Author: Kat (Page 18 of 89)

To Live Life For

28 May, 2012 / Kat

I didn’t originally write this for Memorial Day, but it’s rather appropriate for a day in which we remember those who fought and lost their lives for our country. It’s also appropriate because I think of my Grandpa (a two time veteran) the same way I think of my Nana.

———–

My Nana and I 30 years ago.

This year, I ran out of things to say to those who had lost a loved one.

Sadly, in my mere eight years working in higher education, I have had to counsel and react to too many student tragedies. And this semester, I finally ran out of words of consolation. The loss of those words came when my own internal consolation no longer worked. Before, I just knew these losses and life detours were a part of humanity. But this year, my internal chalking-it-up-to-the human condition no longer worked within me.

That is, until I was coming home from working a candlelight vigil that remembered the lives of three deceased students the night before Mother’s Day. It struck me as I was walking to the train in Kenmore Square.

You can’t explain it. You don’t have to be okay with it. But the best thing you can do is live life for the person you have lost.

In a way, I have been doing this for over a decade. I live life for my Nana. It’s the little things – I always stop and watch any time I see Kelly Ripa on TV, because my Nana always told me she was “going to be a big deal” when I would watch All My Children (with a teenage Ripa) with her. I kept taking Latin because my Nana lamented it being phased out of the schools. I always turn up my nose at Our Lady of Mercy High School because Nana attended school there, but always recalled the nuns were too mean.

And whenever I get depressed, discouraged and convinced that I should just quit everything I do and go work at Dunkin’ Donuts or Target, I remember that Nana would be horribly disappointed in me. She wanted me to succeed. She held me to the highest standards anyone has ever held me to, and continues to do so thirteen years after her passing. Living up to them would be what she would have wanted.

I live life for her, which is the best tribute I think I could do for her.

So to my colleagues, students and anyone else out there trying to make sense of a loss: live your life for them. Live your life like they would have wanted you to, or how they would have if they were still able to. Because in living your life, you’ll do great service to the memories and foundations they gave to you while they were alive.

A view of Binghamton University from the Appalachian Dining Room in Mountainview College.

Remember That Time I Gave A Commencement Speech?

24 May, 2012 / Kat

Last weekend, I was invited to give a Commencement speech for a residential community ceremony at my undergraduate alma mater, The Binghamton University. (No, they don’t really use The like Ohio State, but let us pretend that they do because it sounds more fun.)

It’s a little unnerving to know that your words are going to be a part of someone’s graduation memories. That didn’t really hit me as much when I spoke at my own residential community commencement eight years ago, but I was also more in the habit of speaking in front of crowds at that point. Eight years as an assistant to people doing all the speaking later, it is a bit more nerve-wracking to get up and speak in front of people who are either so totally excited to be there or already sound asleep. It is also really nervewracking when you see parents holding up cell phones or Flip cams to film the entire ceremony. I saw a Flip Cam in the crowd while I was speaking and thought, “Holy smokes, they’re going to trot out this .mov file when the kid is 45. Or it’s going to get lost and deleted when their home computer eventually crashes, so you’re probably good.” Continue reading

Accountability and Expectation: Why The Josh Beckett Anger Is Justified

11 May, 2012 / Kat

I thought out this blog post while in the shower this morning. So, we’re not even going to pretend that it is well-researched. It’s stream of consciousness. I apologize in advance.

Josh Beckett (image from Over The Monster and Getty Images)

There are Boston Red Sox fans who I follow on Twitter who are upset that the media has pointed out that Josh Beckett went golfing, despite having a muscle issue and missing a scheduled start on the mound. They feel as if the media has ganged up on the pitcher, and he has every right to play golf on an off-day. Beckett himself even defended his actions by saying that he “only gets 18 off-days a year” and that he had every right to use one to hit the links.

Let’s put the supposed media “witch hunt” aside. Let’s look at the actuality of an athlete playing another sport as leisure while in season.

Professional and college athletes are often forbidden from playing any other sport – even one as innocuous as golf – while in season. For example, a very good friend of mine played Division I hockey, but she also loved to ski. But when she was home for the brief time she had for the holidays because she was in-season, she had to watch everyone else in her family ski while she sat there. She couldn’t downhill or cross country ski. She had an understanding with her teammates and her coaching staff that because she was an athlete in season, she couldn’t jeopardize being injured participating in another sport at leisure.

Sometimes this expectation is physically written into a contract with a professional athlete, and sometimes it is just implied. If you make a living from your body being at its peak, you don’t put it at risk of any type of injury.

There is a vast difference in athletic output between golf and skiing, but you still can be injured playing golf (ask my father, who actually broke ribs playing golf a few years back.) While those injuries are usually relatively mild, the risk is still there. And given that baseball is a sport where players often miss starts due to things as minor as ingrown nails and broken toes*, the minor injuries that golf can cause are significant enough to meddle in the everyday life of a baseball player. For a pitcher, the repetitive shoulder isolating actions of golf increase that risk more. If you’re a pitcher with over ten years of major league wear and tear on your arms and shoulders, and you have a sore latissimus muscle (which Beckett has) the motion of hitting a golf club may not be advisable in season. (In layman’s terms, the latissimus muscle is the muscle found from under your armpit around the side of your back. It’s a muscle used in both pitching and swinging a golf club.)

Also, there is that old adage that if you’re not well or performing well enough to do your job, go to school or attend an event, than you shouldn’t be stepping out and doing something enjoyable in its stead. When you were a kid, and you had to stay home from school with either an legitimate illness or a trumped up cold because of an exam you wanted to avoid, your mother wouldn’t just let you go to the mall or playground or what have you later in the day. No, even if you were feeling better, you stayed home. You needed to keep up appearances – or at least my mom wanted us to. Even to this day, if I am stuck home sick, I’m not jumping in The Kat Mobile and putting around. That’s playing hooky. I don’t want to appear to be playing hooky.

If you are being paid handsomely to show commitment to your job, you never want to appear to be playing hooky.

Josh Beckett knew he was not making his next scheduled start. He then decided to go play golf with another pitcher. He’s an adult and is allowed to make his own decisions, but I just don’t know if that was his best one. Is the media out to get Beckett? Frankly, the media is out to get anyone and everyone involved with the Red Sox because no one within the organization is showing accountability. It’s like a consumer report – you pay $50 to attend a game, you spend $140 a month to get a cable package with NESN so you can watch it, but you’re getting nothing but failure from that money. I think it’s fine for the media to ask these questions. The product is faulty, and they are just trying to figure out why.

*And before anyone comments, “Have you ever had one of those injuries? They hurt,” yes, I have had both. And danced on pointe, ran cross-country and did beam with both. I’ll get off my high horse now.

I’m Writing 30 Blog Posts In The Month of May…Or At Least I’ll Try

2 May, 2012 / Kat

Hi, my name is Kat. I joined a 31 day blog-post-a-day challenge (the WordCount Blogathon Challenge) and…missed the very first day.

Oops.

And now that I’ve negated my eligibility for actually saying I completed said challenge, I’ll try to go 30 days in a row writing a post.

Sure, posting once a day on all three of my personal sites in the month of May when I still work full-time in higher education is rather self-punishing. If I get through it, I’ll be a better writer for the experience. In addition, it’ll help me write substantive material every day, something I feel empty not doing. But it is something I go without doing too often.

Writing something once a day means I may have to branch out beyond sports, which I hope my more sports minded followers will not mind. One topic I will be writing about in May will be that this month is National Stroke Awareness Month, a topic very near and dear to my heart. My grandfather (who taught me a lot of my sports knowledge, including an extremely useful base level knowledge of NASCAR) suffered numerous strokes between 1991 and 2002. Just about two weeks ago, my own mother (who is only in her early fifties) suffered her own stroke. My mom is well on her way to recovery – luckily, her stroke was mild, and she’s already back on her feet after a few days in the hospital.

The general public doesn’t talk enough about stroke – in fact, it seems like it’s only mentioned when we talk about the late Dick Clark, and then, it’s shrugged off. We forget that it can strike the very young and very fit (like former New England Patriot Tedy Bruschi), and that if you are vigilant, you can treat a stroke before it causes significant damage. We also overlook that research has provided us with immensely better ways to treat stroke in the past twenty or so years – the advances in treatment from my grandfather’s first stroke and his later ones were noticeable, and is has improved more since the early 2000s.

So in between the sports and social media related posts I will write in May, I am going to talk about stroke – how you can prevent it, how we can work together to further the research and how many stroke victims have successful recoveries. I promise not to get preachy – I just hope that I can use the small platform I have to help others.

Why I Couldn’t Handle A Day With the Stanley Cup, But Here’s a Worthy Person Who Could

18 April, 2012 / Kat

If I ever had a day with the Stanley Cup, I am not sure exactly what I would do with it. You’re talking to a girl who once had to carry the Beanpot down a Madison Square Garden hallway and did so totally on her tiptoes because she was too frightened of somehow harming the famous trophy. I feel like if given the Stanley Cup for a day, I’d find a padded room, place it there, borrow some stanchions from my full-time job, and only let people get within four feet of it. I wouldn’t want to be THE person that somehow breaks the Stanley Cup, thus ensuring its future as being imprisoned behind thick plexi-glass.

Given that anxiety, I did not enter Discover’s Day With The Cup contest. But many hockey fans did, and the contest has been whittled down to three worthy finalists. You can see each finalist on the contest’s Facebook page.

While all three finalists have equally motivating tales, I have to say that the entry of Heather and Noah was the most heart tugging. Noah shared his love of hockey with his father, a member of the military who was recently deployed overseas. As the entry reads, “Hockey was something that me and my dad did together, every weekend, my mom don’t like the cold.”

Noah and Heather (who I am guessing is his non-cold liking mom) credit Noah’s hockey team, the Fulton Red Raiders, for helping them through the emotional ups and downs of having a loved one deployed. They want to win a day with the cup to salute Noah’s dad and his fellow soldiers.

The other two finalists are equally as deserving, but Noah’s especially touched my heart. I know I’ll be voting for him to earn a day with the Stanley Cup.

Which one of the Day With The Cup entries do you like best? Would you be as nervous as I would if you got a day with the Stanley Cup? Tell me in the comments!

Thank you to Discover for providing the information for this Day With The Cup post. It is a sponsored post, meaning I may receive compensation from the company for posting it.