i think i did ok

In October of 2003, I made a decision to pursue an alternative attitude towards education when I met a man named Steve Goril. He was standing behind a table in front of our student center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and when I stopped at the beckoning of my curiosity, he handed me a beautifully photographed catalog. The cover was stamped with N O L S, National Outdoor Leadership School, and its contents prophetically displayed the path that would lay down the next five years of my young adult life.

A family friend and avid outdoorsman, Mark Rowland, said to me in an e-mail, “You will realize, perhaps only to the fullest extent when you return to the norm, the realness of it all. The experience is raw and like nothing else.” Period.

I traveled 12,000 miles to Broome, Australia where I stripped away and strapped on the bare essentials. I spent the next 68 days learning to travel by canoe and foot with a group of eleven strangers from all over the United Sates, whom, for various reasons, chose to submerge themselves in one of the most awesome and unforgiving environments in the entire world.

Mark was right. I realized it then and I continued to realize it when I quit taking classes at Miami. He was right when I began picking up applications to outdoor education camps. He was right when I applied to Southern Illinois University and I felt right, for the first time in my college career, when I stepped into my future as specialist in Outdoor Recreation.

There is a lot for me to yet to learn about this field, but with the confidence and pride that I gained from my experience with NOLS, I feel I can begin to set some short and long-term goals for myself.

In time, I wish to become a backcountry expedition leader with a focus in psychological therapy. I believe that by removing people from their everyday environment and harnessing the basic necessities of human life, people can look more intently into themselves and truly discover positive and powerful things that they often fail to see. I believe that by teaching leadership and self-sustainability while interacting closely with a group, people gain confidence and trust themselves to open up to the world around them. The ecology of the natural setting is in many ways a wonderful and creative tool for communicating the importance of each individual in a team.

In order to harness this dream as a reality, I need exactly what I gained from NOLS: experience. I am an emotionally intelligent person with a fair amount of experience dealing with psychological obstructions. I am flexible, honest, open minded and patient. When judging my own personality, I feel I could do a tremendous job in this field. What I need to strengthen, however, are my outdoor skills. I received the caviar of outdoor education with NOLS, but practice, as always, makes perfect. I am determined to gain as much experience in the field through internships or personally planned expeditions with peers. I believe that integrating myself with a smaller scale organization that programs towards children with behavioral disorders would be a good challenge to see how even my strengths are tested. I need to gain a real perspective on the population I wish to work with to ensure myself that the direction I want to take with outdoor recreation will be far more than just a walk in the park.

spread the word

Spike Lee "When the Levees Broke" aired on HBO tonight, the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

I can't even watch the whole thing. I took the time off from working on my self-evaluation/professional direction assignment. I'm having a hard time getting back to thinking seriously about my degree in Leisure Services.

speaking of feeling without direction

thanks to the men on the 13th floor

http://www.grizzlymanmovie.com/grizzly.html

this was a change of pace for my usual friday night routine.

hence commencement

chicks that drink. / like beef.
good god, in the male right mind, you're right. what's wrong with us.

There are things that you become aware of. This has nothing to do with beef. I've strayed from such a post-graduate existence for positive mental health accord.

I re-read these things immediately and dont know what they mean.

take notes in multifaceted color sharpie scheme....they're less intensive on the written page that ive grown impatient with.

i went to a meeting for the kick off of SEC (Student Environmental Center) tonight. I was feeling apprehensive. For whatever reason, i view activist groups as extreme intimidation. I participate in these groups to learn more and do things that i could never discover on my own. I like to be a team player. Awareness is the best tool. (Super Size Me?) None the less, you go in thinking, is my philosophy of just learning enough?

I've talked with my sis about what it means to be an activist, and I concentrated on my experience in an anit war NYC protest thru miami's Student for Peace and justice. Right now ive been searching for the dates and the objectives...searching for them because i can't remember myself, which initiates my point but still leaves me without a progressive state of reference. basically, i wanted to meet new people and get a free trip to new york and ended up with an ongoing obsession to become involved. its actually beautiful to the process: plant the seed, get the growth.

since ive myself lost the objective, as most do with language of the pollitically correct...
it doesn't matter. the language. the intimidation. the lack of confidence in speaking of issues the way issues are so often addressed. but it does, in the end.

The organization to make things happen is the organization that is lacking in most organizations in the enitre nation today. We talked a lot about the kids that are pushing the ballot in a new direction today. They're white, middle class, and usually (to the outsider) smelly and unshaven. Fine, we realize that. But for those of you that have tried to get activism booming throughout your campus....what side of the brain do we operate on? Are we logical? Or do we use too much inspiration without direction?

I'm not making any judgements against the SEC at SIUC becuase i haven't seen seen them. Just makes me wonder is all...the programing behind the scenes. If we want to breakdown the stereotype of "shut up hippy" then maybe we need to be a little more established in the distribution of skills into focus groups to make the show run. What these are specifically depend on the group and i know to little and am too intoxicated to propose such innovations.

isnt that funny




that its once again re-read and i still dont know what the hell i mean. o to contridict like contraceptives.

EAT THAT FROG

i made up a word on tuesday.

Not only did i make up a word, but i used it with confidence. I used it and the silence that followed was not the uncomfortable...."dude, i dont know what that means" that i interpreted it as, but rather an Uh...?

We play icebreakers. There are no such things as icebreakers at miami university. There are no icebreakers in English classes. There is nowhere in my previous collegiate existance that i recall breaking the glass fortress that is as cold as it seems. Knock knock?
We're supposed to pair an adjective with our name. Creative perfectionism is a demon when youre pressurely defunct. Marvelous? Magnificent? Monsterous came into my mind but as firm rejector of the creatively judgemental, i chose not such a route. So, as i pondered my marvelous and magnificent word, while simultaneously RUINING the point of the game (to learn everyone elses name by ways of association), i came up with:

Morphious Meredith.

and that's how it sounds and thats how it was spelled in my head. This is the problem/brilliance of/with language. Look at that word, look at me, and tell me why i would have felt so inspired to shit on the integrity of documented words and outspokenly make an ass of myself. Yea, shatter that shit.




small segment #dos

EAT THAT FROG

Wake up. Turn off the alarm clock. Wipe grime from your eyes and feel freaked about what you got.






Everyone's got a frog. Mine's finding a job. Yours is:

going to the bank
writing a 45 page paper on the west bank
breaking up with your boyfriend
finding a way to break up the stash you just got in

whatevs. EAT THAT FROG.

eat that frog alive and whole, with heart and blood pumping, skin absorbing, all and eyes staring. it's nasty and nasty. let yourself curse and scream as you try and capture it, get it all in your hands to scream at it again for not sitting still. You question many beliefs and bite your fingernails at PITA and think you should change views and give up, but you dont! F U FROG! When you're almost there you can call it your bitch as it still struggles to get away from you cuz there aint no stopping this culinary delight. you eat that frog.






no matter what you do for the rest of the day
it will not compare
in straining stature
to what you had for breakfast
that morning.





get your shit done.

I MISS THEE BLOGger

There will be so much to say when i can actually stop thinking long enough to say it.

hi all, hope you're still checking in every once and awhile.

love me love say that you love me.

nipples are peach pits,
sherbety forcasting touches.
heart is a grade school art project.
cheap manila affixed to pink construction paper.
two dimensional anger pulverizes that paper heart.

no significance at all, just trying to write something. 1st stanza in the poem "want ad' by jennifer winkler...Grassroots undergrad lit mag. also on the list of "things to do" the list is so long i forgot to buy my books today.

thanks to all the wonderful people in my life that do so many interesting things. they seep out of you and i soak them up and up and totally and utterly copy the poop out of you.

yea for getting involved! (im gonna be a DJ)(an activist)(an artist)(an adventurist)

g'nite