once a wildcat...?

i graduated from northwestern almost 20 years ago (holy shit i am the old) and while i always tell people that if i had it to do all over again, i'd go back to nu in a heartbeat, there are still some things that bugged me and continue to bug me about the school/administration/environment. enrollment and retention of minority and traditionally underrepresented populations has improved marginally over time, but i can still remember being downright giddy when a freshman class had 10% black people because omg we'd broken double-digits. (told y'all i was old.)

i still subscribe to the nu alumni newsletter/magazine and attempt to at least skim the alumni emails that land in my inbox. there was part of a note i received today that piqued my interest, so i followed the link and read about a new homecoming tradition at my alma mater.

instead of electing a traditional homecoming king and queen, there will be a single homecoming wildcat. it sounds kinda cheesy, i know, but this is what really sold me:

"The 12-person Homecoming Royalty Court formerly included six men and six women; the 12 top candidates will now be selected regardless of gender."

i will be the first to admit that i did not have the understanding or vocabulary to knowledgeably discuss gender identity some 20-something years ago, so as much as current me would like to be all "y'all should've done this way before now," i can't honestly say that because such a thought probably wouldn't have even occurred to me back then.

but here we are, in the year of our lord and savior black jesus 2017, and i am proud of northwestern for making a step in the right direction. here's to being a wildcat.

on: feeling isolated while surrounded

talked to carol today. there's all kinds of drama going on, some of which i alluded to on twitter, and i can tell it's taking its toll on her. she's been thrust into the role of caregiver again, this time for her father (and our pastor), and she told me how she feels like no one really understands what that's like for her, especially knowing that barring a miracle, there will be no recovery for her father. i understand it to a certain extent, having lost countless loved ones, but i don't even want to pretend to know what it would feel like to potentially lose both your husband and your father in a span of less than 10 years.

carol's like me in a lot of ways, and not just because we were born in december. we're both way too stubborn for our own good sometimes. we know friends and family would do their best to help out if we could articulate what we wanted/needed instead of just saying that we're tired. sometimes we believe that it's just easier to shoulder the weight and do it ourselves and worry about the consequences later. way deep down, we know that this isn't healthy, but we've so conditioned ourselves that this is the way it has to be that it's difficult to break that habit.

at one point during our conversation, carol mentioned that she'd called a family friend of ours to be potential backup in case some of the aforementioned drama gets even uglier. i had to laugh because i was already mentally writing a text to a friend on how i might need them to be ready to show up at a moment's notice due to said drama. then i had to pause because i heard a hint of loneliness in carol's voice and i knew better than to call her on it in that moment.

that's another thing we have in common. we can be surrounded by people we know and love and still feel like we're utterly alone. y'all know that this is something i've battled and am continuing to attempt to work through.

then i started thinking about jordan hankins. i didn't know jordan personally, but i can see the similarities in our stories. being a black woman at northwestern is not easy. i knew a fair number of black athletes while i was there and one of their constant complaints was feeling isolated from the rest of the black community on campus. knowing what i do about current campus conditions, my guess is that not much has changed. let me be clear in that i do not and would not dare to claim to know what jordan was going through. i would submit that it is possible, though, that she felt a sense of isolation even while being surrounded by teammates and friends and family. i hope her spirit is at rest now, and that those who knew her and loved her are able to find some peace.

unsoberly stumbling down memory lane, part i'm too unsober to remember what part i might be on right now

if you were paying attention to my twitter feed late this evening, then you probably noticed a series of tweets about my freshman year at northwestern and some of the songs that will always have a place in my heart, like this one:

oh, man. if i had a dollar for every time i heard this song during freshman year, i could...i don't know. pay my renter's insurance for the year? a couple of cell phone bills? or a couple of 30-day ventra passes? yeah, that sounds plausible. we'll go with that.

one of my favorite memories attached to this song? daddy picked me up for our thanksgiving excursion to st. louis to see ma dear (my paternal grandmother) and some other relatives. one of my fellow kappa sweethearts (just google it, y'all, b/c i tried to find a wiki link to post here and came up empty) lived in the st. louis area and daddy offered to drive her home for the holiday. road trip! i swear the flava in ya ear remix came on the radio (yes, children, this was back in the days when you couldn't hook your ipod or phone to your car stereo to haz all of the music nao) at least 5 times during the trip to st. louis and on our return to evanston. every time, my friend and i would look at each other and lose our shit b/c it was pretty much our unofficial anthem, based on the number of times we'd danced to it at parties that quarter.

daddy, bless his everloving heart, never said a word. i think the last time it came on in the car, daddy just rolled his eyes at our giggling selves and kept on driving.

(ehrin, if you're out there and you stumble across this somehow, please say hi via comment or twitter or whatever!)

misc.

--college football is back, you guys. i may or may not be excited about this...oh, who are we kidding? i'm totally excited about this! i'm wearing a northwestern t-shirt as i type, ffs. tonight's game isn't until 9:30 so i'm definitely planning a nap at some point. i still have a +1 for next week's home opener against syracuse, btw, so let me know if you're interested. eta: this ticket has been claimed.

--i'm also excited about pro football season starting. yes, i took off work so i can watch the bears season opener. yes, i switched days with a co-worker so i can watch northwestern/western michigan and bears/vikings. yes, i will have three consecutive sundays off (we're closed tomorrow for the holiday) for the first time in...hell, i think for the first time since i started this job a year and some change ago.

--i made some updates in the post i wrote about moms mabley the other night, so feel free to check that out again, or for the first time if you missed it previously.

--today is international bacon day, which would be a bigger deal for me if i wasn't already such a fan of bacon. mmm...bacon...

happy saturday! hope y'all have a good weekend. :-)

on: current wave of emo/nostalgia

i feel like i've been all over the place emotionally this week. it really hit me last night when i realized i'd gone to 3 different grocery stores for things (and still managed to forget something i wanted for tomorrow's dinner, smh) and how i really am my father's child, b/c he used to drive from store to store in search of the best deals. and then this morning, i was making breakfast and had another moment of channeling my father. to say i miss him would be an understatement, obviously. but then it all kinda clicked while i was watching melissa harris-perry and having my breakfast and looking at my twitter feed.

i got a haircut the other day (stay with me, folks, b/c i promise this is relevant) and it's been weirding me out for a couple of reasons. one, my hair hasn't been this short in a while and i'm dying to see how short it'll look when it's in its curly state. two, my timing for this haircut was damn near perfect b/c #summertimechi is upon us and one of the last things i want to deal with is my hair on my neck. it's hard enough being a fat girl in the summer - no need to add to the sweat.

and then the proverbial light bulb came on. the last time i can remember having my hair this short is the summer of 1998. i got it cut especially for graduation. somewhere i have a picture of me and james standing outside after i'd walked across the stage and my hair was about as short as it is now.

y'all. northwestern's commencement weekend is happening even as i type. it's been 15 years since graduation. i had an impromptu hangout with a fellow alum (and former football player) earlier this week and someone asked how long we'd known each other. we both started laughing as we said "19 years" and then realized, holy shit, we're old. i also thought that if we partied that hard on a tuesday night, there's no way my liver is going to survive homecoming. i'll have fun trying, though.

my father has been dead for 16 years. one of my regrets, and i admit it's a pointless regret to have b/c there's jack shit i could've done about it, is that daddy didn't get to see me walk across the stage and receive my northwestern degree. we both worked hard for it. after he died, james and i continued working hard so i could actually stay at northwestern b/c it was looking kinda impossible for a second there, but we did it. daddy and james and i did it and to this day, i hate that daddy wasn't there in person to see it. i also hate that i can't call james and tease him about being old, but that's a different story.

i'm looking forward to homecoming this fall for a lot of reasons. i just wish the two family members who helped me get through northwestern in the 1st place were around to indulge in this nostalgia with me.

hail to alma mater

it's commencement weekend at northwestern, and all the tweets about graduation and purple gowns (seriously, purple gowns? in my day, we had blue gowns and we were thankful!) and colbert's address and webcasts of the ceremony have me feeling a bit nostalgic. yes, i know it's a bit weird to mention tweets and nostalgia in the same sentence.

i have so many purple-tinged memories that it's damn near impossible to pick my all-time absolute favorite one, the one i'm about to tell ranks pretty high for me.

flashback, if you will, to 13 (!) years ago, when i was working on my very last assignment as an undergraduate. i hadn't really thought about graduate school yet, so i was probably going on the assumption that it'd be my last assignment ever.

wanna know what that assignment was? it was an essay for a communications studies seminar. i don't remember the topic of the seminar and it's not listed on my transcript, but it's not really important right now. what's important is what i filled up a blue book writing about...ll cool j. i'm serious. i cited his autobiography and everything. please don't ask me about exact content b/c, well, it was 13 years ago. i got an a-minus in the class, though, so it couldn't have been too horrible.

i just looked at my loyola transcript and i have no idea what my last b-school assignment was. there could've been a group project involved. or a paper. i really don't know. given my decades-long infatuation with ll, though, it should come as little surprise that i'd remember writing about him for class.

the best part about that assignment at the time? i finished it during reading week, which meant i had 2 weeks (finals week and senior week) to do nothing but hang out and pack. good times. :-)

stop reading if you've heard these

james has been on my mind a lot lately. i don't necessarily think that he's trying to communicate with me from heaven or the great beyond or whatever afterlife you may or may not believe in, but there's definitely...something. i can't quite put my finger on it, and i'm not inclined to put forth that much effort into solving the puzzle.

some of the memories popped up late last week when #10confessions popped up as a trending topic on twitter. i started thinking about doing a post about 10 confessions, but then i remembered i'd done that whole "25 things you don't know about me" meme a while back, so i was just going to repost that. so then i started thinking about confessions/memories related to northwestern, b/c it's senior week and it seemed appropriate.

for instance...did you know that james paid for my northwestern class ring? he called me one day senior year, not long after i'd picked the ring out and charged it to my amex card. he asked how things were going, and i mentioned the ring to him. he sounded devastated when i told him i'd paid for it already (ok, not technically paid for, but, y'know) and he damn near demanded to know how much it was. next time i saw him, he gave me a check for the full amount of the ring. i tried to turn him down, but he was pretty adamant about it.

i know that doesn't sound like much, but considering that i almost didn't make it back to northwestern for my senior year, it meant (and still means) a lot to me.

yes, folks, that's another confession. i was *thisclose* to leaving northwestern. after daddy died during junior year, james was the one in charge of handling the estate and taking care of bills. daddy had set up a payment plan for the portion of tuition/room & board that wasn't covered by loans and grants, and luckily that had been taken care of for the year. senior year, though, was up in the air. daddy didn't have life insurance (note: my policy, coincidentially enough, is through northwestern's alumni association), and money was tighter than usual.

when my financial aid package came in, there was a sizable gap between what loans/grants/work-study covered and what i'd be responsible for. well, what james and i would be responsible for. even on the 9-month payment plan, there was no way that amount was feasible. at all. even if i moved back "home" and cut out room/board, there was no way we'd be able to make it work.

thus began my summer of "stalking" the financial aid office. i was working on campus, so it wasn't much of a stretch to walk over and plead my case on a monthly basis. or was it bi-weekly? i don't really remember. what i do remember was me pleading my case to the financial aid officer. i played every card i could think of. the "i'm an orphan" card. the "it'd mean so much to graduate on time" card. the "i've worked so hard and i don't wanna dropout" card. the "do you want me to be another minority statistic?" card. yeah, i went there. i didn't care. i begged for more work-study, more loans, more grants...whatever would lessen the out-of-pocket burden.

and it worked. the details are sketchy at this point, but my expected contribution came down to a slightly more tolerable level. it'd still be a stretch for me and james, but we'd make it work. and we did. and i graduated, and here i am. this story would have a much happier ending if i was employed right now, but oh well.

i have 1 or 2 more northwestern-related confessions, but i'll save those for another post. there's at least one more james-related memory that's been on my mind lately, but, again, another post. and yes, i'll post the 25 things here, probably before the week is out.