I will not go gentle into that good night. But my blog will.

Well, kids, it’s been fun. But I’m over it. I’ve long neglected my blog, and I’m ready to abandon it for good.

I’ve received several notifications that my domain name will soon expire, so I think it’s an appropriate time for my blog to expire, as well.

It also freaked me out a little to Google images of myself, and find pictures of extended family and such that I’d uploaded onto Flickr. Which raised an interesting question I’d never considered: While I find it OK to broadcast myself, is it OK to broadcast my family (unbeknownst to them)?? I guess, for me at least, the answer is no, which is why I just went and restricted my privacy settings on Flickr. It’s not like anything there was too personal and none of it was inappropriate, but my mother-in-law might not appreciate popping up in a Google image search for “Brittany Creamer,” who, by the way, doesn’t really exist anymore. I feel a little like a butterfly, shedding my cocoon. Just as a butterfly was once a caterpillar, I was once a Creamer, but I’m ready to move on to another stage of my life.

I think I will start up a blog to keep up with friends and family, but I won’t pretend to try to say anything provokative or intersting, or at least interesting to anyone beyond my inner circle. My wedding blog was a huge hit, so I might as well keep up that instead of wasting my time here!

As Edward R. Murrow used to say, “Good night, and good luck.”

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

It’s a perfectly beautiful afternoon here in the lovely Austin, Texas, and it’s a day made all the sweeter because it marks the beginning of the single-digits phase of my wedding countdown. My wedding is in a mere nine days, so you could say I’m a little busy. But despite my single-mindedness, I’m cool as a cucumber. What was once a gigantic five-page long To Do list is now a measly list of 6 or so things, so I’m putting it on auto-pilot and trying to savor the last of what has been a truly wonderful time in my life, my engagement.

I’ll be MIA from the blog for a few weeks, not that I post often, anyway, but I feel like I have a legitimately good reason this time and I wanted to defend myself. The worst part of blogging is the unnecessary guilt of not blogging frequently enough, so I guess eventually I’ll take it down and remove a trivial worry from my life, maybe when brittanycreamer.com expires. 

Over the next few days and weeks I’ll update my profiles and other digital name tags around the Web to reflect my new station in life. I want life post-honeymoon to return to normal as quickly as possible, so I think it’s a good thing to get the name-change ball rolling now, although I’ve promised myself not to update my Facebook page until after we say I do! It’s not  official until it’s on Facebook, right?!

Happy summer, bloggers!

I take it all back!

My life has changed dramatically since the last time I blogged.

I am now a college graduate.

I am now the proud owner of an iPhone.

I am also employed!

In an unexpected turn of events, I received a call last Thursday from a fabulous lady over at a boutique PR and marketing firm here in Austin where I interviewed a few days earlier and she offered me a job! Graduation was not until Friday, so as it turns out, I do know how it feels to graduate with a job lined up, and it feels pretty freaking amazing. It was much more of a bittersweet experience than a bitter-getting-kicked-out-on-your-a$$ kind of experience.

A few details on the job: it’s technically neither full-time nor permanent, but this is not a reflection of me or my skills, but rather a symptom of a tumultuous economy. I’ll work a 32-hour, four-day-a-week job from June 1 until August 31 as an Account Coordinator doing real work (and hopefully work the 5th day at my current job to supplement my income). I’ll be paid the prorated entry-level salary to compensate for my “day off,” and the hope is I will be brought on full-time, permanently at the end of August when the company better knows how its year will end. It’s lost a few big accounts this year, but was able to replace the loss with new business and it expects to grow this year, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan so in August I’ll post that my “internship” rolls into a REAL job! With health benefits and a company-matching 401(K), Ma!

A few skeptics out there may wonder why I chose to accept a job that’s not exactly full-time nor permanent. Well here’s why: as reported in The Wall Street Journal, college graduates who graduate in a recession do much worse over the first 20 years of their career both in terms of salary and in meaningful experience. Those who take ANY job just to have a job, meaning one outside their field of interest, do much, much worse than graduates who graduated a year or two before or after them when the economy is better and worse than their peers who take jobs within the field, even if it’s not a good job on paper. So it’s better, economically, to take a job within your field of interest even if it pays a little less or whatever, because you will learn the foundational skills you need and not delay gaining the essential tools and knowledge that will see you through. And let’s face it: Hiring PR firms are few and far between these days and I feel incredibly fortunate that I will not be forced to stoop so low as to take a real internship doing menial internship work.

I can’t wait to start next week, and in the meantime, have kicked my wedding planning into high gear (only 19 days to go!) so I won’t be distracted and/or stressed out at my new job!

Graduation approaches at speed of light…brings with it an identity crisis.

What the wise older generations, replete with disgustingly (un)motivational books like Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You Will Go” and “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” fail to tell you is that upon graduation, in the event you do not have a job, you will undergo something of an identity crisis. Perhaps this identity meltdown happens even if you are lucky enough to graduate employed, but I wouldn’t know about that. 

I always knew I would go to college, there was never any question, so that’s exactly what I did. First, I was a high schooler with dreams to go away to a big state school and have a good time. Then, I was a freshman at Tech who realized that, once I was actually in school, learning something (and getting my money’s worth) was more important than playing beer pong four nights a week. And most recently, I was the honor student at The University of Texas at Austin who thought I could waltz into any interview, charm their pants off, and easily have a job by graduation. And then my new identity could be summed up by my answer to the inevitable question, “So what do you do?”

Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to that (now painful) question. What do I do? Exactly what you think a 2009 graduate does: look for job leads and send out resumes, only to feel a little piece of my heart chip off each and every time my inquiry is met with “I’m sorry, but we’re on a hiring freeze. Get back to us in January,” or “We’re only hiring interns this summer, and those positions are unpaid. Are you still interested?” Umm. No. Maybe I would be if I weren’t so worried about paying rent. And eating. But that’s just what I do, or rather, don’t do (work full-time). But WHO am I?? I don’t know if I know anymore.

So here I sit, blogging about my anxiety regarding college graduation when really I should be channelling my frustration at my prospects into an A in Finance. Oh, that’s right. All of my sleeping in (a symptom of acute senioritis) means there is no way I can get an A now. Too bad I don’t care (another symptom).  I thought I’d be eagerly, almost desperately, counting down the days until I was finally free. But looking back on my last four years of endless reading, pop quizzes, late nights and knit-picky tests, it doesn’t seem all that bad. Actually, it was kind of fun. Kind of fabulous. Maybe all kinds of fabulous, actually.  Now I’m begging for a few more weeks, maybe another month or two? Please? But I promise I’ll be good!

My cap and gown and five honor cords hang in my closet (have a job? I’d trade my stupid honors for a job). I get a chill down my spine if I accidently brush against the black polyester gown of impending armageddon. Fourteen days. 336 hours. 20,160 minutes.

Graduation, please be gentle.

ambivalence and audacity

My college graduation is in less than a month; there are only two weeks of classes left in my college career.

And I’m not excited. Not even a little bit. Not even when I count up that I will ever only take three more tests.* Not even when I think I will never take out another student loan.* Not even when I realize I won’t have to suffer through another lecture of what to wear to an interview (square-toe shoes with a two-inch heel, an dark green skirt and jacket, in case you didn’t know it’s 1994).

Instead, I’m 100 percent ambivalent. Who’s graduating? I am? Really? That sucks.

To think a year ago I thought I’d be eagerly counting down to graduation; counting the days until I left class, group meetings and tests in the dust and entered into the world of getting PAID for your work. The “real world” is a lot scarier a place now and I’d quite prefer to stay in my safe little college bubble. To think, a year ago I had the audacity to think I’d be employed upon graduation.

Well, reality crashed down last semester when I attended a job fair. Employers didn’t bother to show up. Internships went to recent grads. I left feeling miserable. And since then, it’s been damn near impossible to search for jobs I don’t think exist. I’m a bit worn down by the whole recession thing. Finding a job is so labor- and time-intensive, even when jobs are plentiful.

My only motivation, at this point, is that I don’t want to ruin my honeymoon by spending the whole time worrying how I will pay July rent when I return home. And you know, the whole poverty thing.

I do not think my experiences and emotions are unique. Hardly anyone at school talks about their job search, their possibilities. The only question you hear is, “do you have anything lined up?” As in, did you lock in a job offer before everything went sour? Because if you didn’t, I know better than to ask if you’ve found anything.

It’s a depressing post, I know. But it’s frank. I’m about to get serious, real serious. I need a job. I’m a well-rounded and highly-capable candidate. And I am self-motivated, even if this post sounds like a pity party. Because I’ll go hungry if I don’t find a job. So I will find a job. It just may not be the job I thought I’d have back when I lived in my naive little bubble.

So, cheers, my 2009 peers. Here’s to us. We’re going to be famous: The graduating class of the worst recession since the Great Depression. In fifty years, documentaries will look back at our bad fortune, our resiliency, our frugality. We’re not just the Net Generation. We’re the Recession Generation. Here’s to us.

*not counting if I decide to go to grad school

I participated.

I’m not usually a participant. Few issues get me riled up because I can usually see both sides. Even if I have a clear preference, I can usually understand how someone might not draw the same conclusions that I did.

So before I tell you what I did, I need to give you some background on “where I come from.”

My mom grew up really poor, hole-in-her-shoes poor. When she was 12 or so, she had a calf (yes, as in a baby cow) named Lashes, the name my mom chose for her because of her long eyelashes. My mom looooved Lashes. To pieces, even. One day she came home and Lashes wasn’t there. But she did have veal for dinner and food on the table for the next couple of weeks.

Then my mom’s sister Louise, let’s say about three years older than my mom, had a real thing for Bambi. She just adored Bambi. My nana made a stew for dinner one night and my aunt gobbled it up, it was so good. “Mama, what kind of stew is this?” And then the inevitable, “It’s venison stew” answer. And then my aunt proceeded to vomit for the rest of the night because she had just eaten Bambi.

I tell you all of this because I am not a die-hard gun control supporter. I believe there is a time and a place for guns. My papaw’s no stranger to the gun, but he is not a sportsman. He fed his family. He put down the dying family dog. This, I am fine with.

I am not fine and will never be fine with guns being permitted on university campuses.

So today, for the first time, I participated. In a two year anniversary memorial for the 32 lives lost at Virginia Tech, I walked out of class in opposition to Texas House Bill 1893 which would allow concealed hand guns on university campuses in Texas.

I can’t articulate my opposite nearly so well as the speakers today, one of which included the friend of a Virginia Tech victim. 

Guns simply don’t belong on schools. You would never allow them at your kid’s elementary school or in your place of worship. Lawmakers certainly would never allow them in the state capitol. So please, don’t allow them on our university campuses, one of the very safest places to be. A speaker said today that less than one quarter of one percent of gun crimes occur on campuses.

Let’s keep guns where guns belong. In the safe. In the locked cabinet. Not in your pocket in your Stats 101 class.

Read about the rally I went to:  http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html

I resurface to complain about…Easter.

Hello world! It’s been nearly two whole months of blatant neglect of my blog. I’ve got excuses, but I’ll save my breath. Or my fingers from typing them. And frankly I don’t think I owe you an explanation except to say blogging has clearly not been a priority, but that yes, I’ve been busy with other priorities. 

So I’m going to dive right in. Today I had a whole, productive day planned. I got up, did a finance problem set for school, ate some breakfast, and then decided I would shower and get ready to go shopping for my honeymoon at the mall and to run by a crafts store to buy ribbon and then an office supply store to pick up some cardstock, which I would then spend the rest of the afternoon printing and assembling menu cards and programs for my big day because I’m crafty like that. And then I would go get groceries, like I do every Sunday night, so I don’t a) starve or b) spend unnecessary money eating out all week.

But, no. It turns out 95 percent of my plans are completely spoiled by the Easter holiday and, what I at least consider, unnecessary store closings. I’m not arguing whether or not Easter is an important holiday, before I go get attacked becuase “Don’t you know Jesus rose from the DEAD today?!?!” Just for me, since I have no Easter plans, I feel for once like a non-white, non-Christian person must feel like on other Christian/white culture holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. I feel TRAPPED in my home. EVERYWHERE is closed. THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN ON ME. 

Considering how many people in our country do not celebrate Easter (at least as Resurrection Day), I think there are better holidays for which stores to close. Like, say, Election Day. There’s a noble day for our retail and service industry brethren to have off from work; a day the vast majority of our country’s inhabitants could legitimately use off from work to do their country good. As opposed to, say, sitting at home eating pastel-colored, small animal-shaped candy. 

Then again, maybe I’m just bitter that this is a holiday that always falls on the weekend and can’t be truly lived up with a day of no classes. Oh wait. That’s called Good Friday, another holiday I’m opposed to because as an hourly wage person, I’d rather get to work and earn money than take off a holiday I don’t celebrate, which is how I bet 90 percent of retail workers feel right now as they look at their recession-drained bank accounts and feel hopeless. Oh well.

Maybe I’ll find an open drugstore today and score big on discounted Easter candy.

Students just now want to get good grades for hard work?

Is it truly a recent phenomenon that college students expect to get A’s by attending lecture, completing all reading and producing assignments with as much effort as possible? A recent study by Ellen Greenberger called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence and featured in today’s New York Times, suggests that Gen Y’s “sense of entitlement,” possibly caused by “increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety,” makes them expect high grades for effort. Really? Students (and people in general) in the US haven’t always felt that hard work should be rewarded? Does this remind anyone besides me of the American Dream? 

The NYT article interviews professors who find students’ complaints about grading incongruent with the quality of students’ work.  Professors interviewed state that the default grade is a C, while students expect at least B’s. According to the Times, the ”researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.”

From my collegiate experience at both Texas Tech University and The University of Texas at Austin, the assumption that one can earn a B simply by showing up and completing the reading holds true. The study’s premise strikes a chord. I see it everyday in every single one of my classes when students don’t like their grades. But I disagree that it’s our sense of entitlement. I think the real problem may exist in lower level classes where students learn that adequate success in college can be attained with minimal effort and they continue to believe this even as upper level coursework demands more critical thinking than factual regurgitation.

Perhaps it’s not students’ expectations that are incorrect. It’s interesting that the professors interviewed in the article never considered that perhaps their assumptions are incorrect and that this aspect was not a part of the study. I’ve only had one course in four years of college where a C was the default grade. I’ve had many professors state on the first day of class that everyone started off with an A, a clean state. Only did poor performance throughout the next thirteen or so weeks lower that grade. So why would students think they deserved an A? Because professors told them so and backed up those words with actions: giving out A’s and B’s.

This notion that students’ selfish sense of entitlement causes grade disputes seems like another case of older generations maligning the younger. And now they have an official study to back them up and make them feel more superior. Like tenured, published professors needed an another ego boost. 

Perhaps the study holds some truth, that in this day of ubiquitous standardized testing this expectation of academic success “stems from their K-12 experiences…[as students have become] ultra-efficient in test preparation. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get high scores.”

But I seriously doubt that my generation is the first to ever think professors grading can be unfair or too hard. Am I wrong?

Facebook Update

Since Facebook changed their Terms of Service earlier this week, Facebook users lit up the blogosphere with dissent at the thought that Facebook owned their content, photos, videos, etc. Now, at least temporarily, it appears Facebook will (for now) revert to their old Terms of Service. CNN reported today that Facebook’s action is in response to the “feedback” it received.

The CNN article reports that, “thousands of indignant members either canceled their accounts or created online petitions. Among them were more than 64,000 who joined a group called “The People Against the new Terms of Service.” Of course they did. Like previous changes to Facebook policy (remember the opposition against the news feed, opening membership up to everyone, and the “New” Facebook, whose group still numbers more than 1 million users), users leveraged the social utility against the company.

Ok. Users have won the battle, but will they win the war? It seems unlikely. The same CNN article says that “Schnitt said the company is in the process of rewording its Terms of Use in “simple language that defines Facebook’s rights much more specifically.”

All of this TOS hullabaloo (not to mention my friend’s recent departure from social media) has really got me thinking about how long we (me and my generation) will continue to frequent Facebook. Will we be 40-year-olds still logging in at least regularly to check in on college friends, our kids’ friends and to update our relationship status from “married” to “divorced?” I highly doubt it. Of course it won’t still be cool then. But when will we all abandon the thousands of hours of time invested? The hundreds of photos collected? For users that collected photos from their high school college years, quitting is something like destroying a big box of photos, throwing out your scrapbooks. If anyone else feels the same sense of loss that I do/will, it looks like Facebook will die a slow death. But adding possessive Terms of Service can only hasten its fall.

I’d rather write a wedding blog.

I beat myself up last semester for not posting frequently enough because school dominated my life. I swore to you I would post more once my last, carefree semester got off the ground. And then I got engaged and I became one of THOSE girls. One of those who can’t think of anything if it isn’t somehow related to being engaged, planning a wedding, going on a honeymoon, or building a healthy marriage. In my defense, my engagement will clock in at a speedy five months, so I have a lot to do and not much time to do it, so I really had to go on the defensive and dive right in to the planning. But that’s just my excuse to be one of THOSE!

And the weird thing about how I’m posting even less is that I’ve never been so active in the blogosphere. Just not my own. But maybe it’s good that I’m getting out there and reading so many blogs. I’m not even lurking on a lot them. I’m actually commenting! And linking back to other posts I’ve read! It’s amazing! But it has absolutely nothing to do with www.brittanycreamer.com. 

Here’s some of my favorites, in no particular order:

www.stylemepretty.com

www.snippetandink.com

www.tenthousandonly.com (I don’t particularly like the blogger’s style (writing and decor) but it’s much more realistic than some of the others where a $20,000 wedding is “budget”)

www.2000dollarwedding.com (The best inspiration for keeping it cheap, plus tons of practical relationship advice)

www.oncewed.com

I’ve been regularly reading ten or so wedding blogs (including the above mentioned), mainly for inspiration. I’ve added these blogs to my Google Reader, which turned out to be a huge impediment to my staying well-read as now I click my  Wall Street Journal and LA Times feeds to “Mark All as Read” so I can skip down and read my wedding blogs. And now I’m fighting the urge to become a wedding blogger. I think I’d be really good at it. But of course it’s just a fantasy of mine to be a witty blogger living off of advertising revenue, and this is the newest incarnation of this dream. On the other hand, I can’t imagine immersing myself in the industry deeper. There’s a lot things wrong with the wedding industry, first off being how much more everything costs. A makeup application at a salon costs $75. A bridal makeup application at the same salon costs $150. And I’m not sure I’d want to be peddling the picture of perfection.

So for now I will continue to privately blog about the wedding planning process at my wedding website. But I will also continue dreaming about working from home, staying snuggled up in bed with my MacBook and a cup of hot chocolate on a cold, rainy day like this as ad revenue checks flow in and my humorous, smart, chic and romantic wedding blogs flow out.