That time I went to New York

Prompt: In honor of the 100th anniversary on February 1 of New York City's famed Grand Central Station, write an essay about a time in your life when you travelled—it could be daily travel, such as the commute to and from a job; seasonal travel, such as heading to a beach community every summer; or a vacation, such as a trip to a foreign country. Focus on what compelled you to go and the transition of leaving one place and arriving in another.

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The summer before my sophomore year of college I hopped on a bus at Boston's South station and headed to the City that Never Sleeps.

I feel like a trip to New York City is a certain rite of passage for all college students in the Northeast. This would be my second time ever going to the city but my first going by myself. I had told myself that before I graduated college, I needed to do this trip. In high school when I still wanted to work in fashion, I remember not being able to wait until I got my chance to go back to New York. It seemed so much more glamorous than Boston and one of my close friends had made it sound like magical every time she told me about her trips there. Not to mention Gossip Girl was filmed there as was Breakfast at Tiffany's; the city had a special kind of allure that can't be ignored.

So, I left my dorm at precisely 6:30AM to get on a train to South Station. From there, I boarded a bus that would take me into the heart of downtown Manhattan. Gatsby in hand, I watched the endless road that passed us by from my window seat. I wasn't quite sure of what things would be like but I was excited to find out. 

As I got off the bus, I remember feeling like it was the most adult thing I had done to date. After assuring my mother that I had indeed reached the city and not died in a ditch on the side of the road, I basically had the freedom to do...whatever I wanted to. That freedom was kind of glorious. 

I ended up meeting up with a friend later that day who introduced me to the Shake Shack and then I took my first ride on the New York subway as I headed to the Lower East Side to meet my roommate with whom I was staying the weekend. We ended up walking around for a bit before heading to K-Town for Korean BBQ and froyo. I spent most of my time in the city eating Asian things and shopping though I did manage to fulfill one my dreams of finally going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art(I think my art nerd is showing a little). I stayed in the city for about 2.5 days, so my faithful roomie took me on a whirlwind tour of the area. To be honest, it's a little bit of a blur but I know that in one day we hit 4 of the boroughs which was pretty cool. 

Actual pic from the trip

I've been separated from the experience by a bit of time so I have forgotten some of the particulars of the trip. However,  I think I can sum up my impressions of the city thusly:

1) Wow, everything is open so late! There are trains running past 1:30AM? I can buy myself a cake at 3AM if I wanted? What is this madness?

2) Everyone dresses so chic-ly here; I see no Harvard sweatshirts or Sperry Topsiders so I know I'm definitely not in Boston anymore. 

3) Even the men dress better than I do. What up with that? (though I was informed that was just a product of us being in K-town)

4)  How do people have money left over for food if we keep taking the train so often?

5) Why are there so many people around me right now? I would really prefer that there weren't.

I definitely had a lot of fun that weekend and even though I haven't gone back since then, I definitely could see myself visiting again in the future. In many ways, the New York was much more the prototypical American city than Boston is. All the buildings were taller and shinier, the people moved faster and dressed better and there were exponentially more different types of ethnic cooking. I think if I ever decided that I didn't want to be found, New York would be the perfect place to disappear for awhile.  However, I think I've gotten way too attached to Boston to really want to move there without the incentive of a job/school. But it's not your fault, New York-you put up a good fight but nothing compares to my hometown, the City of Champions. ;)

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Author's note: I am incredibly tired right now an am writing this because I told myself that I wasn't allowed to go to sleep unless I posted something....so it goes. 

What I am Thankful for

I am thankful for fuzzy socks because they make my day a little more delightfully fluffy. Also thank you for being ridiculously patterned and colored because as long as I wear boots no one even knows-it's my little secret, my fabulous little secret.

I am thankful for Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Peppermint White Mochas for ushering in the holiday season, my favorite time of year. I look forward to you every year.

I am thankful for tea: green tea for helping me focus and milk tea for comforting me during late nights, as well as making me feel a little bit superior over those who do not drink tea. Also I am thankful for tea so that I can have a few moments of respite in the middle of a stressful day.

I am thankful for coffee helping me get through my studies-no really. I don't think I would be able to do it without having a cup in the morning. Thank you for making me want to get up in the morning, every morning.

I am thankful for fairytales for always letting me to return to you, even after all these years. Thank you for reminding me that Love is the closest thing we have to magic, even when I now know that it's not Prince Charming that I'm waiting for but my partner in crime.

I am thankful for the opportunity to study at Wellesley College. Wellesley, you make me want to scream and tear my hair out and you have definitely made me cry on more than one occasion. But at the end of the day, I am so much a better person for having come to you. I am thankful for all the lessons I have learned inside and out of the classroom and I truly believe that they could not have been learned anywhere else. I can not wait for the day that I will come back to you as the proudest alumna there ever was.

I am thankful for the teachers who have truly touched my life. There haven't been as many as I thought there would be and it took me a while to find you but I am so glad I did. I am grateful that you took an interest in me not just as a student but as a person in general and live-r and lover of life. You found me at my most vulnerable and made me love learning again. It is a debt that I can never repay.

I am thankful for my friends, who have seen me in my darkest hours and are for some reason still here. Thank you for being strong for me when I didn't know how to do that for myself. Thank you for not giving up on me even when I wanted to give up on me. This year was barely bearable but without you, I would have just given up. I am thankful for having people by my side to push me to be my best self. I am thankful to have you at my side pushing me towards new experiences, while letting me know you will be there for me to fall back on. Thank you for pushing me to be my best self. Just...thank you.

And most of all, I am thankful for my family. Circumstances change and whether I liked it or not, we have been scattered all over the globe. Thank you for reminding me that it is not the place or time that is important; when I am with you, I am home.

Tiff's war on Writer's block

Hello Lovelies!

I've been having a problem for about a year or so and I think it's finally time to talk about it.

I don't know what to write about here.

There, I said it. It's actually really hard to come up with topics to write about and I usually start articles that a relevant in a moment but when I try to come back to them later they wouldn't make sense to talk about outside of the moment in which they were conceived. Also, to talk about subjects, one needs to research them thoroughly to present them in a clear fashion to an audience.

And what about talking about myself and my own personal experiences?

Well if you know me in real-life, you'll know that I am partial to my privacy, especially in this day and age when nothing feels like it's private anymore. Not to mention to share anything on a deeper level is exposing myself and making myself more vulnerable than is really prudent. Not to mention, what if I make a strong claim and then change my mind? That would be rather embarrassing for me wouldn't it?

And on top of all of that, these writings need to be interesting/appropriate to a wide audience of people? I think that just thinking about all of that has been a little paralyzing.

So, I'm starting going to the modified/written equivalent of what is a common practice on YouTube: just writing everyday.

A lot of content creators(i.e. Hank Green and Hannah Hart; Grace Helbig/Shay Carl do this on the regular) on YouTube take a month or so to just vlog. By forcing yourself to practice your craft every single day for a while and to put it up for others to see, you don't really have time to think too much about how it will be received.

I don't quite have a whole month to do this, since exams are almost upon us. However, here's the game plan: I have compiled non-fiction writing prompts and will be publishing a post every day for a week starting tonight. I originally started this blog when I was a staff writer for the Wellesley News so that I would have a place to practice writing so I guess in a weird way, I'm going back to the basics.

I'm not sure how these posts will turn out but I'm excited to share them with you anyways!

Here goes nothing,
T

The best of Tiff's "What would I say?"

For those of you who have not seen this yet, there is a trend starting whereby a website ran a program to mash up old comments and statuses together into new hypothetical statuses for you. Most of it is gibberish or ridiculous and I imagine this is more or less how reading over drunk texts would feel like. However, there have been a few gems I wanted to share some of the more colorful ones generated from my statuses and comments over the years. Let's start shall we...

Yes. They absolutely do.

Not even the right professional field....

Ever the optimist.

Well, that's a bit of a problem. We should always feel FABULOUS.

If you think you ate something, you probably did.

Lolskis, indeed.

Were it only that simple >.<

That's pretty true, I guess.

With awesomeness, I hope

HOLY CRAP, WELLESLEY, you're awesome and terrifying and I hate you but I also love you. It's complicated.

The Lemon Plants are alive and well!

It's been a while since you've seen anything about the lemon plants and that's mainly because I haven't seen much of them myself! I took one pot with me to school in an attempt to grow them in my room but unfortunately they were not flourishing. As such, after about a month or so of waiting for sprouts, I decided to take them to the Wellesley Botanical Gardens to see if they could rehabilitate them. I was hoping that the warmer temperatures and more abundant sunlight would give them the extra boost they needed. 

Taken 19. October. 2013

And behold...the new sprouts! It's been a much slower process than what I observed in the summer with my first two pots but they are trying really hard to grow! It was a little weird that I had put so many seeds in and only got 5 sprouts back because one seed can give way to about 3-4 sprouts because of cloning. But, it only takes one plant to become a tree anyways! It's also nice that they are currently being housed in the Greenhouses because that means I need to go at least every other day to go and water them. If you haven't visited the Greenhouses yet, I highly recommend it because it's like going into a retreat without ever leaving the Science Center. Unfortunately, I think I will probably need to bring this pink pot home for the winter within the next month because it can't really stay there indefinitely. For now though, it has a cozy little home and lots of visits from me :)

So how are the original plants doing? Well Mama C and I repotted them this morning! I didn't count but I would guess that there are 30 individual sprouts so they were getting desperately crowded! I haven't ever repotted plants that were this mature(They're about 4 months old) so they had pretty extensive root systems which were difficult to deal with. It was actually a kind of violent process and I think it's a little bit traumatic for the plants but hopefully they'll be okay. I'm a little worried now that we're going into the winter months that some of the seedlings won't be strong enough to thrive after the re-potting but since I planted them in the height of summer I hope it will work out. I believe it takes about 3-4 years before they'll look anything like trees but at some point, I'll try to repot some to give them more room to try and become trees. For now though, they're kind of cute little shrub-by things. I am kind of in awe of what you can accomplish. This was really just meant to be small project because I saw it one day on Pinterest and now I have three pots of pretty sizable plants. And while 3-4years seems like quite a far ways out from now, I think it will be really fun to come back and look at these posts again. I think that planting these little buggers from seeds and seeing them grow into something is one of the most rewarding and easiest things you can do. 

Taken 3. November. 2013

Hopefully more to come!

"10 Things I know to be true"

I recently saw a TedTalk where there was a poet/teacher who asked people to think about the things they know to be true as a mechanism for writing poetry about things they care about. Here is my list:


10) I have never regretted a work out. It is a pain in the butt to try and get yourself to go to the gym but how could you possibly feel bad about doing something to make yourself stronger?


9) Swimming can wash away most of the evils of everyday life. There have been many times where I haven't really been able to think about what has happened to me, only that I knew I wanted to swim and I knew I didn't want to stop. If nothing else, it will make you tired enough to collapse into bed and a new day will come that much faster.




8) Tea is good for your soul. It may even be the closest things we have to magic.

7) I say that New England is most beautiful in Fall and Winter but let's be real, it's beautiful all year round. Though if we're being honest, mid-September to early January is still my favorite time to be in the city ever.

6) Reading a good book is the fastest escape from the world you could possibly have. Whether it's a new one or an old favorite, a book will never judge you for opening its covers.

5) The perfect cup of coffee can make your day that much better. It's one of the smallest yet most important joys I know.

4) Time to yourself is important but you need never be alone if you don't want to be. This is a more recent one that I learned and I think I'ms till getting the hang of it, but it's also the most rewarding thing you can do for yourself.

3) Given the opportunity, I will always return to the seashore. It is one of the most (if not THE most) beautiful places I know.

2) It is really hard to be productive when your bed is close by. I don't know about yours but mine is fluffy and warm and pink. This is not conducive to homework in the least.

1) You can never go wrong with small acts of kindness. A smile, a text or even a meal can make huge differences in someone's life to know that someone cares. I know it has in mine.

We were instructed not to think that deeply about this list so there's my list with minimal editing and  here's the video if you would like to watch it because I highly recommend it! I should have more posts up soon, there's a lot of topics in my queue waiting to be written.

Bises,
T