WPSU's This I Believe

I believe in mental health awareness.

I believe that one cannot be physically healthy without being mentally healthy. Mental health has always been something I take very seriously. One’s emotions and mental stability can change their whole life, for better or for worse. And in doing that, it can change the lives of individuals around them.

I believe in party dresses.

My mother and I both use clothes to make a statement.

For 26 years, my mother, Margaret Simmons, worked as a high school home ec teacher. She can sew anything:  business suits, wedding dresses. She must have altered a hundred prom dresses over the years for her students who were not conventionally sized.

I believe in Jeopardy. Growing up, my family had a dinnertime routine. No matter what food we were eating or who was sitting around the kitchen table that night, we would always watch Jeopardy! at 7 o’clock. As Alex Trebek read the questions (or, as they’re known in Jeopardy terms, answers), we ate leftover lasagna and tried to remember facts about world geography and Shakespeare. The first person to shout out the correct answer was the winner.

I cry every day. My tears are tears of anguish but also tears of the most intense joy.

I believe in thank you notes. I believe in sending them and in receiving them. Absolutely for gifts – every gift REQUIRES written acknowledgement – but also for random acts of kindness or thoughtful behavior and for hospitality.

Ask anyone, “Hey, how are you doing?” and they will most likely respond, “Busy. I am SOOO busy. There is just too much going on.”

People are busy. Everyone is busy. 

Work. Play. Shopping. Recreation. Family. Cooking. Errands. Laundry. School. Housework. 

Social commitments. Yard work. Commuting. Volunteering.

I don’t know the type of person I would be if I were an only child, and honestly I don’t even want to imagine that version of myself. My older sister Isabel has taught me so much in my brief 19 years, both through her successes and her (occasional) mistakes. 

We weren’t the best of friends as children; my mom always tells me she was legitimately worried we would hurt each other in one of our epic brawls. My dad even started calling family game night “family fight night” because they would usually end with Isabel and me being sent to our rooms. 

I believe in the kindness of people. 

Many people have been kind to me here in State College over the past three months.

What would you wish for if you are going to stay in a foreign country for the first time by yourself? For me, I wanted to adapt to the new life as soon as possible and make some friends. 

Fortunately, I did that because of the kindness people offered to me.

The first day I arrived, my Chinese roommates, who I didn’t know before, asked whether I’d like to join their weekend trip to Cleveland.

I believe in high heels.

I can still remember prancing around the living room of my childhood apartment in my mother’s white satin stiletto sling backs. They were a gift from my father and she wore them for special occasions. When my mother took an afternoon nap, I quietly removed the shoes from their box, slid them over my small feet and stepped out across the parquet floor. I felt great. I couldn’t wait to grow up and wear heels every single day.

I believe in bravery, not perfection.

When I was growing up, I learned how to be brave at the lake in New Hampshire my family visited every summer. I would jump off swings, rocks and boats, soaking myself in the murky water. My siblings would watch in awe. I was the daredevil, the center of attention—and I loved it. At the lake, I possessed a kingdom of my own, and I determined that I would conquer the world.

I believe in storytelling and bringing attention to those who live outside the limelight.

In the summer of 2017, I collaborated with my great-aunt and godmother, Marie-Edith Douillard, who has lived in Paris for 40 years and works for a human rights organization called Amnesty International. She introduced me to two refugees and helped me create a short documentary that has since been successful at various international film festivals.

I believe in board games.

As a kid, I started with the basics like chess, Othello and Monopoly. As I got a little older, games like Stratego, Risk and Mastermind were added to my collection.

This essay originally aired on April 26, 2018.

I believe we must remember the past so it doesn’t repeat itself.

I believe in talking about important political issues in school.

School shapes children’s lives in a major way. School teaches children about the world around them, about how things work. So what better place to teach kids about politics than school?

This essay originally aired on Oct. 25, 2018.

I believe in a good cup of coffee.

I was about five years old when I brewed my first pot of coffee. I remember reaching for the red plastic container labeled Folgers, lifting the lid and appreciating its rich aroma.

I carefully counted the spoonfuls of Folgers, while my brother, who’s just a year older, measured the water. The counter the coffee pot sat on was barely reachable, but we made it work.

I believe we all have a story.

I grew up in a small town about 30 miles outside of Harrisburg. When I say small town, I mean we only had one high school with about 60 kids in each graduating class. We had one red light, one Sheetz, one grocery store and a few banks.

I believe in traveling alone at least once in your life.

I’ll always remember how I felt the morning of December 27, 2014. There were butterflies of excitement in my stomach as I found a window seat near the back of the German train car. I settled in and double-checked that my written itinerary was still in my pocket. The train began to leave the station. Once the pure rush of adrenaline wore off, a feeling of complete shock hit me.

What in the world was I doing? 

Was I prepared to travel through Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and England on my own for two weeks?

My dream had always been to play basketball in college. But during my junior year of high school, I got a severe concussion. In the months that followed, I went through concussion therapy, different drugs and steroids, and seven different doctors. By August 21, 2015, I was progressing well in therapy—so well that I was going to be cleared that day. I was in the car with my sister on my way to my very last appointment. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to play basketball again for my senior season, and then in college.

I believe in myself.

When I was a sophomore in college, I realized I wanted to be a nurse in the military. I had just gotten back from a medical clinic in Honduras and felt inspired—I wanted to travel and help others while doing it. I knew nothing about the military, but when I Googled “traveling nursing jobs,” the first thing that came up was the Air Force.

“Take one pint of water. Add a half-pound of sugar, the juice of 8 lemons and the zest of half of a lemon. Pour the water from one jug into the other several times. Strain through a clean napkin.”

I believe in the power of lemonade.

To most, the drink brings back childhood memories of hot summer days, family cookouts and catching a breeze outside.

But don’t get it twisted. The lemonade that has been quenching my thirst as a Black woman in the U.S. today is what’s being served up by the Queen herself, Mrs. Beyoncé Giselle Knowles Carter.

This essay originally aired on Feb. 2, 2017.  

I believe in fat. Not too long ago, I would have said, “I believe I’m fat.” But my mindset has shifted, because I’m in the midst of recovery. This is me speaking, not my eating disorder convincing me that my body is a worthless, loathsome shell.

This essay originally aired on Aug. 3, 2017.  

I believe in sharing food.

Growing up in Penns Valley, I became accustomed to a community that shared the fruits of its labor. Fresh produce was abundant due to the many farmers in the area, and neighbors shared recipes and baked dishes for friends in need.

I believe in music. Sweet melodies make me feel radiant and free.

I play the piano. As I’ve learned to play, my mom has been with me every step of the way. I remember her sitting next to 6-year-old me, sharing the same bench, the same music, as I progressed from playing single notes to mini-recitals.

My mom is a passionate classical music lover. Music takes both of us to another world.

In Mozart’s “Horn Sonata,” Mom and I are attending an extravagant royal ball.

This essay originally aired on Feb. 15, 2018.

When I was little, my mom warned me time and again that if I became nearsighted, I’d only have my bad habit of reading under my comforter with a tiny flashlight to blame. I didn’t listen because in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” there was no worrying about eye care. There was just traveling across the ocean through the eyes of an explorer and feeling page-long names of sea creatures swim past my fingertips. A whole bunch of things in that book were made up, but I loved it.

There are many things that define my life: my love of swimming and theatre, my desire to be with my friends at all times, my inclination to stay up late to finish a good book. My late nights, paired with early-morning workout sessions, mean I drink a lot of coffee, because I believe in waking up.

This essay originally aired on January 4, 2018.  

I believe teaching is the best profession in the whole world. I am myself a high school German teacher and have been so for more than twenty years. 

This essay originally aired on December 21, 2017.  

My paternal grandmother, Helen, was a frugal and reserved woman with dyed-red curly hair. She always wore a 1960s-style house coat, even into the 1990s. We visited occasionally and I played with a few antique toys in the sunroom while the grown-ups talked in the den.

Helen enjoyed drinking tea and, I’m told, favored a weak brew. When I began drinking tea in the fourth grade, my parents compared the sweet, weak liquid I sipped to Helen’s. She passed away that spring, almost a year after her husband.

I believe in libraries.

I was born in Colombia, a country where books were luxury items, public libraries were few and bookworms were considered arrogant. I grew up being shuffled from aunt to aunt and town to town while my mother was in the U.S., working to support us from a distance.

This essay originally aired on December 7, 2017.   

On a crisp day in October, I was on my daily walk through the Arboretum at Penn State. I had discovered my passion for photography there, and I was on a mission to photograph the roving gangs of chipmunks devouring the decorative pumpkins and gourds the Arboretum puts out at this time of year.

Suddenly, a stranger approached me. And immediately I thought, “Ugh. Go away. What do you want?” I thought about pulling out my cell phone to act busy. A gut, automatic reaction. 

This essay originally aired on April 12, 2018.  

Everyone has a hobby — a thing they do for fun to get away from work and the general grind of everyday life. For me, it’s golf. 

There’s something about the feeling of a well-struck 8-iron, about the sound of a ball rattling in the bottom of the cup, about the curve of a good tee-shot through the air, that makes everything else just go away. 

But golf is more than just a sport to me.