Hello

It’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet.

JUST KIDDING!

Hi guys, I know, it’s been a while. I’d like to apologize for my complete neglect of this blog. Life has just been pretty busy. I think if anything, my lack of writing post-Paris just goes to show how incredibly hectic NYC living compared to easy breezy Paris. Anyway, I’d like to update you on a few things before I get back to posting more regularly (fingers crossed).

Updates: I’m back in New York (yay). I am currently interning for Delish.com  and loving every second of it because food is life. I am still single (hey boys ;)). I am still living in a dorm (boo) although it’s in SoHo (fancy) so I’m not complaining too much. I am back to working at an elementary school so I’m getting my regular dose of kid loving. Oh, also I’m still a student, a second semester junior actually, so that kind of takes up the rest of my time when I’m not working, interning, applying for 1000 things, or going on woefully unsuccessful dates. I also started a second blog for a class on Immigrant Latinas in New York, so that’s pretty fun. Oh also, I cut my hair again.

As you can see, I’m basically busy af. But I have a bunch of blog ideas bouncing around in my head so I will hopefully sit down and knock those out in the next few weeks (if I don’t die of exhaustion first). So stay tuned, I promise to make this a little more interesting.

 

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Smart Phones: The Glue Holding Our Lives Together

So I haven’t really talked about it on this blog but I had a pretty shitty experience when I went to Istanbul. Long story short, I got all my stuff stolen from my room while I was sleeping there. Ok, so not all my stuff, but the thief took my camera, my phone, all my cash, and weirdly, my computer charger-so basically, all my Millennial essentials. Of course, I am grateful that I am alive and my friends and I left Istanbul unharmed. But I’d be a lot more grateful if all my electronics were still safely in my care. Anyway, I know that like many other people of my generation, I am extremely dependent on my smart phone. But it wasn’t until I was plopped down, phoneless, in big ole’ Paris that I realized what an essential tool smart phones are for city conquest. So yeah, this is a post about how great smart phones are because, let’s face it, they are the unsung heroes of our lives.

1. Smart phones help us keep our shit together.

You know those big chunky organizers we learned to use in elementary school so we could learn to organize our lives and be productive adults? Well, we often forget but smart phones are the modern, eco-friendly form of that. I use my smart phone as a planner, an organizer, and a “random thought/actually important things” notebook. Everything important that I should remember is contained in my tiny little phone. My appointments, my class schedule, my rendez vous, the list of restaurants I want to check out- all on my cellphone. When someone wants to hang out I have to check my phone to make sure I’ll be free. I even check my phone to make sure I’m going to the right classroom because I can’t even seem to remember where the hell my classes are located. And honestly, I don’t know how I ever woke up on time before having my smart phone. I need at least three separate alarms, set at 15 minute intervals, to wake me up, and that’s on a good day. With an analog clock or one of those lousy non-phone alarms, you max out at two alarms, so you’re guaranteed to be perpetually late (and I’m already always late as it is). What’s worse is having absolutely no notion of time because what young person actually wears wristwatches in this day and age? I mean, to be fair, lots of people wear wristwatches, but not me of course, because I had the false sense that my phone would always be all I needed. Also, no phone = no handy dandy notebook to take notes in. I’ve had to resort to writing all my little notes on my hands and arms and looking like Guy Pierce in Memento. You would think I would just carry around a little notebook with me or something, but of course, I always forget to and find myself paperless when I most need to note something. It’s kind of ridiculous, but really, city dwellers have busy lives to keep organized, and it’s just so convenient to have it all on a phone.

2. Don’t know the way to that new bar with the chicken and waffle sliders?  Good thing you’ve got a smart phone.

I personally suck at directions. I actually didn’t learn to get to my best friend’s house until last summer, even though she’s lived in the same place since we were both in 5^th grade. New York is a little easier to navigate because, thank God, the whole city is planned on a grid and there are tall buildings that function as markers of north and south (I would die if I were stranded in the woods). But basically anywhere else, Paris especially, I have to be lead around everywhere like a child. So there is not a single day that goes by that I don’t thank the heavens for my iPhone and Google Map .I mean sure, paper maps exist and all , but imagine having to carry those obnoxious things around. I owe my ability to get from point A to point B to the little blue dot on my screen. My dependency on this technology has never been more evident than when I found myself on the verge of tears after spending half an hour searching for Chipotle and not finding it because I didn’t have my iPhone telling me where to go. I decided to just get off at the Metro stop that was in the general area and pray that my Chipotle senses would start tingling and lead me in the right direction, but of course I think I gave my connection to Chipotle a little too much credit.

3. Smart phones actually have decent cameras

So, this one may not be as evident or important to everyone, but as a photographer I highly value the cameras on smart phones. I can’t speak for all smart phones cause I’m Apple and iPhone all the way, but it seems like nowadays most smart phones come equipped with a good camera. I take pictures all day every day and of everything. I’m all about capturing fun moments and taking pictures of pretty things and occasionally snapping a pic of a particularly scrumptious meal (judge me all you want, food is art and it merits recognition). As much as I love my Nikon (or loved, because you know, that’s gone now) it’s kinda bulky and it’s a lot weirder to aim a huge DSLR at a bomb ass salad than it is to discreetly point your iPhone at said deliciousness. It’s just easier to carry an iPhone and more likely that you’ll have a phone on you and not a gargantuan camera. So yeah, phones are convenient for my share-happy generation. They also come in handy when I’m too lazy to write down the name and address of that cute little boutique I want to come back to. Take out a pen and paper and slow down the crowd around me? Nah. I can just snap a pic with my phone and look at it later. Also there are times when my best friend isn’t with me and I need someone’s opinion on what I’m about to buy so what do I do? Take a picture; send it right away, and bam! Instant feedback to satisfy my Millennial anxiety.

4. Phones provide hours and hours of entertainment and procrastination.

It’s really satisfying when you are bored out of your mind and you have the ability to be entertained instantly. I love being on the subway and being able to whip out my phone and catch up on some New York Times articles-no bulky paper copy needed. I can just as easily drown out the noise of the city (or have a private dance party) by just playing some of the music on my phone. Or I can watch some Netflix while I wait for my next class to start. For the less culturally inclined, there are also endless games to choose from- all accessible thanks to our handy dandy phones. You can crush candy, dress Kim Kardashian, make a Doodle jump – the possibilities for mind numbing entertainment are endless. We also can’t forget that smart phone s are convenient (and dangerous) portals to our ever-important social media lives. Instead of playing games, reading, watching videos, or studying you can spend hours on Facebook or Twitter obsessing over how many likes you got on your last selfie. You can check out what your friends are doing on Instagram too and you can find yourself a hot date on Tinder. Honestly, as much as I judge people for constantly being on their phones and perusing social media, I gotta say it felt really off putting not having constant access to my Facebook after my phone got stolen. Not only was I constantly missing out on the latest political war being waged on my Newsfeed but I also missed a lot of relevant messages from people. It’s telling of the decay of our society, but being disconnected from social media actually has a tangible impact on our young lives.

5. The actual reason phones were invented: communication.

Given all the cool things that our smart phones can do now a days, and the many ways we rely on them as more than phones, we often forget the most important thing they do-they connect us to other people. Whether it’s through Facebook messages, FaceTime, texting, or calling (people still do that?) phones allow us to communicate with other people and we take that for granted. With our phones we can call each other for important things, make plans to meet up, or simply say hello. You’d be surprised how hard it is to do any of that without a phone especially when you live in a city. If you’re just planning on catching up with someone whenever you run into them, you’ll likely never hear from them again. After coming back from Istanbul without a phone, I had to plan everything to a T. There was none of, “I’ll text you when I’m on my way”, or “text me the address,” there wasn’t even room for a change of plans unless I knew exactly where to go for those plans. My friends and I had to plan where we were going, when we were meeting, and what we were doing ahead of time because if anything went wrong, we had no way of telling each other. And waiting around for hours at a coffee shop because your friend suddenly got a migraine and didn’t have a way to tell you they couldn’t come is not super fun. Basically, the only way I could talk to someone would be to have them in front of me or to wait until I had access to a computer and when you’re out and about doing your thing it might be a while until either of those things happen. So not having a smart phone (or really just a phone) basically means you accept a life of loneliness. My utmost respect to the generations that came before me and actually had lives before phones-I don’t know how you did it.

Paris, France

La Douleur de Paris

Unlike a lot of my fellow Millenials I am not one to post about politics or show my solidarity with this or that cause on Facebook (except for Kony 2012 of course, but I was like 15 and stupid so I think I deserve a pass on that one). I do this for 3 reasons. 1. Facebook for me is a place to talk to family, post photos and occasionally rant about exciting things in my life. 2. I am not a fan of shoving my political/social/religious opinions in everyone’s faces. 3. As someone who eventually wants to be a journalist, I believe in keeping a bias-free image (of course, no one is truly bias-free, but I do my best). All that being said, I have been on Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media basically non stop since Friday to see what is being said about the attacks in Paris and this time I felt compelled to join in and show my support for Paris. That’s right, I changed my profile photo to look like the French flag.

Of course, to me it made sense to change my picture. I live in Paris; this tragedy affected the place I am calling home at the moment and my personal sense of safety. It affected my friends, some of which live right by Le Bataclan and Le Petit Cambodge and had to stay in a hotel that night because they were too afraid to go home. Some of which were sitting at restaurants close to the cafes that were attacked and had to watch as people ran away from the chaos and tried to hide in these establishments. Some of which are flying back to the states early because they can’t stop thinking “what if I get shot today?” So yes, I changed my picture as did my fellow NYU students and people from New York, Austin, and all over the world to show our support of France. It felt nice, really, to see so many people’s pictures changed to the beautiful red white an blue stripes of the French flag. It felt nice that people cared and wanted to show they cared. But of course, people can’t let a good deed go unpunished.

Almost as soon as people started changing their profile pictures and writing a few words of support a whole other group of people started bashing their actions. Without missing a beat, Social Justice Warriors felt the need to demonize support for Paris given that so many other places were also being tormented by violence. You couldn’t even finish typing out the word Paris before statuses of people admonishing the lack of support for Beirut, Japan, and Mexico flooded your newsfeed. At one point people even started posting an article about a massacre in Kenya claiming that Paris was stealing the spotlight from this horrific event, which actually happened to take place in April (but you know, we should stop focusing on Paris). Perhaps the worst part is that people made this about race (because of course everything is about race) and started saying that people who showed solidarity with France were actually racist because they only cared about white pain. Give me a break.

I was embarrassed for humanity. Not only are we screwed because we keep killing each other left and right (that’s right Social Justice Warriors, I’m acknowledging death of all colors) but you know there is something disturbingly wrong when we can’t even let someone mourn without feeling the need to one up them on their misery. It’s honestly fucking ridiculous that in the world we live in, a country and its allies aren’t even allowed to mourn for one day, or even a few hours before someone feels the need to point out all the other death that is being “ignored”. In this day and age you’re a monster if you have an actual connection to just one place. That won’t do. You have to be constantly supporting every death of every country of every day-or you’re an insensitive racist fuck.

I wasn’t shocked by this reaction from the general Facebook populace. This happens all the time, every tragedy is automatically turned into a commodity or thwarted to fit the rhetoric of every political movement on the face of the planet. It’s not new, but it doesn’t make it right. I don’t understand what people get from hijacking a tragedy to fit their agenda, it generally doesn’t do anything to help their cause and it just makes them look like jerks. The whole “my horrible suicide bombing is worse than your horrible suicide bombing” argument is unproductive, idiotic, and such a slap in the face to the people that actually die in these events and their families. All terrorism is horrible and tragic and it doesn’t need to be made worse by people trying to fit it onto some imaginary scale to get their point across.

What’s more, all this arguing over what country has it worse and how racist white people are for “not caring” about death in other countries is distracting from the one thing people should be able to do without judgment-mourn the loss of life.   People should be allowed to mourn or simply to respond to something that shocks them without fearing that by doing so they’ll be insensitive to someone else. Everyone has their own tragedies and their own ways to deal with them and having someone yelling over their Facebook loudspeaker “but do you cry over the children in Africa?!” is robbing people of their freedom to feel their grief. There is nothing more disgusting to me than someone forbidding someone their own emotions.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Beirut, Japan or Kenya (and I definitely don’t have anything against Mexico). I don’t think that the deaths that happened there are deserved. I don’t think that any death is deserved, especially deaths caused by ignorance and hatred. When I pray at night I pray for everyone in this world because we’re all living in an awful place. But I don’t live in Beirut, I live in Paris. I’ve always wanted to live in Paris, I have French host parents, I have been struggling to learn French for years-I have a relationship with Paris. I can’t say the same thing about Beirut. So when a terrorist attack happens in Beirut around the same time that one happens in Paris, I’m going to be sadder about Paris, not even sadder, just more attentive, because I have a connection with Paris. And you know what? That’s ok. Or at least, it should be. I should be able to write poems and cry and pray and do whatever it is that is comforting to me and be sad about whomever I am sad about because these are all natural responses to loss. I shouldn’t have to apologize for the way I grieve or who I grieve for.

I know that changing my profile picture on an online social network does nothing to end terrorism or return the killed to their families or end all wars but reminding people of this fact also does nothing to better the world. It gives me comfort to go on Facebook and scroll through a sea of tri-colored photos and if that doesn’t give someone else comfort that’s fine too. You don’t have to care about the attacks on Paris, you can be racist yourself and not care about the loss of white lives, you can think what I am doing to grieve for something that is important to me is stupid-that’s ok too. But don’t you dare make me feel bad for doing what gives me comfort. Don’t you dare qualify my own grief against the grief of others. Most of all, don’t you dare make me apologize for mourning over something that is dear to me.

Paris, France

Internship Applications: 21st Century Torture Devices

New York is the land of possibility. As the song says, “if [you] can make it here, [you’ll] make it anywhere. But the whole point is that you actually have to make it, and that’s not an easy task, am I right Sinatra? If you’re a student, you have to work 1000x as hard because you don’t even have a solid tie to the city yet. Sure, you have four guaranteed years in the big city (if you don’t get defeated in the process), but you have to start putting down some roots otherwise eventually your four years are up and come graduation you’ll be shuffling back to whatever not-New York place you’re from. You have to work to live in New York. I’m not even back yet and I’m doing more New york things than I am Paris things because let’s face it, Paris hasn’t changed in the last 100 years and New York waits for no one.

One of the things you can do as a student to establish yourself, is to build professional experience, in other words, internships. Internships are a necessity in New York (and most large cities really), equivalent to the latest must have accessory. Except this accessory can make or break you. Most people I know have at least one internship every semester; others (who might be slightly insane) have multiple internships per semester. The pressure to have an internship attacks from every angle-parents, classmates, your university-everyone is wondering what you’re doing to get ahead in life. But I think some of these people lack awareness on just how stressful internship applications are.

First of all, you have to make time to apply to internships, contrary to popular belief, internships don’t just materialize out of nowhere (shocking, I know), That means that on top of going to class, studying, going to work, going to the museum exhibit your professor wants you to see, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, finishing your 12 page paper, cooking, doing homework, going outside and getting some sun, sleeping, working out, getting from point A to point B, not dying-on top of all that, you have to make time to sit down and actually apply to an internship. If you’ve managed to set aside a morsel of time for this purpose, you are definitely lucky, but so painfully far from being done.

Internship applications take time for a reason, There’s the actual application of course, which can be as simple as uploading a few forms or as complex as requiring several different essays, but then there are all the supplementary documents. A resume is a given and the easiest thing to have at the ready. But many times you also need to turn in letters of recommendation. It would seem that this would be simple, given that all you really need to do is reach out to people to recommend you, but when it’s November 1^st and your application is due November 2^nd and you’ve yet to receive your anticipated letter of recommendation, that’s when it gets personal. The sense of injustice that accompanies a completed application waiting only on letters of recommendation is indescribable.

Work samples are also generally required (at least for journalism internships) and of course these don’t come about over night. Work samples mean that your application does not even begin when you sit down to put everything together, it begins months (or years) in advance before it even occurs to you to apply to write for any actual publication. If you ‘ve been proactive and been getting published (in a school newspaper for example), this part of the application process should be a breeze. You can feel like a boss uploading you published work without breaking a sweat. But if this is your first internship or you simply haven’t been published, this is the moment when you feel like you might as well hitch a ride back home-because you’re basically screwed. You can put off the application and try to get magically published before you turn it in (and have to find time to do that work on top of everything else) or you can hope that your personality is more magnetic than it actually is and will shine through your application to attract internship offers. Either way, your confidence is very vulnerable to taking huge hits during the work sample stage. Even if you are a lucky soul and have work samples at the ready, it’s always terrifying to submit your work, and you’ll probably have a little nervous break down. Submitting your work to a mediocre school paper is absolutely no preparation for submitting it to heavyweights like the Times or the Journal.

Finally, the most feared of all internship application components, the cover letter. Good cover letters are mythical beasts like big foot, people claim they exist but no one really knows what they look like. There is so much conflicting evidence on how to write a good cover letter, it’s kind of amazing that anyone has ever gotten hired. I’ve done ample research on the qualities of a good cover letter and every time I end up confused and nauseous and ready to just crawl back in to bed and live with my parents the rest of my life. Some people say it should be creative and stand out among the stacks of black and white pages that hiring managers have to look at. Others think there is a formal business memo approach and any deviation from it is a one-way ticket to land your cover letter in the trash. Don’t even get me started on the debate about varying the structure by using bullet points. Every time internship application season rolls around, without fail, I take a good long look at my cover letter outline and immediately freak out at its possible inadequacy.

Recently I asked one of my friends who has had many flashy internships (including a very successful one with the White House) to see his cover letter so I could get a glimpse at the glorious wording and enlightened structure that landed him so many sweet gigs. It was honestly, a flop. I mean it was nice but it was the most unoriginal, run of the mill cover letter I have ever seen. I even asked him if he just gave a template or something so I wouldn’t steal his powers but he swore that this was it. So if anything, now I am quivering with fear because I’ve filled out a bunch of different applications with witty, non basic cover letters, and I’m afraid there’s someone in the BBC hiring department having a good laugh over my attempt to get a job with them.

At the end of the day, I think getting an internship is more of a luck thing than anything so I try to keep my anxiety over the process to a minimum (an 8 out of 10 on a normal person’s scale). Sure, you may be a great candidate, but when it comes down to it great candidates are everywhere and if the company you’re imploring to hire you isn’t feeling it, they’ll just move on to the next person. There’s really nothing that you can do about it, unless you happen to have a creepy ability to know what a specific hiring manager is looking for. So the only real solution is to keep sending applications until your fingers bleed from typing, and just pray to the hiring gods that someone will give you a chance.

Paris, France

La Joconde, Much Coveted

Today I saw the Mona Lisa. But I didn’t actually see her. What I really mean to say is, today I was in the presence of the Mona Lisa. That’s all you can do really, be in the presence of it. There’s no such thing as actually seeing the Mona Lisa, not when there’s tourists involved-and in this city there always are. Let me describe what a trip to see that famous gal really entails.

I walked into the room where she is housed, by chance really, thank God I didn’t set aside time specifically to see her. It was a stunning room, not as lavish as some of the showstoppers in the Louvre but stunningly dressed with luxurious paintings by this and that famous painter (not that anyone in the room actually cared). I walked slowly around the room, stopping every now and then to admire the works that really caught my eye. I read a few plaques here and there while mentally preparing to dive into the obnoxious glob of tourists crowding Mona. After seeing basically everything else there was to see, I decided to finally play tourist.

One: good thing about going to see the Mona Lisa, you literally cannot miss her. Mona, she’s a petite little beauty, but the huge swarm of buzzing tourists crowding around her like a hoard of famished animals ready to pounce is kinda hard to miss. People are squeezed into this small roped off section, which just exacerbates the whole animalistic feel of the visit and makes you wonder if you’re at a world-renowned museum or a zoo. Tourists push, shove, and fight to make their way to the front as if Lisa could at any point materialize into a real person, grow some legs, and walk off somewhere less hellish. I honestly wouldn’t blame her.

Anyway, after being bumped, bruised and elbowed in the boobs a few times (being 5’3” has many disadvantages), I finally made my way up to the front. And for what?

Once I made my way up to “the front” -the front being the little crevice between the heads of two different Asian tourists taking various peace-signed selfies- I wasn’t anywhere near enough to actually appreciate this thing that everyone calls a masterpiece. Even if I had been at the front there would have been no way to appreciate the painting. Mona was barricaded behind a wooden barrier protecting her from peasant paws by keeping them a safe three feet away. A sad and murky sheet of bulletproof glass veiled the painting itself. This massive protective shield ironically made Mona seem insignificant. To tell you the truth, Mona looked like nothing but a blur, a little hiccup of history overshadowed by camera happy tourists, screaming unamused kids, and general chaos

After about two minutes, I had to get out.

I wondered how long it had actually been since someone had actually looked at the Mona Lisa, not snapped a selfie, not glanced for five seconds, not fought other people to get to the front of the line and claim the empty honor of having seen the Mona Lisa but actually looked at her and appreciated her for what she really is. I wondered when the last time was that someone had stood in front of her and had a thought other than “my friends will be so jealous” or “can’t wait to put this on Instagram.”

This inability to actually look at famous works of art is not new to me; it’s one of the struggles of living in a city with a lot of tourists and really important works. The inability to see the Mona Lisa in Paris is the same as the inability to see Van Gogh’s Starry night in New York. It’s sad that these works have such a celerity status that people who actually value art can’t look at what is considered to be some of the best art. I would like to go to The Louvre and have a good look at the Mona Lisa. I would like to have the ability to scrutinize her and decide for myself if I actually think this is a masterpiece rather than just believe it because people say it is so and because of all her groupies. I’m sure it’s been too long since any one could look at her and wonder about her ambiguous face and what she was thinking. But I think this is the sad fate that these bright stars have been condemned to, a superficial level of admiration. I doubt the barricades and bulletproof glass will ever disappear.

Paris, France