Progress Defined

prog·ress

–noun

1. a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage: the progress of a student toward a degree.

2. growth or development; continuous improvement: He shows progress in his muscular coordination.

3. the development of an individual or society in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level

If I could sum up this semester in one word, this is the one that I would use. For some reason, this semester is the one where I have felt more mature, more wise, more intelligent as each day goes by. I feel like this is kind of the equation for one's junior year because for most, it's the year you officially become an adult. 

But I don't only feel progress in my maturity and intellectual level; I feel progress in my creative ability. I think one big contribution to this expansion of my creative ability is keeping up this blog. I've found that not only have I been able to reflect on things going on in my life in a creative way, but I've been able to put down in words the unfiltered mumbo-jumbo going on in my brain in an eloquent, developed manner. I found that I would write down the first thing that came to my mind and make it into an interesting, engaging topic for a blog post. 

With the social, intellectual and creative progress that I have made this semester, the situation is nothing but win-win. 

Given this conclusion, there's only one thing left to say: 

peace out ☮

And This Dedication Goes to... Melanie

Meet Melanie, my first dog. I got her when I was three years old. She's an interesting mix: half bird dog, half dachshund. Throughout the years, we've shared a lot of memories. 


I'll never forget my childhood days with Melanie. I remember when I was little, the first thing I would do when I got home from school was go to the back yard and visit her. Since I never failed to do this, she always knew when it was 4 o'clock. My mom said that she would always get really excited right before 4, because she would always be awaiting my return home. 


I'll never forget the way I felt one time when I thought she had run away. My parents and I had gone on a short trip out of town and when we got back home she was gone. I remember bawling my eyes out and crying myself to sleep because I didn't think that I would ever see her again. However, we got a phone call from the vet the next day and they had her. It turned out that somehow she had gotten out of our backyard, wandered the neighborhood, and returned to the backyard of a different house-- one that looked very similar to ours. 


My parents and I always called her a mute because it was very seldom that she would bark. But then, as she got older in age, she began to get more neurotic. I would play a game with her where I would pretend to be letting her inside and then close the door, over and over again. This game would get her so wound up that she would begin to bark in a way that I had never heard before. Below is a photoshoot of this game.

I did this photoshoot my senior year in high school for a photography project. I took these pictures on the digital camera that I got for my 18th birthday. 

These pictures are the last pictures that I ever got to take of Melanie, because she died the day after my birthday two years ago. She died in the kennel my mom had left her in while my parents came up to Dallas to pick me up for Christmas break. Since I was still in Dallas on my birthday, we decided to spend the night in Austin to celebrate. My mom's cellphone rang late that night, so she decided not to answer it. The next morning she checked her voicemail to find out that Melanie had died in her sleep of a stroke. It was my first Christmas home from college, and I didn't get to see my dog. I felt gipped. I wish I had known when she would leave the world, because then I would have taken more pictures of her on my camera for memory's sake.

I believe that first pets have a significant impact on a child. I believe that they can even bolster a child's creativity: most of my drawings in school consisted of me with Melanie. First pets also serve a loyalty that one could not find anywhere else. When I was 9 and halfway through the third grade, my family and I moved to San Antonio. Since I started at a new school halfway through the year, it took me a while to make new friends since everybody had long ago formed their cliques. For a while, Melanie was my only friend.


Though later in life I will have new dogs, Melanie will always be in my heart. 

There's a Place, and it's called Aldi-land

Monday, after over a month of not going to the grocery store, one of my friends did me the favor of introducing me to a new grocery store called Aldi. Though Tom Thumb is normally my store of choice, I decided to try it out. 


I was completely amazed with the amount of food I got for the small price I paid. Normally, since I apparently only go to the store once a month, my grocery bill ends up being about $100, if not more. My bill at Aldi was a grand total of.... $41.84. With that miniscule amount, I got:


-- A bag of spinach leaves
-- A package of mushrooms
-- 2 pounds of grapes
-- Hummus
-- A block of swiss cheese
-- Fresh Mozzarella cheese
-- An entire bag of onions
-- An entire bag of bananas
-- A bag of organic baby carrots
-- A mango
-- Tomatoes on the vine
-- An avocado
--- 3 cloves of garlic
-- Granola bars
-- Chewy bars
-- Peanut butter
-- Dijon mustard
-- Sandwich bags
-- Golden raisins
-- Chili powder
-- 18 rolls of toilet paper
-- 1 gallon of milk


I was amazed by some of the prices on this list. Take tomatoes on the vine for example (the baby kind). At Tom Thumb you would pay a good $5.00, same with the baby carrots. I only paid $1.49: more than half of what I would normally pay. My entire gallon of milk was only $.99. I felt like I was back in the 1980s, where everything was much cheaper, and the millennium inflation had not yet kicked in. 


After going to this unbelievable wonderland, I got to thinking: How did everything get so expensive? The price that we pay for some things (cough, a cup of coffee at Starbucks, cough) are so ungodly expensive, yet we pay the price in a heartbeat. I know that if my grandparents were still alive they would be in shock. When they were young, they only had to pay something like $.50 to get into a movie. Now, we pay $10, if not more. 


I wonder what would happen if we tried out reverting our prices back to what they originally were before inflation. Would it make our economy crash? Or would it be beneficial to it because people would be more willing to spend money since they'd be getting their dollar's worth?


Since I'm not an economist, I don't really have an answer to this. But I do know that I will be shopping at Aldi way more often. For the record, the shopping center that Aldi is in (off of Abrams and Skillman) is phenomenal if you're trying to keep you wallet thick. There's a dry cleaning place in the same center with incredibly low prices; one time I brought in a white silk blouse that my messy-eater self spilled a bunch of queso on and the price to flawlessly bring the stain out cost less than $3.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year... Or is it?

The lights are up in the Dallas Hall quad, which means only one thing: the holidays are very close. It always amuses me how the preparation for Celebration of Lights begins around the end of October. I always love attending every year, bundled in warm clothes with a hot chocolate in hand, singing Christmas carols with my fellow SMU students. However, I found an interesting tidbit of information when I did a news package last year on the preparation process for the Celebration of Lights:

It costs $30,000 for the Celebration of Lights, each and every year. That's basically the cost of my entire tuition for a year at SMU. Don't get me wrong, I love Celebration of Lights. I think that it's a tradition at SMU that should stay because it brings our university together and lifts up everyone's spirits before finals kick in. But the cost of this makes me wonder how many other things our school spends money on that may not necessarily be, well, necessary. 

I read an investigative article in one of my journalism classes last week about the SMU Board of Trustees and its oath to secrecy. The Board meets in a room in the business school and the windows are even covered so nobody can look in. The Board has never released any public records for what it talks about during meetings. There is only one member from the student body on the Board, and that member was selected by the Board for his or her ability to keep confidentiality. So basically, the Board makes decisions that the student body and the rest of the SMU community has no say in because everything discussed in the meetings will never be revealed to the outside world. 

It makes me wonder if the Board had anything to do with making the decision to plant winter grass all over the university every year. Necessary? I think not.

1000 Ways To Die

Above is a a typical episode of Spike TV's "1000 Ways to Die." Lately it's been one of my favorite shows. I find it very entertaining and amusing despite the great amount of gore. The actors are so bad and reenact the deaths so humorously that you can't help but to laugh. 

However, some of these deaths are so incredibly unfortunate that they make me stop and think about the concept of life and death. For instance, the episode above is probably one of the more average occurrences (the wife yelling at her husband as he does chores) and the wife's life ended from it when she acted out of frustration. Granted, most of the episodes involve people doing ridiculously stupid things (peeing on an electric fence, eating so much that their stomach explodes, jumping in an empty swimming pool while on an acid trip, etc.) But other deaths are so unexpected (having your tent get blown away while you're inside it and then crashing into a building) that it's kind of scary when you think about it. 

This show just makes me realize even more how precious life is, and how it can be snatched from you at any moment. And apparently, if your death is ridiculous enough, you could be reenacted on this show.

How Would Your Life Be If...

Do you ever wonder how different your life would be if something else had happened other than what actually happened? Take the place you grew up for example. I was born in California, spent my early childhood in Oklahoma, and the latter part of it in Texas. But I wonder what the scenario would be like if:


My family had never left California. I was born in Walnut Creek, which is a little town about 20 minutes outside of San Francisco. My parents originally moved because the cost of living was too high and they worried about me growing up there. My mom had some terrible image in her head that when I would become a teenager, I would take the Bart (San Fran's version of the Dart) far away from home whenever I would get upset. But I think it would have been really interesting to grow up in the Bay Area. Here are a few ways my life may be different if we had stayed there:


-- I would have grown up in a much more liberal community, which may have differed my political views from what they are now. 
-- I would have been more city savvy, since San Francisco is such a vibrant, urban area.
-- I would have been even more a chocoholic than I already am (Ghirardelli headquarters, duhh)
-- Instead of playing tennis in high school, I may have taken up surfing as my weekend hobby.
-- I could have had a different personality altogether. After all, your personality is partially influenced by who your friends are, and I obviously would have had a completely different circle of friends.
-- I may have ended up somewhere besides SMU (but who knows, maybe I'd still be here. There are a lot of California kids here).


As interesting as it is to come up with ways my life would be different if I had never moved, I think that things worked out for the best. Since I moved around so much I think it's a symbol for how my life will be. After all, I do want to travel as much as I can while I'm still young, so I think that living in a few different places may have been my calling for this because now I know that I can adjust to new places. I'm not meant to sit still; I'm meant to be a doer, an explorer, a discoverer. And I know that the way I have lived my life will help me with this destiny. 

My Happy Place

Do you ever wish that you could be far away from reality? Do you ever wish you could go somewhere far away and never come back?


That's how I feel right now, most likely because finals are just beginning to start up, and I have four. When there's something I don't want to be doing, I tend to revisit old memories and look at pictures that I have taken. As of late, the series of pictures that I never fail to revisit is this year's Labor Day Weekend that I spent at Nocturnal Festival. It was the first rave that I've ever been to and after going I want to stay in one forever. There's something about everybody dressed in neon clothes, the vibrant techno music, and the festive light shows and fireworks that make me incredibly happy. 

I think Nocturnal appealed so much to me because the setting of it is far from one that you would stumble across in everyday life. For one, in real life, people would look at you as if you were crazy if you were constantly dressed in rave clothes. For another, everything is so carefree that it's unnatural. Everyone always loves each other because the only thing you can do is bond over the music. I guess you would call it our modern-day Woodstock. Unfortunately this is not the case in the real world.


I wish that everyday life was always like Nocturnal. Nobody would ever be upset. There would never be any fights or conflicts going on. And there would sure as hell never be any judgement for what you're wearing. It would be utopia. Too bad it only comes around once a year.

My Side of the Story

"You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it... fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf-- your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality."


This is a quote from John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. I really like this quote because I think that it applies to all of us in a sense. When something happens in our life that could be considered painful or unfavorable, we tend to try to black it out by altering what happened in our minds. 


I especially have found the truth in this quote when I get two sides of the story from the two different people involved in a conflict. One person's story has a point-of-view that is favorable to them and unfavorable toward the other person, and vice versa.


I think this is a fascinating phenomenon because the way I see it there should theoretically be only one side of the story based on the facts given at hand. However, I know that this is completely impossible, because different point-of-views and conflict tend to run deep in our blood. 


But what if there was a day where there was only one side of the story in every aspect of the world? Would that story actually be true? Or would it be one person's perspective that everybody else was forced to agree to? 


Somebody could easily become a world dictator in a day. Or somebody who is guilty and on death row for a terrible crime could convince everyone that he is innocent. Those are the extremes, however. There could never be any disputes between friends because there would be only one side. Major political decisions would become a breeze because there would not be two parties with opposing sides of the story. Having only one side of the story could be a good or bad thing, it's just up to you whether you want to use it wisely or play with fire. 

Who Am I?

Though I myself am still trying to figure this out (since it is my theory that I get to know myself better as each day passes), here's what I do know:

I'm independent. I don't need anybody to take care of me. Therefore, I know that I will never marry for money, only love. My favorite color is yellow. It reminds me of sunshine, which brightens up my day; therefore, it brightens up my outfit and my mood when I wear it. My favorite vegetable is spinach. Most people hate spinach, so I guess that makes me a bit of an oddball. But I'm okay with that. 

Speaking of oddballs, I've never had the chicken pox. Maybe it will come back to bite me in the ass later in life, but for now I know I've never had it, so that makes me feel a little invincible. I tend to say really ridiculous, quotable things. You can ask any of my friends and they'll tell you about a few things I've said in the past couple of weeks that made them bust out laughing (or just give me a really weird look). 

I don't get embarrassed if I fall down. I know that many people's most embarrassing moments involve something with falling down, but it doesn't bother me. I'm a clumsy person. You can't always be graceful. So even if I fall down in front of over a hundred people, it is what it is. I'll just laugh it off. I'm always one to embrace imperfection and failure, because sometimes those two things get you the farthest in life.

A few of my nicknames include but are not limited to: Natty, Crumpet, Natattack. They may not make sense. But if you know me, they make all the sense in the world.

If there's something that I want the most out of this life, it's that I will be remembered. Though extreme wealth would be nice, it's not my first priority. I think the only way I know my life will be worthwhile is if I am memorable to people and made an impact on them somehow.

On the contrary, though I want to be remembered when I die, as far as my everyday life goes, I don't really care about what people think of me. Put a label on me. Pass judgment. Think what you want, I won't care. All that matters is that I'm happy with who I am, since I'm the one who has to live with myself everyday. 

I'm learning little tidbits about myself like the details above each and everyday, but there is one fact that I've always known:  I'm Natalie Anne Posgate, and my initials spell NAP (hence the blog title). 

Now, who are you?

An Underrated Freedom

It blows my mind that only 70 years ago one could not freely express their political opinion without the risk of getting imprisoned, or even executed if their views challenged the authority. 

I thought about this when I watched the film "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" in a history class that I am taking. The film is about a 21-year-old German woman named Sophie Scholl who was a member of the White Rose, an intellectual resistance group that opposed Hitler and Nazi Germany during WWII. One day Scholl and her brother passed out leaflets at the University of Munich that called for opposition against Hitler. Though the Gestapo did not see them passing out the leaflets, both Scholl and her brother were arrested as the primary suspects of the stunt. 


While Scholl was being interrogated, she provided a believable story and was almost let off the hook. But the next day, the police decided to search her apartment and found too much evidence that pointed at her as guilty for passing out the leaflets. She was then sentenced to death and was executed. 


It's crazy to see how much progress our world has made in less than a century. Nowadays, you could badmouth the president to his face and probably nothing would happen to you. In fact, this day and age stresses on the idea of having a variety of opinions in society. 


We would not be where we are today if it weren't for people like Sophie Scholl. She was not afraid to voice her opinion, even when that was the most lethal thing one could do. If it weren't for people like her, people would be afraid to speak up when it is needed the most. And I think that today many professions (especially advertising) rely on the ability to voice opinions.

11 Things I Want To Do In 2011

So, I know it's a little early to think about the New Year, but since I'm such a fan of bucket lists, I thought I'd get started early on the cool things that I want to do for the upcoming year. 

1. Take a yoga class
2. Go on a road trip across multiple states 
3. Go with a group of friends to Vegas
4. Get a cool, well sought-after internship
5. Find more cool local hubs in the Dallas area
6. Regain my piano repertoire, and learn another difficult piece
7. Go camping (the legit way-- no cabins, no RVs, just tents)
8. Add on to my portfolio by getting more of my stories published
9. Host a dinner party
10. Meet an inspirational person
11. Go on a really original date 


I'm doing this now so that I can start thinking about new things I want to do instead of have half a year pass by and realize that I never made a bucket list. Maybe since I'm thinking about this earlier in advance, I'll be able to cross more items off my list by the time 2011 comes to an end.

Thankful for Traffic

Why is it that Thanksgiving travel is the WORST kind of travel out of the whole year? 


I contemplated this when I was driving back to Dallas today from Austin. Normally my short little trip is between a 3-3 1/2 hour drive, but today it took me nearly 4 1/2 hours to get back to Dallas. As I was driving I saw the same sign multiple times: "Thanksgiving Traffic. Expect delays Wednesday-Sunday." 


Before I began my journey, I only assumed that I would hit bad traffic in Waco, since many of the drivers should be Baylor students returning to campus. But then I hit traffic in Temple, Troy, Hillsboro--- places outside of Waco. 


All of this ridiculous traffic made me come to the conclusion that it's not just college students who take the whole week off for Thanksgiving. Everybody else is taking off as well-- and leaving returning home at the last minute. 


Why isn't Christmas traffic ever this bad? Is it because people visit with their families for variable amounts of time versus one general time frame? 


Or is it because Thanksgiving is a more family-oriented holiday than Christmas? It makes sense when I think about it. For most, Christmas is not based on celebrating Christ or uniting with family, but instead, it is a complete consumer holiday. Gifts are all people ever think about when they hear the word Christmas. But Thanksgiving is a time when one goes home because they legitimately want to spend time with their families. If somebody did not want to see their family they wouldn't make the effort to come home and sit at the same table as parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles and muster through all the family talk. If somebody actually comes home or visits family for Thanksgiving, it's a symbol that they are actually thankful to have their family members in their lives. 


On that note, maybe the excessive traffic on I-35 could elicit a heartwarming outlook because the amount of people on the road represents the amount of love people have for their families (and I'm sure the airports weren't any different).

Something We Could All Do Without

There are many things that would make our world a better place if they just did not exist. Sure, there are the obvious, like wars and recessions, cancer and obesity, poverty and drug addictions-- but the thing that I am talking about is something that would truly improve our everyday outlook on things if it did not exist. And the winner is... stereotypes.


I deal with the burden of stereotypes almost everyday-- especially since I go to SMU and am involved in greek life. Some stereotypes are included but not limited to:


1. "Oh, you're in a sorority. So you're paying for your friends..."
2. "So you want to write for a magazine when you graduate. What kind? Fashion?"
3. "You must be rich, you go to Southern Millionaire University."


I'm tired of being labeled just because of what I am associated with. True, there are those certain people who feed the fire to the stereotype they represent; I am just not one of them.

To counter the stereotypes above:


1. Yes, I'm in a sorority. No, I'm not paying for my friends. In fact, I don't like a good number of people in my sorority (how the hell can all 130-something girls in an organization all get along?) I probably would not have even rushed if I went to a bigger state school. But, seeing how huge Greek life is at SMU, I thought I'd give it a shot.


2. Though there is nothing wrong with wanting to go into fashion, it's not for me. I hate it when people think that the only kind of magazine out there is fashion. I would like to cover news, but in the soft, magazine-style writing approach. I want to be the one winning Pulitzers, traveling to Africa, and writing some of the biggest investigative stories of the decade. I hate it when people assume automatically that I want to go into fashion, because it implies that that person thinks I'm not capable of pursuing topics of more substance. Yeah, I may be blonde, but there is more intelligence to me than what meets the eye (unfortunately, many blondes at this school give us a bad name because, they in fact, do act like idiots). 


3. Just because I go to SMU does not mean I'm rich. Though I have a few things that are nice, most of my clothes are from Forever 21, I drive a Nissan Altima (not a Mercedes Benz), and probably the only reason my parents considered sending me here is because I received an academic scholarship (and I'm an only child, so they don't have to worry about putting other kids through school).


I wish that people would try out one day where they would not judge people based on what meets the eye. If people did this, a whole new door of possibilities could open. Somebody could meet their new best friend because they made an effort to get to know this person when they normally wouldn't. Somebody who would not normally be considered could earn a job position and produce very fine work for that company, and even earn that company some awards. People could accept help from someone they would normally least be willing to get help from, and end up better because of it. 

The possibilities are endless, but we can't make these possibilities happen if we do not try. We are our own worst enemies: we let guards up around us before we truly give people a chance to prove themselves. If we just let these guards down, where could our world be in 20 years?

An Anti-Thanksgiving

What would a life without Thanksgiving be like? Would our country ever set aside a day to reflect on everything we had to be thankful for? 


Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of things to be thankful for. But most of those things end up being what everyone else always says: "friends, family, health, security." So instead, I'm going to list the things that I am not thankful for that are Thanksgiving-related (because no matter what you're thankful for, there's always conflict):


1. The aftermath of overindulging on food during the Holidays
2. The overwhelming amount of people in the mall and stores on Black Friday (which spells the bringing together of all the crazy people under one roof)
3. The fact that everything is closed on Thanksgiving, which is bad news if an emergency occurs and you can't go to the bank, etc.
4. The Thanksgiving traffic I will have to deal with when I drive back to campus on Sunday
5. The ugly truth that when Thanksgiving hits, final exams are right around the corner


I couldn't think of many things to not be thankful for, though, because I am a very thankful person and a big fan of Thanksgiving. However, it's always interesting to look at things from the other side.

The Day We've All Been Waiting For...

So I'm turning 21 in almost two weeks. As excited as I am to legally drink...


I don't want to grow up. 


I remember as a kid there were always those special birthdays that I fantasized about for my whole life. When I was really little I always thought about how cool it would be to finally become a teenager. I would wear hip clothes, be allowed to wear makeup, be in middle school and have my own locker, start dating boys. I would be so much older. 


Then I turned 13 and didn't feel any different. But it was ok, there was always the "sweet sixteen" to look forward to. I would get to drive a car (which meant everything to somebody in high school). I would no longer have to beg my older friends for a ride home instead of taking the dreaded yellow bus. I could have my own set of keys, and pull them out of my bag even when I was still a mile away from my car just so that I would look cool. I would finally get to travel the roads I always knew on my own for once. I would be so much older. 


And then the anticipated day happened and I didn't feel any different. But, no fear, there was always my 18th birthday. I'd be able to vote and make a contribution to my country's decisions. I'd be able to get into some bars. I could buy a lottery ticket, cigarettes, and, god forbid, adult videos. I'd be able to do about anything legally but drink and pay taxes. I would go to college. I would be so much older.


But, yet again, I turned 18 and wondered how the time had flown by so fast. But I still wasn't "officially" an adult. I still had another 3 years. 


And now, almost three years later, my 21st birthday is so soon that I can almost feel the hangover that will occur the day after. Sure, it will be liberating. I will officially be an adult who makes my own choices and is fully accountable for my own actions. I can go to bars, gamble in Vegas, and stay in resorts (but not get a rental car). But what happened to the day when my 21st birthday was light years away and I was still a kid: chasing the ice cream man down the street, playing tag at recess, going to the roller-skating rink every Saturday with my best friend, wondering what Santa Claus would bring me for Christmas? When the biggest issue was to stop playing hide and seek with my friends because my mom said it was time for me to come inside and take a bath? Those were the simple days. I didn't have a care in the world.


Everything in life gets so much more complicated the older you get. Soon I'm going to have to graduate college and go out in the scary "real world." I'll have to make a name for myself. I'll have to pay my own bills, my own taxes, my own daily expenses that I don't really think about right now. And if I do one of these little things wrong: I could get audited, my landlord could kick me out on the streets, my car could break down after forgetting to check the oil for a year.


Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell my little kid self to not hurry on life: it is short, precious, and irreplaceable. Cherish the moment you have as a 7-year-old, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, 19-year-old. Because each day that you live you will never get back. Live in the moment. Never hurry on getting older, cause once you're actually old and your hair is falling out... well, it sucks.