I’m liking South Carolina. I’m liking the lush heaviness of the trees - the massive knobbly trunks you couldn’t wrap your arms around; the slow drip of cascading leaves; the play of sunshine, like a spray of bright coins, across the streets. I’m liking the way beautiful college girls with their honey-skin and skimpy sundresses walk the streets with old ladies in their sun hats with sun-kissed, age-spotted limbs. I like Charleston, with its converted movie theaters and white-washed French coffee bars and windy beaches and a jumble of old and new - historic hotels, hushed and dark, jammed up against rolicking gas stations turned into diners. I like that the Civil War hangs on Charleston’s shoulders, a heavy burden carried mindfully. I’m liking the Lowcountry: the gullah slang that to me sounds like speaking with a mouthful of marbles; the menus that have “gator burgers” and “Mississippi mud slides”; the marshes and creeks and sputtered-out neon signs and rusted beach cruisers and the sleepy hang of cool, wet air. I like the tiny houses that look like frosted wedding cakes - all shades of icy pink, washed teal, mint green, sunset orange so deep you could sink into its smolder - and the heavy whip of waves against the gray shore. 

I thought South Carolina would be Georgia, just further in the sticks. I was wrong. I like that Charleston is a study in contrasts: old money and new money; liberal progressivism banging elbows with conservative down-South values; pride, flags draped over walls and roofs, the Southern preening. I cannot reconcile some of the viewpoints: I overhear snatches of conversation in the streets that are all “them blacks” and “those people” and “in my day”. I could not live, so young, with so many old folks, because I find myself slipping into their patterns and I fear withering before I’ve even bloomed. But I could lose myself gratefully in these marshes and the weave of bridges and the slip of boats between islands. I could wind my way up and down the coastline, in and out of the hushed historic buildings, through the cool sweeping forested streets. 

Step 181: Say what is on your mind without eight layers of filter

adulting:

I am originally from the south, and like many southern girls I speak in a very indirect way that can be completely indecipherable to someone who isn’t used to it. It’s this very vague, veiled way of talking — I will express what is actually a direct, actionable request as an anecdote about someone else’s desires or perhaps if I’m feeling really forward, as vague statement of hope.

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Step 190: Go to grad school for the right reasons

adulting:

                       

Y’ALL! It is time for a Very Special Guest Entry, so circle up.

Sometimes, you read someone’s blog, and then realize that there is no point in your continuing to blog, since this person has so obviously shut the blogging game down.

That’s about how I feel about Yes and Yes, the project of one Ms. Sarah Von Bargen. This blog has just about everything one could need to be an effective young lady or dude in this world — everything from how to accomplish things that seem completely impossible to how to be a non-annoying vegetarian to getting over a break-up.  So as soon as you’re done reading this, I highly recommend you head on over. Sarah?

Many of us (myself very much included here) go to graduate school when it takes us more than a few years to find a job that we really like. Or maybe the professional world isn’t quite shaping up how we imagined and we were always good at school, so why not go back? Or everybody we know is doing it and, dammit, I’m totally as smart as they are! I want a Master’s!

Here is my incredibly mercenary advice.

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