Social Cache and the Mountain Girl

Remember the days when I used to blog bi-weekly? When I had deep insights about coal mining, water quality, and the education system? I guess I honestly haven't been having that many inherently "Appalachian Adventures" lately. Most of the things I want to write about are fairly universal, like computational modeling (I put that first to impress you), activism, and the difference between being a nice person and being a pushover. I spent most of the last 4 months in Ohio, in a place not even the ARC could call Appalachia. And even though it's not January any more, I don't want to change the name of my blog, because everything I am and everything I do is impacted by where I'm from. So I find myself writing an English paper at 3 am and incorporating elements of the STAY Project, and explaining to a classmate that my interest in India is actually tied in to my interest in Appalachia.

My friends and I were talking the other evening about what defines social cachet at Oberlin. Social status at Oberlin could probably be made into an equation of sorts.

Social status(x) = economic background * [where you grew up - being from the country, the South, the Midwest (not Chicago), the middle of nowhere] + college major(4humanities, 3composition/timara, 2 social sciences, 1 natural sciences, 0 conservatory) - dressing like you don't go to Oberlin + comfort around alcohol/drugs * 2how attractive you are + knowledge of art, music, literature * knowledge of certain cultural references

As you can see, I don't exactly have a ton of social cachet at Oberlin, although I do pretty well considering that I had no clue what I was getting myself into socially at Oberlin. Where I'm from is who I am, and even if I wore the right clothes, listened to all the right music, and was studying studio art and not psychology, I'd still say "mel" instead of "mail," watch The Fifth String at least once a semester, fear deer on the road, and miss the mountains. While I don't have the same social cache at Oberlin as someone, say from New York, I do have a social comfort zone that allows me to go up to the bar at Old Timbers (a bar near Oberlin that is more like a bar in Pocahontas county than a bar that close to Cleveland), make friends with the bartender, and order a pitcher of Bud Light (no, they don't have PBR silly hipsters). I knew when I bought my Hunter Boots that I would use them to muck out stalls, garden, and clamber through fields of mud, and not just go to class in the rain in them.

Maybe I got into Oberlin as the token West Virginian/middle-of-nowhere dweller, but I'd like to think that they got much more than they bargained for. And I know at home I'm the weird smart one who went to some college that no one had heard of, but I'd like to also thing that I'm going to give PC much more than they'd bargained for as well.

I guess this was just a long, unstructured way of explaining that I am a WV-ian through and through and if I'd have gone to WVU, I probably wouldn't feel this way, probably wouldn't like PBR as much, and probably wouldn't wear high waisted shorts with polka-dot tank tops and gladiator sandals, or maybe I would, but not for another year or so. And that's why I'm not going to change the name of my blog.