Category: Senior Literary

I believe Valentines Day is such a strange holiday, at least for us to celebrate in the modern day. In between the major holiday of New Years and the minor one of St. Patrick’s Day (which is also weird), there’s a holiday all about dating and love. It’s also turned into a consumeristic cash grab but I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade (especially my own). I’ve never met anyone who actually likes Valentines Day, unless it’s someone who’s been in a long-term relationship (which makes you think… duh!).

Personally, Valentines Day has always been something that I dread. Since getting old enough to date, I’ve either ended a relationship right before Valentines Day, met someone immediately after, or was with someone that never took it seriously. So I always opt out to spend it with my friends or with family. Thankfully, my dad has stepped up to be my number one Valentine every year since I was a baby, so my standards are high.

I introduce all of this to sort of counsel myself into a solution for my own love life problems and also stall for the real topic of this blog. It’s no surprise that I am very open about loving my friends a little bit more than most people are comfortable with. A lot of people are really specific about saying “I love you” either to people they don’t really love or saying it too often. I think there are two types of “I love you”s but, of course, they’re going to sound the same. I absolutely think you should take the romantic “I love you”s very seriously, don’t say them too often and don’t say them too quickly. But the platonic “I love you”s? Everyone gets one of those from me. It’s really hard to not earn one from me, I love hard and I love lots. 

A few months ago, a family friend that I really look up to and admire sent me a video on Instagram. I find it funny how she drops the most inspiring pieces of advice through Reels at random times in the day, especially in between Smiling Friends (RIP) fan art and other funny videos. It was a video about a girl getting interviewed in a park and she said, “Treat your friends more like your lovers and your lovers more like your friends.” She goes on to explain herself in a really beautiful way that I admire so deeply. I want to take this statement and explain why I personally believe in it. When this family friend sent me that video, I had already been thinking about that statement and saying it in a different way in my own life and since then, I’ve been thinking about it even more.

Obviously I don’t think we should date our friends. I just think we should prioritize our platonic friendships as much, if not more, than our romantic relationships. There are so many young girls that chase after a date while not being able to see the beautiful platonic friendships that provide for them even more than a romantic one ever would. I was definitely one of those girls when I was younger.

As I got older, I heard more and more about how I should value friendships over dating. I heard it so much that I knew it couldn’t possibly be a thrown-out suggestion that didn’t take years for these other people to realize it themselves. But sometimes you have to live through the experiences to truly learn where it came from. It’s hard to take advice and live by it without knowing what happens when you don’t.

Now, there are definitely lines that shouldn’t be crossed in showing your love for your platonic friends, but that should be up for you and the other person to decide. For the most part, it’s not anyone’s business how you interact with your platonic friends, just like it’s not anyone’s business how you interact with your romantic partners. You don’t have to put a label on it either, again, the same way you don’t with romantic partners. You don’t have to claim it as some sort of nonbiological familial love to explain it to people and you don’t have to explain it as pretend dating either.

As an only child, it’s difficult for me to be able to relate to actual sibling relationships. Usually, I label any friendship I have with a male as a brother/sister relationship because that one of the only bonds I know will make sense to other people. I have felt, what I think to be, true sisterly love before, but as I get older, I try to lean away from specifically labeling my friendships, especially as sibling relationships because 9 times out of 10 they don’t even fall under that category to me. I just naturally refer to many of my friendships like that.

Of course, as a society we are obsessed with labeling things. I’ll admit that I am too. It gives me a form of comfort in understanding more about the world or myself. But I’ve noticed a lot less labeling recently. With the rise of “situationships” and just “talking” to someone romantically (even though those are ultimately labeling it) rather than dating, I’ve noticed more and more people pushing against the expectations of labels. Now both your and my opinions about labeling romantic relationships are a topic for another day, and that’s just not what I want to talk about. I want to hop on the no-label train and prioritize the bonds of friendships rather than labeling them, even if I do treat them the same way I would romantic partners sometimes.

More recently, I had a talk with one of my closest friends about romantic and platonic love, specifically in inexplicably stated queer media, after watching “The Long Walk” (I wonder who). We talked about how a lot of queer relationships are deemed as “brotherly” or “sisterly” love by the mainstream media that’s too afraid of outwardly titling those relationships as queer/romantic. We came to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter if it’s labeled as some form of “sibling” love, as long as it’s not explicitly stated as that in the actual content and can be interpreted as queer representation, the most important part of it is that it’s love. It doesn’t matter if it has the ability to be explicitly stated as queer representation or if it falls under the description of platonic love to the mainstream media, what matters is that it’s love and it’s beautiful. (maybe omit since it’s saying the same thing)

Ultimately what I’m trying to say is in the title. There’s not much explanation I have other than love is beautiful. There’s a lot of overlap with the feelings you have for platonic friends and the ones you have towards romantic partners. Don’t be afraid of that overlap. You don’t need a romantic partner in your life if you have meaningful bonds that already fill that role.

You don’t need to have a boyfriend to have a good Valentines Day. It’s not lame that you spend it with your dad every year. If you want to give gifts to your friends like an extravagant boyfriend, don’t be afraid of doing that if you know it’ll make you happy. I’m just talking to myself here…

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I wanted to insert a bit about this clip from Smosh where Shayne Topp talks about how people love to see a relationship on screen because I thought it fit and it was just so beautiful. I also just think a lot of things are beautiful.

When I was younger and was more of a quiet kid, I would watch the popular friend groups and specifically observe their friendships and relationships with each other. Even if I knew the group was not nice overall, like if they were mean to most people, I still admired their friendships because that was some of the most genuine relationships I’ve seen from an outsider’s perspective.

All relationships are beautiful, even if they weren’t great in the beginning, even if they aren’t great now. I think we were put on this planet to love each other. Give your friends a kiss for me. Or whatever.

In November I had the opportunity to work at the Renaissance festival, a popular festival that happens every year in the Louisiana area. People from states close by and far away travel to see this amazing event, and it’s truly as awesome as it’s hyped up to be. If you’ve never been to the ren fest before, it’s a big festival; based within decorated boarders that depict what life was like in the Renaissance Era. There are old-timey houses, huts, shops, and booths that surround the streets of the main festival. The streets/walkways are dirt and gravel roads, and they run miles across the base. I didn’t get to see every part of the festival, but I knew it stretched very far, and there were many more interesting things happening in certain areas (like jousting, kind of upset I never got to see it).

This specific job was very memorable to me because it was my first time working in the food service industry. My older siblings have all had jobs in the food service industry, so naturally I thought it’d be a good place to start whenever I needed to look for work. This past summer I ended up working at a nature center (which I loved and totally want to do again). So, I wasn’t working in the service industry yet, like I thought I would. During this time many close friends and family members were recommending that I give it a try because I needed the experience, socialization, and money. I do like working with people, so I wanted to give it a try.

I would’ve never thought one of my first jobs would be at a place as cool as the ren fest. I’d never been to the festival before, so I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I agreed to work with my friend and her sister for the month. It was an amazing experience. I got to wear garb for the first time in my life, and it felt good to wear something completely different than I’m used to. I got to interact with people from different backgrounds and states. Some of them had been coming to the ren fest for years, and they were very open to talking about the details of their garb (I loved to ask them). Everyone was so happy and outgoing, and I loved being a part of it.

I worked in an ice cream/milkshake booth, and I can honestly say that I underestimated the skill and experience it takes to work in the food service industry. Of course, I had no prior experience in customer service, but I didn’t think it’d be as tough as it was. It took me a hot second to learn how to make the milkshakes, sundaes, and even the simple crepes we sold. We operated on a make-by-order basis, so while I was learning I was also serving the customers (Many people were forgiving when I messed up their order). There were moments when I had no idea what I was doing. It got nerve wracking at times, but I learned how to handle myself in those types of situations, so I like to think it worked out in my favor.

Working at this festival was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, and I would love to do it again. The owner of the booth I worked in does a lot of different shows, so it’d be interesting to travel and work at other events. If you’re considering changing your work options or looking for different environments, you should totally take a chance and see what’s out there. I did, and I had an amazing time. Thanks for reading.

As an online dual enrollment student, I take plenty of classes that I don’t necessarily have an interest in. Honestly, taking these classes isn’t all bad because I also take classes that I do like and genuinely enjoy. But there’s always that one class that I can’t fathom, no matter how many placebos I’m juggling at the time. Although I expected intro to philosophy to be included in this bottomless pit of classes, it wasn’t. In fact, I learned the most in philosophy I’ve ever learned in another online course before. I took a genuine interest in the material and learned valuable things about life. This knowledge not only had an impact on how I viewed the world, but it put into perspective what I could do to change my own actions. In this blog, I’ll be talking about what I’ve learned in philosophy class and how it impacted my understanding of the world and myself.

The mind and body as two separate entities:

There’s a famous philosopher who specifically studied the correlation between the mind and the body. The body, in this philosopher’s brain, is an unthinking, machine operated being, and the brain is a non-extended thinking substance. Rather than seeing the mind and body as one whole that works together to carry out life tasks, he sees them as two separate entities that work closely together but have little in common. He backs his belief up with the fact that the body is divided into multiple parts, whereas the mind is only one whole and can think independently. Thinking about the mind and body in this way makes a lot of sense because I feel that my mind is vastly different from my body in every aspect. So, because we deal with two separate entities, it’s important that we care for them individually and through different methods.

                                                There’s a lot of power in reflection:

            For an assignment, we wrote about our feelings on Socrates quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I remember reading this and thinking that the quote was a bit too serious. But the more I read and wrote about it, I realized that the unexamined life really is as bad as Socrates believes. An unexamined life refers to a person who acts constantly but never reflects on the consequences of his or her own actions. This might seem easy for people to comprehend, but it’s not hard to get trapped in a cycle of doing and never reflecting. Reflection is how we achieve knowledge that can help our specific circumstance, and I feel that I especially stray away from it because it’s hard for me to accept criticism. It’s a harsh truth, but reflecting can do more inner work than we think.

                                                            Act now, reflect later:

            This might contradict the paragraph above, but it’s just as important. I’ve heard a version of this advice in every school I’ve been to and I’m just now understanding how relevant it is to everyday life. My dance teacher used to tell us to say yes to everything and no to nothing when we are actively creating art. When we create art or make decisions, we often do so with a conscious, logical mind. Removing the inner critic that’s always within us can help us create better art, it can ease our minds, and it can prevent or limit the chances of thinking ourselves out of opportunities. This can be especially helpful for people who struggle with procrastination, as it encourages them to act rather than go through the process of convincing themselves. This advice isn’t always easy to follow, but it works as a reminder that simply acting on something is all it takes to get started.

Pentatonix, a name that is a play on the pentatonic scale, is an acapella group who started in 2011 with Kirstin Maldonado (Alto), Mitch Grassi (Tenor), Scott Hoying (Baritone), Avi Kaplan (Bass), and Kevin Olusola (Vocal Percussion). Kevin has also been known to play to the cello in many of their songs. The group mostly does acapella cover of songs but have made a few originals. One being “Can’t Sleep Love” that was very popular. There most popular cover video is Daft Punk which is a collection of songs from the group… you’ll never guess. Daft Punk. The music video is so freaking awesome like it just really takes me back even though the blue contacts always freaking scared me. 

Pentatonix was such a huge part of acapella music becoming mainstream. They have made covers of so many popular songs with nothing but the sounds of their voices, and almost every year they come out with a Christmas album because Christmas is their thing. I’m 92% sure that they are a Christian group, but they’re so amazing and two of them are homosexual (Scott and Mitch), so the group is talented and inclusive! Both Scott and Mitch made the song Guy.exe in a duo group called Superfruit in 2017. They both planned to branch off and do solo things but just decided to do it together. The last music video was posted 7 years ago. 

The group continued to grow in popularity but in 2017 also, Avi Kaplan left Pentatonix. It was said that he wanted to spend more time with his family instead of touring around. The group continued to be friends with Avi, but he was replaced by Matt Sallee just a few months after, I think. It didn’t take very long is the point, which is good because they need a freaking bass. It pulls it all together. 

The group continues to go on tours and has been going strong since 2017. And also, they take awesome pictures like this, and their outfits are always so unique, and I think that’s awesome. Pentatonix has been one of my favorite groups for years and though I’m not as into them as I was, I still love their music, covers or original, they really do have some crazy talents. I know a group like this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Pentatonix did have a really big effect on music back in the day, pop and Christmas music mostly, and I think that’s important to acknowledge.