HIndsight is 20/10

May 5th will mark the end of the 2008-2009 school year. This year has been one of a lot of changes...some expected and some not so expected.

Okay so I realize that that last sentence sounds like I am either about to burst into a David Bowie song or a PSA on puberty. I will do neither (even though Bowie is the OG).

But for real, the first year of college is supposed to be a pivotal year in determining the rest of a person's life. Winthrop itself was new. The entire summer before school I was anticipating the "college life". Climbing up the seven flights of stairs to the dingy prison rooms of Wofford was a definite eye opener: this is real life.

From that time on I can say I have been taken on a roller coaster of a year.

I've made friends, made A's, made D's, realized some friends weren't my friends, had nights where I laughed and nights where I've cried, I've fallen in love, had my heart broken, and learned what it really means to forgive.

Thomson cafeteria will always be full of supper time conversations and hang over mornings. It was the place where I had my first surprise birthday party and witnessed the concoction that is broccoli and bacon pizza.


I feel pretty good about this year.

I know I could have studied harder, woken up more than 5 minutes before class, made better decisions, but you know what it's only moving forward that allows us to look back.

So as we all leave for the summer I hope that everyone continues to enjoy this beautiful weather, and appreciate this beautiful life.

The final "Echo" of racism finally slipping away....

In the spring of 1996, cable news took the city of Laurens to the world with a story about a brand new business that was causing a bit of controversy in our small city. Friends from far and wide called to ask, “What’s this I hear about this store in Laurens?”

“The World’s Only KKK Museum and Redneck Shop,” which opened March 1, 1996, forced Laurens City Council members to get creative as they worked to come up with ways to deny a business license to John Howard as he sought to open the store and Klan Museum in the building which had previously housed the Echo Theater.



Controversy swarmed, with Klansmen dressed in robes showing up occasionally for a dreaded, but peaceful show of support of Howard. On another occasion, several hundred protesters, from within and outside the county, wore black and white ribbons in a show of racial unity, which seemed to grow stronger as races worked together to politely fight the new “foe” in our midst.

In the end, of course, there was an appeal, and City Attorney Tommy Thompson convinced council that the license would have to be issued, thus making the business, at least in the legal sense, as legitimate as any other on the Historic Courthouse Square.

But everything didn’t remain peaceful. A few weeks into it, on Sunday, March 24, David Pritchard Hunter, a 43-year-old white man from Columbia, decided to make his own protest statement and drove his van up from Columbia right into the front window of Howard’s business.

With Hunter’s misguided vigilantism, Howard had become the victim.

Now that 13 years have passed, the controversy has, for most of us, waned and faded to the point that the shop is just “there.” Occasionally there’s a person seen coming in and out. But mostly, the last several years it’s become a place on the periphery, just a shop you pass by on the way to somewhere else down Laurens Street.

Twelve years ago, there would have been jubilation over the news that signs had gone up in the windows signaling the coming end of the store. Now, it’s more of a response like, “Well isn’t that interesting?” or “Who would have thought it would have lasted this long?”

But it wasn’t long, really. Thirteen years. A baker’s dozen.

Ecclesiastes says, “To everything there is a season...”

Evidently, four little hand printed signs quietly mark the end of the season for this World Famous business.

It was easy, especially in the early days when emotions ran high, to think of sides. Are you on “this side” or “that side?” But there is no right side to hatred.

I hope that hatred, whatever “side” it may be on, will soon be gone as well.

I am a Material Girl.....

"cause the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right"

In the words of the original material girl herself, Madonna, or Duchess Madonna now, I have a confession to make: I am material, hopelessly.

I can't help it. I have been at college since August, and I have definitely been craving a good shopping trip. Like a junkie I drool at the Urban Outfitters ads and adorable J.Crew clothes out this season.



The two main obstructions in the way of satisfying my fix are transportation and lack of funds. As the end of school gets closer and closer I can almost hear the muffled music, feel the cloth of the endless racks of clothing, and smell the intoxicating smell of new clothes.
Never have I been so thirsty for a job, a real job, not West Center Computer lab girl.

I am actually looking nostalgically on my months spent behind a desk filing papers and answering phone calls for 15 hours a week at a dance studio. I mean this is bad.

Last semester the lack of funding was my only problem. Back then I had transportation in the way of friends with automobiles. Having left my Chevy S10 at home to bus around my other 5 siblings I have been land bound and despising it.



The friends with cars were also shopaholics, and you think this would be a great set up, right? WRONG. There is absolutely nothing more depressing than walking into Charlotte's South Park mall and realizing, you can't afford the toilet paper these people are stocking their bathroom's with.

I strongly think that "window shopping" is an agent of assisted suicide.

After last semester one of the friends with a car got one too many speeding tickets, and the other realized that because of the frequent shopping trips, she was probably not going to be able to leave her books ever spring semester.

Now that all these troubles are less than a month behind me I can't say I am feeling relieved. To make up for lost time I will need to shop for every season, I mean I need to hit up fall, winter, spring, and most definitely summer sales.

It's going to take some time, It's going to take some money, and it's taking too damn long to get here.


PS. If you would like to donate your time, money, or just become my sugar daddy/mama...please contact me asap.


:)

Homosexual Minority Profile

In my media writing class we had to a write a profile piece on a person who we considered a minority. It was very sobering as well as interesting to hear Philip tell of the trials he went through because he was a homosexual.

Here's my work:

He remembers the day vividly. He was 11 years old walking home from elementary school, sobbing as he made his way down the busy main street, his backpack dragging behind him on the ground and through his front door.

“That was the first time someone called me a ‘faggot’,” Philip Perry a 21-year-old general studio art major at Winthrop said, “That word would determine the beginning of the rest of my life.”



Perry grew up in the small rural town of Clinton, SC. In the heart of the Bible Belt there is little tolerance for a “homosexual with refined tastes”

“homosexual with refined tastes”

as Perry calls himself. Having also been raised in a Presbyterian church, Perry was well aware of the church’s view on homosexuality.

“I grew up knowing that everyone around me thought that homosexuality was a dirty sin, and to some, worse than murder,” Perry said.

Perry faced daily accusations and bullying through middle school and high school. At times the physical harassment would become life threatening. Perry describes his days in junior high as “What you see in the movies: I was thrown into lockers, beaten up, and shoved headfirst into toilets. It was hell.”

Perry denied being homosexual throughout most of middle school and high school. He spent many days eating lunch alone in his high school’s art room where he found refuge from the constant sneers, catcalls, and harassment he received from his peers.

Today he no longer hides in art rooms, but instead works through them to be noticed. His plan is to attend the Fashion Institute of New York next fall where he will major in male fashion design.

After “coming out” to his school, friends, and family his senior year, Perry said he finally felt like himself. Although bullying has not been a problem for Perry since he has attended Winthrop he still feels to be a minority in a majority heterosexual world.

“The media tends to portray gay men as the stereotypical flamboyant tease,” Perry says that this representation is unrealistic.“The main problem with the media’s view is the lack of ‘real gay men’ role models,” he said.

“The main problem with the media’s view is the lack of ‘real gay men’ role models,”

he said.

Perry’s view of the media is that if the movie, show, or story does include gay men they will often make a caricature of an actual gay person.

“A straight man can be cast in a movie as anything, “ Perry said, “but put a gay man in movie, and you’re going to get a high pitched man with a flair for rainbow scarves.”

Regardless of the majority of the public’s views, Perry is glad to see that things have progressed since he was growing up.

Perry looks over his rough childhood as a time for growth,“Everything shaped who I am now. This is not an ugly perverted thing, but it is a beautiful thing, and it is who I am. “

“Everything shaped who I am now. This is not an ugly perverted thing, but it is a beautiful thing, and it is who I am. “

Broadcasting Application

I will be applying for my broadcast major soon, and in order to be considered you must write an essay explaining why they should let you in. I figured I would post it, just to be boring... :)

While other seniors in high school were desperately trying to decide what college they wanted to go to out of five or six, I was only waiting for one acceptance letter. By my junior year of high school I already knew that I would attend Winthrop and major in broadcast communication. My choice of Winthrop as opposed to every other school in the state was made strictly on the reputation of Winthrop’s communication department.

On my first visit to Winthrop’s campus I had a chance encounter with Associate Professor of mass communication, Haney Howell. This conversation eventually led to the abandonment of my tour group and the conclusion of Kathleen Brown’s one and only college application.

The same experience and expertise that inspired me on my first introduction to Dr. Howell is evident in all of my communication teachers. Whether the class is introduction to mass communication or speech class my teachers are always pushing the class to take opportunities and become active in every organization and class we can. The push that I feel from my teachers and class work can only be matched by my drive to succeed.

News has always interested me, and there is not a day that goes by that I do not sit and read over online news on the BBC website or the New York Times. Before taking the media writing class I simply read these articles for fun, but upon taking the class taught by Associate Professor of mass communication, Lawrence Timbs I was taught how reading and making commentaries on blogs can greatly improve a students writing.

Not only have I found this technique helpful, but I also find that now, whether I write a summary of the story or not, I am always recreating a response to the article in my head. The style and writing techniques I am still learning in media writing are already making a mark on my writing skills within my communication classes and in other classes.

Learning to write is a keystone in the media world, but

learning to be flexible and listen is probably almost as important as a person’s writing skill

. What better place to learn flexibility than in the disk jokey booth of the Winthrop Radio station? With no experience and no qualifications I was allowed to play music and talk about whatever I wanted to a pretty large potential audience. After floundering around with the telephone line and many buttons on the radio soundboards for a couple weeks I finally found my groove.

Although I have only been enrolled in two mass communication classes I know that I have the ability to take advice and benefit myself as well as others through my experiences at Winthrop.

The DJ booth of a college radio station is somewhere that I never thought to see myself, but with the responsibilities and opportunities that a communication major offers at Winthrop

I hope to find myself in many other places I never dreamed I would be.

Inspirational Martyrs.....

Everyone needs to watch this. In a country where the luxury of the press is a foreign concept these heros risk and lose their lives to report the story.

Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country, the new documentary coming out in the fall.