#engl-425

She stared into my eyes, pleading with me to do the right thing. It’s funny but I thought what she was saying was wrong, yet I felt compelled to hide her secret. It’s not like I don’t know right from wrong. I do. Therein lies the complexity of the problem. I know it’s wrong, yet somehow I cannot do it. As a child, my parents constantly preached to do the right thing, no matter the situation. When I got to college, I was definitely self-righteous and sure that I would keep that ideal within myself for not just my four years of college but my life.

It’s almost like that X-Factor commercial with Simon Cowell. The one in which on one shoulder sits his own persona but in a black T-shirt, spewing off all the negative comments that a person should probably not say. On the other side sits his own persona in a white T-shirt, pushing Simon towards positive comments. In the commercial it’s humorous. There are no consequences for whatever Simon decides. That is not the case in real life, but that is how I feel. Battling back and forth between what I know is right, and that little me sitting on my other shoulder asking me to do the complete opposite.

I smiled back at her, not a normal comforting smile, but a sad smile. I shook my head and said, “I’m sorry, but this affects more than just you. This affects a lot of people and I cannot just watch you head down this path knowingly. Someone else needs to know.”

She didn’t say anything. Her eyes began to water and she turned toward the door. She got five, ten, I don’t know I was still in my own head, steps away from me before she spoke, her back still to me, “You know that this only makes me want to do it more right? I feel like I have nothing left, can’t you just let me have peace with this?”

"Title IX is a law passed in 1972 that requires gender equity for boys and girls in every educational program that receives federal funding"This is a quote made by a Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, forty years after the passing of Title IX, in an explanation to a group of seniors on their trip through the Capitol of our nation. Though he managed to simply state the purpose of Title IX in one sentence, he is far from explaining what it has done for women in the United States, particularly those who are athletes.

I attend class each day at Valparaiso University where most often, I am the lone athlete. Not only do I attract stares for my sometimes sweaty appearance or constant apparel of sweatpants and sweatshirts but it also comes with a lot of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding that I am only there to play sports. What I do, that is to say what I play, softball, is the second most important thing in my life behind family. Why does it come before school? Well because softball pays for school. Should I not perform on the field, I do not get the money allotted for my education. But that is what Title IX does for me and plenty of other female athletes just like myself.

Title IX gives me the opportunity to play the sport I love every single day, just like the boys. I play a sport at the collegiate level, traveling across the country to play the very best athletes in the game. Title IX gives me the ability to attain an education while playing so that when my career is over and I go into the real world just like everyone else, I will have a future.

Cerulean is defined as “the color of the sky” but not everyone sees it that way. How could they? The sky is different each day.

In Josef Albers Interaction of Color his first section is based in visual memory. He describes the way the minds of humans work in relation to color, "If one says "Red" (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 different reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all of these reds will be very different." By this he goes to say that no person pictures everything the same in their mind, particularly that of color.

Cerulean is a color that has many definitions of blue. Try googling it. There are too many different types of cerulean to count, so why do I always have such a specific depiction of cerulean in my mind? Because I picture the Crayola crayon labeled cerulean (lets face it, if anyone should get it right shouldn't the kings of color, Crayola?)

Take the Color Dictionary of Flowers and Plants for Home and Garden, pages and pages of beautiful flowers to look at. But each flower contains so many different shades of a single, or even multiple, colors that it can be hard to pinpoint which one is most like that which you wish to describe. I found a picture of Gentiana Sino-Ornata, a bell shaped flower that appears to me to be cerulean in every way I could describe it, from its exact shade to the way the color fades out into white tips. It's bright and catchy, just the way I view Cerulean. Seeing the photo and becoming satisfied with my claim, I decided to look up other pictures of my flower. Which led me to a picture with the caption, "Pictures of the Gentiana Sino-Ornata, the aqua flower."

It was the last spring of my junior high days, just when the war in Iraq was really getting started. John Kerry and George Bush were getting ready to duke it out for the presidency that next year, but all my friends and I cared about was our eighth grade trip to Washington D.C. creeping ever closer. The struggles of people across the globe we didn’t know or understand did not trouble us because we were getting to spend time away from our parents. White and cerulean pamphlets had been sent home describing new methods of security in the airport and on the plane—no one was safe anymore. 

7th period social studies. The windows might as well have been closed for as much air as they gave the humid room—heat pressed in on the classroom like a child pressing their nose against a store window. I pretended to take notes on the Civil War while the clock ticked away the seconds until the final bell of the day rang. While I was excited about the upcoming trip, my parents were anxious about putting their daughter on a plane after that horrible day two Septembers before.  All the fake bomb threats, the real bomb threats, the war settling upon us, my parents had utterly refused to fly since. But on this they had budged. Had to. My brother traveled for his eight grade trip in a more privileged time, free of worry. My eyes flickered to the clock, and then back to my “notes.” The page, filled with doodles and words with no meaning, at least gave the idea that I cared about Reconstruction or Fort Sumter.

It's impossible to not be romantic about baseball. Romantic about baseball? Baseball? Sure. Baseball is more than just taking a wooden stick and waving it frantically around trying to hit a moving ball. It's more than running in a diamond shape trying to return to where you started. It's a game of the heart. The battle of pitcher v. batter is more like a dance than a matchup--he swerves here you swerve there--finally meeting at the same place. Desire.

Once again you might be asking, but how is it romantic? It doesn't have candles to create a sexy ambiance or delicate music tinkling in the background--instead it has screaming umpires, ball players spitting seeds and the scratching of metal cleats against the concrete of the dugouts. My very first date took place in Great American Ballpark--home to the Cincinnati Reds. My date paid for my ticket and drink which made him look much cuter in my eyes. 

The Reds played the Mariners on that hot afternoon. The black and cerulean mixed in against the red and white. All he talked about for the week leading up to the date was the prospect of seeing Ken Griffey Jr. playing against his old team(I should have known then that the date would have turned out to be a dud since this was all he cared about). Don't get me confused with other soppy girls who come to these games on dates though. I loved, still love, baseball more than a lot of other things. But on this particular day, I just wanted to go on a date with the boy I liked and have that affection returned.

And yet, as I sat there watching the game, finally realizing that we might be there as friends rather than anything else, I decided that there is another reason baseball is romantic. It's the notion that no matter what a player goes through in life, there is still the chance to make it big and play in front of millions of peole the game you love. I know my date chased that dream. Here I sit, almost seven years later and he is still chasing that dream--I however moved on to better things.  

I was six years old when I was first introduced to the song on a car ride home from the grocery store. Unlike other kids my age, I was raised on musical groups like "The Beach Boys," "The Mama's and Papa's" and "The Beatles." Rap contained words too raw for my ears and other types of music just didn't compare to the music of my parents youth--or so they believed.

"California Dreamin" echoed the sadness of the sixties, a time much different than the exciting seventies that would change the nation. While I had no way of knowing what the song’s lyrics mean't at the age in which I first heard it, I did know that I heard the song in a popular movie, "Forrest Gump." A film that rocked the nation in the way it depicted the sixties and seventies, “Forrest Gump” made real the words of the song in a way that the radio never could. Maybe it is for that reason that the words of the Mama’s and Papa’s number one hit are passed along to future generations.

The song represented the desire to move to California, where it was rumored that everything was better—and warm. It was a representation of hope in the form of voices blended together with the gentle notes of a guitar. Its timeless meaning, particularly during the winter months of the year when the entire world is truly "grey," pushes me across campus echoing the mood that the snow and rain have elicited.

Interviewing a good friend can be a difficult thing to do. First and foremost, it's hard to think of topic you haven't already discussed but even more to push past the boundaries that friends typically have without ruining a friendship. I interviewed my roommate and friend Jennifer. Being seniors, we have all started the great job search to find where we belong in the world. For some the search is easy and we know where to begin, but for most, we only hope to find something that puts food on the table.

In Jennifer's case, it is nothing but confusion. When we sat down to talk she was relaxed and laughing, she was munching on cheez-its and drinking Dr. Pepper. Jen falls into a strange category of seniors, but not an uncommon one. We discussed her desire to be a rheumatologist--solely because as a child she was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid arthritis. The doctors and care she had in her childhood, led her to choose a career in helping others, hoping to make a difference in someone else's life like her doctors had done in hers.

Upon pushing a little further however, I found out that her grades are not enough to get her into medical school. This was something she had never mentioned, and I could tell she was uncomfortable talking about it because she was afraid of disappointing everyone her supported her through college. Due to her grades in school and on the MCAT she had decided to take a year off and peruse other avenues of careers, like PA school where she would become a physician’s assistant.

Her interview demonstrates all that seniors in college go through. Indecision, loneliness, fear, are things that seniors believe they can avoid but the truth is that no matter who the student is, there is always the chance that when they receive their diploma they will be left with no other option but to move back in with their parents and find a minimum wage job to start paying loans.

The squeak of the door is the one sound that turns every head in one of the tiniest but most used rooms of the athletic recreation center. The door, labeled with a topsy-turvy sign that leans to the left one day and the right the next, reads Valpo Sports Medicine. Here is one place where students from a variety of different majors and backgrounds come together to heal their injuries and wounds. One boy in the corner is sitting on the table, he wears a cerulean shirt with gold letters reading "Win the Day." The trainer in front of him wraps his ankle with yellow, foamish, pre-wrap followed by strips and strips of tape. The boy tells a story of someone's phone going off in class--the professors tantrum making anyone in the vicinity laugh, "It was like the world was ending or something. I mean we all sat there like, no big deal, but this guy literally imploded."

The door squeaks again and all the heads turn, looking for teammates and friends as well as their designated trainer. A tall girl enters wearing black shorts and a jersey with gold stripes down the sides. Etched on the jersey is a basketball going through the hoop behind the letters WBB. Upon entering she looks through the crowd of athletes receiving attention from their trainers until she finds the other group of people with her exact same outfit.

Another door slams and this time an athletic trainer emerges from the main office, rolling a large bin of ice towards the main door. He's wearing khakis and a black shirt with gold writing on the left breast of the shirt. It matches several other people in the busy room, that of the athletic trainers. It's easy to see why they need such casual attire as they bend and squat, work sore legs back and forth, dump ice into huge Gatorade containers and never sit down.

A loud bang and several other people come crashing into the training room. This time its five boys, not really boys because they are built like bulls, but males, all yelling for their own athletic trainer and also carrying on their own conversation, "Dude did you see Ashley's skirt today? Damn. Dat's all I gotta say," and "Nate, can you look at my ankle, it’s huge from where Summerville hit me yesterday."