The weekend is here again! I can’t believe it’s already June – May seems to have gone so quickly. I’m really looking forward to some traveling this month, and then my trip to Ohio for Ms. Wheelchair USA next month. Exciting things coming up!

I have a fun mix of favorites this week – some serious, and some less so.

• Dealing with group chats
  Group text message chains can be great when you want to keep in touch with a group of people from a certain time in your life, or when you’re making plans, but we’ve all been in the group chat where the notifications start to get out of control. This has some great tips for ways to minimize the notifications without hurting your friends’ feelings!

• United Shades of America
  United Shades of America is a TV series on CNN hosted by W. Kamau Bell, and in late May, one of the episodes focused on the disability community. I don’t have a link to the episode itself (though I think it’s on demand), but this article goes along with it and talks about the issues with disability representation in the media. It’s a fantastic read and echoes a lot of my own feelings!

• Posing for Photographs
  Maybe this one is just for me? In the age of Instagram (shameless plug to follow me here!), we all want to take pictures where we look our best. This has some helpful hints, plus a reminder that we don’t need to worry about hiding our flaws.

• Panic Button App
  I think this app idea is genius. It’s a panic button that you can press, which will send an alert to people you’ve pre-selected, telling them you’re not okay, and sending your GPS location. It was originally designed with depression and mental health in mind, but it could definitely be used for physical issues, as well! I had an issue in college where I fell forward in my chair and didn’t get help for a few hours… I now have one of those “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” buttons, but this sounds like an amazing alternative.

• Karlie Kloss and STEM/STEAM
  This last one is a long interview, but it’s worth it! I love the work Karlie Kloss has done through her “Kode with Klossy” initiative to introduce more girls to coding and STEM career paths. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before than I studied Mechanical Engineering as an undergrad, and I was one of maybe 8 girls in a class of about 100 in most of my MechE classes. The interview is a conversation between Karlie and a teenager who founded a non-profit called ThinkSTEAM, and it’s a great reminder that STEM fields can fit in with all career types, including arts/humanities.