Chicago, Pt. 1

I’m back! Again! I logged into my WordPress account to write this post and Safari didn’t recognize and autofill the domain! If I have one really great trait, it’s reliability.

Most people are just starting their summer internships, but because my summer is weird and I don’t take time off, I’m halfway done with mine. Last Friday was the official halfway point, and I wanted to share my initial observations/impressions with you. I have been to Chicago before, but I have never lived in a big city before. I totally love love love the city, but some things are a little different.

The Good:

I love not having to drive. I am not a good driver and having to drive is stressful for me. Driving is like playing a team sport, another thing I excel at, but if you miss the catch it costs you five thousand dollars. I live basically on top of an L station (so if you’re counting, I’ve gone two for two on living near trains in 2017). It’s great.

Eating has been excellent. While I love the southern food pyramid– mayonnaise, chicken fingers, cheese-based dips– I have eaten some really awesome, probably lower calorie, stuff in Chicago. There’s pizza, of course, and a lobster roll I fantasize about daily. I’ve eaten a lot of tacos and Indian food, and once an Indian-inspired taco, which was delicious. I love eating out all the time and my bank account totally hates me for it.

Big Macy’s. This is Chicago-specific and probably wouldn’t make most people’s list, but there is a nine-story Macy’s that has become my happy place. I don’t even shop at Macy’s regularly at home, but I have formed a connection with this particular one. Every time I enter, it’s one of the several underrated shopping scenes in Legally Blonde. When I meditate, I transcend to Third Floor, Women’s Contemporary.

The Bad:

While the food has been generally delectable, I ordered a buffalo chicken wrap from a place called Protein Bar that was 85% quinoa. I should have known not to trust them with something as precious and pure as buffalo chicken, but I assumed by the roughly one thousand locations of Protein Bar that it would be okay. Wrong.

I took one of my signature Netflix/wine bubble baths (pretend I invented this), actual green-black dirt came out of my skin? From the smog? I have never experienced having to shower because of incidental dirt. All of my dirt is usually intentional and realized. This was super alarming and my recreational bubble bath rate has dropped from almost five/week to nearly never.

The Weird:

There are a lot of revolving doors in this city, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean very literally, whenever there was an option for a normal door, they essentially chose a carousel. Revolving doors are the location of small humiliations. It is embarrassing when you have to use both arms to push them, because they are heavy. If you struggle at all with depth perception, it can be awkward as you accidentally get in the same pod as someone else or you get hit with the door. Great design is functional for the least competent person, and I would like to set up a meeting with the designer of revolving doors because I am that person.

I’ll let you know what I think about Chicago at the end of the summer. I’m so reliable so you know that will happen.

xo,

Megan

P.S. The “follow” widget has moved to the top of the sidebar. Just a note for the curious.

 

 

Semester Round-Up

Here we are. It’s been a while. Five months, actually. I kept thinking to myself, My life is going really well. Stuff is happening. I should write about it (my thoughts are not particularly articulate). It is hard for me to sit down to write unless I feel like I have a couple really solid lines to base the post around. While my life was going really well and interesting things were happening, it just wasn’t funny.

Hoo boy.

I (stupidly) asked life to give me humor and was overwhelmed by just how funny it could get. Here’s what went down over the last semester.

I was transferred from the behavioral psych lab to the neuroscience lab. It has been a dream of mine to work in a neuroscience lab since high school– I acknowledge that this is really weird. I loved working in the lab except when I actually had to do it. I loved talking about it. For some reason, telling people you are a  neuroscience research assistant makes them think you are really smart. I always imagined it being a great party story– it is not. My job mostly consisted of filling 64 nodes on a brainwave-measuring cap with a gel similar to aloe vera but completely edible. I never tasted it because I was afraid I would become addicted. The coolest part was the vial of liquid we used to sanitize the equipment. It can dissolve human flesh in six minutes or less. I made it out with all of my extremities so that was cool.

I took the LSAT in September. My score was fine; I’m going to try again just to see in February. I made myself so nervous that after it was over I threw up in a bush at a swanky Birmingham strip mall. It was 1 pm.

I was elected president of my sorority! It was a huge honor and something I was afraid to even dream of because I really wanted it. I realize that is pretty lame. On a parabola of how into your sorority you are as a function of coolness, I am on the far right (see figure below).

Far too into it. Not cool at all.

The adjustment was hard. A sorority president’s term is only for a year, so your transition time is very short. I had about a week, which preceded finals week. In that week I adopted the new mother phrase “sleep when the baby sleeps,” except my baby was my email account. I also caught myself thinking, Gosh, I wish I could just shower in peace which I am also told new mothers think. I was already wearing stretchy pants so I didn’t even have to change that part. Since I had just given birth to a 450 person sorority, I cut myself some slack. Since then, I have caught my stride and am both sleeping and showering. Big things!

This semester will bring more change. My parents are moving into their new home in Frederick, Colorado in January. Steven will be taking a new job (he’s a nuclear engineer) in Virginia. I will be taking a class at Alabama’s law school and traveling around the states. The January roster is Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Baton Rouge. Did I ever mention I like to stay busy?

Happy Holidays and Roll Tide!

Megan

Enjoy a photo roundup of the semester.

 

What No One Told Me About Reaching My Goals

When I write my resume, I am proud of the things I have accomplished. In fact, I have done almost all of the things I set out to achieve in college. What I have learned is that those moments often don’t feel quite like you think they will (I always feel like I should be getting taller when I achieve my goals, even though I have been the same height for almost seven years). There’s a reason they say opportunity looks like hard work. When I was sixteen, my dream was to become a National Merit Scholar, go out of state for college, join a sorority (and become a leader within that sorority), and work in a neuroscience research lab.

The National Merit thing and the subsequent scholarship that allows me to be at Alabama was pretty predictable. I actually did feel super excited about the possibility that all my hard work paid off– but most other people (besides my parents and gifted counselor) didn’t really care or get it. Underwhelming.

I was very interested in neuroscience in high school and was disappointed that Alabama didn’t have a formal program. I love that I continued to follow that passion and joined our small lab. I could not have dreamed that I would have a chance to present our work at a national conference. I also didn’t dream that our lab would be on the humid fourth floor of one of the University’s oldest buildings. The peaks are high, but in the day-to-day? Underwhelming.

Joining my sorority and being appointed to my various leadership positions are among the happiest moments of my life. I didn’t ever think part of that leadership would be dressing up like a frat dude for an audience of hundreds– just kidding; I loved that. Most of the time, I don’t feel like Megan Anderson, Executive Board Member. I feel like Megan Anderson, Wears a Gray Sweatsuit to Breakfast Every Day. Underwhelming.

In so many ways, I am the person I wanted myself to be in college. I dress better, I like my major, and I don’t feel weird about studying alone in a coffee shop– but I don’t think of myself differently, and I think many young people feel the same. If you climb a mountain and look down the entire time it will always look like rocks (I assume. I have never climbed a mountain). The challenge is to remember that the ascent doesn’t cheapen the summit.

I just got back from Colorado so I am full of mountain climbing metaphors. Be proud of your accomplishments and try not to let daily monotony discourage you. Your goals are worthy, even when they feel lame.

xo,

Megan

PS. I tried to rewrite this in a number of ways that didn’t sound like a humble brag, but none of them worked. Here it is, my humble brag.

PPS. I wish I looked as good as this stock photo when studying but I am usually wearing the aforementioned gray sweatsuit.

Actual College Shopping List (<400 Items)

I always see “back to college” lists that are like 400 items long, which is overwhelming and unhelpful to everyone. If you have to be told to bring a toothbrush to college, you shouldn’t be going. But there are some items I would really recommend bringing. Here’s my dos and don’ts:

Bring:

1. Twin size foam mattress topper. (Therapedic, 3inch) I have a sensitive back and way less than $300 to spend on a mattress topper. This is my pick.
2. Organizers. Firstly, your dorm/sorority house room/apartment will be small, so if you bring too much crap there is no device on the planet that can make it fit. To make use of every inch, I recommend an over-the-door shoe hanger, Huggable hangers, and a cube organizer system.
3. Keurig. I own the family size one which I love because I’m lazy and don’t like to refill the water tower. I didn’t use this in the sorority house because one was already supplied.
4. Medicine. This is probably the most important item on the list. I am always sick at school. I keep lots of cold, allergy, and stomach medicine on hand because there’s nothing worse than not having it when you need it. I also keep a lacrosse ball in my medicine basket for rolling out knots in my shoulders after a long night of studying.
5. Slippers. At home, my mom likes to keep the house at 76 degrees, so I am frequently cold at school. If you live in the sorority house, you will be annoyed that you have to put shoes on to go on the main level and get breakfast. These are my “shoes.”
6. Wall art. Curating my wall art brings me a lot of joy. Let this be your excuse to paint something or take advantage of 50% off wall art at Hobby Lobby.
7. Credit card phone case. I lost my student ID seven times before I bought this.
8.  Iphone speaker. No one ever has one of these and it is essential to a good time.
9. Corkscrew.
10. Printer. I know this is controversial but I am pro-printer– if you are ok with being the girl with the printer. I am, and sometimes people will bring me snacks or like a dollar to use my printer. It’s a good set up.
11. My Little Steamer. Stop looking a mess today!
12. Towel wrap with velcro. These are good for commuting to the shower and also sitting in bed post-shower for two hours, which I have only heard about second hand and have never done myself.

Don’t bring:

1. A lot of clothes you bought the summer before college. Your style will change and you will sell them for $11.96 at Plato’s Closet.
2. Ice cream. Responsible for at least 30% of my freshman 15.
3. Every item you own. Seriously, it won’t fit. Throw some stuff away.

 

What I Never Thought I Would Tell Myself About Inspiration

 

I am someone who deeply loves poetry and who is deeply embarrassed to love poetry. The nature of it is often woeful and self-indulgent, but at my best I have always been dancing with poetry, words, and ideas. One unidentifiable day, about three years ago, it stopped. It is hard to know when, precisely, because inspiration and emotion ebb and flow, but the last poem stumpling (a stanza or so that comes to me, to be used later) I saved on my iPhone’s notes section is dated 2013.

The effect it has had on my life is quiet and immense. It is as if you had been having a languid, lifelong, coffee-and-wine drenched conversation with God-your-creator and all of creation and then one day, it stopped. Radio silence. I received nothing, and for a long time, I said nothing.

In spite of it all, I started this blog. I felt overly self-concious of what I was writing and the inherent worth of it all. I knew I was missing something essential to my happiness, but I threw myself at the commonly prescribed remedies. I  exercised and went to bed early and counted my blessings. I redecorated (I am terrible at decorating). I floundered.

In the midst of my daily routine, the classes and chores, I felt an odd temptation to drop to the ground and lay, soft belly up, waiting for some angel’s touch to remind me who I was.

In April, I wrote my first poem– really any sort of creative thing– in a long time. It was almost as to end an out-of-body experience that had lasted several years. The feeling was immediate and very still.

God, or inspiration, or whatever you want to call it, still seldom calls on me. There was a time in my life when I could see a strange door and be taken away on a day-long engrossing story. Even if I knew it wasn’t a particularly good story, it was a joy to be taken.

I am trying to get back there.

xo,

Megan

Changing Course

You may have been wondering, if you’re a particularly dedicated reader, in what location is the summer series I said I would write? Well, you creepily dedicated reader, it’s not up and it’s not coming. Here’s why.

I GOT A JOB!!!!

If you read Funemployed, you’ll know I was struggling to come to terms with the vast openness of my summer at home after a long and fruitless job search. As in the past, I have been touched by the “Anderson luck.” Both my brother and I are particularly lucky– not just to have been born to the easy lives we have but frequently in big, act-of-God ways. So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that one night while my family and I were dining at The Landing, we ran into Rachael– my brother’s girlfriend– and she told us that her uncle was looking for a receptionist at his law firm. Ding ding ding! Relatively short story shorter, here I sit from 8-5, Monday to Friday, raking in that sweet, sweet receptionist money. I like my office a lot. I  love working downtown, not only because I can eat lunch with my mom most days but also because I feel like I’m doing important work by bringing the average age of downtown Topeka employees down by at least five years. It is difficult work, rejuvenating the city, but someone has to do it.

My summer has gone from an expansive oasis to roughly eight weekends, which is part of the reason there will be no summer series. The other reason was that my ideas were not that good. I briefly became obsessed with organizing, I think partially to avoid my finals. It is very easy to organize a small room that you share. It is significantly more difficult to organize your childhood bedroom that has so much crap in it that the crap has formed geologic columns.

My other idea was for tiny found-object sculptures of the presidential candidates, which was foiled when most of them dropped out. One could also say that column would be “rude” or “not contributing in any significant way to American political discourse,” but I think I live my life in both of those ways, to an extent, already. Keeping with the title of this blog, I would have done it, but it is significantly less funny to kick people while they are down– which is why I won’t point out that in addition to not being the Republican nominee, Ted Cruz also looks like two pumps of my winter foundation.

I still have the tomatoes, by the way, and they are getting absolutely devoured by ants.

xoxo $$$,

Megan

If you want to read about the organizing kick I was on, go here.

If you want to read an interesting theory about the levels of argument (my sculptures would be level 1), go here.

P.S. The header image is the third image when you search “downtown topeka kansas” in Google under Creative Commons. The first picture is a highway overpass– literally just the overpass. The second picture is Kansas City.

 

Advice for Graduates

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! Today, I chose to honor this holiday by buying a pair of Steve Madden booties at the Nordstrom Rack. There was a girl in front of me in line who was clearly a recent high school graduate (she was shopping for platforms but had not yet developed the comfortably soft physique familiar to undergraduate women who are not employed as shot girls). I looked at her in all her hopefulness as we both argued lightly with our moms about who was paying, and I felt a pang of nostalgia. These are the moments I didn’t see coming when I was in her (new, discount) shoes.

I gained (and lost) 15 pounds and almost no one noticed. Stop stressing about the freshman fifteen because it happened to me and my hairdresser adamantly insisted I had not gained any weight. My feelings were lightly hurt when I once commented about how obese I looked in a photo at my heaviest and people said I look the same now. 

I passed Calc 3. And then I never shut up about it. I am actually having a small custom trophy made for this accomplishment currently.

I should stop buying things online from Charlotte Russe. This is the cause of much of the rayon in my closet and the reason I had a weird obsession with minimalism and organizing this spring.

I cried when I bought my first suit. In a weird alternate universe, it was because I was proud of the accomplished young woman I was becoming and the bright future ahead of me. Really, I just felt ugly. I would recommend curling your hair and wearing pantyhose to combat this phenomenon. Don’t say to yourself, “I will look like this for the rest of my life.”

Buying a Swiffer is a rite of passage. I have attended a few Quinceañeras and one bar mitzvah, but if you are a white middle American like me without the funds for a Sweet 16, the purchase and subsequent usage of a Swiffer sweeper signifies the passage into adulthood. Cherish the moment, it is fleeting.

Sometimes I catch myself being who I always wanted to be. And I’m like Hey! This doesn’t feel as cool as I thought it would. I thought I would be taller! And more aloof!

My majors– Finance and Economics– interest me and could foreseeably pay my bills one day. Yet, they are a total conversation killer. I am always tempted to tell people I am a Marine Biology major. Everyone loves dolphins; no one loves the Federal Open Market Committee.

I used to think I was a pretty big narcissist. But then I got to college and realized I wasn’t even the best at that! It is truly amazing what being in a large pool of talented people will teach you.

Congrats, graduates! Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will perish in zero gravity and your death will be on the Today show!

Xoxo,

Megan

 

April Twenty-Sixth

A brief interloper, I once was

In a year long affair with an apparition of myself; akin

to have come to the edge of a dark pool,

dipped my toe in,

scuttled–fallen, aghast– backward.

To watch the sun rise and fall,

the moon rise and fall

and feel no more different

Until this evening

under a rose oil bath water sky

I blinked twice, hard  and

My elbows became my own

My hips became my own

All parts of anatomy so rendered under God

United with my soul,

the twist and snap of old walking partners

falling into a comfortable stride.

A laugh that sounds like a bark carried by the breeze–

a soft and unheard resolution.

Why I Blog

Hi!

I’ve been avoiding blogging for a while because I’m sitting on a series I want to do over the summer that sort of has a schedule to it and so I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Not blogging is so hard. Let me take that back, not writing is so hard. I could write all day and just shove it in my drawer and be fine with it. For all the techie stuff that blogging includes, I am pretty terrible at all of it. I cannot code to save my life and my blog never quite looks like the template (speaking of, check out the new template!) The only thing that keeps me posting is that I create a lot of content because I am a crazy person.

I blog because I can’t shut up.

From a young age, I have been a certified fast talker. My handwriting even mimics this– my brother always puts his finger between my words, Kindergarten style, to remind me that I am not leaving adequate space. One of my favorite people to talk to in the world is my mom because she will let me monologue uninterrupted and then will offer a slightly shorter monologue in return. My ideal conversation is basically a poorly paced play. This means a blog is a great format for me because I talk into the void and the void occasionally comments back.

I blog because I love to laugh.

Close to 90% of the jokes I use on my blog wouldn’t work in a real-life conversation. The setup is too long, the words are too complicated, or I would get too excited about it and stutter. This website is the garbage dump of my jokes.

I blog because I am hugely competitive. 

I started writing for fun at a young age because reading and writing were the first things I was really good at. I struggled to read for a few years before I saw one of my friends reading a Bible and I thought she was actually able to read the whole thing, chapter-book style. I learned to read because I didn’t want anyone else to be better than me at something, which is funny because at that time the only thing really exceptional about me was how tall I was (I have been effectively the same height since the fourth grade). I’ve mellowed out considerably and now I love reading what my friends are working on, but I started writing because I liked the praise.

Speaking of the praise–wow!! I just found out I have over 1,800 email subscribers! Thank you all for reading and believing in my work. Also, I am so sorry that you are going to get another email.

Love (really a lot of love),

Megan

 

Funemployed

Why don’t the ones you want ever want you? This is not a rumination on men, though it could be and often is. This is a statement about my internship hunt.

It has taken a lot for me to share this struggle with y’all. More than anything I want people to perceive me as successful, so to go back on all those ideals and admit that I may be unemployed this summer is so not me. However, so rarely are we alone in our struggles. I hope this rings true to someone else, too.

I have been fishing for internships since September, when my friend Ferons alerted me that I should maybe start doing that. Previously, I had thought of unemployment as a theoretical issue, someone else’s problem. I was 12 when the housing market collapsed in 2008. I didn’t dream that we would still be dealing with the aftermath 8 years later, when I was finally seeking a big girl job.

To clarify, I am not unemployed in the sense that most people are unemployed. I will still have a place to stay and food to eat and *~* healthcare,*~* which is good because I am always sick. I am not at any risk of actual danger. I am just frustrated.

I have received a lot of rejection emails, and most of them were so positive that I was a little bit unsure if I was being rejected or proposed to, a la Chris and Ann Perkins from Parks and Rec. I’m not entirely sure the interviews I went on weren’t just a misinterpretation of an especially nice rejection email. A key component of a rejection email, I have learned, is the word unfortunately. Unfortunately, we have filled this position. Unfortunately, you do not meet our needs at this time. Unfortunately, we are not even hiring, we don’t know how you got this number, please cease and desist.

I could work at the pool, as I have in summers past, but last summer a man told me he wanted to put my feet next to his face all day. Later, I realized I only got paid 12 cents for that interaction– and that is a generous estimate– and that kind of killed the entire proposition for me.

Hopefully, this is not a period of unemployment, but rather underemployment, or perhaps, ideally, funderemployment,a term I have just coined for working a menial job but also pursuing interests that would have been neglected had I accepted an internship in my field. I’m hoping to keep practicing pilates, teach Smudge the cat to walk on a leash, read a book every day and grow tomatoes.

My aunt Kris once tried to grow vegetables in her garden. She said she had this idea of a kumbaya moment with her children in the garden, but she ended up dirty with a crying baby and a little weiner dog on the loose. I am fairly certain at one point this summer I will be dirty and sweaty (because it is regularly 102 with 75% humidity in Kansas in July and that’s why home prices are so cheap) and I will whisper fuck you, little tomatoes because I am naturally impatient and not a good gardener. At least I recognize that possibility.

I will have to work the rest of my life and I probably won’t have the time to get mad at my tomatoes. Just the other day, my mom asked Steven if he wanted to come with us to Orlando– she would by the ticket. But Steven is in his busy season at work, so he can’t come. If I ever turn down a free trip to Orlando, put out a hit on me. I mean, it’s good we have hardworking people like Steven as our nuclear energy risk analysts, but free time is undervalued.

That being said, if anyone in the finance, data analytics, or legal industries is looking for an intern, please hire me. I don’t value free time that much. 

Megan

P.S. Check out this fancy new layout. Moving up in the world.

P.P.S. Add me on LinkedIn