But, Hey, Things Change

One of my best friends is someone I met my freshman year at TCU. She is a hilarious, loyal, forgiving, trustworthy, genius, quirky person with whom I instantly clicked with during the exasperating required Frogs First activities. We were practically inseparable all year, but then in January that year, she told me she would be transferring to a college that was closer to home, and I was devastated.

Who else would have Harry Potter marathons with me?

Who else could I laugh until I cried with?

Who else would accept how weird I was?

Then I didn't have the answers. But now I do.

As a freshman, you make a lot of poor bad interesting decisions. Going greek was not one of those.

(I truly hope this is not a cliche "my sorority changed my life post")

I came to TCU knowing I would go greek because my sister is greek here. I knew I would end up in her house, and was thrilled when I did.

Everyone always says a sorority is what you put into it, but I didn't realize that until I had to make friends. I realized I had done nothing freshman year to help myself become friends with these women who I apparently shared values with and could call sisters.

After my best friend told me she would be transferring, I started attending more sorority events and hanging out with girls I would see at chapter meetings. Then I realized, WOAH, these girls are amazing, quirky, talented, bright, spunky individuals who I can click with, too.

Now, don't get me wrong, my best friend cannot be replaced, and we are still best friends to this day, but I needed to be surrounded by people who could make me laugh and could fill a void I had.

And my sisters filled that void.

Here I am, a junior, living in the sorority house, and as involved as I can be with my academic load. I have learned from my freshman and sophomore years quite a bit.

Who else would have Harry Potter marathons with me?

Who else could I laugh until I cried with?

Who else would accept how weird I was?

My sisters.

I know this is probably all kinds of cheesy but, wait for it! I learned something.

I learned that relying on one person for all your friendship needs is like putting all your eggs in one basket.

I learned that I am not the hardest person to get along with and made friends much easier than I thought I would.

Sometimes you need things to fall out of place, so they can be put back into a new and meaningful place.

I am not someone who accepts change easily or happily. I react poorly to all forms of change. But change can be good. It forces you to look around and evaluate and see who you have in your corner. Maybe you need to rearrange, or in some cases start over completely.

Only one thing in life is certain: that change is a part of it. Whether it is a change of scenery or pace or people or work, change is bound to happen. For me to have been in denial that change is a possibility is naive, yes, but also part of growing up. I think, if you are lucky, you come from a place of stability with little to no change on a daily basis. Then one day, you are 18 and change happens all around you.

Everyone talks about how college is a new beginning, a period of transition from adolescence to adulthood, like no other time in your life. And maybe part of that is realizing that change is healthy and normal and something that is going to happen. Not most likely, but will happen.

One day your best friend, attached at the hip, is planning on living with you in the commons next year, and making plans for spring break, and the next she is transferring.

One day your sisters are these abstract faces you see in passing and refer to as a whole, and the next are people you couldn't live without.

But, hey, things change.

Water Wonderland

Over the very eventful weekend, I got sick.

I'm almost positive it is a simple cold, but it still sucks.

Anyway, while I have been sick I find myself doing a lot of things that use water. I wash my hands almost twice as much, I take long hot showers to help my congestion, and I drink hot tea.

This got me thinking about how much water and health go hand in hand. How healthy can anyone be if they don't have access to water, let alone clean water? How much water does a hospital use? Could a hospital, urgent care, or doctor's office survive one day without clean water?

Probably not.

This got me thinking about countries who don't have clean water. What are their surgical success rates like, and are they at all correlated to clean water resources? I can't imagine having surgery done by a surgeon who hadn't washed their hands all day, let alone scrubbed in less than a minute before. The thought scares me. What kind of bacteria could be lurking?

We have access to 24/7 clean water. And when the water gets shut off for a multitude of reasons; we freak out.

Case in point: I am a Floridian. As a born-and-raised Floridian, hurricane season is something you prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. In 2005, Hurricane Charlie hit. There were trees trapping people in their neighborhoods, power outages, and some water shortages. We were without power, (including AC in the sweltering heat) for days. We all could manage, until my mom turned on the sink and no water came out. We packed up the car and headed to a hotel with generators.

People don't know how to cope without something they have always had until they don't have it anymore. Humans have to have water to live.

As I have previously stated, I am from Florida. That being said, I had no idea that most of the country, and much of the world, was in significant drought. Where I am from, you can't have basements because underground is full of water. We have lakes galore and a working water reclamation program. We have actual "water parks" and giant rides that use thousands of gallons of water a day to push a boat down a river. There is a fountain at the beginning of every neighborhood and mall entrance. Droughts were a foreign concept to me before this class.

Now I understand that a drought is an international problem that affects everyone. We need to work together to understand and evaluate water resources and ensure that everyone has access to clean water.

This may seem like an impossible dream, getting everyone in the world on the same side of one issue, but dreaming big is where true successes stem from.

Travel to the Trinity: Part II

I chose a much better day to visit the lovely Trinity. It was Sunday, September 28 and it was finally sunny! Lucky for me, my sister lives in the apartments with a view of the Trinity, so I was able to get a much brighter better shot this time.

Ahh, much better. 

This picture is clear and crisp, unlike the murky water. I am still saddened by the amount of green in the river. 

This time I ventured down a path to see if there was a bench to sit on, and eureka!, there was. I, unfortunately, forgot to take a photo of said beautiful bench. 

Because of the better weather, I was graced with a far better collection of subjects people to observe. I saw 12 (TWELVE) people on walks with their dogs, 4 moms with strollers, 2 families, and 3 couples. It must have been family day. 

It is interesting that on such a sunny day people went out with others, presumably loved ones. But on the cloudy day, folks went out by their lonesome. Maybe the weather was representative of their mood that day? So they felt they had to connect with nature, and the same can be said for sunny days. 

Sunday is also a great day to visit the Trinity because it is a day of rest. Whether you believe in God or not, resting is promoted in our culture on Sundays. Eat brunch, go to the farmer's market, watch football, walk the Trinity. All on the list of acceptable Sunday activities. 

One of the three couples thought a great place to have a deep discussion was on the bench right next to me and yell talk about their problems. 

They talked about grad school and the big gray, scary place called "after college" and came to no conclusions. But they did manage to make me feel extremely uncomfortable. (5 points to Gryffindor?) 

Then a precious family walked by with two little girls and a little boy. They reminded me so much of my family 15 years ago. Two girls, separated by only a couple of years, attached at the hip, and obsessing over their perfect, unworldly, little brother. You could feel the parents pride. The parents laughed at things their kids did, but in an encouraging, nonjudgmental way. 

Side note: these people sound like I invented them. Especially when I tell you they packed a picnic.

Anyway, this transportation into time was lovely and picturesque. 

I saw a corgi, two yellow labs, a golden retriever, and some other dogs which I could not tell you their breed. 

I saw green water, and a blue couple, and a bright yellow family. 

People always flock to water. Why do we go to the beach? Why is a restaurant or hotel room so much more expensive better with a lake/ocean/pond view? Is it because on some deep level, all humans connect with water in a way they can't explain?

Probably, yes.

Water is beautiful and vital. We literally could not live without it. But we live in a world where we treat it like trash. 

And even though no one littered near or around the area of the Trinity that I was in, it is somehow still green. 

Travel to the Trinity: Part I

On Friday of last week I visited the Trinity river. Specifically I was near the area of the Trinity by Woodshed. Upon arriving and finding a comfortable spot of grass to sit on, I realized something peculiar. The Trinity river is not as it looks here.

Or here

Instead it looked like this. 

And this. 

Not only was I not blessed enough to have visited at twilight or on a sunny, breezy afternoon, but I also was graced with this hideous green "water." Not exactly what you expect when you have Google Image searched "Trinity River" before. 

Did I pick the wrong place to observe? Is there a green river monster polluting Fort Worth's great river? I digress. 

Once I was situated, I did something unspeakable. Yes, you guessed it, I turned off my phone. I decided to go old school and just sit and think with zero interruptions. Which was easy because few people passed on such a miserable day. 

I love the way the wind whistled through the short blades of grass, even when it was only a whisper of a breeze. It was peaceful in a way you can't always find in a big city. I have found in my years living in Fort Worth that is it full of beautiful snippets of nature; a whisper of the wild. The Botanical Gardens, Water Gardens, and the Trinity all make for a nice break from a skyline. 

I saw a little family of ducks walk by (they didn't swim by, obviously afraid of the green-hued water). I thought it was odd that baby ducks were born anytime but the spring. The idea of rebirth in the spring has been so powerfully engrained in my mind I found it difficult to imagine a baby duckling walking through crunchy leaves instead of soft, meadow, bright green grasses. 

I saw a whopping three people in my observational study of the Trinity. 

Subject 1: A woman jogging with her baby (Subject 2) in the stroller. Power to you, mom who can power through the Trinity trails. You have me beat. 

Subject 2: Baby above.

Subject 3: A man running with a German Shepherd. Both were in tip-top physical shape and could impressively stay in step with the other. 

Such a dismal day was no help. I prayed for someone to come downstairs from the apartment building across the way, or even someone taking a picture after eating at Woodshed. My prayers were not answered. I saw only three other humans (listed above). 

I had to get creative. So I started looking at the clouds. I decided to crawl back into that dusty old box covered in cobwebs in the deserted corner of my mind that reads "Fifth Grade" and try to distinguish cloud patterns to no avail. 

Then I let my mind drift. When I do this, I tend to analyze everything I have to do in the next week, and then go from there and always end up thinking what am I going to do after college? 

Which is a rabbit hole I decided not to go down.

Instead I got to thinking about my plans to study abroad next semester in Florence, which always gets really dreamy and romanticized. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself, and I plan to visit as many places as possible while I am in Europe. That can't be expensive right? Of course not, naive Hayley. 

I realized after looking at my phone (which was off and was not help) watch, I had been sitting in the grass for a solid hour. That may not be impressive to Thoreau and the like, but for a 20 year-old college student, I was impressed with myself. 

Nature is beautiful and thought provoking, but even more it brings the absence of technology. This is what made my first Travel to the Trinity so interesting. I don't have an extensive work about the world around me, but I do have an hour without my phone. That is something I will applaud myself for, no matter how sad it is that I find it applause-worthy. 

Who Am I to Judge?

After discussing major themes in Huck Finn nearly two weeks ago, I have finally digested all the information. Our discussion forced me to look at the work, Mark Twain, and myself to discover if this  work was racist, or instead a criticism of racism. For a long time, four years to be exact, I have considered this book to be a criticism of racism. I believed Mark Twain was so disgusted with society that he used satire to poke a hole in the veil of the times. How could a man who depicted such rich, multi-dimensional black characters such as Jim be a racist himself?

Reading this book for the second time, with a set of older more globally aware eyes got my gears turning. I have become a critical thinker, an extreme devil's advocate of myself and the world around me. I rarely make decisions without asking myself "what if" or how doing the opposite would affect things. With this view, I set to read Huck Finn in a way I hadn't before. I was strived to be unbiased.

After pouring over the book, analyzing Twain's language, and agonizing over my decision, I have come to one. Maybe this has been said before, and maybe everyone knows this, but it is significant enough to point out again. What if Huck's conscience agonizing over what his heart believes is right and what his upbringing and society tell him is right is actually a mirror of what Twain's internal struggle was? Is it possible that Twain used his most famous novel as a way to plot out his decision? I'm here to say yes. I believe Twain used Huck as a character to show his own internal struggle of what society told him was right (i.e. slavery, racism, degradation of all black people) and what his heart told him was true (i.e. black people are people all the same, regardless of their skin color).

Jim is a golden-hearted man. The only reason Huck ever considers this to be false is that he also happens to be black. Maybe Huck's internal struggle is representative of the struggle many people had, instead of just Twain himself. Twain started a conversation about racism in this country that we still are engaged in today.

This realization made me take a look in the mirror. Am I unconsciously racist? Do I racially profile? I was born and raised in Florida, a place where there are people that are white, black, purple, and green. My parents were adamant in raising someone who respects races for whoever they want to be. Actually, someone who respects people for whoever they want to be. Who am I to judge someone based on anything, especially the way they look? I am just a person trying to find my place in life. Everyone is their own person, searching for whatever desire they pursue. I am in no position to judge.

I am not blind to the fact that racism still exists in this country, and moreover this planet. I don't pretend that I have ever been subject to racism as a white girl from a prep school in the upper middle class. But I am firmly against judgment of people. Sexual orientation, race, religion, beliefs, gender identification are all things I cannot possibly choose for another person. So why should I judge them for it?

Tranquility in the City Center

If I were to describe to you the Fort Worth Water Gardens in one word, it would be tranquil. The day I went it was overcast, chilly, and there was an aura of silence. Interacting with water is something I have done since I was young. Being from Florida, getting to the beach took little time, and I did it often. I have always loved the humble feeling I get walking away from the ocean, imagining myself as a tiny drop of water in this ocean of life.

The Fort Worth Water Gardens is very different. While it is large, it isn't huge in a way that is isn't comprehensible; I can see to the other side of it. I don't get the same feeling; instead I see art. The way there are only a few paths to get down to the center was something I connected with the idea of success. In life, there are only so many paths you can take to get to where you want to be.

Sitting, just watching the micro-water falls made me peaceful, tranquil, and thoughtful. Worries drifted through my mind and directly out of it with the lapping of the water. If anyone has anxieties, please visit this sacred place. It will hug your mind out of its worries.

What is "Literature" and "Civilization?"

I'm sure lots of people have lots of different ideas as to what literature is. I instantly think of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fitzgerald, and Rowling. Others may think of endless assignments and sonnets with little to no meaning to them.
What exactly does civilization mean? I think back to the Dark Ages and beyond, when the dollar and the internet didn't exist (gasp!).
After asking three people what they thought these words meant, I have a better grasp on the definitions too.

Morgan Vienneau
Literature: "Written works that express language."
Civilization: "A group of living people."

Sarah Posz
Literature: "A group or body of writings about a common theme."
Civilization: "Groups of people colonized in one place who share a common goal."

Courtney Bogert
Literature: "Mark Twain, and something I don't like."
Civilization: "A community built on principles shared by the majority of its citizens."

It seems that everyone has a grasp on the fact that literature has to do with writing and that civilizations have to do with people, but beyond that strict definitions become moot because these words can mean different things to anyone.