#ive volunteered a lot since i was a kid and its because i genuinely want to help out and enjoy it

[gwystyl]

thing that bothers me about academia: 

in 10th grade my english teacher was really involved with kids against hunger, which i have helped out with a couple times with my family’s church (that she also goes to), and so she’d often have sign up sheets for students to help out. towards the end of the year she’d often remind of us of it and say it’d be good for resumes and transcripts and such

i have a lowkey hatred for the kind of smart honor society system around and some of the students involved in it, and i just would look over the class and think of how disingenuous it was for these (pretty privileged) kids to be volunteering solely to make themselves look good for snobby, honor society kind of schools. you can make a statement about the high expectations for students to be highly involved in several things while maintaining good grades just for a college to look at them, but i always hated the idea of these kids only helping out because they wanna wear a fucking honor society sash around school. i feel like perhaps the original intention of adding volunteer work to one’s transcript or whatever is to showcase the activities they’re involved with, along with highlighting their personality like....they care for the environment! theyre an activist! they like helping others! but showing up for the sole purpose of it being on there doesnt showcase that at all. their volunteering isnt something they’d.....voluntarily do if it wouldn’t benefit them. it doesn’t show that this is their passion or whatever, it’s just another entry in your college admissions form.

at least people are benefiting from their help, but what kind of people will they be when they grow up and only help others when it’s beneficial to them. what kind of people in power will these kids make. and i hate, hate the thought of how disingenuous it is to see these kids there helping out just twice because they want to act like they’re an empathetic person for colleges 

#ive volunteered a lot since i was a kid and its because i genuinely want to help out and enjoy it #ive volunteered with girlscouts #ive helped at a hospital event #ive volunteered at koolaid days #i volunteer at the museum helping with kids classes #ive helped with kids against hunger #ive helped at the church

[yaminerua]

I was rewatching Thriller earlier for like the bazillionth time and then I started remembering back to when 10 year old me went to my primary school’s halloween disco. I think I was attempting to replicate the way Michael looked in the video for The Way You Make Me Feel. Only I looked kind of terrible cos I was just using whatever I had and the shirt wasn't even the right kind of blue.. Lmfao you tried, past me. Anyways, I guess I was kind of known at school for being That One Kid who’s way into Michael Jackson. Like it was well established by that point and everyone in my year was well aware of and highly amused by it so I got made fun of a lot for it but I had tougher skin back then and could brush that shit off much easier. Didn't really make it easy for myself for being really fricking obvious about my obsession either. Ive never ever been subtle about anything I love. Anyways since it was a Halloween disco obviously the inevitable happened which is that Thriller got played and my classmates were all like lol hey Lauren do a dance. Man I knew I was kind of shit at dancing but like I said I was a tougher cookie then than I am now and I had confidence then that gradually got bullied out of me but the point is I had it once. So when the opportunity came to do a little dance I was like heck yeah. And I probably at the time didn't even realise everyone else was just laughing at me but they formed a circle around me on the school gym hall floor and let me do my embarrassingly bad attempts at dancing and at the end of the night the DJ guy called me up to the stage and gave me a box of maltesers chocolates for being a 'wee star'. I still have a photo somewhere if me posing with the chocolates at the end of the night. I had fun that night. Really had fun. And even tho everyone was probably laughing at me making a fool of myself, in the moment I felt cool, I went for it and got a box of chocolates as a result. The bullying became pretty relentless in the time afterwards so gradually I stopped being as confident. It kind of wavered. Sometimes I didn't care and just went for it (like when I entered the school talent contest trying to do an MJ song and nearly hit my teacher with my shoe when it came flying off my foot in an attempted kick of the leg dance move lmfao) and other times I got overwhelmingly self conscious and chickened out. I didn't go to the Halloween disco the next year because I had become too self conscious. My parents were at the disco tho with some other parents who'd volunteered to help with food and drinks and stuff. And my mum and the neighbour across the street both told me that when it came time to play thriller again the dj had remembered me from the previous year and was all 'where's that wee Michael Jackson girl?' My dad still brings it up sometimes pfff. I felt embarrassed at the same time as regretting not going. I wish I'd gone to more school dances/discos but I became super self conscious and missed out on a lot. I'm still fond of that memory tho because in the moment I had a lot of fun;;;; the picture of me that was taken back then also years later got submitted into a mosaic of the This Is It promotional image of Michaels silhouette built up of thousands of pictures of fans showing their love after... Well... You know. I think my picture in the mosaic was placed somewhere near his legs but I can't remember exactly. It meant a lot to me to be able to be a tiny part of a tribute to him. I went into more detail about it in a Twitter ramble a few nights ago but gosh he was really such an important pillar of strength for me during my younger years, especially through everything that was happening at home. Dancing, even if I was never good at it, and singing to his songs provided an escapism I sorely needed and honestly could probably benefit from going back to now. And regardless of what people believe or hear about him, I genuinely felt that his love and care for children was real and genuine and sincere and that he would never hurt a child. It felt like, even tho I didn't know him and would never know him personally, he was there for me and for all the kids going through awful stuff, be it in their homes or communities or anywhere. It made it feel like even though I couldn't talk about it to people, and had to endure all that shit in silence, that there was someone out there who would care if he knew. Maybe it sounds silly. I don't really care how it sounds. It was important to me when I was small and it gave me so much that I really needed that I couldn't get anywhere else. his death still hurts 9 years later. It's going to be 10 years next year and I am never going to be ready for that. It literally felt like the world just stopped and it still feels like yesterday when I settled down to sleep in this very room and my brother came up the stairs to break the news. I can still remember how hard I cried. I cried solidly for hours until i passed out. I'd always in some way hoped that maybe one day I'd be lucky enough to meet him. To say what I'm sure he probably heard a thousand times in a thousand different ways about how important he had been, how positive his impact had been for me as a child and ever since. That can never happen now but.. Ahh;;;; Someone recently had commented about how next year will make it 10 years since that awful day and I guess it just. Triggered something in me. I hadn't been very outspoken about how much I love the guy because people would always be shitty about it and I was afraid about what people would say because I got bullied relentlessly for it in both high school and primary school but honestly. Fuck that. I don't care anymore. He was important to me and he still is and I'm not going to shy away and pretend that isn't a fact. Genuinely tho...... I'm genuinely 95% certain that if I'd just had the same space now as I'd had to just go and dance til I dropped and sing til I cried as a kid to get out all that was happening inside I'd maybe be a little less fucked up. It was cathartic then. Therapeutic and honestly i want to get that back. Just. Lock myself in a room for hours and get completely lost in the music and then come out of it feeling... Better. Lighter. I don't doubt that maybe if I'd been able to do that when I was going through what I was going through in 2011/12 I might have come through that abuse a little less broken and suicidal but who knows. Maybe not. I'm where I am now and I'd like to think there's still a little hope that things can be alright. This house doesn't have the space nor the privacy tho to do any sort of dancing. Doesn't even have the right kind of floor to spin around on like the old house did before its renovation in like 2008. That and I'm also laughably out of practice and super unfit so I'd probably die like halfway through a song when I used to be able to go on for hours before I got tired. Aaah... One day maybe I'll get to see if that old magic can still help me like it did then. For now........I should probably sleep instead of getting weepy and nostalgic.

#personal shit #thinking back and remembering stuff #and I'm feelin immense love and appreciation for the King of Pop tonight. #And every night since before I was even double digits to be honest but still