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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A Girl Defends Her City

Tupac and Biggie might have taken it a little far with their coast-y love but I get it. It’s important to represent your turf. It’s not easy living in a city. Living in a huge metropolis is not as simple and glamorous as Gossip Girl and Friends make it seem-it’s expensive, it’s cramped, it’s dirty and oftentimes, as one of thousands of people, you feel anonymous and unimportant. Still there’s a reason cities are so appealing and people from Sinatra to Kendrick sing their praises. People work hard to get the chance to move to big places like LA, New York, Paris, London, etc. (and they work even harder to stay). So when you do live in a dreamy city and you can still love it despite all the crap that comes with it, you can’t help but develop a certain sense of pride for your city.

I am so proud to live in New York. I am all about that concrete jungle where dreams are made of (or wet dream tomatoes, gotta work on that enunciation Alicia). I would wear those gaudy “I ❤ New York” t-shirts 24/7 if they didn’t make me look like a lame tourist. In short, New York is BAE (I hate myself for using that phrase, but it’s true). Now that I am living in Paris, and especially post-November 13^th attacks, I am also extremely proud to live in this city. I have to hold back from doing the t-shirt equivalent and constantly wear a beret. So when my mom came to visit me in Paris this past week, I was stoked to show her just how cool Paris is.

Of course while I planned a brilliant let-me-get-you-to-fall-in-love-with-Paris itinerary I kind of forgot that my mom isn’t a huge city fanatic like I am. In fact, she’s not a city person at all. She doesn’t like museums, she doesn’t care for architecture, she has no interest in history, she is anti-walking fast, and she most definitely is not down with rats (the nerve!). I planned to cram the 6 days my mom would be here with everything pretty and Parisian and she was having none of it. Notre Dame was meh. The top of the Eiffel Tower was too high for her. And the Louvre, oh the Louvre. She didn’t even want to take a picture with the damn pyramid like a normal tourist. She was more interested by the fact that straight men kiss each other on the cheek here than any of the world-famous pieces at the Louvre. I was frankly offended.

First of all I couldn’t believe how little interest my mom showed in any of the activities and places that are so quintessentially Parisian. As someone who loves to travel and see new cultures it baffled me that she didn’t really care to experience anything that makes Paris and its people unique,The world renowned museums that Paris is home to and the history that is contained in its walls meant absolutely nothing to her. The only thing that captivated her attention was shopping, which we did endlessly. What bothered me the most is how little she valued being in Paris. To a lot of people coming to Paris is a dream and to my mom it seemed more like something she just decided to do because, why not?

This isn’t the first time my mom dissed my city, she showed the same level of disinterest (and disgust) when she went to New York. All she did was complain the entire time she was there. Ay Sammy, why do you like to live in such a small room? Sammy it smells like urine everywhere. Sammy I don’t know why you like to ride the subway-it’s so dirty. Sammy why are you walking so fast? You would think I was living in the middle of a dump, not a large cosmopolitan city, from all the comments she made. I was so angry at how she reduced New York to nothing more than a dirty city. I mean she’s right, it does smell like urine everywhere, but it’s NEW YORK, I’ll take a little pee on the sidewalk over not living there any day.

The truth is, I love the cities that I live in and to me they are amazing so it’s always hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that other people don’t like my cities as much as I do. In fact, I can barely understand the concept of people not wanting to live in a city (where else are you supposed to live? The countryside?) I love big cities because they’re fast paced and exhilarating and there is always something to do. But I forget that those are precisely the reasons why people don’t like them. New York especially is a place that I’ve heard many Texans scoff at and dismiss as “somewhere they would never want to live.” It always takes everything in me because to not make some wise ass remark about how they couldn’t handle it anyway, because how dare they not value NYC as a place to live.

But the thing is, even though I love New York and Paris and all their big city pals, even I sometimes find myself thinking I may not want to be a city girl forever. I see articles about how married couples have to get roommates because their combined income just doesn’t cut it for rent. I watch as moms in the subway struggle to awkwardly get their strollers up the endless steps out onto the street. I work with kindergartners who don’t know the joy of running around in their own back yard and have to walk all the way to a local park to get the feel of some grass under their feet. Even worse, I see old people get bumped and pushed around as busy city dwellers fly off to their next appointment. I see all this and even I think sometimes, why would anyone want to live here? So I guess every once in a while I do have to put aside my tremendous pride of big cities and recognize that they aren’t exactly the warm homey places that some people need to live in and they are definitely not for everyone. I have to think that just like some people could never see themselves living in a big city, there is no way in hell I could ever live in a small town. A place where you actually know your neighbors (and they know everything about you)? Fuggedaboutit.

Who knows, maybe some day I’ll get tired of hopping along from big city to big city. Maybe some day I’ll move to a (slightly) smaller city and be ok with not having great museums and bars all over the place. But that’s not gonna happen for a looooonggg time. In the meantime I’ll keep repping the East side (and Paris) and you can be sure to find me at the Louvre.

Paris, France

Vendredi 13/11/15.

 

When you live in a big city, there are certain things that come with it. For one, you should probably be ready to shell out loads of cash constantly for everything from your organic Trader Joe’s groceries to your exorbitant rent that you don’t even know how you afford. You can also kiss that whole big yard with a white picket fence pipe dream goodbye because that crazy rent money will barely be enough to get you a shoebox of an apartment. On the bright side, you can count on some pretty wild public transportation stories to wow your non-city friends (have I told you about the time I saw a dude poop on the subway bench?). But one thing that comes with living in a big place with a concentrated population is the one that most people generally overlook, or like to forget, and that is the potential for terrorism.

Yes, that big T word that makes everyone tremble is very much a real thing when you live in a city. New york is the blatant example, 9/11 happened there and it’s not because it’s a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Even Austin experienced its five minutes of fear when North Korea placed it on a list of American cities that should be expecting some major Kim Jong-Un wrath (he must just hate good music and BBQ). I have to admit, when I moved to Paris I was a little worried. I’m not any more exposed to the threat of terrorism in Paris than I am in NYC, but 9/11 was 14 years ago and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo still loomed in the public consciousness. So yeah, I was well aware that Paris being a large city and a hotbed for controversy had that terrorism-target potential, so I was scared. And then, this past Friday, my worst fears came true.

I was luckily not in France; I was in he middle of a solo trip in Poland. But my friends were not. They were right in the middle of all the chaos; some of them even lived within walking distance of the concert venue where a hostage situation took place. Of course Social Media being the monster that it is immediately released a torrent of panic-tinged live coverage by my friends. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that I was miles way, protected by the relative safety of Poland, I was immediately sucked in.

You see, it’s called terrorism for a reason; quite simply acts of terrorism are terrifying. They are not scary, scary things are the potential monsters under your 5-year-old bed. They are not worrisome, worry is something your mother feels when you haven’t texted her to tell her you arrived safely at your destination. They are fucking terrifying. Terror has an awful power that transcends borders and races and ages, in a most cliché way, it knows no bounds.

So this past Friday I was terrorized. Even though I was miles and miles away from what happened I was scared shitless. I could feel the terror transmitted by my friends who were still in Paris. I could feel the terror as I got message after message from endless family and friends asking if I was ok. I could feel the terror emanating from my parents eyes when we had the chance to Facetime and they kept murmuring over and over again how relieved they were that I wasn’t in Paris. I could feel the terror as I wrote this post, trying to hold back tears to save myself some curious polish stares. I can feel the terror as I type this now.

In a way I feel bad for feeling so affected by this attack. Because I wasn’t attacked, I wasn’t there to feel the actual life threatening terror of having a gun pointed at me or a bomb going off near me. I wasn’t even in Paris. But it did affect me, because I could have been there. I live in Paris. I was in Republique just last Wednesday, what if it happened then? I pass by Les Halles every day on my way to and from school. What if it had happened on one of those many occasions? I live in Paris, I am a part of Paris and it could have happened to me. One of my biggest fears about living in a city happened in a city that I lived in, so yes, it did terrorize me.

I cried as I talked to my parents. I cried the next day. I’ve basically been crying non-stop. I wanted out. Out of Poland, out of Paris, out of Europe. I wanted to be back home surrounded by the relative comfort of my parents and my dog Rocket, and Chipotle (of course). But even the idea of home wasn’t completely comforting because Austin is still a city, New York is definitely a city, and this awful thing that happened Friday night could just as easily have happened there. That is the most terrifying thing. I no longer felt safe because this could have happened just about anywhere I live.

Regardless, Austin, though not 100% terror-proof seemed like my best bet and I was about to book a ticket to the states and say au revoir to NYU Paris. I was literally about to give up my amazing study abroad opportunity (and $30,000 worth in tuition) to go crawl into the illusory safety of my cozy Texan bed. Then my dad did the most dad thing he could have possibly done and used my own words against me (good to know you’re listening dad).

“Remember Sama, you are the one who always says scary things happen, but you can’t live all your life in fear. You have to do what you want to do.”

Of course he (but really, me) was right. That is what I always say when my parents are apprehensive about me doing something, and it’s true. This extremely agonizing event is unfortunately not unique to Paris; it can happen anywhere. It can also happen nowhere. The thing is we’ll never know when/where/if anything like this will happen. So we can’t live life in fear that it will happen. Living in a city, especially a large city, arguably increases the chance of being a victim to terrorism. But I love cities, and I can’t give up that love because of something that may or may not happen. Not living in a vibrant, amazing, generally enthralling city out of fear of things that are not in my control is letting the bad guys win, and I’m not about to do that.

Yes, I am scared and no I don’t feel safe and I probably will be hyper vigilant at least for the rest of my time in Europe (I may even break down on the metro, it’s all possible). But now I am back in Paris and eventually I will be back in New York and I hope to eventually feel more at ease and regain the ability to enjoy these cities to their fullest extent. Because yes, cities are major targets for terror but most of the time they’re not terrifying at all- they’re just fucking awesome. These cities are resilient; they have been targeted and suffered time and time again but they always bounce back. Paris, New York, all of these cities stand for creativity, and opportunity, and freedom and rather than cower in fear and give up these important ideals like the terrorists want me to do, I’m going to put my Chucks on with Saint Laurent and live it up in the city.

Krakow, Poland /Paris, France

The Eyes of Paris Are Upon You

When I first came to Paris I expected it to be much like New York, except maybe prettier. I’ve always seen the two cities compared to each other. They’re both large, they both have world-renowned museums, they’ve both been breeding grounds for great artists and revolutionary art movements, they both have incredible shopping, they both have great public transportation… the list goes on and on. In my mind Paris was the prim and proper cosmopolitan city while New York was its gritty boho counterpart. But the longer I’ve been in Paris, the more I’ve realized how different the two cities are.

One of the biggest and perhaps most striking differences is the way people treat each other in Paris. New York has a reputation for being touchy and not entirely friendly, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that people in New York are rude, but they certainly do appreciate their personal space and anonymity. Before I came to Paris I was told that I shouldn’t expect much better from Parisians. Most people said Parisians are snobs and just as unkind to strangers as New Yorkers. But I’ve actually found that this is not true. People in Paris have largely been friendly and welcoming. As soon as they hear me struggle with my French they instantly try to respond in English in an attempt to help me out all the while praising my shitty French and bashing their own shitty English-often justifying it by saying they “speak English like a true Parisian,” (i.e. very poorly).

But what’s even more striking is that people actually acknowledge other people here. My little southern heart glowed the first time I walked into a Parisian café and was instantly greeted with a warm bonjour (in Texas smiling at and greeting strangers is just a sign of good ole’ southern hospitality). It still flutters a little every time this happens, and it does a whole backflip when someone wishes me a good day on my way out. When I run into my neighbors as I’m walking out of my apartment, they always smile kindly at me, even though I’m the weird American girl who always wears too much makeup (by Parisian standards at least). People smile at you on the streets just because and I have to admit, it’s very refreshing.

Even the way people act on the metro is worlds away from the behavior you see on the subway in NYC. Here people actually wait for people to get off the metro before they try to hop on (a concept that is lost on New Yorkers). If you’re trying to get off the subway, good friggin’ luck not getting crushed by the mob of people crowding in that doesn’t give a damn if you have the right of way. And you can fuhgeddabout people caring if they bump into you (even if they actually knock you down, they’re not taking the time out of their day to say something). In the Parisian metro however, if the metro comes to a sudden halt and someone lightly taps you because physics do not cease to apply in Paris, they will turn, look at you, and actually apologize. What’s more, people are courteous; they give up their seats without having to be told (in New York, much to my amusement, there are stickers on the subway describing the situations in which you should give up a seat-because the MTA feels the need to imbue some manners on the lost lambs that are New Yorkers). Men give up their seats to women, young give up their seats to old, friend groups give up their seats to family groups, it’s a big old game of musical chairs-and its fantastic.

The most astonishing thing about Paris is that here, you can look at people. People watching is normal, in fact it seems almost encouraged. There are so many places to do it, parks, wide streets, etc. Parisian cafes seem built for people watching with their sidewalk seating outfitted with strictly street facing chairs. In fact, the waiters always get perplexed if you turn the chairs to look at whomever you’re sitting with. You don’t get attacked with a hostile “whaddayewlookinat?!” when you watch someone go about his or her daily life like you would in New York. You don’t look like a deranged person when your mind wanders off as you look at someone. People don’t mind if you look at them because they’re most likely looking at you-especially if you look particularly touristy. What’s more, people make eye contact in Paris. I never thought I would write about people making eye contact, but the comparison with the little eye contact in New York is so striking, I had to mention it. If you’re looking at someone in the metro, they’ll eventually look at you until you both look at each other’s eyes, and guess what? It’s not awkward. They don’t look at you brows furrowed, lips frowning, wondering what the hell you want from them. They just go on doing their thing.

Sometimes I do find myself reverting to my New York ways and cursing all the friendliness and hellos and watching of me. But as a little short girl who sometimes gets bounced around the metro like a pinball, it’s nice for people to apologize when they’ve almost just elbowed me in the face for a change.

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