Respect

Today I was given an arm band, think yellow livestrong for this. (Quick side note for those of you who do not know, I really like arm bands. They give me an opportunity to connect with others I believe.) The giver told me to think about myself when I looked down and saw the band looped around my arm. I kind of thought the giver was a little strange for giving me the band and I honestly did not think I would put it on, but I told her thank you and pocketed the band anyway. The band has written on it one simple word, RESPECT. There first thing that comes to my mind when seeing or hearing that word is that Aretha Franklin song here, you know the one I’m talking about. Google will pop up about 221,000,000 hits if you search the word respect. That is huge! How does one word have that much information? This post has a point but to see the point you have to try and follow along with me. So here it goes.  How often on any given day are you given a chance to show respect to a stranger, a close friend, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, a teacher, a student, a co-worker, an employee, a child, yourself? The list could go on and on. From my own experiences with respect, I tend to give people around me a lot of it. I believe that everyone deserves respect. It is not something to be earned like a medal or an award. You deserve respect and that’s what you’ll get from me. You can however lose respect. It takes a very talented person to lose respect in my book and only a couple of people are in that book. My biggest challenge is respecting myself, the person God created. So today and everyday hence forth I am going face this challenge head on and respect the person God created me to be and all the other people, places, and things God created. I challenge you to do the same. You may mess up and fail but keep on trying. RESPECT!

Identity Mishaps

A requirement, as you all know, the college makes it mandatory (technically) for all students to attend seven convocations a semester. Well as of today I now have two under my belt, such an accomplishment I know. I have survived seven semesters of going to forty nine convocations, fifty one if I start counting this semester. Something I should add here is that I love hats and they are somewhat of a comfort object for me. Without my hat on in crowded places, such as Phelps Stokes during convocations, I get really anxious and unfocused. There is a “responsibility” at convocations that states * Respect for the presenters includes an appearance of attentiveness, including upright posture and forward gaze. Caps, hoods, headphones, earbuds, or any other obstructions to listening or to others’ vision should not be worn. The head over convocations sends an audience rights and responsibility paper out at the beginning of every year. It has been a struggle every semester being told that I need to take my hat off. Something I find interesting though is when I wear sock caps in the colder months they do not tell me to remove my hat. What distinguishes a ball cap for a sock cap, I’ve been asking myself for four years now. Today I got brave or stupid, depends on the perspective you take I guess. Instead of waiting to be told to take my cap off I stopped the head honcho himself and told him my dilemma involving crowds, hats, and anxiety. He looked at me with genuine compassion and said if I let you wear your hat though others might ask why they can’t wear theirs. I see the dilemma here but I wasn’t about to give up. After a minute of eye locked silence he spoke, “Just keep your hat on and if a convocation usher tells you to take it off tell them I approved it.”  Yes! Finally some understanding justice. I thanked him greatly expecting him to move on down the aisle. Nope he then preceded to say, “As a freshman this is something you can work through and maybe you won’t need to wear your hat later on down the road, you are a freshman right?” I kind of panicked at this question, what if he wouldn’t let me wear my hat if I said I was a senior because by then I should be use to the crowds and noise. So in my panicked state mumbled and shook my head yes. As if things could not get any more frightening for me, he asked what my name was. In my not so sound mind I said the first name I could think of that sounded legit, Taylor. Smooth right, how do you even get the name Taylor from Amanda? So now there is officially a freshman from Western Kentucky named Taylor who is thinking about majoring in Child and Family Studies wandering around campus somewhere. Oops! I have no justification for why I lied, it just kind of happened. I feel super guilty about it and tomorrow I plan to go to the man himself and turn myself in, my real self that is.