Adventure Time with KC

This post has taken me a few days to finally sit down and finish writing. I came back from three days worth of visiting various refugee communities in Jordan, and I was exhausted. When we finally had a debrief on the whole experience, I wanted to blog even more. But then even more things happened, and I just sat around being tired and overwhelmed. Today, one of my professors emailed us the Thought Catalog article by Kelsey Parsons in response to increasing criticism against volunteering abroad. I read the article, and I was struck by Kelsey's patience with all the comments and honestly responding to a lot of them to defend and refine her position. Sure, her article was not written to be an excellent piece of literature to be remembered forever more, but what her argument sparked was tons of people spending ridiculous amounts of time to criticize her and others like her while the rest of the world is suffering. Sure, I scoff at short-term projects that may waste money, time, and d...

Since I returned home two nights ago, I've slept, ate, unpacked, and began exploring the city I call home again. In some ways, I feel like things are starting over as I settle into this winter break. I have to readjust to home life and New York City life again, I have to find something new to do this summer, and to top it off, I have to start a new academic semester with an entirely new group of strangers, traveling to new countries I have no experiences with.  I would be remiss to not mention that I intended to start things over by taking time out to study abroad for a semester. Life inside the hedges has been fulfilling, exciting, and particularly challenging. I see myself grow every semester, bigger and better as the days and weeks push me to a different level. While I'm proud of all that I've done and feel that I've used my time well, I also feel that everything I've accomplished is beginning to wear on me. Between classes, extracurricular activities, an...

At the end of my sociology class on deviance, justice & popular culture, our professor reminded us that next week, we're talking about women. Here's the heading for Week 7 in our syllabus, verbatim: Where are the women?: Gender, proper femininity, and pushing boundaries? (aka, ‘You go, girl’) Thanks, Professor, you go, too! So Steubenville, Blurred Lines, Kill Bill, and other juicy stuff are on the line-up next week, and I cannot be more excited. A fellow Duncaroo (one whose residential college affiliation is Duncan College) actually recently messaged me about what I thought of Blurred Lines and feminists' reactions to it. I gave my share of limited opinion because I feel that I have more questions than answers about this whole fiasco. I will save all my thoughts until after the two class meetings next week; I bet by then we would've generated so many great thoughts that I will be inspired to write a full blog post all about it. So stay tuned. In other ...