The Best Freshman Year Summary in the Universe

While a lot of people have been writing about their freshman year, using lists and gifs to (somewhat cliche-ly, let’s be real) sum up their experiences, I’ve been thinking on the subject as well. Because I’m not a real blog and because I think most lists, even if they’re really accurate, insult the intelligence of the general populace and add nothing to the global conversation that we, as young people, are so blessed to be a part of, I’m going to instead focus on how my freshman year was defined by two questions: What do you want to do and How good are you, really?

When you’re in high school, it doesn’t really matter what you want to do. It does, to some extent, because you’re making huge, life altering choices about your future, but at the same time you still have to ask to use the bathroom. I don’t know how we as a society reached a point where we trust teenagers to take out massive student loans in order to make the single largest capital investment of their lives but somehow handling their bodily functions is beyond them? If you want to talk about double standards, that’s the one I want to talk about. Moving on: all your life you are prodded, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and you answer, “A veterinarian!” if you’re like every other girl in my first grade class or “A zamboni driver until I’m 80 and then an astronaut!” if you’re 7 year-old Megan. But you never really have the power to chase those dreams. Sure, you can take a lot of science classes and volunteer at the Humane Society or spend every spare moment at the ice rink until the local U-18 hockey team puts out a restraining order on you, but you have no tangible ways of working towards your career goals. In college, I have changed my major four times, three of them before I took a single class, so I have had lots of opportunity to directly affect my future. I’m also going to Italy (ITALY), which has been a lifelong dream of mine that I am finally old enough to chase. And it’s not just the huge, life-altering decisions. It’s getting to chew gum and wear a hat whenever I want (side note– if I’m ever rich enough to make a large donation to Topeka High I’m going to have a portrait painted in which I’m wearing both a strapless top and a baseball cap. It will be hung in the library and it will be hilarious). Every day, the question is “What do you want to do, Megan?” and I say to myself, “Self, I will do whatever I want.” It’s pretty great.

On the flip side, college is a whole new world. When I lived in my hometown, I often wondered if I was standing on my own two legs or being supported by the friends and accomplishments I had previously secured as crutches. Being confident was easy; everyone  had known me and could speak to everything I had accomplished in my whole life. It was kind of like being a Spice Girl: even if you accomplished nothing else, ever, people could still talk about that time you were a Spice Girl. So the question in college has become, “How good are you, really?” Really really. Not just compared to your high school or your small town but compared to the 300 foreign students who are applying to your masters program and are in the library at 11 on a Friday, and not just during finals week. This question and its competitive nature keep me from failing out of school when the answer to “What do you want to do?” is “Dance on top of the Theta Chi couch until 2 a.m. the night before my Econ test.” My competitive nature is, at times, the only thing that motivates me to better myself, which is a little scary. Think about it: if I didn’t want to beat other people at things, I wouldn’t really care what happened to me. Scary. But yay I like winning so I won’t allow myself to fall into irreparable  sloth!!

Freshman year has helped me discover who I am. I am pretty much a fully formed adult at the moment; I have emerged from my chrysalis; I am a butterfly; trust me with your retirement fund because I am a business lady. Those were all jokes but some of them were sort of true-ish. I don’t know if this was the best freshman summary in the universe but just because I’m not a real blog doesn’t mean I’m above click-bait. I’m just gonna log off because finals week is getting to me and this is getting weird.

Love,

Megan

Final thought: My brother has two commemorative tattoos of his college and his major (he’s a nuclear engineer from Missouri Science and Tech). If I got a similar tattoo it would be a taxidermied Big Al stuffed and overflowing with money because I’m a finance and economics major at Alabama. Roll Tide.

Someone take the internet away from me.

I’m Kim Kardashian and You Are Too

Guys. My blog hit 700 views this week. I want to thank everyone who shared my last post, That’s a Weird Thing to Say to Someone, but I also want y’all to know how strange this is for me. Through all of high school I let my mom read probably less than ten pieces I wrote, and the number is only that high because she begged constantly and I occasionally left them on the counter by accident. It is terrifying to be blogging publicly, but as the saying goes, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”

All this vulnerability, something I generally try to avoid, got me thinking about the changing dynamics of our presence online. It was not so long ago that we were all told to never put our real names or photos on the internet– and that went extraordinarily well and we are all totally anonymous online. JUST KIDDING. Instead, what has arisen is an era of micro-celebrity and total inauthenticity driven by a lack of real human connection. So let’s talk about the internet.

Am I pretty enough to be on Instagram? If you see me at 8 am, studying for an econ test with a pizza in my bed, probably not. This is something I have actually done (multiple times), but if you only follow me on Instagram, it’s probably pretty hard to imagine. Instagram Me (follow me @megan_ali) always wears makeup and goes out EVERY NIGHT and goes on exotic vacations and is not an outfit repeater. Some of those things are half-true, but they’re not even half of the truth. The temptation to be inauthentic on Instagram is strong, because everyone is doing it. No one shares their normal day-to-day lives; I wouldn’t get 200 likes on a picture of me writing this because I look like death. I’m not saying my life isn’t fun, because it’s actually SO much fun, but just know that while I do get to go to some really cool parties, I also cry every time I take a Calc 3 test. Every time. That’s something you would not learn from my Instagram, and here I am sharing it with you. Blogging is cool.

On this flip side, oversharing is really weird and we need to stop doing that, too. I don’t really know how to be anyone but myself, which is a topic for an entire other post, but I’m never going to lie in a post. On the flip side, telling everyone everything about your life is just as unnatural and harmful as pretending your life is ultra-glamorous. Like Our Heroes Beyoncé and Jay-Z, I will never talk about my relationships, past or present, publicly. It’s tacky and it forms a weird relationship between you and people you barely know. Just today, I was thinking, “How can I create quality content for my readers?” But no.  This is not a real blog. As you can see, there are no “Pin it!” buttons or ready-made quote/picture combos. My header is a stock photo of a sunflower– clearly I am the queen of the internet. I am not a professional and this is not a blog; it’s just me talking to myself on the internet. I’m making a commitment to be myself to be authentic, and part of that is not sharing what goes against all boundaries of good taste. Shocker: we can still have boundaries on the internet. That’s real authenticity, and I’m down with that.

At this point, you’re probably like “Okayyyy, but I came here to read about Kim K and all you’ve done is shame my Insta-game” and that’s true, so here’s the wrap up. As millennials, we need to be conscientious that we do not live our lives in a talentless and vapid manner, becoming celebrities for no apparent reason (cough cough). We need to pursue accomplishments that are not linked to an all-time record number of likes. We need to stop being so weird about the internet and go outside and play. This isn’t really an original thought; I’m aware. So just to be a little more specific: stop doing the overshare-y Pinterest-y Stepford wife thing and for everyone’s sake STOP BLURRING YOUR PICTURES AND LEAVING YOUR EYES DEFINED. WE ALL KNOW YOU HAVE A NOSE AND YOU CAN’T HIDE THAT.

MEGAN OUT.

PS Shout out to my one reader in Aruba. You’re my most exotic and mysterious reader.

That’s a Weird Thing to Say to Someone

“I like you, because you’re pretty, but you know– you don’t suck.”

Maybe people have been thinking this all my life and they just started openly expressing it in college, or maybe this is something new, but I have heard almost this exact phrase uncountable times in the past year. I used to be pretty flattered by it, because people– actually, let’s not beat around the bush, exclusively guys— were noticing my fun, unique personality. But, when you get down into it, it’s actually pretty offensive, because it assumes a dichotomy where girls can only be cool or hot (pun absolutely intended), but never both– and that’s absolutely not true.

It’s not flattering anymore, and I owe this insight to my sisters. I am blessed with nearly 400 smart, funny, and flaming hot sisters. They outshine me regularly on all fronts and I am lucky to know them. My sisters are irreverent, empathetic, strong, silly, ambitious, and kind. But to outsiders, we all probably look like zombie srat-star clones, apathetically sipping Starbucks and waiting for rings by spring. I know that’s the first impression we give; I’m not naive. Still, it’s not difficult to discover that we have much, much more to offer than blank stares and bleached hair. And these are just the women I know; I’m sure there are more great girls at Alabama that I will never meet. Which is why it is so puzzling that the default assumption for many college age men is that pretty girls suck. There seems to be an abundance of evidence that pretty girls do not, in fact, suck. So to all the people who were surprised to find I have a personality: an open letter.

Hey, so I know you were pretty impressed that I didn’t peel the crawfish tail to eat it/ watch “Bob’s Burgers”/ made a Batman joke (FYI I don’t even like Batman, I just got lucky), but you shouldn’t be, because I’m not a Flat Stanley drawing of a girl but rather a living, breathing human being. I’m not mad; I’m just a little surprised that at this point in your life you haven’t made a female friend, because then you would know that girls don’t suck. Also if you think my bad dancing is the weirdest/quirkiest/coolest/bro-est thing you’ve ever seen, then hold on tight because things are about to get a lot weirder. That is not even the funniest thing I do and I’m not even the funniest girl I know. Take a second and let that sink in, because there’s a Big Truth coming your way.

I can think of a lot of things that suck: finals, the Tuscaloosa train, some people’s boring, shallow attitude about women, etc., but pretty girls don’t suck. 

Pile of Wood Chips

I keep a list on my phone of blog topics to write about so I can write when I’m uninspired– like today. These are pretty broad topics: my hometown, bureaucracy, my upcoming trip to Italy, etc., but I also have a list of metaphors or jokes I want to make on each topic. Unfortunately, I did not foresee that I would forget the relationship between the metaphor and the topic, which is why I have a list of metaphors that includes the topic “pile of wood chips” with no footnotes. I can’t ascertain what I was relating to a pile of wood chips unless it was damp, prickly, and an omen of arriving spring? It was probably a reach. The closest link I can draw in my present state is “New Orleans is like a pile of wood chips because it is humid, smelly, and liable to catch fire if left in the sunshine for too long.”

Some days I experience nearly manic productivity, and the levels of output I create, both menial and creative, are astonishing. Other days, like today, I feel uninspired to do anything. I can partially attribute this apathy to being under the weather– a week of Indian Party has left my immune system KO’d– but there’s a natural rhythm to it, too. There’s feast and there’s famine, as I think any creative person attest. Although I have always enjoyed keeping many creative outlets, I would struggle with the uncertainty of dry spells if I depended upon my creativity for my means. The only form of urgency my work currently experiences is the need to put pen to paper before I lose my train of thought, and, as such, the process is deeply enjoyable for me. The stress of being a (sometimes) barren creative would strip the natural ebb and flow of its dignity and would force me to write things that I would find mediocre.

I’m blogging, even now, when I feel like I have nothing to say and no voice to say it with, because I don’t want to grow old and lose my fire. In many ways, some would say I’ve lost it already. I used to be hungry, uncertain, unfounded, and insatiable. I craved greatness over stability–over happiness. I’ve mellowed considerably since. I want to do what I like and be good at what I do, but I no longer feel consumed by my projects and goals. In many ways, I’ve found what I once deeply disparaged: balance. There are things upon which my soul rests and I do not vilify them for existing. This is more radical than it sounds.

I was really going to try to bring this full circle, but my current philosophy on creative output and writing is not like a pile of wood chips. It’s just not; there’s no work around for it. I guess, if anything, some days you’re a majestic tree: inspiring, beloved by all, and some days you’re a– well, you get it.