How do you meet someone new without automatically labeling them and them labeling you? We create these labels and categorize people into them, even if we do not tell them that we are categorizing them. Everyone does it, whether they realize they are doing it or not. Labels make it easy to remember someone, but it also makes it easy to forget that the people we are labeling are more than just the box we put them in. I don’t want one thing to define me. I am more than that. I am more than just what meets the eye. Because I don’t want to be known as “that girl”. No one wants to be known as “that girl”. But we let one trait define people. It’s an easy way to remember who they are. We use their physical traits, or one specific thing that they did or said, whether good or bad to remember who they are. And that’s what sticks. It how we describe the person to others. “that girl with the red hair”. I know that’s how all my teachers remember me, how my peers remember me. It’s an easy descriptor. Something that stands out, controls who I am. They’ll remember my red hair before they remember my name. And it’s fine for people to remember me in that way. It’s the first thing that people notice about me. I’ll always be easy to spot in a crowd, easy to pick out. That is not a big deal. But it’s the perceptions that people create that come along with it. As crazy as it sounds, people create this idea of who I am as a person, just based on the color hair I have. They think that my hair color is what makes my personality, how I act. I have many people ask me disgusting and creepy questions that I would wish I never heard come out of their mouth. I shouldn’t have to worry about how people define me, as my opinion about myself should be the only one that matters, but when there are so many people that come up to you and expect a certain thing just by the way you look, it makes you question your worth. And my label is just based off of my hair color. I know that their labels are far worse. They have worse perceptions, and have much judgment and hate surrounded by them. So, even if labels make us remember people and make it easier to be apart or something, are labels really good?

There is always an idea of who is allowed and who is not allowed to take up a label. This being the jaded perception provided through stereotypes, prejudices, or just judgements based on your embodiment. The idea that someone can be a fraud within the labeled community is a different type of rejection, as you are rejected by people who are like you. Labels are constraining when it’s hard to identify how you feel in relation to other peoples experiences, especially as you are not sure if you feel the same way, or if you are going to continue feeling that way. Labels are an added on identity that we as a society associate with people, when a label becomes such a defining piece of you, it limits the way in which you feel you can move within that label. 

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This post is kind of like a diary of how I currently feel. Lately, all I want to do is isolate myself from everything. The pressure of graduating in a year is really starting to hit me, and it feels like I should start figuring everything out, yet feels so far away. Sometimes it’s hard to stay grounded and not lose focus of the end goal. It’s really been hard to manage time and emotions, especially after the pandemic getting right back into the routine of things has been hard, even a whole year later…

Also, it feels like for some reason as you get older, people start to kind of disappear from your life. Maybe it’s a me thing, i’m not so sure to be honest, but I feel like as I get older, the less family I see, the less friends I have, and the more involved with being alone I am. Am I an introvert and didn’t know it? I used to love socializing and interacting with friends, but lately it feels different. It feels like everyone has a secret agenda or a way they feel about you but don’t want to say it. I guess it’s harder for me to find genuine connection, and when I do, I get really attached and feel like I am overwhelming people. It’s just been hard to find my space and figure things out… but I’m optimistic it won’t always be like this. It’s just a season of my life that I have to go through.

I know, I know, another late blog post. Will you hear me out as to why?

Having soft deadlines is the best humane invention. I’m learning to not feel like I’m taking advantage of it because it’s not like professors doesn’t know what a soft deadline entails, right?

Teachers being hardasses about deadlines just stuck with me terribly. The fear of a zero looms behind me like skyscrapers coming to block the sun. I procrastinate but, this semester, 3/4 of my professors have big red signs floating above them that’s screaming at me, “No late work!”

So, I take my wins where I can. And I get it, hard deadlines are preparing us for the “real world” but nobody’s real world is deadlines so hard that you’ll lose your job over something being a day late, until it is. I’m wrong sometimes but I’m hoping for the sake of all of us that no one’s job is like that. Some people like pressure but no one should deal with that amount of pressure.

College are incredibly outdated and anybody else on whether a hard deadline has helped them or humbled them or whatever else they’ve convinced themselves.

Soft deadlines are easy. They’re lax, as all things should be, and I’m a firm believer in easiness. That’s why my blog posts are usually late, coupled with the fact that I’m running out of things to write about. I feel like I spilled my entire heart into my first post and now I’m just picking out any remaining chunks about myself. Being late is a little bit of my thing but, also, did you know that (apparently, so, don’t take my word for this because every piece of evidence is from an academic journal behind a paywall) Black people perceive time differently from other races?

So, maybe I’m not late.

I finally asked for help at work. Between midterms and the start of the holiday season, I was starting to become buried in work. For me, the state of being burnt out is comfortably-uncomfortable. Despite feeling miserable, I tell myself it is easier to just power through and get to the end. And honestly, I am just afraid to ask for help. For some reason it is more comfortable to try and power through instead of telling someone I am struggling. In class we talked about the urge to just power through our obligations; it made me realize, why am I putting myself through this? 

During my most recent shift I stepped back from the register during a rush and walked to the back office. I told my store manager I was tired of being at the front every shift and she validated my feelings. It was so strange to actually have something go my way for once! What I don’t understand about myself in this experience is I knew my managers were accommodating. Yet I still let myself slip into burn out. People, including myself, can feel ashamed in admitting they need help, or they feel they have no other option. I convinced myself people would think I was being dramatic or just trying to get out of work.

While I knew my managers would be understanding, they still did not make consistent attempts to make sure their employees were doing okay. When I was hired, they told me they would do regular check-ins to evaluate wellness, yet I have not had one such discussion in the year I have worked there. I believe that managers need to regularly and empathetically check in with their staff and allow employees to rotate rolls as needed. This creates a trustful environment where the staff feels comfortable to approach managers for help.

Sorry, this a rant of the unfortunate conversation I had with a disgusting cis-white male the other day, that uttered out of his mouth “Black women have been a tyrant to this great America. That it makes sense why black women go through with what they go through.” I have never in my natural born life had to deal with so much rubbish. African American women are phenomenal human beings. They, like other women, are inconvenienced with the difficulties of being a woman in a “man’s world,” where a woman’s perspective and knowledge is not valued. AND IT BUGS MY SPIRIT! In my opinion, black women are like the earth’s resources, we forever be abused and needed, and most times out of the time never get the credit that’s due. And it disturbs me that mostly how we are viewed is derived from the stereotypes bestowed on us. Over the last couple of decades, and even the last century, black women have been characterized by society negatively with being called ghetto or ratchet, and we are continuously confined those words. But when thinking about it all this stems from the media, and it’s now being pushed by my own people (i.e., Martin Lawrence’s “Shenaynay” or Tyler Perry’s “Madea”). And don’t get me started on the idea that we all have “Angry Black Woman Syndrome”. This “syndrome” meaning that all black women “…are “sassy, ill-mannered, and tempered by nature”, a.k.a. we have been labeled as shrews. For example, not going to lie, I participate in watching trashy T.V. reality shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Basketball Wives. The show which follows the lives of women (mainly African American) who are married or use to be married to famous or wealthy men. Throughout the shows you see the women, who happen to be black, starting arguments and fighting over frivolous things and matters, and the grand scheme of the show is terrible. Millions are people are being entertained from black women tearing each other down and it honestly worries me.

In class recently we were talking about what a fair classroom would look like; how could we best accommodate students’ needs while still maintaining fairness to everyone in the course? The topic triggered an unpleasant memory in my mind of a situation where a professor of mine tried to maintain “fairness” for all students.

This situation happened in Fall 2020, during our first fully virtual school semester. That semester was my most difficult semester to date, and not necessarily because of my course load. That semester I had a very close family member pass away and I was physically and mentally unwell. I’ve never been able to pin down what exactly was going on with me but I had extremely low energy and would sleep most of the days. I later found out I had type 2 diabetes and very low vitamin D levels, which I believe to be contributing factors but honestly, I can’t say what it was for sure. The thing that sucks about being this type of unwell is that no one cares. It’s very hard to get accommodation from professors without feeling like you’re oversharing about yourself and just hoping they have sympathy for you. When you get “real symptoms” or end up in a hospital/urgent care, you can just send your doctors note to the professor and they let you take the time that you need. When you’re just… tired? You get told to manage your time better, go to bed earlier, etc. Poor mental health? You get a week or so to mourn then you better get your act together.

We’ve been talking a lot about how people with disabilities are called lazy for needing accommodations. But what does that even mean? I’d like to talk about it. Disclaimer: I’ve had three cups of coffee today and this post is all over the place.

If I asked you to define laziness right now, off the top of your head, what words would you use? Unproductive or unmotivated? Lacking energy/effort or unwilling to do work? Sluggish, inactive, sloth? Couch potato?

Procrastination is probably one of the first to come to your mind. Because we always attribute being productive to being successful and being unproductive to failing. (Capitalism, am I right?) You are not considered a valuable member of society unless you are giving 110%, 100% of the time. You have to be on all the time. You have to prioritize your job or your schoolwork above everything else in your life, including yourself. And for a lot of us, it is the fear that we could fail that keeps us from being “productive.” Or maybe it’s just that we aren’t putting our energy toward things that society approves of.

I used to want to be on Broadway. I wanted to apply to colleges as a musical theatre major. That’s where my energy was going when I was in high school; I was working on my acting and my voice. I can’t even count how many times I was told to pick something more realistic, more practical, because acting was never going to work out for me. So I said fine, whatever… I didn’t get into my first choice school anyway, so I guess I’ll just give up on theatre. I still wanted to do something I really cared about, though. So I chose GWST and was really excited about it. Again, people questioned me. Oh, that’s… interesting… and what do you want to do with that? What kind of job will that get you? How are you going to find a good job after college? Firstly, it’s none of your business. Secondly, why can’t I just get a degree in something that I enjoy and want to be more educated in? I didn’t even want to go to college in the first place, but everyone got in my head about getting a job when I’m older. Prospective jobs need to see that I payed well over $100,000 on a degree that cost me my mental health, and probably isn’t useful for the position anyway. Society rewards jobs that need a college degree over jobs that don’t, even though the jobs that don’t (food service, grocers, janitors, garbage collectors) are for services that we need and benefit from every day. Yet these same people will get mad that no one wants to make them a Big Mac for $9 an hour.

Where was I? Oh, right: laziness.

Instead of calling ourselves lazy, we should think about why we are using that term. Most of the time it’s because it is the easiest word to describe what we’re feeling and going through. If you are feeling unmotivated and unfocused, if you are fatigued, or if you can’t find pleasure in doing things that you usually love, you might blame it on laziness. Or, if you have a mental illness or other disability, you might think that being lazy is a symptom of that. But here’s the interesting thing: ‘laziness’ is not a psychological term.

No one is going to include “laziness” in the list of symptoms for depression. They might, however, list lack of motivation, lack of concentration, loss of interest, that “empty” mood, pessimism, fatigue, self-doubt, etc. All of these symptoms are things that would make someone procrastinate or seem lazy to an outsider. One blog I found on the myth of laziness says that “even if laziness did exist, it only describes a set of behaviors – the symptoms. It doesn’t describe or explain the cause of so-called laziness.”

So next time, instead of judging someone for being lazy, ask yourself what conditions around them have made them act the way they are. Instead of judging a disabled person for needing an accessible parking space or any other accommodation, ask yourself why society functions in a way that forces people with disabilities to even need accommodations… and then stigmatizes them for asking.