Struggling Millennials 화이팅 !

This is something I’m getting really tired of hearing from people. Something people don’t realize about life is that sometimes when you actively do things to make your life better, there’s still a lot of waiting for those things to take effect. I’ve been going through a very difficult time all year. I really really hate my job. I deliver food for a fast food restaurant. Sometimes I have to carry 50+ lbs of food on my back, walk for miles (they don’t give us bikes) and carry it up 4-5 flights of stairs, sometimes in the pouring rain, boiling heat and freezing cold. When I’m not making deliveries, I’m in the dining room cleaning, taking out the trash, running and bussing tables, running dishes to the kitchen, helping customers, mopping, sweeping and stocking supplies. Sometimes I even help with food prep. The only thing I don’t do is wash the dishes. Now you’re probably thinking, “oh, well that doesn’t sound that bad.” Well, try doing that while the room is spinning, you feel like you just ran a marathon and the chemicals in your brain are telling you to kill yourself...and this is all before you even start your shift. I have thyroid disease, vertigo and a vitamin D deficiency. All these things make my job unbearable. I’m constantly exhausted, depressed and dizzy. Not to mention, I have a communication disorder so speaking to people is very difficult as well. My immune system is compromised. I got an infection on my hand after only working there for a couple of months because the restaurant is always filthy and it’s my job to clean it. My finger swelled up so much that I couldn’t bend it. Since I didn’t have medical insurance, I had to prick myself with a needle and drain the pus myself.

I have been trying like hell since I started this job to find another job. And of course, I keep getting rejected. 

So here are a few things I’ve been trying to do to improve my situation aside from applying for jobs:

• I’m a freelance illustrator and I’ve been trying to put myself out there and try to get commissions to make some extra money. But of course, I can’t just assign myself commissions and give myself money, I have to wait for people to commission me and I’ve actually gotten a few commissions this year. I also tabled at an art show last month and sold a few prints and copies of a novel I wrote. 

• I illustrated a children’s book for free as part of a deal so that the author and I can go into business together. However, I’m still waiting for the author to get the book printed. I’d like to emphasize the “waiting” part. This isn’t going to happen overnight. I need to WAIT. 

• One of my former teachers got a grant to work on some short films and he wants to create a short series of pilot films/episodes for a film series. I showed up to every meeting for these discussions always prepared with my script, always on time and always willing to take the next step toward making this happen. It’s been a couple of years since we first discussed this and during the past couple of years, we’ve had to WAIT for him to get that grant. Now that he has the grant, I need to WAIT for him to return from traveling so that we can start filming. More waiting. Not much else I can do at this point.

• I reached out to the dean of my college and the program coordinator of the pre-college program that I graduated from in high school to ask for help with finding work. My college’s campus has a career services office which I’ve visited. I asked for help with finding a job at this office and all they could tell me was that I wasn’t going to find a job on Indeed and that I need to reach out to other alumni and network in order to find work--which I’ve already tried. So now I need to WAIT to hear back from the dean and the coordinator to see if they can help me find a job. 

Story Time: The school that I attended is a not-for-profit university and while I was attending the university, I had a very difficult time securing enough financial aid to remain in my classes. I came close to dropping out because of this. I got a meeting with the financial aid director of my school and they told me that since I was in that pre-college program and I spent so much time in high school volunteering and I came from a poor socio-economic background that the school had a responsibility to help me finish school. So, they gave me extra financial aid to dorm and they helped me secure a work-study job. Now that I’ve graduated, I still need help from my school to find a decent job. As a matter of fact, I got my first job after I graduated because one of my supervisors from my work-study job found me a job. And then I got laid off less than 6 months later...

• I recently had to retake my learner’s permit exam because my permit expired and I didn’t get to take driver’s ed yet. I haven’t taken driver’s ed yet because I’ve been more focused on trying to find a better job, working on the children’s book I illustrated, dealing with my medical issues and just the day-to-day bullshit. I also haven’t had the money since I recently moved out of my mother’s place and drained my savings and whatever money I had to do so. So yeah, I’ve been pretty broke these past few months. Now that I’ve retaken my permit test and went into more credit card debt paying for that, now I need to WAIT for my new permit to come in the mail so that I can start driver’s ed. My girlfriend and I plan on moving to California someday and that’s going to be very difficult to do if we can’t drive. I know, all the Cali people are going “well, you don’t necessarily need a car.” Well, when I visited Cali, my friend and I had to do an obscene amount of walking through the suburbs to get anywhere after getting off public transportation. And having to take trains and busses between each city also takes a lot of time. Having a car would be so much easier. But we’re going to wait until we actually have the money for all of this which won’t be any time soon. Also, a lot of arts-related jobs require that people know how to drive because if you work for an arts program or gallery, they ask people to transport art pieces. So if I get my license, I’ll have more job opportunities in general. But like I said, this isn’t all going to happen overnight. I have to WAIT.  • I used to work as a teacher’s assistant for a non-profit but I quit because they kept running out of money to pay us. But I recently discovered that they increased their pay rate and that they’re hiring. I really hope this means that they’ve solved their funding issues. Anyway, I told them that I want to work there again because, at this point, I rather work anywhere else. I actually liked working as a teacher’s assistant too. It was easy and sometimes fun. So I have a meeting on Monday, that I have to WAIT for to discuss my availability and where they want to place me. So I already technically got the job, we’re just going to discuss my scheduling for the job. 

• I am also writing a new novel not only as a possible way to make money in the future but also as a form of therapy (since I can’t afford actual therapy right now because my “health insurance” is a scam). I’ve also came up with an idea for a TV show and my teacher suggested that I apply for a grant to create a pilot for it. I have over 50 pages of an outline of events that take place on this show. I made a documentary in high school so I know a little about filmmaking but I don’t yet have experience making fictional films so I am going to WAIT until I have experience with the film that I’m going to be making with my teacher so that I know what the process is like and so that I can use it as a way to hone my writing/directing skills. 

• I’m going to be applying for medicaid today since my health insurance is utter crap but I heard there’s a WAITING period as they figure out if the applicant is qualified so I’m probably not going to get that any time soon. But when I do, I’m going to try to find a therapist and/or psychiatrist.  

So in conclusion, I may complain a lot about my situation and I have the right to do so because if I just kept everything bottled up all the time and never complained, I’d probably be having a panic attack every day like I did yesterday at work and like I did last summer at my last job. I get really mixed messages from people about how I’m supposed to go about dealing with my struggles. I get people telling me that if I’m going through something that I need to talk to someone; that I need to talk to them about it. But then when I do, they often tell me to just suck it up and be glad that I have a job and place to live. However, just because I do doesn’t mean that I have a decent quality of life. For example, my apartment has bedbugs and I’ve called the housing office (which has abysmal reviews), 311, the borough president’s office and they haven’t done anything about it so my girlfriend and I had to take care of it and they haven’t completely gone away. My health insurance doesn’t cover any of my medical expenses and I’m paying out of pocket via my paychecks for it. Doctors’ visits are very expensive. I’m currently almost near $3K in debt and that’s just from getting a splint for my wrist and getting testing done at the OB/GYN’s office. I feel like our society has been so conditioned to believe that as long as you’re not homeless and you’re making minimum wage, you should be happy even when your medical insurance company is trying to drown you in debt, you barely scrape by to pay your bills every month, can’t afford to go back to school and you’re living in a bed-bug infested apartment. In other developed countries, people don’t have to struggle the way that we do. Their tax dollars pay for everything including medical care and college. Their public housing is also better too. So you could live a good life going to school, working part-time and living in public housing in places like Germany but here, in great ole’ America, we have such a terrible quality of life that it makes people want to kill themselves. 

STOP TELLING COLLEGE EDUCATED PEOPLE AND THOSE STILL IN COLLEGE WHAT TO STUDY! I keep seeing people on Twitter, Facebook and other social media whining about college students who go to school for majors such as philosophy, gender studies, English Lit., fine arts or any other major they deem “useless” in the job market. And I don’t see anyone else combating these ignorant people. So I will...

I’ve noticed that a lot of these people are Trump supporters, the same people who keep lying to everyone about how America is the best country in the world and about how we have the most freedoms and blah, blah, blah. Well the fact is, we’re not. We let tax paying citizens starve and die because they can’t afford to feed themselves or their families on their full-time salaries and/or they’re mired in debt from medical expenses. There are even people like this man who can’t afford to retire or when they do, they’re forced to go back to work and can’t find decent work. I can already hear you Trump supporters and conservatives saying “oh, that’s his fault, he deserves that, he should have thought ahead!”  If that’s what you’re saying, watch this. It doesn’t matter if you have a well-paying job anymore and if you do “everything you’re supposed to do,” shit happens. You can spend your entire life saving money and all of a sudden, get into an accident that drains your savings because your insurance all of a sudden decides that they don’t want to cover your medical expenses for your hospital stay. You become screwed and there goes most of your savings. Suddenly, there’s barely enough money for you to retire with and you have to go back to work once you enter your senior years. The stock market also has an effect on people’s pensions and investments as well. If a company goes bankrupt, they can take their workers’ pensions down with them. There goes your retirement. Other first world countries don’t let this happen. 

Another thing that these people often claim is how free we are as a society. Yet, they are the ones trying to control what people do with their lives such as who to marry, what women can do with their bodies, which people are allowed to live in this country and how much responsibility the government has to it’s tax payers. They love touting the words of the founding fathers and talking about the constitution and other such documents without even knowing what these documents entail. For example... “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

For anyone who doesn’t know where this quote originates, it was written in the Declaration of Independence. 

“...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...”

Our declaration of Independence states that we, as American citizens have the right to pursue happiness. If a young adult wishes to pursue an education in a field that they are passionate about, be that gender studies or fine arts, do they not have that right? It is written in the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents in American history. As an American, it is un-American for anyone to question one’s right to pursue happiness if it does not cause harm to another human being and their right to pursue happiness. 

“...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,...”

We live in a nation whose government denies tax payers, the people who pay the government to keep us safe, healthcare. In other first-world countries such as those in Scandinavia, healthcare is a basic human right for their citizens. Why should any American citizen who has worked hard all their life have to suffer the rest of their retirement mired in medical debt? Why should any parent have to watch their child die because their job’s insurance refuses to cover their medical expenses? If our government isn’t taking care of working citizens, as the Declaration of Independence states, we have the right to alter the government to assure that it is working for us and not against us. Health care should be a right, not a privilege. We should have single-payer health care like the rest of the modern world. 

State and City colleges should also be free--just like they are in other developed countries. If a student is going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on their education, they should be able to study a field that they’re passionate about and have an acuity for. Another thing that most non-college educated people don’t know is that schools can only admit a certain amount of students per year, meaning that not everyone even gains admission into college. Going to college, for many people is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and is a privilege. Some people can’t even afford to go to college because it simply costs too much money.

For the people who might be saying “well, if it’s that difficult to attend college, wouldn’t you want to study in a field that’s in high demand so that you stand a better chance of getting a job when you graduate?” Well, it becomes a problem when too many people want to enter a certain field just because it’s in high demand. So many people apply for certain programs that wait-lists are created for the people that didn’t get in. I know someone who is currently on a wait-list for a medical program that trains students for a field that is in high demand. Not everyone can enter that field and not everyone is going to enter that field because they’re are just too little spots open for admissions. The job market then becomes saturated because of this and soon there won’t be any jobs left in that particular field because too many people have taken jobs in that field.  Not everyone can be doctor, or an engineer, or a lawyer, or a scientist or any other high-paying college degree requiring position. 

WE NEED ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS

Question: Did you grow up reading picture books, comics or prose? Did those books not have illustrations or other art inside or on the cover? Who do you think created those images? Fine Arts and Illustration Majors. Or sometimes, these artists didn’t even attend college, they were self-taught and they made connections with writers--people who majored in Literature or other liberal arts. Illustration Majors and Graphic Designers also illustrate important and useful things like instruction manuals, signs, warning labels and visual aids for children and the disabled. Designers, people who attend art and design schools design literally everything around you; your house or apartment (architects and interior designers), your laptop (CAD drafters who work with engineers and Tech majors), the posters on your walls (Illustrators and Graphic Designers) your linens (textile designers), your clothes (fashion designers) the packaging for your food and all the items you buy (Illustrators and Graphic Designers as well), your game station, lotion containers, your car, your shoes (product designers). Where in the hell would our country be if we didn’t have artist and designers creating all of these things? Most engineers can’t even draw. They can’t build bridges if there’s no one to design them. Also, those Fine-Arts majors who create paintings and sculptures--these artworks don’t just create vibrant spaces out of boring plain rooms, they create an outlet for people to express themselves in non-violent ways and can be very therapeutic. If you have any art in your home or have ever visited an art museum or if you allow your child to draw at home or take art classes in school, you’re a hypocrite. 

WE NEED LIBERAL ARTISTS

Question: Do you enjoy reading books, watching educational programs or have you ever attended school at all? Your Language Arts teacher--the person who taught you how to read and write and your English teacher, the person who taught you how to analyze and understand texts better--was mostly likely an English major. A lot of Liberal Arts and History majors are also researchers who have discovered a lot of important historical information. These are the scholars who interview people about their experiences so we can learn more from our past so that we don’t repeat certain mistakes in the future. A lot of these people work with Film Majors so make documentaries and educational programming. If you think that there are too many young people studying Liberal Arts right now, just remember, older historians aren’t going to be around forever. We still need a new generation of educators, researchers and scholars in this field to create more of that content. Every day, people who study Liberal Arts are discovering new things. I know how much you people love people who go into Gender Studies. These are the people are breaking down gender norms and trying to create a society where both men and woman treat each other as equals by analyzing and breaking down harmful gender norms. (I know, the idea of this triggers you and you’re probably screaming that this is a load of BS and about how you hate feminists and more uniformed nonsense.)

WE NEED PHILOSOPHERS AND SOCIOLOGISTS

Philosophers and sociologists are the people who change the world and help inform politics. They change the way that we think about ourselves, each other and the world at large. They are the scholars who start revolutions. People such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Noam Chomsky studied such fields. I know how much you conservatives love to champion MLK Jr. as a bastion of conservative values. How do you feel knowing that while he was attending Morehouse College, he studied sociology, a field that you deem “useless”? He also studied theology, a field where you can only hope to become a pastor. He used his studies to inform his stance on human rights and equality and how we as Americans could achieve it. MLK Jr. is the first person that comes to everyone’s mind when we think about civil rights in America. And that’s right...he was a sociology major. Philosophy and Sociology teach us to open our minds, think freely and challenge many of the norms in our society and many people in this country who study these fields go on the help change laws, protest against injustice and make us ask ourselves if we are truly able to pursue happiness in our society--again, as long as it doesn’t bring harm to other people. Ask yourself: Would you have gone back and time and told Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that studying Sociology was a waste of time and that he would never find a job with his degree? I don’t think so. You know who else studied philosophy in college? Bruce fucking Lee. Yeah, go back in time and tell him that was pointless as well. 

In conclusion...

If you’re going around on the internet telling people that they wasted their time studying any of these things in college--you have the right to do so but just think about how different the world would be if we didn’t have anyone studying these fields that you deem “useless.” No 20-year old who’s studying Gender Studies is going into your house every night taking food out of your child’s mouth or taking money out of your wallet. If they’re (we) are complaining that we can’t find jobs after we graduate, so are a bunch of Baby Boomers who can’t afford to retire because they ran into a financial snag or got screwed over by the company they worked for all their life. The job market sucks for a lot of people and guess what? It costs money to go to trade school. If you are truly tired of millennials complaining about not being able to find work, why don’t you tell us how you found work or if there’s any free or low-cost training programs that we could take for fields like plumbing, carpentry or any other trade? Stop bitching about our complaining and do something. Not everyone can do what you did to become successful or get as lucky as you did.  Sincerely, 

An Illustration major who, if lucky, will be getting the chance to illustrate books and create cartoons alongside a Business Major that will teach children on how to start their own businesses. I currently am experiencing difficulties finding a decent job that actually requires a degree (preferably, an administrative assistant job) but I am stuck working part-time and doing deliveries for a restaurant. I live with my girlfriend in our own apartment (for those who want to call me a loser who’s stuck living at home). In the past, I have also worked as a media assistant for a non-profit (got laid off from that job), a teacher’s assistant (the job didn’t always pay on time and caused me to go into debt), an after-school teacher (also got laid off) and a group leader for an after-school program (I, along with 5 other people in the same year quit because the management and a lot of the kids in that program were terrible). 

I have a love/hate relationship with NYC (but mostly hate). And I was born and raised here.  It’s Hella Crowded  1. It’s too crowded; feels claustrophobic (this within itself causes problems).

2. Since it’s so crowded, it’s nearly impossible to find housing when you’re poor like me. 

3. Since it’s so crowded, public transportation is often packed like cans of sardines.

4. The over-crowdedness of the city makes it difficult and annoying to get around. 

5. Competition for jobs is ridiculous. If you have a college degree in even a creative field, good luck finding a job. 

It’s Polluted

6. The streets can be filthy because so many people here litter and apparently, don’t know what a garbage can is regardless of the fact that there’s one of every street corner. 

7. It smells like garbage and fish in a lot of parts of the city, particularly by the East River and in commercial/touristy areas.  8. The streets in a lot of places look oily and are often covered in dumpster sludge. There are street cleaning machines that traverse the city to clean the roads but they usually make it worse. 

9. The air quality is pretty terrible. Along with the stench of garbage, the pollution causes a lot of kids here to suffer from asthma from an early age. 

10. The rivers are filled with trash. The city’s working on cleaning them but you do NOT want to go swimming in these rivers, especially the Hudson.

11. People often smoke where they’re not supposed to. You’ll always find someone smoking right next to a sign where it says “Do NOT Smoke Within 20 Feet Of This Entrance.” Smokers are pretty obnoxious here.

12. It’s also filled with a lot of noise pollution as well; constant construction, police sirens, people blasting music from their cars, honking their horns, people playing music loudly during house parties and never ending night-life, this city does NOT sleep. 

13. It has light pollution as well. We can barely see the stars at night and in some neighborhoods, there are bright billboards and lights that shine into residents’ apartments and keep them up at night. 

It’s Expensive AS Fuck

14. Rent for apartments are sky-rocketing. The average apartment costs over $1,300 a month and most buildings expect renters to make 40x that amount in income. A lot of these apartments aren’t even worth the money. They can be as small as a closet. Also, people are renting ROOMS in apartments for that much! If you’re saying to yourself, “Oh, that’s not bad,” consider yourself privileged to not be poor.

15. The cost of public transportation rises almost every year and the service never improves. Currently, a single ride metro-card on a bus or train is $3 and if you pay for additional rides, it’s $2.75 each. Again, if you’re poor or working minimum wage, this adds up and can become unaffordable. You’ll see a lot of people asking for riders to swipe them into a station or jumping turnstiles because they can’t afford the fare. 

16. Food is expensive, especially healthy food. We have issues with obesity and diabetes because a lot of people can’t afford to purchase perishable items like fruits and vegetables for themselves and their families so they opt for fast-food. I often opt for fast food over cooking or healthy food as well. 

17. The average movie ticket cost $16.50 or higher. Wanna go catch a matinee? Get ready to pay up to $13! When I was in high school (which wasn’t that long ago), I could catch a matinee for $6. The price has sky-rocketed. And don’t even get me started on popcorn and snacks. A small drink or popcorn can cost about $6 or $7. 

Our Tax Money Seems Criminally Mismanaged 

18. Our expensive and extensive public transportation system is deeply flawed. We are still using trains from the late 90′s and they’re constantly delayed. They’re also constantly making unnecessary cosmetic changes that don’t improve service like installing flat screens in stations to display ads and train times tables and updating the interiors of some trains. What they really need to do is update the signaling system and mitigate litter on the tracks to prevent track fires.  

19. Our public housing is crawling with mold, rats and is crumbling from the inside.

20. A lot of the roads here have potholes or are in disrepair.

21. Our subway platforms feel more like caves than public transportation hubs complete with leaky pipes, rats, sewage and garbage.

22. A lot of sidewalks in poor neighborhoods are cracked and missing chunks and people often trip and brake their ankles walking through them. 

23. It’s 2018 and there are still too many vacant lots where affordable or public housing should be. 

24. There aren’t enough public or affordable housing vacancies to go around so if you’re poor, you’ll probably have to live with your parents if you’re lucky enough to still have them, live in shelter or sleep on the streets and this also includes poor people who are working. 

25. Public services like welfare and public housing offices often treat people terribly. 

26. We have housing lotteries for poor people which pits poor people against each other for apartments. It doesn’t matter if you’re a poor person and you’re working full-time, you’re NOT guaranteed a place to sleep at night. Often, shelters run out of space for people as well.

Our Government Has Corruption Issues 

27. Our police department is very racist and corrupt and has had an issue with quotas that target men of color, particularly black and Hispanic men. 

28. Our governor is in bed with realty companies which is one of the main reasons why rents around the city are so expensive. Governor Cuomo claims to care about making sure the poor having housing but he makes us poor people compete for it amongst each other with housing lotteries which our mayor, Bill deBlasio also has a hand in. 

29. Riker’s, our bastion of human rights abuses still exists and if you commit a minor crime and have little or poor legal representation, you could spend a long time here. Please Google Kalief Browder. 

30. Don’t let anyone tell you that NYC is a progressive city. All or most of our politicians take money from corporate entities and do their bidding at the expense of their citizens (see 25). 

31. Although our city is seeking to decriminalize marijuana, it’s not enough to decriminalize it, it has to be legalized and our politicians don’t want to do this. Not only could it add some much needed tax revenue to the city but it could also eliminate a lot of crime, free up space in prisons for actual violent criminals and stop kids from being able to distribute K2 and other dangerous brands of synthetic weed. 

We Have A Serious Gentrification Problem

32. It has caused rents to rise to the point where a lot of native born New Yorkers like myself can’t afford to live here anymore. 

33. Many (white) gentrifiers to the city are racist and don’t respect the people or the cultures of the city. 

34. Gentrifiers often seek to put natives and their business out of business which is not only insulting and infuriating but violently seeks to erase NYC native culture and the people who create it.

35. Gentrifiers seem to detest the cultures of native New Yorkers yet they CHOOSE to live here when they can live anywhere else which is beyond disrespectful. How DARE people move into a community by choice and then complain about the people who live there and how they run their businesses? BTW, I’m allergic to cats too but I would  NEVER complain about a cat in a bodega. If I didn’t want to get food from there, there are many other options which, I admit, is the great thing about NYC. 

36. Gentrifiers often have more money and resources to learn the skills needed for jobs so they often come out on top when landing high-paying jobs over low-income/poor native New Yorkers who have similar skills and education. 

37. Gentrifiers often exploit or parody the issues in the communities they move to or set up businesses in. 

38. Gentrifiers always claim to “discover” things that native New Yorkers created and have known about for generations which reeks of colonization.

We Have A HUGE Poverty Issue

39. There are well over 60,000 homeless people in this city, including homeless families and children. In one of the richest cities in America, this is a crime and it shows just how much this city cares about the poor. 

40. There aren’t nearly enough full-time living wage paying jobs being created in this city. Even for someone like me who has a college degree, I haven’t been able to find a full-time job for the past 4 years because they either don’t exist or the ones that do are super competitive. So I am forced to work a low-wage part-time job that doesn’t pay nearly enough for me to survive and live on my own. 

41. Most New Yorkers haven’t received a raise in 10 years or longer but the cost of living here has been rising every year leaving many people struggling, on the verge of homelessness or homeless. 

42. If you don’t have health insurance, the dangerous and unsanitary conditions and the stress of living in the city can cause you to become very ill, be it mentally or physically and it is easy to have accidents. If you fall under any of these unfortunate circumstances, you might be out of job and in a hell of a lot of debt. 

43. Poor people are often treated terribly by the authorities while seeking help. 

44. Homeless people also fear staying in homeless shelters because of the amount of mentally-ill people residing in them so they opt to sleep on the streets. 

45. Many homeless people in the city are homeless because of rent increases, medical bankruptcies and mental illness.  

The People Can Be Rude And Even Violent

46. There are CONSTANT physical altercations on the trains and buses. 

47. Men are CONSTANTLY molesting woman and little girls on public transportation. And sometimes when other men step in to protect the girl, they get arrested until they can prove that they weren’t committing any crimes. 

48. There are so many mentally ill people in this city and although, they are more likely to face violence from other people, you find a lot of them walking around cursing and saying disgusting things to people. I once had a mentally-ill white woman approach me at work and tell me “my daddy told me that people who take things that don’t belong to them are n-----s.” She was so mentally fucked up that she didn’t realize that she was speaking to a black person.  

49. Tourists are ESPECIALLY rude. They are always standing in the middle of busy sidewalks obstructing pedestrian traffic with their large maps when they’re lost instead of standing to the side or asking for directions. 

50. Often people don’t move for you when you say “excuse me” and they even bump into you and not apologize. 

51. Getting around the city can be a nightmare because everyone walks so slow and tries to cut in front of you. I had a grown-ass man tell me the other day “don’t do it” when I was walking toward him because he didn’t want me walking before him. Mind you, I was rushing to get back to work while I was doing deliveries and he was clearly, just out for a stroll. No manners at all. 

52. Men often sit with their legs wide open on public transit to stop people from sitting next to them (man-spreading) and women often hog seats with their purses and shopping bags or refuse to take them off and constantly prod you with them. 

53. People almost NEVER take their bags off on public transit to make room for people. I ALWAYS take my book-bag off and it pisses me off whenever other straphangers don’t. 

54. I’ve seen people smoking in train stations and on public transit when it’s against the law. 

55. This is more personal for me but...people, men in particular often get on trains reeking of alcohol or cigarettes and then sit next right next to you when there are plenty of free seats around!

56. Cab drivers are always trying to speed as if they’re going to run someone over, especially when they don’t have the right of way.

57. People often throw parties in a lot of apartment buildings up until 4 or 5 in the morning, blasting music and generally being loud. 

58. Parents frequently yell at, hit or chastise their kids in public, demonstrating that they have no control over their children and no courtesy for those around them, though I’m sure this happens in other cities as well. I once heard the guy upstairs yelling at his child in the hallway demanding that his son not embarrass him in front of his mother or else he was going to beat him and I often hear this same child crying and screaming which made me and my girlfriend want to call the police a few times. 

59. Domestic violence is a big issue. There are mens ‘and women’s shelters all over the city. Many people living in these shelters and in public housing are victims of domestic violence. My mother was a victim of domestic violence as well. I also witnessed a man beating his girlfriend in public and when I attempted to call the police, he came after me. Such a big manly man...Not to worry, though, that coward didn’t hurt me. 

Despite How Liberal It Is, It’s Not Always Welcoming To Everyone

60. After 9/11, people stopped Muslims from creating a Mosque, a place of worship and peace near Ground Zero because Islamophobia. Whenever a right-wing Christian or Catholic terrorist commits a terrorist attack, no one bars anyone from building a Christian or Catholic place of worship in the are near the attack. Thank about that. 

61. Many transgender women, especially those of color, are beaten and murdered here, in the city where the Stone Wall riots and LGBTQ rights movements occurred. 

62. The NYPD implemented stop-and-frisk, a policy that specifically targets black and brown men in an attempt to find weapons and drugs on these men and incarcerate them to fill quotas. 

63. Homophobia here is still a big issue.

64. Even in gay “safe spaces,” like The Village or Chelsea, gay people are still at risk of being murdered. 

65. Marginalized groups of people often go after other marginalized people. 

66. A lot of businesses in the city do racist things like this and homophobic things like that. 

It’s A Playground For Rich People

67. A lot of apartments here are mostly vacant because they’re designated for wealthy foreign nationals who do business here. 

68. Broadway tickets can cost over a thousand dollars, even plays with a majority minority cast, coughHamiltoncough which is created for marginalized people to star in. So poor people of color can’t afford to go see them. Makes me think that Broadway plays are experiences only to be enjoyed by the rich and wealthy. 

69. Hotels in even the poorest of neighborhoods can cost up to $100 a night. I know this because when my family was evicted, that’s how much my girlfriend and I were charged to stay in a hotel for a night. You’ll see a lot of poor young people backpacking in the city and staying in cheap hostels or sleeping on the sidewalks because they can’t afford to stay in a hotel. 

70. Wanna expose your kids to the arts by taking them to see a ballet or a performance at Lincoln Center? Get prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets! Best stick to pay-what-you-wish museums and community theaters which are free and cheap. 

71. If you’re poor or make a low-income and you want to live in a nice neighborhood that’s safe for you and family, good luck moving into one with the income requirements. If you want to live in a nice and clean neighborhood in this city, you need to be making at least $40K or $60K and with the stagnant wages in the city, most working-class people just don’t make that much money. So getting to live in a safe neighborhood that the city actually cares to take care of is only for the middle-class and upward. Real estate owners MAKE it so that poor people can’t live in certain neighborhoods through zoning. 

Might As Well Call New York City “Scam City”

72. Scams abound for almost every service in this city from driver’s ed classes to apartments. People post fake listings for apartments, renters scam people out of their deposit money (this happened to me and my girlfriend) and people make you pay sky-high prices for shoe-box apartments.

73. You know those name brand knock-off purses tourists buy on Canal St.? They’re made in sweatshops around the city. That’s right, you’re not getting a great deal on an a luxury brand item, you’re getting a cheaply produced item made by women who work for slave wages. 

74. A lot of cab services in NYC overcharge for fare. I once asked how much a cab service would charge for a ride from my place in the South Bronx to LaGuardia Airport and they told me $50. I knew that was a scam because I could take a cab from my place to lower Manhattan for $30, which is a much longer ride. 

75. If you’re a college grad with a lot of debt in this city, fake student loan forgiveness programs will call you relentlessly to scam you out of your personal information and money to sign up for their programs. I don’t know if this happens in other cities but it does here. 

76. People in touristy locations in the city are constantly trying to sell you things, even things that are free like rides on the Staten Island Ferry. 

77. If you ride a bike here, make sure to buy a really good lock for it because bike theft is rampant. I know this from experience. My mistake was buying a cheaper lighter lock that someone obviously easily broke. 

78. Panhandlers always hang around in subway stations often with dogs and babies begging for money but a lot of these people are scam artists. One panhandler who owns a dog makes up to $200 an hour! That money could go to actual poor people. 

79. A lot of people selling candy on trains for their “youth basketball team” are really just selling candy to line their own pockets (which isn’t wrong...I mean, it’s technically illegal but not policed. But if a broke kid wants to sell candy on the trains to avoid stealing, they should be honest about it). I’ve spent 7 years working for non-profit youth programs. They never ask their kids to sell M&Ms and Welchers Fruit Snacks on the train to raise money for their programs. Youth programs often get their money from private donors or tax money. 

80. People from Con-Edison are constantly calling people to scam them into so-called “free energy for a month” in exchange for sensitive personal information. Although I’m not the head of my household, (and Con-Edison should know who is) I would frequently get these calls. I don’t even know how they got my number. 

81. A lot of posts online for roommates are scams (like the one my girlfriend and I fell for) they’ll take your security deposit, tell you rent is up to $1,300 (which doesn’t include utilities) and that there are other fees not mentioned in their ads. A ROOM in an apartment should not cost $1,300 PLUS additional fees. That’s the cost of renting an actual apartment. 

It’s Not As Nearly As Glamorous As It Looks In Ads And On TV

82. There are rodents and roaches everywhere; In public parks, on Wall St. (I mean both the people and the animals) and in a lot of buildings. A lot of bodegas have cats to combat rodents. Remember Pizza Rat? Yeah, it’s so comical how disgusting this city is!

83. A lot of public art in the city has backwards messages behind them. The Charging Bull on Wall Street is a symbol of reckless greed. And the Fearless Girl is a symbol of women on Wall Street and has virtually nothing to do with actual feminism. I wrote a blog about it. I have a bachelor’s degree in art so I’m qualified to weigh in on this. 

84. The city can get pretty disgusting and stagnant during drastic weather conditions. We experience heat waves that bring mosquitos, spiders and roaches and blizzards that kill people, hurricanes that leave people homeless and destroy property and whenever there’s a snow storm, the city all about shuts down. 

85. Ever here the phrase “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere?” Yeah, well that phrase only works so well for NYC because it’s so difficult to survive here. 

86. You might think it might be glamorous to work in NYC but a lot of businesses are anti-union and don’t pay their employees a living wage. You’ll often find these giant inflatable rats around this city that draw attention to these businesses. Some of your favorite clothing stores might have this giant rat outside of them often. 

87. Times Square used to be a red light district. That’s right; the tourist trap you take your family to with the Disney store and the people dressed like cartoon characters...this used to be a hub for live sex shows and porn! 

88. The daily rush of the city causes people to become very jaded and impatient which causes rudeness. 

89. Most neighborhoods in the city used to be immigrant communities but most of the immigrants in these communities were pushed out or changed due to gentrification and red-lining. 

90. There are highways in the city (The Cross Bronx Expressway in particular) that displaced a lot of people during their construction. 

91. Men often urinate on the trains and in public. 

92. Many dog owners refuse to curb their dogs and the city doesn't enforce the law well enough so when you're walking around the city, watch where you step or you'll have a really shitty time! 

93. A lot of our trains and buses are filthy due to littering and also still have some graffiti on the insides (not like the 80's but it's still there!). 

94. Women, be careful which night clubs you go to because the men there might try to sexually assault you. One of my roommates in college had to invite her gay best friend with her to one club because the last time she went without male supervision, a man tried to grind on her without her permission.

95. Men, watch out who you hang out with and who you're around because if you are around the wrong person/people, you could get murdered or assaulted in drive-by’s. This applies to most cities but assault and murder should take the glamour out of NYC for anyone who lives or tries to come here.

96. Rush-hour here is the worst. Public transit and street traffic stall for hours in the mornings and evenings. Tip from a native New Yorker: Do NOT get on a crowded train or bus while you're going home; wait for a less crowded one. Patience makes the city move faster. 

97. It's not always safe to go out late at night alone regardless of your gender.

98. While you're on 5th Ave ogling the massive glitzy, sparkly luxury brand flagship stores, try not to think about how many sweatshops abroad produce all those handbags and clothes.

So let me start off by saying I turned 26 last week, which for most people in America who are dependent on their parents’ health insurance means that I no longer have health insurance. I didn’t feel like my 26th birthday was worth celebrating. I felt like this whole year was just another year of me being broke, miserable and struggling because I can’t find a full-time job or just a job that doesn’t make me suicidal. I haven’t been able to find a permanent full-time since I graduated college. I recently had to quit my job because it was making so miserable that I was contemplating killing myself. I had been applying for jobs the whole year while I was working there and hadn’t found anything and I still haven’t secured a new job. It’s been over a month since I quit.  Why I Quit My Job

I got a job with a volunteer/leadership organization that I used to be in when I was in high school but the program changed a lot. The program director that was there when I was in high school left and one of the previous facilitators took over. 

I was assigned to be a group leader at the program. I worked for the summer camp and for the time being, it was a full-time job. The first troubling thing about the job is that we didn’t get our paychecks until almost a month after we started working. And since the program director already knew me, I was just starting and hadn’t made any complaints about it, she actually loaned me some money to get through the weeks that we weren’t getting paid. I also actually thanked her for letting me know about the pay delay because I had just quit a job that never told us when there was going to be a delay in pay (they just waited for us to check our bank accounts and notice that our checks weren’t in there). Anyway, when I got paid, I had to pay her back.  The second issue I had with my job was the youth worker (my assistant) that was assigned to me. Every week, we had to have planning meetings to decide what we were going to do on days where we had a few hours to kill before and after trips and other activities. For the first few weeks, even though he knew that we were supposed to be having these meetings, he wouldn’t show up. And then on other days, he would try to leave an hour early even though we were supposed to be preparing for the following day. He was constantly breaking rules, especially in regards to how we’re supposed to conduct ourselves with the kids. We’re not supposed to yell at them no matter how bad their behavior is or (of course) touch them. We’re supposed to pull them aside to speak to them and if that doesn’t work, write them up and report them to their parents and the program director whenever they have behavior issues. Instead of doing that, he would constantly yell at them. And every time I pulled him aside to tell him that we weren’t supposed to yell at these kids, he then yelled at me in front of the kids, telling me that he knew what he was doing. And because of this, the kids didn’t feel comfortable talking to us about anything, him in particular. There was an incident where one of our kids and a kid from an older group were arguing in the cafeteria during lunch. I asked my kid what happened. It took a while for him to tell me because he was really upset but he eventually told me that the older kid stole his hat and in return, he stole something of his and then they got into an argument because of it. I told the two boys to return each other’s belonging to each other and then asked the older boy’s group leader to take him back to their table. I then spoke to my kid and told him that the next time someone or something is bothering him to come to one of us and tell us instead of taking matters into his own hands. He told me that he didn’t trust the youth worker because he never listened to him. So I told him to come to me then. So after that, he calmed down. Then here comes the youth worker to ruin what I had just fixed. He yelled at the kid and stole some food off of his tray.  I complained to the program director about his behavior and she didn’t do jack shit about it. She had a couple of conversations with him but apparently, nothing she said to him clicked. I don’t know what lies he told to her but once, she even pulled us into a meeting and basically told me that I just had to suck it up and learn to deal with him because I have to learn how to deal with people with different personalities.

The third issue was when the program director told the youth worker that the location for one of our trips had been changed and not only did he neglect to tell me but we wound up going to the wrong location. Now that wasn’t the biggest deal. I personally didn’t care that he screwed up, all I cared about was just getting to where we were supposed to go as soon as possible. I called the program director after contacting the educators at the location and she asked to speak to the youth worker. Instead of owning up to what he did, he started yelling at her over the phone. Why she didn’t do anything about disciplining him after that, I don’t know. Also, whenever we go on trips, we’re supposed to participate in whatever the educators are having the kids do. If the kids are being asked to work on an activity, staff are supposed to either help them or work on it too. The youth worker knew this and even after I reminded him, he never did this. All he did was hang out with the SYEP workers who got assigned to us. Our boss noticed this too and had a conversation with us separately about this. She told me to make sure that they were all doing their jobs and not hanging out because as the group leader, I was supposed to supervise them. 

At some point, all the stress of the youth worker not doing his job and me constantly having to fix his mistakes, and dealing with the kids and their problems and having to plan a lot of the activities for the kids on my own and having to deal with my boss not really being much of a help took a huge toll on me. While I was still at work on our way back from a field trip, I started feeling parts of my face going numb. Then when we got back, my arms started going numb and I started getting a migraine. I took some Advil for it but it didn’t do anything. When I got on the bus to go home, it started getting so painful that I started crying. When I got off the bus, the numbness was spreading throughout my body and I was beginning to fear that I was having a stroke. I had just learned last year that my piece of shit deadbeat father has a genetic disease called CADISIL that causes strokes and I started panicking because I thought that I had this disease as well and that it was causing me to have a stroke. I frantically called my mother, struggling to use my phone because I couldn’t feel or move my hands and fingers. When I finally got on the phone with her, I told her what was going on and then she told me to call an ambulance and call my girlfriend to see if she could meet with me before the ambulance came but she wasn’t answering. Oh, also, did I mention that it was pouring raining while this was happening to? And since I living in a poor neighborhood, if there was anyone around to see me lying down on the park bench in the rain and freaking out, they’d probably think I was crazy and refuse to help me. So eventually, the ambulance arrived and the EMTs told me that I was having a panic attack. I’m so glad that it wasn’t a stroke. When I got to the hospital, eventually my mom, her boyfriend and my girlfriend eventually arrived. It took an hour or more for someone to see me and the ER wasn’t even that packed. 

The following morning, I called my boss to tell her about what happened and that I wasn’t coming in. My group was supposed to be going on a trip that day and I texted the youth worker to tell him that I was in the hospital the night before and that I wasn’t coming in. I told him to make sure that he had everything he needed for the trip. This asshole tells me “that’s your job.” I swear, if I was a different person, I would have called him, cursed him the fuck out, then called my boss and told her that I can’t deal with him anymore and quit right then and there. But me, trying to being professional and act like the smart educated person that I’m supposed to be, called my boss and told her what he said to me. She told me that she would deal with it and told me to get some rest. After that, I went back into my room and went to sleep. 

A week or so later, my boss calls me into the office to tell me that she received some phone calls from parents whose daughters complained that he was touching their hair and instead of dealing with the consequences of his inappropriate behavior with these girls, he quit. I don’t remember how many times I complained about him to my boss, from the many times I complained to her about him yelling at me, the times I complained about him not showing up to planning meetings, to that one time he made fun of one of the girls who was experiencing menstrual cramps (must take a big man to make fun of an 11 year old girl on her period) and the times when he just straight up wouldn’t do his job, like literally sit around doing nothing while I was facilitating an activity with the kids and he was supposed to be helping me. She should have fired him before things got to the point where he was borderline molesting a child. My friend who later worked with me at this place told me that I should report her to her boss for this but honestly, after working in this hell-hole, I don’t want to have anything to do with this place anymore.  So after working for this place during the summer, I reluctantly returned to this job for the school year. It was less hours (about 20 a week) and was after-school only. I was also told that we would be working some weekends and that it was going to be a lot easier than working at the summer camp. Since I still hadn’t been able to get a job anywhere else, I accepted.  When the program began, it was ok for the most part. It was a lot slower than the summer camp. The weekly schedule was a lot easier to follow since any field trips we would be taking were on the weekends and not during the week and we remained on site pretty much every day unless there was an event going on or we had projects to work on off-site and we were to participate. One of the problems that arose in the first few weeks, however was that half the staff from the summer left so it was only three of us working there; me, another group worker and an activity specialist who was mostly responsible for helping with the general running of the program whether he had to act as a group leader, youth worker or whatever needed to be done. 

First issue of working for this place during the school year: Lack of staff. Me and these 2 other staff were saddled with so much work after the start of the program. There was just too much to do. Before my boss hired an administrative assistant, we were responsible for most of the administrative work on top of having to supervise the kids every day. So a typical day would go as follows:

2:30-3:15- Arrive at program, grab the attendance sheets, set up the classroom for the kids (getting water jugs and cups) creating a lesson plan for the day’s activities and prepping for those activities, and getting them approved (on STEM and club days), if we get any parents coming to the program during this time to enroll their children or ask for information, we had to help them if my boss was busy, make copies of permission slips, attendance sheets or anything our boss needed us to make and also watch the kids. There was so much work to do during this time of the day and during closing that we often got in trouble for not getting things done on time or not all because there was barely enough time and we were understaffed.

3:15-3:45- The kids are supposed to do their homework at this time. But because these are middle-school students whose parents don’t do enough to discipline them, they pretty much never wanted to do their homework and would often to lie to staff about not having homework. We were also supposed to tutor the kids if they were struggling. If they claimed to not have any homework, they had to read a book--which they also never wanted to do. So if my boss ever walked in and saw them doing nothing, whichever staff was watching them--which was usually me, would get in trouble. Getting these kids to do anything was like pulling teeth and it only got worse as time went on.

3:45-4:15- Check-In, Snack and Ice-Breaker games. At this time, we asked the students to stop doing their homework (whether they were finished or not--which created a problem with some of the parents) and join staff in the circle. I handed out snack to the kids who were the quietest and who were cooperating first and then to everyone else last. Sometimes I made the mistake of having the kids come up to me for snack because they would grab extra--as if I wouldn’t notice when they were only supposed to have one. And when I asked them for the extra back, they refused and hid it somewhere. Also, sometimes, they would tell me that they didn’t want snack and then later on the day when I wasn’t supposed to give out anymore, then they decided that they wanted some and got mad at me when I refused to give it to them. I also had kids from the other group sneak into the kitchen to steal snacks whenever they lied to me, telling me that their group leader said that they could have snack when they couldn’t. That was always super frustrating. The activity specialist and I conducted check-in with the kids. We asked them how their day was and ask them a random question to learn more about them such as “if you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?” Best case scenario, every kid answered the questions and we actually learned something about them. Worst case scenario, they didn’t feel like answering. The activity specialist usually came up with the games and the kids typically enjoyed them and I would help make sure everyone was participating. I enjoyed playing games with the kids too.

On Mondays we had fire drills at this time. I basically put myself in charge of making sure we did this every Monday because there were times that we forgot about this and got in trouble. Basically, before or after check-in, I would remind the staff and the kids about the fire drill. If it was cold outside, we told the kids to put their jackets on. Then the activity specialist would blow his whistle to silence the kids, and I would lead the kids out of one of the emergency doors. The kids were supposed to be quiet and stay in line but they almost never did unless the activity specialist told them to because they all respected him. I constantly had to tell the kids to stop talking, stop touching each other and to stay in line but they never listened to me, even when I threatened to tell the program director or revoke privileges from them. I hated doing fire drills because of that.

4:15-5:15/30- We had our activity for the day, usually STEM or a club once we created clubs. I was usually the one in charge of STEM activities or whatever lesson we had for the day. Beforehand, I would have gotten the supplies ready for the activity and all I would have to do is get up in front of the class and explain the activity of the day. I would then present a few examples of how the activity could be done (showing them images of projects done by other kids or sketching things out on the board). The activity specialist would then help me distribute supplies and then help me make sure they were doing what they were supposed to do. I would also walk around and help students if they needed it. We also had to take pictures of the kids while working. Some of them didn’t like this. I actually had a girl stick up her middle finger at me while I was taking a picture of her and her group. Mind you, these kids’ parents signed a release form saying that we were allowed to take photos of them so these kids should know that from time to time we had to take photos of them. Some kids usually refused to participate during the activities and I would have to speak to them about why this was and usually their response was “This is boring,” “I don’t feel like it” or “I don’t like the people in my group.” When the kids were done, we asked them to clean up. Most of the kids did this but we always had that 2/3 kids who thought they were special and didn’t need to clean up. At the end of the day, I always made a mental or physical note to myself about calling their parents but there were times when I didn’t have enough time to. 

5:30-5:45- My favorite part of the day, dismissal. After we cleaned up, we sat them down and made announcements to them about upcoming events and trips, asking them for permission slips and other documents they had to turn in and reminding them about rules. After that was done, we dismissed them. There was this one older kid who, for some reason, though that he never had to leave with the other kids and stuck around to hang out with us. He was a good kid but since he was the oldest, he always thought that he was allowed to hang out with the adults. Eventually, this got us in trouble. 

5:45-6:30- Administrative Assistant work. Whatever didn’t get cleaned up in the classroom when the kids were dismissed, I had to clean up, which was a pain in the ass because most of these kids don’t know how to clean anything or sometimes would refuse to clean. They would leave garbage and crumbs every where, especially in the back where we had a rug and a couch (we had to ban them from this space for some time because of that). And sometimes there was so much to clean that I didn’t have enough time to call all the parents I was supposed to call for behavioral issues or trip/event reminders. I also had to make sure that all the windows were closed, the emergency door for my classroom was locked and that all the tables were clear. Once I was finished with that, we had to call parents of the kids who were absent to ask them why they were absent and then fill out a form of explanations. We also had to call parent to let them know about field trips ahead of time and to ask if they had filled out permission slips and told them when they were due. We also had to enter in the contact information for any new kids that we got. If we had time, we also had to use this time to create lesson plans and to decorate the classrooms for the season or upcoming holiday or event. Sometimes my boss would ask us to do a bunch of other tasks during this time as well like making copies or she would ask me to make fliers. 

A Lot of The Kids Had Serious Behavioral Issues 

At it’s mildest, their behavioral issues are mostly the kids not wanting to participate in any of the activities, talking back to staff and giving us an attitude. And since I was the newest staff, it was even worse with me. Since they didn’t know me very well and I was new, they thought that they didn’t have to listen to me.

I had worked with kids for 6 years, grades K-12 and never had any serious issues with any of the kids that I have worked with. I sometimes got 1 or 2 kids with attitude problems but whenever I sat them down and spoke to them, they usually turned around. But with these kids, that would never work. Over the summer, the same kid I mentioned who started an argument with some kid who stole his hat and I spoke to him about coming to me with his issues instead of taking it into his own hands, he never listened to me. Until the last month that I was working at this place, he was still getting into fights with other kids instead of telling staff. And I told him that because he refused to tell staff about someone bothering him instead of fighting, he was going to be in trouble. He just couldn’t get it through his skull. And I know that these kids are in middle school and they’re in that stage of life where they’re between being a child and a teenager and they’re challenging their boundaries with adults but I still feel like a lot of their behavioral issues can be curtailed with some guidance from their parents...or not. Maybe this current generation of middle school kids where I’m from just feels that entitled to doing whatever they want without accepting the consequences. And all the staff I’ve worked with at this place feel the same way. Oh, and it only gets worse...

These kids started physical fights with each other all time--at least once a week or multiple times a month, we had several major incidents with the kids getting into physical altercations and these are only some of them...

-This girl was sitting behind this boy and she kept touching him. I told her repeatedly to stop and to change her seat and she refused. The boy got up and punched her square in the face.

-While we were working on an activity, these two boys started insulting each other. While one boy said that he was joking, the other boy didn’t take it that way. I was trying to help the other kids who were actually participating and there was no other staff in the room at the time because understaffing. The two boys starting hitting each other. Thankfully, the activity specialist happened to walk in and he saw them fighting and helped me break them up. The boy who threw the first punch was later suspended from the program because of this. 

-These two girls in the program who claim to be cousins (this was never proven) were constantly getting into fights with each other because, apparently, when they’re not in the program, they act like they’re best friends but when they’re at the program, one of them never wants to have anything to do with the other. One day after program, the smaller younger one allegedly pushed the older larger girl into a wall (we never saw a single scratch on her so we didn’t know if this was true). Then the larger, told girl retaliated by pushing her into the wall back. She came into the program after we had dismissed them and showed us a large bloody gash on her hand. After that, we suspended the older girl from the program. 

I also had a lot of kids give me an attitude, curse me out or flat-out ignore me. It ranged from me saying “hi” to a kid and them not saying anything back to me to a kid cursing at me or physically shoving me around. 

I finally got a youth worker to help me during the winter and he was awesome. He was great with the kids and he always helped me prepare for the day--the complete opposite of the asshole who worked with me over the summer. But, even with his help, the kids were still misbehaving. After working with us for only a week or two, he told me that these kids were terrible. He works with teenagers with serious behavior issues and problems at home who are still in middle school because of these things and he told me that these kids were worse than them-because they have supportive parents and they go to decent schools yet they make every excuse in the book as to why they can’t or don’t have to do what they need to do. He was also studying child psychology. I was relieved to know from someone who is actually studying to be a professional in this field confirmed my gripes about working with these kids. And I thought I was strict with these kids at times but he was even stricter than me when it came to dealing with their behavior issues. Whenever a kid acted up, I usually gave them another chance to change before reporting them. He on the other hand reported them right away. He was 0 tolerance. And one day, one of the kids, the girl who gave another girl a bloody gash on her hand after pushing her, cursed us out because she wasn’t participating in an activity and all we were trying to do is try to figure out what was wrong with her. He threatened to report her when she refused to talk to us and then she started going on a tirade, calling us “bitches” and “dick-riders” among other disgusting insults. My boss reprimanded her and suspended her again for a few weeks--which I think was a slap on the wrist but whatever. 

At the program, one of our rules was that after 3:15, the kids had to put their phones away. Whenever I was in the room and I told the kids to do this, they never listened but they listened to the other staff. Before I quit, I had an incident with one of the girls from my group not wanting to put her phone away. I was allowed to confiscate their phones if they didn’t comply but when I approached this girl and asked for her phone, she started playing keep-away with me and taunted me. If my boss saw her with her phone out, she would have just given it to her when she took it. But with me, no. These kids had no respect for me so whenever I asked for their phones, unless the other staff asked them to give me their phones, they wouldn’t do it. So I gave up on trying to take it and turned around to sit back down. As soon as my back was turned, the entire class said “oooh!” as if she had either cursed at me behind my back or she stuck up her middle finger at me. I asked them what happened but none of them would tell me. I asked her what she did and she claimed to have done nothing. At this point, I was so fed up with the disrespect that I reported her to my boss and my boss asked her to come into her office and speak to her the next day. During the meeting, the girl claimed to have said “oh my god” behind my back but I don’t believe that. Kids don’t respond to things like that in that manner unless the person said or did something reprehensible. Anyway, after that meeting, she never gave me and attitude ever again. 

Me and the activity specialist were playing a game with his sports club one day and these two boys were about to get into yet, another physical altercation. One of them claimed that the other cheated and some of the other boys claimed this as well. However, before the activity specialist could address this, they started getting in each other’s face and arguing. Me, the AS (activity specialist) and some of the boys managed to separate them before they could throw any punches and the AS pulled one of the boys out of the room. The other was still hurling insults and curses at the other boy long after he left. The AS came back in and told me that the game was over and to tell the boys to sit down and be quiet. Boy #2 is still cursing and insulting the other boy. I told him, I don’t know how many times to stop talking. I could have reported every single thing he was saying about this kid to my boss and he would have gotten suspended from the program just based on that but since he was a good kid, I was tying to stop him from getting himself in trouble. Then he started using anti-gay language and after that, I was over protecting him, especially because I had already had a conversation with him about how I and another staff were gay and that he shouldn’t use language like that anyway because it’s insulting and harmful. At that point, I began raising my voice at him, something I had, until that point, always tried to refrain from doing. Some of the other boys even found what he was saying funny and when I told them not to encourage him, he went off on me and started directing his insults at me, calling me a fag and telling me that I “suck dick” for a paycheck (which I now find hilariously ironic) and to “get the fuck outta here.” I told the other staff what he said to me and the activity specialist made him apologize to me. I was so done with being treated like shit by these kids that I didn’t accept it at that point. I just wanted him out of my face. So after I reported him to my boss and got him suspended, he came back to the program to ask for help getting a job. However, my boss told him that she was only willing to help him if he apologized to me again-since her and the other staff knew that I still didn’t really feel like he was truly sorry (like he was only apologizing to me because he was made to and not because he actually cared about how I felt or understood the gravity of what he had said to me) and if we had a conversation and I truly accepted his apology, which I told him that I did. I felt like there was an enormous pressure for me to do so because now he was learning how his actions could effect him in real life and that now that he was having to ask for my forgiveness again, he had finally truly learned his lesson. And after this, we were cool. After that incident, I decided that I was quitting.  Too Much Work, Too Little Time and Help and Poor Management

Aside from struggling to deal with these kids and their behavioral issues, I was also struggling with the mountainous work-load and all the problems that arose out of us being understaffed. After my amazing youth-worker quit because on top of the kids being unruly, he was also being asked to do a lot of work that he was unqualified to do, things became really difficult. Well, they already were but before and after I had that extra help, things were pretty stressful. 

There were times where I was spending so much time dealing with the kids and their behavioral issues that I didn’t have enough time to get administrative work done and vise versa. My boss expected us to be administrative assistants, teachers and social workers all at once, all the time and it didn’t help that a lot of the equipment at the office like the computers and phones would break down all the time. We had 6 staff working there at one point and only 2 working computers for staff to use so getting shit done around the office was nearly impossible at times. And to make it even better (sarcasm) when the 2nd computer in the staff office broke down, my boss got angry at us and blamed us for breaking it even after telling me that the computers at the office had been there since I was in the program which was over 10 years ago! Any time something broke down in the office, the first thing my boss would do is get angry and look for someone to blame and then contact an IT guy later. It got even worse when my friend got hired as a group leader around the winter and she had to make lesson plans for her group. So at that point, we had 3 group leaders who all had to make lesson plans for club and leadership activities and only 2 working computers. We also only had 3 phones to call parents on and 5-6 staff who needed to make daily phone calls. Thankfully, when my youth worker was there, he was able to make phone calls for me while I handled other responsibilities but when he left, the problem came back. After my friend quit the program when she found a full-time job (so fucking lucky) me and the activity specialist had to take turns using the phone. 

I feel like all of this stress and lack of adequate facilities to do our jobs effectively caused me to have several mental breakdowns. And it started when my boss had me and my friend start the project with the kids to teach them about healthy eating and then create a counter-marketing campaign against fast food companies. Again, more staff, less equipment, more problems. As part of the project, I helped my friend facilitate and organize a series of lessons on negative health effects, PSAs against fast food and eating healthy--y’know, all the stuff a person with a degree in illustration is qualified to teach. Along with this, we were still going on trips and doing other activities that needed permission slips for. My boss scheduled my group to be part of a focus group. We needed 10 kids to take part in it and I had a month to get their permission slips in. I handed out the permission slips and told the kids when the deadline for submission was and that it was mandatory. Some of these kids flat-out told me that despite it being mandatory that they didn’t want to do if because they didn’t feel like it and refused to turn in their permission slips. And whenever I would call their houses, their parents would either tell me that they filled them out and would be sending their child to program with it or that they never got one. I would then ask the kids the following day if they all got one and I would get kids telling me that they didn’t or that they did and would turn it in the next day or in a couple of days or at the end of the week. And for weeks, this would repeat. I would keep hounding these kids down for their permission slips and the same would happen. I would even get kids telling me that they lost their permission slips and I would have to make copies and hand them out. Then some of the kids would be absent and not hand them in and some kids stopped coming entirely and/or new kids would come in. Out of all the groups in the program, my group was the largest. I was basically responsible for making sure that 10 out of nearly 30 kids turned in these permission slips--by myself while I was still trying to manage dealing with behavioral issues and other administrative duties. My boss had to extend the deadline another month but the cycle would then repeat. Also, at the last minute, she gave me another permission slip pertaining to this focus group that they would have to turn in. She did this a lot for many of the field trips that required multiple layers of paper-work that had to be signed by parents and the other staff complained about this when they weren’t able to get permission slips in on time either. When the deadline came for the permission slips to be turned in, I only got 7 back. My boss got really pissed and spent at least 10-20 minutes reprimanding me for how much I had embarrassed her and about how I should have been able to get all this work done while still balancing all the other shit I had to do--by myself and about how it shouldn’t have happened and that now she was going to have to fix my mess. My brain was fried and I had no mental energy left at that point. I broke down crying in front of her. Then later that week, she told me that the 2nd set of permission slips that I had to have them fill out was completed wrong when it was my understanding that they were supposed to fill out part of it by themselves and I later found out that I was right about that but again, she made me feel guilty about that too and I was having another mental breakdown as we were scrambling to fix that. When the organizers of the focus group came to the program, they told her that the other half of the permission slip was supposed to be filled out by her--and not the parents so she screwed up on that. Not surprisingly, the other staff had told me that she made mistakes like that all the time. i understood that I could have done a better job of trying to get those permission slips in but her making a mistake and not apologizing to me for it and placing the blame squarely on me for that didn’t sit well with me at all. 

My boss almost never admitted when she was wrong about anything. There were times when she would send us on field trips with the kids and not give us enough money and we would just have to figure things out for ourselves. The activity specialist told me that he thinks that she does that on purpose. There were also times when she wouldn’t do research on what she was paying for and she would embarrass us, whenever we would go up to a staff at a museum and tell them that we were paying x amount of money for an event or activity and they would tell us “uh, no, that’s not what you signed up for, you signed up for this.” And then I would have to speak to the other staff about what we should do about it and then the kids would get frustrated with us because we would have to wait even longer to do what we arrived there to do and we would have to explain to them that the program director made a mistake and to bare with us while we fixed it. And then later on, she would find something to get mad at us for instead of apologizing to us for her mistake. 

I had a second mental breakdown, not at work, but on my way to work. I dreaded going to that job every single day that I was working there and to this day, the only thing that I can say I ever looked forward to about this job was getting to work with my friend and the two other staff there who were amazing and fun to work with. Not even the field trips and fun activities were that much fun for me because preparing for those things and dealing with the eventual fighting between the kids and monitoring their behavior was so fucking annoying. A few months back, I was really feeling the stress of the job taking a toll on my mental health, especially after I broke down in front of my boss and with the stress of having to finish this big counter-marking project with the kids mostly on my own. I started thinking about how I was barely making enough money at this job to do anything that I wanted or needed to do like buying a new pair of jeans after finding holes in a few pairs or taking my girlfriend out once in a while or signing up for driver’s ed. I started thinking about how much I busted my ass in high school and in college to try to have a better future and a decent job and about how I felt like all my hard work was for shit. Wasted. I started thinking about how all the people who ever told me that I’d make a great teacher and that I should work with kids despite me having no interest in that whatsoever and didn’t go to school for that were dead fucking wrong and that I was living a life that other people wanted me to live and that it was making me miserable. I started thinking about how I knew people who didn’t even have degrees who were living better lives than me with their own apartments and full-time high-paying jobs and the harsh reality that I had to face that sometimes, hard work just doesn’t pay off sometimes and that I would just have to deal with it...or not. I also started thinking of killing myself. I mean, I’m in a ton of debt that will only go away once I’m dead. Why not? It would solve that problem. No one wants to give me a full-time job, maybe no one thinks that I’m worth having one. Maybe there’s no way out of any of my problems. Maybe the only way to solve my problems is to just end it all... 

I hadn’t been this suicidal since high school. 

I can’t believe that I let this stupid meaningless job make me this miserable and make me believe that I was worthless. Even attending 4 years of the most competitive and challenging art school in the world (Parsons) where I was getting little to no sleep every week and saddled with unbelievable amounts of work didn’t make me as nearly as miserable as this job had made me. I even find myself missing college because of the awesome people I met, the classes that I learned so much from, being able to study abroad in Paris and getting to work for a pre-college program where I got to help the next generation of artists succeed in places where I still haven’t. 

I still feeling like I am mentally recovering from this past year. I never got to go to therapy. I’m still depressed and miserable, still broke, still jobless and still trying to fight off suicidal thoughts. Still waiting for things to get better.  Going to say what I recently had to tell someone else... 

NO JOB IS WORTH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH! 

also,

Florida School Shooting Survivor: 17 students and school faculty, our teachers and best friends were murdered in front of us. We saw our friends being shot in the head right next to us...

Conservatives: We need to come together and pray for these families.

Florida School Shooting Survivor: We need to pass legislation for stricter gun control, comprehensive background checks and--

Conservatives: Oh shut up! You’re all actors and communists! Go back to doing your Tide pod challenges, you stupid kids! You’re not taking our guns away!

Words can’t describe how horrible this shooting was not only for the people involved but also for the country as a whole. This is the 18th school shooting that we’ve had so far this year. Legislators have the power to pass stricter gun control laws but they refuse to because they are in the pockets of the NRA. The NRA doesn’t care if your family members, teachers and best friends are gunned down in front of you because they’re collecting money from gun sales. Conservatives have been beyond hypocritical in their response to this and past mass shootings. They keep saying “pray for the victims,” “let the victims grieve,” “don’t try to politicize this.” Well, this time, the victims are asking for more than prayers; they’re asking for a response from the government. They’re demanding a response from the government to make sure that guns don’t fall into the hands of violent men like the former student who massacred their friends and faculty. And now that the survivors are demanding action from the government, conservatives are angered that the survivors aren’t echoing their sentiment on how we as a country should respond to tragedies like these. They think “how dare these people who have witnessed their closest friends dying in front of them by the hands of a gun demand stricter gun laws!” The amount of greed that it takes to disregard the lives stolen by a blood-thirsty gunman in favor of pocketing money from the NRA is inhuman and evil. The stronghold that the NRA has on conservatives and Republicans is so powerful that it has caused these so-called Christians to not only turn a blind eye toward the murders of these students and adults but has also caused them to profit from it. After all, the gunman attained his weapons legally after the FBI failed to follow up into their investigation on him. 

Now some people will blame the shooting on mental health issues (specifically Trump). Oh, it’s not guns that are the problem, it’s these lunatics who keep getting their hands on guns. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? How in the hell did this 19 year old with clear mental issues pass the vetting process to attain a gun? Was there not a thorough background check into this guy? Had no one found out that he had been reported on YouTube for posting “im going to be a professional school shooter”(sic)? Had no one looked into his history of the police being called to check in on him because of his strange behavior? Even people who had spoken to him said that he had been making jokes about school shootings and engaging in anti-social behavior. If we had more comprehensive background checks, this man would not have been able to legally purchase any firearms. It is the system we have in place that allows anyone to have a gun, including mentally ill people that causes these murders to happen. It’s the fault of these conservative Republican legislators and weak Democrats who bend over for the right that these shootings keep occurring. We’ve been having multiple shootings taking place every week now and the majority of our country’s politicians are silent on proposing sensible solutions to this issue. 

So...really short quick political rant...

Joe Biden, who also plans to run for president in 2020 is literally one year younger than Bernie Sanders but no one ever talks about him being too old. The only health issue Bernie has been reported to have is hypothyroidism which he is being treated for. I also am being treated for the same disease and I’m 25. From personal experiences, I know that as long as you’re taking meds for this condition and maintaining a healthy life style, you’re fine. Biden has also suffered from health conditions that he has been treated for such as asthma, back pain, sinus issues and brain aneurisms. Both are in good health. 

So I’ve been doing a lot of political and personal life rants as of late and I decided that I need to write about something a little more positive. I’m going to try to write a little bit more about my interests. And since Nickelodeon has been in full 90′s cartoon revival swing, why not talk about my favorite Nicktoons? Most of these shows aren’t from the 90′s but they are just some Nickelodeon cartoons that I loved growing up and still love now. 

So...

10. Chalk Zone

The concept behind this show...brilliant. As a kid who loved to draw, this was like the ultimate fantasy for me. I absolutely loved the idea of a whole world of drawings existing behind every chalkboard in the world. It was so cool seeing Rudy creating all these cool drawings and interacting with them and that his best friend was a drawing that he created. And one of the most interesting and creative aspects of the show was that he had to use his drawings as a means of problem solving whenever he was faced with any conflicts. I don’t think our education system stresses how important art and design are to the problem solving process so it’s great that a children’s cartoon does this.

I also appreciated the fact that one of the smartest characters in the show, Penny was a brown-skinned Latina girl as opposed to an Asian girl or another boy. She also played an integral part of each episode helping Rudy solve problems throughout the show. That is something that I always appreciated about a lot of Nickelodeon shows. The opening song was also so catchy and got me excited to watch every time. I didn’t watch the show religiously but I did try to catch it whenever it was on which is why it isn’t higher on the list. Also, they don’t rerun this show like they do the others which is pretty unfortunate. 

9. Doug

This show was so down-to-earth and simple. It was a show about a boy who moves to a new neighborhood and fears that he won’t fit in. He goes to a new school, deals with all the typical trials of being a kid like bullies and crushes and makes friends who help him become acclimated into his new surroundings. 

There were a lot of similar shows like this in the 90s. However, this show had three major quirks that stood out from the rest of the crowd: 

1) Doug had such a vivid imagination. Whenever he worried about something, his anxieties would manifest into the most bizarre and exaggerated scenarios that could never happen in real life. This also happened when he was excited about things as well. He has a whole cast of characters in his head that he also uses as a council including a superhero that he created called Quail Man, a smooth James Bond type character called Smash Adams and an Indiana Jones look-a-like named Race Canyon. Whenever he needs advice about a situation that he’s in, he asks himself...what would -insert character- do? 

2) Doug keeps a journal of everything that happens to him throughout the day. This is something that young male characters rarely do. Normally, boys aren’t taught to express their emotions in calm and creative ways so to have a young male character keep a diary and use it as a way to discuss how he feels about his life is pretty refreshing.

3) Some of the characters in this show have odd skin colors. His best friend, Skeeter has blue skin but according to the creator of the show, Skeeter is supposed to be African American. There are also characters with green skin, purple skin, magenta skin and pink skin. I guess that this is supposed to represent the racial diversity of the town. 

I like that all the characters including the popular kids, the rich kids and the bullies are shown in nuanced lights that make them feel human instead of the one-dimensional caricatures we see in a lot of kids’ programming. The main bully character, Roger who often picks on Doug admits to actually liking him as a person and even hosts a party for Doug at his house to celebrate the anniversary of him moving to town. Bebe, the rich girl of the school owns up to lying about having her property stolen after it winds up broken and she asks Skeeter to fix it for her and Judy, Doug’s older sister who he often can’t stand goes out of her way to help him with a lot of his problems. The animation isn’t always so great but this is one of those shows that depends more on storytelling and imagination than anything else. I still watch this show now as an adult and find it enjoyable. 

8. Invader Zim

Man, this show was such a cult-classic. From the twisted mind of Jhonen Vazquez came the story of an incompetent alien named Zim who came to take over earth with his adorable and even more incompetent robot side-kick, Gir. This show was on multiple levels of weird and fucked up. If you were an outcast millennial teen growing up in the mid-2000s, this was one of your favorite shows. It definitely was and still is one of mine. For those of you who haven’t seen it and wonder why everyone loves it so much, you need to go watch it. The best way that I can describe this show is that is that it’s about an alien who looks like your typical green Martian with large black eyes trying to masquerade as a human child going to school with the worst costume ever (human-eyed contact lenses and a wig) and though it’s so painfully and frustratingly obvious to skeptic, Dib, the rest of the world is so oblivious to the fact that this green skinned kid who seems to know the bare minimum of human life is an alien. Throughout each episode, Zim keeps making his failed attempts to take over the world and his plans are often thwarted by Dib, his own incompetence, his fellow aliens who don’t trust him and even his own sidekick Girl. 

A lot of the characters in this show are on so many extremes of either being dim-witted, evil or unattached to reality and I often got the sense that this is Vazquez’s commentary on people in real life who are so far removed from reality that they don’t realize what’s going on around them. Zim is like a massive elephant in the room that no one but Dib cares to address or notices and the same can be said for other things in our reality like our moronic criminal elected leaders -coughTrumpcough- and mass government corruption. I loved the art style. Everything was so dark and grungy looking and this is very much attributed to Vazquez’s alternative/goth aesthetic. The animation was great. When I was a kid, I didn’t realize how much of a nerd I was and how much I liked sci-fi but I always loved the use of robots, mechanical contraptions and fake scientific elements in cartoons and Invader Zim was crawling with all of that stuff. There were so many rememberable and weird stuff about this show like Gir’s cute antics, dancing and singing, the dialogue was so in-your-face and the visuals were so gross but fun to look at. I love and miss this show and I can’t wait for the movie!

7. SkyLand

Does anyone else remember this show? These characters were basically Sokka and Katara before Avatar: The Last Airbender existed. This show took place in the 23rd century in a world where the earth was shattered into billions of pieces. Water is scarce in this world and its supply is being controlled by the antagonists, an organization called The Sphere. When the main characters’ mother is abducted by this organization and they join a group of pirate freedom fighters to go after the mother and fight against The Sphere. In this world, some humans called Seijins have gained the ability to absorb energy from the sun and harness it into energy beams, telepathy and telekinesis. This show wasn’t on for that long and I saw it so long ago that I honestly don’t remember too much from it but this is what I remember loving about this show:

`1) I loved the concept. Before Avatar: The Last Airbender, this is was one of most anime-inspired shows I had ever seen. I loved that this show had that classic freedom fighter storyline behind it where oppressed people are having their people and their natural resources stolen and controlled and they join a band of rebels to fight against them. It felt so relevant to issues that occur in many countries in the world.

2) Powerful female characters. I loved Lena and Diwan. I am very much attracted to young characters who have so much untapped talent and potential. Lena was so powerful at her young age, it would have been great to see how much stronger she would have became if as she grew older. Although Diwan was a villain, it was refreshing seeing that both the hero and one of the antagonists of the show were female.

3) This show took its viewers seriously. It never condescended to kids on any terms. The characters were well-designed and the environments and backgrounds were beautiful. The creators of this show put in a lot of effort to make this show stand out from a lot of other western animated series. I also really appreciated that this show addressed serious issues like kidnapping, absent parents and unethical seizures of natural resources by organizations.

Hats off to the French for this. I bought some episodes of this show on iTunes when I was in college because I remembered how awesome this show was and my opinion on it as a kid hasn’t changed much. I still love it.

6. As Told By Ginger 

A show about a girl living with her single mother and brother who deals with fitting in at school and crushes and being bullied by the popular girls at school...sounds so much like my life growing up! This show was so real. When I was a kid, I was typically into “boys’ shows” but for some reason I loved this show. I didn’t realize how much I related to Ginger until I was much older. There was an episode where she was reciting poetry at a school assembly and her father told her that he would come watch. She then takes to the stage to deliver her poem and doesn’t see him in the crowd. She’s very disappointed about this and when she goes backstage she receives flowers that were left by her father. Then it gets even more real when we learn that her mother is the one who bought them. Her father made yet another excuse as to why he couldn’t make it and we learn that he does this quite often. Her father is essentially, a deadbeat. As a kid with a deadbeat father, this hit home for me. Not many shows are willing to provide such a realistic approach to absentee parents and tell stories about non-traditional families. This show did such a great job of telling this kind of story. 

I like that they gave some realistic depth to their other characters. For example, one of her best friends, Macie Lightfoot in one famous episode was adamant about performing a song from a show from their childhood called “I’m a Little Seal Girl” even though she and her other friends had long outgrown the show. She took to the stage and performed the song even after to the radio blew out during her performance. Her bravery won a standing ovation from the crowd and the respect of her friends. In another episode, we learned that her parents still treat her like a child and show her love by showering her with lavish gifts like a petting zoo instead of actually being there for her. This is one of the first shows I ever saw about kids at my age (I watched this in middle school) that took our lives seriously. I haven’t seen reruns of this show in a long time but I would love to see this show again.

5. The Wild Thornberrys

Being the nerd that I was when I was a kid, I love that this show actually taught me things about animals and survival in the wild. I loved Eliza and how much she cares about animals and as a budding xenophile, I loved the fact that they traveled to different countries and learned about different cultures. The adventures that they went on made me experience so many different emotions at once in one episode. One minute I’m laughing at Donnie’s antics while he’s harassing Debbie or Darwin, the next minute I’m fascinated by Nigel’s teachings about the animal they’re documenting in the episode and the next moment, I’m horrified or worried about Eliza while she running for her life from a threat she’s facing. Every episode was such a thriller. 

I loved that they brought in real-life wildlife experts like Jane Goodall onto the show. As a kid, it made me feel like this was a good legit show to learn some real facts about wildlife. I loved the character dynamics; each character is a foil to another. I loved that Darwin, the chimp was so much more civilized than Donnie, this human child who’s at the age where he’s supposed to be learning so much about the world around him. I loved that Debbie, on the surface, was the typical teenage girl who cared about what was cool (I say “on the surface” because at heart, she’s really eclectic and is really great at building relationships with people who don’t speak her language) and her sister was a complete geek. I loved that Nigel was always so free-spirited and throwing caution to the wind and Miriam had to keep his craziness in check to make sure they got their work done, all the characters just played so well off each other and created for some fun dialogue and situations. 

I always thought the art style was a bit strange but it didn’t bother me that much because each episode was packed with so much action. The concept behind this show, although not too original (Eliza is basically a Dr. Doolittle without the medicine) but it was executed in a way that made it feel like a new and fresh concept. I really liked that the animals she spoke to had such diverse personalities and that she used her powers to help out her parents nature show. 

There was a great episode where she met some finches who were struggling to collect food for themselves and she decided to help them out by giving them needles to use to procure worms from trees more easily. After this, the other animals on the island were complaining about food shortages. When she traced the food shortage, it led back to her and she realized that she had tampered with the ecosystem. It was such an excellent lesson for kids about the food chain.

I also appreciated Eliza’s fearlessness and that unlike a lot of young female protagonists, she had a dare-devil/action hero spirit for adventure (much like Tomb Raider) but still used her intellect to solve problems in peaceful ways. I wish that they would rerun this show again. The last time they aired reruns on NickSplat, I still very much enjoyed the show. 

4. Rocket Power 

This show can be described in two words: action-packed. Whenever I watched this show as a kid, I always wished that I could move to California, take up skateboarding and learn to do all the cool tricks that these kids did. But I mostly stuck to playing Tony Hawk games and watching skateboarding documentaries...I’m too uncoordinated to be a skateboarder. But anyway, I loved this show for so many reasons: 

1) This show made me want to go outside and do physical activities like riding my bike. When I was a kid, they had a programming block on Nickelodeon Nick GAS (Games and Sports) and they would air a bunch of sports-related shows.

2)  I really liked that Rocket Power made sports and exercising cool. On summer afternoons, I would watch this show and then take my bike outside and ride around the block a few times. It wasn’t as exciting as what the Rocket Power crew was doing but I still had a lot of fun. 

3) I liked that all the characters had their own unique personalities, strengths and weaknesses and these things were openly addressed. The characters often worked on addressing their weaknesses and fears in various episodes. I thought it was great seeing the characters become stronger and learn new skills and grow. 

I loved the episode where Sam was having trouble with surfing because of his weight and Tito, who is also large in size helped him solve his issue by giving him his iconic long board with the floral pattern. I really appreciate that this show has a character who’s interested in athletics that isn’t skinny like the other kids. I also enjoy the episodes where Sam uses his science and engineering knowledge to help his friends and improve his own athletic skills. It’s important that kids learn that even though they’re not good at something, their skills in another area can help with that skill and when it comes to teamwork, their skill-sets in other things could go a long way toward achieving goals. 

I absolutely loved Reggie. She was one of my cartoon crushes growing up. I wanted to be so much like her when I was a kid but sadly, again, I’m not coordinated enough to ride a skateboard. She’s such a great role-model for girls because she exemplifies the fact that girls can do anything that boys can do, skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding and a lot of other extreme sports are not just for boys and that sometimes, girls can even do some physical activities better than boys. As a girl who was told a lot as a kid that I can’t do certain things as well as boys, characters like Reggie really motivated me to surpass boys at a lot of things including drawing. 

I still enjoy this show a lot as an adult. This show has always been entertaining to me. This show immersed me into skater culture and influenced how I dress and speak. Also, I have very real plans of moving to California someday after having visited the place that Ocean Shores is based on (The Santa Monica Pier)! 

3. The Rugrats

This show was a such a large staple in my childhood. When I was growing up, I watched this show so much that watching it now as an adult brings back so much nostalgia of just being a kid. This cartoon was my childhood. The concept behind this show was so creative. If babies could talk, what would they say? How would they see the world around them? This show answers it all. Just like in Doug, these characters had such vivid imaginations. They could take the most mundane situations like going to the car wash and turn them into the biggest adventures. Although we may never know what babies are thinking, I think this show does such a great job of imagining it. The characters’ personalities are also very representative of the kinds of personalities that very young children have. You have Tommy, the child whose curiosity and hunger for adventure often gets him into trouble, Chuckie, the child who’s afraid of everything including the monster under the bed, the closet, trying new things and being in strange places, Phil and Lil, the kids who love getting dirty, playing with and eating bugs and playing in the garbage and there’s Angelica, the spoiled brat who bullies younger kids and always wants things her way and her foil, Suzy, who stands up for the bullied kids and wants to make sure that everything is fair. 

This cartoon tackles so many milestones of growing up like moving from a crib to an actual bed, potty training, having to clean up after one’s self, taking care of younger siblings and dealing with loss. The show did such a great job of addressing the fact that Chuckie’s mother is no longer alive and we see so many signs that Chaz, Chuckie’s father is still dealing with the grief as well, seeking therapy and struggling to find a girlfriend. Chuckie’s response to his father dating was also similar to how a lot of older people tend to handle this as well. 

I also like that this show explores a lot of Jewish culture as well. This was probably the first show that taught me anything about Jewish holidays or religious customs along with my 2nd favorite cartoon. They also touched a bit on Kwanza as well which as an African American, I thought was really cool. This show does such an amazing job of making the viewer feel as though they are part of the Pickles’ family. I have been watching this show for so long, I feel as if I know all the characters so well as if they are people that I know personally. I loved this show as a kid and I still do as an adult.

2. Hey Arnold

As someone who grew up in a working-class community in NYC, Hey Arnold speaks to me in ways that no other show possible could. Arnold comes from an unconventional family as you will find in a lot of poor communities. He also lives in the inner-city, which is a refreshing setting since pretty much every show on my list has characters who are from the suburbs or other small towns. Coming from a large city, I can relate to all the urban myths and legends that Gerald is constantly regaling throughout the show (except in my case, they were usually rumors about different neighborhoods and crime). I can relate to not always feeling safe where I live just like what Arnold deals with when he is mugged. I’ve had “adventures” with my friends hanging out in the city (mostly hopping train-cars and hanging out at the park). Just like Arnold, I had to ride a public city bus to school when I was a kid, I had to deal with bullies and my grandparents had a large part in raising me as a child since my mother is a single parent and my father was seldom involved in my life.

I like that this show delves into the lives of the characters surrounding Arnold and often I am more fascinated by the secondary characters than I am with Arnold (kind of like with OITNB). Helga is a particularly interesting case. The episode “Helga on the Couch” was such a deep and serious episode. It gave us a window into Helga’s life and MO. We see why she picks on Arnold so much and hides her feelings, why she’s angry all the time and how her family treats her. It presents a clear-cut case of child neglect. In the episode, we see that her parents often forget to pack her lunch, let her walk to pre-school by herself and outright ignored her whenever she tried to get their attention. They openly favored their older daughter Olga over her and they often call Helga Olga by mistake. This definitely made Hey Arnold stand out to me more than any other show. The fact that they’re willing to show what real kids go through makes me feel that the creators take kids and their lives seriously. 

The show also has a lot of coming-of-age moments that I appreciate. This was shown in the episode where Herald goes through his bar mitzvah and he was afraid of the responsibilities and implications that came with growing up just like with most kids. He knows that becoming a man means that he’s going to be held accountable for his actions and that’s a pretty scary thing to deal with for him. On the other side, we see that some kids are actually open to gaining new responsibilities. There was an episode where Arnold was tasked with procuring his grandfather’s watch from the jewelry store and he was super excited to be given the responsibility because his grandfather never trusted anyone with that watch and his grandfather explained to him that he’s growing up and it means adults will trust him with really important things now. There were also characters who wanted to grow up too soon like Gerald who getting fed up with his family and wanted so badly to move out. Once he persuaded Arnold and his grandfather to let him move into the boarding house, he realized that he couldn’t handle it and that it was easier being a kid.

The thing I love the most about this show is actually something that most people don’t like about it or at least, a critique that I’ve heard before from other people who watch and review the show. I like that the endings to a lot of the episodes aren’t happy or have some kind of profound message. When you’re a kid, sometimes daily life doesn’t have any profound messages or lessons despite the fact that you’re supposed to be in a state of constant learning. Sometimes you have a shitty day at school, you come home and deal with annoying siblings or parents and your day ends on a low note. Some days you have a great day at school, you chill with your siblings and your parents make your favorite dinner and your day ends on a high note. That’s real life. I think it’s realistic that a lot of episodes don’t have perfect endings. 

I couldn’t get enough of this show as a kid and I still can’t get enough of it now as an adult.

1. Avatar: The Last Airbender 

What can I say about this show that hasn’t already been said? This isn’t just an cartoon, it’s a work of art and philosophy that has yet to be surpassed by any other other show, not even it’s successor, The Legend of Korra (Nickelodeon’s fault, not the creators). 

This show has that classic “with great power comes great responsibility” message. We are introduced to such a young character, a 12 year old boy named Aang who has been reincarnated as the Avatar, the master of all the 4 elements, destined to restore peace and balance to the world. Knowing his destiny, however, scares Aang to the point where he runs away and winds up getting frozen in a ball of ice while protecting himself from a storm. He then wakes up 100 years into the future and learns that the world is being taken over by the Fire Nation and his mentors and peers have all been wiped out. One cannot say whether or not Aang would have been well-trained enough to defeat the Fire Nation but Aang blames himself for what transpired. This child has so much weight on his shoulders it’s no wonder why he clings onto his childhood so much. Imagine being 12 years old and being told that you have the save the world? How does one cope with that?

There are so many amazing things about this show that cannot be counted. And I’m definitely not going to be able to get to everything but here are my top 4 reasons:

1) Each character has so much depth, including the villains. There are also great character dynamics as well. Sokka and Katara have your typical brother-sister relationship. Sokka can be a nuisance to Katara and get tired of her trying to control everyone’s behavior but Sokka reveals that he relies on it. He feel like Katara is the closest thing to their mom to him. There are very few cartoons where we see siblings who appreciate each other to such an extent. 

Then we have Zuko, who is possibly the deepest most well developed cartoon character ever to be on television. Zuko goes from being the main antagonist of the series to being a part of the main cast as a friend and ally. We see this teenager struggle to cope with the fact that his father abused him for speaking out of turn and forced him into exile until he was able to capture Aang. Even after he briefly defeated Aang and returned to his father’s good graces, he still felt unhappy and it’s because he knew that he was on the wrong side. This fact became especially clear when Iroh teaches him that one of his ancestors was the Avatar which creates this internal struggle within him about whether or not he made the right decision. He then learns that his father and his regime need to be taken down and that he needs to join the Avatar. 

Speaking of Iroh, it’s clear that he’s gone through a similar internal struggle as Zuko and I haven’t heard much of anyone mention how much he changed after visiting the spirit world and how he decided against killing the last of the dragons, claiming they were already dead. Seeing how war affected his life and took the life of his son also made him very protective of Zuko and made him not want Zuko to be lost to violence and the war machine as well. 

We even delve into the mental state of Azula whose sociopathic ways stem from a superiority complex that she’s gained from spending her life trying to please her father--the parent she felt that actually paid her any attention and was proud of her. She craved her mother’s love and attention and I got the sense that she wanted so badly to be as powerful and domineering as her father and the rest of the Fire Nation’s regime but her mother looked down upon this. She felt her mother loved Zuko more than her and it hurt her that she was closer with Zuko, someone in her eyes, showed weakness and wasn’t worthy of being the successor to the throne after her father. If Azula wasn’t going to win over her mother, she was going to take power and respect from everyone around her by all means necessary, even if it meant crushing her most loyal friends. Just like Zuko and Iroh once shared an internal struggle of right vs. wrong, I think that Azula and her father Ozai shared this feeling of wanting to gain power and respect from their fathers who looked down upon weakness. Azulon, whom Azula gains her namesake from was very much in line with Sozin’s ruthless totalitarianism but I felt that Ozai took this a step further when he suggested that he’d take over the throne after Lu Ten, Iroh’s son passed away and he could no longer accept the responsibility of being Fire Lord. Even Azulon thought this was pretty fucked up because he was being so insensitive toward his own brother and in return, he suggested that Zuko be killed so that Ozai could see how Iroh felt...damn and all of this is in a kid’s show on Nickelodeon... It goes so deep that I could write a whole case study on this but I need to move on. 

2) Strong female characters! I loved the fact that the creators made Katara a bender as opposed to Sokka. Not only does it create a balance of power within the characters but it also gave young female viewers someone to look up to. Katara is Aang’s first water-bending teacher. And even though Aang is technically the leader of the group, each member of the Gaang plays important roles in making sure that they accomplish their goals. Katara keeps everyone together when they are facing dire situations. In the episode where Appa is kidnapped, it’s Katara who takes charge when Aang is too angry to function and Sokka becomes intoxicated by cactus juice. Aforementioned, Sokka admits that Katara acts as a strong guiding force in his life in the absence of their mother and he looks to her for strength. Typically, strong female characters in cartoons and movies are basically male characters in female bodies which is something similar that was said about Marida from Brave. These characters don’t typically get to deal with the issues that real girls deal with or the traits that real girls have. What the creators did so well with Katara was show a character that embraces her abilities to be a healer, to choose peace and forgiveness over brute force and violence and isn’t afraid to show emotion around the boys. She’s soft, sensitive and at times, motherly but she will totally kick your ass if you threaten her or her friends. Then there’s Toph. There are so many things I want to say about her character as well but I may save it for a possible case-study about each of these characters. One of my favorite episodes with her was when she was hanging out with Katara on their girl’s day out spa outing and she had to step out of her tomboy rough exterior for a day. She was made fun of by some girls after getting a make-over and for the first time, we saw her experience something that every girl goes through in her life: feeling insecure about her looks which is something she admits she’s never had to deal with being blind. I also love that in this show, your sex doesn’t play a role in any of the monarchies. Women can become Fire-Lords. Although Azula is the last character anyone would want assuming that mantel, I thought it was great that a woman could actually become the Fire-Lord so hats off to the creators for that. 

3) The animation and art are so deserving of a better platform than Nickelodeon. They did not deserve to have this show on their network, especially after almost rejecting this show. Just look at this animation. 

4) An intro to Asian culture and philosophy to children! This show dignifies ancient Chinese philosophy and martial arts in ways that a lot of shows that attempt to incorporate similar topics couldn’t come close to. A lot of this is attributed to the fact that the creators consulted actual martial artists, calligraphers and educational sources for this show. The amount of research that they did to create this masterpiece was amazing. I love Asian culture and martial arts related movies and shows and I just loved every minute of this show because of that.

This series represents a milestone in the history of animation and I don’t think it receives half the credit that it deserves. And we definitely deserved more than that god-awful The Last Airbender movie that did nothing but mock the series and anger its fans. This is a great series that I loved since I was kid and will always love. This show has inspired me in so many ways as an artist and a writer and I someday hope to create a story as half as amazing as this. Thank you so much Mike and Bryan!