Spelman

really makes me reevaluate how I have been living my entire life. This class is the BOMB, literally, it blows my mind. The class is called African Diaspora and the World, but me and my fellow Spelmanites simply call it ADW. It’s a year-long course and for some, ADW sucks because readings are assigned every week and they range from videos to short reading excerpts from 4 different books we bought this semester. For me, though, this class comes quite easily since I already read so much as it is. My lecture class only meets once a week on Mondays for an hour and fifteen minutes, but everyone also has to take the lab for the class as well and mine meets on Wednesdays for the same amount of time. My teacher is really chill. He doesn’t try to be extra, he just gives us the assignment and basically let’s me live. I’m doing really well in the class because I actually do the homework and I haven’t missed all semester.

Oops, okay, so I still haven’t actually explained what the class is. Technically, in ADW, we’re supposed to learn about the migrations of Africans to all parts of the world and their effect on the modern world. We’re supposed to learn about different diasporas (which is basically people migrating and moving to different places whether by force or by choice).

Outside of the technicalities, I have learned so much about myself in ADW. Before I came to Spelman, I thought I had a good sense of myself and clear knowledge of my identity. But ADW forced me to learn not only about all of these people, but to question all the beliefs and ideas that I thought I knew all about. This semester, I have learned that being black, and being a black woman, COMPLETELY BLOWS! Now don’t get your panties in a bunch. I hold feminism and black pride dear to my heart, but ADW has forced me to view how women, and especially women of the minority races have been treated in different societies.

This semester I have been involved in lots of heated discussions with my classmates where I have to remember to breathe. I have learned that it is important to say exactly what you mean because there are at least 50 other girls who are ready to pounce at any moment. I tell you sometimes it gets so crazy that our teacher has to stop the discussion because people cannot get a word in. Lastly, I have learned how to hear; not just listen to people and have their words go completely over my head, but to actually try to comprehend what people are saying because everyone has a different opinion.

My favorite ADW moment this semester has to be our Performance Project. Our teacher assigned the class into groups at the beginning of the semester. They are small groups only 5 people. Basically, any group activity we do, we do it with our group. So when teachers started assigning the Performance Project after midterms, I started hearing really terrible stories about how groups weren’t working out and people weren’t pulling weight.

Sidenote: I got to witness this scary story first hand. So two of my roommates were in the same group: Let’s call them Player 1 and Player 2. I dislike Player 2, soooooooooooo much and she’s in a group with Player 1. Player 2 is rude and decides she does not want to go to the planning meetings even though Player 1 was the one to organize them. Instead she decided to sleep in the bed, while the rest of her group does all the work. Almost every day Player 1 came back to the room angry after she realized that Player 2 had skipped out on yet another meeting. So they get to the project deadline and Player 1 tells the teacher that Player 2 hardly did anything for the group. Player 2 then went to the teacher and lied and said that she was working all those times she was sleeping in the bed. *insert pissed face* So I was super angry for Player 1. The moral is, I didn’t want to be Player 1 and Player 2.

Back to the story: My group was really chill. We decided that we would do skits, and someone sang, and we read a poem. Even though everything was pretty last minute, we did really well in my opinion. Our teacher really liked it too.

But overall, ADW has been the best class I have ever enrolled in. It has so many interesting facets and I’m so excited for next semester.

Adieu,

Kennn 🙂

Also, I don’t know when this is getting posted, but Happy Birthdayy to my mommy!

……..oh and Happy Thanksgiving. *smooches*

I decided to attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. First off, it’s hella hot down here and I don’t know why I came down considering I’m allergic to the sun.

So anyways, the story starts like two days before my family and I were supposed to leave. I’m at Mayfair to get my allergy shots, I start the car and it sounds like metal grinding on metal. So I try to drive anyway and it was jerking and sputtering. I’m super embarrassed at this point because the car is making super loud sounds and people are watching me. So I pull back into a park, and turn off the car. After a while, I start the car back up and I think everything’s okay. I start driving, heading towards downtown to pick up my mom, and the car starts jerking again. I get super stressed out about it, like I’m sweating profusely because I don’t want the car to give out before I get to my mom. So, by the grace of God, I make it downtown in one piece. I pull over to let my mom drive, but the car won’t stop rolling backwards even after I turn it off. Turns out some part fell off the car and we had to send it to our family mechanic to fix by the next night (Thursday) so that we would leave by midnight and still be on schedule to get to Atlanta.

So, of course, nothing in my life goes according to plan, and our mechanic doesn’t fix the car in time. Thursday comes and goes, and on Friday morning, my mom has to go to a car rental place to get another car. If you knew my dad like the Table does, you would know we can’t ride all the way to Georgia in a little mini-van. So after my mom has been at the rental place for an hour, we finally get a car that’s bigger than our actual car. We’re finally able to hit the road on Friday, August 8th at about 2pm. Way later than planned.

Going down to Atlanta was me, obviously, my parents, and Jaylen, my younger brother. The drive was about 13 hours, which my parents split, but I still stayed up about 10 hours of the entire way. We finally got to our hotel at 4 am on Saturday, August 9th. Mind you, I had to check in at 10 am, so the entire family is working with practically no sleep.

Move-In Day was an event. Like they had a ton of people moving in at one time. We had to walk to our check-in location, walk back to get the car out of the garage, pull up in front of the dorm, remove all my stuff from the car, take the car back, walk back to the dorm, and finally take the stuff upstairs to my room. Be aware that its at least 95 degrees outside with no breeze whatsoever. But the good thing is, I’m staying in a dorm with air conditioning.

I’m currently staying in temporary housing with four other girls. At this point, it’s okay, but obviously not ideal. I live in LLC1, also known at the Living and Learning Center. Chi So Fly!! I stay on the second floor. The other freshman dorms, Manley, HH, and Abby don’t have AC. So when we do dorm call and stuff, one of our sayings is “LLC got AC! You mad!” The other girls’ names are Kyla (from New Jersey), Roxan (from Miami), Kristann (from Atlanta), and Talisha (from Detroit). Some people are irritating, but it comes with the territory. Our room is like a big open space, but you can’t have any privacy because there aren’t any dividers or anything.

I’ve met a lot of people here . Spelman College is relatively small, only about 2,200 undergraduates. There are about 540 girls in the freshman class. It’s a private, liberal arts college. Right now the best part of being a freshman is the camaraderie. Like each dorm has their own hand signs and calls and it’s fun, when in the middle of the night, the freshman dorms have dorm battles. So you run to each dorm and everyone does their dorm call.

I know you’re all wondering about the boys. The boys are literally always on campus, LURKING! Like sometimes it’s ridiculous. But the first weekend, every Spelman woman got matched up with a Morehouse brother. My Morehouse brother is literally the best person in the entire world. His name is Malakai . He’s from New Jersey. He plays the saxophone in the Morehouse band. He’s a biology major and he wants to be an emergency room doctor. He’s so sweet and nice. Like he brought me medicine when I got sick the first week of school. So hopefully our relationship lasts. I’ve also met a lot of girls. I can’t remember half of their names, but that’s okay. They’ll be alright.

This year my goals are to get a 4.0 because I want to get scholarships to pay my tuition. I also want to have a lot of fun. All the upperclassmen tell us that freshman year is the best year to experience Atlanta because once you start your major; you basically have no time to do anything.

I’m most excited to party. Like I went to my first party already. It was called Welcome to Atlanta V. It was at a club called the Enclave in downtown Atlanta. So they told us there was going to be a shuttle that would take us starting at 9 pm, but I look at my phone and its 9:55 and the shuttle still hasn’t come. So my roommates and I took this cab-like thing called the Lyft to get to the club. We get to the club and basically skip half the line, but we still have to wait in line for another hour before we can even get into the club. We finally get in and it’s dark and hot. They played a lot of good music though. The only thing I didn’t like was that they were smoking a lot of black and mild’s and I kept breathing it in. Also the drinks were super expensive. I didn’t drink any alcohol, but like water was $3, and I wasn’t trying to be about that life. Also it was hella hot. Like me and everyone else were literally dripping sweat, but I still had a good time. It’s gonna be great.