Quarantired of Waiting

Hello, my dear friends!

I have decided to revive this blog in the interest of reigniting my love of prose.  (No better time to reflect and ruminate than while sheltering in place during an international pandemic, right?)  Somewhere along the line, I allowed the joy of writing to slip from my grasp and nearly vanquish.  I could blame this on the lack of personality in most legal papers or on my introduction to the "real" or "adult" world of working all day and striving to find purpose at night.  You know, people say you shouldn't allow work to define you, but that's pretty tough when the first question strangers ask you at social gatherings is, "What do you do?"

Indeed, what do I do?  Lately, outside of my profession, it is primarily slumping on the couch and rewatching Parks and Rec.  Now that I am no longer in school, I seem to have less to look forward to.  No more learning new subjects in an attempt to discover my passion and no more clinging to the hope that I will figure everything out by the time I graduate.  I'm here, I've graduated, and I'm still lost.

It's never easy to feel completely at home with yourself, no matter how old you are or how much introspection you've practiced.  Sometimes your own mind can feel like a foreign habitat.  Every now and again, I still get glimpses of past loves, losses, successes, and struggles, and I wonder how this person I once knew so well could have changed so fast.  

To be sure, my core self remains the same: shy but silly, intellectual but childish, anxious but cheerful.  But the level of comfort I feel with those traits differs--and some of my more problematic qualities have become more pronounced.  For example, my raging perfectionism urges me to make my reentrance into the blogging world spectacular and flawless.  Perhaps that's why I haven't posted in four years--I've felt as though I've had nothing important to say for a long time.  I've felt like a drone in the working world.  In fact, I'm so used to billable hours that I find myself mentally calculating whether the time I've spent writing this post has been efficient.

I miss the innocent, curious Amanda from time immemorial.  I miss my college friends who made me feel whole.  I miss our philosophic discussions in the library stacks or random classrooms at midnight on Friday nights.  I miss our human pyramids and our spur-of-the-moment fashion shows.  I miss dressing up like a dude with my best friend and attending a student drag show.  I miss discovering all of these crazy new things I enjoy.

Equally as satisfying as discovering new interests, however, can be rediscovering old ones.  And if I'm writing this, right here, right now, I think I'm nearly back.  Maybe I won't be composing twenty-page essays on all the ways COVID-19 has changed humanity for good anytime soon, but the important thing is I just wrote six paragraphs about my feelings--my raw, unabashed feelings.  That's a pretty good start.

'Til the next six paragraphs,
Amanda :)

Faux fur jacket: Michael Kors.  Necklace, top, and boots: J. Crew.  Pants: Ann Taylor.

All photos thanks to the incomparable Sean Su!

I Fought the Law, and I'm Still Here!

My apologies for being in some kind of Twilight Zone TM for the past six months.  I started law school just after I wrote my last post, and I haven't really done much but law since.  It's been a whirlwind journey filled with blood, sweat, and tears (the blood mostly from all the times I've slipped on the softball field playing those darned 2Ls).  In the meantime, I feel as though I have lost part of myself, at least the part who truly appreciated who I am as a person.  I'm hoping that at least a few others can relate.  For that reason, I wanted to list some of the most important life lessons I've learned while undergoing the most academically rigorous period of my life:

1. There are some hobbies you've got to keep up to stay sane, no matter how busy you get.
Yes, I am talking about exercising, writing, drawing, eating something other than cookies and Cheez-its for dinner, and making sure you clear a path to walk around your apartment despite all the piles of papers and clothes everywhere (the last two aren't really hobbies, but still).  Amidst the endless recitation of issues, rules, analyses, and conclusions, I have forgotten to bathe on my best days and eat on my worst.  You can't live a sustainable life doing those things, no matter how well you have mastered the art of finding clean underwear under mounds of cover letters.  Start freeing your mind and your closet today.  Trust me, you'll be happier when you can see your couch again.

2. Stay true to yourself.
There is a specific type of person who tends to enter the legal profession: the outgoing, outdoing, outdebating, outshining gunner.  People will tell you these traits are necessary in order to succeed in this tangled web we weave.  Don't listen to them.  Sure, there are some inevitable "fake it 'til you make it" aspects of law school, but what really matters at the end of the day is your commitment to your true self--your ideals, your philosophies, and your quirks.  You are the only one who truly knows what works for you and what doesn't.  St. Louis suburbanites can fit in with the California crowd too, ya know. :)

3. Do it!  Whatever it is you really want to do, just do it!
It's simple: just go for that thing you've always wanted to do but never had the confidence to do before.  As our lives become increasingly monotonous, it's important for us to take even more risks and see what we can do.  Just as you need to keep up with your favorite pastimes and remember what you like/find amusing about yourself (see 1 and 2 above), you need to keep growing, keep exploring, and keep questioning.  Looks like it's time for a new adult coloring book!

4. Take everything in stride.
You're going to receive a heaping bundle of pig slop from certain professors every once in a while.  Or at least, that's what you'll think.  If you're like me, you've never received so much criticism in your life.  But THAT'S OKAY.  It doesn't mean you're unprepared or not cut out for this profession.  It simply means it will take you slightly longer to get used to certain things than the rest of your peers.  And it will get easier, and you'll feel more confident, and you'll be freer to discuss your flaws openly.  Gotta keep that ego in check.

I'm not the girl I was six months ago, and I think that's for the better.  Despite what I've been learning, I've realized (slowly) that life is more than just a study of law, a compilation of rules, or a lonely night in the library.  You have the right to get everything you want out of life and put everything you want into it, and a legal remedy won't always suffice.  Sometimes all you need is art and music and pure unadulterated joy.  Laws can't explain all the crazy stuff we do, and they shouldn't.  Only we can (try to) explain that.  And our opinions matter.

Law school may not always be super conducive to self-reflection, but it's good to remember every once in while that you're not just a soldier training for battle.  You are a person living out your dreams.

May the dreams be with you,
Amanda

More to follow...

Dress: Cynthia Rowley.  Shoes: J. Crew.
Photos by Alex Zhu.

In Defense of Horrid Penmanship

            “I’ve got a paper here I can’t read.  Looks like it was written by a guy…maybe Aaron or Adam…”

            “That’s mine,” I would respond to whichever teacher fell prey to my spell that day, snatching the sheet of lines and squiggles from her judging hands. 

            Yes, it’s true—I have a problem.  It’s called cacography: bad handwriting.  It’s been an issue ever since I first picked up the mighty pen.  My mom, my friends, my teachers: everyone has commented on it.  I used to be so embarrassed when other students peered over at me scribbling not-so-sweet nothings.

            “Has anyone ever told you that your handwriting is a bit illegible?,” my twelfth-grade English teacher asked me, several months before the AP Language & Composition Exam.  “They’re not technically supposed to take your handwriting into account, but it may factor into their subconscious.” 

Did she think she was my Psych teacher all of a sudden? 

One day we anonymously exchanged in-class essays to grade, and one loudmouth proclaimed to the whole group that she couldn’t read what hers said. 

Did she not think the culprit was bound to hear her in a class of fourteen?

But the original shame came from my first grade teacher: “Now everyone look at Trevor*.  He’s holding his pencil just right—look at how he gently grips it instead of wrapping his fingers over each other.”  Sitting next to Trevor I could feel her eyes darting my way, somehow implicating me as the token bad example.  It didn’t help that Trevor was my long-time bully, a title he would smugly hold until he moved away in the seventh grade.  Now he’s playing football at Yale.  He’s about the last person who deserves to be in that position, but that’s beside the point.

            In researching why society gets so hung up on bad handwriting, I found a study, aptly titled, “Poor Handwriting: A Major Cause of Underachievement,” by Linda Silverman, Ph.D.  Her main finding is that a lot of “bright underachievers” have “difficult births” and suffer from ear infections in the first few years of life, leading to “sensory-motor integration dysfunction.”  Well, from what I’ve heard, I didn’t experience any of these issues as a child, and many of my fellow chicken scratchers didn’t either.  I had an ear infection or two in elementary school, but that’s past the initial developmental period.  My birth was pretty seamless, too; actually, it was my twin brother who tried to force his way out feet first and ended up being pulled out with a suction cup.  There was one time in second grade that my teacher signed me up for special “Resource” classes because she thought I couldn’t read, but it turns out I just didn’t want to talk.  Perhaps poor handwriting is correlated with underachievement in some, but it certainly does not cause it.  There’s a big difference between cacography and dysgraphia, the latter being the “inability to write coherently, as a symptom of brain disease or damage.”  Shyness, not a sensory-motor delay, was my hang-up.

            My brother suffers from this same “disorder,” arguably worse than I do, and he doesn’t compensate for it with a little bit of sketching on the side (“Wow, your handwriting is so bad, but your art is so good!,” said my ninth grade art teacher).  But Daniel’s not a girl, so society almost expects him to have bad handwriting, at least at first.  It expects him to be in the storied troublemaker phase, hoping he will grow out of it some day.  It expects me, on the other hand, to be a perfect little angel from the start, only growing more and more civil as I get older.  Neither of us quite fits these models.

            Ever since I learned my penmanship could never be remedied, I committed myself to breaking as many stereotypes as I could.  I stopped taking dance lessons in favor of field hockey scrimmages, I ate like a wild hog on a mission to kill, I roughhoused with all of Daniel’s friends, and I watched endless basketball games with my dad.  Today I mostly make fun of women who still expect men to carry all their shopping bags for them, or who fantasize about marrying strong men with broad shoulders, blue eyes, and a faint-worthy smile.  I even convinced my grandma to stop asking me to help bake her famous cinnamon rolls.  Now she only asks Daniel, who would do anything for a cinnamon roll.

For all the times a TA has asked me to type up my in-class midterm, I can take pride in the fact that they probably thought I was a man when they first read it.  No, dear Teaching Assistant, it is I, Amanda Rose Miller, designated jar opener and cliché averter of apartment 416.

            My handwriting also serves as a sort of secret code, a special language of sorts, reserved for me and for anyone else who dares decrypt it.  I can tell you now that anyone who tries to read my diary won’t get anywhere; that stuff is sealed in a ten-ton vault made of solid gold.  Come to think of it, I regret never exchanging notes about crazy kid stuff with Daniel.  Then again—while we did share our own verbal language as babies—even he can’t read my mishmash.  Nonetheless, it’s entertaining to see what comes out of my friends’ mouths as they attempt to sound it out.

            “He…intervention for ranging and cattle?”

            “No, ‘The intersection of language and culture.’”

            “Oh, wow.  Have you ever thought about being a doctor?”

            A deficit of manual dexterity has taught me to exercise what little I have to its full capacity, so when I do produce a drawing, or a field hockey goal, or a well written essay, I really treasure it.  Art, of course, comes in a variety of packages, very few of which are contingent on Immaculate-Conception-Jesus-Christ-is-this-God’s-handwriting penmanship.  We can’t say what perfect handwriting looks like anyway; for all we know, God’s handwriting could look exactly like mine—you don’t know. 

            I look back at my fourth-grade projects, and if anything, my handwriting has gotten worse.  Years of copying down PowerPoint slides will do that to a girl (or a guy, for sure).  But in a lot of other ways, I’ve gotten better.  I can’t attribute all of that to bad handwriting, but I can say it has helped shape me into the cynical feminist writer I am today.  I’ve heard my fair share of groans, gasps, sighs, and even psychological diagnoses in response to my handwriting, but it never really got to me.  I just kept on scribbling.   If nothing else, my bad handwriting gave me a unique perspective and a voice, and that’s really all an aspiring writer wants.  Even if some people can’t see it.

More posts to come as I start law school next week! :D

Love,

Amanda

Top and Skirt: Paperdolls Boutique, St. Louis.

All photos by Alex Zhu.

*Name changed because I know all of you with your mighty powers of stalking would have looked up "Trevor" here or somewhere else. ;)

A Human is a Human, is a Human: Why this Essay Makes Sense

My brother, Daniel, and I in Rome.

            Humans are quite distinct from animals.  The former write poetry and memorize things like the Pythagorean Theorem and the U.S. presidents.  The latter eat poop.  Whether we deserve to be inside or outside of bars, we generally know where to draw the line.  So why is it that we still can’t get it right for some of the most oppressed people—Native Americans?  As time has passed, Americans have eliminated many forms of native-themed paraphernalia, and Northwestern University has established a committee redressing John Evans’s role in the Sand Creek Massacre.  But the fight for basic human rights remains paramount.  And who’s a better mascot for this cause than the Cleveland Indians, located, ironically, in Progressive Field? 

Sure, Willie Wampum isn’t dancing down the fifty-yard line anymore, but the names and logos still in commission highlight our nation’s shameful exploitation of an important race and culture. 

            To be clear, I don’t allege any Native American heritage, and my experiences can attest to that.  A white friend and central Illinois native once shared his family’s rite of passage: accompanying dad to watch Chief Illiniwek parade across the field.  Notwithstanding this time-honored tradition, children witnessing such events will blind themselves to the historical and contemporary struggles native people face unless they actively challenge them—an approach the NFL and MLB could uphold by retiring racist mascots. 

            Most influential to my beliefs on this matter are those of my own aunt and uncle, who defend constantly the Chicago Blackhawks’ right to shape an underrepresented people’s history the way they see fit. 

My brother told me of an argument he had with our aunt while he was living in Chicago: “Well, what about Satanists?  Aren’t they offended by devil mascots?,” she remarked one day, playing devil’s advocate.  “Perhaps,” my brother said, “But Satan isn't a human being deserving of human rights, namely the right not to be portrayed as a violent savage."  I later added in my own accounts that Satanists might admire Satan precisely because of his ruthlessness, whereas Native Americans probably wish every day that the rest of the world could see them as they are: people with hearts and souls and complex identities.  The devil is not here to disprove his popular portrayal, but Native Americans are, and we need to listen.

Arguments revolving around animal rights and certain human roles or nationalities—such as the Cowboys or the Fighting Irish—are less extreme but nonetheless question our use of any mascots.  The fact of the matter, however, is that animals are animals, cowpokery is an outdated job, and the Irish have not experienced the American oppression that native peoples are all too familiar with.  There’s no escaping that reality.  While perhaps none of these groups deserve to be defamed on a football field, our most pressing issue is that of the people our forbearers persecuted.

I don’t blame my aunt or my friend for the relentless pride they take in their local teams.  That’s the way they were raised, and it’s hard to change long-imbued mindsets.  But it’s far from impossible.  Over time, sane Americans have released their hold on the institution of slavery, on the Confederate States of America, and on barring women from higher education.  We can find something other than native-themed mascots to cling to—something that all humans can agree on.  It’s a challenge, but a worthy one.

The ubiquity, popularity, and sway of the sports-media complex greatly desensitize us to larger inequalities.  Most days we hear some version of: “The Redskins whipped the Dolphins today, and look at those Raiders go!  Yeah, demolish those Cardinals!”  And most days we don’t even notice it.  Implicating the media for many of our problems isn’t a new technique, but our apathy toward the bubble in which we live is getting old.  Football will still be the majestically violent sport it always has been when we drop the associations with savagery and primordial instincts.

All of this is not to say the plights of other ethnic groups are invalid.  Implicit and explicit racism continues to line the doors to justice in this country, especially as we consider consistent evidence of police brutality, a lack of comprehensive immigration reform, and the stigma that interracial couples still face.  But all of this seems to start and end with the media’s plain endorsement of inaccurate and antiquated imagery, which reminds Native Americans everyday how twisted their past has become.  If we can nip this in the bud before it spreads any further, we can prevent a lot of damage.

By virtue of enduring colonialism, Americans think they can lay claim to everyone and everything that came before us.  Despite all the wrongs we have committed against people of African descent, however, we have enough common sense not to name a team the Tallahassee Tutsis.  Even when we have stooped so low, national and even local recognition of such mascots as the “Chinks” has stopped altogether. 

So what’s our obsession with Native American culture?  It’s powerful, it’s mighty, it’s just the way it is?  Since when is “the way it is” always the way it should be?  However sexy the “noble savage” is to us virgin white men, there is no reason other than fetishism, a quest for domination, and/or conformity to bigotry to explain our insistence on Native American mascots.  And if these are our only reasons, we really have no reason at all.  Once we realize this particular defect in our ancestor’s ambitions, society will raze the bumps history has created and give way to a level playing field.  All humans will have the opportunity to voice their concerns, address evils, and portray the image they want to portray.  Immutable human rights will be won for all. 

            The last counterargument comes from my dad, who for the heck of it, threw out the idea of  “the Sante Fe Ethnic Cleansers.” 

“Isn’t that a non-human ‘role’ just like a cowboy or a Viking?,” he prodded, facetiously.  “Well, I guess it is,” I said, “but isn’t the whole point about being sensitive to the mistreatment and misrepresentation of other cultures?”  After everything we’ve been through and everything we have at stake, let’s just see if that name takes off.

I write this in the hope that I can convince a few of you that no one has anything to gain from Native American mascots.  More than anything, however, I share this with you to further my brother's petition on change.org, calling for the NHL and the Chicago Blackhawks to retire their racist mascot.  Please take a moment and sign this petition here.  Thank you so much for reading.

Amanda

Cyn

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