Conversation Partner #6: Farewell for Now

As the end of the semester started to approach, I wanted to meet with Maram as I was not sure if she would be here next semester. I remember her saying that she would be leaving at the end of December. I remember this specifically as I could recollect how excited she was to be going home. As I texted her to meet, it was soon realized that both of our schedules are too crazy to have a proper hour long meeting that we were used to. Working through all her appointments as well as all my tests and meetings, we were able to come up with a meeting time where we would be able to meet for about fifteen minutes. This meet-up was nudged right between her last doctor's appointment before she leaves for home and our class. It saddened me that we were not able to meet for longer, but I knew that I was lucky to be able to give a proper goodbye.

When we met at Union Grounds, I was kind of at a loss for words. I am so especially bad at goodbyes that I didn’t know where to start. Goodbyes have never been my strong suit but I knew that I needed to eloquently express my appreciation for her time and friendship. As soon as we got there, Maram said that she had a present for me. She has always been so thoughtful but this gesture surprised me especially. She pulled out a box of Russell Stover chocolate and I nearly lost it. What is so coincidental about this is that for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a box of Russell Stover for every finals period. It’s something that has just always gotten me through the hectic, stressful time of finals even in high school. Obviously eating my feelings is something I do very often. When she gave me this, I was so extremely thankful that I hugged her, which is something that I do not do to people very often. I was so grateful for this simple gesture and was even more aware of how much I will miss her after this semester.

As soon as we got past this gushy phase, we were able to sit down and have a short conversation before class. She was telling me all about her finals and how they have been so stressful for her. She told me that she has multiple a day-something that I make sure to complain about to everyone when I have them. However, through all of this, she did not seem extremely flustered or frustrated. Yeah, they were pretty hectic but she seemed to talk about it in a way that made it seem like she was getting through it easily. I asked her why she did not seem to be dreading finals like the rest of us. She quickly responded by saying that she was so grateful for the opportunity to learn at TCU. To her, TCU education seemed like a privilege and something that she got the opportunity to do.

Through my conversation with her, I was able to see finals in a different light this week. Dreading finals seems to be a topic of conversation for all of us during this week however I was able to see it as a learning opportunity. Yes, it was still a frustrating experience, but it is one that I am grateful for.

To my surprise, Maram will be staying another month after she goes home this week! I am so happy that I will be able to see her in January. We have already made plans to meet up after break so I can hear all about her experiences in Saudi Arabia. We have formed a great friendship and it is one that I am quite thankful for.

Conversation Partner #5: Favorite Places

After not being able to meet for a while, I was excited to see Maram and catch up on things. This was my first time seeing her since Thanksgiving break so I was excited to see how her break went. After sitting down in Union Grounds, she began to tell me all about her break.

She said that she spent most of it with her brother. Since her and her brother live together, they usually spend their free time at home. She said that she was able to watch movies and start on How I Met Your Mother. She had wanted to watch it ever since we talked about it with her friends and this break was her opportunity to do so. Although she said that she has taken a break from it as school has started up for her, she said she plans to keep watching it when she is home in Saudi Arabia.

She then proceeded to ask me about San Antonio. I told her about everything, especially what food I had for Thanksgiving. She seemed interested in that and I completely understood. She then explained that she doesn’t celebrate that in Saudi, so she was curious as to what I had done for it. I then continued to tell her about all the exploring I did in San Antonio. I told her that although I have lived in San Antonio all my life, there are still things that I have not seen of my city. I also told her about the “haunted” train tracks in San Antonio. The story is that once there was a bus full of kids that had gotten trampled by a train after they had been stuck on the tracks. It was said that the souls of the kids still roam around the tracks and if you keep your car in neutral while on the tracks, the kids will push your car to the other side. Over break, I tried this with my friends but unfortunately, we found out that night that the story was definitely not true. It was still a fun experience and since I was not able to spend Halloween in San Antonio, this worked just as well. Maram seemed mortified then laughed when I told her that it was all made up. I then asked if they have any scary stories like that in Saudi, but she said that she has not heard of any.

Maram then asked me about my favorite place in San Antonio. It seemed like such a loaded question that I wasn’t sure how to answer. After some thinking, I replied that my favorite place was the Quarry Market. The Quarry is a plaza type place that has a movie theatre, restaurants, and retail stores. I especially love that place because it was such a big part of growing up for me. I remember I used to always hang out there in middle school. As I went away for school for high school, it was a place that I always cherished when I was back home. It seemed like a place that always stayed the same no matter how much time had passed since I last visited.

I asked Maram what her favorite place was. She quickly replied that it was her home. After knowing what a homebody Maram is, it seemed understandable. She then went on to explain that having her family all in one place is such an amazing thing. Being especially close to her family, she loves being able to hang out with them all the time. She then went on to say that her family always has awesome talks about life at her house. She told me that she has learned a lot from them and that this conversation was making her that much more excited to go home. I know that the semester is closing in and that I will miss Maram, but that it makes me so happy that she has a place back home that makes her so happy.

Conversation Partner #4: Hard Times and Home

Going to our meeting today, I did not expect what we were going to talk about. I came in completely not knowing what I would ask Maram about today and I was nervous about it. Through our first three meetings, I learned so much about her that I did not know what else to ask. However, Maram seemed to have something in mind that she already wanted to talk about with me.

As soon as we got to Chick-fil-a, it seemed as though something was wrong with Maram. She did not seem as cheery as she always does. She greeted me with a forced smile and I knew that something was not okay. We ordered our food and I had waited to ask her what was wrong. I did not want to alarm her if nothing was actually wrong that day and she just had a moment. When we got our food and sat down, Maram immediately told me what was on her mind.

She had expressed to me that she was feeling down that her classes were so stressful. It seemed like it had been a hard week for her. She then apologized for not being the cheery person she has always been. I completely understood as when I’m really stressed out I’m definitely not the smiling person I usually am. I asked her what she had due this week and she proceeded to list all the projects, presentations, and tests she had that week. It worried me to see Maram so frustrated with school and I wanted to do what I could to make it better. I proceeded to ask her more about her schoolwork and asked if I could help in anyway. She was quick to reply with a thank you.

In order to distract her from school, I proceeded to ask her more about her family and ask if she had any plans for when she goes home in December. She replied that she did not have any specific plans, but that she was still excited to go home. I asked her what was the thing she misses the most about home and she immediately said “food”. I could completely agree as food was something that I missed constantly about being home as well. I told her about San Antonio and all the amazing dishes we have. Being a part of a huge Mexican community comes with its benefits as I am constantly surrounded by authentic traditional Mexican food. While I can’t always go to Mexico for the real thing, I really appreciate being able to have a little taste of it in San Antonio. She then proceeded to tell me that she really wants to visit my town. She said that her brother has always talked about it and how much he loves the riverwalk. I was quick to respond that she definitely needed to visit and that I would surely take her on a tour of my favorite places.

Although Maram seemed to have been having a bad day, I sincerely hoped that our meeting brightened it a little bit. I tried my best to remind her of the amazing time she will have in the future once she gets done with all of her studies here. When we left, she said she was a little happier and a bit more excited for the upcoming weeks, no matter how difficult.

Learning Experience #4: Super Danielle

         This semester I was lucky enough to take the post-production class in the Film/TV/Digital-Media department. Wanting to eventually work in the post production part of the industry, I was extremely excited to take this class from my favorite teacher in the department. Having taken two classes from this professor last semester, I knew that he would be one of those teachers that I would have to take again and again.
         I had taken motion graphics last semester which also deals with post work and I loved it. For the final project in that class, I had to work with the green screen to create a project. Many people chose to put themselves in a scene from a film or make themselves teleport from place to place. I got inspiration from one of my childhood loves: Super Mario. I re-created the entire Super Mario world and put myself in as Mario. I called it the ever clever: Super Danielle. The video is down below if you want to see how it turned out and go along with my shameless self promotion:

         As most people, I've never been extremely confident in my projects and abilities. Coming from a department where everyone always has such great ideas, it's hard to be able to distinguish yourself from your peers. Throughout the entire process, I was not sure how the end result would come out. I feared looking like a complete weirdo in front of my peers. When the day came around where I had to show the final project, everyone in the class clapped after my video was finished. I think I even heard a "Go Girl!" from the crowd. My professor was extremely supportive-as he always has been. He came up to me after the class and told me what a great job I had done and that he was very impressed with my work. I felt a sense of relief after the class was over. I felt confident and that I truly did a great job with my project.
        Taking post-production with the same professor this semester, I was both excited and nervous to take the class. I was excited because I knew I would be learning rich information but I was also nervous because I was afraid to let my teacher down. I did not want to go below his expectations of me-which I think is common for most honors students. Because I knew that this was the specific part of the industry I wanted to go into, I felt a big responsibility to do the very best in the class. I was trying my best to distinguish myself from the rest of the class again. I was intimidated by others that I knew were good editors, but I was very open to accepting and growing from their expertise.
        One of our projects was editing a scene from the TV show 24. I was extremely excited to work on this as we had footage from the actual show. It all felt real and seemed to mimic the setting we would be in in the industry. I worked diligently on the project, however, like most students, when I finished the project, I did not feel confident about it at all. When the time came to show all of our projects, my heart was beating so fast. We all gave critiques and compliments to each video, however I knew that I was my own worst critic.
        After viewing all of the projects, my professor said something that stuck out to me. He said something along the lines of "You see, not one of these projects is the same. Everyone cut their projects so differently-but you can see how each of the projects had their strengths." I think that that dialogue was something that I so badly needed to hear. I realized that I needed to stop worrying about comparing myself to other students. I had my own strengths and my peers had theirs. Not one of us is the exact same and we will never do things the exact same way, but we are all right in our paths. Although it took some trying, I'm now happy with the place I am in in both my studies and my career path. I know that I am unique in my own way. I understand that instead of comparing myself to others, the best I can do is to just learn from them. It's a lesson that has taken me some time to understand, but I am so glad that I know it now.

Learning Experience #3: Corgis and Car Crashes

While coming back from Thanksgiving break something quite out of the ordinary happened. Let me start at the beginning.

If you don’t know, I live in San Antonio. Usually to get to and from TCU I take a five hour bus ride that is thoroughly unenjoyable. Because of this, I was extremely excited when my friend offered to drive me to TCU. Turns out, she was getting a puppy right around Austin, so she would be in the area. Not only was I happy to know that I wouldn’t have to take the horrid bus, I was also ecstatic to hear that I would be sharing the ride back with a cute corgi puppy named Amber. When Saturday rolled around, I couldn’t wait to get to Austin to meet this new friend. Three of my friends were there to greet me and we got in the car to make our way to Fort Worth.

We couldn’t decide on where to eat. My friends all suggested Chipotle, however I very much dislike Chipotle (I know, I know) so I vocalized against it. Because of that, we decided we would get food further into our trip. We were on the highway laughing and singing along to Taylor Swift. We had our cute little puppy in between me and my friend in the backseat. She was just sitting there on her own when my friend in the passenger seat asked to hold her. No more than five minutes later, it happened.

We crashed. Not only did we crash, but we crashed our friend’s mom’s car. The airbags deployed as my friend did not hesitate a bit to call the police. We all got out of the car shaking. Luckily, we hit a couple who was very nice and tried to sympathize with us. We tried to remain calm, but we all knew that we were shaken up by what just happened. It all seemed to happen in a matter of seconds. Traffic stopped suddenly and my friend was not able to break fast enough. It helped us to hear that the driver that we hit had to literally stand on his breaks so he wouldn’t crash the car ahead of him. We all kept saying that we were lucky that no one got hurt, but we were still freaking out over what had just happened.

After the police came, we tried to drive our car. We couldn’t get more than a few feet before the engine became over-heated. We decided to call our friend’s mom to come pick us up-she was three hours away. In those three hours we sat in our sad crashed car with this two month old puppy. We had gotten various people come up to our car and ask if we were okay. One couple even gave us their phone number and told us that they would be more than willing to even just wait with us till our ride got there.

Through that three hour wait, we had a lot to talk about. In depth conversations about our pasts and dreams for the future were only a small margin of the subjects that we discussed that day. Now that some time has passed since the accident, we cannot help but think of things that could have stopped that experience. We’ve thought about what would have happened if my friend didn’t ask for the puppy five minutes before the crash; if the puppy would have been okay. We discussed what would have happened if my friend was driving in the middle lane instead of the left. Through it all we learned that we cannot just keep over analyzing what happened that day. Some horrible things occurred, but so many other things were pure luck. We were lucky that none of us were hurt, that our friend’s mom could have picked us up, and that our new puppy was okay. We were lucky for those that stopped and asked if we were okay. The domino effect of the actions you take are so easy to get wrapped up in, but wishing you could have done something different does not change what has already happened. I guess the real lesson to take from the event is this: Learn to like Chipotle, it could save you from a car crash.

Conversation Partner #3: Mexican Food Breeds Friendship

         A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet up with Maram once again. This time, she wanted to go to Sol de Luna, which was pretty different for us since we usually just meet up on campus. However, I never turn down Mexican food so I agreed to meet her there. When I got there, she was sitting with a table full of people. It didn't surprise me though- Maram has always been a social butterfly in all the other settings we have been in. I was excited to meet all of her new friends and get to know them. I soon found out that a lot of her friends are conversation partners with my friends in the class as well! Small world. I was able to take a picture with one of my new friends and send it to Jordan-her conversation partner. 

It was awesome to hear about all their experiences with their conversation partners. They all seemed so grateful to have them, which is so weird to me because I feel like I should be the one thanking them! Because of them, I have been able to experience a new culture that I would have never known about otherwise. I am extremely thankful for this class and the opportunity to meet someone like Maram and all her friends.

       It didn't take long before her friends welcomed me with open arms. They joked around with me, listened attentively to me and eagerly answered my questions. It had taken me aback a little, seeing as it’s so rare that you meet people that are actually genuinely interested in what you have to say. They asked me so many questions such as where I am from and what I am studying. It was so cool to hear about their experiences and their education as well. It wasn't long until we sifted through all the basic information you disclose when you meet someone and moved onto deeper questions.

Television and movies. It seemed like a rapid fire question round answering all their questions about what movies I have seen or what TV shows I watch. Being a proud film major, I had seen basically all what they had asked me. It was so exciting that I was able to talk to them about these things, seeing as though I have already exhausted all of my friends with these topics. We were able to talk about Friends, How I Met Your Mother, My Sister’s Keeper, Nightcrawler, and so much more. I love being able to talk to others about these things so this conversation just made me feel so much closer to these new found friends even though we had barely met 20 minutes ago. Although we are so vastly different through our countries and background, we completely bonded over something so simple.

It was amazing to meet all of Maram’s friends. It usually takes me a while to warm up to people, so I thought that this meeting would be very awkward for me. Much to my surprise, it certainly wasn’t! I felt so lucky to have been able to share my opinions on movies and tv shows with them. It’s great that this type of media is able to be discussed with people from all over the world- it makes you think about just how alike we all really are.

Learning Experience #2: Cameron's Christmas

On the topic of suicide in class yesterday, I came across a post that I thought that I needed to share with the class. One of the organizations that I am involved with on campus is To Write Love on Her Arms, which is also a national organization that you may have heard of. Basically, the national non-profit organization fights for the destigmatization of mental illness and through that generates revenue that they put directly into treatment and recovery for those that are struggling. 

This story started out as just a recovery program for a friend. *TRIGGER WARNING: ADDICTION AND SELF HARM** Renee was heavily involved with drugs and alcohol and she had a history of self injury. Her friends urged her to get help to which she refused. The night that they convinced Renee to get help, she had self-harmed severely. They had taken to her to a rehab center that refused her. To them, she was deemed as “too great a risk” to take on as a patient. The center told her friends to give them five days. If, in those five days, they were able to keep drugs out of Renee’s system, she would be admitted. In the days that followed, her friends became her church. Renee always found salvation in music so they took her to as many concerts as possible. They star-gazed with her and watched the sunset together with her. After those five days, Renee was able to get the help she needed and has been sober ever since. One of the friends that helped her, Jamie Tworkowski, realized that this isn’t just Renee’s story. Thousands of people must struggle with these issues every day and struggle to get help. To fight against that, he created To Write Love on Her Arms.

Every day, the national organization receives hundreds of e-mails that they read and respond to. Sometimes those e-mails are sent with very heavy hearts, and sometimes they are sent with hope. This e-mail they received was sent with both. The message was sent by a mother whose child committed suicide a few months ago. The holidays coming up will be the first that they will be without him, so they wanted to make it special. The mother prefaced the e-mail by saying that they have always been a stocking stuffer family. She didn’t know what to do with Cameron’s stocking. She didn’t want to not put it up, but she didn’t think she could bear it if it wasn’t getting filled like the rest of her children’s. She then thought of an idea. 

She wants others to do random acts of kindness and then write about it. After that, she wants them to send their family a card with the written description of what they did and she will use those to stuff Cameron’s stocking. She will not read them beforehand, but on Christmas day, the family will read all of the post cards together and see the positive impact Cameron had on other people even in death. 

The truth is, sometimes we never know the reason that others commit suicide, just like the man in the story. They could be struggling with unimaginable things. These random acts of kindness will not only keep Cameron’s memory alive, they may be just the thing that helps others get through the day. I urge you to participate. Below is the mailing address that Cameron’s family would like you to send your messages to:

Cameron’s Stocking
c/o Lou Brandt
10 Railroad Place
Norwich Ct. 06360
OR email it to:
CameronsStocking@gmail.com