#43: a 14 year old made me cry this past week

also a quick chat about feet (yes you read that right)

hi hi hi sisters ♡ anyone else go to the doctor this week and have them tell you that you have bunions, tailors bunions, AND hammer toes on both feet? or just me? cool cool cool, thats what I thought… which theres nothing to really do about any of that until it starts to get painful, so I just need to find some orthopedic insoles and start wearing wide shoes.

if you see someone walking around with an “extra wide” sign on them, know its just me and i’m only talking about my feet

beyond feet talk, I hope you guys had a good week. we are on heat wave #3 I think this week in new york, so thats fun… as much as I love a long day i’m ready for summer weather to be over!!

another newsletter that I have been reading for quite some time now is downtime by

Alisha Ramos

!! it was formally called Girls’ Night In if anyone is familiar with that. alisha has a paid version that gets you all weekly newsletters plus extra content each month featuring roundups, interviews, Q&A’s, personal updates from Alisha, mini-essays, etc.

I personally enjoy the free version because if I were to pay for every substack i’m subscribed to I would be paying SO. MUCH. MONEY. each month.

BUT the weekly free emails she sends are so great! they are full of fun recs, fashion deep dives, and more!

movies: for our book-to-movie club we read call me by your name and watched the movie this week! we even had different peach snacks- iykyk- to set the scene ;)

OH. MY. GOSH. if I can convince ANY of you to do ANYTHING, I hope it is to convince you to see a new movie called sing sing. it is about a correctional facility located 30 min north of nyc, the facility itself is called sing sing. the inmates at this facility created a theater group to help them process their emotions and to escape the reality of being in prison. the movie stars previously incarcerated inmates from sing sing who were part of this theater group, alongside coleman domingo. and HOLY. SHIT. this movie slapped me across the face. it was so beautiful and just a movie that shows humanity in the purest form. I went to the screening that had a Q&A afterwards with two of the stars of the movie- two of the previously incarcerated inmates, and the Q&A was maybe even more emotional than the movie itself. every single person who worked on the film was paid the same amount. from coleman domingo to the other actors to wardrobe. EVERYONE. it was also filmed at the facility, which I could imagine is incredibly triggering for those who were released. but of this one of the stars said “I will go through anything if it betters hundreds or thousands” like AREYOUKIDDINGME?!?!?! I went up to him after to thank him and I was just sobbing, I could barely say my name, but he gave me the sweetest hug. it is a truly SPECIAL movie

okay moving on. studio ghibli is releasing their films back in theaters this summer so i went to see princess mononoke with bjørn who was in town this weekend from his internship in SF this summer. it was very beautiful to see on the big screen. we also watched once upon a time in hollywood and I quite enjoyed it. I think the last 15 min or so were very intense, but I thought it was a very good film (Im not hard to please, I give just about every movie 3 stars haha). and lastly for movie church we watched the 1997 rodgers and hammerstein cinderella featuring brandy. talk about a throwback !!

in my mind: there is a new illinois law that mandates influencers to compensate child participants !! I think this is so wonderful and I hope that more states adopt this, I think its easy to see when influencers exploit their children for views and clout. they deserve to be compensated!

for my internship this summer, which I really have enjoyed, I have been teaching incoming 9th graders about the criminal legal system. which can already be such a complicated topic to teach in law school, but when you get 28 inquisitive teenagers, getting through each day becomes a FEAT. the organization that the program is through is called legal outreach. for the month of july, from 9 am to 4 pm we are in a law school teaching these kids. they have to apply to get into the program and they come each and every day in business professional clothing. nothing is taken lightly. and with that comes the expectation that these kids act well behaved and are respectful of one another and the space that they are in. for the most part our kids are truly terrific, but 21 of the 28 of them know each other from their middle school, so its VERY chatty and rambunctious and one kid in particular has been a real bitch if I do say so myself. now dont look at me like that, if you met her and had to deal with her, youd be saying the same thing!!

each day she would test our patience by using her phone when we told everyone else to already have them away. she would talk over her classmates while they were asking questions. she was incredibly disrespectful to us and her peers; even calling them stupid and dumb, which is just not acceptable behavior. ESPECIALLY considering since all of this is an OPTIONAL program that is only bettering them for participating in. that being said, I found myself at the place of disciplining her each and every time. which got to the point of absolutely wearing me down and caused me to break down one day at work. I dont like feeling like the bad mean teacher, but she was truly just not respectful of anyone around her. and we had already sent out emails to her dad and our director had even talked to her multiple times, but at the end of the day we had to move her to a different location for the program and I hope that she can thrive there.

all that being said, yes a 14 year old made me cry. and once she was gone, some of the other kids came up to be and apologized for that one girl’s behavior and they were saying “ms. kaitlynn we are so sorry for how she treated you. we were all talking about it in our group chat and we felt so bad” which made me feel better because I was truly thinking that I was hated by EVERYONE when in reality it was just one student that was being a bad apple.

did I spiral into thinking I was going to be suited as a parent because I couldnt handle a mean teenager, yes yes I did. and I will add that my sister and I were nearly perfect teenagers. we rarely spoke back to our parents and outside the home we were truly SO respectful of adults and our classmates and never got in trouble. so god, if youre out there, I would love to have a teenager like me, cause I dont know if I can handle anything else.

so last week was rough, but truly our kiddos are so nice and kind and so so so inquisitive. they ask so many questions and are so curious and want to do good!! yes they are 13/14 year olds and can be crazy, they really are good kids. all so kind and respectful and just so funny as well. they crack us up! the internship is really going well, its a lot and one I dont know if I would do again if I had to go back into time, but thats not because of the internship itself, but maybe more so i’m figuring out what I want in the future more and idk how this aligns. BUT it wont hurt to have done it.

tiktok: niche hades town joke; harry styles is BACK; I really love this video that debunks the rumor that 50% of marriages end in divorce

pinterest: anyone else love this song as a kid?; necessary kitchen wallpaper; adorable accessory for a pan

instagram: another bio-pic for timmy?!?!; starting a go-fund-me so I can go to london to get a tattoo of my pooh bear; I ♡ girlhood

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LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!! thanks so much for reading and following along. please share with your friends, we are at 82 subscribers, so only 18 more to go to hit my goal of 100! you can help with that by sharing with the people you know ;) but if you dont and all you do is read and like and comment on this, i’m so happy and grateful for that as well ♡ have a great week!