Bees

He is in her thoughts.

He is buzzing about there. Striped and somehow flying, despite the impossibility of the weight versus the wings.

Goes about in search of nectar, and in the process has stung her.

How is that something she could genuinely miss, really feel the absence of?

The void where the poison used to be. Where the barb was lodged in her skin.

She envies the flowers.

Things I've learned in 2015 so far:

• Social media is far more important than I thought it was in terms of branding, and I should really get on that.
• Mother Nature has a good time screwing around with calendar dates of the female Shark Week. Meanie.
• It's okay not to have it all figured out at at 18 (original goal), or at 25 (like some of the people I've been meeting).
• It's okay not to give a damn about what you eat. I work at a burger joint, and I eat there all the time. And you know what? Still gorgeous in my eyes. And my vision is the only judgement that really matters.
• Dorm life v. commuter schools: Classes are taken a lot more seriously in the former and the social body is ten times as active. Commuter schools, however, are easier for people who work at the same time.
• Indulgence is healthy. There is no such thing as too much pampering when you work fifty hours a week. There is also no such thing as too much coffee when you work so many hours.
• Mistakes are easy to make, and it's okay to make them. Bounce back like a bobo doll!

I apologize to everyone who gets paid to read resumes.

How I imagine what goes down during the job application process.

The second session I attended was titled "How To Get A Job." I'd argue it was the most interesting one because all of the panelists were having a very civil disagreement without ever saying that they disagreed.

This is because, as someone I met at the dinner pointed out to me, because everyone has a different way to get employed and as long as they are employed, they feel they can say that their way is right. But I'll talk about him later. (Like, another post kind of later.)

They talked a big game about resume clean-up and gave interview pointers. I felt that this much was worth sharing. So what did Katherine learn today?

• You have to get your foot in the door first. Seems a bit obvious to you too, right? Upon first hearing that, I kind of slumped my shoulders back and thought, that's kind of the point isn't it? But getting your foot in the door, especially in an industry where the average income is getting lower every time some writes a blog post (Ironic, I know), is actually kind of a big deal. It's a big deal because I've never really interned anywhere. At least not for an extended period of time. So I have zero experience.
• Nobody likes reading your resume. You're a name on a piece of paper in a stack of papers. And nobody cares that you'll be broke after they see your first typo and throw out your resume. Make them as easy to read as possible. Big type. And proofread, do not just spell check. Do you know how many essays I've edited in my academic career from my peers? How many other people read the same essays looking for the same errors and found new and different ones each time? Typos are easy to miss. I'm sure I missed a few in this post.  Make resume reading less of a chore.
• Nobody cares about you. Which I guess I kind of said before. You have to make them care. All resumes look exactly the same. They sound the same. The wording is always matter of fact, straight to the point. Everyone is familiar with what a cashier does. Everyone is familiar with what a copy editor does. How did you do it differently? How did you change it? Ask yourself how did you make it special because that is an extension of how special you are. And you have to do all that, while making it short, concise, and easy to read. Easy, right? Ha.
• Cover letter or a resume? Two of the panelists were having a civil disagreement over which one is more important. One said the cover letter was more important because all resumes look the same and you could tell a story in your cover letter. The other one said the resume was more important because the cover letter is often only looked at if the resume was liked enough to not get crumpled and thrown in the trash. So to be safe, I'm going to treat both of them with equal importance and be panicky and anxious about both of them being perfect.
• A wide net or a narrow focus? Two panelists said to apply everywhere and be crazy persistent. The third gave very specific instructions: figure out where the cheapest place to live is, draw a one hundred mile radius around it on a map, and look for jobs around there while networking to get a feel for the neighborhood. His advice is sound and safe and logical. It's just not very ambitious. Go big or go home back to your red circle radius.
• New York City is not the only place in the world you can be a journalist. It's just the only place in the world everyone dreams of being a journalist in. But an East Coast perspective is more valuable on the West Coast where no one has it. There are more opportunities in more places. I guess it seems like generic advice to some people, but as someone who has lived in NYC my entire life it never occurred to me that I could work somewhere else. Just don't know if I would really want to.
• "You have five minutes to get your next five minutes. And then those five minutes to get the next five minutes." Which is exactly word for word what Peter McGowan (WCBS-TV) said. Nobody likes reading your resume. I can't imagine how they feel about interviews. You have to be a conversationalist in an interview. You are selling yourself to them as tool to use in their business. Which is even more crucial as a writer, because your voice and your perspective being specific and unique to you is what sets you apart from everyone else. I know the word perspective sounds wrong there. We're journalists; we're not supposed to be biased. But in this case, it's not the separation of facts and sensationalism that I'm referring to when I talk about perspective. It's about the observations that you make, the little things you notice and the details you chase down that no one else is. The stories you chase after that only you seem to be writing. That whole last bit about perspective didn't come from the panelists though. That was entirely my interjection. Do not discredit them for my opinion.
• Stand out. Again, seems obvious. The question is not what you put on your resume. The question is how will someone feel after they read your resume. Think about impact.

So, does the FOIA think we're as inept to handle the truth as Jack Nicholson thinks we are?

So I did something really cool today. Something decidedly less depressing than some of the other stuff I've been posting lately. I attended the Society of Professional Journalists Conference at Hofstra University today. I'm actually still here.

I'm in this musty old room right behind the library labeled "Group Study Room." Despite the name, it is inhabitant of any other soul but me. And no one in here is studying.

I am trying to just sit down and absorb all the information that I obtained today. The first session I attended was about FOIL. I've never heard anyone talk about the Freedom of Information Law as an acronym before today, but I definitely see the significance now and why journalists feel the need to mush it all into one syllable. Us writers. We all think we're so clever.

There were the least students in this particular session today and more professionals in it than any other session I was in. It was definitely the most specific one because it all came down to trying to get around someone telling you you can't have the information you have the right to have. I get it. It's not a law most students run into that often because they're students. We report mostly on the schools we're in.

But the professionals (mostly women today, I might add, which I did not expect) seemed to be having a very profound struggle with being told no, being told it was a matter of national security, or being told they couldn't have it because the matter was "under investigation."

The panel was very encouraging, and discussed the importance of persistence, courtesy, rudeness when it is necessary, and making sure everything you get is on the record all the time. The only journalist on the panel recommended that you shouldn't rely on that single FOI for you story. His answer to the question seemed obvious--source up, buck up, eyes and ears peeled for where else to go for information, and dig around with the officer you're requesting information from. Singular question with a singular answer I guess. Definitely not a singular or exclusive issue though, obviously.

It has piqued my curiosity, however. I'm going to file for one of these on Monday to see what the process is really like.

AIM used to be cool, you know.

Remember AIM? That instant messaging system with the little yellow man with a black outline? I think it's deader than MySpace, but it used to be a really huge deal. Especially with those kids kicking around the screens of their Sidekicks. It was this huge deal that we could IM from our phones.

I didn't have a sidekick in the eighth grade. But I thought I had a lot of free time. I knew my homework would take me all of five minutes.

I had all the time in the world to rush home, put Star Trek: Voyager on, and message this cute, very skinny, handball-playing, bass-wielding, boy with a skater boy haircut. I could literally message him from four o'clock to eleven at night about music and the news of the world and the last book I read.

Wrong. I thought I was too smart to be distracted by some dalliance with a boy when we both knew we were way too young to date. I thought I everything had so far under control, I didn't even have to think twice about what high school I would be attending.

Actually, I didn't think about it all, despite the fact that everyone around me was studying for the SHSAT like they were going to take it and its firstborn child, including this boy. I almost failed the eighth grade.

I did little to no work in my Earth science class, even though I'm pretty sure a total of five assignments were given the entire year. I cried in front of all my teachers. I nodded my head, I promised I would do better because I was better than what I was doing.

I learned then I was exceptionally prone to distractions, especially ones that made me giggle with just the quiver of a brow.

Have you ever made a mistake, and knew it was a mistake, thought about how dumb it was while you were doing it, and did it anyway? As if you never learned a thing? As if every time you did something, it was like you were doing it for the first time again?

As if every time you pushed your hair out of your eyes and made eye contact with milk chocolate brown ones, you saw all the things you were going to regret in his pupils, and then proceeded to do everything you knew you would regret.

In the words of Harley King, "One must give himself completely to his art and not hold back. Throw caution to the wind. Embrace the muse. Make love to your art.”

She needs a muse. Someone to watch, to wonder about day in and day out. To feel for and just be stunned by and surprised by. 

To turn her eloquence into thoughts of wordless blankness as she just tries to process what it meant when her muse just smirked at her the way he just did.

A subject that will just melt her into a puddle of oh-my-god's and what-just-happened's and no-one-can-see-the-look-on-my-face-right-now-right?'s. 

A boy, nay, a man (as she would correct herself and declare for emphasis) who she needs to sit down and think about. Find just the right words to describe who this man is, what he wants out of life, what he's experienced.

Maybe find the right words to figure out what it is she wants from him.

He doesn't need to stupefy her every moment of the day by being a god among men (though, she wouldn't frown upon it). As long as he's around to remind her of what it's like to feel.

Remind her what the high is of being forbidden, or being her secret. What the low is of the hurt, the way she feels even more alone when she's alone because now she knows what it's like to be next to him.

And then she'll go home and breathe for a moment or to, then let herself totally explode all over the pages of her notebook. Her awe of him takes up a line or two, then the adrenaline she feels, how she is physically driven to be near him. Paragraphs and paragraphs about how she's driven, how it's not exactly sparks flying. It's a little more like an electric current.

It's not as if she knows she is going to meet him or that she is looking to. But after the first lapse in judgement, the slip up that he will be there to create, there will be no rescinding the invitation into her mind. His name will just embedded in her brain, shooting off its own synapses. He embodies pure, unadulterated dopamine, in total dysfunction with her brain's inner workings.

I don't think this much caffeine is very healthy.

Scrubbing the shower tiles until 4am was so incredibly unnecessary.

But I did, and my house is going to be and stay pretty because of me. Someone has to care about the way this place looks.

I think the dryer is broken though. Just like everything else. I couldn't go to class today. My bus isn't running on schedule and all the sidewalks are iced over. It's really dangerous for me to leave my house.

Of course, I'm still going to work today. I'm a mess. I'm also incredibly broke. Because even though I'm very proud of the fact I pay for everything on my own-100% tuition all me, no scholarship, no loan, no parental help-my bank account still hurts.

I mean, whatever though because I'm learning all the things I need to. I signed up for a third class on Friday (that I wasn't able to attend today unfortunately) and they won't let me take a fourth, academic probation (means I can't take more than 13 credits at a time) and all that. I also signed up for some online courses to bide my time. Because if I'm at school or at work and I finish studying, I'm on my laptop. I'm pretty sure all the Netflix and Youtube is going to start rotting my brain if I'm not careful, so I figured I may as well learn some more useful things that will actually help me in life, like using WordPress and about web design. A lot of technology involved thingys to make me more well rounded, especially with convergence and all that.

I'm not very eloquent when I've had as much coffee as I've had today.

Anyway, those online courses aren't even for school. They're outside my college. I started today and they're more fun than any class I've taken in ever except for AP Lit, ninth grade English, newspaper, and seventh grade English.

Not necessarily in that order. AP Lit is probably tied with seventh grade English for the win, newspaper a close second.

So yay, for extra special extra useful learning.

I'm going to go take another stab at my bank account and engage in that super special rip off that is only outdone by the rip off known as tuition. Buying college textbooks.

So yeah, that stuff I said about deferring a semester...

HAHAHA.

I actually thought my parents would let me go through with it.

It's funny, really. They think I'm mature enough to live on my own and pay my own bills, but not enough to make decisions about my education.

The hypocrisy of those who think they know better than everyone else never ceases to amaze me.

I'm only taking two classes, so it shouldn't be too exhausting. I'm trying to find a nice work-life-school balance. A balance I'm going to dump the second summer starts because I'm going to gun it.

I mean, I'm on academic probation. I'm pretty sure if I deferred they'd just kick me out anyway.

For 2015, I have only come up with two New Year's Resolutions: no boys, and just gun it. Based on my recent school disaster, you'd think that I was just terrible under pressure. That's false. Last semester I let myself sleep. I gave myself room to breathe. I tried to deal with my family's problems instead of focusing on myself. I can't change the things that go on at home, because like I realized before but didn't practice, I can't save people from themselves. They have to want to be better.

I can only fix my own individual problems. I very much would like to save myself. Nothing less than A's in both of the classes I'm taking, nothing less than A's in my classes for the rest of my life. I don't have room for anything less.

I asked my father for advice on saving up for tuition. You know what he told me? He told me, "When I was your age, I didn't save up. I just made lots of money."

Great advice, Dad.

But since I am apparently not as smart or as hardworking as my balling daddy, I'm going to have to find inventive ways to pay for college.

One of them being financial aid. Last year, I couldn't file because my parents wouldn't give me their information. I don't understand why, I don't know why. But for the first time I can file my taxes on my own, and therefore, don't need them to give up anything.

So I'm gunning it. No option for failure this time around. I'm going to bite the bullet and pray it doesn't enter my cranium and stop me from functioning completely. The rest of the year, and I have no choice in this, the rest of the year has to go exactly the way I'm planning it to.

Just one of his half crooked smiles could be worth her stressing.

It's really easy to misunderstand what other people want from you. Your parents might tell you all they want is for you to be happy, but then have a roadmap for how you will get there that has nothing to do with your own personal definition of happiness. Your friends will say things like, we'll still talk everyday after high school ends, and then high school ends leaving your phone with no texts from anyone you actually graduated with.

People might tell you they love you, but then have no intention of actually seeing you. Boys might tell you that you're adorable one minute, and then tell you how much they need a more stimulating act from you the next. Your boss might tell you that he will work around his schedule even though you know the schedule depends on you being able to work and run solely on caffeine, not sleep.

Then you need to sit down and figure out what you want to give and what you want from them. And then that whole thing is troublesome because how much is too much to ask for? How much do you really need anyway, and do you even have enough to give? Do you have all the energy you need, the emotional tolerance to deal with everyone else's battery? Do you have the time to be everything to everyone, everything to some people? Is it even worth it?

Which of course is the real question. What's worth doing, who is worth doing right, what will make you a little happy, someone else a little happy, and not be a total waste of time. Who is worth all the worry, all the love you have to give? Who isn't worth it, and should you give it anyway because it's the right thing to do, because it's worth it to help those who can't help themselves?

Sometime though, I find myself doing things I know for a fact are not worth it. And I know they're not worth it while I'm doing those things and I do them anyway. I know it's silly and weak.

I just love making a smile happen.