And the Wheel of Fortune turns....

Its weird how fast things can change. As an Anthropology major, I have come to understand 'deep' time and how humans have only been on earth for a blip in time. My life is like an eye lash blowing in the wind or you could insert some other small thing in a big place reference. Last year, I was a girl lost. I was super confused about love, friends, and my own sexuality, but within the time span of a few months, I have gained such a conviction about life that has me on my rightful path. I still don't know exactly what that path is, but, I know I'm on it because I am learning and I don't feel like I'm fighting an upstream battle to get there. Things are falling in to place. I learned more about my personality and how I interact with people while I was in Australia. I ventured out and did something crazy when I went skinny dipping with a girlfriend of mine at the beach. I have kissed guys without contemplating a relationship. My old high school adviser who I am friends with has always told me to 'taste flavors', meaning to kiss a lot of frogs, and I used to have a mental block about it. I've finally learned that a kiss is not the end all be all. Actually I've learned that sex is the same way, but I'm going to be choosy about who I sleep with because I've also learned that the intimacy of sex lingers with you. I can absolutely see how easily it would be to give your heart away. If I didn't know my friend who I slept with so well... I could have been in serious trouble. He is absolutely not someone I want to be anything more that just friends with. So back to my list... I've learned that I'm capable of being caught up in lust...which is something I wasn't sure I could do. Honestly, for the longest time I was feeling like I would never feel any kind of spark. I say this because I have kissed guys and I never got swept up like I did with Greg. My friend Caitlynn says that now it will be easier for me to be intimate with someone else when the time comes. I'm pretty sure shes right.

These things may seem a bit teenager-ish, but I've kind of prolonged theses experiences and it was about time I grew up and joined the adult world...or well at least partially. I am 22. I'm excited about life. Whatever comes, I know that I can face it. With my hippy love for life and a smile, I will be me and that is enough.

V-Card Exchange rate

For years I have been talking to my girlfriends about how they lost their virginity and from their stories I had decided to wait to have sex until I was in a committed relationship. To me being in a committed relationship meant that I wouldn't be losing my V-card to a stranger and that I would feel comfortable and secure. I was planning on waiting. I have had opportunities to lose it but I never felt comfortable enough...till this weekend and no I'm not in a relationship. It happened with one of my best friends. I got drunk at a party and once I got taken home my friend asked to come over to hang out. I've known him since my first year in college and I lived with him for a few years. The last party we had at our apartment...we had almost kissed. So he showed up a little after I got home, and we talked about our curiosity for each other. We started kissing and then one thing led to another and there we are on the floor in my hallway. (I couldn't go to my room because I share a room. Also, everyone was asleep so there was only a small chance of getting caught.) After, I was completely shocked, but I was very happy that I had lost my virginity to someone I loved (as a friend) and who I felt completely comfortable with. I was lucky. I had a fun, exciting experience and I have no regrets. A couple nights later...we did it again sober. It was even better.

One's V-card varies in value for every girl. And, depending on the country you're from so does the exchange rate. I hope that girls today wait to have sex until they are with someone who treats them right and who will not be in and out of their life. Only cash in your V-Card if the exchange rate is right.

Modern Evolution and you

I have been thinking about evolution a lot lately, perhaps because I am taking an Introduction to Evolution class or perhaps because I am graduating this quarter and I've been thinking about how I've changed since starting college. Either way, I'm wondering in what ways are humans evolving today? Sure there are the physical ways such as lactose tolerance and sickle cell anemia, but I was thinking about the evolution of thought. We all change our thought processes from the time that we were infants to the period just before we pass away because we are always learning, but are these thoughts different from those that previous generations had? If so does this change of thought cause recent generations to act differently and if so is this considered a phenotype on which natural selection can act. Can the manifestations of our collective thoughts cause thought processes to evolve from generation to generation? I guess I'm wondering if thoughts can be a phenotype on which natural selection can act. If so, then what are the selection pressures that humans face? Of course there would be different selection pressures felt by different populations, but with the growing uniformity in culture, what pressures are felt by humans as a singular species?

Take technology for example. It is continuously adapting and in a way evolving because there are heavy selection pressures placed on the phenotypic/expressed variants that are produced by different engineers who's thoughts, like genes, dictated what the were to become. The ones that are best suited for the their environment succeed and get worked on further and the engineers who created the product pass on their thoughts to the next generation of engineers. Would the manifestation of thoughts, in this case technologies like the iPad, be considered heritable to the next generation of engineers? Natural selection doesn't act on individuals, but humans do evolve in their thoughts and that does correlate to how they act. Those actions in turn affect the next generation and how they think and then act in response to those thoughts. So is natural selection working on society as a whole? Thoughts being the genes and the action those thoughts create being the phenotype.

For example:

I am a fourth generation Mexican American. When I look at how my grandmother viewed marriage when she got married at the age of 17 and compare her thoughts to my mothers when she got married at 19, and then further compare them to my own now at the age of 22, I can see how their thoughts and actions have influenced my own views about marriage which directly resulted in why I did not marry at a younger age than I am now.
My grandmother married my grandpa because she wanted out of her house and my grandpa was the one that could give her that the quickest. My mother wanted a family of her own and so married my father because he asked her to marry him first. Of course there is love mixed into those equations which is a variable that I can't take into account because I don't think its something that evolves from generation to generation, but my point is that they had reasons to say yes to marriage excluding those of love. Now, I myself have heard these stories and their reasoning several times in my life and have concluded that what I want is to find a partner and am willing to wait to marry no matter what age this occurs or even if it occurs. Now what I'm wondering is whether or not my views on marriage are the result of my family's thoughts evolving from generation to generation...

You can say that my thoughts are different than theirs because we all grew up in different environments, but aren't our homes and social environments the manifestations of evolved thought?