New Semester, New Struggles: Speaking Spanish & Swimming the Rio Mississippi

Here I am, back for another school year.  I begin this school year with just as many doubts, fears, and anxieties as before but this year in a house with air conditioning, a dishwasher, and two male roommates who, like me, remain on the hamster wheel of the non-traditional college student. 

I learned a lot last year.  I learned how to get through tough situations in two, often alternating ways: by gritting my teeth and doing the best I could with my often limited or worn-out resources or by sobbing uncontrollably and planning my dramatic withdrawal from Iowa City and the University of Iowa in my head.

Last year was challenging, busy, and oh so entertaining.  I spent a lot of time working, although at times work became a pretty loose descriptor because I was usually quite simply, having fun with my co-workers.  I studied a little, here and there and pulled ONE all-nighter (I’m old) with Regan upon which we rewarded ourselves with a delusional, yet sober, 6 a.m. Village Inn breakfast.  And lastly, I spent a lot of time daydreaming and reflecting about what I would when I didn’t have to work or study.  I had fun, especially when people showed up to distract me from work and school.  Joey Donia, the OGs of high stakes UNO, and the Mondo’s staff and our post-work festivities provided some of the best distractions.  There were days I definitely felt as if I were frantically treading in a dirty sewage lagoon, barely able to keep my head above the feces surrounding me.  There were other days that onions on a salad or questions about my hair sent me into a tail-spin of toddler-like behavior.  And of course there were some mornings I impressed even myself with some pretty convincing reasons why it simply would not be feasible to make it to class that morning.  However, there were also days that I worked long hours and managed to be nice to everyone (well, almost everyone I’m sure), read assigned readings and took notes, did my dishes immediately after using them, hung up my clothes in my closet, got A’s on papers, ate fruits and vegetables, and calmly worked through everyday problems with ease.

 

I believe my biggest struggles this year will involve the Spanish language and my long-distance boyfriend.  The long distance relationship is not as foreign to me as the Spanish language, rather it is a concept I have somehow found myself involved with on more than one occasion.  I’m gonna go out on a limb here and just say that you have to be slightly unstable (by that, I mean crazy) to willingly involve yourself in a long-distance relationship.  My boyfriend Chris can undoubtedly attest to the craziness that ensues over the course of a LDR (yeah, we have an official acronym).  While we are doing our best to maneuver through something that, similar to speaking a foreign language, involves communication that is often frustratingly misunderstood and one that requires A LOT OF WORK to be successful with.  Even writing this paragraph is A LOT OF WORK, if that gives you any sense of how I’m feeling.  While Chris might be three short hours away in Illinois, separated only by a river constituting as a border between his home and my home, I often feel as if I might succumb to all the negative and unfortunate external roadblocks on my path to relationship happiness and stability.  Here I am, just a girl trying to cross the Rio Grande (just kidding, the Mississippi) armed only with the dream of creating a meaningful, tangible life with the person I love, yet there are skilled gunmen and border patrol always there to send that dream swimming back to Iowa.  I’ll stop that comparison right there.

      

Alas, I’m still here in Iowa City.  I’m still passing…somehow.  Still working…thanks to the good graces and patience of my employers and co-workers.  And, most importantly, I’m still learning more about myself via the unique survival tactics of the completely irrational, unorganized, and whimsical young lady I am proud to embody.  So this year stay tuned as I fake it ‘till I make it in Intermediate Spanish II and attempt to cross the Mississippi River to find true love.   

I blogged, and it's depressing.

Several weeks have passed since my last blog.  Two of my friends and my Mom made sure to remind me of this, in their own unique ways.

   

True to our friendship, Courtney drew attention to my lack of blogging with a simple text message that got right to the point as almost all of our conversations do, void of flowery mush and gush small-talk.  It read: BLOG, NOW.

About a week later, as I’m scrolling through Facebook wasting time I didn’t have, I notice a little red notification box appear over the messages icon.  YAY! Someone wants to distract me in the most efficient and quickest form known to Facebook: an inbox message.  It came from Jeff and it read matter-of-factly: “So don’t you blog anymore?”

I’ve been friends with Courtney for about 26 years now.  After that many years of friendship, you can tell each other white lies without running the risk of offending the other.  Example: Telling each other that making wedding boards on Pinterest isn’t weird in an effort to convince each other we aren’t weird….even when we both know the whole thing is weird.  So, I chose to respond by promising her I’d blog by the end of the weekend, with absolutely no intention of doing so.

I’ve been friends with Jeff for about 26 years now.  After that many years of friendship, you can basically ignore one another if you deem fitting without running the risk of the other even noticing, especially in the case of Jeff.  We can go weeks without talking and not worry about one another; one of the many beauties of being friends with a dude.  So, I chose to not respond at all.  The conversation was essentially over before it began.

     

This past weekend I traveled to Illinois with my parents to celebrate the 2^nd birthday of my nephew, Nile aka “CrocoNile”.  As Nile slept through what could quite possibly have been his first diabetic coma from the cake we enjoyed the night before, my mom and I sat alone in the living room.  She asked me the usual questions to get caught up with the happenings in my life.  How’s school? How’s your health?  What did you think of last week’s episode of Teen Mom?  After we covered all the bases and the room fell silent again, she looked at me quizzically and states, “I noticed you haven’t blogged in a while.”  Like a two year old caught who has just been caught red-handed swiping frosting off a cake when it appeared no one was looking, I had been caught unexpectedly with no way out.  So, I did what any two year old who just got caught and tried, guilty as charged, in the blink of an eye with no time for defense.  I started crying.

Amid a waterfall of tear, short gasps for air, and the pointless, incredibly unattractive efforts to retract the snot that was on the verge of overflowing down my lips and onto my chin, I attempted to explain myself.  If I had an emotional-rant-translator present at the time, he or she probably would have looked at my mom and calmly translated the following information out of my tear fueled stutters: “Mom, I’ve been having a really hard time in Iowa City the past few weeks.  I’m upset at the thought of losing the Sebring and all the memories we have made.  I feel like I don’t have any friends here.  I miss people.  It’s fucking cold outside and impossible to function under incessant amounts of snowfall.  Going to school and having two jobs gets really overwhelming.”  That translator was absent as they always seem to be in moments like these, but I think my Mom still got the point.  I felt as if I had nothing good to write about.  Nothing silly, nothing entertaining, nothing of importance.  Or, as I later explained to Courtney in our straight-to-the-point conversation style: it’s all depressing shit.

    

Backtracking, I’d like to point out that never along this little blog experience have I actually thought that anyone was particularly intrigued by my blonde moments, my senior moments, my crazy thoughts, or the myriad of emotions I experience day-to-day.  Nor do I think anyone will be any more interested in me blogging about not blogging.  Having said that, I have found for reasons yet to be explained that telling others my stories of all the stupid things I do and crazy thoughts I have in bizarre, full-frontal, and often exhaustive detail is oddly therapeutic.

Fast-tracking, it’s now 2:07 a.m. and I have spent a significant amount of time I don’t really have writing this, but I feel better for doing it.  I’m still pretty stressed with school and upcoming midterms but I know it will be over soon, as will my arch nemesis that calls itself winter.  My beloved Sebring did in fact go into a brief coma, but is now recovering peacefully from engine replacement surgery in my parking lot.  I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as I have friends tucked in the mountains of Vail I’ll always miss not having them closer.  And as long as I have friends scattered along the stretch of land that runs alongside Lake Michigan from the skyscrapers of Chicago to Lambeau Field and friends getting weird in Des Moines and everywhere in-between, I’ll always miss them too because they aren’t in Iowa City.  But at least I have friends.  Friends who live in cool places and do cool things.  And friends like Courtney who encourage me to write about the “depressing shit” even when I don’t think it’s important, because as she reminded me, “we know how to make depressing shit interesting.”  Truer words have never been spoken, Courtney.  We make paying rent on time a game, car troubles are a way to make new friends, winter and loneliness are villains we fight together by planning fake vacations and telling stupid jokes about seasonal depression.  Depressing shit has never seemed more interesting.

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Fun-Fueled-Experiences

If you have contacted both of your parents by 10:30 a.m. for advice, you're probably in a pickle.

Today, for example, I called my Dad at 10:10 a.m. and immediately began the following G-chat with my Mom at 10:25 a.m.: 

me:  you probably don't have these moments very often anymore.... but do you remember the feeling of thinking "hmmm...I probably shouldn't do this", but you do it anyway?

Val:  I'm afraid to ask...what did you do?

So, as most of you are probably wondering, what did I do this morning?

I'm proud to announce that as I type I am in the midst of not one but TWO "hmmm.. I probably shouldn't do this"

moments.  To begin, I made the mistake of gambling with a gas tank.  In hindsight, I'm not really sure why I decided to gamble in the first place.  I've lost countless Packers bets this past year alone and won thirty-nine cents my last trip to the casino, but I guess you could say the temperature rising above zero had me feeling lucky.  Needless to say, I came back to my car after letting it "warm up" for 15 minutes to find the only sound coming from my Sebring, normally growling with excitement through her muffler each morning, was the radio blaring inside her poor, lifeless shell.

I cannot say for sure why I spent the next 10 minutes sitting alone in my car listening to the radio, as if i was in shock that this car, this beautiful automobile that has accompanied me on so many free spirited-adventures and  last-minute road trips over the course of our five year friendship, couldn't actually run on fumes alone. Hmm.  In that moment, alone in my parking lot, I pondered my next move.  And by pondered my next move I mean checked Facebook and listened to the radio for a few minutes in hopes that the answer to my problems would pop up in a status update from Clay Matthews saying "On my way to Iowa City to rescue Jaclynn and then cuddle the day away with her."  Sadly, I am brought back to the real world when I catch a glimpse of a disgusting stray cat meandering from the dumpsters towards my car.  Alright, time to get moving there are real problems at hand.  Cats are gross and my car won't start.

My first call goes out to who else but 'Mopar Mike', the Sebring's primary care physician and also my Dad.  He gives me two specific instructions: get a 5-gallon gas can don't try to start your car right away after you've filled it with gas.  "Got it," I try to say as confidently as possible as I'm racking my brain trying to figure out the hell is going to help me out of my very first Iowa City car emergency experience.  From experience, I knew this would be an experience in itself.  For example, when I popped my tire after running over a median in 2010, I called Phil.  When my tires almost fell off after not being properly fastened by their lug nuts in 2007, two kind old men on their smoke break outside an auto shop in Kiehler, Wisconsin got me on the road again.  In 2008, Jamie, Lacey, and the Valley West Mall security guard assisted me when I locked my keys in my car with the lights on at work and John Benigni escorted me 20-miles to retrieve my spare key after I locked my keys in my car as it was still running later that year. And for the sake of time and dignity, I will not mention name-by-name all the former boyfriends who have came to the rescue during my many car crises of times past.  So 2014, fresh off its debut, seems to be eager to introduce a new experience to the roster...but who will I call this time?  I'm not in Des Moines, Milwaukee, or Kiehler, Wisconsin anymore, still relatively new to Iowa City, and not fully ready to expose the few friends I have managed to acquire at school and work to the car-crisis-experience just yet.

Roughly 15 minutes later, my knight in a yellow-cab came to my rescue.  His name was Jorge, and he didn't know it then but he was about to add his name to my roster of car-crisis-experience-companions.  He greeted me with a smile, and in the short trip to Wal-Mart we made small talk about the weather and I filled him on my situation.  He pulls right up to the doors (VIP status), and as if he can sense from the front seat that I have no idea where to look for a gas can,  turns around and tells me exactly where to go when I get inside.  Thanks to Jorge's directions, I find the selection of gas cans with ease.  Hearing my dad's voice in my head, I spot the 5-gallon gas can I was directed to buy.  It seemed way too big and intimidating compared to its 2-gallon counterpart. Reaching for the more user-friendly 2-gallon gas can, I hear my own voice in my head saying for the second time this morning, "hmmm.. I probably shouldn't do this." I make my way to the check-out, snag a bag of M&M's, pay, and walk out with my brand new 2-gallon gas can.  I would later regret that decision.  The gas can selection of course...NOT the M&M's.

Two and a half hours later, two trips to the gas station, one bag of peanut M&M's, and one jump-start later the Sebring awoke from her dehydration-induced coma.  After an unsuccessful first attempt at reviving the Sebring with two-gallons of gas, I quickly got back on the phone to get Jorge, my knight in a yellow-cab back.  He arrived quickly, and like before greeted me with a big smile.  We already got the small talk out of the way on our first journey, so on our second trip we talked like old friends.  We talked about our families, dreams, and debated whether or not it was possible to get high off of gasoline fumes.  So, what did I learn from this experience?  Well, for starters...don't gamble.  Also, when Mopar Mike tells you to buy a 5-gallon gas can, you buy a 5 gallon gas can.   I learned that Jorge's dream is to open a hair salon in Iowa City and bring his wife to the United States from Brazil and most importantly there are some pretty incredible people out there who can turn a crisis into an experience to laugh and blog about.  It certainly isn't my first crisis and it won't be my last, but at the end of the day I am reminded that even though you start your day in a pickle, crying out to your parents for help you can still end your day high off gasoline fumes with a new friend, a new experience and a reminder that getting to where we need to be is half the fun. 

God Bless America and as my Dad's T-shirt reads: Mopar or No Car.        

      

Fish, birthdays, and technology.

Well, I successfully completed everyone's favorite week of school: syllabus week.  I can't tell you how glad I am to have fired up my car's frosty engine and exposed myself to the conditions of the second "polar vortex" so that I could have a syllabus read to me.  I think I got this down, but correct me if I'm wrong: don't cheat, don't plagerize, don't sexually harass one another, turn in your homework, and try to show up as much as possible.  

However, as the week warmed up my creativity followed suit by the time I got to my last class of the week.  After literally reading the syllabus word-for-word on Wednesday, today we graduated to icebreakers (another favorite among students) in my Media, Advertising, and Society class.  We went around the room telling the class our name, where we came from, what our major was, what we are passionate about, our most memorable advertisement, and our favorite app or technology.  I noticed three things as I listened to the first few introductions.  1)  I had only one thing in common with the majority of the class, a Communications Studies major, 2) I am not passionate about fashion, cooking, or working out, and 3) apparently I know nothing about new apps or technologies (not a huge shocker, but worth noting).

One girl rattled on about a wristband that documents her sleep patterns, another talked about an app that allows you to link and review old and new posts from different social media sites.  Now, call me crazy but I'm not so sure I would want to review what meal I posted to Instagram on May 10, 2012 and what emotion-laden status I followed it up on Facebook that same night after my boyfriend dumped me for being 'that girl' that Instagrammed my food.  In addition, I must be more frugal than I thought because I think spending $130 on a bracelet that informs you that you had a shitty night of sleep is kind of a waste of money.

Here is essentially how my introduction went: I'm Jaclynn Hanson.  I'm from Eagle Grove, Iowa (I'd imagine this invoked some confusion, as I did not list off a "suburb of Chicago" like the others).  I'm a Communication Studies major.  I'm passionate about birthdays (I'd couldn't take myself seriously if I said I was passionate about dogs, fashion, cooking, or working out).  The most memorable advertisement to me is the Filet'o'Fish commercial from McDonalds <<silence, blank stares>>  At this point, I go into panic mode...and start half singing half mumbling "gimme that filet 'o' fish.."  in a desperate attempt to get at least one head nod.  More silence. Well, I'm glad it only took two class meetings to have officially solidified my role in the class as the L-7 weenie (think Sandlot).  

So I have one last shot to redeem whatever is left of potential coolness by bragging about this cool app I know everything about.  I  thought about saying the navigation app on my phone but I'm guessing the majority of my class had a GPS as infants attached to their strollers.  Okay, my next favorite app...'calorie counter'. Real cool, Jaclynn.  What about my Packers app?  I rationalized that due to the fact that most of my class is from Illinois it was probably a little early  in the semester to make those kind of enemies.  I was stuck.  I simply could not compete with magical sleep bracelets or a social media embarassment-creater.  Preparing for the enivtable crash-and-burn of my introduction, I shrugged and spoke truthfully.  "My favorite technology is...Netflix."    

Minds: blown.  

Guess what three people after me listed as their favorite technology including the teacher?  Netflix.  I think I have redeemed myself and the Filet 'O' Fish anthem.

Jaclynn Hanson, Communication Studies major, not from Illinois, technology guru, lover of birthdays. Nice to meet you, class.  I hope this semester brings me knowledge of new and innovative technologies like Netflix and moves me to song like a singing fish nailed to a plaque.    

Never too old

Tomorrow I will begin my second semester at the University of Iowa.  Do I have my books yet? No.  Do I know where my classes are? Of course not.  Have I read those awful, incessant university e-mails for all those "incredibly important" announcements?  The answer to that one should be pretty obvious by now. How is a girl to concern herself with such petty "to-do's" when there are questions of real intellectual matter looming in front of me that carry with them an incredible weight.  A weight I have wrestled with for weeks to get to the core of.  These are the kinds of questions that require one to look deep into their soul to answer.

What am I going to wear to class tomorrow!? How will I top the Sesame Street shirt I donned the first day of last semester?! Ugh... these decisions are too much.  I need a Busch light. 

Okay, okay... all jokes aside, lets get real.  I'm a 26-year-old junior.  I won't have to try too hard to stand out in some way over the course of this next semester just as I managed to do last semester.  However, all those B-'s on my report card weren't earned in vain.  I managed to obtain some knowledge in the time spent spacing off during various lectures trying to figure out what the hell I was doing there in the first place.  I'm not ashamed to reveal my barely average collegiate status.  Not one bit.  Reason being...I'm fairly confident I scored above average in 'Surviving-your-first-semester-back-at-a-major-university-that-just-so-happened-to-be-dubbed-the-#1-party-school-when-your-a-little-older-and-you-don't-know-anybody---101.  As you may have guessed, the class was small and I wound up teaching the class myself most days.

The day before classes began last semester I was crouched in the corner of my tiny, dirty, boiling-hot apartment...sobbing.  I was staring at boxes of my things that were waiting to find their place in my new space and a boyfriend that was on his way out both figuratively and literally.  This wasn't my first move by any means, but this was the first time I had packed along with me a very realistic notion that it wasn't always going to be easy or fun.  

I found out I bombed my first test, but I laughed it off over wings and beer with Joey and DB.  I figured out that I needed to race my shared-wall-neighbor to sleep every night in order to beat his unbelievably loud snoring. I discovered having a fling with a football player is only as interesting
as who the person is off the field.  I became addicted to Pop-tarts and peanut M&M's...and only when checking out my U-bill learned how quickly they add up in dollars not to mention pounds.  I learned that having my parking ramp ticket stuck to my cell phone causes it to demagnetize...but only after two straight weeks of having to see the parking ramp attendant to manually calculate my totals.  He said he loved our visits, so I guess you could say he was my first friend in Iowa City.

     

Despite all the combinations of doubt and uncertainty I flooded myself with leading up to starting school again, I made it to class that first day.  I even made it to class a good majority of the rest of the semester.  I learned many new things in class that I will build upon this semester, but more importantly I learned that I could do it. Simple as that.  And when it's all said and done in December (pending a passing Spanish grade..eeek) will be the grade I'm the most proud of.  So here I am, the eve of my second semester sitting in the middle of my living room in my tiny, occasionally dirty apartment looking at all the things that have found their place in my tiny space and feeling incredibly grateful for the people, lessons, and events that have found their place in my life the past few months.  Get ready Sesame Street shirt, we've got some school to attend.