THE FINAL BLOG: What I've Learned Part 4

This is my final blog, and I feel I need to dedicate it to something incredibly important. I've been sitting staring at a blank page for about thirty minutes now, waiting for a moment of brilliance to occur. It finally hit me...leadership. Since I was a child, I have been fascinated with being a leader. Not just any leader, I might add...THE BEST leader. I have written research projects on famous leaders just to have a reason to do research on them and their techniques (I know I'm a nerd). I was elected Vice President in 7th grade and then President in 8th grade. In high school, I was a class secretary, and captain of my drill team. I have always felt the need to be in charge. Perhaps I am a control freak, but I like to use the term "leadership." It sounds more eloquent. 

This year I decided to run for Captain of the TCU Elite dance team. When I was elected, I hardly knew what was in store for me. It was all excitement at first. Little did I know, it would nearly change my life. Starting out, I was friends with all the girls on the team and we all continue to hang out outside of practice. However, being a captain is more than just fun. In fact, it is a stressful position. Being a leader, especially of something that means a great deal to you and to others is difficult. You often have to be the bad guy, and it often is your best friends you are the bad guy towards. Though it has been stressful carrying this title this year, I have enjoyed it more than anything else. 

Leadership: this word insinuates a passion and confidence for something special. It also tends to mean a positive thing. You don't often think of leaders as being bad or malicious people. However, they definitely do exist. Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones of the People's Temple were most definitely leaders, however their motives at the end of their lives were destructive and ruined the lives of many people. Leaders such as Abraham Lincoln show the opposite morality. He was a great leader with constructive ideals and goals that ended up helping many people in America. 

Though being a leader means a position of high standing, it can often mean losing friends. You have to do things for the good of a whole group, as opposed to what you would like to do or what your best friend wants you to do. You become responsible for the activities of many people in the group. It deals with more maturity and responsibility. Many people don't have the energy or courage to be a leader, since it often means you have to go against your friends to do something right for the rest of the group. 

I discovered this difficulty in being a leader when I was captain of my high school drill team. The girls on the team were some of my very best friends, but if they were talking in practice or disrupting and event, I was the person who had to tell them to stop. I had to be the bad guy. I am not going to lie, I lost some friends through this process. It was incredibly hard to stay neutral, but it had to be done for the team. Though I am sad I lost some friends, I grew so much as a person being a leader and dealing with the hardships of being one as well.

Now as Captain of a college team, I was a little more scared. Next semester, our coach and one of my close friends will be studying abroad, which basically means I will be in charge of the team. This is terrifying. I am already super busy and next semester I will be taking MCAT prep courses and working towards my goals of becoming a doctor. I am terrified that I will fail at the task of being a good coach and leader. I can only pray that I will have some guidance and help from people around me. 

Being a leader doesn't mean being everyone's friend. It means doing what is best for the group and sticking to the goals and ideals of the group. It is seldom an easy task nor a fun one, but it can do powerful things for an individual. I feel I have learned a great deal from being a leader in the past and I can only pray it continues to help me in the future. 

Have a Merry Christmas and God bless you!

Uncontrollable laughter from the perspective of a Daddy's girl

Daddy. The one word that can truly light up a little girl's face. Yes, there are many people that can bring joy to a little girl, but truth be told, there is something about her daddy that brings an emotion out in her that I personally don't believe there is a word invented for.

The other day Iw as feeling horribly sad because some plans I made had fallen apart last minute and I had taken a large amount of time to get ready and get excited for it. Feeling rather glum and seeing as both of my roommates were not at home, I wanted to call home to vent. Being Italian, I find I am always in need of an emotional venting session....just FYI. So, that being said, I called home and my dad answered. He picked up the phone and immediately started making me feel better before he even knew I was upset, with some comment such as "HELLOOOOO my princess!" I was already feeling better.

I was going to attempt to not let him know I was upset and just try to talk and hopefully feel better by the end. Trying to hide my sadness, my dad instantly picked up on it and was instantly worried about me. I told him I didn't know how they could always pick up instantly on if I was feeling down. So I explained my situation to him and he listened intently.

There is something you must know about my father. He is an ideal "expressive." He makes everyone feel better and tries to make everyone laugh. If he finds one pathway of humor, he will keep it going for as long as it is still funny to the listener.

You need a little bit of background information for this to make sense, and even then, you may not quite understand the hilarity. We have some inside jokes in our family. I am pretty good and imitations and when we all watched "Series of Unfortunate Events" together, there were several lines I continue to reenact to this day. One is "My name is Stefano. I am an Italian man." The other is "It's Captain Sham, YOUR NEW GUARRRRDIANNNN."  For some reason, our family became somewhat obsessed with these lines, and continue to say them to this day.

Back to the story, I finished telling my father why I was so upset. First, he made me feel better saying things like "Madison, this is one night out of tons more, don't be upset about one night" and "Maybe something bad would have happened if you had gone and it's better for you to stay in tonight," etc.  So now that I was realistically thinking about how unimportant it was for me to go out that night, I was being more logical and less emotional about everything. 

While making me feel better, my dad started inexplicably using our inside joke lines (stated above), but was changing the words to pertain to my situation. I honestly cannot tell you exactly what was said, but I remember one thing, the uncontrollable laughter and joy I felt.  I was laughing so hysterically that he kept making the jokes and cleverly changing the words to keep describing my situation. He turned the whole situation into a funny memory for me. I remember not feeling sad, but feeling so loved and cared for that I still laugh at it today thinking back. My dad left me in the most ideal mood to get on with my night, do a little studying, and watch a movie with my best friend when she got home. It ended up being quite the perfect evening, and I owe it all to the therapeutic laughter incurred by my father. 

Final meeting with Fanny: Conversation Partner Part 6

Today was the final meeting with Fanny. It was surprisingly a lot more difficult to say goodbye to her than I had imagined. She has really grown into a friend of mine and I trust her, which is hard for me to say with just anyone. 

Today we talked a lot about affirmative action. It was randomly brought up. When I arrived to our meeting wearing navy blue scrubs, she immediately asked why I was "in uniform." I explained that I was going with a friend (Ashlyn) to the Harris Emergency room later this evening to do an observation for a few hours. I then explained why I had to do this kind of thing. The average person accepted into medical school has ~50 hours of observation, and it is ideal to get much more than that to ensure you are considered above average on hours of observation. Then we discussed how incredibly ridiculous and difficult it is to get into medical school. I explained the various aspects of doing well and preparing for medical school: good MCAT score, good grades, observation hours, community service hours, and extra-curricular hours. Not to mention that all of these generally require a good deal of money to be spent and many sleepless nights. 

We talked about acceptance rates and how ethically affirmative action plays into the decisions for acceptances and denials. I explained to her that though race is not supposed to play a role in acceptances, it often has an influencing factor in the admissions committee, because often they receive pressure from alternative sources. I have done about 4 presentations in my life regarding affirmative action, so I understand the process fairly well. She told me that she views affirmative action as an "unfair process." She said it's annoying to her also because since she is a Colombian citizen with a green card to the United States, she is considered an international person here in America. She hopes to attend TCU's MBA Master's program and get a Master's degree, but it is a rather rigorous program and she worries her English is not where it should be to get in. A friend of hers deals with admissions and told her that as an "international student," she will have it more difficult to find opportunities and get in places because she is competing with ALL the other international students. Her friend also shared that if she were to get her American citizenship, she would be viewed as a Latina-American, and her opportunities would skyrocket. She shared with me that she didn't think this was fair, and she wants to keep her Colombian citizenship, but worries that if she does not complete her American citizenship, she will never get into a MBA Master's program. 

It was an interesting topic and she brought her daughter into it. Katie's birth was planned to be in America, but since she was premature, she was born in Bolivia. When the doctor asked what her last name was, she defaulted to saying two last names (one from her mother and one from her father), as is the culture in Latin America and many parts of South America. Her husband said Katie having 2 last names wouldn't sit well in America, and they needed to do one name for her. Fanny's friend in admissions told her it's way more preferable for Katie to have 2 last names, because opportunities will be opened up to her since she will be viewed as an American citizen, but with Latin decent. She was very pleased she decided to keep both last names for her girl. 

Our conversation came to a close and she said she had been very lucky to meet with me and know me and she was glad we had become so close. She again stated that if I am ever traveling, she wants me to stay with her, and even said if tomorrow, I get a flat tire in Arlington, to call her and she will come to help. I am amazed at her kindness and warm heart and I truly trust her and appreciate how open she has been with me. We hugged at the end and I got very sad, hoping it was not the last time we would meet. When we parted, I realized how very lucky I was to get to meet with her, learn about her culture, family, and past, and make a very strong new friendship. 

Conversation partner PART 5 - Hair, Dance, and Obsession.

When I showed up to the bookstore to meet with Fanny, I hardly recognized her. She had cut her hair about 4 inches, and it was now very short and right under her ears. When I saw her I immediately told her how cute I thought it was, and she immediately said how much she hated it. I laughed at her response because I feel like that is one subject that is the same globally for women. HAIR. Why is it such a big deal? Nobody knows, but it is nonetheless. We ended up having a pretty long and profound discussion on hair and why it is so important to us and how it seems nobody actually LOVES their own hair when it's changed. When we are used to something on ourselves and looking in the mirror to see the same thing every morning, when there is a change (good or bad), we hate it. We have this strong distaste simply because it is foreign and we all to a certain extent, fear change. But still, why is hair such a big deal to women?

 I am not going to lie and say I don't also have this irrational obsession with my hair, and wouldn't go absolutely crazy on someone if they so much as cut an inch off without my permission, but still women are very irrational about their hair. She was then saying that she could tell her husband didn't like it too much, but would not out right tell her for fear of hurting her feelings. He kept using phrases such as, "It's so cute, but so short." She said she could see right through his expressions but that she appreciated that he wouldn't tell her he didn't like it, since she was already so upset with the change.

I found it very interesting, the similarities of humor and marriage in our two very different cultures. She laughed at the same funny "fibs" her husband was telling, but a woman is a woman and she still cared so much that he said he liked it. Any woman feels this way, I guarantee it. She may say she wants a change of hair for herself, but in the end, she will hate it until someone close to her reassures her it is a nice change.  Again, there are some distinct differences between women and men in this case. Most men could not care less what happens to their hair. They often shave it all off, if it is uncomfortable "touching their ears" or "under a helmet." I've heard the most utterly ridiculous and hilarious reasons for men cutting their hair. They don't care about it, and I truly think they would not have any on purpose if they had some weird fear of balding. I for one, don't find balding to be an issue. Evolution teaches us that men who bald have more testosterone than men who don't, and therefore, females are often attracted more to men with this increased amount of testosterone as a sign of protection and reproductive success. Not to get all scientific on everyone, but I simply have never found a dislike of men who don't have hair.

Fanny and I also talked a lot about dance, which made me ecstatic, seeing as dance is one of my main passions in life. We talked about her daughter Katie, who as she put it "got the dance genes from her father and her father dances like a robot."  She said since she was a baby, Katie couldn't move with fluidity and her teachers would say that she would get better with time and that there was no means for worry. Fanny knew though that she would never have the coordination of some of the other girls in her class. Now that Katie is older, she has started realizing that she doesn't look the same as some of the better girls, and has stopped wanting to go. Fanny is finally able to take her out of classes and stop paying for something poor little Katie is not so talented at. She does however have a knack for piano and music in general, and Fanny is looking into putting her into piano lessons.

We also discussed parental issues. She is definitely a sheltering parent and has trained Katie to be a careful child. For me, this is a touchy subject, because different parents feel very strongly about their methods of parenting and it really is nobody else's business. She doesn't let Katie go to sleepovers at all, even to her grandmother's house. I think this may be a little extreme but she does have her reasons, and her past in dangerous countries and seeing the things she saw gives her leeway to protect her child the way she sees fit. Parenting is always cause for debate in societies and here in America, it is almost necessary to overprotect one's child. 

I am loving meeting with Fanny and we are growing a fond friendship that I am very pleased to have. 

What I've Learned Part 3 WAHOOO

I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR.

My deep and profound thoughts this week are dealing with gender. In my honors class Literature and Civilizations, we are currently focusing on genders. What makes guys different than girls? Why do girls communicate differently? And so forth. While reading two different books, one by Nora Ephron and one by Dave Berry, I found myself getting beyond angry. At one point I nearly threw one of the books across the room. Luckily for everyone around me at the Jiffy Lube, where I sat for thirty minutes to get my car's oil changed, I restrained. Needless to say, I disapprove of stereotypes based on gender. I don't agree with thoughts that men can do anything different than women nor that women can do anything different than men.

Equality. Equality in sex, race, religious views, etc. All of these matter to me, and should matter to everyone. It is not fair to lump women and men into different categories. Yes, they communicate differently, but they are not a different species. Anyways, I'm done with my rant.

My learning experience is dealing with women. I am a woman and I am proud to be one.  As a member of Alpha Chi Omega, our philanthropy is Domestic Violence Awareness. We work directly with the Women's Center here in Fort Worth and donate $45,000 every year to support domestic violence awareness. We are very passionate about what we do to help women and children and I believe that we help women every day.

Recently my sorority decided to have a school wide philanthropy event and I decided to take control of it and be the head coordinator. The event was called Break the Silence, and was a battle of the decades with fraternities and sororities around the school. I had about a month to plan this in addition to the crazy school and work load I already had. Needless to say, I was beyond stressed. The event came and went and I was incredibly pleased with the results. Many people showed up to fill the auditorium and in total we raised just under $1000 for the Women's Center! The event showed me not only what a strong leader I am capable of being, but also how proud I am of my sorority and our philanthropy. We serve women and children all year long and have donated over $500,000 to the women's center. Our chapter here at TCU is in the top 2% of money raising sororities and fraternities in the nation! Leading this event showed me how important what we do is.

Many women are beaten or raped in this country and 80% of rapists never see a day in jail. It is downright wrong. It's so difficult to see women torn down to the ground that don't think they will ever be able to rise up from their ashes. The Women's Center here has literacy programs and computer classes to teach women to learn new skills that will allow them to move up in their lives. They pick up their pain and move on. It is incredible to see a women torn by pain and distress pick herself up off the ground and keep moving and providing for her family. They are strong. They are beautiful. They are worthy. They are women.

In the past couple of weeks, working so hard on my event and learning a lot more about women in general in class and with the Women's Center, I have come to the realization that I LOVE being a woman. I am proud of it every single day. I am not a feminist, I believe men and women equally contribute to society and both are necessary in a functional society. However, I do love being a woman and I am very proud of women in history who have put a name for themselves and for future women, like me to be able to vote, own land, and work. 

This is a concept my mother has engrained in me since I was a small child. It is important for women to work hard and understand the fundamentals of living alone and providing for oneself. Independence is key for every person on this earth. One will get burned if he/she puts faith into other people all the time. One must work for what he/she wants in life and cannot count on anyone else to help. I have put my faith in myself and in few others, and I can count on myself time and time again. I know I will never betray me. I know if I set my mind to something, I will do it. I am a fighter. I am a woman. I believe all women and men alike should be the same. 

Conversation partner Part 4

This most recent time meeting with Fanny was absolutely the most informative and interesting of all of the meetings I have had with her thus far. We began as usual. A little of this. A little of that. And then all of the sudden...BOOM...it got personal. She shared so much about her life with me and I am so grateful to have heard all of her stories and how she overcame them.

I am still not entirely sure of her husbands job, but I know they must travel often for it. Awhile ago, when her daughter Katie was still young, they had to move to Bangladesh. Though they didn't want to go, it was the only viable option for them to stay together as a family in one location. When they arrived, she already had some uneasiness.

A couple days in, her husband asked her to run to the market. She went alone, wearing normal American type clothing (a blouse, and form fitting pants). She wasn't showing too much skin or anything, but she said since she was not covered head to toe, she stood out a lot and brought a lot of attention. At the market (which was outdoor and in broad daylight surrounded by many people), she noticed four men had been following her. She quickly switched her direction to see what they would do. Again they followed.  Eventually, they were surrounding her on all four sides. They came close and began yelling and scolding her in Bengali (which she did not understand at this point). She could tell, however, that it was rude and horrible things they were saying by their nonverbal communication and gestures. One of the men grabbed her chest so hard that she said she was purple with bruises for over two weeks. The other men started laughing and continued to yell at her. She began to sob and didn't know what to do, so she ran from them and approached the first woman she saw to plead for help. The woman looked straight at her, understanding exactly what had happened, and proceeded to spit on her face.

After this event, she never went anywhere alone, let alone anywhere at all. She began to retract further and further away from the public and stayed at her house most of the time, too afraid to leave and have another horrible experience. Her descriptions of Bangladesh were so vivid and meaningful. One could easily tell her disgust of this place. She described the men as dogs, licking their lips and pouncing on women not covered up. She said anywhere she went she had this problem. She also explained to me that the hospitals recycled syringes, and when her daughter got sick, she didn't know what the safest options were. She was not going to allow recycled syringes to be put anywhere near her baby, but also wanted her to get some sort of medical attention. They flew to Thailand to get proper medical attention and supplies to bring back.

She so badly did not wish to return to Bangladesh, that on the plane flight back, she had a panic attack. It was set in motion because a flight attendant had run to clean up a spill on a passenger. The sight of the running induced a panic attack in Fanny. She choked up, got very sweaty, and could not breath nor speak. Since this was the first time this happened to her, her husband did not know what was happening. An in flight doctor thought she was having a heart attack, and they were forced to land the plane in a different location to get her medical attention. Upon investigation, they found it was not a heart attack, but purely anxiety caused. She was forced to undergo treatment (therapy) to see, in her words "What horrible experience from her childhood triggered this." She, had not had anything traumatic occur in her childhood, it was simply Bangladesh. She did not want to go back. She hadn't felt safe in many months, and felt helpless to protect her baby girl from the horrible actions that took place.

She shared with me that after that, things were different for her. She lost a lot of weight. She would get anxious in the middle of the day for her daughter's safety in school. She would run to the school simply to see Katie and make sure she was okay. She lived every day in fear, never being happy.  One day, the generator in her building got turned on, and she thought it was an earthquake at first. The way she put this was so beautiful. "My head realized it was not an earthquake and that I was fine, but my body didn't understand." She went into another anxiety attack at home. They had to go back to Thailand to treat her and make sure she would be okay.

When they finally left Bangladesh, the fear stopped. She put the weight back on, and never had another panic attack. I asked her if she thought this made her stronger, and she responded "Absolutely." It had shown her the poorest of the poor and the hungry, but she had also been exposed to horrible people that wanted to hurt her. She has learned to love what she has and feel blessed every day for her life and her daughter's safety. This brought her closer to God and made her faith even stronger than it was then.

Here are some pictures she shared with me of her life in Bangladesh. 

             

Conversation Partner Part 3

Today I met with Fanny for the third time. Since we hadn't met in a couple weeks due to extenuating circumstances, we began our conversation by catching up. We discussed small events in our lives in the last couple of weeks.  She then described to me something I thought was very interesting. She had to cancel last Thursday for our meeting because she got called in by the director of the program she is a part of here at TCU. He had told her it was very important and she needed to be there in order to register for her next term here at TCU as an international student. She went to the meeting and the director told her a teacher had complained about her attitude and rude behavior in classes, and she was of course shocked by this news, since she is just about the sweetest person I've ever met. She told the director "Please let me speak to the professor because if I've offended her, I want to apologize because it was not intentional." He continued to disregard what she was saying and claimed she had been rude in class for quite some time. When the teacher finally arrived in the office, she looked at Fanny and said "This is the wrong student." Fanny was then relieved to find out that she wasn't actually in trouble, however something about this story struck me as wrong.

She said that the actual student in trouble was a much younger Columbian girl in a similar program here at TCU.  The teacher, I assume, had gone to the director and said that a "Columbian girl" in her class was being disrespectful and rude in class, and the director thinking he knew the only Columbian girl in the program, called Fanny in and assumed it was her.  This rubbed me the wrong way. Don't you think they should have checked and made sure who the student was before calling them in to a serious meeting in his office to be scolded? There are two things in this situation that bother me greatly. Not only did the teacher refer to her student as "the Columbian girl," taking away her name and identity and assigning her identity to her race and ethnicity, but the director didn't question who "that Columbian girl" was in the program and simply assumed it was Fanny.  If he had really known her, he would have known she would never be rude intentionally and if there was ever a question of offense, she would quickly apologize for having a miscommunication.  It pains me that in an international program here at TCU, the director would succumb to racial identities when referring to his students.  Fanny, who has never been in trouble, because she is such a sweetheart, was terrified by this accusation that she had done something wrong and was in danger of not being able to register for the next term of classes. To me, this is inexcusable. I have to admit, I am disappointed with the people involved in this process for letting this happen to Fanny.  If it had been me referred to as "that white girl," I would have lost it. Please have the decency to use their name. They deserve that right as a human being. 

Anyways, now that I am done with my rant, I can continue with the conversation. We spent a lot of time discussing troubles we have with each other's language. I have been having a lot of issues lately in Spanish with the order of words. For example in English we would say "Maria is here" however in Spanish the order of words appears like so: "Here is Maria."  When translating English phrases into Spanish ones, I tend to use the incorrect order of words. She is having issues with her writing in English as well and confused "has" with "had" and "have."  We discussed how it would just be so convenient if the whole world just knew the same language. We then laughed at how ridiculous we were sounding with this philosophical and impossible view we expect of the world. 

I've found that each time I meet with Fanny, the time goes by faster and conversation is much easier to attain. We don't stall in our words to think of what else to discuss. Instead it flows rather tirelessly.  The hour went by so quickly today, I felt like there were so many more things I'd like to talk about with her. 

I felt very pleased when I showed her the book we're reading in my "Panorama of Spanish Literature" class here at TCU and she was very impressed that I could read and understand it. She kept saying "You're better at Spanish than you think you are Madi."  This made me feel much better. For some reason, I have a huge fear that when I try to speak Spanish to native speakers, they will judge me or think about how horrible my pronunciation is compared to theirs, etc. But hearing this reassuring comment from Fanny helped my confidence in Spanish a lot more. I am thankful for her help in breaking me out of my so to speak "Spanish shell." 

I am looking forward to meeting with her again soon, because we are becoming friends now and enjoy spending time together.