Dependence Day

I am pleased to announce that I have survived my first week of college. In my spare moments between scouring basements with moving walls for my next class and trying to find the fourth floor library's checkout desk, I've been thinking about whether I should continue my blog.

Will I be busy with college life?

Yes.

Am I in a different phase of life than the people we normally identify as teenagers?

Yes.

But am I still a teenager?

Numerically, yes. And I still care. So I'll keep blogging until I leave for an eighteen month missionary stint at the end of the school year or until I run out of things to say. I think I know which one will come first.

I like to think of myself as independent. I wake myself up. I get myself to class. I keep myself fed. Most importantly, I'm living on my own. When mail comes to me, there is absolutely zero chance it will be addressed to "the parents of Erica Smith". I don't have a curfew. I didn't have an official one living with my parents, but there are no more 11:55 "When are you coming home?" texts.

Whenever I hear footsteps in the hall around midnight, I feel like someone's coming by for a light's out check. But no. It's just some girl getting back from a date. 

But am I really independent? Is anyone?

I have a friend from my hometown who's commuting to class every day. When I found this out, I felt bad for her because she wasn't living the same life of independence as I was. Then I realized I'm not independent either. At least, not in the technical sense. 

Let's look at some dictionary.com definitions of dependence.

1. The state of relying on or needing someone or something for aid, support, or the like.

2.

reliance; confidence; trust:

Her complete reliability earned her our dependence.

3.

an object of reliance or trust.

4.

the state of being conditional or contingent on something, as through a natural or logical sequence:

the dependence of an effect upon a cause.

5.

the state of being psychologically or physiologically dependent on a drug after a prolonged period of use.

6.

subordination or subjection:

the dependence of Martinique upon France.

Let's focus on the first two and the final definitions, shall we? Three is dependent on number two and I don't really care about drugs and logical sequences right now. 

1. RELIANCE

The most obvious kind of reliance is financial. No modern teenager can pay their own way to college. Not without some source of financial aid. Universities don't come cheap. My hometown friend is living with her parents and her parents are paying for it. I'm living in a dorm room and my parents are paying for it. So in that sense I'm just as reliant as she is.

2.  TRUST

I spoke more boldly and openly to my family in the last month of summer. I knew I wouldn't be living with them much longer, so I simply didn't need to tiptoe around their feelings the way I did for the first eighteen years of my life. Still, I wasn't stupid enough to burn bridges, because I'm still bound to them financially. Besides, when it comes down to it, I love my family. If trust is a form of dependence than the only way you can truly be independent is to cut off all contact with your family.

6. SUBORDINATION

In this way I'm finally free. I've mentioned before that my parents turned off our home's router every night and didn't give my brothers and I the wifi password to our own house. When I get on my phone each night, my eyes still go to the wifi icon in the top left corner, waiting for it to disappear. But it never does. The router lives on my desk, it's little green flicker a comforting beacon in our dark dorm room. Even my roommate doesn't touch it. The password only changes if I feel like it. I have the privilege to take Internet access for granted, a force as invisible and necessary as air. And yes, Internet is necessary in the life of a college student, a topic that deserves its own post.

My life has changed drastically in the last week. But in the ways that matter it's still much the same. I'm stuck in limbo, not that I mind. I've always liked halfway points. New Year's, sunrise, and sunset in time, bridges, borders, and vestibules in space. I think I'll like college life for that alone. As for the actual lifestyle changes, well, I'll just have to wait and see. I've got a long year ahead of me.

Fear Only the Toaster

This time last year, my friend Dorothy was prepping for college while I geared up for senior year. Dorothy was the friend I looked up to as a junior. Part of this was that she was the only reason I passed chemistry. She would've been in AP if it hadn't conflicted with her schedule, so she would spend the period sleeping, reading comics, or talking to me, and somehow got her packets back with 100% scores. In addition to that, she was the kind of person who always had her life together. She got perfect grades but it never stopped her from enjoying her hobbies. She had plenty of friends, especially guy friends, so getting a date was never a problem. She didn't waste her time with boy drama and always seemed to be in a good mood. I figured if anyone was prepared for college, it was her.
But there had to be something. Her Achilles heel. And whatever Dorothy was dreading in her final days of freedom, I'd better start preparing for it now.
So I went up to her the day before she left.  "Dorothy, I want to know. What's the biggest thing you're concerned about for college?"

"Well," she sighed, all the weariness of a forlorn freshman dragging down her shoulders, "I don't know if I'll have a toaster."

"A toaster?" 

"Yeah. I know I'm bring the TV..." she rattled off a list of which roommate was bringing what. "But I don't know if anyone is bringing a toaster." 

And all my fears for my college bound friend promptly evaporated. "Oh Dorothy. Poor, poor Dorothy. Worst case scenario: you have to eat raw toast for a week before you can find the time to drop by a yard sale and buy one for a buck fifty."
(Also one of Dorothy's roommates ended up bringing a toaster so her life's in pretty good shape)
With two days left before I head out, I am pleased to announce that I have arrived in the Toaster Stage. A huge mound of Stuff lurks in a corner of my living room, ready to take over my dorm. Well, my half of the dorm. The other side belongs to some girl I've never met before.
But I'll be living with her.
Always.
When I'm not navigating a strange campus.
Full of people I don't know.
And classes I can't find.
Or pass once I get there.
But you know what?
I've spent years worrying about these things. Now, when people ask me if I'm "excited for college", I can't honestly answer yes, but I'm not "nervous for college" either. Just ready.
That's how you know you hit the Toaster Stage.

Body Language and Parental Permission in the Wake of an Organ Harvesting Scandal

I think by now we've all seen the Planned Parenthood sting videos, or at least read about the baby tissue and organ harvesting scandal, but here's one of the first videos for good measure.

Two things stick out to me as I'm watching these.
1. Body Language
The woman in the first video refers to the lungs, heart, and liver as lungs, heart, and liver, but the head as a calvarium. When was the last time you heard any kind of person-doctor, biology teacher, guy on the street-refer to the head as such? It's showing up on my screen with a red line, for heaven's sake. She uses different terminology because, no matter which side you're on, there's something nausea inducing about crushing a head. Calvarium is a euphemism, a dehumanization. Along with that, both the Planned Parenthood executives and undercover "buyers" are careful to refer to babies as "specimens", even dodging the more politically correct term, "fetus".
I'm a writer, but sometimes I hate words. Words are just packaging for ideas. A rose by any other name and all that.
Last month my family went on vacation with my friend Ashlin's family. Her youngest sibling is eleven month old Layla. We all took turns caring for her, but she was mostly the responsibility of her family and the other girls on the boat. Towards the end of the week someone asked my brother, "Can you take Layla?" He responded, "I already held it." Since Layla is a born baby, hardly anyone calls her "it", so we found his answer hilarious. We spent the rest of the trip referring to Layla as "it' whenever he was within earshot.

In the English language, the idea of referring to a person with that pronoun is so dehumanizing, Dave Pelzar used it to title his infamous memoir about surviving childhood abuse. Yet people continue to do it with both pre and post natal babies.

2. Parental Permission

Most adults seem to believe that parental permission is the difference between right and wrong. That a young child won't have nightmares after a violent movie if a parent is curled up on the couch beside them. That a teenager drinking under parental supervision is somehow better than a teen having a kegger with friends. That those parent permission slips for everything from science fair to field trips to that Obama speech we watched in seventh grade (someone explain to me why I need my mom's permission to watch my president speak) actually mean something.
I think right and wrong is the difference between right and wrong. Whether you're pro choice or life, you can't deny that there's something wrong with scrapping a kid for body parts. Even if the mother did give the go ahead.
At the end of the day, abortion is always about putting the parent's wants and needs first while dehumanizing the unborn child.

Middle Schooler and Professor Face Off Over Irish Discrimination (Teen Wins)

Richard Jensen was an elderly academic who decided Irish discrimination was a myth.
In a 2002 paper, Jensen wrote that the infamous NINA (No Irish Need Apply) signs of the 19th century are an urban legend. After a supposedly exhaustive research endeavor that included combing seventy years worth of New York Times ads for the word Irish, he decided that they either
1. Never existed at all
2. There are so few of them that any Irish Americans who cry out in protest are hate-hungry oppression seekers.
When another academic, University of Missouri history professor Kerby Miller, begged to differ, Jensen accused him of being Irish and Catholic and wrong.
Miller is none of those things.
And we've got a fourteen year old girl to prove it.
Rebecca Fried was an eighth grader with access to google.When her dad brought home Jensen's article, she took to the internet. A short while later she found a whole crop of examples. She made a project out of it, organized her evidence into a thesis, and contacted Miller to read through it.
Oh, and in case you were worried?
She's not Irish.
Just an American kid who cares about discrimination.
Sorry, Jensen.
I've written before about how much I love teenagers who use their after school hours to quietly become experts in something. Fried-yep, I'm calling her by last name here, because she's a scholar-had her thesis, "No Irish Need Deny", printed in last month's Oxford Journal of Social History. From there it spread across the internet. As usual, because she's a teenager who figured something out, she's being hailed as a precocious wunderkind rather than someone who figured something out.
It gets better.
Jensen stumbled across Fried's work over on Irish Central and decided to grace the comment section with his presence. He claims that
1. This photo of a NINA sign used in the article, which I've borrowed for this blog post, is a fake (Keep in mind that even if it is, news sources regularly use stockphotos or similar sources to cut time or expense)
2. Fried doesn't have enough evidence
3. What she does have is the wrong kind of evidence, because for some mind boggling reason, anti-Irish newspaper ads are different than anti-Irish signs
And then Rebecca showed up to the party.
With all the politeness and professionalism teenagers are forced to use when defending their stance against someone older and crankier, she
1. Thanked him for gracing the comment section with his presence
2. Pointed him back to specific pages of her own article that contained tallies of NINA newspaper ads and store window signs
3. Thanked him. Again.
4. Closed with "I respect you and your work".
Can we raise the scoreboard?
Rebecca: 1.
Richard: 0.
In my most humble teenage opinion, I think Rebecca Fried is a savvy scholar who will give more teachers the what's for as she enters high school next month.
But don't take that at face value.
After all, some of my ancestors were Irish.

Why School Doesn't Suck Anymore

"What do smart people think about. Fancy things I suppose. I wish I knew some fancy things alredy."

-Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

"When are we going to use this?"
That was our marching anthem in middle school. I'm not going to be an architect, engineer, or research physicist, so why should I learn this equation? Do I need to know the history of Texas if I'm never going to live in Texas? I'm pretty sure my job won't require me to write anything more complicated than an email. That plant's just a plant whether I know anything about the cell membrane or not. And tell me, senor, why am I learning how to say "Mis bis abuelos viven en un casa no muy lejos de tu casa?" My great grandparents aren't living, let alone living near anyone who speaks Spanish.
By high school our cries dissipated. Not because the teachers gave us answers we liked, but because we found our own. We became part time students, and spent the other part of our time in a vocational training that taught us things engineers, dental hygienists, and cosmetologists actually need to know. We interned at hospitals, aquariums, and publishing companies. When sophomores saw us walking the halls in scrubs or firehouse uniforms, name tags swinging from our necks, they knew we knew where we were going.
And how to get there.
We cut the fluff classes and applied for work release. We graduated early so we could save some money for college already. We went AP or stockpiled concurrent credit hours. And it finally clicked. Maybe we won't use any of our classes in every day life, except for driver's ed and cooking. But all of it's stepping stones to get us where we need to go.

I'm not just spouting this out. After thirteen years of school, I'm four weeks away from college and truly believe this. I couldn't be more excited-or more grateful. I have friends who aren't going to college, either because they can't muster up the confidence to do so or because their families aren't behind them. I thank my parents every day. My still-in-high-school friends are sick of my class chatter. "Did I tell you I got into my waitlisted plant science class? And that BYU offers a class called "Dinosaurs"? Not Dinosaurs 101 or Introduction to Dinosaurs. Just Dinosaurs. If I take that I can run around saying 'Oh crap, I'm late for Dinosaurs!' And I don't need math thanks to that ACT prep class. Oh, and once I get a few more English credits out of the way, I can take folklore!"
Now that I've passed all the stepping stones, I can learn whatever I want. And I've learned a secret:
It's not about the grades.
It's not about the diploma.
It's not about the transcripts.
It's not about the resume.
So far as society's concerned, education's about producing a population that isn't full of idiots, and so far as you are concerned, it's about making your life a little more colorful.
I'm ready, college.
Give me some fancy things to think about.

Abandon Ship: Or, Some Things I've Finally Figured Out About Life

Like many high school seniors, I celebrated my graduation with a "senior trip", although mine was a little different. For one, we left the week after the fourth of July, not immediately after graduation. Also, I was the only senior aboard.


From left to right: Layla (10 months), Natalee (17), Erica (18), Bonnie (12), Hanna (16), Ashlin (16), and Carly (15). Not pictured: Camille (20), who had to leave early

My family owns a 1/6 time share of a houseboat in Lake Powell, a giant freshwater lake in the middle of the Arizona-Utah desert. Our boat has air conditioning, a flat screen TV, a water slide, and two bathrooms. Deal, right? I thought so. But I couldn't get a single one of my senior friends to go.
Since we only have one sixth of the summer, we meet with the other houseboat owners midwinter to assign weeks. Our family's prep and planning for the trip starts a month or two in advance. They needed to know how many friends I had early on, so I started recruiting well before the summer, only to be turned down by literally everyone I counted as a friend throughout high school.
A few of them had legitimate excuses. "I'll be in Montana that week" or  "I'm spending eleven days in Israel for my graduation trip and I won't be able to get more time off."
But most of them didn't. One girl got a fast food job the week before we left and didn't bother asking for time off. The restaurant is so lenient, they let my friend Tessa work just Saturday shifts all through the school year so she could balance homework and lacrosse. If she'd told them "I can start a week from Monday," they would have let her. Another girl told me in May, "I don't plan that far ahead, so let's just go with no." But my favorite is the girl who, when invited in February (this is a July trip), said, "I can't. I'm cleaning my room."
Chirp.
Chirp.
I've been in her room. It's not that big. Plus, she said she needed to "get it ready for college". She's living at home for college.
So I brought four of my neighborhood friends instead. Three of them have stuck by my side since elementary school. One's a newer edition to my neighborhood, but she's been there for me in my darkest hours. My sophomore friend brought her younger sisters along. The more the merrier, right? When we were done, the ages of our party ranged from twelve to twenty.
I talked with my boss weeks in advance to make sure I could get it off. Camille took time off as well, and she had to leave early for a family reunion, but she committed to as much of the week as she possibly could. There's always room when you make it.
The day before we left, one of my fifteen year old brother's friends called us up to say that by some miracle, football practice had been canceled for the next week. Could he tag along? This was my trip, so my brother and parents turned to me for an answer. I almost declined out of petty jealousy. Did he really need a friend? Why should he have this miracle last-minute friend when mine said no six months in advance?
But I let him come. I'm proud of my brother and wish I would've been more like him at his age. Confident, fun loving, and surrounded by friends. All friends bring drama at the worst times, but no friend should bring you loneliness at anytime.
Then the morning of the trip, I had a dream that Hanna called. She said she'd accepted an unpaid job running the tech for a play in a city an hour away from our home. For an hour, I lay in bed, unable to separate dreams and reality. I wondered how the driving arrangements, meal plan, and other details would work with her gone. But most of all I wondered why all of my friends would put absolutely anything before me and my trip.

Hanna, Queen of the Cliffs

I told Hanna about my dream on the way down, and she laughed. The same sort of "that's absurd" laugh people gave when I told them about my friends who bailed. That is, when they're not staring at me in slack jawed stupor or asking if my friends are druggies. She told me she wouldn't miss my trip for the world.
That's when I finally realized the truth: I hung out with derps all through high school. One time I invited six girls to a backyard party. One of them asked me to take a picture of her on our two person swing. The next day, I found it on facebook with the caption, "Nothing says summer alone than being on one of these by yourself."

In the end, I'm glad for the way my trip turned out. The kind of people who can't stand the stress of talking to a boss, leaving Mommy's side for a week, or marking a date on a calendar wouldn't be able to handle jumping off thirty five foot cliffs or hurtling over the water on a jet ski at fifty miles an hour. They'd spend the whole trip lying in our stuff cubby bunks with three foot ceilings. We had our quieter adventures: lying out on the top deck, heart to hearts on the beach, and hiking the desert rocks in search of cell service. But after the best week of  my life, I've decided that I'm not built just for safe harbors.


Life, especially teenage life, is supposed to be enjoyed. I didn't realize that through most of high school. A lot of my older posts talk about how "real" teenage life is actually pretty boring. I now know that I misrepresented teenagers as a whole, that I took my experience and tried to make it universal. Real friends make an effort to see you outside of school more than a few times a year. Normal friends talk to you on a Friday night, not just in class. True friends are there for you in the light, not just your darkest hours.
I am eighteen years old. I laugh without fear of the future. I'm proud of every passion and pain my teenage year brought me, and now I'm a young adult. I have a fabulous, colorful, lovely, adventure filled life ahead of me, and nobody, friend or foe, is going to stop me from living it.


The New Marriage Deal

These are the souvenir earphones my school gave out for Senior Dinner Dance. They're miles beyond our prom key chains that broke a week later, and as a bonus, they come in a commemorative box that could pass for a ring case at a distance.

My friend Matt took full advantage of the fact. While our principals looked on, he knelt down and proposed to the nearest girl, our friend Faith. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the looks on their faces."They thought it was real!" We laughed as we made our quick getaway across the parking lot.That's when I realized it could've been. Marriage isn't a joke for us anymore. We laugh the most at things that are forbidden, but now we've crossed that threshold. Soon, Matt will be kneeling down for real.Just maybe not to Faith.

My friend Shelby is already engaged. We were Sterling Scholars together-a departmental award/scholarship competition put on by every school in the state of Utah. I didn't know her at all beforehand, but we posed for pictures and shared a table at the awards banquet. Yesterday I got home from work, clicked on my facebook feed, and the first picture to pop up was Shelby flashing a Diamond ring from a bridge with some boy.We have been out of high school for twenty two days.And she's only the first.My brother came by the computer, glanced at Shelby over my shoulder, and said, "Married by eighteen, divorced by nineteen." But I know that's not true. Some people have the perseverance it takes to get it right the first time.My mother's parents divorced when she was in kindergarten. One of her elementary school teachers fit all the divorced kids at one table. When my grandmother's parents separated, it was Something Polite People Don't Talk About. But when I met with my Sterling Scholar adviser, she scoffed at the sheer number of divorce essays she'd seen for the Hardships I've Overcome prompt. However real their heartbreak, divorced kids don't qualify as sufferers anymore.Divorce is new. Newer than two other marriage delayers, prolonged lifespans and educational pursuit.
Young brides are shamed. I've never had a boyfriend and I'm headed to the top school in Utah. But all I ever hear is "Don't get that MRS degree too fast." Of course, it's worse when you're actually a bride, according to teen bride blogger Natasha Craig. Some of the responses she's heard include:
"You're too young to know what real love is."

"Are you even old enough to sign the marriage certificate?"
"Are you pregnant or something?"
You know what? 
If a young couple gets divorced, they'll do it without your help.
If a young couple turns into an old couple and sit gray haired on their front porch surrounded by grandchildren, they'll do it without your help. And you were never helping in the first place.

Old lovers are just young lovers who grew up.

Modern people, no matter what era they live in, seem to forget they aren't the gold standard for normal. After marriage, the next biggest place I see this is college. Leaving home is the traditional, natural, normal way to attend college. I didn't even know staying home was an option until I was sixteen. I thought all the college kids I saw hanging around the neighborhood must be home for the weekend. My parents never explained it to me. So it still baffles me whenever I say "I'm going to BYU in the fall", and the response is, "Oh, are you living down there?"
Note the going part.

This is going.

This is staying.

I've read years ago about some Indian tribe (Hopis, maybe?) that believes in adding rooms onto existing homes instead of kicking adult children. But besides that, absolutely every culture I've encountered, visited, or read about believes in growing up and moving out. I can't think of a single place or time across the wide expanse of human history where this wasn't the standard. There is no shame in passing a traditional life milestone when your heart says it's time. Let's hear it for Shelby and her soon to be husband Bronson.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Genesis 2:24