Ciao belli e belle…

Hello everyone! I’m Christine…

Greetings to Hons 201 and to anyone else who stumbles upon this blog!  My name is Christine Elyse Galotti – you can follow me on Twitter!  I am an animal LOVER and an undergraduate student at CUNY Hunter in New York City…
When I first entered Hunter College as a freshman in the Fall of 2010, I had dreams of pursuing a double major in English Literature and Spanish – as those two subjects were my forte in high school, having been voted Best Writer by my graduating class!  But as life would have it, my education at Hunter inspired different passions within me, ones which I never would have considered exploring prior to taking my first Women’s and Gender Studies class, with Professor DeLorenzo.  Suddenly, I became enchanted by the social sciences.  A career in Academia would enable one such lucky student of the world to explore the very questions she or he feels like asking, with research and funding and the opportunity to teach at the University level.  Since then, I have been focused on working towards one day earning my Ph.D., hopefully at the CUNY Graduate Centre here in Manhattan.  Currently I am working on an independent study supervised by Professor Chito-Childs, researching the projection on negative female stereotypes in reality television.

Often depicting women as angry, irrational beings with little to no control over their emotions.

I grew up the youngest of three girls in Suffolk County, New York on Long Island in a town called Lake Ronkonkoma – which also happens to be the very last stop on the Long Island Rail Road.  This time last year, I was commuting on that line – two hours there, two hours back – three days a week while balancing my restaurant job on the island.  Then one day, the universe magically clicked and I got a dorm at Hunter’s Brookdale campus on East 25th Street!  Actually, it required a bit more begging, letters, emails and phone calls than that…but it mostly boiled down to pure luck: the right time in the right place kind of thing.  Since then, I have not taken for granted the blessing it is to be able to live in Manhattan for such an affordable price – which, thankfully, has been significantly reduced by the generous assistance provided by the JFEW Eleanor Roosevelt Scholars Program.  It was through this incredible program that I was able to receive the opportunity to intern at New York City Council Member Letitia James‘s District Office in Council District 35 of Brooklyn this past summer 2012.  The experience of working in the field of public policy was an unforgettable one, to say the least.  I had fun, but learned that the office environment isn’t necessarily for me in the long run, if I can help it.

Great show…not my ideal reality, however.

Now I am working on my three majors, which are Sociology, Women’s and Gender Studies and Literature (through the Thomas Hunter Honors Program).  While it is my goal to graduate within four years (i.e. eight semesters), the more important thing is what I get out of my education, which hopefully will be something like [the ability to thoroughly grasp] knowledge and to somehow articulate that knowledge well, respectfully and accurately to the world.  And I am not so proud as to possibly believe that the world will one day ever be reading my writing as a basis for anything and/or if at all!   What I mean is that to be published leaves some kind of impression somewhere on someone, and that difference is significant.  It has transformative potentials for critics and advocates alike, which I have experienced first hand as the student and hope to one day reinforce as a voice of [some kind of] knowledge…
Paz y amor,
Christine

PS: On a personal note, I just got back from a two week adventure in Spain with my sister, Geri!  When I got home, I turned 20 years old and got my [first, but not last] tattoo!  It is a strawberry on my hip – because not only do I love The Beatles (i.e. “Strawberry Fields Forever”) but also I enjoy the fruit more so than the average human being.

“Living is easy with eyes closed…” ~John Lennon