Saturday, November 12

Diversity Week

This has been quite a week to talk about!! Stephens just finished up Diversity Week, and I got to attend a good majority of the events.
Diversity is a subject that's be slowly becoming a bigger and bigger point of discussion on campus over the past year or so, and I think the Diversity Week and it's events gave us all a big relaxing deep breath. It's like everybody secretly wanted to say something about diversity on campus the whole time, and now we finally had a conversation about it. I think a lot of people benefited from the events, it was very cathartic.

Karith Foster and Adam Lehman were the big guests of the week. Karith is a Stephens Alum who now does stand up and all sorts of other entertaining things in NYC and LA. She and Adam are touring with their new program "Stereotypes 101", a half stand-up half heart-breaking-discussion about, well, stereotyping. Karith and Adam shared stories from their own lives about race and sexuality, and after that event students started talking, too. That's one thing I love about Stephens-- ripple effects work here.



(This picture was taken from Karith's website)

If you guys were in attendance at any of their events, or are interested more in Stereotypes 101, or just want to jump on the Diversity wagon, check these guys out on Facebook! They were extremely inspiring, and a complete joy to have on campus.

Did any of you attend any of the Diversity Week events? What did you find to be inspiring?

love, rudi

Wednesday, November 9

Inspiration from & Kathleen

I'm going to do something a little non-traditional with this post, and simply share another blogger's post with you. Jeremy & Kathleen  is one of my favorite blogs of all time, and I always go there for inspiration, whether in design or for advice like the post below

I found this particular post to be really helpful and it spoke tons to me, so I thought I'd share it with all of you. More and more as I get older I find myself facing bigger and more "important" problems, and it was really helpful to take a step back and define how I deal with problems into three simple categories. Kathleen explains it all perfectly, which is why I wanted to share her post with you.

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FightFlightFreeze

Sometimes I don't even know that I'm scared until I feel the fight-or-flight-or-freeze sensation bubbling up from the pit of my stomach. The idea is that when animals or prehistoric humans were confronted with a threat the stress response was fight-or-flight-or-freeze. So no, I'm not being attacked by a lion or trying to protect my baby from a dingo but I am going through tremendous amounts of growth that push me out of my comfort zone. And with that I'm feeling the need to fight, flight or freeze.


FIGHT: I get aggressive and shitty. I buzz with unkind energy - directed at both myself and others.


FLIGHT: I start fantasizing about living in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Jeremy's out back chopping wood and I'm in an apron cuddling a little baby with ruddy cheeks and a white onesie.


FREEZE: Freeze only lasts for a few seconds at a time before fight-or-flight kicks in. Freeze is that moment where I find myself in a blank stare and wondering to myself "what am I doing?"


Obviously, flight is my favorite stress response method - because it pretends to be productive. And sometimes it is. But lately, when I feel the need to fight-or-flight-or-freeze I recognize that it's a symptom to let me know that I'm growing - that I'm stretching - and that if I can hold the position and stay the course for just a little bit longer I will be a better person for it.



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I hope you all got as much from this post as much as I did! Do you all agree with Kathleen's perspective? Or do you have other methods of dealing with things?

love, rudi


Thursday, November 3

Halloween

I got the extremely disappointing news on Friday that I didn't get accepted into Creative Ink, that really awesome . I really pouted about it for a while- things this year have been going really well for me and I've been on a great "I win" streak, so it was sort of like having a glass of cold water tossed in my face. It's so necessary to have a humbling experience like that when you're winning too much, though. It keeps you working hard!

So in order to celebrate my humbling experience, me and the girls (and Joel, that redheaded guy you keep seeing around) dressed up for Halloween on Saturday night and went dancing! Dancing with my friends is the best hobby I've picked up here at Stephens, because not only is it way fun and a great way to meet non-Stephens people, but it's a months worth of workouts!


(This is us all pretending to be Courtney, the blonde on the left. She always makes this face in photos!)


And here's creepy Joel.


But after advising day on Wednesday and looking at my future schedule, I'm feeling less sad about the whole thing. It looks like (and I hope I'm not jinxing myself) I'll graduate Spring 2013! That's a full year early, which is so exciting! I love college, but I'm already so excited for all of the post-college adventures I'll be having. I can never stay in one place too long, it seems.

And what's more- there's a possibility that I'll be studying abroad!! But I really don't want to jinx that possibility, so more on that later!

I hope all of your Halloween's were as fun as mine!

love, rudi