Diversity

While sitting at a Board of Trustees meeting for my Journalism class, I was appalled to hear these trustees discussing diversity in terms of percentages. “Our school is 46% diverse, which is an improvement over the 43% of three years ago,” kind of thing. There were a lot of statistics thrown around. Demographics of the city. Demographics of the school. Demographics of the staff. I couldn’t quite grasp how they were measuring diversity until one of the trustees commented that the progress was too slow for his tastes and that the ultimate goal was to have 25% of each major demographic represented in the staff.

What?

So to clarify, the goal is to have 25% Caucasian, 25% African American, 25% Latino and 25% Asian staff members. A complaint that we lost diversity during the budget cuts further outraged me. “I know, I know, ‘last hired, first hired’ is something we live by and it’s something that will always be there.’” He made it sound like a bad thing.

First of all, you don’t hire someone because they are HIspanic, or white, or for any other superficial reasoning. You hire someone because they are the best candidate for the job. If that means you end up with 70% of your staff being of Asian decent, or any other combination, so be it. This is a school, not an elementary school art project. You don’t pick based on color. Period. That is discrimination, even if your reasoning behind it is completely well meaning. This is never okay.

Secondly, “last hired, first fired” sucks if you’ve got the lowest seniority, but it is one of the most fair ways to handle a massive budget issue. The other option is to remove the least effective teachers and staff members, and with tenure that’s nigh impossible. Perhaps, if the school hadn’t gone hiring only minority teachers in the last few years in an attempt to balance out the diversity, the ones who were laid off because the school couldn’t afford to pay all of their staff.

That’s not fair. I’m pretty sure they weren’t simply hiring minority teachers, but the way the trustees were talking it certainly sounded like that was a major factor.

The fact that pretty much everyone on the board was a older white male didn’t make me feel any better listening to all this. I’m not being intolerant, I’m all for diversity in the workplace, but treating it like a mathematical equation instead of a conceptual goal is a terrible way to try to achieve it.

Replaced?

About a month ago, I started noticing that people who I’ve been very close to for a long time were suddenly quite distant with me. Some people are just too busy to interact with me regularly, and I can understand that. I’ve got a ridiculously full schedule, with school and work and the comic contest I entered. (Well, technically it’s an Original Character Tournament, but that’s neither here nor there.) It’s hard to find some time to see someone. But that doesn’t mean that texts should go unanswered completely. A lot of the trouble is I feel as though I’ve been replaced, something better has come along in other people’s lives.

Let’s be fair, for some of my friends, better things have come along. And I’ve been pushing some people away as well. We all grow out of people sometimes. It seems that it happens around me at an accelerated rate, is all.

There’s one particular change in friendship that I don’t really know what I want to do about. I’ve known this guy for years, and for some reason we clicked even though we’re pretty much complete opposites. He can be difficult to get along with, but we’ve stood with each other through some difficult stuff. Except, like I said, I started to notice I’d been replaced. He’s done this before, he found a surrogate for his male best friend almost immediately after the guy left work, so I probably should have expected this. Except I’m still here. I was here when this happened. There are two girls who filled in what I considered my niche. Only they fill it better, it seems, because I’m not so good at going out and partying and all that, and they apparently are. Either way, I don’t know how to behave around any of them, because I’m not sure where I stand. I used to be friends with all of them, but I feel like there’s this distance between us I can’t bridge anymore. And the girls are starting to act a lot more like the guy. As I mentioned, he’s a jerk. Very judgmental, finds humor in what he thinks is jokingly bigoted comments, a real sarcastic bastard. He’s also got trouble sticking to one girl, it seems.

I don’t think he knows that he pushed me really far with his jackass-ery yesterday. I’ve been tetchy and emotional for the past week, but he wouldn’t shut up. I started snapping back at him, and I think his best-friend surrogate realized I was seriously upset, but didn’t do much to stop the conversation. Whatever, that’s not really the point of this. Although the whole separation might be a blessing in disguise. It may be time for yet another round of growing up.

My point is, I’m feeling lost. I don’t feel like I can turn to the people I used to be able to turn to when things started getting out of hand. That, in turn, is making things get out of hand. I’m feeling a little bit….

Well, I can say this. While I’ve been replaced, I’m not going to knock anyone down a crevice or out the window with a remote-controlled car in order to regain my old position. Neither do I intend to be stuck on the people who have pushed me aside to the point where I’m willing to simply watch the world go by. I will not be put in the attic or the dump or the fender of a truck. I’ll also stop making Toy Story references.

….

Maybe.

I keep thinking about Rex through all of this.

Rejected Again

Oh dear, yet another NO. NO we don’t want you as a trainer. NO we don’t want you at our school. NO I’m not interested in you as anything other than a friend. NO you can’t join our program. I’m tired of it.

I know this isn’t how I’m supposed to view things, but it feels like “NO you’re not good enough.” And I’m really starting to believe it. Actually, I kind of already knew that I believed it somewhere deep down.

In case you’re wondering, I got a NO from the YES Facilitator program at work, which I’ve had my heart set on for months. I didn’t even make it past the first round of auditions. Surprise, everyone who said they were in entertainment seemed to go on. The audition took place in a rehearsal hall, which was covered in mirrors. So I also saw myself. Not terribly happy with the girl I was seeing in that mirror, especially next to most of the others in the room.

I don’t want to be told to try again, or that I’m almost there, or that I’ll get it right eventually. I just want to feel like I did something right, something that validates me.

I’m off to go sulk in my room for a while.

School Enrollment issues.

So today, my last day of summer, I discovered that not only did I accomplish virtually nothing I wanted to do before school starts again, but that I don’t have any classes. Somehow I was under the impression that I had paid, at least in part, for my fall semester. This was not the case, and all my classes were dropped. So now I’ve gone from having all the classes I (didn’t really) want and having been one of the first to enroll to the kid frantically scrambling to find room in classes at the last second. I put myself on the waitlist for all the classes I was in originally, but that’s probably not going to help much. I emailed the teachers, and now I’m trying to find my way into similar classes without completely screwing up my entire schedule.

The woman at the cashier’s desk wasn’t really very kind about it either. To add insult to my injury, she told me to just re-enroll in the classes as if there would be room in them. Last semester nobody got into classes. Waitlisted or petitioning, everyone got screwed. I’m terrified. My health insurance depends upon me taking twelve units in school. And if I screw up my schedule too much, I’ll collide with work or with something else I have to do and I’ll be screwed.

Super stressed over this.

In related news, I don’t recommend driving while crying. It’s not safe.

Tumblr account

I’ve been reading a comic by a gentleman on deviantArt.com by name of Seph Hunter. (You can check it out here.) Essentially it’s a journal. He updates with a very short comic, usually only one or two panels, in which he recounts something that happened that day. So, after following him for a month or so, I decided that might not be a bad place to take my work. It’s not the only time I’ve seen that kind of thing. A while ago, my friend Leif started up a Comic-A-Day project which was very similar. So now, I’ve decided to do my own version of the comic journal.

Behold, my tumblr.com account! Here I will be hosting a comic that updates every day or so relating something that happened to me. So far, I’ve got two entries. I’ll post them here too, but I’d like to get a few people following that account on their own. Enjoy!

http://anapplescruff.tumblr.com

I couldn’t get away from this guy for a good five minutes.

Justine turned 20, and I slept through quite a lot of it. Felt like such a jerk.

Complaining

I’m sorry, this week is not going my way and I’m tired of it.

I just logged into deviantArt, thinking I would work on the original character tournament entry I had and forget all the stupidity I’ve had lately, and I got a rude message from the guy I’m competing against. So to you, username simongreve, word of advice: If you want to know what happens in the story I’m in the middle of drawing, ask me for the plot politely. Writing a note with so-called advice that has typos and sarcasm will make me completely unwilling to work with you. Oh, and your advice to start an in-between piece between rounds is duly noted. Especially because I did, but I have other things to do with my life and I’m getting to the actual inking and posting of said comic at a slower pace than you wanted. Also, I needed the results of Round one to know how to continue. Round two of this contest opened yesterday, douchebag. Deal with the fact that we have until the end of July and back the fuck off. Oh, my bad, two days ago. I have no idea what day it is because I’ve been working with morons all night for two nights. DAMN.

Also, username simongreve, from your profile picture I have a strong suspicion that you are in high school. In fact, if you aren’t graduating this year you will be soon. So, thanks to the past two nights and the nightmarish behavior of the thousands of graduates I’ve seen, I no longer consider you to be a human. You are a lesser organism and I can and will treat you as inferior until you prove to me that you deserve it. That goes for all the rest of those idiots from last night. I’m terrified that the creatures I was supposed to be entertaining last night are supposed to be the future of this country. Wow.

As for you, Sovereign Parks Board of Directors and Paragon Management, y’all can go die. Disband the parking nazis, or at least take responsibility for putting the group together. You set neighbors to spy on other neighbors and then won’t admit that this is ultimately your fault when we get angry. Also, because you posted signs all over the place making it clear that those who do not have a complex parking hang tag cannot be parked between the hours of 10pm and 6am. I parked my car in the complex at 5:59 this morning. Yes, I broke the rule by one minute. No, you do not need to leave me a nasty notification telling me I will be towed for a rule infraction that I didn’t actually make. There are people in this complex who never move their cars at all. That’s abuse of the parking spots. There are other people who park without stickers, including the woman I strongly suspect of reporting my car. She’s one of the bitches who does this kind of thing on a regular basis, so it really won’t surprise me. Especially after she saw me come home at 6:01 yesterday morning and spent five minutes staring at my car while her shitty little designer dog barked its head off, per usual. Trust me, you’re not perfect, and next time you make a “rule infraction” (i.e. breaking the law) I’m going to be reporting you to the proper authorities. Have fun with that.

I don’t want to hear my mother sniping at me about not having a boyfriend or not buying milk, both of which she’s doing as I type because she is watching “Say Yes to the Dress” and drinking tea. I don’t want to wait endlessly for my new phone to come in, which should have been here by now because it has been five business days, which was the latest it was promised to be delivered. I don’t want to feel the insane paranoia and all the rest of the insanity my body put me through the past two nights from sleep deprivation and caffeine overdose. I don’t want the hundreds of little things that are going wrong lately to keep happening.

The worst part is, although I’m ranting and raving here and in my head, I’m emotionally not reacting. That kind of worries me, because of how I usually react. I’m prone to emotional overraction, not Vulcan pissy pseudo-stoicism.

Someone please make things better.

Summer Glau

I think signing into WordPress and finding something like this in my comments would be the most glorious thing ever.

It would actually be nice to know that more than three people read this. But I don’t want to make a mockery of the internet by spamming my blog all about when I have little to nothing to say.

Water Dragon

I was up late last night working on this nice thing. It’s a little messy, but I’m happy with it.

It's a water dragon! With bioluminesence and barely visible rainbow cilia. Yay!

Accomplished Human Being

So lately I’ve been wondering why I’m so disgruntled about work and school and all that. I think it’s because, despite everything that’s ever happened to me, I’m feeling like I’ve never accomplished anything. I have never really done anything in the real world that amounts to much.

The ice skating? I was too old, skated against the book instead of other skaters, and I never really was any good at it.

Mock trial? Not only was this a fancy version of debate club, but this was in high school. Once you graduate, nothing you did in high school is worth anything.

I got into college. Community college, that accepts anyone. And I’m still trying to transfer out while everyone around me seems to be graduating and declaring majors and moving along happily with their lives. I’m still undeclared and I’m still looking for a school I can afford that will have me.

I’ve worked for Disney for three years. And I’ve nothing to show for that. I’m still at the same level I was when I hired in. Lately I’m feeling like I’ll always be in that low-level position. This, right now, is probably a large part of the reason I am a.) so resentful about the trainer thing and b.) trying desperately to be a trainer anyhow.

And before you say anything, no. No, I don’t consider finally getting my emotions under some kind of control to be an accomplishment, because it’s something most people learn to do when they are twelve to fifteen years of age. No, I don’t consider three years in a job a good thing, because it’s literally eating up my entirely life and I feel completely trapped half the time I’m there. No, stupid things like NaNoWriMo and online character tournaments and being a know-it-all queen are not accomplishments, not in the sense I’m talking about.

I just want to have something I can tell the world I did and have them acknowledge that it is in fact an achievement.

And this is brought to you by a manager asking, “What do you want from the Disney Company? I will help you get it.” I didn’t answer her. Because this kind of thing, verbalized, is not going to come out happy.

Sorry about the moody complainy blog entry after so much nothing for so long.

Struggling

Work, school, bus, projects, friends, eat, sleep, breathe, and homework on the side. Spring break is not really a break for me. Honestly, I’d love to just have a few days of doing absolutely nothing. I did get most of Wednesday to myself, but the evening was marred by going to a Handbell Practice where everyone was ready to kill the others. We’re really nervy about our Easter performance, it seems. Plus I just don’t like Kim, but that’s beside the point. I’ve tried mild escapism, but that didn’t work either. Reading Star Trek novels on the bus is really not productive and no matter how much I try, I cannot pretend I am on some desert world with an unstable sun and gallivanting with Spock and McCoy. Not for long anyway. They never turn and question who I am or why I’m there, and that spoils the illusion a little, don’t you think?

Seriously though, I’m slipping behind in school again. And all these things I keep meaning to do are piling up. And I haven’t seen anyone at all outside of work for more than 30 minutes, and those two visits were with people I haven’t seen in at least a year. I’m staying up late not to accomplish things (unless they are due tomorrow) but because I’m addicted to the internet and trying to escape into cyberspace. So maybe I am indulging in escapism after all. Just not through the many novels I’ve been reading, both the ones that are assigned and the ones that actually have entertainment value for me. The bus schedule has become more and more of a mess, and now I can only work certain hours of the day if I don’t want to sleep at the feet of Robot Lincoln or with the Tiki Birds. Maybe Trader Sam would let me into his hut if I asked really nicely, but I don’t care for his *ahem* taste in friends, if you take my meaning.

Also, things are changing around me, and once again I’m not sure how to deal with them. I’m trying to find time to see the doctor for some tests (I’m not really comfortable sharing what they are for, but if you are paranoid like I am just know that I am fairly sure this is not a huge danger, but something I should have checked out so it doesn’t come bite me later. I’m also still having hearing issues, made somewhat more fun and exciting by my mother’s insistence on talking way too quietly and my father’s insistence on turning up the television far too high. I don’t know what normal speaking tones are half the time. And working parades and then Opera House means I have to switch my volume constantly too, so I’m often at the wrong one. Lucky people around me.

Anyways, I just thought it was time for an update and I didn’t have anything I thought truly deserved a post. It’s not as if everyone else with a blog isn’t mentioning Easter tomorrow for some reason or another. So that is all.