About me June 7, 2008

The INSIDER’S GUIDE TO COLLEGE is the serious, professional side of me. In the last 8 years I have worked in higher education, I’ve ascertained the foundation of the space between the successful and struggling students is access to, and understanding of, information. Campus communities are rich with pamphlets, brochures, websites, and social networking links that are intended to answer the myriad of questions students, parents, and families pose to a university. Families who have learned to navigate the system pass the information to each other and the knowledge often spreads like branches of a tree. But that may be where it ends. My professional passion is make sure you understand the university so you and your student can successfully tap into the resources the exorbitant tuition fees fund. I will be prompted to post topics based on my frustration with consistent misinformation, but am also happy to answer any questions you’d like to email me at: insidersguidetocollege@gmail.com

THE COCONUT DIARIES blog is the uncensored part of me. The squirrel that’s just trying to get a nut. The pieces of me that are good, bad, funny, and reveal my persistent, incurable inattention to detail that exercises itself in my missing obvious social cues. Why the title? Well, someone I respected and loved in my adolescence pulled me aside to say, “Us coconuts need to stick together!” He later explained that, like us, a coconut was brown on the outside and white on the inside. Although I don’t consider myself “white on the inside”, there was an indescribable comfort in knowing that I was not alone. I wasn’t the only one who’d grown up with mostly white friends. The only one who felt a constant tug between cultures that left me “too white” for this or “too black” for that. This is me in a blog, living my life the best way I know how, and painting my own silver lining on the clouds so that someone else might discover, in this vast Internet connection, that they are also not alone.

…And because stories about the weird guys I’ve dated, the random things that skate through my mind, and the countless ways I make a fool of myself are funny.