The giving of thanks and my traditional homage to the ones I love

Happy American Thanksgiving my dear friend!

So, for years I have written something expressing my gratitude on Thanksgiving. More or less it is my way of acknowledging that in my life there is a lot of things in my life that I am grateful for in my life.


It is in no particular order.


1) My given family, they may drive me crazy, make me furious, make me want to cry out of frustration, but each of them has given me something to strive for and I am grateful for that every day.

2) I am grateful to be where I am at, The United States of America is not perfect (not in a long shot) but the principles that my nation was founded on still hold true in my heart. I have hope that we will eventually be able to make this country a place that I can be proud of.

3) My chosen family. Science Campers, Jessupites, Millsies, and everyone in between. You are the family that I chose to love. We have had many adventures, laughs, cries, and stories. Let us have many more to come.

4) I am thankful for creativity, because without it, the world would be a very boring place.

5) I am thankful for passionate teachers. It's hard enough to get people to like learning, it's an even greater challenge now. The teachers and professors that have always inspired me to do more, explore more, I thank you over and over again.

6) I am thankful for technology and the communities that have spawned from it. The internet has its downside, but with so many made of awesome people, the internet can be a source of incredible charity, partnership, and joy. It also let's me stay in contact with you my dear friends. I may not be able to see you all of the time, but know that I am always thinking about you.

These are the big ones and I can think of a lot more, but they more or less fit into these categories.

You have a wonderful day with your family (given and chosen) have love and joy in your heart. Remember that even though the day can be stressful, don't let that be the focus.

As always,


Love and Hugs

Kylie

Trains, planes, and well travel in general

Hello Dear Friends!


33 hours on a train with no wifi, a good chunk of it with no cell service, and the brief moment of seeing the very good advice from wonderful experienced camp people provides a girl with a lot of time to think.

It has been 4 days since returning from my Mid-West adventure and in reality it took that many days to process the emotions I was feeling as I passed through Colorado and Utah seeing the most beautiful natural landscapes.

When I woke up in Denver 8 hours after I departed Lincoln, Nebraska two things popped up into my brain.
1) I am very hungry.
2) That is the fastest 8 hours I have ever experienced on a train.


You have to understand, coming from a person who has frequently traveled on the California Zephyr between Reno and Oakland (or Roseville depending on what school year you are referring to) 8 hours is how long it takes to get from Reno to Roseville due to the Mountains that separate the two cities. The fact that I was able to go so far in that amount of time just reinforced the idea of travel in the Mid-West is a lot less complicated. (I know this is really not true, but sleepy Kylie doesn't take in account of nuances on an empty stomach.)

Which then brought a thought to my attention. In the last 5 ish years I have been traveling a lot. I know that there are professional people who travel more than myself, but I have spent many an hour in airports (or on trains) waiting for my next fabulous adventure and there is distinctly two types of travelers: plane people and train people.

Plane people are the ones the are constantly angry about everything, they are in a rush, little delays become major crisis and are the ones that really upset when a plane has been overbooked and the person at the counter is asking for a few people to give up their seats in exchange for a ticket on a different plane a voucher for another flight later. You would think that them being late was a national tragedy or something. These people are separated from the traveler who has had a bad travel day (you know, the kind where it has snowed and there is no way for you to leave for two days and the such) I am speaking only about the people that you can tell they travel (most of them get to board before you because of priority awards and the like) They all are in a rush and think that if people would just get on faster the plane would leave sooner. (At this point I would like to point out these are the people with those HUGE wheely carry-on bags that take up a crap ton of room and thus makes it harder for other people to put their bags up the space too) A person on a train can act like a plane person if they don't understand why we may have to stop at one particular stop for a little while longer due to freight-trains using the same track ahead of the train they are on and then proceed to be angry about it for the rest of their trip.)


Train people are the ones who are pretty content about the travel situation. It's not that they don't get upset, but they tend to be the ones who are ok with waiting. They understand that travel takes time, and you might as well enjoy it. Trains are not equipped with wifi (like I said earlier) so, the idea of walking to the observation car and taking in the beautiful rocky mountains as you ride past the partially frozen over Colorado River is a wonderful option. You might as well talk to the people around you, all train people as well, who are happy to share their adventures with you. You meet a lot of foreigners in this form of travel, all excited to see America in this manner. You meet retired professionals who share their life stories with you, give advice to you (if you want it or not) and encourage you on your way in life. Sometimes if you sit in the observation car long enough with a scholarly book an attractive person around your age will stop and chat with you until it is dark or one of you needs to depart the train. When a train person is in an airport they are the ones who aren't yelling at the ticket agent when the plane is delayed for an hour. They are the ones who, if they think they may be late give a call to the person meeting them at the airport that they may or may not be late and as soon as you know you will text/call/ snapchat/twitter/facebook them to tell them all of the details.

I am a train person. And as I passed through the Ruby Mountains in Utah as the sun was setting it occurred to me that this process of applying to grad school is like a train ride. For the last few months I have been acting like a plane person, impatient and upset about why I wasn't getting the results I wanted. This is a train ride and I need to remind myself that sometimes there is snow on the pass or a freight train on the track ahead before I get upset. I am a train person, I observe and enjoy the things around me and this adventure is just part of this leg of my journey.

So I leave you with this, even if you have never been on a train (and I highly recommend it if you haven't) are you a train person or a plane person?

As always Love and Hugs

Kylie

Home means Nevada but Nebraska holds my heart.

Hello there dear friend!

Well, it is hard to imagine that I have been in Nebraska for 5 days because it seems much much longer!

To start from the beginning (because that is of course the best place to start) I must explain myself a little bit.

I took a year off from school between undergrad and a graduate degree, not because I had wanted to but because I didn't get into either school I had applied to in the first place. It was incredibly difficult for me to conceptualize me not being good enough to get into grad school.
Looking back now, I completely understand why I didn't get into those schools. My application was sloppy, plain and simple. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. It felt like I had been asked to shoot an arrow, never having used a bow in my entire life at a very small target with my eyes closed and expecting to hit the target on the first try.


Since returning from camp my primary motivation has been to make my application fabulous and above expectation. This is much harder than I expected it to be, since I have a love hate relationship with how I view education.
I love learning. I hate the politics that are involved in the progression of my education.

If you read my last post, I wrote about being in Nebraska for some interviews with department professors.
All of them went really well. In fact, they went exceptionally well and I cannot be happier with the conversations that I had.

I learned a lot from these interactions. I thought I had been ready to speak to them and for the most part I was. One question reoccurred though: what is it that you want to do with a doctorate and what are you going to study to get this degree?
It's hard to be precise in an answer when I have been asking that question myself for the last two months. Writing a Statement of Intent is the hardest thing I have ever encountered. I am basically creating an outline for what I want to do for the next 5-ish years. I can always tweak little things, but in essence what I write will be what I am expected to write a million page dissertation on.  

Once I get that done and submit the applications I will get to play the waiting game again. The wait that will then determine where I will be packing up my things and moving to for my current future.

That is what brings us back to Nebraska.
I had mentioned that I liked here. In fact, to be more precise, I love it here.

It is a strange feeling as I pack my bags and prepare for a train ride home tonight that in fact I will be missing this place. The feeling is akin to how I feel when I leave West Virginia at the end of my summer. I haven't even experienced all of what Nebraska has to offer (like Tornadoes and lots of snow) and I want to be here.

Most of you will probably think this is me just saying this because I have visited here and none of the other schools I have on my application list. That may be quite true to an extent but I cannot explain why despite the absence of mountains I feel at home here. The mountains for me will always symbolize home and safety but standing on top of the observation deck of the Nebraska Capital, the dizzying vastness that is Nebraska has instilled a kind of calmness in me.

I sit here, leaning on my green suitcase that has traveled with me on my adventures, and wish with all my heart that I did not have to get on that train today.


 Home means Nevada but Nebraska holds my heart.


Love and Hugs

Explanations and talk of adventures (in Nebraska?)

Hi there friends!
It has been a while since I wrote a blog (After study abroad! Holy Crap almost a year and a half!)
I will explain the purpose of this blog later but I have to share

It's hard to explain to a West Coast person the beauties of the mid-West, but I will try.

As a disclaimer I was one of those people who made fun of the mid-West with how flat it is and of course the miles of corn fields that are in fact here. I am a fan of the mountains, desert, and to an extent the ocean (preferably the Oregon Coast but I digress). For many years I pushed back any thought of going to school in the center of the US for reasons legitimate and not so legitimate. Yet I have seemed to find myself in a bit of a strange situation, Nebraska has brought serious aspects of life to the fore front that I have only really described but never truly thought an actual possibility.

So yesterday was my first full day in Lincoln, Nebraska and in true Steven's fashion I got up early dressed up and left 2 and a half hours before I needed to leave for my meeting with the Graduate admissions people. (You have to understand, even though this campus is huge compared to Jessup or Mills it is pretty navigable if you know where you are going.)
I did not know where I was going so I of course left early. After about 45 minutes of wondering around I finally found the building where I needed to go and proceeded to baffle the lady at the desk when she saw I was over an hour early.
She suggested I go to the union and get some breakfast which I happily did. I returned back still an hour early because, well, why not. I am my father's daughter.

I met with the grad admissions people, which wasn't too dramatic but helpful. I was an hour ahead of schedule and didn't really know what to do. I couldn't go back into the apartment building that I was staying at because my dear friend Katie was on a completely different campus so I couldn't obtain her card to get into said building.

Instead I moseyed (did I spell that right? I am a history major. . .it's a moot point) into the Lutheran Center that Katie said to go to if I needed a place to hang out for a bit.
The connections that permeate life are pretty great and I have come to find out and the world is getting to be a smaller place every day.
 Case in point:
1) I walk into the LC and people introduce themselves, realize who I am and proceed to get to know me.
2) I tell them the ridiculous story that got me to Nebraska in the first place
3) The pastor of the LC hears about my study abroad experience in the Middle East and calls their intern over because she has lived in the Middle East. Bethlehem to be exact.
4) Turns out she went to Oxford through BestSemester when she was going to school at Messiah College which was the college that my roomie in the Middle East went to.
5) She and I knew all of the same places of eating and shopping in the Bethlehem/Jerusalem area.
6) Life is a crazy random happenstance and it amazes me that by simply walking into a place and having a little faith in humanity this kind of connection can happen.

I left so I could walk to my next meeting. (I still had 3 hours before this meeting mind you.) It was a fairly nice day though so I didn't mind it all that much. I sat at a bench near a strictly musical bell tower (topped with what else  but corn) and observed the hustle and bustle of the campus.

I then proceeded to be flabbergasted at how BIG Memorial Stadium is.

No Seriously.

HUGE.

I grew up with Mackey Stadium down the street. I have passed the Cal stadium. I have ran at the Sac State stadium. This football stadium was massive.

I knew the mid-West took their football seriously but it wasn't until this moment I actually could physically see it. I had heard about it from my family in Ohio. (O-H!) but knowing what I know now I appreciate it much more.

The one thing so far that has stuck out to me is how nice everything is. Not that people on the West Coast aren't nice, but just the things that they value is evident in their daily goings of life. Study tables are shared with apparent strangers, doors are held open and a greeting of have a nice day are said (not that in itself is odd, but life seems a little slower paced for UNL students even on a busy Wednesday.)

I say this with all sincerity. I am a mountains girl, with desert embedded in soul but the mid-West has seemed to find a part of me that wishes for a little of this flat seemingly unending land. I like it here. It's an odd feeling.


I'm going to try and write more about my adventures later. Maybe I will even get fancy with pictures.

Love and hugs,

Kylie