My "Save Chatham" Petition

I recently learned that my undergraduate college, Chatham University, celebrating 145 years as a woman’s college, is moving to go co-ed. I am as shocked as all my fellow alumnae and current students and I understand their outrage. I’m right there with them. My experience was unique and I would want to preserve that for future generations as much as anyone.

But outrage and petitions are not enough to “save Chatham.” I see these petitions—the posts on everyone’s Facebook, the Facebook groups and pages, even the website savechatham.com—and all I can think in reply is anger. I get it. Tradition, honor, women’s rights, feminism, whatever. I don’t like the idea either. The problem I have is with the complaining.

All of these women are fighting against this action with no counter proposal. Do they even understand the desperation that Chatham must be in that it would stoop to such a solution? The economy is hurting, and Chatham is no different from any small business. In my four years at Chatham, I noticed the classes getting smaller each year. I noticed the students in my own year that transferred away. Tuition prices were getting hundreds of dollars more expensive every semester. They gave undergraduate housing to the graduates because, hey, they’re getting more of those guys (and I mean, literally, men who are allowed in the graduate program and lived in the undergraduate women’s dorm).

Allowing men into the undergraduate institution could potentially “save Chatham” by giving Chatham more enrollers. Even if you point out that similar colleges like Carlow who were all women and went co-ed don’t have a large men population, if you want to compare Chatham to other colleges why don’t you also compare it to the other private colleges that closed due to bankruptcy?

For alumnae this problem doesn’t really matter. But what about current and future enrolling students? Tuition is already skyrocketing just to fill the gaps of enrollment. To compensate not allowing men into the undergraduate program to increase class size, Chatham will have to put more money into advertising for more young women. They will have to spend more money on programs to appeal to them. That money will be coming out of the students’ pockets more and more. And what do you think will happen when going to a private college will cost more than $200,000 for a degree in a time where getting a job is more about having the experience over having education, even if it’s an entry level position? Enrollment will go down. People will transfer. Tuition goes up to compensate. Enrollment goes down again. Do you see where this is going? And don’t forget about the faculty. They’re the ones that will get fired to save money. Fewer professors mean fewer classes and fewer programs of study, which leads to less enrollment once again. Or the campus will suffer. Maintenance will go down. Sports teams cut. Extra events and activities cut. Residence halls consolidated. Chatham will be a shell of what it once was. What’s the point of all these petitions if it’s going to lead to the college closing down anyway?

If you really want to “Save Chatham” you need to do more than share your opinion and your experience at Chatham University for your other fellow alumnae and students to read and gush about together. Your words will mean nothing if Chatham will have to close its undergrad program entirely. If you really care, you need to use your precious Chatham education to get a great job (good luck with that) so that you can donate to the school and become a trustee. Or find new and willing trustees. Or help out with advertising so that Chatham will get the biggest enrollment of women it’s seen in a decade. Volunteer for something to help alleviate costs. Or propose something entirely new. Don’t just sit there and complain.

As for my personal opinion on the matter, I don’t see why allowing men into the undergraduate program is such a big deal. I chose Chatham because it looked like a nice school with a great environment and highly rated creative writing and English programs. My parents were more comfortable with me going to an all-women’s college because they were living on a military base in South Korea at the time, but I didn’t really care if it was co-ed or women-only.

Honestly, Chatham has such a feminist, forward-thinking environment, wouldn’t it be good to introduce more men into it so that they can share and spread our ideology and cause? Maybe Chatham will have a better reputation than being a bunch of lesbian feminists who want to stay huddled together in the corner of Pittsburgh hating any and all men. Maybe you don’t know that reputation? Being on a sports team, we travelled a lot to other colleges, we’ve overheard the rumors. We are a lesbo-school. Which isn’t actually untrue if you look at what they had to go on. I mean, for my time on the team half of us were lesbians and all of us were LGBT supportive. It was their attitude that pissed us off. But how can they think of us any differently?

Chatham is a bubble. No one can really wander our campus. The only things they really know about our school are probably from the people who transferred out, and what nice things would those people have to say? We aren’t like U. Pitt. where anyone can come and go as they please. I’ve seen women who get antsy when they see groups of men on the campus and will intentionally go the other direction. Or I’ve seen women who would pounce on them like a hungry pack of wolves. I myself felt socially awkward because I wasn’t used to being around guys. When I took graduate classes in my senior year, we had a man in it, and I think it was much more enlightening than having a class full of women. He applied a different perspective that really helped everyone, as I’m sure our perspective helped him.

I don’t wish to get into the politics about anything. This rant isn’t about feminists or being a feminist or believing in feminism, however you define it. I would like to preserve Chatham as much as the next woman, but only for its tradition. From a real world standpoint, I think having a segregated college is archaic. Segregation and isolation are historically unfavorable for the segregated/isolated side, so why continue with it? What are the benefits in it that are more beneficial than sharing our ideology and way of life to the other side? Like I said before, I don’t want to get into politics, so I’ll finish that thought there.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully support Chatham staying as a women’s college, but I just want to point out that if Chatham needs to go co-ed in order to be functional, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. In fact, it could be a new opportunity. The point of my argument was to point out the flaws in the arguments of my friends and to provide my own opinion on the matter of Chatham turning co-ed, and I think I effectively went off on a few tangents there, so I will stop here.

This long rant brought to you by Jennifer Murphy, Class of 2013.

My Quarter-Life Crisis

I read an article today about a woman describing her “Asian American quarter-life crisis” in which she received her PhD in psychology and hated her life. She worked hard her whole life because she was told to by her family. It was ingrained in her brain to study, study, study; to get a stable, well-paying job so that she can live life without worry. But she hated her life, and she saw that her fellow peers also hated their life. It was extremely rare to see any of her Asian American friends who actually enjoyed their stable jobs. Eventually, she decided to quit the psychology track and try out jobs that she could find until she found one she enjoyed. She juggled teaching and consulting jobs and found happiness there. At the end of her article, she asked the readers how their experiences were—if they were different or similar, or just how they felt.

I myself am a half Asian American, half military brat. I spent half of my school life on military bases in South Korea. My mother is South Korean and my father is white. I went to ten different schools before college, including two high schools on opposite sides of the world. It was an interesting life, to say the least. Now, my mom wasn’t your typical ride-on-your-back through high school type Asian mom, but she was strict. She didn’t have to act strict—I knew my place, and what to do, so that she wouldn’t have to be (most of the time). I strived to get A’s in high school, not to please them, but because it pleased me. My mom wouldn’t get involved as long as I reported A’s, she didn’t mind if they weren’t 100%’s. My dad was super chill and would actually reward me money on report cards for each A, and a bonus if I got straight A’s. I graduated high school in the top 10% of my class, and my parents were happy.

I never really found out how my mom felt when I declared that I would go to school to study creative writing. I knew she wanted me to become a doctor, lawyer, or the best job—a dentist to fix her teeth—but I knew already that I wouldn’t be happy with that kind of life. I am an introvert so I wouldn’t make a good lawyer. I don’t like blood or needles and I cringe when I hear the drill at the dentist even if I’m just there to get a cleaning. Maybe my mom knew that I wouldn’t actually succeed if she forced me into those careers so she said nothing about my degree. And once again, as long as I brought home A’s, remained on the Dean’s List every semester, and kept up with being on the tennis team, my mom did nothing to argue or fight my chosen path.

But at this point of my life, not even a full year after I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I kind of wish my mom DID do something. I almost wish that she pushed me to at least major in English instead. Maybe I could have become a scholar, or at least a professor. But I pass by my degree every morning—still sitting in the foyer where I left it when I brought it home—and I think: “What the hell am I going to do with you?” I look at jobs on Simplyhired.com or Indeed.com or even Craigslist, and all I see for writing jobs are technical writers, copywriters, legal writers. None of that interests me, and I’m not qualified for them anyway (it’s a known fact that, today, even entry-level positions require 0-1 years of experience, and the 30-100 other people who will also apply for that job will have more experience than you, so you shouldn’t even bother).

And I did have a semi-purpose I found in my last year of college—when it was almost too late to get an internship and only one could be found in my city that I was half-interested in that I didn’t get anyway—and that was video game writing. I love video games. I spend all of my free time playing games with or without my boyfriend. I judge them a little too harshly sometimes, and the awfully written ones make me really want to write my own. The bad thing about getting into this industry is that only the big companies are hiring. Smaller ones already have their writers—anyone can write. The programmer or designer can double as a writer to save money. Jobs I see for writers for video games at small companies want writers who can also program or do concept art or anything. So I looked at big companies like Bethesda or Riot, but big companies want experience. This can be applied to every job everywhere in America today—there is no way to be qualified for a job unless you did internships in college, if you were lucky enough to know what you wanted to do (or were forced to do) in time. Small places don’t want you because you aren’t a jack of all trades. Big companies don’t want you because you don’t have enough experience. Where the hell am I going to get experience then?!

So now I am stuck at my parents’ house, writing whenever I find the motivation to. The plan now is to try and build a video game writing portfolio that I could maybe send out, or to finish a book I started in my last year of college. But it is incredibly hard to self-motivate, especially when I feel like I’ve lost my purpose in life. I find myself procrastinating every day by playing games—with the excuse that I’m “researching.” I complain and complain about not having a job, but in truth I’m scared to apply. I’m scared of rejection, I’m scared of success. I dread the interview process and if I actually get a job I think I’ll have a heart attack. I think this comes from being a natural introvert but also from staying in my house all day almost every day since I graduated last May.

And I keep trying to make a plan: do this, write this. Just write one chapter a week—that isn’t much but that might finish a book within the year. Just write a blog—but I find that when you spend all day in your house it’s hard to find something worth writing about to publish online. Just apply to one job a day—that isn’t much either but maybe, with a little luck, I could get something. Don’t even try to just apply to jobs that are in my field, apply to EVERYTHING. Retail, data entry, secretary, anything, anything. Just something to put on my resume for future jobs. As the days tick by I know I’m digging myself in a hole that I won’t be able to claw out of. “Why was your last job a tutoring job at your college over a year ago, and the job before that a high school job at a crafts store?” I know I’m a failure, and that depression is just making me hide myself in a corner more and more.

When this woman who wrote the “Asian American quarter-life crisis” article and asked how her readers’ lives were, I just wanted to answer that I’m envious. Not envious that she hated her life for a while, because I’m currently in that boat now, but envious because I wish my parents saw just how ridiculous a creative writing degree would be in today’s economy and told me to suck it up and go into something safer. Into accounting maybe, or science as a researcher, or teaching, or going on to graduate school. Even if those fields aren’t exactly safe enough today (as I imagine there is intense competition there as well) I would have probably had a better chance at getting a real job. I wish my parents made me go into something that would have gotten me an internship, which maybe could have turned into a decent full-time job. And in my free time, while I’m saving up money and paying my parents back for paying my way through college, I could write, and maybe really, really write, since I would have so little time to. Then maybe I could already be living with my currently long-distance boyfriend (who also spent a year searching for jobs and only just today finally got one) and we could be living the life of video games and saving up to get married and get a real place.

So my question at the end of my rant isn’t going to be “how did you experience your crisis?” or, “do you regret anything?”

It’s going to be this: What advice do you have for me, the creative writing Bachelor’s degree who dug herself into a career-less hole, who is too depressed (in a non-medical condition way) to self-motivate herself to write, who is too spoiled to deserve any advice in the first place?

P.S. You can read the referenced article here: http://mynameiselizabeth.com/2014/01/22/the-asian-american-quarter-life-crisis/

P.S.S This became a longer rant than I had originally intended. Also bonus question: is it sad that these 1500 words are the most I’ve written in weeks?

League of Legends Championships

I'm always super excited to watch the LoL Championships. I've been cheering for SKT T1 the whole time for this season (Korean pride!) and currently as I write they are 2-0 against RYL in the finals. The two games were very strongly in SKT's favor the whole time. Not the mosttotal domination game I've seen from SKT, but incredible for being the finals. I expected to see more even matches, and though RYL came close to shutting down SKT in the second game, SKT managed to split push and snowball out of control, catching RYL out and winning team fights.

I said I was a supporter of SKT from the beginning mostly from Korean pride, but after watching a few of their early games I really came to like their players instead of just their namesake. Faker is an incredibly strong mid player and it's really fun to watch him melt his opponents with his assassin picks like Ahri and Zed. I also like the bot laners, as they have good synergy between them and later on, good synergy with the team.

So yeah, hoping SKT brings home the cup! Looking forward to seeing who wins. I wish I could actually be there to see the teams in person! My lucky boyfriend is over there soaking up all the fun and getting free stuff...

Gogo game three!

FFXI: A look at Geomancer in Delve

Back into the world of FFXI...

Lately I've been going into Delve as Geomancer. I only have a few jobs "delve-ready," and I consider White Mage as my main job, so it was a little weird going in as GEO. It's actually a lot of work! If I actually want to do more than my job description. The group I was with had me hasting the Scholars for their stun recast, debuffing the NMs, Impacting certain NMs, as well as keep up my standard GEO buffs and debuffs. I basically took over a Red Mage's job. It's a lot less stressful than being a WHM. The only way I could screw up is if I cast the wrong thing on the wrong NM, but that's a huge mess up to do! I keep a notepad in front of me reminding me what to do on each NM. Some NMs cannot take any magic damage or it'll ruin the whole fight.

It's also hard to keep up MP. In my 1300ish MP pool, 666 of it goes to Impacting, and almost 300 goes to Geo-Frailty (defense down on the mob) and about 70 or so goes to Indi-Focus (magic accuracy boost on my party). Thankfully the Bards that have been in my party know to put Marches up but also Ballad on me, and with Refresh from my RDM sub and switching into my idle gear set, I get a decent amount of MP refresh back. Generally I will have enough MP to recast Impact on the next mob. It all ends up depending on if I can keep my luopan from dying too much, since it's 300 mp to recast it.

I've gotten a few compliments on my GEO, and the linkshell I am rolling with now seems pretty intent on having me come GEO regularly. I have mixed feelings about this, since I still like WHM and I'm better at WHM. My old linkshell mates, who I followed into this new one, say that my WHM is better than the two that this new group uses regularly (or at least better than one of them... which I agree), and I'm wondering if having a good GEO is worth not having two solid WHMs.

Well, we got one win in the Foret fracture, out of quite a few attempts in the past week (6-10 I would say). And of course the time we actually win is when everyone magically has an item set in their search comment (the usual way of deciding loot from the mega boss). Before this, nobody bothered setting a comment... and then suddenly everyone but me had one. I even asked in chat if I could still lot on the item I wanted (dagger, two dropped) and I already passed everything else to show I wasn't being greedy or anything. No answer, everyone ignored me. Well, I didn't want to cause drama (because I guess someone could say "hey, maybe the drop she wanted didn't drop so she's lotting this as a consolation or something") so I passed. And they of course replied to everyone else's question even though it was right after mine... Someone said that in this LS people tended to ignore things they didn't want to reply to. And they are on Ventrillo, so they have there own insider information that they probably told their own people to not forget to set their comments. Would have been nice if they let everyone know... But loot is loot, and having fewer people able to compete gives you a bigger chance, I suppose. Oh well, I was able to purchase the dagger with plasm saved up anyway. So now my delve-useless favorite job, Thief, can now be uber!

I'm wondering how long my friends and I will end up staying in this linkshell.

FFXI

So the game that I've really been investing too much time into is Final Fantasy XI. I've been a player since 2004, on and off, and still enjoy it today. I used to be Agelcat on Titan, but then I quit and made a new character called Koyuki on Remora, who became Kallio on Valefor where I am today.

FFXI recently released a new expansion: Adoulin. Wow. Squeenix are really outdoing themselves. Maybe a little too much. There are still a lot of things they need to fix about the game, but who cares? New content is a better fix, apparently. And there sure is a lot of new content. Adoulin basically replaced everything from the old game. Almost all gear outside of Adoulin is outdated and rendered useless. There is an upcoming update that will supposedly bring some of it back after heated debate in the community. Mainly they are going to revamp the Relic/Mythic/Empyrean gear that a small percentage of players worked so hard to get. Months of dedication and grinding and it was almost immediately replaced as soon as the new expansion came out. I never made any of these weapons, as they literally took months or even years to make, and it made endgame content very biased, so I was happy when SE decided to equalize everything. Sure, it made bad players and new players catch up in gear terms almost instantly, and it's made it hard to sift through badly-skilled players for content that required skilled ones. But it gave a chance for regular and skilled players who don't have the time to grind out epic gear to stand on even ground. It sucks when you're as good as anyone but you don't have the gear to make you that much better just because you don't have three hours to spend every day for months on a single event to gather thousands of a certain item.

Anyway, moving on... So yeah, new content. The bad thing is, SE decided to also release their new game, Final Fantasy XIV. Bad timing, SE. Bad timing. Ever since FF14 was re-released, a lot of players have quit and moved on. Unfortunately, the new content to get the best gear requires eighteen people. Eighteen skilled people. Maybe even a couple of cheaters who use third-party programs because SE is intent on a system based on "if you don't stun this one move the whole run is over". Which might be fine, might be doable, if the servers were not in Japan. This means there is a few second delay on what is going on, and so when a monster uses an ability that needs to be stunned, by the time North American players even see the move happening it is almost done using it. Then people die because of it, and the run is over because we have a time limit of 45 minutes to kill six Notorious Monsters.

Lately, getting through the first five monsters is cake. Except if you miss a stun. But cake. On the last monster though, if you miss a stun it could be devastating. You only have ten to twenty minutes to take down this guy and if your damage dealers die there is a five minute cooldown before they are back up to snuff. That's five minutes of missing damage, which means the fight is longer, which means the mob will use more abilities, which means more chances to miss a stun. The mob will also become resistant to stun after awhile, so you can only do so many stuns before we get shut down. There are three of these battlefields as of today, called "fractures" or "inside delve," and I've managed to be in a group that has cleared one of them. Currently trying for another one, but we keep timing out or getting defeated around 10-30% health left. It's so aggravating!

Well that's enough ranting. I'll go into more specifics, like my job and my role in these fights, in another post.

League of Legends Recap

When I decided to start posting in this blog I first forced myself to reread my previous posts from over a year ago. My very first post was about League of Legends. After reading it, I can't believe I only wrote that a year ago! It feels like it was forever ago. I am now a decent player at League, though I still do not play ranked for the same reasons (fear of failing, mostly). I play more roles than just Support, and I am more comfortable at playing different champions.

Ever since ARAM (all random, all mid) came out as a real map to play, I have been forced outside my comfort zone by getting champions who I have never played before. And I loved it. I actually stopped playing Summoner's Rift and only played ARAM. The games are shorter and are more burst-based, rather than a slow grind to eventually outplay the other team. Now it's all or nothing--go in and kill or die trying. It's also a good training ground for teamwork. We have to work as a team from the get-go, rather than after 10-20 minutes of laning phase. You get to play as new champions, work as a team, and overall have fun. No wonder I only played ARAM for months.

It wasn't until recently, when a friend joined as a new player, that I started playing Summoner's Rift again. And boy, was I rusty. I found, though, that I could play a lot more champions than before. I was horrible at Annie and Veigar until I continued to get them in ARAM. Now I can decently go mid (at least on my smurf, probably not against experienced level 30s yet). I also know how to play a lot more AD carries now, and I got better at being a support in team fights. Maybe with more practice I will gather enough courage to play ranked.

It's amazing how much the game has changed in a year. Many new champions, new maps, new friends. A new outlook on the game. I've been a player since 2010, and I will continue to be a player for the foreseeable future. Add me if you want to play, my ID is the same as my username here: Agelcat.

Warning! Necrobump!

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted on this blog. I really tried posting every day, but since I was in school I wanted to concentrate on my school work. Now that I’ve graduated, I’ve found that I have an ample amount of free time. Looking for jobs sucks (as everyone experiences, unless you’re super lucky) and being a creative writing major without internship experience sucks more. Well, I will always have the ability to continue work on my novel, which is what I’ve been doing since graduation.

But while looking through applications, I understand that having a blog—having published writing out there on the Internet—is very important. Especially focused blogs for the career I want. Well, this is a blog. And even though it is old, it is still based on what I love most—video games. My desired job would be in the video game industry, whether as a simple desk job or as a writer. So… gotta get to writing. Look forward to more posts!