Harley Khaang is a UMBC returning women student and an intern at the Women’s Center. She is currently a junior and an INDS student, focusing on earning her degree in Communications Strategy.

My first day of school was Groundhog Day. I hadn’t stepped foot on a campus in decades, but there I was sitting in my remedial math class at 7 am (it was an 8 am class), shaking. Sure, it was February 2nd and brutally cold, as it should be, but as much as the blustery wind was affecting me, I was shaking mostly from fear and the overwhelming feeling that I had possibly gotten myself in over my head. It was a moment … I had a moment.

I got through the day, then I got through the semester. And despite the fear and the doubt, I managed to complete 4 more, graduate with an Associates in Arts and Sciences, and transfer to UMBC. During the 5 semesters at CCBC I noticed something interesting emerge: As education became more important to me and I was getting ready to transfer to UMBC as an undergrad, I began to notice resentment coming from several friends and family members. Just a short time before these people were supportive of my decision to go back to school, yet now they looked at me with contempt. Growing up I was taught that getting an education was the best thing you can do for yourself. So why was I losing support from friends and family? I was hurt, but what’s more, I was confused. Was I supposed to apologize for getting a degree, or stand up for myself and tell them to bug  off?  I didn’t know what to do. Why couldn’t I just earn my degree in peace? Why couldn’t they just understand and give me their support like they had been doing? I felt torn, truly torn.

As I was nearing graduation in 2017, I was also dealing with big changes in my life: I moved, dealt with health issues, and was accepted to UMBC. As if that wasn’t enough, I was dealing with never ending issues with phone companies, cable companies, my apartment management, to name a few. I had almost always avoided confrontations throughout my life. I let a lot of people walk over me because I didn’t want to face them and “start trouble”. I lost a lot of money because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of haggling with companies who had over charged me. I let a lot of things slide that I should never have let side, all because I didn’t want to be confrontational. Now, I was forced to take a crash course in Standing Up for Myself 101.

As I began to find my bearings I realized that maybe there was a reason for all the “confronting.” I realized that I wasn’t being confrontational, I was demanding what was wrong be made right. For the first time in my life I was standing up for myself. I was being my own advocate; I was finding my voice. Then I came across a brilliant article, and that tiny impetus to apologize for coming back to school disappeared quicker than I could say “poof”.

I received a newsletter from brainpickings with the tagline “Adrienne Rich on Why an Education Is Something You Claim, Not Something You Get.” My heart skipped a beat. In the piece, written by Maria Popova, I read that Adrienne Rich “delivered a convocation speech to a group of women at Douglass College titled Claiming an Education”. In that speech, Rich states: “One of the dictionary definitions of the verb ‘to claim’ is: to take as the rightful owner; to assert in the face of possible contradiction. ‘To receive’ is to come into possession of: to act as receptacle or container for; to accept as authoritative or true. The difference is between acting and being acted-upon, and for women it can literally mean the difference between life and death.”

I was at CCBC for 5 semesters before graduating. Out of the 5, I worked full time for 4 while attending school full time. It was exhausting to say the least. There were many things I had to “put on the back burner,” there were things I had to learn to live without, there were compromises I had to make, and there was not a single part of my life where a corner or two were not cut. I realize now, women like myself who go back to school later in life, often make our choices based on pacifying everyone around us. That act of keeping everyone happy can often keep us from achieving our education goals. I look back at those times I felt the need to apologize for “neglecting” my duties to my family by going, yet again, for another degree, and know that coming back to school was not an easy choice to make, but one I would make over again. The women I have met at UMBC, and especially at the Women’s Center, know exactly what I am talking about. We have had many passing discussions regarding this issue.  

Returning women students (undergraduate students 25 years and older) have a full plate and then some. In trying to balance work and family life, most of us have put ourselves last, minimizing our needs. Many of us who are returning women students are constantly on the go, working to find time for everything on our list of things to accomplish, all the while fighting money issues and guilt that we are not accomplishing enough. Many of us feel we are doing this alone, but that isn’t true. There is camaraderie to be shared with the Returning Women Students here at the Women’s Center. There is sisterhood among us who understand and feel the pain so common, and at times, deeply rooted in our psyche.

We have been there. We know; we understand. We got your back.

Since that cold Groundhog Day in 2015, I have realized, that for many of us returning women students, the recurring theme is self advocacy. We have a duty to ourselves to claim what is rightfully ours, in this case, our education. What I have come to realize in the past 3 years, and with the help of the recent discovery of Adrienne Rich’s amazing speech, is that self care = self advocacy. We have to be our own heroes because, most times, we will not be given what we want or deserve, even if we’ve earned the right to it. No one will give you what’s rightfully yours, you need to claim it. And at times, the process of claiming it means demanding it. I claim my education. I claim myself and my well being above all. I claim me. I hope you will claim yourself.  

For more information and further reading: 

Self-Advocacy: A Women’s Catch-22

Adrienne Rich On Why An Education Is Something You Claim, Not Something You Get

Stepping Up to the Plate

Time, money, leisure and guilt – the gendered challenges of higher education for mature-age students

More on the Returning Women Students Program in the Women’s Center to include our scholarship program (deadline is March 30th!!) 

Program coordinator Amelia Meman reminisces about her feminist friendships and analyzes how these relationships foster empowerment and powerful networks.

This Women’s History Month, the Women’s Center was inspired by feminism’s legacy of collective action. While feminism is very much based in the personal and individual, it is also a movement built through the camaraderie, collective consciousness, compassion, and connections between people. That’s why, this March, the Women’s Center is celebrating feminist friendships. That’s also why I’m writing this blog post.

Every time I come to think about this theme, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because I immediately think of the bonds I made at UMBC that have continued on. More on this later, but I’ll tell you this much: nothing brings you together, like the hot crucible of simultaneous existential crises via The Patriarchy. Our angst-ridden mental toil aside, describing a friendship as “feminist” might feel weird to some people, but I wonder what it means to those it resonates with.

For me, it’s not about the friends who encourage me to burn my bra and always validate my decision to not shave–although they also do that. It’s also the friends who affirm me and remind me that I am a person with power who deserves good things in the world. My feminist friends go to rallies with me and talk Butler with me, but they also are the first to watch Neighbors 2 and they’re the best at recommending sci-fi and fantasy novels.

The personal is political… and the political is personal

I think that all of my relationships are political. This is probably by virtue of being a feminist and a philosophical thinker, but it’s also because my friends are my political allies. We are constantly thinking about the political power that comes with being women, being queer (AF), being trauma survivors, being white and/or people of color, being (dis)abled, etc. and being radically together. We’re friends who empower each other to live when so many other things in this world act to kill us. We’re constantly navigating privilege and oppression, and we get a lot of things wrong. We teach other, call each other in. We are committed to the process of constantly learning how to be better humans to one another and all of the people we interact with.

Does anything scream friendship more than this group shot of the Great British Baking Show judges?

So when I say that the personal is political, I mean that things we like to keep in private (i.e. whether or not we’re having sex, what kind of sex we’re having, birth control, abortions, survivor status, etc.) are personal experiences that are also–with feminism–political. Rather than continue to make the prudish world of vanilla, purely procreative sex comfortable, feminists talk reproductive justice, use the words “vagina,” “penis,” “vulva,” “anus,” etc. Those things that people would rather sweep under the rug? We dig those out and we burn the rug.

Just so, the political is personal. This, for me, is feminist friendship. My unity and belonging with other feminists is tied, not just to our affinity for one another as funny weirdos, but also to our political mindset. As we dance, we move toward liberation. As we laugh, we banish the silence pressed into us as women and femmes. As we eat together, we feed each other the love and power we deserve.

The political is personal, because my liberation is tied to theirs, and we both know that as we watch the latest season of The Great British Baking Show.

Shine theory

So as we move throughout Women’s History Month and think about all of our herstorical sheroes who give us life (often literally), think about those friends that are around you who make you shine brighter. Whether that’s your mom, your professor, Oprah, think about the women who inspire you.

Take a breath, and think about your best memory with that person. How did you become friends? What do you all do best together? How do you feel when you’re around each other?

Seriously take like 15 seconds to meditate on that.

Alright, now you can come back to me.

Didn’t that make you feel shiny?

In the Women’s Center, we like to talk about shine theory. Jess is the one who introduced me to this concept a while ago (see her awesome UMBC Women Who Rock series), but basically, shine theory is a lens through which we can think about friendship. Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow (of Call Your Girlfriend) coined the term “shine theory” in an article on powerful women as best friends. Friedman wrote: “when you meet a woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished, befriend her. Surrounding yourself with the best people doesn’t make you look worse by comparison. It makes you better.”

Friedman and Sow add that in its simplest form, shine theory is this: “I don’t shine, if you don’t shine.”

Feminist friends, to me, push you and support you so that you can shine as bright, if not brighter, than them and we all get a little better for it.

GWST-ers 4 Life

I would be remiss to not note that the thing that brought some of my best, most steady feminist friends together was our journey through the UMBC Gender and Women’s Studies Department. We were knit together through a shared affinity for feminist politics, and I know I was able to find myself through them. Not because they showed me a self I wanted to be, but because they allowed me to actually BE the person I always wanted to be.

It wasn’t all hearts and rainbows and radical self-care quotes from Audre Lorde. It was a lot of shit. We went through heartbreak together, we grieved together, we powered through classes like beleaguered Weather-people in a hurricane. In queer theory, we read Michel Foucault’s interview, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” in which he lays out this idea of queer community:

The notion of mode of life seems important to me. Will it require the introduction of a diversification different from the ones due to social class, differences in profession and culture, a diversification that would also be a form of relationship and would be a “way of life”? A way of life can be shared among individuals of different age, status, and social activity. It can yield intense relations not resembling those that are institutionalized. It seems to me that way of life can yield a culture and an ethics. To be “gay,” I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the bisible masks of the homosexual but to try to define and develop a way of life. (p. 137-138)

Being “gay” or “queer” or, in our case, “feminists,” is not about defining who we are, but about creating a way of life that suits our needs and that is, potentially, radical. When the institution is so often your oppressor, molding new culture and ethics through friendship becomes a way of also creating new futures and pathways that the institution did not initially have open to you. For example, I don’t know where my self-confidence would be without my therapist and the power of my friends, but I know that the impacts of sexism, racism, ableism, etc. were limiting my self-confidence, and when I learned about myself as someone who was strong and capable of loosing that sort of weight, I was able to achieve more and better. I have a job, I’m pursuing my (very high) educational goals, I’m publishing this blogpost; this is all enabled through this alternative way of life that teaches me that I have power, I am power, and that my friends and I disrupt oppression.

Feminist friendship, shine theory, all that glorious glowing goodness that brought us together–it created power.

So the next time you think about your friends, your shiny people, your feminist sheroes, think about the power you all cultivate and bring forth by being your badass selves together. Think about how that power can grow with you and the friendships you share. Think about what your perfect world would look like for you and your feminist friends–and then make it. 

More resources, if you’re interested:

Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life”

Dan Willey, “Gay Hair”

Gaby Dunn, “It’s A War Out There: How Queer Female Friendships Can Save Us All”

Cori Wong, “Feminist Friendship” TEDxCSU

Make feminist friends and build up your network at our Women’s History Month celebration on March 28th from 6 pm to 8 pm in the Skylight Room! RSVP via myUMBC!

A reflection from student staff member, Sheila, about why finding and fostering community is important on a college campus.

What does perfect community look like?

Let’s be honest. We might never reach anything close to perfect. But I do wonder, what can we do to continually create and build better community? Something that is always on my mind is wondering where we can find community, and what makes it feel as good as home. I remember when I first got to UMBC, settling in to my dorm, my roommate saying the bare minimum to me, and not knowing anyone who understood the culture where I came from. I felt alone. I did not know that in a few weeks, I would learn about clubs and events at Involvement Fest. During Involvement Fest, I was able to find organizations on campus and meet active student leaders. There, I was able to start to build my UMBC community. 

According to U.S. News, there are several reasons why being active on your college campus is important. U.S. News reports that involvement helps students to feel connected to the school, feel as though they have a community, discover their passions, and it gives them opportunities to build their resume with experiences. After all, we are all here to get a job in the future. 

These factors are all important, and students know they need them to be successful, especially first-generation college students. According to Cia Verschelden, the author of Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources Lost to Poverty, Racism, and Social Marginalization, “when students belong in a place, they have, or begin to build, social capital, defined as the connections, often informal, that they need to get inside information and to gain access to resources, such as tutoring or on-campus jobs.” By having these connections, relationships, and communities, all an important part of a college experience, we have access to valuable resources. One of the biggest reasons I want to foster community is because I do not want anyone to feel alone here. No one has to experience that feeling on this campus.

On UMBC’s campus, the Women’s Center is my home. Since last semester, it has been one of the places where I have tried to foster community. The Women’s Center is that older next door neighbor who asks you to cut their grass but will teach you life lessons you can not get anywhere else… and give you snacks. The Women’s Center has fostered my self-love and a sense of belonging. I’m not sure I can thank them enough. Also, the people here help me gain a sense of community and challenge me to be a better advocate for everyone.

The Hispanic Latino Student Union (HLSU) had their third meeting of the semester this past Wednesday. As a Hispanic student, a group that makes up 7% of the campus community, I have been going to their meetings for over a year now. HLSU is also a place where I feel at home on campus. HLSU is like being with my favorite cousins that I see during holidays. They really know how to get the fun going, and their mom always lets me sleepover. HLSU is always my reminder that there are people who share my same cultural background. With them, I can be understood.

I joined Lambda Theta Alpha, Latin Sorority Incorporated (LTA), initially because I wanted to meet others who understand what it is like to be a first-generation Latina college student. LTA are my sisters. We fight about why no one washed the dishes, but when someone makes popcorn, we are all down for spending a Sunday watching Disney movies. With the help of this organization, I have learned how to use my voice to be a leader in the community.  

If you want to build community during your college experience here are some pro-tips!

1. Reach out! UMBC has this handy dandy spreadsheet with the e-mail address for every member of student organizations’ executive boards. You can get in touch with the group leaders, and from my experience, most groups are always welcoming to new members and would love to hear from you.
2. Go to those meetings. Most groups have a set time they meet (i.e. bi-weekly, monthly). Head on to myUMBC and follow them to check out the meeting times. If you can’t make it, I am sure someone will reach out and let you know when they are just hanging out.
3. Stay in touch. I know, us younglings love our technological things. How hard is it to stay in touch? Sometimes, very. Just do your best with your busy schedule to let others group leaders know you are interested in joining in on whatever events they have planned!
4. Follow your passions! Do something because you want to! Not because that is where your friends hang out, not because someone told you this is the spot, but because you feel passion towards it.
5. Know when the space isn’t for you. I mean this with straight respect. Sometimes places are not the fit for you, or sometimes the space wasn’t created for someone like you in the first place. Know which spaces are for you, know which spaces are not. Respect group members enough to let them have their space and continue searching for your best fit.
6. Be yourself! Know that when you find the right community for you, that people will care and want to be around you, your authentic self. Do not allow who you really are to hide behind who you think people want you to be because if want real strong community, you have to be willing to show yourself.

Finally, remember fostering community is work. Let me say it again. Fostering community is work! That is why all my meetings go on forever!

While, the Women’s Center, HLSU, and LTA are the places I found my community at UMBC, these spaces are not for everyone as they try to fulfill what they want from a community but there are many groups and clubs on campus. To help you get started, here is a list of over 300 clubs and organizations that are active on UMBC’s main campus.

Staff member, Missy Smith, takes a deeper look into cryptocurrency trend.

Every winter break or summer season, I choose something to study and dive into when I’m in between “stuff” with a little more time to grow a hobby or a part of my dream. Last summer, I scratched my creative butch itch and learned how to do some woodworking. I sanded and polyurethaned a bench in my driveway in the hot summer sun. The result is pretty awesome! Here is an after and before pic. 

Someone asked me what I learned in the process. I made a list. 

1. Sanding by hand is tedious, but I got to know the wood better by taking my time and using patience with each stroke, resting when necessary, and being more perceptive of changes when I come back to approach the canvas.
2. No shortcuts. I cannot rush the work. When I rushed or tried to take shortcuts, the end result was blegh. 
3. There are not a lot of women hanging out at Home Depot and sometimes I had to figure things out on my own or wait for a long time before anyone would help me.
4. I met a lot of cool folks in the woodworking and refurbishing community!

This past Winter break, I decided to dive into creative work and finish some lingering music projects from 2017. After reading headlines about something called Bitcoin and pondering my own investments, I accidentally stumbled into cryptocurrency. Like Home Depot, when I started researching, I didn’t see a ton of women (or African Americans) talking about it. I did some digging. To no surprise, I quickly learned that there are not a lot of queer folks, women, or women of color in the crypto universe, just like STEM, corporate America, and higher education. But I know we exist. I see us all the time, and I am one of the few in these spaces sometimes. Being an outlier is not new to me, so I was curious about crypto. If the boys can do it, why can’t I? Why can’t we?

What is it? A Blockgeeks Inc. guide explains it well. “If you take away all the noise around cryptocurrencies and reduce it to a simple definition, you find it to be just limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions.” Even more simple, your bank has a ledger that accounts for transactions, but in the crypto world a network of your peers owns the ledger. Everything is tracked, there are not mistakes (so far. And yes, I know things get hacked. Banks get robbed too!). If you are still confused, here is an image that links to a deeper dive.

Why am I so interested in cryptocurrency? I think that for the first time in a long while (however long that is), there is something that is leveling the playing field for folks who might not have a chance to get ahead. Millenials know that should save money and invest in their retirement. Some folks are fortunate to be able to do it, and others may not be so fortunate. For me, I am in the weird generation before Millennials, and I have a unique outlook on tech, financial security, and I’m DIY enough to want to make my own way. Beyond investing, there are some great companies doing innovative work and reimagining the ways we send, spend, and receive money. 

I found some Facebook and Reddit groups for my identities as a woman and as a black person investing in crypto. There are minority professors and business leaders working as admin, holding FB live chats to talk about new coins and market strategies, all while growing the network of folks who are looking for a different way to make and spend money, digitally. I even learned about an LGBT cryptocurrency that wants to showcase the buying power of small(er) and mighty communities!  

Working at the Women’s Center has exposed me to global issues that impact women, and after studying eco feminism for one of our events last semester, I was excited to hear about sustainable currency initiatives. There are a lot of women and minorities working in the crypto space, leading companies that are offering innovative solutions to 20th century problems, thinking forward and manifesting a better future.  I learned about Power Ledger ($POWR), an Australian company that wants to recreate buying and selling of energy using blockchain technology. Their CEO, Dr Jemma Green is taking her team from Down Under to work in North America, earning headlines as “the woman powering the energy industry on the blockchain” from her peers! 

Lympo ($LYM), a new coin that may change the healthcare industry, is led by CEO Ada Jonuse. Her company is changing the way the internet uses healthcare, data, and fitness apps and incentivizing wellness. There are even some companies that are making it easier to send money to family members in other countries. They do it faster and cheaper than traditional currencies. Women are also creating their own powerhouses networking groups to support each other and teach the world about crypto. So after all my digging over break, what did I learn? For starters, I am not a financial advisor.  But also . . . 

1. Coming back from break is hard, but I get to know myself by studying the pieces of my bigger dream. I’m in school to make my dream concrete, so I continue to dive into work that I love. By thinking of the future, I am able to find joy vs stress in the work.
2. There is no quick way to make money. I cannot rush the calendar year. When I rush, I stress and become obsessive. Be careful with your spending. Learn about investing and how to use the different exchanges! 
3. There are not a lot of women working in the crypto space. I had to search for us, and I know we are knowledgeable about making money in the crypto world. We make our own networking groups to empower each other #girlsclub 
4. I learned about a ton of cool people (people that look and live like me) making big headlines and leading 21st century companies, global entities, that will change the world.

Many mornings, I wake up and find headlines about women in crypto. We are leading and contributing and the world is taking notice. Crypto will not last as another boy’s club, not if we can change the narrative. If you want some more reading, here are a bunch of recent articles, mostly about women and crypto, that have made my morning coffee more enjoyable! Have fun!

• The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency Investing
• Where Are The Women In The Blockchain Network?
• Women in Cryptocurrency: Bring On The Revolution
• Bitcoin’s Gender Divide Could Be a Bad Sign, Experts Say
• 20 African Women To Watch In Blockchain And Crypto

 Educating yourself and being yourself: the dangers of cultural appropriation by Harini, a student intern. 

I was the only brown kid at my school until ninth grade. Growing up in a town I once described as “never realized the Union won the Civil War,” it was no surprise that all my friends were white. I was careful to conceal any aspects of me that did not mirror their own personalities, effectively whitewashing myself. I laughed along with their mockery of desi culture, its gaudy outfits and pungent foods, all the while ignoring the guilt and defiance that part of me felt at hearing my own culture ripped apart by people who had none of their own.

Once I reached high school and began making friends with people from similar backgrounds to me, I realized the error in my ways and embraced my heritage with a group of people who respected and shared my culture. I packed the foods I liked to school, and posted pictures of me, donned in traditional clothes, to social media for the world to see.

Around that time, American culture began to shift. Suddenly, the ingredients in our foods that were once considered ugly and smelly were now labelled “superfoods,” and they were all the rage. Our jewelry was considered the epitome of fashion, despite being practically taboo not too long ago. This led me to the question: why is something considered acceptable only after Western cultures adopt it? People have been wearing naths and eating turmeric for centuries, so why was it suddenly considered a trend? Moreover, why was it a trend to begin with, when the sole reason the elements of our culture exist with a meaning and value that was being completely disregarded by Western culture?

Actress Sonam Kapoor wears a nath on the red carpet.

I grew angry each time I would see someone that once made fun of desi culture wearing bindis for Instagram. This was a piece of Hindu culture that was symbolic, and it was being reduced to a costume. For these people, this was an expression of appreciation, because apparently there was no better compliment to a culture than the validation of a westernized person. There was no consideration that disregarding the meaning behind these things (whether they are intended for brides, as a mark of celebration, etc.) was offensive.

However, white people are not the only ones guilty of doing this. Non-desi people of color often see their non-whiteness as a free pass to appropriating cultures outside their own. Desis are guilty of appropriating other cultures as well, so no ethnic group is entirely free of this offense. The entertainment industry is the worst offender, with a history of using blackface to depict villains and demons unscrupulously.

Of course, appreciation of a culture is acceptable. For example, eating ethnic food, consuming media, and learning a new language are all forms of appreciation that are inoffensive.

When a person uses an element of a culture they do not belong to as a costume while ignoring the ethnic, national, or religious significance of said element, they are appropriating a culture. Appropriation is not just about material items. It can take different forms, like stealing opportunities that should belong to people of an ethnic group or religion. This is seen too often in Hollywood, with white actors playing roles that represent people of color, with (see Matt Damon playing a Chinese general in The Great Wall). White actors find themselves under fire for accepting roles depicting Asian characters that are heroic and central to the story, while actual Asian actors are too often offered minor roles that exist for comedic effect or to create a backdrop for the important white characters. The way in which the West regards Eastern culture is dubbed “Orientalism,” a concept that has come to possess a negative connotation only because it reflects said perception.

Furthermore, brown actors are used interchangeably, regardless of their ethnicity. A recent example of this is the casting for the live-action Aladdin movie, in which Naomi Scott, a biracial actress of Indian descent, is playing Jasmine, the princess of the fictional Agrabah, which is canonically located in the Middle East. So, why are brown people seen as transposable? Why is our culture regarded as easy?

Bridging the gap between Western ideals and pride in one’s heritage is in the hands of brown peoples’ white peers and the media. Looking back on my journey as a brown girl growing up in small-town Pennsylvania, I can see my growth from someone who tried too hard to imitate her white friends, to someone who is unashamed of who she is. Much of that personal development came from being receptive and open to criticism. Often, people don’t realize their actions are offensive because of how common appropriation is. Ignorance is a slippery slope, so being informed is vital, as is holding others accountable for their actions. Learning the difference between appreciation and appropriation is the first step to respecting all cultures and regarding them as equal.

Below are some articles about recent instances of brown culture appropriation and orientalism:

American Orientalism

What is Orientalism, and how is it also racism?

Gucci accused of culturally appropriating Sikh turban

People Are Seriously Pissed That “Vogue India” Got Kendall Jenner For Their 10-Year Anniversary Shoot

Coachella Queen Vanessa Hudgens Loves Cultural Appropriation

Zara comes under fire for cultural appropriation

In ‘The Problem With Apu,’ Hari Kondabolu Discusses South Asian Representation

Celebrate Women's History Month with these great events happening throughout March!