If you guys haven’t picked up on it by now, your girl is GRADUATING!
Less posts, less commenting, etc. in this past month – it’s all because I’m gearing up for adult life and trying to make the most of my college life while I can. It will be interesting to see the direction in which Yow Yow! takes after I graduate because this blog was first created when I was just a second quarter freshman here at Seattle University. Together, we’ve grown a lot since then, but as always (and to be extremely cliche,) all things must come to an end.
Yow Yow, however, won’t.
My dear friend Megan Newell recently helped me design a graduation announcement for my big day and she did a phenomenal job at creating one that was truly me. I am very lucky to have such wonderful and talented friends in my life.
To promote this year’s Quadstock, we invited one of our acts, Campfire OK, to do a series of spontaneous performances on our campus in a classroom, in one of our busiest buildings, our library, and our cafe. It is always such a joy to work with this band. Not only are they extremely talented, but they like to have as much fun as we do.
Thanks for everything Campfire OK. We love you so much!
This video was edited and shot by my dear friend Veronica Lim.
Despite being gone from Yow Yow! for an entire week, the blog has still been receiving its typical number for visitors! Thanks for sticking around y’all!
With graduation just around the corner, life has picked up a bit. I’ve been tying up some loose ends and spending time with some dear friends and family. I know that, however, Yow Yow is always going to be here. I may not have had the chance to post daily for awhile now, but the pressure of keeping up with every day news just got to be a little bit too tough for me. Will that change when I am a working girl? We shall see.
So it’s been a crazy whirlwind of a past two weeks.
I planned a music festival! Well, actually, I’ve been planning it for a whole year with my co-chairs, but I finally got to see it come to life and it was by far, the coolest thing I have ever done.
I returned to a community and said my parting goodbyes along with the rest of the seniors in my class.
I ate and didn’t eat a lot simultaneously.
I didn’t sleep very much.
School was kind of on the back burner.
I became a “downtown” kind of a girl.
“Call Me Maybe” became a little bit more permanent
But most importantly, in the last two weeks (probably in the last month since I said this not too long ago,) I have laughed and smiled more than I ever have in my years here at Seattle University. It is such a joy being a senior, but my time here would not be worth anything if not for those around me and in my life.
You guys, my last week of college is next week. I’m not even going to try to wrap my head around that right now at 10 PM.
We like to eat at small burger drive-ins.
We spend our mornings and afternoons chalking our Quad for our biggest event of the year.
But seriously, allow me to introduce to you our bands:
Mayer Hawthorne and the County:
+ R&B/Soul/Pop
+ Hails from Detroit, Michigan
+ Supporting Foster the People on tour this summer
+ Just finished a worldwide tour/in the first leg of his national tour
+ Performed on David Letterman and Conan
+ Collaborations w/ Snoop Dogg, The Cool Kids, Rizzle Kicks
+ Ranked by Filter Magazine – Top 10 Albums of 2011
+ Performed at 2011′s Lollapalooza and Moog Fest
+ Was the last band to tour w/ Amy Winehouse along w/ Janelle Monae
ScHoolboy Q:
+ Rap/Hip-hop
+ Hails from California
+ Will tour w/ Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller, and Kendrick Lamar this summer
+ Part of TDE Entertainment w/ Kendrick Lamar and A$ap Rocky
+ On the bill for Pitchfork Music Festival 2012
+ Performed at this year’s SXSW
+ Part of the Rock the Bells 2012 lineup
Bearbot:
+ DJ/Mashup
+ New York native
+ Design student by day/DJ by night
+ Has had her work recognized by the 2012 Oscar Awards in the shorts nomination category
+ Latest featured work in David Guetta x Nicki Minaj’s music video “Turn Me On”
Pickwick:
+ Indie/Pop
+ Local band
+ Will be on the mainstage at Sasquatch 2012
+ Participated in SXSW 2012
+ Performed at 2011′s Doe Bay Fest, Bumbershoot, and City Arts Fest
+ Voted by City Arts Magazine as part of the “10 New Seattle Bands to Watch” March 2012
+ No strangers to selling out their shows
Campfire OK:
+ Indie/Folk
+ Local band
+ Performed at 2011′s Capitol Hill Block Party, Doe Bay Fest, Bumbershoot, and City Arts Fest
+ On the verge of releasing their new album
+ SEAC’s 2012 Battle of the Bands judges
Our incredible graphic designer, Alyssa Johnson, has been responsible for all of our pub for this year’s Quadstock. I thought I would be able to hold off on posting them until next week, but I just don’t want to.
The girl is a goddess and this post is dedicated to her.
I don’t like to typically talk about things unless they are for sure happening, but this is for sure NOT happening anymore – therefore – I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t post this.
A few weeks back, the leadership department at Seattle University was searching for commencement speakers for this year’s graduation ceremony and I figured I had a few things I could say. I turned in my application and my speech and became a finalist. I had my audition last week, but I had this sinking feeling that the role just wasn’t going to go to me. We’ve all had that feeling, right? The girl before me made everyone in the room laugh a lot harder than I did. Oh well.
Below is my speech though and even though I was not selected, it is still a piece that I am proud of.
Thank you to Seattle University for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the students. It is an honor to be standing in front of you all today – students, family, friends, faculty and staff, and the Seattle University community.
Four years ago, we sat in a set up similar to this one. We made jokes in our seats, reminisced with our friends, and dreaded the ceremony that we thought would drag on forever as every one of our peer’s names were called. Secretly, you loved every minute of it. Today, you might be in your seats doing the exact same thing and feeling the same way as you did four years ago or you might just be Facebooking and tweeting from your phone.
As Free As My Hair: My college experience and personal formation as told through my hair.
Hello! My name is Ben and I have known the beautiful Katie since freshman year. So when I received a message from her asking if I wanted to write a blog my instant reaction was HELL YEAH. Since I am senior this year at SU with Katie and I have an abnormal love for reminiscing, I kept coming back to the idea of reflecting on my college experience and the many transitions I have gone through. Now you may be thinking that relating this to my hair is super dumb or really vain but I think hair can liberating and has allowed me to externalize emotions or internal feelings about my life at the point. Through this post, I hope you get to know something about who I am and how, at some level, I have let my hair reflect where I am at in my life.
The starting point: High school
When I got to high school, I had grown my hair out and it is what we now call “the swoop.” I had the original Justin Beiber haircut and will probably have neck problems later in my life for flipping my hair so much. People knew me by my hair and people liked it. Above all though, I liked it. But I think at the core of who I was at that point was trying to “fit in”. Even though I had so much fun in high school, I definitely was trying to just fit in. Not make any waves. Just get by. The swoop was safe (and warm since I have really thick hair). I had the swoop for most of high school and any haircut I got was either a variation of the swoop or ended up returning to what the swoop originally was.
Picture 1. The “swoop.” And yes. I am wearing a Panic! At the Disco shirt.
Congratulations, you are almost done! I know it’s a couple months away, but you do have every reason to celebrate. You will be able to do senior streak and you will have the time of your life. You’ll have so much fun that you will spend half of the day passed out, you may or may not puke in the library and you’ll spend the next couple of days trying to figure out how to get the blue paint out of the bathtub, the bed sheets, and the shoes. You will also realize that Crayola is not all that washable. But here’s the kicker- you’ll actually make it to your final, and your professor will be kind enough to pass you.
I know the future may seem like a blurred-dark-abandoned-hell-of-a-rabbit hole and every time someone asks you, “What are your plans after you graduate?” you want to cry, scream and even punch the person in the nose. But here’s one thing I want you to know – come graduation day you will forget all about the stress and live in the moment. You’ll spend the day smiling until your face hurts; you’ll stand on your chair and fist pump; you’ll see a big giant poster of your face- of course it’s the one picture of yourself that you absolutely hate – and your crazy family will be behind it waving and laughing; except grandma, she’s tired.
Welp! I’m pretty late on getting this news out, but I guess that just goes to show how little time I have for this blog right about now. Regardless, I am BEYOND thrilled to announce this year’s Quadstock lineup:
Mayer Hawthorne and the County
Schoolboy Q
Bearbot
Pickwick
Campfire OK
Br’er Sun
It has been a long time coming getting this lineup together – 10 months to be exact (but who’s counting?!) and being able to release it to our students is a huge weight off our shoulders. So far the response has been pretty great! My biggest concern with this lineup coming out was having to deal with the criticism, but I’ve secured a solution – kill ‘em with kindness!
So I’m pretty excited and I promise to give you all updates along the way especially with the final product. I especially want to make a post at some point with all of our publicity because it’s incredible and designed by my dear friend Alyssa Johnson.
Remember when I wrote a post a couple weeks back about the wonderful people I go to school with? I mean you’ve sort of seen an example of that in Yow Yow’s guest posts, but now I would like to introduce you to someone lovely in a new format. Not too long ago, Seattle University had the opportunity to host TEDx and one of my peers, Renee Vandermause, gave a talk.
Renee is someone that I don’t interact with very often, but I pretty much think the world of her. Along with being a Civil and Environment Engineering student, she has dedicated a great deal of her time to service through Professionals Without Borders and leading and participating in immersions. She is someone that I find inspiring on campus and I wanted to be able to share this video of her spreading this important message.
Every time there is a campus tour going on, I happen to be involved in some activity that is not traditional at all for a normal college student. The first time, I played water wars with Veronica on the patio. Last weekend, we were filming a parody of Dollar Shave. This time…I posed in an outfit as Space Girl. The tour then watched me prance around doing various dance moves in the space helmet.
So here’s my justification in all of this. Yes, it’s a little strange, but if you want to understand in one tour what student life in the wild looks like, then this is it. By me behaving this way, you as the prospective student, can come to the realization that your future campus will let you just be who you are. It also says, “Hey, we breed students who do not care about their appearance/behavior in public.” Oh…just me?
So I just realized that my first post about San Francisco was a little bit weak. It was all sorts of reflective-ness and such, but I didn’t even go into detail about the things that matter the most: the food and the sights and everything we did in between. San Francisco is a beautiful city. It has so much character and color. People are full of energy almost all of the time and being there for four days was an adventure like I’ve never experienced before. Many friends told me before leaving on my trip that San Francisco is a lot like Seattle. I disagree. It’s in a city, sure, and it’s near water, but other than those two things, nothing else stood out to me that would support the cities being similar. If you’re making a visit soon, just stop – and look up at the buildings and the structure of it all. There’s also way more things to do there than in Seattle. In fact, I’m probably going to need to plan another trip again soon to complete it all.
On our first day, we picked up lunch at a popular deli called Arguello. We took our sandwiches up to the old army barracks overlooking Golden Gate and battled the intense winds as I tried to nom my sandwich desperately needing a hair tie. Afterwards, we just decided to embrace the wind. The photograph above is just a still of my girlfriends running with it for five minutes.
