Personal Biography: Tell a story about yourself that describes you and your “beingness”.

I'm trying to decide which of these two papers to use for my history class personal bio. Thoughts?

Option A:
My plan from when I was a freshmen in high school in Maine was to go to Wheelock College in Boston as a psychology major with a theater minor. I wanted to graduate and continue on to get my doctorate degree. I applied to six colleges, four in Boston and two in Maine, and was accepted two of each, one being Wheelock. I paid my $300 deposit and began my preparations. I graduated with a 3.7 GPA. Wheelock gave me a fantastic financial aid package, including a $17,000 merit scholarship, the highest the college offers. Since it is a private school and my parents are below the poverty line I was able to get many other scholarships and loans from both Wheelock College, the state of Maine, and the federal government. The number of scholarships and loans offered to me from all sources totaled just over $38,000. This left me just under $5,000 short of making it to school. My next course of action was to attempt to get a private loan. I knew that my parents would be unable to cosign a loan for me and due to the fact that I did not have any credit, I knew that I would be unable to get a loan as an individual. I talked to many family members and friends and a few even attempted to cosign for me. Any that I asked either could not financially handle the burden or were denied by the loan company. After four to five months of searching and with only three weeks left until Wheelock began their semester, I had run out of options. Rather than attempt to get the financial aid for a different school that I had been accepted to, I opted to apply to Central Maine Community College, which I knew that my financial aid and loans would be able to cover. I applied and attempted to switch over my financial aid information and packed all my items to bring to my sister’s house, where I would stay until I could get signed up for classes. I arrived at my sister’s and the same day attempted to sign up for classes. They told me that I had never filled out the FAFSFA for them and could not sign up for classes until I did. I had forgotten to hit a button verifying the form. After missing my first four classes, I was finally enrolled. I went to CMCC for a semester and began attempting, again, to work out my financials for Wheelock, which I was unable to do. Once that became apparent, I set my sights on Boise State University. Getting to BSU also proved to be difficult. While figuring out the logistics, I set up a backup plan at a community college in Boise, knowing that once I gained residency, school would be $10,000 cheaper. As you can tell, I did not have to attend the community college and my goals have stayed the same.

Option B:
When I was young I had a lot of nicknames. Most of them were derived from my first name, Kymberly. Due to the spelling and the fact that I had four older siblings and two strangely creative parents, the nicknames evolved more than I could ever list. Each of my siblings had a nickname for me. My three sisters would all call me cute nicknames, usually referencing my size (midget, Jiminy Cricket, and munchkin) and my brother would call me an annoying nickname that would make me mad (Kymber. Although I called him Mar-Kiss, so we were even). These nicknames have always had a strange way of defining me. Different stages of my life came with different nicknames. I actually went through three different ways of spelling “Kymmy” before I was in high school, one of them Kimmi, which confused everyone who had trouble with the fact that my name had two Y’s to begin with. I continued to evolve through my nickname phases until I was at my oldest sister Katrina’s house. Katrina had always called me munchkin and, because of that, her girlfriend and her roommate had always called me munchkin as well. Her roommate was playing with a label maker and made a label that said “munchkym” and put it on me. From that day onward, I had a new nickname, and it is the only nickname (aside from Kym, which is just easier to say) that has stuck. I use this nickname mostly for online purposes now. I have taken the username on every forum and social networking website available. I am most well-known as “themunchkym” on YouTube, where I regularly make videos and have more than 3,000 subscribers. The picture included is myself holding up a small painting made by a viewer of mine, and it is my favorite thing that I have ever received from a subscriber. Well, that and my Platform 9 3/4 poster.

The #Kympaign Part II

Are you READY?
It's been a fantastic relaxing month, but now it's November and it is just about my time to run again!

For those of you who don't know my reasoning, this is what's up:
I was planning to attend Wheelock College in Boston this semester.
However, less than a month before I was to go, I discovered I needed a cosigner for loans and I had no one who was able to do that. So, I couldn't go.
Rather than take a break, I came to Central Maine Community College.
Now I'm trying to get to another school (one that I will like better and is more challenging, most likely Boise State) but I am currently completely without income, despite my UNYIELDING efforts to get a job.

My YouTube story: I had been watching for about a year and a half and suddenly began thinking "No one here actually knows who I am." so I decided to fix it!
I began making videos on September 11th, 2010 and I have made more than 85 videos on mine and other pages.
I have been a regular member in two collab channels as well as numerous collab videos.
I am a friend and member of #Grannyyy, and I was even featured on Michael Buckley's Buck Factor.
In June I was made a YouTube partner, something I am extremely proud of. I'm pretty much expecting to make videos forever.

The Kympaign Plan: Save your earned votes! If we save them until the end of the month, then people won't know exactly where we are in the competition. Vote EVERY DAY but keep those precious earned votes!

Man, I'm long winded. I'm proud of you for making it this long in this spiel!
I hope you consider me a good candidate!
-Kym, aka themunchkym

I Am Happy.

I feel like being confident is wrong.
Everyone's goal is to be confident. Everyone. What you want is to be happy about where you are in life.
You want to have things to aspire to while still liking how things are.
You want to look in the mirror and smile because you know you're beautiful.
But the truth is that most people don't.
And that is the norm.
So when I'm confident about who I am, people see it as being cocky.
When I proudly say that I rewatch my old videos because I think I'm funny, people find me strange.
When I have trouble relating to those who hate editing because they hate how they look and hate their voice, I'm the one that no one understands.
When I am proud of nails I've painted or a poem I've written and repeatedly mention it, people unfollow or unfriend saying that I was "annoying" and "self promoting". I really just love what I do and want to share it with the world.
I'm the one that's disliked because I like who I am.

And it hurts.

I'm sorry that I'm happy.
I'm sorry that I feel beautiful.
I'm sorry that I think I'm funny.
I'm sorry that I know I'm good at schoolwork.

I'm sorry that you aren't like me.
I wish you were.

I hope that one day you can love yourself like I love myself.
I hope that one day you can love yourself like I love you.

My Opinion On SlashFiction

I'm going to keep this brief, but I just had some things I needed to get out.

Because of the recent increase in #Grannyyy slashfic, I felt I should tell you WHY I am opposed to it.

SlashFiction, by definition, is creepy. However, it is an art in some way and those who want to partake are welcome to! But I feel it should be done with characters. Characters cannot be hurt by slashfiction or made uncomfortable. However, people can.

It is because of this opinion that I think that #Grannyyy members should have to give approval for SlashFic before it is written. I do not think that it is right to just assume that people will be okay with it or, even worse, not care if they are okay with it or not.

I don't care if GrannyyySlashFic is written. I do care if it is written about unwilling participants.

Banners and Backgrounds!

Since becoming partnered I decided that my channel was in need of a makeover. So I held a contest!
I asked my viewers to send in banners and backgrounds that they had made and I got some fantastic submissions! In no particular order, here they are.
(Note: I am only including the banners because there were only four backgrounds and three of them came with banners.)

Adrelinen:

Christina:

Josh:

Swaneet:

Christina:

Psaul:

Kimber:

And the winner! Sama!

Thank you all! They look fantastic. :)

Should Evolution Be Taught in Schools?

I was watching my normal YouTube subscriptions today and one came up by a very wonderfully brilliant girl who has very strong opinions and tackles controversial world issues. This was a video response to an interview in which every Miss America candidate was asked the question "Should evolution be taught in schools?"
Now, Miss America candidates have been known to say some pretty dumb things. Miss Teen South Carolina, for example.

So, we know that slip ups are constantly being made, and it is a lot of pressure. But this is a completely different setting than the normal spur of the moment questions in front of a live audience. These girls are being asked in a closed environment in front of just a camera and probably a few crew members, and yet they still manage to blow me away with their not-thought-though answers. Most of them immediately went to the safe answer of "Yes, evolution should be taught, but so should religion. They should be able to see both sides and choose for themselves."
However, this statement has quite a few issues with it. The first and most important one to me is the close-mindedness many of them show towards religion. Although they say that all should be taught, this is a very clouded position to hold. When you say "all" do you really mean all? You mean every form of religion available and practiced? Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, ect? And what about the religions seen as madness by most, for example the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? (And, yes, this does exist. Google it.) Do you also want to include scientific theories that are considered nonsensical? For example, the belief that we live in a computer game. There are people (usually considered to be conspiracy theorists) who believe that we are in a simulated world. Are you suggesting that we teach this as well? On a less ridiculous scale, should hypnotism (seen both as fact and as made-up) be taught in schools?
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that we should not be teaching religion as fact in any public school setting. It doesn't matter what you believe, school is paid for by the state and we all know that church and state are separate. Another issue with that statement is the assumption that there are two sides to the argument. There are infinite opinions, so you can't limit the "sides" to just creationism and evolution.
I suppose the next problem to look at is the fact that this is a question at all. What is taught in school is NOT a moral issue and beliefs such as religion should never be brought up. Never. And before anyone goes thinking "Oh, well evolution is a theory and therefore not fact," to you I say, yes. So is gravity. Everything is a theory. That's science.
There were a few quotes that stood out to me. For example, Miss Indiana said

I think we should leave that up to the government. I'm not sure. I think a lot of people would have issues if evolution was taught in school, I think we should just leave that out of the equation.

This is just... Leave it out of the equation? Leave the entirety of the evolutionary theory, including natural selection which is very important for understanding animal and human behaviors, out of the equation? Or do you just mean you don't want to give an answer that will reflect negatively on you as a Miss America candidate? And might I point out that our government is controlled entirely by people like you. Yes, you do trust them to take care of your country and make certain decisions so you don't have to, but that doesn't mean you should hold no opinion on it!
Now, Miss Kentucky really blew me away, here.

I honestly don't think you can ever have too much knowledge on any subject. That's my personal view, but I do feel that evolution shouldn't be taught in school just because there's so many different views on it. So many different definitions on it. Like, how do you teach a child the true meaning of evolution when so many different cultures have their different beliefs. Sciences have their different theories. It's just not a good subject that I feel everyone will agree on in classrooms when kids come from all different backgrounds, different cultures, different beliefs so I just personally don't think it's a good topic for a school subject. At all.

So what you're saying is that you can't ever learn too much, but it's better if you didn't learn things that could be controversial. Do I even have to explain why that makes no sense?

The more learning you can get, the more educated you are and the more educated you are the better you come off.

Oh, alright Miss Massachusetts. So it's all about how others perceive you, then? I see.
I have like 30 good quotes I could reference and discuss, but... I just don't want to. All I know is that my kids will certainly be learning about evolution and they'd better not be taught religion in any public school unless as an elective that they chose in an unbiased learning environment. There are churches and private schools for religious discussions and preachings. I'd prefer the lines didn't cross.

Video in question:
Parody video by ZOMGitsCriss (note: I did not watch this until after writing this blog as I did not want other opinions to vary my reaction) :

Stressed Out - PEDM IX

Fourth grade Kym was stressed out. But I’m pretty sure this poem was actually written in third grade because that’s when we moved, my sister moved, my other sister came out, and my big sister from Big Brothers/Big Sisters moved away.
So, yeah.
Here is a low quality little-kid-Kym poem that makes little sense. It is the epitome of telling, not showing.


Stressed Out

That’s it!
I can’t take it any more!
This is just too much!

I’m a mouse
hiding from a cat.

My sister is moving to Georgia,
I’ve got to pack, we’re moving.

I’m a rabbit,
sprinting away from a fox.

I’m going to scream!
My life’s too hard.