America – 3DPrintsByCece

Posted on April 21, 2019November 5, 2022 by Carolyn — Leave a comment

Strong, Independent woman?

I have a short fun story for y’all. It’s been a challenging few months. I’ve had to work with the former friend I’ve mentioned in previous posts (that I’m pretty sure hates me at this point) and his roommate/buddy, who, in all fairness, is not the best person either. On my end, we can work. We don’t need to like each other, we just need to work. But they are being pieces of shit, not responding to emails, complaining all the freaking time (this coming from me, the queen of complaining), instead of, you know, looking for ways to solve the stuff they’re complaining about in the first place. My favorite part is the snide comments about how I could be doing my job better. So, let’s backtrack to Monday. We had a deadline for Wednesday, the day a big presentation was due. Stuff wasn’t working out, we were troubleshooting, things looked like shit, which they complained about, but did nothing to fix. Enter me. I tried to do something that I had never done before in my job, in order to be able to show a good thing for the presentation. On Tuesday, when I checked it, it still looked like shit. In my defense, I hurt my foot (again), I was tired and in pain, and again, I’ve never done the thing before. If it had worked out from the first try, I would be a freaking goddess.

Anyway, I was putting out all sorts of fires from stuff they didn’t do and neglecting my own work in the process (yay, right?). It’s 1 pm, I’m about to get into my car to get lunch, and guess what? My car doesn’t start. The starter seems to be working, but it’s not turning on, I’ll call roadside assistance after I’m finished for the day, I thought. And I had to get back to work, so I left the car there (make note that I haven’t had lunch yet), and walked down the hill. Now, you know how I said I had a bad foot? It hurts like hell and I’m also wearing an ankle brace, which limits my mobility, and to walk down the hill there are a thousand stairs 🙂. So, of course it took me forever to get there and my ankle was not happy. While all of this was happening, I call my dad again, I told him what I was doing and that I wanted to cry so much. I’m a crier, but normally in situations like these, that are easily fixable, I think about what to do and I do it. But so much was going on with the horrible coworkers and now my car. His response was very man/dad: Don’t cry. Like dad, yeah, that doesn’t help either.

I had to be back around 3.30pm for a meeting, I ask the person I work with if I could get a ride up the hill. Once I’m back in the office for the meeting, they’re sorting all types of last minutes logistics for this very important presentation. My sole work there at the moment is wait for the presentation to be done to burn it into a CD… yes, a CD… because even though the presentation is made for a shit ton of money, they still can’t afford high enough security for presentations to be done with a flash drive or similar devices… At around 4.45, I’m finishing burning the CD, and it seems to be having trouble. My boss tells me to meet him down the building while he gets the rental car. I went down the elevator and waited. I thought he was taking too long, I got my stuff from upstairs and walked to my car. I called roadside assistance and shortly after my boss calls me and tells me that he’s halfway picking up someone, and that he forgot about the damn CD. N0w, it’s 5.10… what was the first thing that passed through my mind? How I just lost roughly two hours. I could have called roadside assistance at 3.30 when I was done with work, I would have eaten something and be home short after.

5.20 – Roadside assistance arrives, jump starts the car, I get food, I head home and I park. I turned the car on and it was working, I ate in the car and twenty minutes later the car doesn’t start again. Through all of this, I have been calling my dad back and forth, I know about cars, but he knows more than I do. He tells me to go get a new battery. Before doing so, I check that the poles are not corroded, hence not giving out enough amperage for the car to start, but it doesn’t work. I go to my apartment and decide to deal with it the following day. But then, I remember that I want to go to home early and the closest place to get a battery opens at 9am, and I get to work by 8am. I decide to check where to get the battery and determine that the cheapest one is in a place by my house. Now, they close at 8pm, it’s 6.50 now and it’s a twenty-one minute walk. I get dressed… again. I bought the battery online with a nice discount before going out, I walk out with my tools, and start taking out the battery, I took out the poles, but there was one screw I didn’t know it had and it was proving hard to pull. When the tool I was using fell, I couldn’t see where it landed 🙂. My eyes watered, luckily I had another tool, smaller, that fit a lot better than the previous one. Now it was 7.20. A few minutes after, I took the screw, the battery and placed it in a cart, put everything away and started walking towards the parts retailer.

I tried to get someone that I knew that lives close by to give me a ride (the 21-minute walk would have turned to a 3-minute car drive), but there was no answer. So, like a strong independent woman, I walked. The funny thing about Americans is that they can see you struggling and no one will stop to help… But that’s not the same as almost being run over. I was about to cross at a crosswalk, I looked to both sides, there’s a car coming from my right but it’s far enough that I can cross and there’s a stop sign, so the person, in theory, should stop. As I’m in the middle of the crosswalk I noticed with my peripheral vision that the car is not stopping. I stopped there and the lovely woman stopped her car a foot and a half away from me, she looked to her left to see if she could make a right and DID NOT SEE ME. SHE ALMOST HIT ME AND SHE DIDN’T EVEN SEE ME. LIKE, WHAT THE HELL?! I cursed at the wind with my dad on the phone and just kept on walking.

Shortly after, I got to the store… at 7.53 (they closed at 8.) I got my battery, recycled the old one and I headed back for another 21-minute walk, which I think was a little more because of my bad foot. I got almost run over… again (!) by a driver in a hurry, who couldn’t wait for me to fully cross. And while yes, I was taking the battery in a cart, you have to remember that it’s a 40-lbs battery being pushed in a metal cart on an uneven sidewalk and road. On the way back I was on the phone with my best friend, while sharing my live location with her because it was dark by then. I got home around 7.30, installed the battery, found the tool that fell, put everything back into place and ran around the block to give the battery time to settle.

And that’s how bad planning plus egocentric human beings make for a hilariously sad story.

Carolyn

Posted on January 31, 2019November 5, 2022 by Carolyn — Leave a comment

The naïve believes of a girl

When I was little I was always more mature than the rest of my peers, I didn’t realized at the time of course, but I had trouble making friends and I didn’t understand the actions of people around me. I figured, as I moved on to the next facet of my life, that it would be different then because I would be dealing with older people and that, in my naïve mind, meant mature people. As I grew and transitioned from elementary school, to middle school to high school and then college, nothing changed. Except of course I was dealing with older people, only they weren’t mature like they should have been, or how I expected them to be.

I have a bad tendency of expecting people to treat me like I treat them. After all, “treat others the way you want to be treated”, right? But I constantly find myself going to lengths for people and because they’re not me, they don’t even do a quarter of what I do and don’t seem to appreciate it, so it appears as if those efforts go to people who don’t deserve it. I feel the need to help people even when they don’t ask, just because I see them struggling. That doesn’t sit well with everybody and I am sorry, but I will try to help. If you say “no” I will work on not meddling, but just know that I will have you in my thoughts and if you need help, I’ll be there for you (pun intended, my fellow Friends fans). Sometimes I don’t know how to help and I beat myself up over it. Little by little I have been learning that sometimes all you can do is nothing, just sit and wait. It is not easy for me as I get the urge to do something. This has particularly been a struggle since I moved to the U.S., people here are really… independent? Isolated? Detached from other’s suffering? I don’t know. But the point is that I come off as weird (more than normal). It is weird enough back home, where people are used to it, and I don’t know if it’s a Latin thing, or a Puerto Rican thing, but the point is, not in the U.S. Generally, people can see you struggling and no one will stop to help or ask if you need help.

Another trait that I have noticed in adults is the necessity to be petty. I don’t like petty people and I’ve always had trouble understanding the need to be like that. It’s easy to be truthful and honest, at least I believe it to be: it’s the way to be a mature adult. Part of our perks as grown ups is that we have a vast vocabulary to choose from, we have experience and we’re supposed to know our likes and dislikes. Now the term adulthood; I would consider anyone over eighteen to be an adult. But not mentally, they still have a lot to experience, they can be, but not necessarily. I am not the best judge of people so I can’t say for sure, but for me, an adult can be anyone who can handle tough conversations, doesn’t walk away from discussions and is truthful and clear on what they can handle or not. So you can be a 22 year old and I’ll view you as a child if you behave like a narrow-minded person. I’ve also considered 40-50 year old people children.

The best examples I can think of are two particular people I’ve had to deal with. For the sake of the argument I’ll call professor 1, Robert and professor 2, Eddie. So Robert had troubles with Eddie, honestly I don’t even know why, I just know that I would get advice from Eddie and that didn’t sit well with Robert who opted to be petty at me rather than you know, be professional. I didn’t need to know that Robert didn’t like Eddie. Nor did the rest of the class. But there I was, stuck between two professors, both of whom helped me further my career. I made it through with silence, smiles and awkwardness. Then, I experienced it again after a friendship ended bad and the person offered to give me back a gift I had given them. I wasn’t gonna stoop that low and go along with the pettiness, so I only said that it wasn’t necessary. It was a gift, you don’t take those back anyway.

On both of these cases I believe there were easier, better ways to handle the situation. In the first one, Robert could have dealt with his problems with Eddie in private, out of the public eye, without putting me or anyone else in the middle. I got so much trouble out of it because Robert’s immaturity transferred to his students who in turn made snide comments to me, something I don’t think I deserved for just seeking help and advice from two accomplished professors. While I tend to be very independent and don’t like people to help me (I know the irony and hypocrisy is showing), I tend to know work-wise when to acknowledge when I need help, so I will always seek the advice of those who came before me. That was exactly what I was doing in this situation. Now in the second situation, what the person should have done is not treat our friendship as if it had been a relationship where we need to give back everything we ever gave each other. And since we worked together, well, treat each other professionally as I meant to do. But that was before the person didn’t even acknowledge I was in the room. Which I learned to live with and even though at the beginning it bothered me, I was never unprofessional.

The thing is, I wish I could have been as petty as they were, but was I? No. But it wasn’t because a lack of desire, it’s just not who I am. But I am not exempt of getting upset and wanting “revenge” even if I don’t go through with it. Not everyone has to like me, I can make my peace with that. But I believe that in the work environment everyone should behave professionally. Feelings need to be put aside because it is not a place for them. And this is coming from the queen of feelings, alright? The one that feels the most, cares the most and has a hard time letting go. Work has to be professional, no room for feelings. If it were, it would be called something else. Of course feelings are always going to play a part in our lives as much as we try to compartmentalize, but we need to try our best to put it aside. Do you know how many times I’ve had to work with a person I didn’t like? Or someone I wasn’t comfortable with? Tons, but if I get mad, or act petty, it just makes everything harder. I wish to show those people the same level of pettiness they’ve showed me, but I haven’t because I know it’s not effective. And truth be told, I am not that kind of person, so I don’t know if I could anyway.

I don’t know what needs to be done in every situation, but everyone reading this: analyze yourself, we tend to overlook our faults. I have been guilty of doing so, that’s why I have been trying to look at my actions and is also the reason why I talk to my friends : “am I not expressing myself correctly?”, “did I say something wrong?” and so on. Little by little I have worked on being my own judge and be as impartial as I could to be. We have to realize that is not always the other person and we can contribute to their response to our actions. Don’t be too overly critical of yourself, but be
critical enough to accept your own faults. Please, grow up, be adults, we don’t need children in work places, we need adults that won’t get offended when they’re reprimanded for not doing their job properly. We need people who, if they were reprimanded, would accept that they’ve been lacking in something and it was well deserved. Accountability. We need accountability.

I am sad I grew up, it’s shocking to learn that nothing ever changes, not really. It’s a horrible world where good things happen to bad people and they get away with it. While it was a lie, it was nice to think, as a child, that when I was older most of my problems will figure themselves out. But now, I know that that’s not the case, not everyone grows out of their immaturity, and they just go through life being adults with teenage mindsets.

I said it before and I’ll repeat it again, we need to be accountable for our own actions, good or bad. Especially the bad ones.

Carolyn

Posted on December 13, 2018November 5, 2022 by Carolyn — 2 Comments

The American Dream

Before I start, a little back story: Christopher Columbus colonized Puerto Rico in 1493 in the name of Spain, after killing all the natives and stealing the land’s gold. Fast-forward to 400 years in the future: the Spanish-American war began as the aftermath of the explosion of the USS Maine in Cuba. Long story short, the United States won, and as a result Puerto Rico, as well Guam and the Philippines were “conceded” (in reality they paid 20 million) to the United States. In 1900, just two years after P.R. became a possession of the U.S., came the Foraker Act, which established a local government. Seventeen years later, came the Jones Act, the one that gave Puerto Ricans the U.S. citizenship (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg). But that’s right, Puerto Ricans have been “American” citizens for 101 years. Let that sink in. ONE HUNDRED AND ONE YEARS. And I still get asked if I have a visa or if I need a passport to travel back and forth. But I’ll get to that later.

The U.S. government used to assign officials to rule over Puerto Rico, but in 1952, 52 years after it was first colonized, Puerto Ricans were finally able to vote to choose its own government for the first time. To put this into perspective, my grandfather was born on a Puerto Rico that was forcefully ruled by American government officials that knew absolutely nothing about Puerto Ricans, or our culture for that matter. It’s been 66 years since the first time we were allowed to vote, but we still cannot vote for the U.S. President while living on the island. Talk about taxation without representation… So, year after year, we are imposed a government and we don’t have much of a say in the matter. Don’t get me wrong, we can vote for our local government and legislation, but any time a federal law is passed and it affects us as well, we can’t exactly do anything about it, since we only have control over our local laws.

That’s right puertoricans have been “American” citizens for 101 years.

Growing up in a colonized country means having your culture affected and influenced by the colonizing nation. Puerto Rico’s culture is undoubtedly a rich one, same as the culture of all Latin and Central America countries. But through the years, we have lost a lot of our traditions due to a modern Americanized culture. A simple yet important example is the language. Given that Spain colonized us first, by the time the U.S. took control of our little island, we spoke Spanish, and though the U.S. tried to implement English as our official language, it never really caught on. Of course there are English speakers in our country, but I’d estimate that it’s only about 15%-20% of the population. But while English didn’t catch on as our first language, it did influence our daily lives a lot, to the point that there’s a word for it: “Spanglish”. Words like: parking, sandwich, and hamburger (to name a few), are used instead of their Spanish counterparts, with a slight Puerto Rican accent, so they would sound more like: palking, sanguish, and jambelgel. While the American culture has influenced Puerto Rico’s a lot, we still have our own identity, and to be honest, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Puerto Ricans are warm, giving individuals, so much so that we have a saying that goes like: “If I’m asked to go a mile, I’ll go two”. It just means that we give more than we’re asked for, and I think that pretty much summarizes us.

“If I’m asked to go a mile, I’ll go two”

Back when I moved to the States, I didn’t realize the huge cultural shock that I was going to experience. I had visited the States a couple times, and stayed around two months on two different occasions, so why would living here be any different? But oh boy, it was. I feel like Puerto Ricans are brainwashed into believing the United States is this ideal place where everything works perfectly, and where we have nothing to worry about. Every time something would malfunction in P.R., you could hear the phrase: “Same as in the U.S., right?” Of course this was meant as sarcasm, criticizing P.R.’s management of a particular issue. But the thing that shocked me the most when I moved? Guns. Americans have a weird obsession with guns. And hey, I kind of get it, I’ve played video games, I love John Wick, but I would never actually own one (between us, it’d probably go off when I had to clean it, and then I’d die). Every time a gun-related incident happens, the white-male logic is that we need even more guns. How the fudge is that the logic?!

We had a ~~huge~~ scare last week at school. I was minding my own business as usual, working in my office, when a text message popped up: “THE CAMPUS IS IN LOCK DOWN. A SUSPECT IS CURRENTLY AT LARGE WITH FIREARM. LAST SEEN BY REC CENTER”. The first thought that came into my mind was: “well, that’s perfect”, a few seconds before someone from my office stormed out and yelled at me to lock the door behind him. Needless to say, I was frightened. There are guns in P.R., but not quite like this. And while people do die as a result of gun violence in P.R., I had never been scared that I could actually die from it. And mind you, I lived behind a public housing project, a place where drugs are sold, and I wouldn’t put it past them that they sell guns too. Yet, I felt safer there than I do at times in my rural little apartment. Anyway, after the guy came back, he was yelling at me to go hide in the Dean’s office where a lot of other people were hiding out as well. I was so disoriented by everything that I left my phone behind, shortly after I’d texted a friend about what was happening, without telling her I was fine (I’m a horrible person, I know, I’m sorry).

But what happened in the next hour will always stay with me. I was trying to keep my cool, because I’m not one to freak out easily, and I also didn’t want to be the cliché girl that freaked out about guns. And I had to bite my tongue as the room I was in, filled in the majority with white males, were: 1. Complaining that if we were allowed to have guns on campus, they would have put an end to it already 2. Joking that even if the guy made it through the double doors, there were enough of us there so he wouldn’t be able to kill everyone 3. Bragging about how many guns they had back home 4. Making endless jokes about guns. Don’t get me wrong, where there are jokes, there’s me in the front seat. But at that time? It was just tone-deaf. Specially, specially, when there’s a shooting every other day in this country. Like, really? I know you guys learn how to shoot a gun before you can even walk, but honestly it’s so over the top. Why do you feel the need to own an armory? I was told a story about how in a place in Europe a guy got into trouble for posing online with a machete or something. A F R E A K I N G M A C H E T E. And you guys complain when you can’t carry your assault rifles on campus! Like honestly, what’s wrong with this country?

…complaining that if we were allowed guns on campus, they would have put an end to it already…

The main goal of this post was to talk about guns. I honestly believe that guns should be much more restricted. A thorough process should be carried out before even thinking to give someone a gun. It also should be expensive as hell, and people should have a hell of a justification to own one. It shouldn’t be as easy as buying one at Walmart. That’s right, you can buy guns at Walmart! (For my European readers.) It’s funny enough that the one near my house, doesn’t sell hard liquor, but you can buy a shotgun and ammo. I was told by a white coworker that if he walked into a random gun shop, he most likely could walk out with a gun, without much fuss. And people try to tell me that the process is rigorous! Look, the Second Amendment thing made sense at the time the Constitution was written. Times were hard and difficult back then. But now? Guns do more harm than they do good. I just hope I live to see a United States were a rigorous gun reform is implemented. I am tired of going around feeling paranoid of what any crazy person with a gun might do. And also, it’s heartbreaking to hear about people dying often because of a crazy and irresponsible person. And don’t you dare start on the “it’s the person, not the tool”, because I am 100% sure that, while to some extent the argument that “if the person wants to do harm, they will do it anyway” is true, they simply can’t kill as many people with a machete as they can with a gun.

That’s right, you can buy guns at Walmart!

I will close up with this: I know you’re wondering why I wrote “American” back in the first paragraph in quotation marks? It’s because no one in Latin America or in the Spanish language for that matter calls you Americans. America consists of: Brazil, México, Canada, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. So naturally, the term feels wrong. I do realize that the word “United Statesian” sounds funky in English, but it’s how you are properly called (“estadounidense”) in any Spanish speaking country, and I think the term should catch on in English too. It’s an insult to all of the Americas that you refer exclusively to the U.S. as America, especially when there’s an active ethnic cleanse campaign going on. By being born in Puerto Rico, I am as much an “American” citizen as my next door neighbor that was born in the mainland twenty minutes from here. But he doesn’t get asked for his visa when doing some errands at school; he doesn’t get stared at in public places; he doesn’t get his name mispronounced or misspelled because people can’t grasp the concept that we have two last names, nor they assume that my first last name is my middle name, and thus I get called by my second last name instead; and he most definitely doesn’t get yelled at in a Wendy’s restaurant for speaking in Spanish. I urge everyone in the U.S. to know more about your own history. What happened in Puerto Rico is part of U.S. history too, and I should have to explain every other day how I don’t need a passport to travel to and from Puerto Rico, and everything else that comes with those questions. It makes us feel uncomfortable and frankly, it makes you look stupid. This is why I enjoyed my trip to Iceland so much. In a week I met more educated people than I did in the U.S. in a year. But that’s a story for another day.

Carolyn