Please for the love of god tell me you got the Tyra reference! But for real, I feel like I have two paths in my life right now. I can stay on my path: manage a World Market, grow in retail, somehow end up on a path I tried to get away from in college. Or, I can go back to graduate school, I’m not sure my original graduate school path is what I want, I’ve grown over the pandemic and I’m not sure that’s the right path either.
For those of you who don’t know I started college as a fashion and retail major at Ohio State. I loved the creative and history classes but was ultimately turned off by the business aspects and the waste of the industry. I’d worked retail since I was sixteen and was growing to understand more of the details through school and working my way up the ladder at Lush. Again the politics of it all was turning me away and I switched majors to Anthropology. I had gotten away from the path I thought I would go down. Corporate retail. As the pandemic ruined most of my plans in the field of anthropology I put off grad school, feeling like I didn’t have anything that made me competitive in my industry. Putting off school has kept me in the world of retail and it’s not in my nature to stay put. I’ve been working my way up the ladder from part-time to full-time to assistant manager. I love the growth I’ve made but feel like it’s pushing me in a direction I’m not sure I want. The logical next step would be managing my own store and maybe from there becoming a district manager in five to ten years. I like the thought of earning my way up but wasn’t this the path I didn’t want? I worked to get away from this and this industry. I love people and the connections you can make over the simplest of sales. But is that enough to keep me in the industry, especially when growing up would mean fewer people interactions?
The other path I feel drawn towards is the world of academics. I decided early on in my anthropology I wanted to earn my doctorate and teach. I thought Dr. sounded sexy and would make me good enough for the ex that hated everything I did. I was ready but scared, I didn’t feel good enough. I packed the summer after I graduated full of resume boosters to look good on applications. Unfortunately, Covid hit, and all of that fell through and I decided to push grad school even farther. I wasn’t sure exactly want I wanted to focus on and I didn’t look special to schools. I took time away to panic over a pandemic with my family and through lots of free time and a TikTok, I found what could be a new option.
I have always loved costumes, historical fashion, and history itself. I worked in the costume department my senior year of high school and a semester in college. Not to toot my horn but I was a better sewer than the other girls in my class so I got to help the graduate students work on restoring a historical dress. It was nerve-wracking and wonderful. I couldn’t find a degree or career path that let me focus on my love of history and fashion. I didn’t want to design and I didn’t want to manage a retail location (see ironic) so I figured I needed to give up my weird love. But thanks to TikTok I’ve found so many individuals who did something like what I had dreamed of!!! This could be a career! I started looking online and there were graduate school options for something like this. Historical Clothing master programs, places where I could learn about the keep and care and showing them and how they go into museums. I could go into museum degrees and library study programs. Something the would let me use anthropology and historical fashion at the same time. I was so turned off by the thought of combining them when I started to switch degrees it used to bother me when someone would suggest I do a project with both. How dumb do I look! I would have been the only one in my department doing something like that, what a stand-out move that would have been!!!
So where do I sit? Do I stick with what I know? Stay in retail, grow, manage. Stay on a path I didn’t think I wanted. Stick with the original graduate school plan, have like ten more years of school to go. Or I can change the whole thing up and combine my two loves.
I feel like when I say it like that it should be a no-brainer! Combining my two loves is the path I am leaning down! Why wouldn’t I want the best of both worlds? I mean Hannah Montana wrote a whole song about it. I’ve found a really cool online program out of the University of Oklahoma that lets me do just that and it’s online!!! I figured after covid I would never want another online class again. Now thought this seems like an amazing option! As much as I would love to move to New York (another amazing program) I just can’t convince myself now is the right time to move and leave my family. My parents are getting older, my dad just fell and broke his shoulder, my grandma has had a couple of health scares in the past couple of years and I’m just not sure I want to have more than a thirty-minute journey to deal with future situations. Oklahoma really sounds like a beautiful mix of everything I want and even better I don’t have to step foot in Oklahoma!!!
Shit We’re Loving: LISTEN
Our Pick: OTF February Playlist!
This month OTF focused on love! The good, the bad, and the ugly. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, why wouldn’t we celebrate all love has to offer. Our hearts get to sing (literally!) and our heartbreak makes us strong! Or at least gives us an iconic breakup anthem! So sit back and feel the love!
Lizzy’s Pick: You should be sad
Halsey went above and beyond on this album! This was a breakup album for me and her. She knew exactly what I needed to get myself back on track. I have literally run a red light I was bopping so hard to this song!! It’s that good! To everyone you’ve ever wanted to say you “missed out” to this is your anthem!
Shelby’s Pick: “1-800-miss-ur-guts” by TRAMP STAMPS
Guysss, all the songs I picked are bangers. You really just have to go listen to the playlist as a whole. If you’ve seen the newest Scream movie in theatres, one of my picks (“Fall Out of Love” by Salem) surprised Zack and me by being the first credits song on the movie! And both Avril Lavigne songs? Particularly “Bite Me (acoustic)”? Avril is back, bitches. I did select to highlight this Tramp Stamps song (acknowledging that there has been some unsavory stuff about them that I know nothing about because I live underground). “1-800-miss-ur-guts” is a ballad banger, and we love an all-women band! It is not a revolutionary song by any means—there have been and will continue to be countless high school breakup songs—but I feel them. I feel missing ur guts.
Aimée’s Pick: "All You Wanna Do" from SIX The Musical
So a couple of weekends ago, I was lucky enough to get to see SIX on Broadway. It's such a fun, brilliant show, and I think this song is probably the most fun and brilliant of them all. It's super catchy, funny, and sexy, but it's also subversive and troubling. You might have to listen to it a few times before you really get what's being said. In simple terms, Katherine Howard (Henry VIII's fifth wife) was groomed and abused for the majority of her short life. Anyone who has experienced something like that or who knows someone who has experienced something like that will be able to read between the lines of this upbeat, ultra-poppy song. But no one will be able to get it out of their head!
Sydney’s Pick: “Night Changes” by Anna Vaus
I first heard about Anna Vaus last year when her upbeat cover of “Champagne Problems” went viral on TikTok. She has a gorgeous voice, is definitely suited to traditional pop, and has a great talent for new interpretations of Taylor Swift and One Direction songs. Her own style is much more indie pop and these twists on fan favorites are refreshing takes on songs we grew up with. I'd also suggest checking out her YouTube for more music (like awesome Folklore Version of ME!).
Blaze’s Pick: “Happy Valentine’s Day” by Outkast
For this month I decided to feature classics only to reflect the delightful level of classic cheesiness associated with Valentine’s Day. That includes the iconic OutKast bop “Happy Valentine’s Day” which I listened to with rapture since it first struck my ears in middle school. Their lyrics reverberated in my head through my brother’s speakers as he drove me to school and I couldn’t let it go. The bass is insane and the line “there’s all this talk about Santa Clause but love will rule supreme” is what sparked my love of Valentine’s Day way back when.
Their argument just made so much sense! How can we as a society justify the tooth fairy, Punxsutawney Phil, or the leprechauns of Saint Patrick yet not give weight to the one fictional holiday character that has a real-life purpose? Love should be shared and unexpected; perhaps even cause some kerfufflement from uncontrollable arrows.
I also added two Beatles songs because the simplistic harmonies warm my soul and nothing says true love like holding hands and dancing cheek to cheek.
Show Your Support: Today’s Future Sound
This month’s organization is a pick from Sydney! Today’s Future Sound is a hands-on beat-making and music production program that constructs an outlet for creativity, personal experience, and critical thinking in a variety of settings for its students. TFS serves over 5000 students each year; 3000 of whom live in the San Francisco Bay Area. The majority of these students are lower-SES youth of color in Oakland and San Francisco’s most underserved neighborhoods and communities. Approximately 80% of students served by TFS are African-American, 15% Latino/Hispanic, and 5% Asian-American/Pacific Islander. TFS' mission is to teach these students new skills and aid in their school learning, all while remaining engaged in the hip-hop community.
TFS’ instructors represent a diverse group of teaching artists and professional studio/audio engineers, multi-instrumentalists and vocalists, professional DJs, computer programmers/mobile application developers, sound designers, and music producers, all working to bring the catharsis of music to these students.
In the OTF fashion, we have donated $50 to Today’s Future Sound already and encourage everyone to give what they can! If you’re interested in listening to the music TFS has created, check them out here!
Daily Intention:
Today I will…
Appreciate the time it takes to arrive at the destination!
Here’s some nifty buttons for you to press, enjoy: