the choice to wear them, like I choose to put my hair in a ponytail or wear it down, or wear a sweater or sweatshirt. It’s just another part of my look.

So while society still has a long way to go in accepting some differences in people and making treating different disorders and disabilities commonplace and socially acceptable, I think we’re stepping in the right direction with glasses (though even now, if one looks up a standard “nerd” costume, those thick-frames black glasses with some tape in the middle still show up). It makes sense that the outlook on glasses has evolved over time. Perhaps others will follow suit. 

Service and Your Future

The one kind of experience you definitely want to have

Originally published on October 16, 2017

My past two summers have been spent in the sun at the wonderful local amusement park, Waldameer. No, not as a paying guest, but as a ride operator on the other side of the BAM machine. And while it was an easy job to get with good pay, there is also something else I’ve gotten from it: experience.

Any college student will perk up when they hear the word experience. You need experience to do anything in your field, or even when you’re not looking for jobs in your field. My original job search that ended with Waldameer began with numerous retail applications, most likely rejected as I have had no retail experience before. I keep doing Odyssey week after week because in someone’s eyes this is a good body of work and it has given me experience in churning out coherent sentences about unique topics every week for a year and a half. Whatever internship I end up with will give me more experience hopefully closer to what I want to do with my career (and if not, it’s still professional experience). So what kind of experience did I get out of Waldameer?

In short, people experience. Guest services might be the way to spin in. I interacted with thousands of people over countless hours, people from many different backgrounds, different ages, different personalities. I had to learn how to be comfortable with people, fast. I had to be able to keep my head cool with an angry guest and know proper solutions to problems. I had to be the friendly face of Waldameer, even on days when it was hot, when I was sore, or when there just seemed to be problem after problem.

Everyone should work in some sort of service industry at some point. This could be retail or food, or even being a ride operator at an amusement park. It is invaluable experience because I cannot think of a single job today that does not require dealing with other people. We are in a smaller and smaller world, meeting people from all sorts of backgrounds. And we need to know how to communicate with other people. We need to interact respectfully. We need to treat every person in every profession with dignity, whether it be our bosses at big corporations or our waiter at a small restaurant. I think that starts by getting some experience from the service side of things.

As a last little tip I picked up in my professional development class, you can spin any little job you’ve had before your “career” as some sort of experience. (For example: any job involving child wrangling, like countless hours in Kiddieland, could be spun as management experience. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!) 

Thank Goodness for Fall Break

Some encouragement to get through a well-deserved break

Originally published on October 9, 2017

I think college students everywhere are going to join me in saying “Thank goodness for fall break!” We’ve all been going for over a month straight, no breaks, new semester, just going and going and going. I’m feeling burned out. I’ve been procrastinating more, pushing things off, not caring as much. Yet I keep pushing forward because of the promise of fall break (just two days after this publishes!).

And yet, how much of a break will fall break be? On the other side of it are nearly 2 months of projects and performances and papers all rocketing toward final exams. We should be already be thinking about the next semester and then that snowballs into summer plans and future plans and yeah, maybe fall break is a good idea so I can forget about that stuff in a good old fashioned binge watch. If your professors are of the same mindset, they will try to squeeze in as much work as possible before so there’s less you have to do during.

I think the point of this article is to offer some words of encouragement and advice, to both readers and myself. The first little bit is a pat on the back. You’ve done it! It’s been nearly eight weeks of constant class-going and you’re still there on the other side. If your grades aren’t quite up to snuff, you have the time to fix them. And soon it will be Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, little rewards for this continued hard work.

Fall break is a time to recharge, but it could also be a time to catch up. If you’ve fallen to procrastinating ways, this is your time to get back on track. Start researching for final papers and projects, pick a topic, review materials, read something. But be sure to reward yourself. Go home. See family and friends. Do something for yourself that you can’t during the regular week.

And here’s a message of hope to everyone out there who has been getting a little sick of this constant hot weather: after fall break, we’re halfway through October. The weather should be changed to more of a fall-like pattern. Of course that could mean the time to get to winter is a bit shorter as well, but at least for a little while it might actually act like fall. Cheers to sweater and boot lovers; we’re almost there!

So whatever you are planning on doing this fall break, I wish you the best of luck. It’s the midpoint of the semester, and there are so many wonderful things to look forward to afterwards. Spend your fall break however you want to spend it, and get your game face on for all that is waiting for you when you get back. 

My Bernadette Peters Concert Experience

A day of hype and a night of pure talent

Originally published on October 2, 2017

This past week I had the privilege of seeing Bernadette Peters in concert at Mercyhurst University. I’m so glad I had this opportunity. For a while there, it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to, but as luck would have it, the stars aligned and at 7:21 on a Thursday night I was sitting in the balcony for the first time ever, snapping a pic of the stage and posting it on Twitter. I was alight with excitement, and in my mind I was trying to think of what she was going to sing.

The concert was amazing. There’s just something about pure talent that makes the time fly. Theater and music and entertainment are often said to be used as an escape, and this was no exception. I wasn’t worried about the paper due the next day. I wasn’t thinking about the weekend, the stressful rehearsal I had just run from to get there in time, or the pile of things I had to do tomorrow. I was in the moment, marveling at the talent of the singer and the trio. She sang two songs I was definitely expecting (“You Are Not Alone” and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods, the piece of theater in which I first discovered her) and many from past shows, but also songs that meant special things to her. She had an encore, where she sang a lullaby she wrote to put in the back of her book about animals. Well, that one made me tear up.

So it was this “brush with celebrity” that made me think about how we view celebrities. I’ve touched on this before, if not on here, then in conversation, when I saw Starkid’s Firebringer last summer. That was a completely different experience. In there, I was closer to the stage. The setting was smaller and more intimate. The actors and actresses were closer to my age, and I had been watching them for many years. And afterwards, my friend and I waited in the lobby for them to come out. They changed into street clothes, carrying backpacks, ready to take pictures and sign autographs for fans. They were…normal. Just like me.

Yet it was a different sort of experience leading up to watching Bernadette Peters. We were talking about it all day, whether when I was trying to work on that paper due tomorrow or waiting for a class to start. People were talking; they had seen her, they had heard her. And what do you mean you’ve never heard of Bernadette Peters? She is a celebrity, elevated, idolized. That’s the mindset I had when I was sitting, waiting for it to start. There was the small part of my mind that was saying, “Five days ago, you were on that stage. You’ve been on that stage many times before. And now…someone you’ve only seen on video is there. And every other time you’re on that stage you can know Bernadette Peters has stood on that stage too.”

I’m not saying we should stop elevating celebrities, or giving them the respect they deserve. I just feel like sometimes we go way over the top with how we act or think or view them.

(Hey, I’m guilty of it too. Reread my inner monologue above.)

Where's YouTube's Line?

Are the YouTube Community Guidelines even worth it?

Originally published on September 25, 2017

As a person following YouTube site drama, I’d always felt like “it would never happen to me”. I’m not a big YouTuber by any means. I watched the Adpocalypse and heard about videos being demonetized and taken down left, right, and center, hitting the big people on the platform and threatening their livelihood.

So last Sunday I uploaded a video I had just spent six hours the night before finishing, a Game of Thrones edit I was incredibly proud of. Within a half hour, I went to check on if it had gotten any views and found it had disappeared. It had violated YouTube’s Community Guidelines (never said which one specifically, but I guessed it was the “violence” one) and had been removed from the site. I had one strike against my channel in the Community Guidelines section but it would drop in 3 months. From following other channels’ troubles, I knew I could appeal. So I did. Last Thursday it was back up.

From my research, I know it is often an algorithm that initially takes down videos. There’s no way a human could go through the thousands of minutes of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute. But no algorithm is perfect, and way too many videos have been dinged for things taken out of context. A robot doesn’t know the difference between comedy and reality, fantasy and journalism.

I understand why advertisers started getting snippy. No one at Wal-Mart wants a Wal-Mart ad playing next to a journalist being beheaded by the Taliban. In my experience, I know that does not mean Wal-Mart supports the Taliban, but that is what the advertisers think. So YouTube lost many sponsors and was pressured to crack down on content, creating their Community Guidelines.

Is YouTube getting too sensitive?

They are a company, and companies need to have policies that partners have to follow in order to be a part of it. If a partner violates the policies, they will no longer be a part of the company. And before I hear the argument of “free speech”, even though YouTube is based in the United States, it is a worldwide company with contributors from around the world. There is a line.

THAT BEING SAID there is a big difference between fantasy violence knowingly consumed by the viewer and very real journalism taking place in our very real world that needs to be spread to raise awareness of things that are sometimes just words and numbers.

Some of the Guidelines make sense. Threats, hateful content, and spam should be stopped in their paths. But the others make less sense. Language, violence, and dangerous content are things found in movies and TV shows and people have the choice to watch them. At the very least, I would recommend YouTube starts doing the thing Facebook has done and put before a video “this video has graphic content; would you like to proceed?”. Age-gating should work to an extent as well, if necessary.

I will be watching even more carefully in the future to see what YouTube is coming up with next. Will there be a solution, or will there be a new platform ready to take its place?