Maame's College Extravaganza: Cornell University

This summer I’m embarking on my giant college tour trip, my parents and I are taking the East Coast by storm from Ithaca to Boston. This has been, by all means, an Odyssey to get here (Mr. Rabiola would be so proud). We drove because, well, I don't really know why we drove. Still, we drove. It wasn't a bad trip, but it was the longest we've ever taken as a family. I like long car rides because it allows me to do my favorite things: listen to music, eat, and read. It's uninterrupted time to relax for me because no one ever tries to make me drive. I assume as I get older this relaxation period will turn into something very different when I'm the one driving for twenty hours and not reading "Americanah" to Laura Mvula's album and a bag of Oreo Minis. Nonetheless I still read some 300 pages of one of my first fiction books written for adults in the driving period. I've also memorized all of "Green Garden" both the studio and the Metropole Orkest (I prefer the latter version, but only marginally).

As I embark on this journey I find it best to describe each place we stop, or at least the interesting ones. My first stop was Cornell University to

1. Visit my sister; and
2.  Go on a tour of the school

Ithaca, NY is in Upstate New York. I'm from Kansas, so when they say it's flat, I always think about how my hometown has huge hills that are scary to walk up, and then I came here and I'll never think that again. In Upstate New York everything has a slope. In Ithaca if you look up from pretty much any point, you see rolling hills, maybe mountains, for miles. It's really beautiful when you don't think about how somewhere in the rolls and rolls of forestry hills exists a few packs of bears that are very prepared to steal your Tim Hortons.

On the way to the cabins you have to go through a dramatic ride through Upstate, and just before you reach the Arnot Forest you're so close to the forest that you can see individual trees. The trees in this area are very thin, but very tall, like a teenage boy with a pituitary gland imbalance, and the roads are always raised up by about 10 feet, unlike in Kansas. So, you can't really swerve around on the roads, unless you enjoy 10 foot car drops onto the family of bears that still want your donuts.

Ithaca itself is a lot different from what I expected. My parents told me it's just like our hometown: that was a lie. Ithaca is very much a different city. It has a vibe to it that I've only found in the East Coast (this isn't my first rodeo in the East Coast please see 2008 and 2010 of my memory for more details). The roads are narrow and the rent is very high. When you pass single family homes, more than one family lives there. The people are very similar to my hometown, I'll give Ithaca that.

It's probably because they're colleges of similar sizes, although my hometown doesn't house an Ivy. Wegman's is a grocery store that's always packed with people because of its many organic options. My hometown just opened its third organic grocers. Ithaca feels smaller, I think it stems from how different the college town area is from everything else.

I've enjoyed my time here, in Ithaca I mean. There is an avid Amish population, which really excites me because they've always fascinated me. The Snapchat filters for the city aren’t half bad, but nothing in comparison to my hometown. I'll give their filters a 6/10. My next stop is Boston to tour the plethora of colleges that exist within the area. 

Let me know if any of you have been to Ithaca. How was it for you?

How To Be Black

The other day I saw the trailer for the upcoming film "Dear White People". As a 16 year old black girl who lives in a predominantly white suburb (technically its own city, but it might as well be a suburb) it's safe to say that I can relate. The film's premise is that a biracial girl starts a radio show called "Dear White People" where she gives white people tips on how to stop being racist, however unintentional it may be. The thing is that a lot of people, especially white people and LeTyrone, a young, urban, African-American, man, growing up in an unsteady area with an African-American single mother who works two jobs because his equally African-American father died in a drug raid (this is actually just a white person trying really hard to seem black), think that the film is very racist.

After seeing this I got really revved up on the topic of pointing out and fixing racism in today's America and started researching things similar to the film. I came across a bunch of PoC YouTubers who address topics like those brought up in the film and one of them I found was Akilah SmoothieFreak. She was talking about one of her favorite books being How to Be Black. So I looked it up and found out it was critically acclaimed and actually a really great book even though it had a bit of product placement for the blog "Stuff White People Like".

If you read "Books For Adults" you know that my book store options are next to none and as previously stated living in a predominantly white suburb (what suburb isn't tbh) didn't help. I didn't even bother to go to any of them because who likes some semi-tall string bean black girl dressed in mostly black asking you where she can find a book called How to Be Black. Who is honestly going to help?! My need for the book did trump my contempt of side eye from English majors at their summer job, but not enough for me to actually see the side eye: so I called. I called Hastings and Signs of Life neither of which carried the book. Personally I think it's weird to carry ample copies of the House of Night series and exactly zero copies of a critically acclaimed New York Times Best Seller written by a Harvard graduate, but I digress.  The Signs of Life guy was talking to someone in the background about a spill on aisle 5 (there are no aisle there I've been)...let's just say I caught your shade okay, and I brought a flashlight that's why you're on blast (is this even putting him on blast??? was he throwing shade on me????? idk????). Long story short I received sound side eye but I trudged on.

All of a sudden, like the time I hit my head meeting the floor of the pre-k bus (I have a permanent scar) it hit me. I own a kindle!! Why have I been buying tangible copies of books when all I had to do was walk into my parents room and use the Kindle. My parents are really chill about us buying books because books enhance our mind or some weird hippy reason that's probably the same reason why my mom hides things like eggplant in our food. It was an extremely simple process that was nearly identical to this

Me: "Can I buy a book on Kindle?"
My dad: "Okay."

Anyways, I'm extremely excited to read this book because

• The author's name is Baratunde Thurston and a really close family friend's name is Babatunde
• he let's me debate politics with him in a non-hostile way it's great
• I'm catching a kind of Mindy Kaling witty humor vibe 
• I read a few excerpts that were hilarious 
• He went to the posterchild of Ivy League schools: Harvard
• The Ivy League is my baby
• I'm not Malcolm Gladwell, so you can bet your mother's life that I think that Harvard will give you a better education than Cloud County Community College

All in all, I feel like this book is going to be a 10/10 would recommend to everyone to read, even though I haven't opened the first page yet.

Lastly, I would like to thank Amazon, for being the only book store to not sound side eye me today and for having the book in stock even if it's always there because it's in the cloud.