Dear Summer...

The school year is finally over and the highly anticipated (for most) summer vacation is here. I do need a break from writing papers, studying for tests, and never sleeping and am looking forward to it. I think I will miss the relative peace of our small Staten Island campus compared to my hometown, but I can survive a few months away from it. I admittedly will not miss all of the rumors and disputes that come along with being a part of a small campus community but I promised myself that next year, I will not succumb to any of it and will be above it all.

I will not relax completely because I will still have a full time job and will still be a full time mother but I am looking forward to the bonding time with my daughter as well as the non- work study paychecks. I am hoping to come back next year with a new attitude, a new sense of determination, and a renewed scholarship. Looking back, I believe that everything that happened during my freshman year here has happened for a reason and it will make me a better person during my next three years of undergrad.

There are so many things that I can say but yet so little that I can put into words. In short, I will miss all of the wonderful people I have come into contact with and hope to see them again next semester and wish those who will not be returning the best of luck. I want to congratulate the class of 2008 which includes my big sister, Renee. Congrats, Big! Finally, I want to say, not goodbye, but see you later to everyone whether they be friends or foes. Hasta próximo tiempo...

When I Cry, You Cry...We Cry Together

Someone once told me, "When it rains, it is God's tears and someone, somewhere is in pain. The rain is the Lord's way of crying with them." Who is God crying for today? Maybe he is crying for those who have lost someone...my sister,Trish, who is having a wake today for her grandfather who passed away. Rest in peace. Maybe he is crying for those motherless children who are wondering why their parents abandoned them. Those who are bouncing from home to home in the foster care system as well as those recently adopted who just realized that they, in reality, may never see their biological parents again. The tears might be for my adopted siblings: Amir, Myaisha, and Kaleema. They went from asking everyday when they could see their mother again to never asking at all though I still hear them mention her in their bedtime prayers. Maybe the Lord is crying for my daughter whose father was not present when she took her first steps, when she opened her first Christmas present, or when she blew out the candles on her birthday cake for the first time. She will be three soon and still has not met him. She probably never will. The Lord may be crying for those who woke up this morning feeling as if the last thing that they had to hold on to is suddenly gone and that they are now grasping thin air, searching for some source of comfort. Or maybe, just maybe, my God is crying for me...me, who let situations beyond my control dictate my actions and my future. Me, who allowed outside stress to affect my performance in work and school and is having trouble frantically trying to piece everything back together. Yes, maybe the Lord is crying with me...

Juno Know

Since I have basically become a prisoner to food poisoning these past few days and have trouble sitting up and doing much of anything, I decided to catch up on movies. One of my sorority sisters took pity on me and came over to keep me company and join in on my movie marathon. She brought over Juno, which I have been wanting to see for a while now because of the rave reviews it has received. I was curious as to what could be so amazing about a movie that involves a sarcastic, pregnant sixteen year old. I did not enter into the experience with very high expectations and the way the movie began did not raise them at all. It started off with Juno, the title character, reminiscing about her first sexual experience, which occurred in an armchair. She then made her way to a store to take a pregnancy test which, of course, was positive. Apparently, the guy who fathered the child was a friend who she had just engaged in sex with because she was bored. Hmmm... Anyway, after discussing the situation with a female friend, Juno decided to get an abortion. She went to the clinic and was waiting to receive the procedure but changed her mind. Predictable.

The movie took an unexpected turn when Juno decided to give the baby up for adoption when it was born but wanted to hand-pick the adoptive parents. After finding some good candidates in the penny saver (whatever that is), Juno told her parents about the unexpected pregnancy and the decision she had reached in regards to it. Though they would have much rather dealt with their teenage daughter having a drug habit, they took the news of the pregnancy in stride and decided to support Juno. She and her dad went and met the prospective parents and signed an agreement with them to give them the baby at birth. Throughout the course of the pregnancy, Juno forged a weird relationship with the prospective father. He ended up deciding to leave his wife and the plans seemed to be falling apart. I do not want to give away the ending but it was not as predictable as one would expect other than the fact that Juno ended up falling realizing she was in love with the child's father.

All in all, the story was heartwarming and it was a different look at the teenage pregnancy issue without involving a cheerleader or something along those lines. Juno's sarcasm and quick wit helped the movie along alot. I am still unsure if it deserved all of the hoopla that surrounded it but it is a movie worth watching.

Final Food Poisoning

Leave it to me to get sick during final exam week. As if I do not already have enough things to catch up on and have not fallen far enough behind...I managed to get food poisoning. The culprit? Our lovely school cafeteria.

I have been eating, at the most, one meal a day for the past few weeks because I do not really have much time to sit down and eat. On Monday, I had a little bit of time so I went to the cafeteria to eat before I met my tutor at the library to get a jump start on studying. I ordered a ham and cheese wrap because it was quick to prepare, quick to eat, and could count as a meal. I was feeling fine until half an hour into studying when I felt a migraine coming on. I laid my head down as I listened to my tutor talk, hoping that it would pass. It didn't. He could see that I really was not feeling way so he sent me home to rest and promised to meet me there when I was ready to resume studying. I woke up two hours later sans headache but now had stomach pains to deal with. I was determined to catch up on studying, however, so I called my tutor and we managed to get through half the material before things took a turn for the worse. I am not going to disgust everyone with the details but it was not pretty.

I went to the school nurse the next day, who confirmed that I had food poisoning and who also identified the cafeteria as the culprit. I was excused from the final that I had missed that same morning and was told that it should pass within 24 hours. It has been more than 24 hours and I'm still not feeling so hot. Needless to say, I have not bought anything edible from the school since. As the days pass, more of my friends are coming down with the same symptoms that I had. Should someone (maybe a health inspector) look into this? Definitely. Should everyone who got sick receive some kind of restitution? Maybe. Will we receive even an apology? Probably not.

CAUTION: Money and Fame May Cause Lack of Consideration and/or Loss of Humbleness

So, I actually took a night off from being me (mother, student, worker, etc.) to go to St. John's annual Spring Fling concert on the Queens campus. There were to be 3 performers: Mr. Vegas, Notch, and Keyshia Cole. I was there for the main attraction because I love Keyshia Cole as a performer. Of course, the concert did not start on time but I was not upset about it because it was my first concert ever and I was somewhat filled with a sense of euphoria. Though I am not very big on reggae and reggaeton most of the time, I even found myself singing along to all of those songs. I was so excited about seeing Keyshia Cole that I even fought myself through the sea of concert-goers to the third or fourth row in front of the stage. At that point, I didn't mind that I was standing, sweaty, and that the people next to me smelled...but all of that changed 2 hours later when Ms. Cole was still nowhere to be found.


It was almost 12:00 AM and we were still listening to music the DJ was playing because she hadn't shown up or, if she did, hadn't yet begun performing. Though this may sound selfish...that is not how I pictured spending my night off from working, writing, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. I was upset and by the time Keyshia did take the stage after 12 I was nowhere near as excited as I was at the start and I would have gone to take a seat had I still had the energy to fight my way back through the crowd. The performance was admittedly a good, high-energy performance. However, I was then and am still bothered by the fact that she was so late and came on stage with no apologies. I understand that, as a famous artist, she may have been very busy and things may have come up, but she knew she made an agreement to be there at a certain time and she wasn't but acted as if it didn't matter.

I will not sit here berating Keyshia Cole because I loved her songs before then and I still do. But I just hope that all of these artists out here remember that the little people made them who they are...everyone has to start at the bottom and work themselves up to the top and I, as well as others who support artists through song buying amongst other things, am giving them the extra push that they need in their climb to the top.

Coming From Where I'm From

I was born and have lived most of my life in Jersey City, NJ. While I have admittedly had some good times there, my place of residence is far from any one's ideal place to live and raise a family. Undoubtedly, Jersey City has always been a high crime area but recent occurrences have made me question why I don't just pack up my stuff and move anywhere that is far away from there.

Recently, there was a triple shooting mere blocks away from my house with two of the victims dying, one instantly and the other days later in a hospital. The only surviving one is in the hospital in stable condition but is unable to and/or uncooperative in identifying the shooter. Since the shooting happened on a Saturday on a busy street, there were many witnesses but no one is willing to come forward and help bring the murderer of two young men (one a father) cut down in their prime to justice. If that isn't bad enough, the mother of one of the murdered youths was arrested about a week later because she kidnapped a child, locked him in her basement, beat him, and attempted to suffocate him with a garbage bag. Why did she do all of this? Because the young boy's father broke up with her.

Very recently, a 13-year-old boy who was on home instruction was allowed back to school to take a mandatory standardized test and was caught with a gun after he set of the metal detector at the entrance of the building. Is it sad that even elementary schools need metal detectors now? Yes. But not as sad as it would have been if it was not discovered that the boy was carrying a weapon until it was too late. Now the boy is in the Hudson County Youth House awaiting arraignment. Though I am happy that he was caught before he was able to hurt anyone, I can't help but wonder where he could have possibly obtained the gun from and if he will have access to others in the future. But I guess we may never know and no one really cares enough to be bothered by that question because that is a common occurrence when you are coming from where I'm from...

It's A Man, Maury!

Despite the fact that I hate to see women degrade and humiliate themselves and their families on national television, I always end up tuning in to Maury if I happen to be near a television between the hours of nine and eleven. Most of the episodes are paternity tests, which have somewhat lost their novelty for me. There are only so many men that you can see a woman test for paternity of her child before it stops being funny and just becomes sad. There are also so many wild teenage girls I can see come onto the show before I get mad at their parents for letting them become that way rather than do everything in their power to help them make something better of themselves. One topic that still holds appeal for me, despite my frequent denials, is the shows where you have to guess whether a person is a man or a woman. It just intrigues me to realize that some of these men are more feminine than me and I wonder how many others they have fooled. I also give much respect to those who are actually women but are called men by audience members and still manage to keep a smile on their faces. I've tried over and over again and the best score I could get was 6 out of 10. I guess its better than most, though. What? Think you can do better? I'd like to see you try...