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.

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.

 

1 Shot Glass of Sunscreen: My First Melanoma Talk

Last night I gave my first presentation as a certified melanoma educator to my sorority sisters. My journey to this point began in 2012, when my aunt Kris was diagnosed with stage IV melanoma and our family became embroiled in the unfairness of the disease. For a long time, I flirted with involvement: I worked on lobbying for a version of an anti-tanning bill in Kansas that we are still fighting for, four years later.  When I discovered I could become a peer educator, I was elated. Finally, I could use my passion for being the center of attention for some good.

I had prepared a lot of jokes for this presentation and I was, unsurprisingly, excited to tell them (side note– if I could have any job without consequence it would either be a farmer or a late night talk show host). I was also really nervous. My presentation was about something that could be perceived as a personal attack for much of my audience because indoor tanning is extremely popular among young women and UV exposure (from the sun and indoor tanning) causes 90% of melanomas. I was scared that people would roll their eyes or even walk out on me. I avoided telling people what my presentation was about until they were already seated. I prepared a long speech for the beginning of my presentation about how this was a non-judgmental space which included that I would avoid making direct eye contact if it made people uncomfortable.

I didn’t end up making that speech. When I told my audience that my presentation was about melanoma prevention and detection, several people exclaimed, “Yes! I needed this.” I nearly had to pick my jaw up off the floor. When I expected hostility, I was welcomed. When I talked about melanoma detection–  a section called “Moles Outta Control”– I saw people inspecting their moles. One girl even shared her own melanoma scar. When my voice broke as I talked about my aunt Kris’s heartbreaking battle with melanoma, they listened to my story as raptly as if I was announcing the themes for the rest of the year’s date parties. Though I feared talking about my story would make me a pariah, after I was finished people came to talk to me the same old way about the same things: our marketing test, my plans for Friday night.  Everywhere that I expected apathy, there was willingness, engagement, and empathy. I could not have asked for a better first audience.

It was a lesson to me in the ways we try to protect ourselves from injury: by assuming the worst in others, by losing faith before even starting. It takes courage to go where you think you will fail, but it is calming and revitalizing to weather a storm– or calm water where you thought a storm would be. I need to take more leaps of faith.

xo, happy Friday, stay out of the sun.

Megan

The title of this post is from the amount of sunscreen you should use every time you apply: one ounce or a little less than a shot glass worth.

2015: The Year in Review

Although TIME has chosen Angela Merkel to be the 2015 Person of the Year, the Megan Anderson Person of the Year is, once again, me. A lot of stuff happened in the news this year, but I’m sure someone else will cover that. The question on the minds of many, if not most, is what I did this year, and this blog post is here to let you know.

January: Returned to Tuscaloosa (Roll Tide). Had my first “snow day” (canceled for up to 1/10 of an inch of freezing rain) and used that as an occasion to go out with my friends, though I had a math test approaching. At this party, I truly believe I was served non-alcoholic jello shots. Month rating: 5/10

February: The highlight of this month was going to formal in New Orleans. Excellent. Month rating: 8/10

 

Why do I have screenshots of all my snapchats? My mom.

March: Darty season, beautiful glorious darty season, hits full swing here. Additionally, I go on spring break to Maui with my parents and my friend Aly. Life is really good. Month rating: 9.5/10

April: Spring break is over, crawfish season is ending, finals are approaching. Fun is dead. I don’t have any photos for this month because it sucked. Month rating: 2/10

May: I went to Italy! I spent most of my time in Florence but also visited Rome, Venice, Cinque Terre and Lucca. This is the best month. Month rating: 12/10 

June and July: I work at my job at the pool in Topeka and hang out with my high school buddies. Pretty fun, nothing groundbreaking. I go see my boyfriend in Nashville and see a show at Red Rocks with my mom. Month(s) rating: 7/10

August: Rush happens, school starts, and I’m in my groove. It’s good to be back. It is hotter than hell in Alabama. Month rating: 7/10September: Football is back. I go to Dallas with Ferons to watch the opening game. I’m at a point in my life where I have $100 to spend on a football game, a feeling which is now foreign to me. This month is good but feels really long. Month rating: 8/10October: I turn twenty, my family comes to visit me, and I come home for Halloween. Time really starts to pick up and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m old now or the semester is just really busy. Month rating: 8/10

November: I have my last tests the first week of November, so most of the month I just coast. I go to my sorority formal, get appointed to ADPi executive board, and go to Denver for Thanksgiving. November is a bang up month. Month rating: 9.5/10

December: 50% finals, 50% Christmas. A real mixed bag, this one is. Month rating: 6.5/10 finals hurt

Quick Hits: 

The blog was founded in March with my first post, Anything for a Joke.

Total readers, to date: 2,354

Most popular post: That’s a Weird Thing to Say to Someone (April)

My favorite post: Pull It Together (September)

Total # of posts: 18

Additionally, I reformatted the sidebar so that it makes some amount of sense. You can now subscribe to this blog without a WordPress account! Be the first to know when a post goes live by entering your email address. What a time to be alive.

Happy Holidays!

Megan

Moving into Your “Third Place”

I realized this title sounds like the third place I’ve ever lived, which would be my freshman dorm, but there’s actually a pretty well-recognized concept known as the “third place.” The third place is basically a place you go very regularly that isn’t your home or workplace/school. For my strict definition of third place, it should be a place you visit multiple times a week.

Third places are important and the end of the third place for American adults is troubling because it signals a loss of connection (according to a lot of very serious articles). Third places in the past consisted of bridge clubs, lodges, church groups and similar locations. Some have suggested the internet as the modern-day third place, something I have some qualms about. Though I am on the internet every day (every second, some might say), it doesn’t foster the kind of close connections traditional third places do. It doesn’t build me. It does build my collection of cute dog pictures.

Starbucks even considers itself a third place, which is incidentally how I came to know about third places at all. The only person I actually know who makes Starbucks their third place is one of my economics teachers, who goes to Sbux every day and even intentionally decorated his apartment like a Starbucks.

Unless you’re my econ teacher, the chance of you moving into your third place is probably slim. My whole life, my third place was my dance studio, and though I loved it, I doubt they would let me move in. So when I had the unique opportunity to move into my college third place, I jumped at the opportunity– but not for that specific reason.

The ADPi house is my college third place, though I award Jimmy John’s and certain fraternities honorable mention. As a freshman, I came to the house every day to eat, study, and meet with my friends. During rush, I told PNMs (potential new members for those unsaturated with greek life) all about how I loved the house, spent so much time at the house, and even frequently napped on the couch we were sitting on. I usually followed it with this:

NAILED IT. But what I didn’t realize was how different living in the house would be. There were all the things I had hoped for: spontaneous trips to get takeout, random meetups in the second floor living room that turned into movie marathons, free laundry. To be honest, there were fewer pranks than I expected, which was disappointing. However, overall it has been about as cool as one could possibly hope for.

Unexpected dilemmas still arose. During rush I didn’t leave the house for two weeks. I had become unaccustomed to sunlight and was actually 70% through the naked mole rat transformation process. Who knew it was so simple? I have also totally removed commuting from my life, which is both a positive and a negative. People who actually have to commute like an hour for their jobs would probably give anything to give up their commutes, but there’s something psychological about physically going home that allows you to take off the day’s stress and be off duty. Walking upstairs doesn’t really have that same effect. On the other hand, I can roll out of bed, grab 8 strips of bacon (we always have bacon– don’t think sorority girls don’t eat) and be to class in 10 minutes.

Sharing a room is different, too. My roommate, Aly, was my roommate last year and we don’t have any of the major roommate problems I’ve heard of in my time at college– and there are some doozies. Aly’s worst roommate flaw is probably “watches too many movies,” so I’ve been pretty lucky. Still, for the last five years of my life, I was the only child living at home. I had basically unlimited alone time and space. I thought always being around others would annoy the daylights out of me, and for about two weeks, it did. Then, something amazing happened:

I became someone who loves to have other people around. It weirds me out when Aly goes on trips with her mock trials team and I have to fall asleep in our (totally normal sized, not overly large) room alone. Studying alone feels weird. I’m writing this in the basement study room/TV room and honestly feel a little weird about being alone. Living in the house really does connect you to your sisters.

I would absolutely recommend living in your sorority house. You’ll feel like you’re always on call– and if you have a leadership position, you are– and you’ll never be alone, but that’s half of the point. My sorority house is the safest, loudest, coziest (even though they keep the thermostat at 68 and I’m getting frosted out) and 2nd most meaningful place I’ve ever lived. First most meaningful is obviously my parents’ house but that’s a given for so many reasons. If you have the chance to live in a sorority house, do it. The only other chances to live with 64 other women are jail or a brothel and this blog post applies to neither of those places.

xoxo gobble gobble,

Megan

Last week: Word Vomit

Next week: Not really looking to commit to anything because it’s Thanksgiving but I have some extra days off school so maybe if the mood strikes me (why does this sound like a Tinder bio)

What I Did This Summer (Megan Anderson, 14th Grade)

This would have a really cool cover photo but I still haven’t uploaded any of my photos to my computer because I am a huge mess!!

So in May I went to Italy, and when people have asked me how my trip went, I’ve responded pretty generically, as if they were asking me how I liked a dessert they had personally prepared. “Cool. Awesome. Great,” I’ve replied in monotony. And it was all of those things, but it was also confusing and broadening and sometimes sad. I loved Rome and the sea. I missed America and fried eggs and clean cut, pastel clothed boys. Do you see how this is going?

Here’s a little more: Italy ruined coffee and pepperoni and Olive Garden for me, but as I type this I’m drinking coffee from the Keurig with CoffeeMate creamer in it, so I guess if I’m anything, I’m consistent. I cried when I stepped off the plane in DC and saw a Starbucks. But I can drink espresso straight now, so I have broadened my horizons as every study abroad brochure advertises. Speaking of studying, I barely studied at all. We’ll leave it at that.

I thought a lot about ownership while I was in Italy. Some days we had nothing planned, and I didn’t want to spend 20 euros for a train ticket, so I would sit in the park near our hotel and just think. I was peeved at iTunes for putting all of my music in the Cloud, because now I couldn’t listen to it without WiFi and I didn’t have a data plan abroad. It seemed strange to me that songs I had “owned” two years ago were now inaccessible to me, like an ex-boyfriend or a pair of size zero jeans from middle school. I thought about 99-year leases on land in Hawaii and all sorts of other ways we fool ourselves into believing that our possessions are constant. I developed a sort of espresso fueled angst, which is to say I assimilated with the Italian youth culture. There are a lot of candid pictures of me looking pissed off from this trip, but I had a good time, I swear.

While I sat in the park, people often tried to talk to me and guess my nationality. I had a solid background in 100 level Italian, so I felt pretty prepared to engage them, as long as they followed a predetermined script and enunciated as though I was deaf. Often, I could physically feel my synapses firing slowly, as though I were a career meth addict trying to take the ACT. The answers were there, somewhere, but I was slow. I was mistaken for French several times, which I attribute to pure confusion because I am both blonde and curly-haired and not particularly thin nor sophisticated. Italians know about California. I explained Kansas a lot.

I never got pickpocket-ed but I’m not sure if the wallet I bought is real leather, which is fine with me because I like it regardless. I grew strong knees (we stood and walked all the time) and a weak alcohol tolerance (I had to lay off the midday wine). I liked dressing simply but hated the clothes I had brought with me by the end of the month. I felt uncomfortable not knowing all the cultural norms. The front desk man at my hotel listened to American country music and I sang along under my breath. I texted my boyfriend, but we lived in a perpetual state of night; it was always 3 a.m. for one of us. I swam in the sea and let my hair get sun bleached. Our hotel in Rome brought us breakfast in bed (coffee and pastries) and it made their microscopic shower worth it. I drank wine and ate pasta and road on a gondola in Venice (the lights on the water at night are magical). The cities never felt romantic, but they were often beautiful or sleepy or exciting.  This paragraph, much like my trip, is a grab bag of ideas. No apologies. Some confusion.