The other day I was watching a couple of guys on the volley ball court acting totally gay with each other.  They were talking with a lisp, fawning on each other, and throwing around the phrase “FABulous honey!”  The thing is, they weren’t gay.

This isn’t anything new.  I see guys from about middle school age on up through recent college graduate age acting gay without being gay.  They’re the same old straight guys who don’t like clothes shopping, have a questionable sense of style, and would be offended if a stranger in a bar teased them about their sexuality leaning.  So what gives?

I decided to ask my straight friend Alex.

“Alex, why do you think it is that straight guys sometimes act gay together?”

“To be funny.”

Okay, yeah, I guess, but that didn’t satisfy me.  Girls don’t act lesbian together unless they really are lesbian, or drunk.

So then I consulted my Brazilian friend, Silas (straight, but speaks a love language).

“Silas, do guys in Brazil act gay together?”

“Yes, humor is one of Brazil’s greatest strengths.”

“But do they do this because it’s funny, or because of something else?”

“They only do it because of humor.  Guys can express their emotions here and not worry about it, so what other reasons would there be?  I mean, here guys kiss each other and aren’t called gay.  It’s common to see two old guys kissing on the cheek.”

I thought Silas’s answer was pretty telling.  I told my friend Meagan about what Silas said, and she ran with it.

“I think that two straight guys acting gay together is one way that they can show just friendly emotions for each other, not be called gay, and be funny all in one.  It’s a win-win situation.”

I think that’s true.  Is American culture turning the boys of Generation Y into fake fags?

So I turned 18 on September 21. I think being 18 is less about buying cigarettes, cough syrup, and porn, and more about being able to look adult problems in the eye and not cringing.

I think being 18 is about realizing that I need to get over myself.

I think being 18 is about stopping worrying about those social rules that society lays before me. I feel like I can say what I want, ignore who I want, and stop laughing at stupid jokes that aren’t even funny. What will they do? Tell my mom?

I think being 18 is about appreciating art, politics, and the feelings behind them.

I think being 18 is about thinking of myself as equal and not beneath.

I think being 18 is about not hiding the bad days, the bad thoughts, the bad things.

I think being 18 is about being above what other people think about where I put my attention.

I think being 18 is about accepting the thoughts that I have and not pushing them away, because really, there’s probably a good reason that I had those thoughts in the first place.

I think being 18 is about not being embarressed about being interested in the naked barbie pictures on the walls of the local café, buying candles with alcoholic names, talking about sexual feelings, or thinking that medical marijuana should be legalized.

But mostly, I think being 18 is about thinking for myself because, well, I’m an adult now and so my opinion counts just as much as any other adult’s opinion.

The Washington Post report
UofA News Update

A UofA freshman stabbed her roommate then killed herself this morning.

Life on campus seems normal. I didn’t even know anything about it until I got a text from a friend asking if I was okay. A girl who sat behind me in my Human Geography class said that her friend was interviewed by a news crew, but she didn’t know what had happened.

No one has given it a second thought. It really isn’t one of those, “Wow, that could have been me,” situations. I pass by the Grahm-Greenlee residence hall every day, but I have no connections. This isn’t at my school. This didn’t happen to me.

Walking through a hall, you can hear the quiet snickers of somber jokes being made.

“Those sorority hazings get tougher every year…”

“Who has a knife around here? Was it a butter knife that she was using?”

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are having blood, and South America…”

Perhaps this crime has something to do with the stress of dorm-overcrowding. Some dorms have three people crammed in a tiny room that was meant for two people and would be optimal with one. Some people don’t even have a room and were given cots to sleep on in the residence hall student lounges.

Or maybe this year at UofA is cursed. This is the second suicide in just over a week.

I’ll probably never know, because all the communication I’ve received from the University is an email saying that someone died and a phone number to call for counseling.

***update***

Sept. 5, 2007
5:41 p.m.

Galareka Harrison, 18, was taken into custody this afternoon by the University of Arizona Police Department after being released from University Medical Center. She will be charged with first-degree murder and will be booked into the Pima County Jail. She has been placed on interim suspension from the UA and is not permitted on campus until further notice.
(source)

I decided to add 4 more credit hours onto my fall schedule, bringing the total up to 15. After talking with my Spanish professor and my parents, I decided that now was the best time to take Spanish 202.

Originally I had planned to take 12 credits this fall. I want to be sure that my grade point average will be high at the end of this first semester at a big university. I especially did not plan to be taking 4 credits at a college that was 60 miles away from where I will be living.

I knew that waiting all the way until next summer to take my final foreign language credits would be tough, but I also knew that taking a foreign language with 200 other students in the classroom would be tough too. There was some discord as to when and where I should be taking the class, but I figured, like everything else, it would work itself out.

So why am I taking the class at a college that is so far away?

Lots of community colleges tout that they are just as tough in material as big universities, but they offer smaller classes and more individualized attention. That may be true in some cases, but word of mouth has told me that’s not true in the case of foreign languages.

While it could be argued that the difficulty is the same but the smaller class size makes it seem like the class is easier, I don’t think that is true. I met a boy whose father’s side of the family is fluent in Spanish, and he took Spanish 101 and 102 before transferring to a larger University. He said after he transferred he could not keep up at all, he did not understand anything that was being said, and he had to drop the class.

I think that in my case, at the 202 level, I would not be able to give the quality of work that is expected. And if community colleges do not want to be known as “easy”, I would say that community colleges are unquestionably more “forgiving”.

I was homeschooled almost my whole entire life––ever since first grade. People ask me a lot of questions about it, mostly because I think I’m more approachable than the average jumper-wearing, loudly-conservative, homeschooling mother.

1. Do you have socialization issues?
   No. When I was younger I was part of a very active homeschool group. If I went to every activity that was offered, I would never have the time to do book work. Then there were church activities on top of that. When I was in high school I swam for the public high school’s swim team. I went to Friday night football games. I was editor of a newsletter. I volunteered. I worked summer jobs. Once I started taking college classes, I earned extra credit because I participated in discussions so much. I don’t think I had a problem.
2. How does your school work?
   My parents would pay a few hundred dollars every year to Christian Liberty Academy in Chicago. That school would send a box of workbooks, teacher manuals, and scantron tests. My mom would teach me things, I would do the workbooks, and when I was ready I would take the tests. Then my mom would send the tests back to the school to be graded. Sometimes the workbooks had to be sent back too. After grading, the school sent us report cards. I earned a real diploma, too.
3. Do you wear pajamas all day?
   No. My mom wouldn’t let me. Once I got older and could make my own decision about that, I found that I worked faster if I was not wearing pajamas.
4. Do you ever wish you went to public school?
   When I was in 9th grade, a lot of homeschooled kids that I knew started going to public school. They wanted a diploma, or a better chance at scholarships, or their parents were afraid they couldn’t teach them well enough for college. But after watching those kids for a year, I’m glad I didn’t go. It seemed like they wasted so much time, and I got to do all the extra-curricular activities that the high school provided anyways.
5. How did your mom teach you enough math to prepare you for college?
   I really can’t answer that question. I hate math. She hates math. We struggled through elementary algebra (my school provided an online tutor). When I was 14 I tested into College Algebra at a local college. I don’t know how I did that either. It turns out that College Algebra is the highest level math that I need for a Journalism major. Most community colleges make you take placement tests, and those colleges also offer math classes for people who failed 7th grade math. Also, most community colleges are homeschool friendly and they’ll let 13-year-olds take college level classes (as long as they have okay placement scores). Check into it.
6. Math is one thing, but science too?
   No, not science too. I wish I had a better science background. I took a couple biology classes at the college, and let me tell you, I failed that first test that involved a lot of chemistry. I ended up staying in the class (even though more than half the students dropped within the first week), keeping my 4.0 gpa, and learning what biology is really about.
7. What was a typical day like in highschool?
   8am: Wake up, do chores, eat breakfast, get dressed
   9am: Family devotions
   9:30am: Start school– Theology, Math, English, Literature, Government, History, and Science
   12pm: Lunch time, leave for college
   1pm: College class - usually Spanish or Biology
   3pm: Swim practice
   6pm: Dinner
   7pm: College homework
   10pm: Brain shut down time
   12am: Bed time
8. Did you like being homeschooled?
   Yeah. Overall, it was fun. I don’t think I will homeschool my kids, just because I don’t have the patience. But I’m glad I was homeschooled.

If you didn’t have a question answered, feel free to ask.