glitter and pearls for the luxury asks? :)
glitter: describe someone special to you.
um i had this teacher in high school that was never actually my teacher? i was her TA for some reason the year after i abandoned being on newspaper when she became the new newspaper teacher, and she was the funniest, kindest, sweetest woman. i really feel like i’m very similar in her to personality, particularly as a teacher—super standoffish and awkward at first, a bit sarcastic, and hard to get to know?—but once i did get to know her she was so gracious and warm. i have a really special memory of her leaning over and whispering to me one morning, “i’m pregnant!” and i felt so cool that i was the first student she told and i got to know weeks before anyone else. i visited her a few times after i graduated and she always spent like 2 hours just chatting with me.
i’m friends with her on FB still and now she lives across the country and her facebook statuses still make me laugh a lot.
i was super affected when she was pretty open about going through her divorce a few years after i graduated, particularly because her husband had been emotionally abusive and narcissistic, and it really, really shook me that someone i could so admire as being a pillar of strength and independence and intelligence as a woman could also have lived so quietly with that secret for so long. she’s now very happily remarried and her daughter is like 9 or 10, and i’m so happy for her!
a few year ago, i had a financial hardship on one of my final steps to starting my teaching program and i suddenly had to pay $1200 out-of-pocket to stay enrolled in a prerequisite course that i didn’t realize financial aid wasn’t going to cover. my sister made me a gofundme and i was super embarrassed about it, and this teacher donated $200 to me, gosh, like, eight years after i’d graduated high school and just said so many kind words about me? i still get emotional when i think about it. it’s wild to me that someone who i only knew very briefly has made this much of an impact on me. i look up to her so much, and i hope i have that kind of effect as a teacher someday.
pearls: what’s something about your personality that surprises others?
hmmm.
well, if you meet me in person, i think it surprises people that i actually am nice, haha. i am pretty uncomfortable in new social situations and i radiate standoffish nervous energy. i can’t do small talk and i’m too uncomfortable to talk about the things that really matter to me (for a variety of reasons).
based on my online persona, i’d say it’s the opposite? i think people would be surprised that i’m super judgy and pessimistic, haha, and i love to complain. i don’t even know how to get along with super joyful people in real life. it is a true challenge for me, particularly because my boyfriend’s family is a bunch of small-talking optimists, and i feel like the odd duckling that’s just wildly uncomfortable and squeezing myself into this box of like, pleasantries
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