Things About MagnoliaDiva

I got the idea to do this from NerdGirl and Facebook.

1. I am a news nerd (I read 3 or more newspapers a day and scan others online). I also can watch the news for hours on television.

2. I secretly want to be a professional photographer (photojournalist and sports photography) or a investigative journalist/reporter.

3. I have three pet peeves: lying (UGH), staring (if you look that hard, SPEAK for crying out loud) and popping gum (just plain rude….NO ONE wants to hear what is going on in  your mouth…..No, we don’t…..really!).

4. I grew up in a two-parent home with a much older brother (8.5 years older) and sister (12 years older) and we ate dinner as a family every day, with whoever was home (seeing that my siblings are much older, some of them were off in school as I got older). So um, yeah…no one can tell me that I was planned……….WHATEVER!I KNOW I wasn’t! LOL….

5. I literally grew up on a college campus (Jackson State University) because my parents worked there and NEVER had a summer where I wasn’t in a summer program, working or taking part in practices for extra curricular activities (in other words, my parents never let me have in idle summer….BOOOOOOOOO!). Of course now, I appreciate EVERY MINUTE of those summer programs and “village” raising!

6. I play the piano (mainly classical) and organ (no, they are not the same play) and took weekly lessons from the age of 4 until I was 17. I cannot play by ear, but I sightread very well.

7. I am one of a few (very few) Delta’s in my family (others mainly via marriage). My Mom, sister, and a host of aunts and cousins are all AKAs.

8. Earth, Wind & Fire and Mint Condition are my all-time favorite bands. I love GOOD music.

9. I am an 80s rap head (minus the west-coast gansta rap). I love Run DMC, M C Lyte, etc.

10. I was born in the mid-west (Hoosier baby), raised in the deep south (Mississippi) and now reside in the mid-atlantic area of the US.

11. I am really an introvert……no, really…..I am….

12. I have been secretly called “The RainWoman” because I tend to know little facts about useless stuff (blame that on the newspaper reading)….LOL.

13. I am a STAUNCH manners and etiquette person…..those who know me best can attest to this! LOL..

14. I think that there is so much to be learned from people from other cultures, countries, and backgrounds. Diversity isnt’ just a buzzword for me…..

15. I suffer from ulcerative colitis (a form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease) and there is no cure. It is an auto-immune disease that attacks your colon and immune system. There are no REAL know causes and no current cure. Google it to find out more….

16. I am a Christian and try to live my life, daily, as I should from His teachings, but some of ya’ll make it REAL HARD ……………LOL!!!

17. I am a die-hard sports fan…….I subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket and will apply a hurting on someone if they change the station when I am watching my teams play (no joke)…

18. I fell in love with volleyball, by accident, in junior high. We were in study hall with a mean teacher and an announcement came over the intercom for any women interested in playing volleyball to report to the gym. ALL OF US left out of the room (LOL). I ended up playing, for real, LOVED IT and played for 2 years! I still like playing beach volleyball, when I get a change (SPIKE!).

19. I am very interested in Web 2.0 and its tools and how they impact our daily lives….(there it is…..the nerd coming back out).

20. I am an engineer, by educational training (BS and MSEE), and am a techy to the core! Yes, I am an engineer, but NO, I WILL NOT FIX YOUR COMPUTER!! Call a technician! LOL….. Yes, I went to school and earned an engineering degree, but they don’t teach us how to FIX those things…..they teach us how to DESIGN THEM!! There is a difference, people!

21. I HATED, HATED, HATED being tall growing up (I was 5’6″ in the 6th grade)! I grew to 5’10” by the 10th grade. As I got older, I learned to LOVE it.  Now, I wish I was about 2″ taller…….no kidding. I LOVE being tall.

22. I love being challenged! I guess my parents and I had that love/hate thing going on when I growing up (LOL)!

23. I love my siblings more than they know…..we fight like cats and dogs and then play like puppies and kittens when it’s all over! LOL!

24.  I am afraid of heights. BUT, I have to have the window seat on airplanes. I can’t walk along the glass  half-walls at malls on the upper floors (where you can look down). I get light-headed.

25. I am DEATHLY afraid of guns……..can’t stand to be near them and

shake if I get close to one. I just need to go to a shooting range and get this all over with (the fear, that is…).

26. I love lemons in my tea and LOVE homemade lemonade, but don’t like lemons pastries and desserts and other lemon stuff (lemon pound cake, lemon tarts, pie, etc.).

27. I used to want to be a medical researcher (cardiologist doing research on non-invasive methods for heart surgery). That was until I took the MCAT……I stayed in engineering! LOL….

28. I used to sneak and eat the kids’ Tylenol that had the orange flavor. I thought it tasted good when Iwas a kid and would pull the tall chair in the kitchen up to the fridge and get in the cabinet and pop them like candy. Thank you for God’s grace and mercy because I should be DEAD after that…..

29. I wish people would stop relying on things of the past as an excuse to not do NOW.

30. I never realized how blessed I was being raised in Jackson and having a “village” raise me and look out for me when my blood relatives weren’t around.

31. Both of my parents hold PhDs. They actually had me when they were in their PhD programs (see #4). My Mom told my sister that she was preganant and my sister promptly told her, “That is impossible! We can’t AFFORD another child in this house!” because they were living on graduate stipends with 2 kids! LOL….. My sister, I tell ya….she’s a funny woman (back to this one in a sec……).

32. I thought my brother and sister hated me growing up because they never wanted me around them, in their rooms, etc. It wasn’t until I got to college they they “liked  me” (in my eyes)….

33. I was  an 80s music Night Tracks JUNKIE in junior high and high school! We had cable but the parentals REFUSED to pay for a cable box, so our cable went 2-13 (until cable-ready TVs came out). So, WTBS (now TNT) it was on Friday nights! Duran Duran, Brian Adams, White Lion, etc……..yeah, I was an 80s pop girl!

34. I love Faith Hill and her music. Yeah, I said it! We are Mississippi Girls!

35. I am a crier………..I am very emotional….

36. My favorite numbers are 9, 16 and 34.

37. I’m very observant…I don’t miss much. I may not say anything about what I see or have seen, but I am VERY observant.

38. I used to be a TERRIBLE pack rat. Kept notes from undergrad and grad school…..just threw them away last year.

39. I hate designer advertising. Like BeBe on t-shirts, the big ‘C’s on Coach bags, etc. I like A LOT of their stuff, but I refuse to be a walking advertisement. I purchase items because I like them and they are usually of good quality and will last, but that whole walking advertisement stuff………not me, kid…..

40. I hate pretentiousness. Who cares about where you live, how much money you make and where you work and what kind of car you drive?! No, really?! When we die, God isn’t going to ask those questions.

You Know What Happens When You Assume

Never judge a book by its cover. Never assume you know someone’s life and background without KNOWING them. And never………EVER assume that all women and black people are the same.

I am a nerd and a geek. No qualms about it. LOVE it. I am a gadget queen and will talk you under a table about sports. I am not your “typical” female. Don’t get it twisted, though. I am a heterosexual MARRIED female. That other side is not my team. It may be yours, but hey, do you. Not my role and not in agreement with that.

My career is in a technical and strategic role. Sad to say, I am used to being the only female and/or the only black in offices, meetings at work, etc. It is 2008 and I am still getting second-guessed on my abilities because I graduated from two HBCUs (if you don’t know, go Google it), looked at as being the admin at an office (get your own dang coffee and take your own minutes!) and rarely presumed to be an active, knowledgeable participant in the meeting that is about to start. Yeah, I hold an undergraduate and graduate (thesis-option) degree in electrical engineering and an MBA in finance. Yet, people come still have this preconceived notion that I am the admin or I must be the note-taker for the meetings or I am the “MS Office” guru (definitely not MS Excel because that requires me being analytical and knowing something and gee, this black girl couldn’t know that!). NOT!

I chose to go into engineering because of my LOVE of math and science and I am very analytical. I LOVE the combination of technology, policy and strategy and law. That is my passion. I love being a nerd and learning new things. But the reality is there are very few of us (female and blacks) who are going into engineering. Articles have shown that younger kids view engineering as pocket-protector having, coke-bottle glasses wearing, Urkle-looking folks.

Just a rant for the day….

Black in America – Part A

So, I watched part of this show last night (I TIVO’d it so I can watch it, IN FULL, with hubby so we and our families can talk about this later). The part I saw (the first 30 minutes or so)…they weren’t saying anything NEW. I felt like I was watching a re-run of our life’s experiences. It could use some work, though. <- more on that in another post.

So, here is my PERSONAL take on being Black in America. I’ll start with the education part.

I was born in the midwest, and raised in a two-parent home in the deep south. BOTH of my parents are educators (they both hold doctorate degrees). I have an older sister and an older brother. My siblings and I were never told we had to go to college, but always knew it was something we wanted to do. I was, basically, raised in education. Like I said, my parents taught on the college level and both hold doctorates.

Education has been the foundation of my family for as long as I can remember. I never had blood relatives in the state where I was raised, but had a HOST of extended family that would praise you when you did well, chastise you when you didn’t and ALWAYS kept an eye on you. This extended family would give you contacts when you went out of town, KNEW what you liked to do and would keep you in tune with those things and ALWAYS kept an eye on you (notice a pattern here?? It does take a village).

Everything around me was education from the people I was raised around to the house I grew up in. Whenever I would ask my parents what something was, they were QUICK to tell me to, first, spell it then go look it up in the dictionary or the set of 1964 encyclopedias in the study. Notice I said study. We had a room with two small built-in bookcases that were full of books (mainly, textbooks and adult study books). The mailman would CRACK on us saying that we received more mail than the entire street, combined, due to all of the magazines that would come to the house. EVERY morning, my parents would read the newspaper (Mom would sit at the table and get a kick out of the comics, too!). I once questioned a book that my Dad was reading that TOTALLY was against anything we believed in. I asked him WHY he was reading it. He quickly told me, “You must understand how the other side thinks and read what they believe in. Otherwise, you can never defeat them.” Can you say LIGHT BULB moment. Whenever we would mispronounce a word, our mother was QUICK to correct us and make us say it slow so that we COULD pronounce it correctly (our Mom was also a speech pathologist). For the longest, I couldn’t say AINT because “that word is not in the dictionary” (yeah, I am telling my age now). See what I mean about the HOUSE being educational?

I could NEVER go home alone after school while in elementary school. I was ALWAYS either picked up by my father and taken home or I took the school bus to the campus where they worked and stayed there until one of them got off work. Best believe that I wasn’t sitting idle. I was either told to go to the library and read, run errands for them on campus (hey, isn’t that child labor and illegal?! LOL) or I sat in one of the empty classrooms and read. I, also, don’t remember having an idle summer. EVERY summer of my life was occupied with summer programs of some sort.

By the time I made it junior high school, I became involved in school activities that allowed me to participate in summer camps (yearbook, drill team, choir, etc.). Again, NEVER an idle summer to sit and watch TV all day.

When I entered high school, I had cheerleader practice and camps every summer and a part-time job in the latter years. Again, never an idle summer.

In high school, it came down to college choices and schools began to write, I began to talk to others about their schools, Mom and Dad, big sister and big brother all gave me their opinions of their schools, etc. I knew I loved math and science. I have ALWAYS been VERY analytical. I am NOT a huge fan of writing (not my forte’). Engineering was the first thing that came to mind when choosing a college major due to my mathematical strengths. When I started looking at colleges, I knew I wasn’t ready for a BIG CITY nor was a ready for a huge school (10000+). I applied to both HBCUs and majority schools. I actually received a substantial scholarship to SMU. I started leaning toward going there because of the money I received, but my Mom and Dad knew (don’t they always know?!) that I should look at all of the schools equally, that I applied to. When it came to decision time, my Mom just FLAT out asked where did I want to go. I told her where, but that they didn’t offer any money. My Mom and Dad said if that is where I want to go, they’d find the money and I’d just better not go there and “mess up”.

That leads to ANOTHER education-related topic. Priorities. My parents’ priorities were to educate their three children. THAT is where their money went. Yes, they could have lived in a bigger house and driven nicer cars, but they socked away money for their childrens’ education. Now, in this day and time, how many parents can say that they live in a smaller place or drive a smaller car for the sacrifice of their children? That is debatable…..

My siblings and I are all college graduates with post-baccalaureate education. I am VERY proud of that and have no problem telling the world. I know my situation was different, but didn’t know HOW different it was until later in life (early 30s) because all I ever knew was education in our house. It was the norm. My parents never directly stated that we had to do good in school and go to college. It was understood, though.

I remember once I asked my Mom and Dad for money if I made X number of A’s. I was told, “I am not going to reward you for doing what you should be doing as a child living in this house”. Nuff said. Again, education was understood.

I am now married to an educator. His parents were also educators (oh, that was SO not intentional). We are both public school products and believe in the public school system. Yeah, here we go, again! LOL.

So, education for our house is a given, not an option.

Maryland should take note of this

Oh, can you say, you and your child at the wrong/non-zoned school have officially been put on BLAST in two school districts in Mississippi?! I LOVE IT! Read the article here.

WHY do I love it? I am a taxpaying citizen of Maryland and I have MAJOR issues with non-Maryland non-tax-paying folks using Maryland resources on my dime, be it health care, schools, etc.

Maybe some other school districts in our area should take note and put their violaters on BLAST, too. Hmmmmm.

Thoughts, comments, etc.?