It's Been Awhile: Update

-

Image By MakeUseOf

It has been over a year since my last post.  College and track have pretty much taken over my life and I just never had the time to do much else.

So much has happened since the last post.  I am half-way done with my undergraduate education at Penn State, which is somewhat terrifying to me.  I am finishing up my second track season for the school.  Last season ended on a really great note, with second places in the shot put and javelin, and the first place in the discus at Nationals!

Earlier this school year, I had an AWESOME internship with the local branch of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.  I cannot put into words how much I loved it and hope to do something similar again.  The best part?  I met a lot of really amazing people who have become lifelong friends.  Through the internship, I was able to canvass and phonebank for local Democratic candidates.  Towards the Midterms of 2018, I was able to travel to another town and help run their hub for canvassing, phone-banking, and getting voters to the polls.

Oh and I almost forgot, I received a new wheelchair.  A post about the headache that accompanied that wheelchair will come soon.

So what's happening in my life this summer?  I have a meet later this week and Nationals again in July.  In a few weeks, I will be traveling Up North to visit family that I have not seen in a while.  Then, I am traveling to Washington, D.C. for a week to participate in a program hosted by the ACLU.  This program would allow me to meet with politicians, get a taste for what law school will be like, and network with ACLU attorneys to get my career jumpstarted.  Then, it is back to Penn State for my third year.

That's about it, now you are pretty much caught up with my life.  I have some ideas for future posts, such as the wheelchair debacle, pop culture topics relating to disability, etc.  Let me know if there are any posts you guys would like to see in the future.   I do not have a set schedule right now, but I hope to establish one in the future.

See you soon!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To One of My Heroes: Thank You.

-
Image
  I have been absent from this blog as of late.  I had many things I wanted to talk about and post, however, I did not have the motivation to post them.  That changed last night on September 18th.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or RBG and the Notorious RBG, as admirers fondly referred to her, passed away surrounded by family yesterday.  Like many others around the nation, I was not okay last night.  Like many others, I went through periods of disbelief, grief, anger, anxiety, and back again.  Today, I am going to do what I always do when I find trouble processing something, and write about it.   Many people who know me are aware that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of my heroes.  She was the reason why I have some of the rights that I do.  She even inspired me to go to law school and pursue a career in law myself.  She was a steadfast advocate for so many voices, and I wish I had gotten to meet her at some point in my life.   Throughout her long career on the Supreme Court (27 years), RBG was a fig
Read more

Reasonable Accommodations and an Unreasonable Response

-
Image
Image Courtesy of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Photo of Rep. Jimmy Anderson This was not the original post that I was planning to write this week.  I was going to talk about my recent trip to Washington, D.C.;  why I was there, what I did, etc.  However, when I first heard about this situation on Tuesday, I knew I had to comment on it.  You can expect to see a post about Washington, D.C. sometime between today and next Saturday. Most of this post will talk about an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel .  So let's get into it. Jimmy Anderson is a representative in the Wisconsin State Assembly for the 47th district.  He became a wheelchair user in 2010 when he was in a car accident that killed his parents and brother, which left him paralyzed from the chest down.  He was elected to the Assembly in 2016 as a Democrat, assuming office in 2017.  Robin Vos is a representative and current Speaker of the Assembly who represents the 63rd district, which includes my hometown
Read more

DC Trails Fiasco

-
Image
This is very similar to the bus that I was on I am posting this immediately after the ACLU trip blog, because I feel that it was too emotional to have in that one, but my story needs to be put out there.  I want to preface this by saying that this is just my experience with one company and I will be naming the company, so that people can decide for themselves if they want to give it business, and I do not mean any sort of ill-intent with this post. Throughout the week in Washington, D.C., the program that I was a part of used a company to take us places called DC Trails.  Prior to this particular incident, I had had issues on DC Trails with wheelchair ramps not working in the past, on an earlier trip with the ACLU.  Each day, the drivers would load me on and off, and strap me in so I wouldn't roll around.  Each bus had two Close Up leaders on board, and each time we would get off, my leader would wait for me. On this particular day, we were going to the Capitol Building a
Read more