Day 19 - A picture and a letter

Day 19 - A picture and a letter


Been a rough day so i though i would lighten the mood with a little comedy, in the form of a letter. So many people have had babies in the past few months it is just nuts. And it has really got me thinking about a few things, and most of your know this already, but i know NOTHING. So here goes nothin...

Dear future baby,

you won't be here for a longggg time but you will probably be one of those colors of the other babies above. I really can't imagine what you will look like because  I saw this thing on 60 minutes about a black and white couple who had a black baby and a white baby, and mixed babies seem to come in all shapes and sizes. Buttt I also heard that being bi-racial is really "in" right now and since i'm half and half you really can't get around the whole mixed thing.


Also , I just want to apologize in advance for making your life tougher than it should be in the beginning. I don't know what to do with you. Hopefully your dad will change your diapers and feed you and stuff because that's not my specialty. You'll probably start to like me once you can eat solid foods because I'm a good cook. Oh yea, and if your baby food tastes weird it's because it's organic and laced with muscle milk and creatine so that you can grow up big and strong and athletic. 


And I can guarantee your room will be nice and neat and your crib will always be clean, but other than that you're on your own. I don't really know what I'll say to you when you get here, because I think baby talk is weird/I'm not good at it. I heard that you're supposed to talk to babies like people so that you can develop their vocabulary. So I will probably use large words like "salutations!" instead of "good morning". Sometime I might even throw in different languages so that I can expose you to other worldly cultures... Bienvienidos! Bonjour! Gutentag! Ni Hao! Just try to listen for a while and when you're ready to talk in sentences then we can really get down to the nitty gritty of life.  If you're a girl baby then we can chat about first wave feminism and go from there....and if you're a boy baby we'll start off with just the basics of life (how to clean up after yourself, how to pee in a toilet, how to spray bathroom spray and courtesy flush...).


And finally....if you spend the first year of your life staring at a woman who looks like the one below, her name is Maeve and I have given you to her because she is a Child Wisperer and she knows what to do with you..... 

well...minus the sharpie writing on her chest

Until next time,
Jenny

Insecurity....

Day 18 - A picture of your biggest insecurity


Biggest insecurity? I'm going to go with....my muscles. They've been a blessing an curse... kinda. Blessing because they make me have super human strength and dominate other girls on the field. A lot of my teammates will agree that typically if I run into you (whether it's an accident or on purpose), I am usually not the one that ends up on the ground. So they have helped me be an aggressive and strong athlete and they were put to good use in lax in my college years.


And they're been a curse because when i was little I always always got teased about them. Like I would always get teased about if i could beat up my boyfriend. Or if my muscles were bigger than my boyfriend.  Or constantly feeling embarrassed by people asking me to flex like i was some kind of freak show. 


At this point in my life though, I have worked through these issues of this and they're definitely a great thing. I like being strong. I like having muscles. I like breaking all-time lifting records on bench and squat max (had to throw that in there...).  But it did take some time to get where I am today. And that, folks, is my insecurity. Here is a picture of me when I was 9....as you can see, I already had some pretty sick traps, delts and bis :)

Day 17: something that has made a huge impact on my life recently

Day 17 - A picture of something that has made a huge impact on your life recently


Ooooo a toughie.... i'm gonna go with black feminist writers. Without them, my thesis would not have been possible. Authors like...

Patricia Hill Collins....no relation

bell hooks

Noliwe Rooks

Lanita Jacobs-Huey

......to name a few. What they have written has provided me with a solid base for my thesis on black female athletes and their hair. Furthermore, what they have not written has left a space for me to explore for my project. Their works have inspired me and made me really reflect on my own subjectivity/positionality and my own actions which has fueled my interest in empowering women and enacting social change.  It seems like so many classes I took and article I read all seemed to fall into place at the right time.  When I was lacking a theoretical backbone to my project, bell hooks' Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) pretty much fell off the shelf and into my lap and opened up to a quote:

...for black people the pain of learning that we cannot control our images, how we see ourselves or how we are seen is so intense that it rends us. It rips and tears at the seams of our efforts to construct self and identity. (hooks, 1992, p. 4)

....and from there the I began to research the construction of cultural identities in sport through black female athletes and their hair. I could go on for days about the influence of these authors on my understanding of the embodiment of cultural values and norms within and on the black female body but I should really go write my thesis as it is due in a month and 7 days!! Can't believe I could actually be done with college soon.....6 years is a long time. Good time, but a long time.

Day 16: A picture of someone who inspires you

Ok so again I am back at it..... trying to keep up with this challenge. At this point I have abandoned the everyday blogging, especially because I am mid-thesis writing and extra writing is almost too much for me.

Someone who inspires me....

Me & my momma

My momma. Claudia Ann Collins. She's inspired me in too many ways to count....I hardly know where to start. When I was little she made my life so much fun and exciting because she always had an art project for me to do, a song to sing along to or a place to visit that opened my eyes up to the world. Yearly visits to art museums, arboretums, the franklin institute, wetlands institutes, American girl doll fashion shows, GOLD (aka girls overnight leadership development) and daily runs to the local rec fields and schools for sports- she did it all. My life was so full of activity and excitement and I owe it all to her.  She's such a smart and strong women- graduated college in 3 years and got her master's at UConn, and she definitely set the bar high for me.  In between all of her amazing maternal talents she has overcome heart problems and beaten breast cancer and she even teaches ESL at a local school. Like I said, she's supermom.  Now as I am about to defend my thesis and graduate with my master's it really brings me back to what has fueled my interest in higher ed and a lot of that has come from my mom. It's exciting that as I grow older I see that we have more things in common (seriously, right down to our handwriting) and when I look back at pictures of her when she was 25 we look strikingly alike.  All in all, I am just thankful that she is my mother and she helped me get where I am today. I really don't think I would be where I am today without her.

Day 15: Something you want to do before you die

They filmed the movie The Beach in Phuket, Thailand on Phi Phi Le Island

Day 15: Something you want to do before you die

Before I die I want to go to Phuket, Thailand. It is like 24 hours away and flights cost a fortune BUT that is why Phuket made it onto my bucket list. Seriously...look at the scenery. The beaches are ridiculous, and I know this for a fact because I watched the movie, The Beach, like 20 times and all the beach scenes are from Phuket.  The water is so clear and pretty and it just looks like it would be the most relaxing place in the world.  I can't get there now but I know some day in the future I could make it happen and, honestly, I hope that it is sooner rather than later because I wanna look hot on the beach. If I go when I'm 50 with all my friends as like a 'girls trip' it probably wouldn't be as fun (but if Maeve remembers, I have predicted the time I am 50 we will be able to teleport, hah!). So check back on my blog in like 3 or 4 years to see pictures of me in this exact location, standing next to those gondola boat things.

Oh yea, and this song was on the soundtrack of The Beach (pure shores by all saints).....I'll be listening to this song my whole 24 hour trip to Thailand

until next time....this is Jennifer E. College. Signing off.

Day 14: A picture of someone you could never imagine your life without

Well, let's see this could get really deep but I'm gonna stop my soul searching right here and just go with my first thought....Obama. I couldn't imagine my life if there was still not a Black President. So I'm glad he's in office....I like the stuff he's doing in that office too. I shook his hand which was cool because I don't think I ever thought I would shake a President's hand.  I like his wife too...she's doing good things, and I've made him numerous offers to send his daughters to Step Up camps for free.

In the spirit of the end of black history month (which ended yesterday...and on that note, why do we only get a month?), I present to you President Barack Obama.

Barack Hussein Obama II

ps: check out www.stepuplacrosse.com. We launched a new site today!