My Commons Life

News & features about the Vanderbilt Commons from the students who live here

Features

The Girl Next Dore: The Next Right Step

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In my last post, Life Happens, I tried to emphasize that recently there have been some big changes in my life and I’ve been incredibly happy!

This is amazing, and I am so grateful to have made such wonderful friends who contribute to my happiness and support me in cultivating a healthy and positive life. But, something I noticed this week is that I also need to remember it is more than okay to have “bad days.”

On Sunday I was feeling really lousy. I’m not exactly sure why — probably either because it was rainy, or because I was exhausted from a 4-show weekend, or I was thinking about Freshman year ending in two weeks, or because I realized I had 100 pages of reading to do. In reality, it was probably a combination of all of these things, but nevertheless, all I wanted to do was be alone and be kinda sad in my bed while watching Brooklyn 99.

But, as I got under three fluffy blankets, I somehow felt like it was a little “wrong” for me to be feeling like I was having a “bad” day. After all, recently I’ve been so happy! So energetic! It’s finally Spring, and things have been great!

I guess in chaos of the past few weeks, and upon the realization that I’ve been incredibly happy, I somehow developed this misperception that being happy meant I couldn’t occasionally have an “off” day, or else I would be “regressing” on this happiness. As I laid in bed watching Hulu, I honestly just made myself feel worse by thinking about my night alone as a step backward.

Yesterday someone told me to emphasize the importance of taking “the next right step,” and this is when I realized what a poorly constructed view I was placing on my “bad day.” Taking the “next right step” means that you are first letting go of the need to overanalyze the broader view of the path you are pursuing. Rather than stressing over an end-goal, you are seizing the course of action that makes the most sense in the immediate future. As I’ve said before, I am a planner. So I’m sure that forcing myself to focus on the immediate will be difficult sometimes, but the idea of the “night right step” sounds like something I can handle.

Taking the “next right step” may mean that sometimes I will need to force myself not to sit in bed on a “bad day” but go for a run instead. Taking “the next right step” may mean that I edit my resume, or apply for another internship, or finish my paper early to get feedback. Or, taking the “next right step” may mean acknowledging the needs of my body and mind — treating myself to the cup of ice cream, a FaceTime call with a friend, or the night in bed with Brooklyn 99.

I’m not sure what taking the next right step will look like for myself or for any of you in the future … but I think that’s the point … and honestly, that’s pretty exciting.

Tonight, for me, taking my next right step is me writing this post. This is my next right step in allowing myself to let go of the meticulous planning and agonizing I’ve been so accustomed to.

What’s your next right step?

Anchor down,
Brooke

Walker and I Get Our Inner Horse Girls On? (or We Visit the Frist)

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With all of the lovely weather that graced us this last week, Walker and I decided to head downtown and get our class on at the Frist Art Museum. With our luck, we planned our trip on the one cloudy and humid day of the entire week, but regardless, the museum was a sight to see. Located near the front of downtown, the Frist is about a 30-minute walk or a seven-minute drive, depending on how you want to get there (10/10 would recommend walking and hitting up McDonald’s for a $1 ice cream cone on the way). As Vandy students we get free admission — you’ll need your Commodore card as proof — and with your sick new wristbands (peep the photos) you’ll have access to the entire museum.

Now normally I’d recommend setting aside an hour or two to experience all of the beautiful art that the place has to offer, but due to an event that was starting soon, Walker and I only had 45 minutes to make it through everything. It was a hard task considering that everything is so regal and beautiful, but we did our best to document the hotspots of the trip (one of which was their insanely classy bathrooms … yes I did take a mirror selfie in it … I am only a little ashamed).

  • classy af
  • whoops…

The lower level exhibits of the museum are currently showcasing Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and Their Times: The Mellon Collection of French Art, which ended up being a glorified animal painting fest with lots of doggos and cattle painted onto canvases. The best part of the lower exhibits, however, was a multi-room gallery dedicated solely to nineteenth-century horses. I don’t know whether “horse” is the museum’s new theme at the moment, but there were so many of said animal that I felt like I was in a horse girl’s dream and couldn’t find my way out. That being said, I got some bomb.com photos with the paintings and was able to find my way out in a speedy five minutes without hating the overwhelming aura of “stallions” too much (this may be me being a bit dramatic, the paintings are nice, I swear).

  • so. many. good. boys.
  • more horses?

Next, we went up to the second level to walk through the Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing exhibit. This exhibit focused on the documentary photographer, Dorothea Lange, whose breathtaking black and white portraits worked to expose injustice and inequalities in the twentieth century.

After making our way through the photographs, we ended up at my personal favorite place in the museum: the interactive children’s exhibit. We ended up spending 35 minutes of the entire 45 minutes we had at the museum in this area, and I do not regret a single thing. From a stop motion station to light boards and a portrait drawing circle (surprise, surprise, where you could draw horses), this place truly has it all. Now I’ve been waiting to hit up this area of the Frist since I first heard about it, so it might have just been me, but I could have spent hours in there. There was this sick heat motion sensor wall that worked kind of like how an Xbox Kinect does when it detects your body moving and we attempted multiple still shots including spelling out YMCA (Walker forgot how to spell and ruined it) and anchoring down (an even bigger fail).

This took us way more takes than it should’ve.

Walker’s favorite station was a soundwave board that moved sand into different patterns on the board as it changed frequencies, while mine was the stop-motion station where we created a short film. I tried to document it on video for the blog, but we accidentally hit delete instead of replay 🙁 (shoutout to the eight-year-old boy who tried to help us recover it even though we all knew it was too late).

  • we accidentally deleted it

What I love about the art museum is that you can go to appreciate the details and effort behind the paintings and photographs, or you can go to have a fun time making up stories about why each piece was created. Either way, as long as you’re respectful of the people around you, the guards are extremely nice and enjoy seeing people interact with the art. So whether you end up checking out the Frist for the art galleries inside, or just for the architecture of the building itself (which is beautiful and 100% photo-worthy), the Frist Art Museum will not disappoint. If you have a free afternoon or weekend and you are looking for something fun to do downtown, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

Frist Art Museum Hours:https://fristartmuseum.org/visit/hours-directions

McDonald’s Hours: Open 24/7… SO GET THAT CONE!

Elect Her’s Coming to Vandy

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“Elect Her” will be coming to Vanderbilt on Sunday, March 31, thanks to a recently passed resolution by Peabody College Senator Katherine Petosa and Vanderbilt Student Government.

Elect Her is a free, one-day workshop with a mission to dismantle the barriers that make it difficult for women to run for elected office by training them how to run for student government. The goal is to create a place on college campuses for women to develop their leadership skills and prepare to run for elected office – a big step towards closing the gender gap in politics.

First-year Senator Hannah Bruns said, “It is so important that our organizations on campus reflect the student population. Often times women can feel like they don’t have the tools to run a campaign, so we hope that Elect Her will help women on campus run successful campaigns to increase female representation in different organizations.”

At the workshop, run by Senator Katrina Robinson of the Tennessee State Senate, participants will have the opportunity to:

  • Discuss: the importance of women running for office
  • Examine: the issues they care about
  • Map: out their support networks
  • Craft: and deliver elevator speeches
  • Learn: about campaign strategy
  • Meet: women role models who have run for public office in their community
  • Network: with students who currently serve on our campus student government

Though Elect Her is an organization that focuses on women’s leadership, it fosters an environment that is inclusive of people across identities, including gender expression and identity, sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, national origin, first language, ability, age, religion, party, socioeconomic status, and more.

You can sign up here

Date: Sunday, March 31, 2019
Time: 1-4:30 p.m.
Location: Commons MPR
personal development GME

Walker Makes A Mixtape?!?! (aka We Visit the Country Music Hall of Fame)

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By: Nashville Wanderers

With the weather warming up and spring right around the corner (my inner Minnesotan is so confused right now), Walker and I decided to head downtown for this week’s blog. As country music fans, and more importantly, Peter Cooper fans (the museum’s senior director as well as our very own History of Country Music professor) we’ve been meaning to hit up the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum for a while. The museum is located directly across from Bridgestone Arena and is surrounded by other awesome Nashville hotspots. It’s around a 45-minute walk or a 14-minute scooter ride but let me tell you: it’s so worth the trip. This has hands down been one of my favorite experiences in downtown Nashville and I hope that everyone takes a chance to check it out!

Now for an important tip before I begin. Lucky for us Vandy students, we have free access to the entire museum (shoutout to my man, Peter Cooper), but there’s a specific way to get it. When you get up to the front desk, tell the staff that you’re a Vanderbilt student (bring your Commodore Card for proof) and say that you’re looking for their “Passport to Nashville” deal with the university. If you don’t mention the name of the program directly, they aren’t supposed to give you a free ticket, so don’t forget this!

For our trip, Walker had scored us two tickets to see a live interview with Emmylou Harris and her Hot Band in the CMA theater inside the museum (which was led by Peter Cooper, because who else at this point?), and it was fantastic. The CMA theater doesn’t have events very often, but I would highly recommend attending when they do.

The self-guided tour starts on the third level of the building where you will promptly meet a door that leads to a Taylor Swift exhibit. Among many things, it includes two of her costumes from her “Look What You Made Me Do” music video which was super exciting to see. Past her exhibit, however, is where you’ll find all of the original country music stars. Rows and rows of glass cases are filled with instruments and clothing owned by the most influential country music artists of all time. They’ve got glass cases for Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells, Elvis Presley, DeFord Bailey, Charley Pride, and more. You name a country artist, and they’ve got a costume and guitar from them.

  • Don Gibson
  • Elvis Presley

As you can see in the photos below, Walker and I found that the second floor was definitely our favorite. Along with the museum’s advertised Outlaw Movement exhibit (shoutout to the billboard on Hillsboro that advertises it), interactive screens and games all over the place. The interactive sites include creating your own song title, writing a song (where we, of course, spelled aNcHoR dOwN), finding your future music-related job, designing an album cover with your face on it (scroll down to see Walker’s horrifying album cover), and recording your own demo in a definitely not soundproof “recording booth” karaoke station (two of the four song options are Taylor Swift songs? … there might be a trend here.)

  • ANCHOR DOWN
  • Inside the Karaoke Booth
  • Walker’s New Single
  • The Outside of the Interactive Station
  • Walker is Destined to be a Music Producer

Another part of the second floor was dedicated to artists starting from the 1990s to today. Toby Keith’s shirt that he wore in “I Love This Bar,” Carrie Underwood’s dress she wore during the finale of American Idol, and Taylor Swift’s dress from “Love Story,” are some of the many iconic memorabilia that are kept there.

  • Jason Aldean and Taylor Swift
  • Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill

One of the more random things in the modern country exhibit was a giant guitar that you could climb inside, and of course, photos were immediately taken. I accidentally walked in front of a seven-year-old girl to get said photo and that is the moment that I realized I needed to chill out a bit — my photo still looked bomb though (thanks Walker). Next to the guitar is a beautiful view glass window view of downtown where I attempted to have Walker take a photo of me pointing to the Batman Building (only my favorite building in all of Nashville). Sadly, he’s still working on his photography skills, so I had to (poorly) edit the photo to do the building justice (please excuse my wonky hand).

  • After editing (aka I’m good at editing) 🙂
  • Pre-editing (aka Walker sucks at photography)

The best part about the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is that it never gets tiring. There are so many artists to appreciate, exhibits to view, and activities to try that you learn something new every time. Walker and I have already gone back since our first trip (cause free trips are the best trips) and it feels just as inspiring and fun walking through again. So if you’re looking for a good time, trying to learn anything about the music history of Nashville, or you just really want to be surrounded by Taylor Swift promotion, the Country Music Hall of Fame is the place for you.

And a quick note to my man Peter: you guys either really know how to market to the teen girl demographic, or you are using your chair as senior director to proclaim your love to Taylor. Either way, I love it.

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Hours: https://countrymusichalloffame.org/visit/hours#.XJmuflxKg2w

Peter Cooper’s History of Country Music Class:

1640 History of Country Music

The Girl Next Dore: Detour

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I am not a spontaneous person. This I know to be true about myself. I don’t know if I’ve ever said “let’s drop everything and go do something random.” I would never just decide one day that I wanted to skydive, or randomly make big decisions. I’ve even recently said that “I’m not a cross-the-street-without-a-light type of gal.” To put it in the simplest way possible, I am a planner.

Although I would consider being a planner a defining characteristic of who I am, there are some things I can’t plan for … and I’m realizing that is such a blessing sometimes.

Last Wednesday night, I got a text from one of my friends asking if I wanted to see a Ben Rector concert in Chattanooga the next night. Without hesitating, I replied “YES, I WOULD CRY.”

This honestly might have been the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done. Less than 24 hours later, I was in a Jeep riding to Chattanooga on a Thursday night to see one of my favorite artists. Receiving that text, my mind didn’t hesitate for a second; my response was a visceral reaction. I needed to go, and I trusted myself – something I don’t think I do enough of sometimes.

Last week I wrote about life happening while you’re busy making other plans … well, Thursday was a perfect example of that. I dropped everything I had going on that night because I knew my heart needed a break. I knew I could benefit from a quick escape more than I could benefit from a few extra hours of sleep.

The concert was probably one of the best nights of my life, and I think that was, in part, because it was a detour from my normal self. Not just a detour from my typical Thursday night routine, but from my need for a plan.

Standing in the middle of the crowd last Thursday, I didn’t care who was watching me, or what I had to do when I got back to campus. My mind was clear and my heart was happy. I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. (Ben Rector showing up right behind me in the audience was just an added reassurance of that …)

I will almost definitely return to my typical procedural nature, but I now recognize the good that a little dose of spontaneity can do every once in a while.

So, take a detour sometimes … to Chattanooga, maybe … but take a detour from the characteristics of yourself that sometimes overwhelm you. It’s worth it.

Anchor down,

Brooke

Dorm Organization Tips

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Staying organized does not have to be a household chore and can actually make your life easier. Here are some tips for having a more organized living space.

  1. Get rid of excess items. A lot of people bring more clothes than what they actually wear at college. This becomes a problem as many of us do not have a large closet nor large drawer space to put our items in. And in turn, this results in overstuffed closets and drawers and eventually to having clothes lying around our dorm rooms. Not only is this displeasing to face on a daily basis, it can also be an annoyance . All of this can be avoided if you only bring what you NEED for college. If you have an overflowing closet, bring clothes you don’t wear home during breaks. Keep note of what you wear and what you don’t wear, so next year (or break) you know what to leave home and/or what to donate.
  2. Store items more efficiently. Instead of throwing your clothes into your drawer after you finish doing laundry, fold them. Not only does this look pleasing, it can actually create more space. Also, if you have bulkier items that you will not need/use soon, place them in an empty suitcase or backpack that is already taking space in your room.
  3. Use small plastic/cardboard containers. If you have a lot of small items in your desk, it may be best to use small tupperware containers (or small upcycled cardboard boxes) to organize and hold them.
  4. Purchase a standing book file. Using a standing book file or large plastic crate can help keep your textbooks and workbooks in one stable place without them always having to be in your backpack or scattered around your desk. You could also keep your textbooks stacked in one area on your desk as a “free” alternative.
  5. Store loose cords. If you have Ethernet cords, cable cords, etc., tie them with twist ties and place them all into a plastic bag. Place the bag in a drawer, on a shelf, or in your suitcase. Since you are less likely to reach for these cords, you do not need to keep them out in the open.
  6. Invest in an accordion file. At some point in time, we all we need to keep important files with us. A file folder is essential in making sure your papers are kept protected and at hand. A file folder can also be beneficial in certain classes to store worksheets, papers, and homework.

The Girl Next Dore: Life Happens

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Five weeks from tomorrow, I will (attempt to) pack all of my dorm into a few small boxes and suitcases, get on a plane, and fly home for the summer.

I realized when we got back from Spring Break that we had almost no time left in our Freshman year. Somehow, move-in day feels simultaneously like nine months ago and just yesterday, but the reality is that our Freshman year is coming to a close.

My final post on MyCommonsLife will wrap up my year, thank some people, etc – but not yet. Today I just want to say that in all this time that I was busy worrying about school, or being critical of the things I didn’t like about Vandy, etc, I guess that I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to love it here.

One of my all-time favorite movies is the cheerleading movie, Fired Up!, with Eric Christian Olsen. This movie is actually trash but it’s also so funny and for some reason middle school me watched it constantly. At the end of the movie, the head cheerleader says, “Life’s what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” I have no idea who said this quote in real life (Google says John Lennon or Allen Saunders, but who really knows), but no matter who actually spoke these words, they’ve stuck with me for a long time. Until now, though, I don’t think I realized how accurate they were.

I spent most of first term being worried about my future and how I could achieve my goals, etc etc. I missed my high school and honestly I couldn’t seem to find a purpose for being here. I went home on Christmas break and my former music teacher said, “do what it takes to check off your Nashville bucket list – maybe in four months you’ll have so much fun that you’ll realize you’re here for a reason, or maybe you’ll want to go home.”

Well, I took that advice wholeheartedly. And, almost without knowing it, I checked off a bunch of things I came to Vanderbilt wanting to do. I joined a a sorority, I was in a musical, I started stage managing again, I started my own blog, and more. By doing all of these things, even if they felt like “checking boxes” at the time, I’ve found so many ways to love Vandy.

I was taking pictures on the steps of Wyatt the other day, and I started smiling so hard. I looked at those pictures later and I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I genuinely smiled like that. I have found happiness here in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined six months ago.

In all this time that I was busy making other plans, life happened.

With five weeks left, go make life happen.

Anchor Down,

Brooke