Last week, I wrote about getting up the nerve to enter myself at my first poetry slam.  This week, part 2.  

The room was tiny.  There was a row of old thrift-store velvet sofas in the front, and mismatched folding chairs and bar stools in the rows behind it.  The lights were off except for two spotlights on the stage, and dimmed red lights surrounding it.  It felt like a Prohibition-era bar.  I sat right in front of a space heater, blowing warm air on my back as everyone else in the room shivered with their coats on.  Outside the velvet curtains that separated the venue from the waiting area, was a young guy standing behind a scratched wooden bar with a gallon of cheap Chardonnay and Sangria that he was selling by the clear plastic cup for $4.  As the host asked for all of those who were chosen to slam tonight to meet outside, I threw away my empty cup with traces of Sangria in the cracks.  I had bought it immediately after getting there, to calm the nerves.  

“Ok, so here’s the deal.  For those of you who know me, tonight I’m going to be an a**hole, I’m sorry, it’s my job.  Here’s the rules.  Each poem has to be maximum 3 minutes long.  I will let you continue talking until 3 minutes and 10 seconds, but you will get ¼ of a point knocked off for every 10 seconds you go over.  Once you get to 3 minutes and 25 seconds, I will literally steal the mic out from under you and hit you with it.  You understand?  You have to learn to edit your poems!  Also, don’t come in here with some poem about flowers and daisies that you wrote in your first poetry class and stand up and compete here.  This is a competition, this is not an open mic.  So…just know that.  Alright, here’s the order of the slammers, remember your place on the list and correct me if I say your name wrong.”

I let my mind wander as he read off the names on the list.  The poem I was about to read in front of this room full of people was a poem I had written in my first creative writing class.  Sh*t.  

“Emily Kur-tch-bum?”

“Kursh-bom.”

“Alright, thank you.  Number 9.”  

When he finished, we all put our hands in the center like the high school basketball team and bounced the mass of palms.  “1 – 2 – 3 – PIGEON!”  One tiny voice in the back screamed, “POETRY!  No?  Didn’t work?  Alright….”

I sat back down on my bar stool and obsessively read over my poem.  A definition poem I wrote in my class last year.  I was planning on reading my favorite poem, the one that made me want to read at a slam in the first place, but it was too long.  Five minutes when I practiced.  

The lights dimmed further, and the guest poet, Shira Erlichman, an up-and-coming poet from Brooklyn, took the stage.  I was blown away, mesmerized, and in love.  Her poems gave me the goosebumps, and her cool personality made me wish I was her friend.  She reminded me of my poetry teacher at Hope College, my quirky writing partner from Texas, and the queen herself, Andrea Gibson.  I could just picture Heather Sellers clapping me on the back, grasping my shoulders, and leaning her mouth to my ear with a whisper, “Poet, you are fabulous.  You better get up there.”  

Finally, it came to be my turn.  I almost tripped over the mic cord before I got onstage.  I stepped up onto the black-painted plywood stage and adjusted the microphone to my mouth.  The faceless middle row of my fellow students screamed, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”  I smiled and nodded, so as not to add to my time.  Then I began with a loud and confident voice that I haven’t felt in a long time, “Her.  Pronoun.  Number 1.  A Person You Couldn’t Look At Or Touch, As in….”  

I continued and saw in my peripheral vision, Shira Erlichman, sprawled out on one of the velvet couches gasping at just the right moments, snapping along with each stanza, mouthing “wow” every once in a while.  I heard other people “mmhmm” and “yeah, you know, girl!” as I shared this poem, this gut-wrenching poem, with this room.  It was exhilirating.  I felt the adrenaline rushing up my spine long after I had sat back down and gotten my losing scores which brought a clamor of “boos” from the crowd.  It didn’t matter.  I had missed the stage, the writing, the story-telling, the beauty for years; and now I knew how to get back on it.  It was life-giving.

I’m sitting in The Bean Café on South Street as I write today, drinking some coffee, even though it’s nearly sweltering hot (for February, at least).

I just finished having class in my apartment.  It’s something that some of the Center’s faculty like to do once the semester gets underway—have class in different students’ apartments. It gives everyone a chance to explore the city a bit more, see where other people live, that sort of thing. Luckily for my housemates and me, we are all taking the same Urban and Political Systems city seminar, so it made perfect sense for us to host the seminar’s first off-campus meeting. (It wasn’t the first class meeting our apartment has hosted, however; on Tuesday we hosted the Exploring Relationships in Fiction and Film elective.) We met at 9:30, people brought some breakfast food, and we spent the morning discussing cultural divisions in America, touching on topics like homelessness, racism, and individualism.

Work this week has been good. I’m starting to settle into my internship and get the hang of going to work four days a week. Yesterday I had a chance to get out of the office and do a little bit of field reporting (a rare occurrence for a legal reporter—usually it’s court documents and phone interviews). I took a train out to Chester County, southwest of the city, to conduct some interviews and observe a legal clinic at a Hispanic community center. Chester County has a large mushroom farming community, and there are many low wage workers who have immigrated from Mexico or other Latin American countries.  The lawyer who runs this particular clinic helps the community handle problems with wages and labor, disability, leases, immigration, or any other issues they might have. I’d never heard of anything like it before. Soon I’ll be putting together the information I gathered into an article that will be published in the Legal.

Also in this past week, I attended “open studio” at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  My roommate and I have a friend who is a graduate student there studying visual art, and we visited her and some of her friends as they showed off the work they’ve been doing this semester. We had a chance to chat with some of the artists and ask them questions. I don’t know very much about visual art, but I do enjoy walking around at events like that, talking to people, seeing what people are working on. I can’t make any judgments about what’s good or not, but I have fun. 

I have a long weekend, since I’m off work Monday for President’s Day.  I’m hoping to explore the city a bit, so look for more adventures soon!

 Each week by Friday night, I am already in awe of how much I’ve had the opportunity to learn.

There is so much going on in Philly…my life has been completely different here than it was at Whitman.  I am taking two classes focused on writing (something I’ve always been nervous about), and the art and craft of critique.  These classes make it impossible to ignore some of the little fictions I’ve told myself throughout the years—you really have the chance to examine those things through the classes offered at TPC.  Recently, I’ve been working on a critique of my own romantic life for my elective (Exploring Relationships in Fiction and Film: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality) and it might be the most invested I’ve ever been in an ongoing academic project.  I’m learning about myself and getting academic credit for it! 

My internship has also already provided me with a constant stream of learning opportunities, and it’s only been two weeks.  I’ve already seen preliminary hearings, a jury selection, an entire jury trial, and a sentencing.  After two weeks I can picture what life is like as an attorney more clearly than ever and while I don’t want to jinx it, I will say that I’m surprised how much I like it.  I’m pretty convinced that the Assistant Chief of my unit is Batman.  This is not a joke. 

The incredible attorney and community organizer that I volunteer with has let me sit in on three meetings so far and I’m working on developing a more specific project to devote my time to this the semester.  She is so fantastic—I wish everyone had a chance to hear her talk about the importance of organizing at the grassroots level.  Smartest woman in the room, hands down.

Meanwhile, my amazing housemates and I are exploring University City! I’ve reserved every weekend to try new restaurants around Philly.  We went to the Poetry Slam that the illustrious Emily blogged about  and we’re looking for a comedy club to visit within the next couple weeks! 

We constantly compare notes on our crazy trolley rides (more on SEPTA in my next post) and our strange encounters on the streets of Philly.  I am so happy to have found such genuine people with such diverse interests to live with! I have found the perfect people to share my West Philly life with.

I never thought I would be so at home in a big city on the east coast, but it turns out I really belong in a place that always has something going on as long as I learn the art of balance. Class, Internship, Volunteering, Read/Study/Write, EXPLORE.  I want to throw myself into absolutely everything here.  There is simply so much to take in! Let’s just say I’m not ruling this place out as my next destination…

I’ve had a long week, or rather, a short week, or rather, a long week that went by very quickly.  I started working at my internship on Tuesday, which already seems like ages ago, although I’ve been so busy that time seems to just disappear.  My internship supervisor got me writing the very first morning, and by the end of the day I had my first story completely finished and ready for publication next week.  On Wednesday I finished another story, and today I finished, believe it or not, two stories that will both go to print tomorrow.

I’m so excited to actually have my own writing in print!  Most of my writing experience up to this point has been for school publications, which has been fun, but it’s a much different feeling to know that you’ve written something for a professional news organization.  I’ve been warned by other reporters that it’s only a matter of time until somebody calls me up to complain about something I’ve written.  I suppose then I’ll know I’m in the big leagues!  Until then, I look forward to having a whole pile of clips to show other potential employers.

I guess I should admit that I haven’t spent all my time working.  This weekend I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with my housemates to check out a special exhibit of photographs by Zoe Strauss, who happens to be the daughter of TPC staffer Ilene Baker.  Strauss is an internationally known photographer who specializes in street portraits.  This exhibit showcased photographs of people and places around the city taken in the last ten years.

Also, because it was the first Sunday of the month, admission for the museum was “pay what you want.”  I paid two dollars, and I was able to see, in addition to the Strauss exhibit, paintings by Picasso, Monet, and Duchamp that I’d studied in art history textbooks, but never thought I’d have a chance to view myself.  Talk about a good deal!

Plus, we stopped at a park along the way and played on the swings.  What an afternoon.

More adventures next week.  Until then, peace and love.

That’s right, I’m finally 99% settled. In the last three weeks, I have:

1) Found 7 amazing people to live with in an amazing apartment in an amazing neighborhood

2) Searched and searched and searched for an internship that I can really contribute to and learn from 

3) Started the never-ending hustle of my course load—I am an essay-writing machine again

4) Acquainted myself with this beautiful city and its surprising residents

5) Taken a full-time internship at the District Attorney’s office and taken a part-time volunteering position as a political organizer. I start on Monday.

6) Fallen in love with almost every guy who works at my Trader Joe’s

Needless to say….I LOVE PHILADELPHIA. The last three weeks of my life rival the 2.5 years total I spent at Whitman.  Don’t get me wrong, though, I miss Whitman and my friends immensely. I keep trying to convince my family to visit me here, and hopefully calling them out in this blog post will be the pressure they really need in order to agree!!

For the record, I LOVE Skype dates, but ya’ll will need to be flexible with me since my schedule is about to get FULL.

And suddenly I am placed!  Shortly after interviewing with the Legal Intelligencer, I decided that this was the publication I wanted to write for. 

It was weird to make such a quick decision after waiting so long to finish my interviews, but once I had made up my mind I felt very relieved, like I had finally settled completely into the semester.

The Legal Intelligencer is the oldest law journal in the United States and operates right in the middle of Center City, on JFK Blvd.  I’ll be working as a writer and copy editor, doing assignments about verdicts, settlements, and opinions, as well as other, more interesting feature stuff.  I’m really excited to work with everyone there.  They’re very committed to helping me learn as much as can and gain as much experience as I can.  This internship offers me the most opportunity for putting my writing in print, which is one of the reasons I knew so confidently that I wanted to work there.

I’m thankful that The Philadelphia Center staff encouraged me to interview for this placement, because I was originally much more interested in an alt weekly A&E kind of publication.  With the Legal Intelligencer, however, I’ll have a chance to gain a better understanding of the legal system, and the challenge of writing about this kind of material will make me a better writer.

All this makes me very excited for the rest of the semester.  Things seem to be coming together nicely!

Philadelphia is a long way from Indiana, both physically and culturally.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be said for small, rural, liberal arts colleges, but after five semesters I was certainly ready for a new environment.  I wanted to live in an apartment, in a city, where I cook food and walk to work, and there are places to go in the evenings other than the campus dining hall.  And now—ta da!—it’s happening.

I arrived in Philly with my friend and classmate Nathan on Sunday, January 15^th.  By Tuesday, we had housemates and an apartment picked out, and on Thursday we signed the lease.  Friday, we moved in, with furniture and all.  I had been nervous about needing to find housing so quickly, but the TPC support structure made it all surprising easy.  After a crash course in apartment hunting and dealing with leases and landlords, we dove into the search, armed with leads from the TPC staff, and we found what we were looking for almost right away.  Now, I’m living in a three bedroom apartment, with a kitchen, laundry unit, and two bathrooms, that I share with four housemates.  It’s within walking distance to Center City, Chinatown, Reading Terminal Market, and Love Park.  We’ve even got a pretty nice view of the skyline!

And soon I’ll start working.  I have one more interview tomorrow, and then I’ll have to decide which of my three opportunities I’d like to take.  I arrived with the intent of finding an internship in writing and journalism, and the Philadelphia Center’s placement directory contained several promising leads.  I’ve already interviewed with a Philly news and A&E web-journal, as well as with a weekly news/A&E print source, and tomorrow I’m interviewing with a legal community newsletter.  Each internship would be a very different environment, but I think I’ll be happy at any of them.  Mostly I’m just ready to have the decision made (I’m just not sure I’m ready to make it yet!).

I’m very thankful to have gotten three interviews at three different organizations, because I know it’s helped me work on my own interviewing skills.  All of my writing jobs have been for campus organizations, so I’ve never had to interview with a professional organization for this kind of position.  I feel much more confident, having completed two of my three interviews, that after college I’ll know how to talk about myself as a writer and how to present my work in the best way possible.

I also look forward to having an opportunity to write about things other than small-college-campus kind of issues!  I’m hoping I’ll have a chance to meet people and cover events that I would never have an opportunity to meet or experience otherwise.  I figure I’ve paid my cub-reporter dues writing piece after piece on campus speakers and school policy changes.  I’m ready for big city stuff now (and if I’m not ready now, I will be by the time I leave here).

Look for another post soon about my internship placement!

There are a lot of things that I will miss about Philadelphia. When I went home for Thanksgiving I started to realize what a unique and weirdo place the city is, and how it has shaped me over the past couple of months. It’s all happening so fast! The end of the semester is this week. Soon I’ll be turning in my portfolio to my adviser, Diana, and saying my final goodbyes to “Conversations on Constructions of Race.” Soon I’ll be walking up those three flights of stairs to get to work one last time, and powering down my computer for good. Soon I’ll be packing up my apartment, bidding farewell to the rickety wooden stairs and the first floor of our old refurbished church. It’s happening so fast, but it also seems right, like the next logical step in the gigantic story of my college life. As I leave Philadelphia, I wanted to share some of the things that made my experience here special, some secret insider tips for navigating the city of brotherly love.

Don’t be afraid to say yes: “Yes” was the watchword in our apartment. “Hey, do you want to go to this experimental theater show in the basement of a building bordered by generators?” “Yes!” “Hey, do you want to go see a movie in this old burlesque house?” “Yes!” “Hey, do you want to go to this coffee shop that has an alien theme?” “Yes!” …This is how my semester went. I think it’s the main reason I had so much fun and did such diverse things: I wasn’t afraid of saying “yes” to new and foreign concepts. That’s how I found out about Mugshots, my favorite coffee shop. That’s how I found out about the secret basement kids section of the Free Library of Philadelphia. That’s how I found out what “Spanish fries” were (for the record, they’re delicious). That’s how I got involved in grassroots organizing, in editing web content for my job, in finding the best hamburgers in the city. Saying “yes” didn’t just help me have fun, it helped me in my workplace. Although some of the tasks they asked me to do I had little or no experience with, I learned quickly and wasn’t afraid to ask clarifying questions. Now I can confidently say that I know how to format and edit magazine content for the web…a skill I didn’t have at the beginning of the semester. “Yes” is the most powerful word in the English language, and I used it to the fullest.

Make things feel like home: Homesickness overtook everyone at The Center at one point or another in the semester. I was lucky enough that my mom came down to visit for my birthday, and that I could go home for Thanksgiving, but not everyone had the luxury of being close to home. How my roommates and I combated homesickness is by making things in Philadelphia feel like home. The ice-cream shop Philly Flavors that we all went to the first week of the program became “our place,” and we’d go there together to have a laugh and eat birthday cake ice-cream. The delicious pizza-and-panini place a block away from us called Colosseo’s became “our place” as well, and we’d eat there and talk about our days. We’d watch TV shows together, make big meals together, swing on the swings in a school playground down the street. We made traditions and routines that built us up as a group as well as familiarized us with the city. Now I feel like when I’m leaving the city I’m leaving home, and it’s bittersweet.

Behind every great woman is a great…group of friends: The people at The Philadelphia Center are what made this program great; not only the students who I came in contact with, but the staff. Every member of the staff truly cared about us, and they showed it by helping us our first week and congratulating us on our last. It’s a homey, family atmosphere at TPC, and although this semester has been challenging, it’s that warmth that has encouraged me to keep going. I couldn’t finish this post without thanking my roommates, Sarah, Nichole and Jessica, for making the semester so memorable. Thanks for eating my cookies, cleaning the dishes, almost burning the apartment down three times (gas stoves are tough), and complaining about our obnoxiously loud upstairs neighbors who somehow always seemed to be moving their furniture and jumping. Even though we slept on the floor for a week at the start of the semester, I think we turned out all right.

Philadelphia became my city for a semester, and I hope it remembers me. I know I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.