Why Whitworth?

Because at Whitworth everyone is embraced, no matter what color, gender, religion or political view they are. As a Whitworthian you will not be discriminated against because of who you love, where you come from, or how much money you have. 

Only at Whitworth will you see professors playing frisbee after class with their students or longboarding across campus. Here you’ll discover the importance of catching a pinecone and traditiation. At Whitworth you’ll be challenged everyday to learn about yourself and what you believe in. You’ll drink coffee with your professors and befriend the President on Facebook.

At Whitworth, not only will you get an education of the mind, but one of the heart as well. You’ll have inside jokes with the lunch ladies and know the “love language” of all the campus security officers. At Whitworth you’ll create bonds that will last a life time. 

Here you’ll surround yourself with love, learning and beauty. Because not only are the people here good-looking, they have beautiful souls as well. 

If you come to Whitworth, you won’t have to worry about being judged, because everyone- to some degree - believes what you do. And if they don’t, they’ll be willing to open their minds to new ideas and experiences, because at Whitworth diversity is something that we embrace and cherish. Here you will become part of a community that you’ll never want to leave. But don’t worry, because “Once a Whitworthian, always a Whitworthian.” 

Here you’ll learn about blatting and transcending, yourself and the world around you. You’ll run from Zombies and soak people with water bottles. You’ll grow in the knowledge of who you are, and become who you want to be. Because when you come to Whitworth, you come home.

To My Someday Cheer Squad:

One of my goals in life is to be a cheer coach. Cheerleading was very important to me, and I think that it's important to share what I love with other people who appreciate it as well. However, I'm going to be hard as nails coach because I want my team to be amazing. So I figured out rules for the cheer squad I hope to coach.

• There will be one week at the beginning of every season where everything will be in a “grace period” so corrections will be given without consequence and hopefully applied. 
• After that week, you get one warning. If I say point your toes more than once, you run. If I say tighten up more than once, you run. 
• Hair may be dyed natural colors only. Highlights of unnatural colors may be permitted as long as they do not clash with the uniform and are maintained. This will be on a case by case basis. 
• If your bangs prevent me from making eye contact with you, there’s a problem and you will be asked to fix it.
• High ponies are the official hair style of cheerleading for a reason. The only time you do not follow this rule is if you cut all your hair off and style it into a bob. 
• Full uniforms or warmups will be worn at all times during competition. However, you may change out of your shoes after performing. 
• No practice wear, no practice. 
• If you soffe shorts are part of the practice wear please do the world a favor and put spandex on underneath. 
• A stunt will not be put into routine until it can be performed flawlessly 10 times in a row at practice. 
• Everyone deserves a chance to fly. You don’t wanna fly? Cool stay grounded. You do wanna fly? Even better, you will at fly at least once during practice.
• No one is too tall too heavy too anything to fly. If you are a flyer and make a comment suggesting so, you will be turned into a base. 
• Once positions are set they will stay that way unless someone dies or drops out.
• You better be dying if you don’t show up to practice.
• You’re late? You run. You leave early? You run at the next practice. 
• Your teammates are your brothers and sisters and your coaches are your parents. Failure to accept that is grounds for dismissal. I’m not saying you all have to like each other, but you do all have to respect each other.
• If I put you in a point position or give you last pass you better show me each and every day why you deserve to be there or I will replace you.
• There will be no eating at practice.
• There will be no gum chewing at practice.
• If you get hit during routine, you keep going. Do not exit the mat or field unless you're broken in some way or are about to pass out. Winners never quit. Fight through the pain. All those cheesy cliches. 
• Cell phones will be put in a cell phone bin in the coaches office until after practice. If it absolutely necessary for you to have it out, please approach me about it first.
• Cheerleading is hard. Cheerleading isn’t always fun. But you work at it and you give it 110% each and every day you have the privilege to walk into practice or competition and I promise, you will ALWAYS have something to be proud of yourself about.

“Friday Night” Cultures: Football Players and Cheerleaders

Friday nights in the fall bring about a very important high school event: Friday night football games. Of course, there are two very important components to this event: the football players, and the squad that cheers them on. Now, upon first glance, one might not think that these two groups of people (who will hence forth be referred to as ‘cultures’) have nothing in common. However, once put under the microscope, a plethora of similarities begin to emerge and exist alongside the cultural differences.
As a cheerleader, I have had many football players try to convince me that cheer is easy, only to be proved wrong once put to the test. This can be attributed to many things, but the most prevalent is that while football players have a special form of training to prepare for “the big game,” cheerleaders spend hours in their own training to be ready to perform once the game starts. While these two cultures train for two vastly different activities, it is important to note that some of their workout methods are very similar. Just like football players, cheerleaders run and lift weights. We also have a set practice time that is crucial to attend. Our workouts focus on strength and endurance, just like football players, along with dance, synchronization, flexibility, tumbling and stunting, which football players do not have to worry about. Not to minimize a football players skill set or anything, but while they are out throwing a ball around and tackling each other, cheerleaders are performing complicated routines, stunts and tumbling passes, all of which are just as dangerous as taking a hit on the football field.
Danger is another field where cheerleading and football play equally, as it turns out. Both sports made livescience.com’s top five lists for most dangerous male and female sports, with football turning in at number 3 for most dangerous male sport, and cheerleading ranking first among most dangerous female sports, followed by gymnastics, which is a component of cheerleading. In fact, it has been widely stated that cheerleading may be even more dangerous than football, but since the two sports involve such different activities it is impossible to tell. These statistics make sense, of course. In football, players are frequently tackled to the ground by people who either the same size or much larger while using excessive force. In cheerleading, athletes are being thrown in the air, performing difficult tumbling passes (or flips, in layman’s terms) and putting a large amount of stress on their joints, muscles and bones. With these things in mind, the frequent trips to the hospital make lots of sense.
There are a few things, though, where there are no differences between cheerleading and football. One of these topics of complete agreement is what athletes learn from participating in these sports, beginning with the old adage “there is no ‘I’ in team”. Athletes learn to participate as a group and trade in their individualism for the good of the group. Indeed, football teams and cheerleading squads are very collective cultures. The athletes also learn discipline, trust, the meaning of the words, dedication and perseverance, and how to give 120% in all things because if they don’t someone else will. That’s a lot of life skills to take in for two cultures that are stereotypically ignorant, if you ask me.
My favorite stereotype about cheerleading is that we’re all stupid. And as far as football players go, they love it as well. Another commonality between our cultures? The world thinks we’re all idiots. This is quite ironic, when the fact that cheerleaders turn in a national average of a B plus where grades are concerned, and although the exact national GPA for football players is unknown, many college football players make the news for not only being amazing athletes but great scholars as well. (Take that, general population!) In fact, GPA is a very important part of life for the non-professional members of these cultures. A grade point average of at least 2.0 must be held at all times to be eligible to play or even practice. This pushes the athletes to not only work hard in school, but to also excel in the academic arena. Professional members do not have to worry about grade point average, because obviously, they are no longer pursuing any type of education, and only working to make money.
Not that professional cheerleaders make much money. According to dancecheer.net, professional cheerleaders only make $15-$50 (with the average price being $50) per game. So unlike NFL members, who make about $1.4 million a year, professional cheerleaders, who practice just as much and perform just like their male counterparts, also have to work full time jobs in order to cover living costs, and necessities for cheerleading, such as their uniform, hair products and travel expenses (which are not always covered).
Football and Cheerleading are quite obviously two very different sports and cultures, both of which fall into what I like to call the “Friday Night Culture” due to their similarities that can be found upon further inspection. From required tryouts for both teams to the ability to be a professional, similarities can be found where most observers only find differences. It really is a small world, after all.

Moonlight Sonata: Adagio Sostenuto

Haunting, as if someone has lost something, and can’t find it. 

I an see them now, walking up stairs, looking left and right on the top floor, then they come to a window, see the light. The darkness that surrounds it, but still the moon shines on.

They pause to think, what have they come for, it is lost, that is all they know. 

A flashback to a happier time, overshadowed by the knowledge of what is to come. A tear, in its loneliness slides down the thinkers face. He turns away from the window.

Now, fully absorbed in his memories, none too happy, but happier than he was a moment ago. There she is, in the moonlight, beautiful. He is in love.

But someone has stolen her. He chases. She runs away from the man who stole her, they meet, he lifts her, then she is suddenly pulled away. Running back, she screams out his name. 

What is his name? He doesn’t remember. The moon lighting his sillouhette, he continues to walk on. He pauses. 

Where is she now? His love. The scene continues to repeat. His love being taken away. He is getting more and more upset. 

He runs through the dilapidated house. Where is she? He can’t find her. He is alone.

Alone.

Collecting

I collect pictures and organize them meticulously so that later on, I can go back and look at them. Make up stories of what’s going on, wonder about the subject’s life, try to figure out how old they would be now, how they would look from a different angle with different lighting.

I collect pictures of places I want to go and make up memories for myself. In my head I relate to others my most recent trip to Portafino, Italy, where the houses are all shades of the rainbow and everyone is transported by boat. I tell them about the time I went to Greece and tanned out on the white sand, stayed in a white house with a blue roof just like everyone sees in the pictures. I’ll speak to them fluently in french, which I will have just recently picked up while sitting at a little cafe in Paris eating my baguette and looking at the Eiffel Tower. And when I walk away, people always speak of how traveled and wonderful I am, how I’ve gotten just the right amount of sun and how they wished they could hop on a plane and go anywhere they please.

Truth is, I collect photos of people I wish I was, places I want to go, things I want to do, and ideas I wish I had because I feel like if I don’t I won’t have any motivation to do anything on my own. For one who works so hard to be original, I’ve really not. I’ve based my life off of someone else’s interpretation of the world. But I have yet to find my own.

And everyone always tells me that I still have a chance to figure it out, that I’m still young, that I’ve got a long ways to go, but it really sucks going through life not knowing who you are. Just blindly being what everyone else thinks you are. But truth is, I am the way I am because I’ve never known anything different. I collect books because I hope to be a great author like Wilde, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Bronte, Dickens (both of them) and yet I rarely find myself writing anything that will ever come of repute. 

I’m lost. I need a map. Now there’s one thing I don’t collect. I don’t collect maps because I’m quite sure I’ve figured out how to get through life. If I hadn’t done that by now we would have a problem. I collect teddy bears, though. To remind myself that you are never too old to be a little kid again. I aim to hold onto my inner child long past the time I have my own child (another thing I won’t be collecting). 

I need to stop collecting others people’s memories and start collecting my own. I need to stop living the life other people have imagined for me and come up with my own goal. What if I’m not destined to be an actress or a teacher? What if really, my calling is to be a librarian at some random library for the rest of my life? That wouldn’t be too terrible, but since I’ve come up with the idea of being a teacher all my own I think I’ll stick to it. 

My point being I collect a lot. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Because alongside my memories and others people’s pictures I’ve accumulated a lot of self-doubt and loathing…which collects whether I like it or not. 

Ah. My inner demons. Now we’ve found something to talk about.

I don’t like myself a lot of the time. I mean, no girl ever looks in the mirror and tells herself she’s gorgeous the moment she rolls out of bed. For me that feeling lasts all day. I feel ugly, I feel fat, I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I doubt my talents and doubt whether or not I have friends. I also doubt whether anyone cares, even though I should know without a shadow of a doubt that a lot of people care, otherwise the decency I have been shown throughout the years would be really hard to explain. 

But still. I collect inner demons.

I guess you could say I just collect things. Trinkets. Things don’t mean much.

But then again, that’d be a lie.

Boys

When it comes to boys I generally think of them in terms of failures and successes. Like, the last thing that happened was a failure. Of epic proportions. For me because I was dropping levels to be with someone that didn’t make me happy and who didn’t really deserve me, and for him because there was no way in hell he would ever land a girl like me.

I mean, he couldn’t even spell intelligent, much less actually embody the word. 

Right now I’m in a success. Not only because everyday I wake up with the knowledge that even though I could live without my current boyfriend and he could live without me, we don’t want to. That finally we took the step that made us happiest. I mean seriously, I’ve been waiting for someone like him for awhile. But at the same time, how often do our supposed successes turn to failures?

When will this boy turn into one of the very same failures that has left a mark on my heart? When will we exit the zone of bliss and enter one of futility? I’m worried about it. I’m worried that somewhere down the road I’ll be just a marker for him, and he’ll be another heartache for me.

I’m no stranger to heartache, and not very much of it is boy related, I like to close boys off from my heart, in fact. My rule is to not let anyone in, because then you don’t  get hurt. But once you start showing people how to climb over the wall you’ve built around yourself, random people are in the garden stealing lettuce and you have nothing for your salad, and it’s all gone to shit.

And there’s nothing worse than people stealing your lettuce, or your dignity, aside from a clumsy fairy tale reference (so I apologize). 

I used to look up to Disney Princesses because I figured falling in love would be this really simple process that every child appropriate adaptation of a fairy tale had shown me. According to nightly story time all I had to do was look beautiful, have a good singing voice, have long hair, and wait for Prince Charming to show up. Oh, and once he did show up, it would be love at first sight, and we’d get married and have a million pretty babies and live happily ever after.

Thankfully, I’ve come to terms with reality, and I know that if I want to find a Prince Charming (if there is even such a thing) I won’t be able to do it just sitting around in my tower. Oh, and if you wanna know what my take is on the whole Happily Ever After thing, read my very cynical Pantoum about it, entitled “So Much For a Happy Ending”.

But unfortunately the road to “Happily Ever After” or as I see it, “Happily Ever After Until It’s No Longer Convenient” is a long one filled with tears and occasionally laughter. I mean, there’s the first kiss, and the first time, and the first heartbreak and the first boy that asks you to a dance, and the first PDA violation at school and all those other important firsts that all eventually lead to a girl sitting alone in her room eating Ben and Jerry’s with a spoon and listening to “Teardrops on My Guitar” because Ben & Jerry are the only two men that will never break a woman’s heart and Taylor Swift is like, the expert on heartbreak and break-up. 

Because for every failure, there is a success. What started out good, ended bad. Conversely the statement is false, because Not all success leads to failure. But where boys and dating are concerned, there is at least a 35% chance of heartbreak. Now I just made that number up, but it’s true to a degree.

And what’s really irritating is that the number goes up if the girl is intelligent. Bimbos get all the boys. Pretty, stupid girls get boys because intelligence THREATENS men. They lose control if the girl is smarter. You can’t control a girl who can outwit you. Girls in high school are almost FORCED to dumb themselves down to get a boyfriend. Because they refuse to accept that we love learning. Being smart is fun. It means we don’t have to giggle flirtatiously while simultaneously consuming a sucker and twirling a pigtail around one of our fingers and batting our eyelashes in  order to pass Spanish.  Smart girls know that they don’t NEED a boy, but we DO like the attention, and most boys, especially the cute jock in Trig won’t give smart girls the time of day. And what’s worse is that smart girls think they can’t get boys because they aren’t pretty enough.

Untrue. 

Boys in high school (I’m speaking generally here) don’t appreciate smart girls and don’t pursue them because they might look dumb. I mean, the quarterback of the football team cannot be bested in Math by Susie. That would just be social suicide. And then to date her?!? Mind = blow. (read: sarcastic)

My advice? Wait to date until college. Smart boys. Smart jocks. And smart girls are appreciated. For the most part. Also, don’t wait for your Prince, go out and find him. Then when you get to his house, kick the door, swag on in and proclaim that he’s gonna love you and like it. And then proceed to romantically go on your first date. 

And make you sure Ben, Jerry, and T. Swifty are at home waiting for you in case that doesn’t work out. 

"You ____ Like a Girl"

The very first time I threw a softball, (yes, Alexis the die hard cheerleader did indeed have a softball stage) my grandfather said to me, you throw like a girl. Pretty common statement, my throwing skills sucked, and I couldn’t get the ball farther than oh, 10 feet away (if that). I didn’t actually think of it. But as life continued the phrase kept being thrown at me.

Phrases like

• “You run like a girl”
• “You hit like a girl”
• “You throw like a girl”
• “Don’t be such a girl”

were just thrown at me over and over again without fail during some part of my week, if not day. And the terrible thing was, girls were saying it to me as well as boys. Boys were telling me, a girl, that I did whatever like a girl, and that there was something wrong with that, because apparently resembling a female in any way, shape, or form was not only a bad thing, but it was incorrect as well, because this a man’s world, goddammit and that’s just the way things are done.

Right?
Right?

Wrong. Yes, a man runs the country. Yes, a predominantly male group defends the country. Yes, men are sometimes stronger than women. But does that make us wrong? I mean, I’m going to use an old and worn out reason here, but we give birth to children. Sometimes very large children. That are inside our bodies for 8-9 very long months. What do men do in that time? Well, they get the pleasure of making the baby, and they get to open doors and tie shoes and get food for the pregnant lady and deal with her hormones, while she embarks on a nine month long journey that’s going to not only change your lives, but her body as well. Oh, and it’s life threatening.

So…uh…excuse me while I go give birth and perpetuate man’s existence. Like a girl.

Oh, and if pregnancy doesn’t occur, girls, not boys, girls, get to take part in the cruelest part of being a female: The Monthly Period. Parts of our insides literally fall out of our body. Our body RIPS itself apart because there’s no baby in it and it hurts. Cramps are so bad girls double over in pain, we become hormonal, emotional blobs and want to eat everything on the face of the Earth, while we’re losing blood constantly for 5-7 days, every 3-4 weeks (assuming that we’re lucky and our cycle is pretty regular). And if this didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be able to have kids. So excuse us for doing the things that are necessary to make sure the human race survives. And how do we do it? Like a bunch of girls.

In fact, men are so busy telling women that are they are all a bunch of “sissies” that they never sit back and reflect on the rights that we have and the things we did first.

Let’s start with the right to vote. Who obtained women’s right to vote? Women. Suffragettes, to be exact. Unlike men, we’ve had to fight tooth and nail for everything we have, except for the kitchen of course. Those come free with our gender. Our healthcare is a part of of the politics game and for the longest time, women weren't viewed as intelligent enough to vote. We could learn French, and play piano and go to high society political dinners, but having a mind of our own was off-limits. So how do we have the ability to do what we want when we want? Again, we fought for it. Like girls. So yeah, go ahead guys, complain about how nothing is fair. While you’re enjoying your white male middle class lives where everything you’ll ever need is presented to you at birth, I’ll be over here campaigning to have my insurance cover the birth control I’d like to have so that I can control my mood swings.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs may be known for their hold in the technology/computer world, but the first computer programmer ever was a woman. Her name was Ada Lovelace and in the early to mid-1800’s she wrote the program for Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Machine” in 1979 a computer program was named for her honor. She didn’t learn how to program from a man, in fact she taught men how to program. Way to go, Ada, you are the reason we have internet today. And you did it like a girl.

Then there was Mileva Maric, who is the often untold of ex-wife to Albert Einstien, and helped mother (some say even created) the Theory of Relativity.

If you’re into spiritual stuff and religions and things, take a look at who gave birth to Jesus, yeah, gave birth for your sins, like a girl.

I could go on, I mean, with people like Amelia Earhart, Queen Elizabeth I who never got married because she didn’t need a man to rule her people wisely and happily, and many other women did things like girls, like, inventing stuff. What did girls invent? Well -

• The circular saw, Tabitha Babbit, 1810
• Chocolate Chip Cookies, Ruth Wakefield
• Liquid Paper (aka White Out) Bette Graham, 1958
• The Compiler and COBOL Computer Language, Grace Hopper, 1950’s
• Colored Flare System, Martha Coston, 1840’s or 50’s
• Windshield Wiper, Mary Anderson, 1903
• Kevlar, Stephanie Kwolek, 1960’s

And the list continues on all the great things women created, founded, started, became a part of, did, just as well or even better than man.

So go ahead, be a man. And I’ll be over here doing things like a girl, because apparently that’s the only way to get things done these days.