I think it’s fair to say that as the weather has been brightening here in State College, so too has the overall mood of the student body. I’m not sure whether it’s the warmer temperatures or more sunlight, but something about spring makes college students reach for their hammocks and Spikeball equipment and flock towards the HUB lawn. Personally, instead of spending the afternoon in class at the Borland Building yesterday, I met up with my SOILS 71 class at the bus stop outside the Creamery, and we all headed off-campus to the Penn State Student Farm for a field trip.

I must admit: while I was excited to spend the afternoon outdoors in the fresh air, I wasn’t really expecting much out of the trip to the student farm. For some background, I come from a pretty large agricultural area, so greenhouses and fields of crops aren’t exactly anything new to me; in fact, in the summertime, I like to place my bets as I fall asleep about what will wake me up first in the morning: my next-door neighbor’s rooster, or the 7AM wake-up-trumpet from the summer camp a quarter mile down the road.

However, the moment I stepped off the blue school bus and into the bright sun, I immediately began to get excited about the afternoon ahead. Though the Student Farm predictably greeted me with fields and greenhouses (or what I thought were greenhouses… more to come on that), as I scanned the visible perimeters of the property, there were also quite a few structures and objects that puzzled me: a small trailer with solar panels and a wooden trailer attachment behind it, a large, trans-oceanic shipping crate with three doors in the side, and so many more oddities. Caught off-guard by this non-traditional array of farm-related things, I eagerly listened as our tour guide brought us through each area and explained its purpose.

The first thing we learned about the farm was that, despite its small size, it produced over eight tons of food during 2022. Maybe a three-acre plot of land is hard to picture for some, but I can undoubtedly say that when I was standing in the midst of it, I was absolutely shocked that an area of land that small could produce so much food. More than that, we learned that absolutely none of that food was produced using pesticides, which made it all the more impressive. As we began to walk around the farm, I learned that what I had originally called “greenhouses” are actually called “high tunnels”, which are fundamentally different. While greenhouses have rigid walls and gravel floors, crops in high tunnels are planted directly into the soil floors, and the thin plastic walls are fitted with adjustable bottom flaps that roll up automatically when the temperature reaches 65 degrees or more. I was also shocked to learn that each of the high tunnels was built in a single day over a ten-hour period by student volunteers.

Continuing our walk around the farm, we stopped at the solar panel trailer and learned that it was a project prototype from the department of biological engineering. Using energy from the sun, the trailer is hooked up to a hand-built, wood-frame trailer that houses a washing machine onboard. However, the washing machine isn’t hooked up to a water line, but rather it is used as a giant salad-spinner to dry fresh kale, lettuce, and cabbage after harvest and washing. How’s that for innovation? And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, as we continued our walk past the shipping crate, we learned that it was also a student engineering project; it’s a giant, three-part cooler that is used to store vegetables at three temperature ranges to keep them from spoiling after harvest. Not only did the design and creation of this cooler keep Penn State from purchasing an industrial cooler, it also reused pre-existing materials and made them more energy-efficient by using simple house-hold air conditioning units to keep each section of the cooler at its specific temperature. As someone who just switched out of the College of Engineering, moments like these certainly make me question whether I made the right decision!

We spent the rest of the tour checking out various areas of crop preparation: a mushroom-growing area that looked like small Lincoln Log piles, an in-progress hydroponics station, and a high tunnel planted with wheat and peas as cover crops to prevent weeds from sprouting in planting areas. As we concluded the tour, we heard from our guide about more ways to get involved with the farm, which include anything from casual volunteering to paid internships. We all thanked our guide, and as the bus pulled away from the farm, I reflected on how much I had learned during the trip. I couldn’t believe that the farm had been practically “in my backyard” for the whole year, and I was only learning about it three weeks before the end of the semester. More than the cool projects I learned about, I’m grateful that my eyes have been opened to ways I can get involved in more sustainability efforts on campus. Personally, one of my interests is environmental sustainability, as well as how it overlaps with human rights, and visiting the student farm was a reminder of how many tangible ways I can make a difference by getting involved in these efforts. Within different branches of the student farm, any student has the opportunity to educate local schools about gardening, talk with designers of the new expansion plans for the farm, help grow produce to be donated to the Lions Pantry, and so much more. Personally, I’ve already gotten on board with the student farm. Just this morning, I reached out the coordinator of the Schreyer Pocket Garden to see about any volunteering opportunities left before the end of the semester.

So, as I leave you with a few final words and a reminder to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather, I also encourage you to think about the topics or advocacy projects you’re passionate about. Speaking from experience, there’s definitely a way to get involved and make a tangible difference in your passion while here on campus, and I hope this post has inspired you to go out and find it. Worst comes to worst, you can always join me getting your hands dirty in the Pocket Garden this month!

Around 11:30 last Monday morning, I finished packing the last of my wool socks and friendship bracelet string into my suitcase, and I clomped down the Simmons dormitory steps in my hiking boots on my way out the door.

A little under an hour later, I found myself in the passenger seat of a car speeding through the woods on the gravel drive of Camp Blue Diamond, and soon enough, I arrived at Week 1 of Outdoor School as a new person — I mean that literally; for the rest of the week, my nature name would be Aspen (after the beautiful species of deciduous tree found throughout the Western US), and I would know the other counselors only by their chosen nature names as well.

For those who don’t know, Outdoor School is a program run by the Penn State’s Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center that brings local fifth-grade classes to the central Pennsylvania woods for a week of environmental education, exploration, and fun. It earns its counselor participants 2 credits of general health and wellness (RPTM 140), and it counts as 75 hours of community service. It’s run every semester, and personally, I knew as soon as I heard about the opportunity that it was something I wanted to do. And after a day of counselor training, I was overwhelmed with excitement as Juniata Valley’s fifth grade class arrived in a big yellow school bus on Tuesday morning.

As soon as the kids arrived, I was launched into a blur of ecosystem science, campfires, exploration. Throughout the week, I made friends with an entire grade of ten-year-olds, helped my learning group leader (LGL) teach the kids about air, water, soil, plants, animals, and decomposers, and ate more cheeseballs and applesauce than I have in all the rest of all my 19 years of living combined. Even as I felt at times like the days were chaotic and unpredictable, I always went to bed in our Barn Owl cabin feeling pleasantly exhausted from the day. Now, back in State College for over a week, I miss the simplicity and childlike wonder of Outdoor School, but I am also grateful for all the things I’ve learned from my experience as a counselor there. For my passion post this week, I felt it was only fitting to list a few of the ways my eyes were opened by this special group of kids:

1. Minimizing food waste is easy! (Also, food tastes better outside) — After each meal, the whole camp collectively weighed our food waste, and though it fluctuated between 1.25 pounds at our best and 5 pounds at our worst, a cafeteria full of roughly 80 people was able to minimize our waste enough to fit in a small plastic bin at every meal. Given the pickiness of the average ten-year-old, the zero food waste goal at ODS reminded me how doable it is for us as college students to reduce our impact on food waste, too.

2. Having a purpose improves our mood and self-esteem. — Before we weighed our food waste after each meal, each table had an assigned camper (and sometimes counselor) who was responsible for setting the table, bringing out the serving dishes full of food from the kitchen, and cleaning up dishes after the meal. As the week progressed, I watched the kids’ attitude turn from “You mean we have to get to breakfast 15 minutes early to prepare for other people to eat before we can take food?” to “Is it our turn to be hoppers yet??? Well, what about for lunch?” It was nothing short of inspiring to watch how assigning these kids a little bit of responsibility and then personally thanking them with the rest of the table after each meal made them feel like they (and their contributions to the group) were important and valued. Back on campus, I now find myself missing the songs we sang before and after each meal, and I especially miss the family style of dining and all the crazy conversations I had with the kids all week.

3. Having a fresh start helps us open up, be curious, and smile more. — I don’t just mean this about the nature names we counselors got to choose for ourselves. Do you remember the mean kid of your fifth grade class? What about the kid who was always causing trouble or kid who was always talking to themselves? One of the coolest parts about Outdoor School is that even though the fifth graders come to us with these labels within their own grade, none the counselors or staff at ODS know or care about these labels, and we’ve also never met the kids attached to them. This means that each kid receives the same expectations as everyone else, and they are each treated with a growth mindset, graciousness, and encouragement regardless of their history before ODS. As the week progressed, I watched some of the kids who I later learned were the usual “trouble makers” of their grade blossom and flourish during our lessons. Their teachers were shocked by these students’ behavior, and it only served as a reminder that many times, labeling someone without giving them a fair chance only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. On a more comical note, I was also reminded by this spirit of freedom and opportunity that when curious or engaged, the average fifth grader asks about fifteen to twenty questions per hour. Multiply that by ten, and you can probably estimate how much quiet-time I got last week…

4. It feels like magic to make magic happen. — So much of what we do as counselors at ODS prioritizes making the entire week a positive outdoor experience for kids who normally may not have that opportunity. And whether I was expecting it or not, at times, proving that experience for them proved itself to be really difficult, frankly. Kids say things they don’t understand the meaning of. They form cliques and they can be bullies. But through it all, they wear their emotions on their sleeves, and they are good people at heart. So even after the exhaustion of the week, remembering the moment when a kid told me that they were having more fun on a hike learning about decomposers than they have ever had at school before has made it all worth it. Dressing up in crazy costumes to quiz the entire cafeteria about the “mystery animal”? Worth it. Feeling a little bit silly singing and dancing with other 20-something-year-olds about saluting penguins? Worth it. Sitting in the library Starbucks for hours on end this week to catch up on a week’s worth of missed work for 21 credits of classes? Worth it. But more than anything, coming back to State College knowing that, even if only for just a week, I’ve helped teach these kids that there is so much more to the world around them than they ever realized?

So. Incredibly. Worth it.

I would do Outdoor School again in a heartbeat, and I plan to apply again for the coming fall semester. If any of you are interested, please reach out, and I am more than happy to talk with you about it.

Until next post!

I don’t know about all of you, but I wasn’t a particularly voracious reader as a child. I enjoyed reading for school, on car trips and in waiting rooms, and minimally in my free time, but I usually preferred to be exploring outside or playing basketball in the driveway instead of curled up with a book. By the time I got to high school, life just got busy, and though I still genuinely enjoyed most of the books we read for English class, I began to find that I no longer had the time or interest to read fiction novels (with the exception of a good beach read in the summer) outside of school. However, since I’ve been in college — and especially during this semester, in particular — I have been doing exponentially more reading for class, and my entire perspective on how reading can transform our thoughts and behaviors has changed.

Firstly, I have been absolutely astounded by the amount of new information that human beings have the potential to absorb simply by sitting down with a work of literature or an academic paper for an hour or so. I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to realize that just because I am generally not a fan of fiction books does not mean that I am uninterested in reading as a whole, but somewhere in the past few weeks, that light bulb went off, and lately I continue to find myself amazed that there is a work of literature or a paper somewhere in the depths of academia for nearly every topic that you could possibly desire to learn more about. For someone who has always been determined to understand the “why” behind the majority of ideas I am introduced to, this has been quite the revelation. What’s more, I have found that reading the works of people who have been asking themselves the same questions or who are interested in the same ideas as I am is an amazing way to expand not only my knowledge but also my perspective on most topics, and that reading works by authors who have had very different experiences or who have dissimilar backgrounds from myself is quite possibly the best way to expand my worldview and challenge my ideas, values, and ethics. More times than not, I have lately found myself staring at the last sentence of a paper and wondering how I could possibly be left with more questions that when I started reading. Though it is admittedly frustrating at times, this feeling has come to be one of my favorite moments throughout the week because each time it happens, I feel encouraged and excited that there is so much more I have yet to explore and to learn.

(Image source)

In addition to all of the new ideas I’m acquiring from vast amounts of reading, I have also been lucky this semester to be in classes that are largely discussion-based. At least three times a week, I am engaged in class for an hour or more in some kind of seminar or round-table discussion. This style of class has not only allowed me to share my own perspectives and questions about material, but it has also taught me how to be a better listener. As a student from my English class pointed out a few weeks ago, there is a reason that human beings only have one mouth but two ears; we should be listening and formulating our own opinions based on what we learn a lot more frequently than we are speaking. In this way, intentional contemplation before we speak leads us to contribute more thoughtful and complex ideas to the conversations in which we choose to take part. Personally, I sometimes find it hard not to engage in discussion when I feel I have something valuable to contribute or if the conversation begins to lag, but recently I have been practicing self-restraint when it comes to speaking out in class because so many of my fellow students have so many brilliant thoughts to contribute when provided the opportunity. Sometimes silence can feel uncomfortable, but if students who aren’t as confident speaking out in the group never feel like they have the chance to do so, everyone at the table is missing out on their ideas and opinions. In other words, through both reading and listening, I’ve come to realize this semester that we often stumble upon the most insightful or thought-provoking ideas when we engage with other people’s thoughts before we formulate our own.

Finally, since I have begun to develop new perspectives about a lot of the topics I have been discussing within my classes, I am experimenting with learning how to better articulate my beliefs and ideas more clearly. I’ve done more writing over the past six months than I have throughout the rest of the years of my life combined, and I have spent a lot of time determining how to best communicate the emotions and ideas that have taken root in my brain regarding different topics. However, the most significant caveat to this communication is that it often leaves me with the knowledge that I believe strongly in an idea, but I end up feeling lost about where to turn to next in order to take action in my belief. For example, the following sentiment is an idea that I have come to strongly believe, and it is also one that is often at the center of many environmental ethics conversations:

We need to expand our definition of Westernized wilderness in order to avoid discriminating against individuals and their cultures who do not define wilderness using the same romanticized and anthropocentric lens.

Even if you don’t understand this statement or aren’t interested in what it is communicating, the point is that this statement tells us what we should be doing. What it lacks, however — like many arguments in our modern world — is any indication of how we ought to do it, which leads us to ask “What does taking action look like?”, “How will we spread this idea to people who aren’t an active part of this conversation?”, and “Why is it so important that we invest ourselves in this?”. Questions such as these are often the hardest to answer, and sometimes it can feel like you’ve hit a brick wall when you have come to the point of asking them. What I’d like to share with you all regarding that stage of your thinking are words that a professor asked me when I explained to her my dilemma in feeling lost about how to put my beliefs into practice:

Where lies your power, and what are your tools?

In what areas of your life do you feel as though you have a voice? Who looks to you for leadership and guidance? What platforms do you have at your disposal to share your beliefs? What can you change in your everyday life in order to turn these ideas into intentional ways of living? As an example, I personally know that while social media is a great tool for many activists to share their beliefs, I don’t have the desire or the audience to utilize it as a platform of my own. What I do have, however, is a group of elementary-aged campers that I will be teaching and leading in a matter of weeks during Outdoor School, and you can best believe that I have been giving a lot of contemplation to how I want to teach them to respect the outdoors and each other.

What do you believe? Which perspective of arguments do you resonate with? (Image source)

Having said all of this, I hope you can look back and reflect on what you have been learning and how your beliefs have changed since being in college. I’d probably be pretty surprised if you felt that you are the exact same person as you were on move-in day. I encourage you to look back on how you have grown as a person and what you feel is important from an ethical standpoint, and then I challenge you to ask yourself the same question as my professor asked me. If you feel so inclined, leave your thoughts down below in the comments or feel free to reach out to me; I would love to hear about what’s been on your mind recently.

This week, I’m headed to Ohio to see one of my favorite artists perform live.

It’s been a long time since I first added Noah Kahan to the list in my Notes app of artists I’d someday like to see in concert, and forty-eight hours from now, I’ll be able to check off his name. I couldn’t attend his show in Philly back in October, and the decision to purchase tickets for his Columbus show was a spontaneous one back in November, but looking back now, I could not be more confident that I made the right choice.  I’ve loved Noah Kahan’s music since I first discovered his album “Busyhead” in high school (I even have it on vinyl back at home), but the artist’s recent transition into more of a folk/storytelling genre with the release of his latest album “Stick Season” came at just the right time in fall semester, and as I look back on the emotional roller coaster on which I felt trapped at the time, it hasn’t escaped my notice that this album was incredibly formative for me.

Suffice to say that my first semester was a difficult transition. To read more about the details, I’ll refer you to my post “On the Interim”, which I wrote over winter break as a reflection on the first four months of my time here at PSU. The moral of the story however, still remains the same: for the first few months of living in State College, I wanted nothing but to leave State College. I remember the day “Stick Season” came out, I had no idea that Noah Kahan was releasing a new album. I’d heard the singles he had already released, “Stick Season” and “Northern Attitude”, but since I don’t follow social media very closely, I’d missed the news that he would be releasing the twelve other tracks that day. I can recall the exact chair I was sitting in within the lobby of the Hammond Building as I saw the text come through my phone: “TODAY IS A GREAT DAY”. I opened the link to Spotify that I’d been sent, and my heart dropped in my chest. Noah’s music has always had the power to reach emotional parts of me that I didn’t know were hiding inside, and while my heart quickly filled in anticipation and excitement over his new songs, I had also spent the majority of the months preceding that moment trying to cope with the mess of emotions that were swirling inside me, and I was incredibly apprehensive about how I would respond to his new album. I decided it was likely not in my best interest to listen to the album in public, so I went about the rest of my day hardly paying attention in class before I made it back to my dorm to listen to the album alone.

When I got back to my room, I sat on my bed and put in my airpods with the volume up. The album’s first two tracks were the singles Kahan had already released, so I hummed along with “Stick Season”, already having experienced the realization that I was in my own “season of the sticks” in State College. But as the rest of the album began to play, everything else in my room melted away and I was overcome with emotion. I remember moving to the floor, lying on my back while staring at the ceiling, and feeling the music in every vein of my body. Every song resonated, and each transition among feelings of nostalgia, grief, anticipation, longing, love, desolation, loss, angst, compassion, foreboding, humor, and confusion was a reassurance that I was not the only one who had ever felt these things. Each song spoke to me in its own way:

“All my Love” was a positive reminder that it’s okay to transition from being “in love” with someone to just “loving” that person platonically. In Noah’s words, “There ain’t a drop of bad blood; you’ve got all my love”.

“She Calls Me Back” was an echo of the relief I felt when my people reached out to check in on me.

“Come Over” was three minutes and seventeen seconds of self-indulgence in grieving a past relationship.

“New Perspective” felt like inhaling fresh air; it was an eye-opening wakeup call that I was in a new place with new people, and that my worldview was expanding beyond my own hometown (where the line “the intersection got a Target and they’re calling it ‘downtown'” is scarily accurate, but just with Walmart instead).

“Everywhere, Everything” was an oddly comforting reminder that we’ll all eventually be “food for the worms to eat”, and that I wasn’t getting anywhere by wasting time here on Earth trying to ignore the hard feelings instead of feeling them and living.

“Orange Juice” conveyed the uncomfortable notion that as difficult as it may be to experience, friends grow apart, and that it’s okay for that to happen. It was a reminder that even though I wanted to be geographically close to my friends again, “I didn’t think to ask [them] where they’d gone”, emotionally, and that I needed to accept that it was okay that we were all finding new paths and new people.

“Strawberry Wine” was just hard to listen to, even though it wasn’t quite for the same reason as Kahan wrote it. I miss my Mommom.

“Growing Sideways” made me laugh; “pouring my trauma out on some sad-eyed, middle-aged man’s overpriced new leather couch” was just too real.

“Halloween” was the only song I couldn’t immediately relate to; but its haunting guitar and violin accompaniment almost tangibly surrounded me and forced me to breathe deeply, for which I was grateful.

“Homesick” hit harder than any song I’d ever listened to. I had no idea where “home” was supposed to be now that I had moved out, but I sure as hell knew I wanted more for myself than Pennsylvania, and I was terrified of spending “the rest of my life with what could’ve been”.

“Still” made me feel like I needed to escape; “You miss something that you can’t place, but you can’t deny it… You can’t stay here, it’s hard to face and it feels too ugly”…

“The View Between Villages” left me sobbing. It still gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. It builds in intensity the same way that I had been feeling my own emotions building over the past few months, and it ends suddenly with calm and reassurance. The line, “It’s just me and curve of the valley, and there is meaning on Earth; I am happy” was taped to my wall from that day until the end of my semester because it reminded me that I was going to be okay, that feeling small can be a good thing, that nature is always there, and that sometimes, you have to “split the road down the middle” to figure out how your past will connect with the horizon in front of you.

I’ve often thought about that afternoon lying on the floor of my dorm, and part of me sees it as a turning point in my first semester. It was the moment I opened myself to feeling emotions that I had only let emerge fleetingly when it was convenient for me to do so until that point. It left me exhausted, emotionally drained, but somehow more at peace than I had felt since arriving at Penn State. “Stick Season” was a conviction that things would be okay, even though it would take time. I left my dorm that afternoon feeling as if someone had removed a filter from my vision; the sun was brighter, my chin was held higher. My problems weren’t gone, by any means, but their chokehold over my emotional and mental state had been released.

And now, just over a month into second semester, I feel very okay. And in less than a day, I’ll be in a car on the way to Columbus, Ohio to see these songs performed live.

Coming full-circle is a visceral experience.

 

Can you identify with any of the following situations?

• You’re walking between classes and somehow your feet know exactly where to turn without you having to pay attention, so you spend your walk responding to texts, scrolling through Instagram, or checking emails.
• Your Apple Watch won’t stop buzzing with notifications, but after you silence it, you’re overwhelmed to find the number of notifications waiting for you when you finally check your phone again.
• You set a time limit to finishing the rest of your homework, but then you become frustrated or annoyed when you aren’t done all the problems by the time you said you’d be.
• Thanks to the trash trucks outside your window, you wake up at night and look at the clock, realizing it’s 5:30 AM. You start to stress about all the sleep you’re losing by being awake at such an hour, but then you’re too anxious to fall back into a quality REM cycle before the alarm goes off at 7.
• You feel as though your lack of productivity makes you less efficient and therefore less successful in your day than if you had managed to check all the boxes on your daily to-do list, even if the boxes you left unchecked aren’t even urgent.

I’m not sure about you all, but I’ve experienced each of these situations in the past 48 hours alone. Lately I’ve been feeling like my phone and the time have more control over my habits and my emotions than I do, and it’s been incredibly anxiety-inducing. Just yesterday, as I walked through campus between classes, I took note of the amount of people with their heads buried in their phones. Comically, it even became easier to count those who weren’t included in this group, until I had the uncomfortable realization that, more frequently and more recently than I’d like to admit, I myself have been a member of the phone group, unaware of both myself and my surroundings on my walk between buildings.

To give further context, I also feel it is worth mentioning that I choose to practice what a close friend calls “digital minimalism”; I don’t have a very extensive digital footprint, and I keep all of my social media (which is really just Instagram) only on my laptop. So, the realization of how much I’ve felt glued to my phone lately — especially despite not having the distraction of social media at my fingertips — has been unsettling and unpleasant, and accompanied by a growing habit of feeling the excessive compulsion to check the time of day (God forbid I show up to class a few minutes late or leave someone on read…), this realization was enough to convince me that it was time to revert to one of my old high school anxiety-management exercises: a no-phone day.

So, from the time I went to bed on Tuesday night to when I woke up on Thursday morning, I left my phone turned off on the corner of my desk. More than that, I also removed my watch, covered the clock on my dorm microwave with three layers of sticky notes, and taped over the date/time display on my laptop. For the entirety of our snow day, I had no perception of time and no contact with my phone. And here were my biggest takeaways:

1. Constant interaction with my phone is a great way to stay in touch with my friends from home, but it’s also incredibly taxing. There were multiple times when I would think of something funny to tell them about or feel the urge to send them a picture of a snowman I made, but those things were no less funny or meaningful when I told them about my snow day activities a day later. What was more notable was the liberation I felt from not having my Fitbit buzz incessantly with notifications from the group chat. I was able to stay more focused on my day’s activities, and I even found myself knocking on the doors of some neighbors I hadn’t talked to in a while for some company.
2. I’m much more efficient in completing a task when I’m not wasting time and focus constantly checking the clock during the process. Who would have guessed?
3. I’ve definitely been letting the time play a large role in controlling my activities — how often I eat, when I shower, how long I spend on something. But when you don’t have a perception of what time it is or how long you’ve been doing the same task, you tend to pay more attention to what your body is actually telling you. “Do I need to take a stretch break from reading this textbook? Am I hungry for dinner yet? Do I feel like walking the extra distance to the IM today, or just running at the White Building instead?” All of these thoughts were far more in-tune with my physical, mental, and emotional needs than usual, and it was startling to realize how much freer I felt to choose when and for what duration I did things throughout the course of the day.

All of this is a long-winded way of communicating that my no-phone day was incredibly successful in helping me draw back and re-examine my phone and time habits. If I had to summarize my experience concisely, I’d probably relay that my phone-free snow day reminded me that time and technology are things to notice, not to consult. And for those who are intrigued by the idea of a no-phone day, I highly encourage you to try it out. Tell your people your plan on the night before and provide an emergency contact number to one or two who are most important (I gave my roommate’s number to my mom in case of emergency). From there, the day is up to you! If you’re interested in more ways to reduce your technology and clock interaction, I’ll leave you with a list of additional actions I took or resolutions I’ve made regarding the subject:

• Cover the clocks! Simple sticky notes will do.
• Set work timers, but use them as “breaks” rather than “deadlines”. See how much progress you’ve made, but don’t be mad at yourself for accomplishing less than you intended.
• Zip your phone into your backpack while you walk between classes. Notice the world around you and be grateful for the time you’re spending outside in the fresh air.
• Set up a focus mode on your phone with only music and notes. Use it as a detox when you can’t take a whole day off from your messages and notifications.
• Go on phone-free walks with a friend, or leave the phone in the dorm when you go to the dining hall.
• Set a time or frequency to check messages or social media throughout the day, and stick with it!
• Remind yourself that your self-worth is not determined by your productivity during the day.

I hope this post was able to leave you with some food for thought, and until next week, I wish you all well!

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lianna. I’m currently a first-year engineering student, but I am in the process of transferring to Landscape Architecture. If you’re interested in learning more about me and my first semester here at Penn State, I encourage you to check out my last post “On the Interim” or read back through some of my earlier posts.

As for my passion blog theme, I have chosen to continue with the same thread as last semester: advice, stories, or experiences that open my eyes to the world around me. Looking back at previous posts, you’ll find that the topics I choose each week don’t generally have much in common with each other: snow-caterpillars, forest therapy walks, poems, art museums, dining halls, etc…. However, what these topics do all share is that they have taught me a lesson, challenged me to change my perspective on a situation, or simply provided me with “food for thought”, if you will. And the mere act of reflecting on my week to select my topic for that particular blog post has actually been far more impactful than I first expected; it’s left me with a breadcrumb trail of lessons I’ve learned and changes in perspective that I’ve encountered during my time here at PSU so far, and it continues to help me focus my mindset on self-growth and personal reflection each week. And if you ask me, those outcomes aren’t too bad for a required English assignment.

So, in spirit of continuing this theme, I’ve chosen to start this semester off by sharing a story that I found particularly impactful from a podcast I listened to over winter break. If you are new to my blog, you’ll soon learn that Brené Brown is one of my role models when it comes to life advice. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the podcast I was listening to was hers. In a recent episode of her podcast “Unlocking Us”, Brené interviews Jason Reynolds, award-winning author of his latest book “Ain’t Burned All the Bright“. In their discussions over the course of an hour or so, Brené and Jason touch on a variety of topics, including Jason’s unique upbringing and his incredible mother, his experiences as a writer and as a black author, conformity, backtalk, courage, self-expression, and more. It’s truly an eye-opening discussion, and I highly recommend taking the time to check it out, if you get the chance. (Or you could read the transcript at Brené’s website here: “Masterpieces and Messes with Jason Reynolds”. )

 

However, the most impactful part of this podcast, for me, was a story Jason told about a high school teacher of his.

One day during his senior year of high school, one of Jason’s teachers brought a fish to class. He informed the students that this fish was to be their class pet, and that they would take care of it accordingly. His only rule about the fish was that under no circumstances was any student allowed to touch it…ever; the result of violating this one strict rule would be immediate suspension with no questions asked.

A few weeks after the class had been introduced to the fish and had been caring for it routinely, Jason’s teacher gathered his students in a circle and slowly walked over to the tank. He removed the fish and laid it on the tile floor in the middle of the classroom, wordlessly. As the fish began to choke and thrash violently around on the ground, spluttering for lack of water, the students were torn between knowing that the right thing to do was to put the fish back in the tank but having a keen awareness that to do so would mean breaking the rules and being suspended. Finally, when they could bear it no longer, two girls from the class scooped up the floundering creature and dropped him back in the water. Calmly, their teacher informed them to gather their belongings and head to the principal’s office; they were being suspended. However, on their way out, he stopped the girls and commended them for doing the right thing even when they knew they would face consequences for breaking the rules. And as those two girls left for the main office, the teacher silently waited for the end of the period with the rest of his class, as they were made to contemplate their cowardice in not taking action even when they knew it was the right thing to do. Even now, years later, as he explains to Brené, Jason still remembers the lesson that teacher taught him about courage.

And after listening to this story, I can’t say that I’ll ever forget it either. Although the teacher discontinued his demonstration in later years of his career due to animal cruelty concerns, the lesson he taught the students who got to experience that day will continue to proliferate anywhere they choose to share it. And more than that, this story serves as a reminder to us all that sometimes, even if we know there will be unfair or unjust consequences to our actions, it is our courage to save the fish that will define who we are and what we value, and that is more important than anything else.

“How was first semester?”

Why is it that, depending on who asks the question, my answer is so different?

If it’s posited by relatives, first semester was good, overall, because things are better now than they were when I started; so why not just skip the details and end on a good note?

If it’s asked by my younger brother, first semester was a big change. Yes, you have more homework. No, having a single dorm doesn’t mean you don’t make any friends. Yes, sometimes I’m at the gym at midnight. No, I don’t go to frat houses…

And if you asked my therapist, I wouldn’t go so far as to say “hot mess” would be in her vocabulary, but she’d probably tell you that my first semester was a nothing short of an emotional roller coaster, complete with multiple e-visit calls from my dorm basement and a fun little desk lamp called an “existential crisis duck” (google it) as a birthday present from my mom.

But if I had the opportunity to answer the question “How was first semester?” honestly, without the constraint of socially-expected brevity of my response, I think my answer would go something like this:

The first two to three months of college were some of the most emotional times I’ve ever been through. I would spend the weekdays in class, learning my way around, and learning my routine, while my weekends were spent hiking to get me out of the dorm and off-campus not only because I wanted to explore the area around me, but also because I felt so trapped. I questioned daily why I had chosen Penn State, of all schools, and how I had wound up there when it had always been my LAST choice. I especially asked myself why I had limited my college search to only the New England area rather than looking out West. And some of it did have to do with my former boyfriend having moved out there to go to school a few months earlier, even though I knew that the last thing I wanted was to follow someone else’s path to college and that I didn’t want a relationship going into my first semester. But I think most of it was because I felt so lost in a place that looked and seemed so much like home. The dichotomy was too much for me; as soon as I stepped off campus, it was almost like I could have been in the woods at White Clay or Fair Hill. And for feeling so far away from the people who felt the most like home, it was indescribably misleading and crushing to almost feel tricked into believing I was still at home, given the scenery.

So, I began to convince myself that I would be happier, or maybe just more accepting of being in a new environment, if that environment did in fact look different than home. I began to consider transferring. I even looked so far as to find application deadlines for schools that I thought would make me feel less “at home” in that they were farther away but more “at home” in that they had endless, majestic mountains and wilderness a stone’s throw away from campus — something that had originally been a crucial part of my college search but had somehow seemingly been swept under the rug in the decision process. And not that State College doesn’t have its fair share of nature, but I’ve lived in Pennsylvania my whole life, and during those first few months of school, I wanted nothing more than to escape Pennsylvania in favor of indulging the wanderlust that has begun to grow uncontrollably within me.

Oregon State, Montana State, and University of Colorado, Boulder were all places I googled, but the funny thing looking back is that I didn’t even know what I was looking for in a different school. I knew Penn State’s love of football games, well-known affinity for parties, and loud school pride bothered me (and still do) because they made me feel like an outsider for disliking all of those things, but if I had been being honest with myself, I don’t know how changing my school would have solved the problem of feeling like an outsider. If anything, I think moving to another university where I still would have encountered all of those things would have made it so much worse when I finally looked up to realize that not only did I feel estranged and far from any feeling of home or stability, but that I really would have been, geographically, as well. And I think in my heart I knew that, but I felt like saying it or admitting it out loud after I had so seriously posed the idea of transferring to so many people made me seem like I was just looking for attention or that I couldn’t just be grateful to be in college at all. And I still struggle with that. Sometimes I think it’s almost like I try to make things feel more complicated just so people don’t assume everything is easy for me because I often feel like that’s the impression people had of me in high school. And maybe that’s dramatic or attention-seeking of me, but I think it stems from an underlying insecurity that I won’t be interesting or unique enough if I don’t manufacture some sort of complexity in a given situation. But in cases where I find myself feeling that way, it helps to remind myself (even though it’s easier said than done) that things don’t have to be really complex in order to feel scary or hard or intimidating or uncomfortable. And rather than avoiding that discomfort by distracting myself with wild convictions (no matter how tempting they may seem at the time) I need to sit back, take a deep breath, open my eyes, and allow myself to feel that pain and discomfort, and even more than that, to remind myself that I wouldn’t be feeling these things to begin with if I wasn’t so lucky to have people who make me feel loved, safe, and supported in the first place.

And so yeah, Penn State as a whole isn’t really my cup of tea. I went to one football game and hated it, drunk and high people make me anxious, and sometimes I swear if I hear one more “We Are” chant that I’m just going to drop out of college entirely. But when I look back on first semester, I realize that through everything, I’ve made a lot of happy memories and connections from within smaller, niche communities that I’d dare to say are much of the reason I’m still here at Penn State giving it a chance. The climbing wall and its community, the Penn State Outing Club and all its quirkiness, my Honors Engineering Design class and our incredible professor (and yes, even the Learning Factory)… In conjunction with my family and friends back home, all of these groups — alongside Dean Masters, Matt Parkinson, Anna, Cam, Joey, Greg, Katie, Aaftab, Steven, Preston, Kieran, JJ, Emma, Sagufta, Nora, Sophia, Baden, Mattias, Tate, Gothamie, Spencer, Marley, Caitlin, Amy, Alexa, Tyler, Brendan, Sam, Emily, Mike, Ashley, Sophia, McKenna, Veneta, Ben, Mable, Jack, Darren, Alex, Julianne, Taylor, and so many others — have helped me remember this semester that connection is what drives us all and makes life worth living. And that even though those connections and relationships can sometimes be what cause the most pain, it is choosing to love anyway that is true strength and vulnerability. Acknowledging the pain that comes with loving life and other people that passionately, fully, and openly is one of the most difficult things I continue to experience, but each and every time, I feel all the more grateful to have loved with that much of my heart to begin with.

If you’ve been reading my blog for long enough, you probably know that Brené Brown is one of my biggest inspirations and role models when it comes to life advice. She has a theory about how joy stems not from external conditions, but rather from engagement with the world through gratitude. In addition to that notion, her advice to “let the shudder of vulnerability that accompanies joy be an invitation to practice gratitude, to acknowledge how truly grateful we are for the person, the beauty, the connection, or simply the moment before us” is something I try my best to let guide me when the road ahead seems obscured or even at a dead end.

So, looking back, even when I felt out of place, lost, confused, and defeated, my connections with all the people who made the last few months worth it is what I choose to let define my first semester at Penn State. And I know that moving forward it’s okay to still feel that way. But to all of the people and experiences who have helped me realize that, I am genuinely beyond grateful for you, and regardless of where the road takes me during Spring Semester, I can’t wait to spend it alongside you all.

Happy holidays, and I’ll see you all soon!

We got my dog from a rescue shelter when she was only a few months old. My brother and I fell in love with her the second we crawled into the play pen full of puppies, and when we brought her home for adoption that day, the people at the shelter told us she was a lab/collie mix that would grow to be about forty pounds. Here’s a picture of my brother and Sammie from that day.

In case you can’t tell, the shelter people lied.

Our vet records classify Sam as a mutt, but anyone with an ounce of dog breed knowledge can tell you that she is most definitely majority boxer and pitbull. Also, she’s ninety pounds. The shelter underestimated that one just a bit.

Regardless, for today’s purposes, it is worth mentioning that Sam can’t stand the rain. And maybe that seems counterintuitive for a creature who prefers to spend her time in the summer splashing in our local creek, but it just so happens that she will do anything in her power not to stand in exposed areas whenever raindrops are falling. So, when I stumbled upon this photo while looking for an image making a “visual argument” to analyze for this post, you can probably tell why I chose it.

Taken outside a Morrisons grocery store in June 2020, this photograph depicts a security guard using his umbrella to cover a dog whose owners were shopping for their produce inside the store during a rainstorm. The photograph was quickly spread on social media, and it made national news as a “feel good” story of the week. It’s safe to say the image is effective in that sense, and I think that’s the case for three main reasons:

1. Sharing an umbrella is a universal sign of compassion – While this is definitely true, the man in this photo isn’t just sharing his umbrella; he’s sacrificing the whole thing in favor of keeping the dog dry. This suggests a level of compassion and sacrifice that exceeds that of the man simply sharing the umbrella with the dog. It can also be assumed that this dog doesn’t belong to the man, which makes it even more uplifting.
2. The photograph isn’t staged – The streaky drops of rain in the foreground of this image suggest that it was taken through the windshield of a shopper who was passing by this scene. Not only is everyone else in the image not looking up from their feet to avoid the rain, but the security guard holding the umbrella is looking right at the dog, as if to determine whether he needs to readjust his umbrella to more fully cover his new canine friend. It’s a moment of genuine, unprompted compassion, and it only serves to amplify the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you look at this photograph.
3. Everybody loves dogs – Most people can likely agree that sitting out in the rain isn’t particularly enjoyable, even for our pets. But imagine how this image might be different if the man were to be holding his umbrella over a frog… Frogs get wet all the time; they live in water. The fact that this particular pet is a dog only makes this image more universally heartwarming.

So, to end my final RCL post of the semester, I’d like to leave you all with a quote from my favorite poem by Amanda Gorman:

“Lost as we feel, there is no better compass than compassion. We find ourselves not by being the most seen, but the most seeing.”

I’m grateful that this semester’s posts have helped open my eyes to the world around me here at Penn State, and I hope more than anything else that they have done the same for you.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and winter break, and I’ll see you all for Spring Semester!

Thanks to Mother Nature, we finally experienced our first snowfall here in State College this week.

As I hope many of you did as well, last night I suited up in my winter coat and gloves to head out into the snow globe that was the Penn State campus. Armed with a few friends and a giant bluetooth speaker playing Christmas music, I was on a mission to build the perfect snowman.

As we walked from the South dorms toward the Millenium Science building lawn, my friends and I amusedly took note of all the other snowmen — and the various other, slightly less-conventional snow structures — that had already been constructed by other students who were surely just as happy to be taking a break from their work to enjoy the fresh snow as we were. The closer we got to our destination, the more we realized we weren’t the only ones with a master snowman blueprint in mind. The lawn was covered in families of snow people, a few of which were easily seven or eight feet tall. Slightly daunted by these marvels of snow construction but nonetheless determined to build our own perfect snowman, we set to work rolling the sections of our snowman’s body — albeit distractedly, as it turns out that spontaneous snowball fights aren’t great for productivity. We managed to assemble all three layers of our snowman successfully, but after realizing just how average our masterpiece was in comparison to the eight-foot snow family, we decided to be a bit unconventional in our construction. As my friend Joey pointed out, who says snowmen can’t have more than three sections?

So, we set about rolling two more sections for our snowman. The fourth section was fairly easy to stack, but when it came time to place the head on our snowman, we unfortunately lost our first attempt to gravity and had to remake the last snow sphere. After a second attempt, we had successfully stacked five sections of snow vertically to create what we’d like to think of as Penn State’s first five-part snowman of the season. Excitedly, we ventured off to the garden area under the Millenium Science building to find rocks and sticks to use as buttons and arms for our snowman, but as we returned, we watched in slow-motion as our perfect, five-part snowman succumbed to gravity and toppled to the ground right in front of our eyes. Our snowman was ruined. After easily an hour of work, all that remained were five semi-round lumps of snow on the ground.

After a few brief but poignant moments of grief, I had a realization: our snowman wasn’t ruined. Like many things in life, we only needed to change our perspective on the situation to find an upside to our predicament. For if nobody said we couldn’t build a five-part snowman, who said we couldn’t build a snow caterpillar? So, we put our gloves back on and got to work forming the five deformed snow lumps back into spheres, and after another half hour or so, we had created the most magnificent — and the only, as far as we know — snow caterpillar yet to be created this semester at Penn State. And though he wasn’t quite as tall as the rest of the snow creatures on the Millenium Science lawn, he was far more unique, and my friends and I returned to our dorms happy to have realized that sometimes, all it takes to change your circumstances is simply a new perspective.

(Here’s me with our snow caterpillar. We’re accepting name suggestions for future members of his caterpillar family, if you feel so inclined to comment below.)

On a small shelf in the corner of my dorm room vanity area sits a small, unassuming wooden box labeled “Gathered Truths”. It’s been there since the day I moved into my dorm, and it’ll sit there until the day I leave. If you remove the lid, you’ll find a collection of index cards with different advice, quotes, graphics, and reminders that are all tied together in that they are words that are true and will continue to remain true regardless of where I go in life. Some examples of cards in the box include “Productivity ≠ self-worth” and “vulnerability means sharing your story with those who have earned the right to hear it”. Before leaving for Penn State this past August, I made two of these boxes (pictured below). One was for me, and one I gave to my best friend before she left for Johns Hopkins University. When I gave it to her, we both agreed that wherever we go in life, whenever we add a new card to our box, we will send it to the other so that we always have the same Gathered Truths to guide us in life. I miss her every day, especially lately, but whenever I pick a new card out of my box to display on my desk for the week, I’m reminded that although we may be geographically farther apart than we’d like to be, the lessons we have learned, the values we hold important, and the connection we have shared over the past decade will always be stronger than the distance that separates us.

This week, like many of you are probably experiencing as the third set of midterms approaches us, I’ve been overwhelmed with assignments and exams for each of my classes. I’ve spent much of my time over the past two weeks in Pattee and Paterno, inhabiting quiet spaces in my dorm building (my favorite of which is a large, comfortable windowsill on the fifth floor), and sitting at my desk working on various projects and papers. Life has felt pretty repetitive and relentless, and besides questioning for perhaps the millionth time why I’m here, I’ve really been missing the people who feel like home.

But this week, I pulled a card from my box of Gathered Truths with the following poem on it:

Thanks to online tuition payments and campus dining, though I can’t relate to paying any overdue bills or shopping for produce, when I read this poem again, I was reminded that self-care comes in many different forms. I’ve never exactly been one for bubble baths or Bath and Body Works, but I have always been one to find nature to be my best de-stressor.

So, I’ve been embracing the beautiful weather while it lasts and doing as much of my work outside as possible. It’s not particularly revolutionary or unique, but it’s helped me stay mindful of my own emotional and mental state this week. In fact, I’m writing this sitting in the children’s area of the Arboretum, and surrounded by a large-scale caterpillar, an army of mushrooms, and an aura of childlike wonder, I’d like to think I am taking care of myself pretty well.