This semester is ending with a bang — or at least a few knocked over trees.

With the storms this weekend comes the light at the end of the tunnel — for many of my friends, that means a graduation, or in my case and many others, preparations for graduation.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who read my article and enjoyed it, you helped keep me going through my weird bouts of writer’s block.

And those of you who found my article offensive and awful…well, I don’t see you putting your soul on a piece of paper for all the world to see. So I don’t really care.

I’ve discovered a lot about myself and how I perceive the world to be by writing this column. I’ve come to grips about who I am and who I want to become.

If you ask me what that is exactly, I can’t tell you in simple terms. Just know that it’s been thoroughly more organized in the chaotic depths of my mind.

This column would have been a much more thought out and sincere “so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night” to all of my faithful readers, but watching YouTube videos of Disney songs just seemed so much more appealing.

And with that I leave you with a piece of advice: being a creative mind is a challenging, frustrating, engaging and wonderful thing. Embrace it. Be it. Be who you want to be and not what others expect.

Add in a sprinkle of “bleeding heart syndrome” and you have a formula for me.

One of my strangest and most irrational fears growing up was to be that woman who would receive an engagement ring, but never a marriage.

You know the story: boy meets girl, boy asks girl to marry him, 20 odd years pass … still no marriage.

I see it on TV and in real life all the time, some of these people even raise children together and send them off to college without ever truly “sealing the deal” or “tying the knot.”

The engagement stage is like being 20 years old — this weird, limbo-esque stage in your life where you’ve taken a huge step towards adulthood and yet nothing’s happening. It’s like everything is different and yet everything is the same.

During an engagement, all sorts of emotions are afloat: some people are ecstatic, some are terrified after the initial euphoria wears off, some are indifferent. For a lot of people, an engagement is something that occurs because it’s “time” to do so. If I were a girl who knew that my significant other only proposed because it was “time” to do so, I would not be happy at all.

I feel that if someone wants to marry me, they need to want to instead of feeling obligated by society to get hitched.

Maybe that’s why so many men propose to their lady friends and end up just being engaged for decades.

This must be the way I feel. I know plenty of girls who got engaged and are well on their way to having their weddings. I, however, haven’t done any wedding planning and I’ve been engaged for two months.

The neurotic, irrational side of me is saying that I need to start planning if I ever want to be a Mrs. but I’m just too lazy to pick out the little nitpicky details and truth be told, I don’t want a wedding.

But what would happen if I did become one of those women who never get married but will have a huge rock on their left hand? That would be torture for me. I’m the type of gal that needs things set in stone, if you get my drift.

I have been watching “Say Yes to the Dress” obsessively. I think I’ve exhausted every single episode on Netflix.

Aside from obsessive TV watching, I have been sitting on my butt every day as opposed to working out and trying to look perfect for my wedding. I wouldn’t say I’m not the marrying type, I totally am, maybe I’m just not the type to want a wedding.

I just want a big party with a burrito bar and a lot of popcorn. Boxed wine and cheap beer will also flow at this party.

If all else fails, I am enough of a crazy animal lover that I will never be lonely. I will be surrounded by 86 cats that will probably eat my face when I die because nobody will have noticed.

No, no, no, no. I can’t have these kind of thoughts. I’m already awkward and strange enough as it is, if I became a crazy cat lady I’d be fulfilling some kind of faux-prophecy.

I found a man who had enough courage and clout to ask me to marry him; despite my lack of Kool-Aid-making abilities and complete obliviousness regarding the word “dive-bomb” (I said bomb-dive for a very long time before someone corrected me).

And if I can charm someone enough to make them want to spend the rest of their life with me, then there is hope for all the currently single, socially-awkward babes out there.

The other night at Wal-Mart I noticed an old man who could barely walk, pushing a cart by himself.

Many people just walked by him without even offering to help. It was windy, cold and awful outside,yet nobody had the decency to help this old man.

What’s happening in today’s society that adds to this? You guessed it right from what I mentioned in a previous article: Internet. Phones. Being able to detach from the world no matter where you are.

I feel like an old woman even mentioning this, but maybe it’s because this generation (my generation) doesn’t have as much respect for the elderly as previous ones. We grew up in the age of the “self-esteem movement,” where we were promised we would all be famous or become astronauts.

Because of this self–esteem movement, myself and many other people were convinced that we were all special and different, that we need to do little to nothing to become successful in life.

But guess what: it was all a lie. In the word of Chuck Palahniuk’s Tyler Durden from Fight Club, “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.”

Even in Korea it’s becoming apparent and Korea is a country that prides itself on the traditional value of respecting elders. More and more kids are becoming self-entitled and care about nothing and no one but themselves.

I feel as though I’ve described most of the population. Not to offend, but it’s totally true. These days I see children saying things to their parents and essentially controlling them when it should be the other way around.

Does this mean that as generations go on, they’ll become less and less empathetic to other people’s situations? Are we, as a species, screwed? What will happen when nobody wants to help out strangers anymore?

I know that Tim Bundy employed the “handsome stranger with broken arm” trick to lure women into his van and then murder them, but for the most part helping really old people with their groceries in the Wal-Mart parking lot at 5 p.m. seems pretty safe.

The only way that we’re going to manage to be special and different in any form, if we want to be, is to give two damns about something other than ourselves.

Everyone that walked by that old man could have spared two minutes to help him with his stuff. But they didn’t. Even I didn’t.

What would happen in this community if you went out of your way to be nice to one stranger, once a day?

It doesn’t have to be cash donations or anything stellar, but even something as simple as a compliment to a stranger. Donating things you don’t need or use anymore. Helping older men and women with their grocery carts.

I really have no good way to end this article because I’m unimaginative and cannot come up with quotes as great as all of these brilliant men and women I admire, so here’s one from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Go. Make it easier for just one person to breathe.

Despite that fact, I’m incredibly outgoing and extroverted yet absolutely terrified of people at the same time. If I could choose to, I wouldn’t speak to them. I don’t like talking to people and yet I hate being alone. I am a socially-awkward personality’s worst nightmare.

I don’t know where this arose from, but maybe it’s from living in a place where you are never truly alone. In a city of 10 million-plus people in South Korea, it’s hard to ever go anywhere without being surrounded by people.

Now that I live in a place where it is possible to be completely alone, it’s terrifying. I also don’t know how to react whenever strangers say hello to me while I’m walking because I am a product of a large city.

I sometimes wonder if people think I’m a jerk for not acknowledging they said hello. I even get mad at my boyfriend sometimes when he does that, accusingly saying, “You don’t even know that person!” then dragging him away by the hand like a protective mother.

I am constantly mocked for being a city slicker in the rural plains of South Dakota and it’s just as infuriating as I imagine someone would feel if they were called a hick. So please stop calling me a city slicker. I can’t help it. I don’t call people “redneck” or “hick,” even if I do think it a lot.

I also feel like I need to dedicate more of my time explaining to people I am not from North Korea and no Korean they will ever meet will be from North Korea, unless they are somehow kidnapped and detained there.

Any time I leave a first meeting with someone, anyone, all I think about is how weird I was and hope I didn’t come across as strange.

With the advent of technology, more and more people are starting to become socially awkward. Some people only know each other exclusively through the Internet and have never met in real life. This can expand someone’s views of the world, but it can also be incredibly dangerous.

What if one day everyone is socially awkward and the only way we can communicate is through technology?

I try my hardest to at least speak to people over the phone or meet in person. Texting someone something is so impersonal. I wish I could just Skype everyone, it would be the closest thing to a real-life interaction.

So, my readers, here’s my challenge to you. Try your hardest to make all of your interactions through phone calls or legitimate face-to-face conversations for the next week and gauge how fulfilled you will feel. I’m going to test it out.

I’ll be sitting in a public space, minding my own business when the unmistakable scent of body odor starts lingering around me. Of course my first instinct is to smell myself as surreptitiously as possible, and then I will completely drop to look around the room to identify the culprit. If it were socially acceptable, I would even go so far as to try and smell the people that I deem the wrongdoers.

I know this is petty and superficial, but some people’s B.O. is so bad that I lose all focus and can think of nothing else. It’s as if it has some magical effect on my already short attention span.

And if you must ask, yes, I wrote this after smelling some rank B.O. wafting around the library. I think it’s the creepy guy in the corner who looks like he hasn’t showered in a month, but looks can be deceiving. He could be the best smelling human on Earth, but for now I’m going to assume it’s him.

Secondly, because I really have nothing more to say about B.O. (other than I wish it were socially acceptable to walk up to someone and shove deodorant in their face), graduation is upon some of you. Some people have been stressed about this moment for years, others it probably did not hit until just recently.

This is my attempt at being optimistic rather than falling back on the pessimistic viewpoint you have seen so far.

The world is in a better condition than we think. People say that so many bad things did not happen in the past, but just as many horrendous events occurred. People just did not have it bombarded in their faces all the time.

Thirdly, I am moving into a new apartment when semester hits, give me your furniture. I’ll give you like five bucks or maybe more depending on how cheap and Asian I feel like being.

Just kidding about point number three, unless you’re feeling particularly generous. I wish nothing but the best for all of you embarking on the journey of adulthood.

And if you need somebody to listen to jazz, get drunk with and complain about life, my e-mail is somewhere at the bottom of this article. That is not an invitation to the creepers who may possibly read this, because I am going to assume you have rank B.O. and I will want to be nowhere near you anyway.

Also, you’re creepy. That combined with bad B.O. just costs you a lot of points in my book.

Gabrielle Wynde Tateyuskanskan of Enemy Swim on the Lake Traverse reservation speaks about her experience with the Dakota Commemorative Walk. - Collegian photo by Robby Gallagher

Reporter

“Han mitakuyepi cante wasteya nap ciyusupiya.”

These were the opening words of educator, visual artist and poet Gabrielle Wynde Tateyuskanskan, who was the opening speaker at the American Indian History and Culture Conference in the Volstorf Ballroom April 4. Her greeting meant, “With a good heart, I shake your hand.”

Tateyuskanskan spoke of the challenges faced by the Dakota Indian tribe. She also talked about the Dakota Commemorative Walk originated by members of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe. The walk happens every year to honor the 38 men who were hung in the biggest mass execution in U.S. history.

Tateyuskanskan and the other participants of the walk hope that it will bring light to what Tateyuskanskan described as social injustices committed in the 1800s by early settlers.

“Knowledge of history is necessary for the future,” Tateyuskanskan said.

Tateyuskanskan aims to educate mainstream America about the hardships of the American Indian.

These issues are what Tateyuskanskan hopes to expose through her activism and her art. Her speech not only included the history of the execution, but it also shed some light on aspects of Dakota culture. Through this, she said it needs to be preserved.

“The suffering of any human being affects all of us,” Tateyuskanskan said.

People of the Oyate tribe were held in prison camps in the late 1800s in Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska.

“Past colonization had a devastating effect on Native culture,” Tateyuskanskan said.

Tateyuskanskan said social injustices have not ceased. According to an Amnesty International report, one in three American Indian women will be raped, and 86 percent of those are not committed by other American Indians.

After 150 years, Tateyuskanskan said the Dakota Oyate people still suffer from not only the social injustices committed toward their ancestors but also the lack of acknowledgement and commemoration from the Minnesota government.

“Apologies are gestures only,” Tateyuskanskan said.