A feminist rant

When I return home or am catching up with friends I do not go to school with, one question comes up without fail each time: "What's your boy situation?" Note: the question is not "do you have a boyfriend?" We live in a society where that information is already on Facebook, so since it didn't provide enough information, we need the whole situation. It implies that a situation even exists. Other common questions include:

"How are the boys? Are you seeing anyone? Any interests? Why don't you have a boyfriend?"
And these are completely normal questions to come home to. From friends, family, people at church, etc. And I want to propose a question that stems from this. 
Does a woman's well-being reflect her relationship status? Why should it? I really have tried to see it from both sides.

If you're in a relationship...

• You value another person's life
• Can balance your time well  
• Supposedly have marriage and a future on your radar
• You have another individual to support you, emotionally and in your life  

If you're not in a relationship...

• More time for yourself- independence 
• At times, more time to focus on your education and work goals
• Can emphasize your relationships with friends and might try more to stay in touch with acquaintances

Clearly, these lists are not complete. Either way, relationship or not: you're going somewhere and moving forward in life- whether it be promotions in the workplace, marriage, etc. So why do we judge a woman on whether she has a man to support her?

A woman can be perfectly competent and successful without a boyfriend. A lot of effort, time and energy goes into the obligation to put someone else's life at the same level as yours. But people need to wait for the right person or opportunity to be there and the right time in their life, not just date to say they're dating. We live in an ambitious and goal-driven world; nevertheless, people are selfish and don't always want to date someone just to have someone for mutual support and a relationship. So we should respect the fact that this is acknowledged nowadays and realize that someone's status as a person is not dependent on their relationship status.

Why doesn't anyone ever ask what you are doing with your professional goals or at school? You could be the CEO of a company, and would have to ease that into conversation since you're not talking about a relationship. I guarantee you that people at home don't know that I'm chairing a philanthropy event that fundraises over $100,000, working for a full-service advertising agency and served on the planning committee for my university's Centennial Homecoming. But they do know I am single!

Moreover, how many BOYS are judged on whether they have a girlfriend? Envision this situation. A 28 year-old man comes home to his hometown and shares news that he has been named president of a company. Now picture this- a 28 year-old woman has been given the same title. And people will still say- "Darn, too bad she doesn't have a husband."

I encourage you to look at boys the same way you do with girls as they achieve their goals. I encourage you to acknowledge your friends and family members' accomplishments and life goals just as much as their relationship status. And I encourage all women to realize that they don't need a man to stay stable, and that good things come to those who wait.

PK Problems

Yesterday, after running into many families from my church at a local shopping center, I tweeted under the hashtag (yes, I used a hashtag) #PKproblems, standing for "Priest's or pastor's kid problems." Attending a rather large church where my dad is the priest for the past ten years, this is a common occurrence and I was rather amused and excited to run into all of these people.

When I got home later, I clicked to see if anyone else had discussed PK problems on Twitter. And what did you know, multiple people had! Below is a screenshot of some other "PK problems" identified in tweets. This is an example of hashtags for categorization purposes, but still remains rather hilarious. Check some of these priest's kid problems out!

From college towns to suburbia…the ins and the outs

Every time I come home from school, there are clear differences in the lifestyle. Not as that of a student and of my priorities, but rather in the norms of the suburbs versus that of a college town. I attribute this to what college students deem acceptable and what suburban citizens have overcome, but it's interesting to observe the differences firsthand.

1. Walking vs. driving everywhere

College students are adjusted to walking all the time. To class, dinner, a friend's house...why drive? You have to pay for gas anyway. Walking is keeping you fit and the walking itself is pretty peaceful. But in the suburbs, it's actually abnormal to walk anywhere. That's what 15 year olds and under do....walk downtown. Walk to their friends' houses. It's unheard of to park a mile away and go get it later. Walk somewhere in the snow just to see friends instead of remain in cabin fever. You're crazy if you want to walk somewhere. Tonight alone, my friends got in cars a total of five times to go to a friend's house, pick someone up from the train, drive back, go to get bubble tea, and drive home later. And each of these distances were probably no more than a mile away from each other. Hence, it's sad how suburban people lose the value of walking to enjoy some quiet time and pick people up without wasting some gas. 

2. Overall moodiness of being around college-aged kids

I live in a sorority house. I live in a double room, with a roommate, and people voice their opinions on things. We understand each other, and some things just go unsaid. You can be in a good mood, you can be in a bad mood, and it doesn't have to be questioned. At home, if you seem even the slightest bit off, something is wrong. With roommates, they don't want to hear it. It's just understood...you'll have a better day tomorrow. But you have to state a clear reason for why you are upset or what is wrong...it makes you think. Whether your rationale was ridiculous, or whether there even is one. 

I've experienced this dress-shopping. My mom and I argued over which length and size to get, and I was disappointed after. At school, it would have been perfectly okay to be moody for an hour and get over it later, but at home, I was hammered about what exactly was so upsetting for hours. Thus, be ready to rationalize your decisions for feeling anything in a suburb. 

3. Running into people

On a college campus, you run into people you know all the time. Classmates, people from campus activities, your friend's roommate's ex-boyfriend that you met that one time, the list goes on. But when you run into high school or hometown people, things are slightly different. Since it's not always expected, there's a grunt of "Ugh, I have to impress them right now. Time for small talk." But why don't we feel that way at school? These people will all run into you someday too. At home, it's a burden but at school, it's rather exciting and makes you feel popular to know people. In the suburbs, it's a competition of who is better off at that point in time and if you can't win, you don't want to be in that situation. 

4. Timeliness

In suburbia, no one is in a rush to get anywhere. Rephrase, no college student is in a rush to get anywhere (soccer moms on the other hand...). You have commitments, but you don't have to stick to a strict time clock or else you're looked at as insane. It's not like what anyone else is doing is that important. We told Hannah we'd be over at 7:30? Let's drive over around quarter to 8. At school, if you're late to such plans, you're missing a ride, missing an event, etc...but here, it can wait. 

Overall, these differences do reflect college student norms--being laid back time-wise, wanting attention but not too much attention from running into others, acting moody in front of friends but not family and walking around. Considering the reasons though is quite interesting and makes you think about why these occur! 

MIZ100HC: A Century of Coming Home

A big chunk of my semester was spent serving on the Homecoming Steering Committee for Mizzou's Centennial Homecoming Celebration. In fact, I spent so much time engrossed in Homecoming activities that I barely got to blog about it! Over break, I finally had some time to create a photo scrapbook, but here are some photo memories of the various activities I got to partake in coming from the other side!

Homecoming Steering Committee members doing the MIZ tiger pose before the
Royalty Banquet on the quad!

Andrew, the other member of the merchandise subcommittee, and I making everyone laugh with the prom pose!

We sold over $70,000 in pre-ordered Homecoming merchandise and sorted it into boxes for each residence hall or campus organization.

As a member of the merchandise subcommittee, we sold Homecoming shirts, ornaments and UnderArmour apparel throughout campus the weeks leading up to Homecoming!

Tiger Food Fight, the campus-wide canned food drive, collected over 65,000 pounds of food for the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri!

For Centennial Service Day, I led a group of students to pick up litter at Reactor Field, a popular Mizzou tailgating location.

Over 5,000 units of blood were collected at the four-day blood drive at the Hearnes Center.
Above, the Homecoming girls pose by the Red Cross truck!

Homecoming morning finally arrived!

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The Reynolds Alumni Center decorated for Homecoming day!

Chester Brewer, former athletic director and football coach, was honored as the Grand Marshall.
A cardboard cutout of Brewer stood in front of the Mizzou Rec Center.

Phi Mu's house decorations on Campus Decorations Night!  I got to walk around with my family and all of my friends after monitoring the streets for a little bit. 

We woke up for an early morning breakfast and got on the firetruck to be in the Homecoming Parade!

At the football game, we got to go on the field and kiss the 50 yard line at the halftime coronation. 

What a great way to close our Homecoming experience! My knees were even grassy after.

After the afternoon game, my friends had a post-game tailgate sponsored by Kathryn's parents, Laura's parents, Sherman's parents and mine! We took pictures of our families and all of the visitors we had- including our siblings, friends, Jenny from American in DC and Helen & Steve from our rival Iowa State!

My family (minus Maria) after the closing committee banquet Sunday morning! Thanks again for visiting!

Everyone after the winners had been announced on the stairs of Jesse Hall

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this year's Homecoming a fascinating experience and one that will certainly live on!

The Hashtag

Ah, the hashtag. #. Pound sign. It means so much to us, but to a non-Gen-Y-er (or non-Twitter user) might mean nothing.

Uses of the hashtag

1. Categorization. The use of the pound sign (hashtag) for categorization was genius, and ultimately, what it was intended for. To be able to tweet an event, conference or international conversation under one name is brilliant. Mizzou Homecoming can be tweeted under the hashtag #MIZ100HC, Mizzou news can go under the hashtag #Mizzou, and news about a celebrity under his or her last name allows you to easily follow a story.

2. This brings us to the use of search relevance. If you are searching news and many have tweeted under the same hashtag, it's easier to find and more credible since one followed to general criteria enough to use the hashtag. Therefore, you have to make hashtags for corporate communication or international news something common enough that people won't change it up, misspell it or do anything else to make it less relevant.

3. Sarcastic attitudes have made the hashtag become a way of expressing one's opinion on something or overall commentary. This is where you start to wonder why it exists. If a tweet is already your opinion or shared knowledge, why not say what you mean? The # isn't supposed to imply sarcasm, so why have we turned it into that? I don't know about non-college towns, but it is pretty common to hear my friends and classmates use the word "hashtag" aloud.

• Hashtag, winning!
• Hashtag, awkward!
• Hashtag, too frat to care!

But what meaning does "hashtag" contribute to this? Absolutely nothing. And I'm guilty of this myself. What did we do before hashtag? Just SAID THOSE THOUGHTS! We have to remember that just because a cool symbol exists to categorize things doesn't mean we have to build its meaning and lose the originality of our comments by branding them to Twitter as a website.

4. Additional emphasis on your thoughts. If you're tweeting, you clearly have a sense of self-importance that outweighs that of those who don't tweet. You think that people actually care about what you're saying, at least enough to read it. That's why this last common usage of the hashtag cracks me up. People want to stress what they say in their tweets in this opinionated matter, using things like #mylife. Please note: I am guilty of this myself, but that doesn't mean I still can't find it funny. #sadday. What you said should have already implied that it's your life, or a sad day. You have 140 characters to get your point across, and you essentially have wasted one of them on a symbol. You really want EVERYONE to know that it's your takeaway point. Hence, we contribute to the #'s meaning by using it so often with the last emphasis tweets.


Therefore, I advise you to monitor usage of "hashtag" allowed and express your commentary in your words, not symbols. If we as a generation began to do this, we would not need signs, symbols and imagery to keep us going and could better define our writing and ourselves by what we say.

Targeted Facebook ads

As a consumer and strategic communication student, targeted Facebook ads fascinate me. My amazement to see what they would come up with and show me what it thinks I want was triggered when I studied abroad, but has continued as I transition from home to Mizzou and go back and forth. It's not only what they can extract from my profile, but what brands are setting in their criteria that helps to target me--whether it be age, network, current location, etc.

Lately, I have felt that after I talk about something with friends, it arises in my targeted ads. I began to even feel like Facebook was listening to me in my daily conversation, which is a problem. In my mind, targeted advertising is comparable to swearing: it becomes an issue if it becomes so embedded in your mind that you are not realizing it. Therefore, rather than giving the internet this much credit, I began to ponder: what does this mean in terms of my internet usage? I deduced three overarching themes:

1. That I have too much information on my interests that are targeting these. New movies that were coming out or music recommendations are based on what pages you have "liked," and they cannot just guess what I liked. I myself have a selective criteria that is evident by the pages I have on there. It's easy to target chick flicks and top 40 music if that's what I have selected. 
2. I subconsciously AM searching such information online, but not noticing it. 

   

   This is clearly from search history, because Lowe's research was a large part of a class project on Home Depot. But do I realize how much I am researching these brands? Not at all.
   
   

   

   Lately, I've been shopping for new jeans and OCJ Jeans are a brand that a Maneater client of mine recently advertised about and we discussed via email. I am crazy to think that words sent in personal emails could be targeted, and am clearly reading into things. But it IS pretty ironic that this specific brand would arise, but showing me that I have probably looked at photos or options for new jeans online lately.  

3. Lastly, I might just be in the target audience by location or demographic and should not worry. I'm reading into things and giving Facebook too much credit. 

   

   
   

   This example probably arose on my profile because I am in the Mizzou network and college-aged demographic, but also have posted statuses about loving Christmas. My immediate first thought, I kid you not, was "It must have known that I created the ornaments for the Homecoming merchandise subcommittee!" Why would it know that? Who has the time to extract such information, especially if I didn't publish it? Nobody, not even a machine. Hence, you have to look at the bigger picture and not feel flattered by such targeting. 

For more information on Facebook's ad targeting, click here. 

Gary Pinkel's DWI

This past Wednesday night (Nov. 16), Mizzou football coach Gary Pinkel was arrested for driving under the influence. After being pulled over, he refused to take a BAC (blood-alcohol content) test and pleaded guilty. Ironically enough, he is featured in an "Arrive Alive" advertisement for the state of Missouri promoting motorcycle safety, and with Mizzou as the center of news spreading with the vast amount of journalism majors, you can imagine how fast news spread on this story. Typing in Pinkel on Twitter gave me updates by the minute, from @komuNews, our television station in Columbia, Mo. with information from broadcast journalism students, the Columbia Missourian newspaper and more. 

The articles and jokes began early Thursday morning, expressing disappointment in Pinkel's decision, notices released from Chancellor Brady Deaton and Athletic Director Mike Alden and later, Pinkel's "official apology to Tiger Nation." All expressed disappointment and outrage with Pinkel's decision, acting as a poor role model to his team, the University and the Mizzou community at large. He will be suspended for one week along with other consequences, and donate a week of his salary (over $40,000) to the MU Wellness Resource Center to promote awareness of the mature management of alcohol.

The biggest ethical upset I have with the coverage of Pinkel's DWI is the published dashboard camera footage of his arrest. KOMU news, Columbia's NBC affiliate, obtained the video coverage and uploaded it to its YouTube station itself. This was uploaded yesterday and my friends noticed it from smart phones on our drive back to Chicago from Missouri. I was appalled at the decision to publish this videotape and immediately questioned its necessity. 

Gary Pinkel is already embarrassed by his actions and has assured a horrible PR scandal to both the University of Missouri and our recent conference change to the SEC. As a journalism student currently enrolled in Communications Law, my class just finished a unit on privacy, obscenity and newsworthiness. 

• Does Pinkel have a reasonable expectation of privacy? No, this happened in public and according to the "standing in" doctrine, filming such footage is legal as long as one recorded from a public area where anyone driving by could have seen what happened. There is no issue about the recording or publishing it. 
• Is it of legitimate public concern? Sure, the news has a huge effect on the Columbia area and Mizzou community. 
• The video or news is definitely not highly offensive to a reasonable person, not even Pinkel himself. 

We see that answering the questions of these test, there is no dilemma to posting the video. The story is newsworthy, but here are my questions. 

What does the video add to the story? 

Does it share anything the public needs to know? 

Does it share anything that can't be understood through written words and stories? 

In a world of emerging technologies, news outlets feel the need to post whatever they have as soon as it's obtained. Videos, infographics, recordings, etc... because we have the capability to. But too often, we ignore the question of what it contributes to the story and rush to posting everything we have on the internet and outlets like Twitter catering to the public need of sharing news.

In this case, we have two news outlets AFFILIATED with the University of Missouri (Columbia Missourian and KOMU news) singlehandedly contributing to our university's national embarrassment from this incident. And I would love to say as a journalist and Mizzou student that they are serving the principles of good journalism by doing so, but they are not. The video of Pinkel's arrest contributes nothing to the story that has not already been reported, and until I see a rationale of what it adds, I have lost respect for both of them. 

No regrets

This past weekend, I was conflicted about what to do. There were multiple events scheduled at the same time, and I could not prioritize which I wanted to attend the most. Between my last semi-formal, a Homecoming reunion, a football game, a concert, a brunch, conference in St. Louis and regular student commitments like homework and sleep, I could not make a decision.

So for those of you that know me, you know that I decided to do it all. And it was not the easy choice, it was the choice where I would have the least amount of regrets.

I started at semi-formal Friday night and went to the Ying Yang Twins concert sponsored by two fraternities immediately after, what a night! Ying Yang Twins were actually very incredible live, or they were lipsyncing really well.

Leah, Megan, Emily, Melanie, Alex, Courtney and I!

The Ying Yang Twins at Whiskey Wild's

Saturday morning, Kathryn and I woke up and walked over to the Alumni Center to go to the brunch for the Chancellor's Excellence Fund! We sang a parody for Chancellor Deaton called "The Brady Bunch," since his name is Brady. It was a big hit, an intimate brunch where everyone even introduced themselves and everything went smoothly.

Mizzou Student Foundation members at the Chancellor's Excellence Brunch

After brunch, I grabbed a bag, picked up Karee and drove to Lake of the Ozarks! A member of Homecoming Steering Committee volunteered his lake house for Homecoming members to hang out and catch up for a weekend retreat. I had never been to the lake before, but it's very comparable to Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. The area and home were beautiful and the weather was nice enough to lounge outside and enjoy each other's company. We went to a restaurant on the water, the popular outlet malls and back to hang at the house! It was a nice little day trip and really makes you feel away from everything for the day.

Homecoming girls! Morgan, Karee, Hannah, Rachel, Hannah, Rebecca and I

...But just for the day. I headed home around 9 p.m. for Phi Mu's initiation sleepover where my daughter and granddaughter Liz and Melissa slept in my bed! We watched SNL and went to bed early- an ideal night.

Liz and Melissa!

Sunday morning, I arose at 6 a.m. to get in the car to drive to St. Louis University for the Relay For Life Eastern Missouri region (EMO) Collegiate Summit! Thankfully, I got to sleep through half of the car ride, but Bret and Charlie (the other Relay co-chairs) had a great time coming up with hilarious ways to wake me up. Blasting loud rap music was the winner. Sessions like this always excite me for our Relay For Life event on March 16 and deliver loads of ideas for fundraising and public relations. I took more notes than I have in awhile and we learned a lot from SLU and WashU's Relay steering committees! Since they were local, 50 of them from each school attended as opposed to the 10 MU students that could make the drive from Columbia. I ran into a friend from middle school who in on the WashU committee though, which was pretty funny! Some things learned:

• Mizzou's Relay will have the president of Relay For Life and a ton of important staff members in attendance! This will be a huge nerve-wracker for myself and the other co-chairs but we hope to put on a great show and experience for everyone! We met a lot of the executive staff who all claim excitement for our event :)
• Relay For Life of Second Life (see my blog post on http://kartemas.wordpress.com/blog from a few weeks ago) was founded the same year as the first Relay For Life of a prison and Relay of a nudist colony! "It was a weird year for Relay..." American Cancer Society employee and Relay youth coordinator Heidi explained. 

Relay Steering Committee members from Mizzou at SLU's Summit Conference

If this wasn't enough, upon arriving back to Columbia from St. Louis, it was time for Phi Mu initiation! Congratulations to Liz and Melissa- my direct family members- and myself and Dani got to initiate them! Below is our PHamily photo of both branches of our pledge family (everyone and their moms and daughters).

My Phi Mu family!

Overall, was it easy to make plans for semi-formal Friday night? No. Coming up with a game plan for the night was incredibly stressful and I had second thoughts about why I hadn't gone to the lake. Was I tired at the Chancellor's brunch? Yes, but it was enjoyable and interesting. Was I fully awake while driving an hour each way to Lake of the Ozarks? Probably not. But I did what I wanted to do and conquered challenges to do so. I saw everyone I was capable of seeing and the tired look I probably exemplify this week will always be overcome by the satisfaction that I don't have to regret not doing any of these things. Everything is not only represented by my friends, but each commitment was related to a campus activity I participate in. Phi Mu, Mizzou Student Foundation, Homecoming Steering Committee, Relay For Life. 

Therefore, when people say "You can't do it all," they are lying. You CAN do it all, as long as you don't regret or dread some of those moments it takes to put you everywhere. Because if you will, I recommend not doing anything then. You have to be prepared for moments of sickness, car time, stress or momentary freakouts. Thankfully in my case, it was all worked out and quickly evolved into one of the most memorable weekends of college!

Creating a home

Two weekends ago, Shaina and I took a road trip to University of Illinois. A popular road trip destination, this is the fourth time I've visited U of I during college. Shaina's twin sister is there, and some of my best friends are there. Champaign, Ill. bars allow entry at 19 years old, so there are plenty of places to go. Overall, it's hilarious that I love visiting U of I, but love being a Mizzou student. Lessons overall from the weekend:

1. While they are very convenient, I hate GPSs. I'm old-fashioned and like to write down directions and conquer the challenge of the turns and counting mileage numbers rather than listening to a machine tell me where I am and actually mentally have no idea. The GPS told us to go south toward Memphis, and I was convinced that it was wrong because Illinois is NORTH of Missouri. Entrusted in Shaina and the GPS, we followed the direction and were suddenly recalculated. Surprise surprise. Thus, I learned to go with your gut and common sense, not a machine.

2. Shaina and I left early Friday morning at 8 a.m. to catch Meredith before she unfortunately had to leave town at 3 p.m. on last minute notice. Originally staying with her, I now had to find a place to stay. I learned what great friendships I have when within a day, I had four offers. It reinforced the idea that you don't have to talk to someone everyday to be their friend, or keep in touch every week. But if you're on the same page and truly value their friendship, you can meet up for lunch or dinner as if nothing has changed. You can tell when you genuinely still care about what is going on in others' lives. This allowed me to see everyone below!

Below are pictures with Meredith, Elena, Anastasia and Michelle! I also got to see Brooke, Jack, Sara, a ton of Greeks including a friend of Maria's, and GBN and GBS students galore!

3. Walking around campus, I was running into people left and right. I saw two Glenbrook South students at Starbucks that I was acquainted with in high school, met some Greeks at a Greek festival that I have been around in high school, and ran into high school friends who smiled, welcomed me and said hello on the street. One even walked up to my car in the middle of an intersection! This taught me that you can feel at home pretty much anywhere, as long as all the people from there are surrounding you. 

4. When I realized with our good friend the TomTom GPS that University of Illinois was actually closer to five hours away from Mizzou, I was a little shocked. The boy that drove me and Shaina freshman year presented the plan as if it were four hours, so it's forever engrained in my head that Champaign is only four hours away. It's actually 290 miles. Chicago to Columbia is only 390 miles...yes, another 100. And on Missouri and southern Illinois highways, that's practically an hour. So why did I not go home? I clearly miss my family, like Northbrook...why would I not go back?

But as you see from the above three reasons, you can create a home where your friends and acquaintances are. I clearly saw a lot of people I know and love and felt 100 percent comfortable staying with them. It was a great point in my life to realize this and makes me happy that as a college student, I'm capable of carrying on these relationships! I thank all of my friends for a great weekend at U of I and look forward to my next annual visit!

MIZ-SEC

The past month has been filled of press news about Mizzou's rumored invitation to join the SEC, Southeastern Conference for athletics. I didn't know how seriously to take it after last year's discussion about joining the Big 10, as Mizzou was in the Big 12. A series of events from Chancellor Brady Deaton stepping down from the Big 12 Board, to the SEC accidentally publishing and then deleting a post that said Mizzou had been accepted, led to a rally this Sunday that we had officially been invited and accepted the invitation to join the SEC.

Students received an email early Sunday morning about the decision and were invited to a spirit rally at the MU Student Center Sunday afternoon.

A screenshot of the Mizzou Athletics webpage with the announcement

After a 4 p.m. meeting, I walked into the Student Center to see this:

Students filling the student center with SEC Commissioner speaking

It took awhile to get started because the commissioner and University of Florida president's flight arrived late, but definitely was a spirited 45 minutes. Students had signs ranging from "Welcome to the SEC Y'all" to "I still hate Kansas!" The amount of students present, the band and the overall spirit reminded me how exciting it is to be a Mizzou student and glad to take part in this change.

I'm excited to join the SEC not only because it's the south and people think we'll dress up more for football games (ha), but because of its overall reputation. The SEC holds itself to a higher standard than the Big 12 and Mizzou's academics are stunning compared to other SEC schools. We will be in the Eastern range of the conference--playing Florida, University of Georgia, University of South Carolina, Kentucky and Vanderbilt. And if Eleni goes there, our schools could play each other next year!

Although Mizzou might not win as many football games as we'd hope to next year, it's a change toward better. Our team will strive to beat the reputable SEC teams, they will strive to reach our caliber academically and University of Missouri's reputation will ultimately grow. 

The new SEC logo with all 12 schools

Officials at the end

M-I-Z....S-E-C!!