Hi, I'm Sadie, and I like who I am.

Every Thursday from 4-6:20 p.m. I find myself in the Crabtree building indulging in two and a half of the most boring hours of my life.

Can you use the words "indulge" and "most boring" in the same sentence?

Apparently the History of Creativity course is so outrageously popular that they decided to add a few more sections this semester. The obvious solution in my mind would be to ask one of the professors already teaching the course to take on another lecture. However, their solution was to take a professor from a different college all-together and stick him in front of 250 eager students with nothing but another professor's powerpoint slides and minimal knowledge on the topic.

I exaggerate not.

The class is a bit of a joke, really. The quizzes are open book, the in-class iClicker questions are opinion-based, meaning every answer is the correct answer, and every test is open book/open note. The only thing that could potentially hurt your grade is the Creativity Project.

The huge, big, over-the-top creativity project. This project is due on the last day of class, and they told us to start brainstorming on the first day of class. It is so amazingly broad I didn't even know where to start thinking about it, so I came home and told my roommates about it in a desperate plea for help.

And then life started happening, and, as distant school assignments are wont to do, the creativity project began to slip from my mind. Until one fateful morning a few months later as I was blow-drying my hair.

My roommate came into the bathroom, leaned against the wall, and asked "have you thought anymore about your creativity project?"

I replied that I had not, then, quizzical look in place, asked if she had been thinking about it? The answer was in the affirmative. She suggested that I do something like a girl made out of egg cartons, to show that girls are always walking on egg shells.

... brilliant.

Pure brilliance, I tell you.

Feel free to watch this, it ties in with this topic quite nicely. 

I mean what girl isn't constantly watching every single move she makes? Will they judge me if I go back for a second doughnut? Am I able to walk flawlessly in heels? Did I tweeze away too many eyebrows? If I admit to my love of soap operas will he still like me? Am I too clumsy with a football? Did I say that too loudly? What will they think if I take this job when my kids are still at home?

The deepness of this topic is such that I could never cover it in one blog post, let alone one paragraph.

But the fact of the matter is, the world has turned the female gender into something to be sized up, played with, and then brought crashing down.

Another girl is not viewed as another person, she is simply a size two with a better sense of fashion, or a set of contacts and some highlights just waiting to happen. She is something to be envied, something to covet, and something to hate for her talents and seeming perfections.

And when her days of beauty, elegance, and grace have ceased, when she finds her hair turning gray, her skin losing its tightness, her agility beginning to fade, the world no longer views her as something of worth.

How has this happened? Who made it ok for there to be one perfect imaginary female after whom we must all be modeled?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I am far from that person.

My hair does not fall perfectly and my eyebrows tend to do their own thing. My waist may never be something to be envied, and I will never fit into my mother's size two wedding dress. My posture isn't great, my nail polish is always chipped, and somehow dirt always manages to find the bottom of my feet. I often feel that my head is too small for my body, and there is no product known to man that can fix my pale complexion. I tend to be a bit clumsy, I often forget my commitments, I have never been a straight A student. I almost never say the right thing at the right time, and I always tend to be on the more awkward side of life. I am so shy around new people that it takes months to realize I have a personality, but once you get to know me you find I like to talk a little bit too much. I often forget to wait my turn, I'm not a very good cook, and when I lose my planner I miss every commitment I've made for the week.

But really, who wants to please the world anyway? Why would I want to be the person you want to make me?

Just today I overheard a group of girls commenting on the hairstyle of one of my friends. "Oh my gosh, look at her hair!" "Well that's... different..."

It was all there in their voices, that judging, comparing, how can I bring someone else down to bring me up? tone was there.

And I wanted to stop them, interrupt their conversation right then, and say You don't even know her, you have no idea who this girl is and yet you are judging her purely on her hair style? How would you feel if someone did the same to you? Your hair is not who you are, and it is not what you should be known by.

But I held back my thoughts. I bit my tongue.

As I think about it now I realize that there will always be those girls. There will always be that portion of society who will judge you based on your awkward comments, your snagle tooth, your not-quite-vogue wardrobe.

I have accepted that fact, and I have come to realize that I am ok with it.

There will always be those who will judge me based on something small and superficial, and I will never be able to please everyone.

But I know who I am, and I am able to love that person for all of my imperfections and idiosyncrasies. I know that I can't live my life worrying about what other people think, because I will never be able to please everyone.

I am socially awkward, I say all the wrong things at the wrong time, I do not fit the profile of how the world says I should look, and I have a mighty long way to go before I reach perfection.

But I am ok with that.

My name is Sadie, and I love the person I am.