4chan, reddit, funny and discord. All have been controversial cesspools in some way or another. Some like reddit and discord have redeemed themselves. Others have… well.. yeah, they’re still exactly the same.

In a world dominated by the internet and the discourse that happens on it, a few have decided that we need to monitor what goes on within our virtual halls in order to protect vulnerable populations. Younger girls needs safe spaces to talk amongst themselves and enjoy content. The lgbt community needs to have a safe space to discuss their needs and issues. The fat community needs to have a safe space away from fat phobia. etc. etc. But with these safe spaces came trolls, usually manifesting themselves from teenage boys and young adult men. Trolls who would often post triggering content within these safe spaces trying to illicit a reaction from the members of said group. And while these actions were not tasteful or ok, many failed to realize that it was this group of people who often needed a safe space for themselves. Their behavior, while not to be excused, should be understood where it came from and why.

Many younger boys and men used to watch cringe compilations on sites like YouTube. These compilations while funny and usually innocent would slowly start adding suggestions in the watch next category along the lines of “feminist gets owned” or “sjw fail” and things along those lines. An interesting video many would think, simply an extension of the video they are currently watching, but alas it was truly propaganda meant to draw in that vulnerable population. From these videos showing very blatantly extremist views from people who identified as feminists or social justice warriors, it would create a hatred of said groups for the viewer. These viewers would then go source out this anti-feminist material and go down rabbit holes of trad-wives, meninism, and other masked alt-right propaganda. Within these spaces, many would interact with actual alt-right members and slowly become desensitized to extreme cruelty and violence towards marginalized groups such as poc, lgbt, and women, often under the guise of “They’re the cringe extremists, we are in the right.” Sites like 4chan and reddit would have forums with thousands of members talking about their distrust and dislike of these groups, slowly brainwashing younger more impressionable boys and men into thinking what they were doing is correct, thus creating entire online armies of people to do their bidding. These high school and college aged boys were truly victims of the internet, and a lot of people don’t seem to see them as such. Boys and men who were sweet and caring were slowly and unfortunately brainwashed into believing in hate and bigotry. This is not and should not be considered a “normal phase”. Of course many teenagers go through periods of questioning the norm and going against the grain, but the lack of empathy and willingness to cause other harm and agony is not. Behavior like this truly is a cry for help.

In this piece , I want to start off by saying , we often find ourselves wanting to be like others , and hyper-analyzing our own self proclaimed flaws to which could be to others our fine points. Beauty is to the eye of the beholder, everyone has beauty inside them, I feel as if its how you radiate that beauty through your confidence that creates your flaws and perfections. Appreciate every aspect of yourself those you can change and those you cannot change. As it holds beauty no matter what.

I always struggled with confidence , even as a child unless I was certain of my ability I wouldn’t dare try or do it fear of the reactions in which my Father or peers would have. Being an individual that constantly messes up and has to go about routes that are rather unconventional , I was labeled as a “fuck up” at a young age. Often found myself having to sit in silence as I’m berated with questions. “Can you do anything right?” , “are you even paying attention?” until it gets to the I’ll do it myself stage. “Just leave it alone , I’ll do it myself or ill get your brother”? I found these turn events occurring in all walks of life , whether it was school , everyday activities , chores , favors , sports. Anything that involved my father. I never realized how much he affected me until my freshman year of college. When I stopped playing soccer and resided to gaming and academics , I gained a lot of weight and continued to blow myself up like a balloon, the sweet tooth always gets what it wants. In the moment , whilst your living it you truly don’t realize the changes that occur to your body. Thus when this arose , my father literally or hypothetically disowned , wanted nothing to do with me because of my appearance and size. I always would just play it off , and ignore his comments. Continued to grow , then I entered high school. Thank the Lord , I had some sort of mental toughness due to my father because I promise you every single day I would be called ugly at least 3 times a day, a peer or friend would just look at me bust out into laughter and say “you know you ugly right?”. Then to make matters worse I had HORRIBLE acne, I must admit it was pretty bad, friends(were they really?) use to call me crunch bar. I found myself not caring and laughing on the situations as I already built a mental fortitude within myself, Idk what would’ve happened if I wasn’t just a walking ball of love & humor who deflects all type of negativity and doubt. But subconsciously , I had a mental image as If I was ugly squidward mixed with when he ate too many crabby patties.

Then the change happened , I realized that in fact I did not want to live like this anymore , I of course would sometimes feel a way due to the words , I’m not superman but I wouldn’t care I felt comfortable in my skin until I didn’t. Until I wanted a change , maybe partially sparked by falling in love with a girl who wouldn’t even look my direction. Only slightly , it twas not only in hopes of gaining her attention I promise but to gain back my confidence. That summer entering junior year of high school , I went to the gym every single day and ran, walked , jogged , skipped you name it for an hour on the treadmill and lifted weights until I became slim/fit. The change was acknowledged by all; neighbors , classmates , peers from church, and most of all my father. Yet , in my mind I still felt fat , I still felt as if it wasn’t enough , as I cycled through weight gain and loss even now as a junior in sophomore, I still feel fat it was not until just recently when my parents(my father mainly of course) believes I lost too much weight and I’m starting to look very small maybe sickly as an exaggeration since he’s use to seeing me with a big frame. Plus of course , when your body becomes fit and your face matures and your features define itself you begin to look better to yourself , and others. However, no matter how many times I’m complimented I subconsciously believe to myself at the end of the day I’m ugly. Is this due to the subconscious ? Though I deflect the comments consciously do they really do stick? As I dove deeper seeking the significance and crucial factor to why I felt this way, I was sent a picture of myself from 8th/9th grade. Where I have my shirt up and I look like a different person. I consciously never remembered myself looking like this , I don’t even remember looking in the mirror a lot. Or ? Did I purposely delete those memories from that phase of my life, even my family had no recollection of me being that size, of course except my father. Yet these memories and events though erased from my conscious I believe they plague my subconscious.

Though I don’t write this to say anything as if it was traumatic , sure my dad had harsh ways of showing his care for me but I truly do appreciate it. I feel as if I didn’t have that negative pressure or better yet a villain in my story , I probably would have grown to an unhealthy size which I already was at the time . It took truly looking within myself whilst forgiving him to realize everything he said to me , every reaction , every subtle remark was to spark a change in me. Make me realize, because he would give me the world if I acted right , I love him , he’s the best. And Just like the movie soul where in order for the soul to get to earth is for them to get an earth pass, which is a spark or mistakenly purpose. I feel as if we all experience life or go through life riding the wave until we either fall to our lowest point and there’s a spark for change , are given an opportunity of a lifetime that sparks a change of lifestyle and focus , or simply maybe the opinions of those we love most. Love yourself through in and through out , don’t fall victim to your villains use their words as motivation, the more you become at peace with yourself the more your beauty radiates, the more you prove them wrong and continue to sharpen yourself the more confidence you develop. I love those moments genuinely as I feel as they shaped me into the good place I am in right now to start my upwards trend in life and enter any endeavor with confidence. I wonder how my self-image will be next year around this time.

Fun Fact : I did not get that girl , but I gained her attention and we became good friends.

The physical accessibility of UMBC’s campus has long been criticized by students and staff alike. Due to the nature of the location, the entire campus is on a hill, and this means that to get to 90% of buildings on campus, you’ll be using stairs at least once or twice. For those in good shape, and who are able to use stairs no problem, it poses a minor inconvenience. However, for anyone else, it is a large obstacle, which becomes worse when you add in the time constraints between classes. If a student has 2 classes back to back, they need to use almost all the intermittent time to get to their next classroom. From personal experience, this usually results in being tired and sweaty upon arrive, which makes sitting in the classroom for the next hour uncomfortable. On top of this, commuter parking lots are far away from any classroom, and require quite the trek.
    Recently, UMBC removed their free hour that had previously existed to allow everyone to have lunch at a relaxed pace. Now, classes can run straight through this time, meaning some students are forced to eat an early or late lunch. But if you’re like me and commute from 30 to 60 minutes away, and have back to back classes, this means that you could be going without food for 6 hours or more depending on your schedule. This is the situation I found myself in this semester. I had 3 classes back to back, and couldn’t take them at any other time, because it would increase the number of days I would have to commute, and thus the amount of time wasted driving (as well as money spent for gas) that I could use to study or work or do anything else. You could argue that I had the choice of schedule, so the issue I faced was one of my own design, but there are many situations where schedule choices are slim, and thus necessitate tight schedules like this one. A choice that saves a broke college student significant money and time is no choice at all, and I don’t have the funds to justify comfortable scheduling over efficiency. After my first class, I’d have to walk across the whole campus from the top of the hill to the bottom to get food, eat within 5 minutes or less, and then run to my next class which was back at the top of the hill. I could simply skip lunch, but then I’d be starving for the next two periods, which would distract me, and prevent me from being as attentive in the lecture as I could be. Even with my rushed travel, I still came to class late, anywhere from 5-15 minutes. And of course, after having eaten quickly, and then exercising a good bit, I’d feel nauseous. But I’m physically abled. For someone who can’t run or get around quickly, or who needs to use the elevators and take the indirect, lengthy, after-thought of an “accessible” path, they’d either have to come to class significantly late, or not eat. Which is not a choice that students should have to make.

    Physical accessibility at UMBC doesn’t concern a minority, it concerns all of us. We all stand to gain from more accessible infrastructure and scheduling. While there are limitations to what can be changed since the campus is already built, and budgets that must be worked around, I pay a lot of money to attend school here. A new stadium is cool, but it doesn’t solve the more pressing issues of parking, and campus accessibility, ones that would significantly improve both my and others time here on campus.

Im starting this out by saying this is the hardest post to write because I’m not very good at being vulnerable, But at the same time its a huge part of the reason why i’m struggling so hard with everything right now. I was originally gonna write a light hearted post about the way a video game I was playing could be used as a case study for accessibility but I decided to write this instead.

Basically I’ve been going through a big identity crisis lately and its been hard to find my footing when I don’t even know who I am anymore. I used to be someone who was so sure of who she was, an embodiment of self assurance and confidence not afraid to be different and face the world head on with a smile. Someone who knew everything would be alright in the end because it always had been. Someone who saw her greatest strength was talking to people. Someone who knew what she wanted and had big dreams and aspirations.

But things have changed. for one that girl was 19 the last time she was herself before being told she has to stay inside for a long time. Then out of no where she’s 21 being told she’s a full adult despite feeling like she’s still fresh out of high school. losing two years has also made me lose my grip on time and there are days I have to remind myself that I did actually spend two birthdays in a quarantine and that no I can not call myself a teenager anymore because i’m truly not even though I never fully learned what it means to exist with out the “teen” at the end of my age. Im still grappling with the fact that I’m not in the same position I was in when I entered quarentine. that im closer to the age when my parents got married then I am to when I graduated high School. That im seeing my friends talk about grad school when I still feel frozen in time in my second year of college. I forget that were not the same people we were when this started.

I also lost my Nana this year. I didn’t realize how much her loss would affect me and its really threw me for a loop. I feel like I lost a connection to a large part of my identity when I lost her. She over the years has been the only consistent person of my extended family in my life and also one of the only connections I’ve had to my families history in the past. she was the only one who had the knowledge and was willing to tell me stories about my families heritage and our family in Italy and it has been hard realizing that connection is now gone. Its been weird celebrating holidays with out her, its only been me and my imediate family and it just feels so off.

finally I feel like im stuck in place while everything is moving with out me. It feels like the world is totally different now and I feel differently about it. I feel like im fighting off my apathy with a stick sometimes because everything is moving to fast for me to even try and keep up. I used to see my voice as my biggest strength but recently its been the thing that’s made the most mistakes in my life to the point where I just want to shut up but my brain doesn’t allow it because with out my voice what do I have? I no longer am confident I know what im doing but instead feel myself cracking under the pressure to know what im supposed to do. everything feels like so much I just want it all to stop so I push it all away and sabotage myself. I don’t want to fail but in being too scared to do so I keep myself from succeeding and I dont know what to do.

In this class we’ve talked a lot about embodiment and how we embody our identities in this world but how do you embody something you feel like you’ve lost? even more so how do you embody something you feel like your still trying to find? and most importantly how so you feel like yourself again when you lost so much of who you were?

I miss the person I used to be because right now I feel like a stranger to myself.

It has been almost two years since universities everywhere had to shut their doors and make the initial quick transition entirely online. After about 3 semesters of learning entirely through the screen of my laptop, sitting on my bedroom floor, I was excited to finally return to campus. However, my excitement was terminated quickly as I became increasingly disappointed by decisions made by professors and the university as a whole during the transition.

I think much of my disappointment stemmed from my ostensibly naïve assumptions that professors and administrators would have learned something from the pandemic’s influence on education. COVID really underscored the fact that being sick is not just an individual issue, but a social one as well. Illnesses are contagious. They are not something to “power through” and ignore just to show up to class. So, I was amazed to see that multiple of my classes still had very strict attendance and illness policies. I do not understand how it could at all be advisable to only have 1-2 allowed absences before a doctor’s note would be required (also while the pandemic is STILL going on).

Another major disappointment was that most of the professors did not take advantage of a lot of the online learning tools we all became familiar with over the past year and a half to continue to make education more accessible. As we are still in a pandemic, it should be expected that those same factors influencing access to education, mental health concerns, etc. during the online portion would still be at play in person. Yet so few of my professors saw an opportunity to allow for asynchronous engagement with the material, or for recorded lectures to make up a missed class.

Over the online portion of the pandemic, many professors were more receptive to student feedback and requests as well as more lenient and empathetic to an extenuating circumstance. However, in-person all of that seemed to disappear yet again. A combination of all of these previously mentioned factors puts students in a very high anxiety dilemma during the end tail of a pandemic. The student does not have access to alternative delivery of material if they get sick and they do not have the flexibility worked into the syllabus to allow them to minimize consequence if they were to take more than a day off.  It puts the student in a position where their only available options are to put others and themselves at risk but continuing to attend class or risk their own grade and even the possibility of a direct point reduction for missing in-person classes and discussions.  

Overall, I was very upset with my experience back in person. If the university is going to put signs up and send emails out encouraging students to stay home if they are sick, then they need to ensure their faculty are writing syllabi and enforcing policy consistent with it.  

Hear me out: Although I don’t do it, I like working out.

I did yoga a lot when school was online but it was always at night so I wouldn’t be interrupted but it just felt kind of…pointless. Who works out at night just to sleep right afterwards?

I mean, I did, but you get it.

I just was never consistent and the thing is, I go too hard. I push myself for the post-workout pain like I’m not this blob of unexercised mass literally because I like to, like the smallest exercise won’t hurt. I’ve learnt to be nicer to my body because of this class but I think I’m really not ready to consciously exercise and learn my limits. I also refuse to calorie count or weigh myself because I’ll get obsessive.

And my body goals are not…casual.

I also wanted to play a sport but I feel like it’s just because I like being dedicated to something. I ran track in middle school for a little bit but that wasn’t really my sport and our coaches sucked. I wanted to cheer in high school, but as a senior when I decided I wanted to, I felt like it was too late. I forgot to go to the tryouts or interest meetings here. My best choice now is making myself work out on my own, with the only thing driving me being me.

I want to start weightlifting. Muscles and flexibility (not losing weight, even though I think that’s inevitable?) are my fixation right now so remember those unconventional body goals? Women gymnasts, figure skaters, bodybuilders, and men that play superheroes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

I love those videos of when actors talk about their routines to get however for a certain role like I’ll ever be in the gym doing whatever actually superhuman shit they did but it’s nice to imagine. Figure skating (or just ice skating in general) just looks really fun and I think it’s the idea of working out and then taking it to better a talent that sounds so fun, same thing with gymnastics.

I just don’t have it in me and that’s okay. I’ll get to it when I have it in me.

I think my obsession with muscle comes with me being nonbinary, in a way. Women are seen as “soft” so I use it to distance myself because I see how women who aren’t your conventional “soft” are sidelined, no matter how unfair it is to those women. It’s hell to be told “Women aren’t supposed to look like that!” from…well, everyone, when all you have is muscle and work out.

I know if I ever start working out, I’ll be hit in two different ways from my family, specifically the women in my family. They’ll either a. try to start with me because no adventure is my own or b. judge the hell out of me because I’m going further than they expected. I’m excited for either because I’m just gonna keep going.

With all that being said, if you see me in the gym next semester or just running around (you probably won’t but it’s the thought that counts), hiiii.

My entire life, I have struggled with who I am–an alpha. I was raised with this mentality by my dad, he taught me to take up space and to be the alpha female. Granted, this caused us to argue and bump heads like you wouldn’t imagine, but despite that, he made me feel as if I can do anything. Even in a society that doesn’t appreciate women and doesn’t allow them to try and take up space, I still do so. I am blunt, smart, fierce, but also emotionally intelligent, resilient, soft, and empathetic. THAT is what makes women, women. We are capable of both sides, being strong and providing while also being able to comprehend and understand someone’s feelings and emotions about a situation. We are superior and are incredible.

For me personally, this can also be a double-edged sword when it comes to taking up space in your own relationships. Always being the leader in every situation, being the informer, the overthinker. Always two steps ahead of everyone, even my own boyfriend. Having two dominant people in one relationships is hard, and taking up space where it isn’t wanted creates so much conflict. Conflict in ways that he feels inferior to you, or feels that he should always be the problem-solver and not you. When you are completely capable of handling it yourself. It is a hard situation to navigate, and it is hard to find someone that embraces that about you instead of putting you down for it. Taking up space feels powerful, until it doesn’t. Despite this feeling, you should always continue to take up space–you will eventually find the space that takes you.

How much of the time are you “running on empty”, just struggling to get through the demands of the day without considering your true feelings.

The inner self is about what can’t be seen: feelings, intuition, values, beliefs, personality, thoughts, emotions, fantasies, spirituality, desire, and purpose. In contrast, there is the outer self which is what can be seen and what we present to the world. It generally concerns with material things such as hair or clothes as well as the personas you portray. We usually try to curate our outer self to reflect the best.

Conflict arises when your outer self becomes a habitual pattern at the expense of your true feelings. This conflict often occurs due to spending too little time considering your inner self.

Lately I feel like I have been “running on empty”.

When I imagine my future, all i see is gray. Yet I am working hard and sacrificing sleep in order to get through the demand and responsibility of passing college. When I took the moment to attempt to balance my outer and inner self, I realized I wasn’t sure how I felt about the career path I chose but I also had no desire to figure out what I wanted to change. I also don’t quite feel like the person I present to the world is me.

Trying to find the balance between your outer and inner self can be difficult, but it is important to stay aligned to your inner self as much as your success on the outside. An imbalance can cause stress, feeling of emptiness on the inside, and damage.

If you also feel like you are “running on empty”, take the time to slow down, focus on the moment, and listen to your thoughts as you go about your day. Only you will know what specific changes might help to align you with your true inner self.