Coming of Age Hyper-Online

 Hello one and all!
Today's post is a piece I submitted in a writing contest a while back, I believe with HerCampus. I saved my entry so that I could share it with all of you if nothing came of it. Most of you are aware that my current writing interest is writing stories outside of myself, fiction stories, and not so much centered on personal anecdotes. This piece does not align with my desire to write fiction and is in fact quite a personal piece about myself. I'm not really interested in sharing the personal details of my life right now for reasons that feel too vulnerable to share here (which is... kind of the point). However, I wrote it to be read by an audience, so read by an audience it will be. I love sharing my work, and while the piece is confessional in nature, it wasn't written to be. It was written to be read and enjoyed by an audience. I have a lot of short piece I've written over the years that I want to share with you guys, and this is one of those pieces.
The prompt for this post was as follows:
"What does it mean for you to come of age in a hyper-online, always connected world?
Living in the digital age can mean something different to everyone, and we want to hear what it means to you."
I wrote the following piece (as far as I can tell from my record) on July 15, 2021. I hope you enjoy!

To me, living in the digital age is just like everything else: it is special, and it can be used for bad and good.
When I was sixteen, my best friend and I started casually dating each other, and we talked to each other every waking minute. When we weren't together, we texted each other. From 5:00 in the morning to late in the night, we were always together, whether in person or on our phones. That relationship ended treacherously. He said he wanted to start using his phone less, so he wouldn't be texting me as often, which I understood, considering we literally were never not talking to each other over text. What I wasn't prepared for was for him to slowly but surely drop out of my life entirely. Suddenly he made an effort to talk to everyone that wasn't me, and it took me nearly six months to realize it was over. When I think of life in the digital age, that's honestly the first thing I think of. I wonder how things would have been if we hadn't spent every moment texting each other. The let-down would have been so much easier; instead, I had practically become addicted to talking to this boy.
That's just one example of the torture we can inflict upon ourselves by living in the digital world. That's not to mention reading negative comments (whether about ourselves or someone else) online, social media stalking someone our crush used to date just so we can find old pictures of him even though we know it will only make us upset, or measuring how liked we as people are based on how many likes the photos we post get.
With all that said, however, we can take that into consideration and realize that the digital world is just like the natural world. It is beautiful and unique, and in its uniqueness, it has unique dangerous--but it has unique privileges too. People can get hurt in the digital world, but people can also find joy in the digital world.
I've been blogging for eight years. I started writing because I needed a place to talk about my thoughts and opinions on literature, but my online writing platform has since transformed into a way to connect with others and have a positive influence on the lives of others. I think of friends online I've met throughout my life. Some of them are from the same place as me and have moved away (as have I), and some of them are from all over the world. Thanks to social media, I can keep in contact with them easily and see what they're doing with their lives, no matter where in the world any of us are.
Thanks to the digital world, we can also meet people we would never have the opportunity to without it. My little brother is an actor and was a huge participant in his high school's theatre program. When school shut down due to the corona virus pandemic, he had to find a new way to perform while he couldn't be in plays. Like many others, he took to TikTok and started making comedy videos. Slowly but surely, he gained a lot of success there, until he finally exploded with his "Red's Kinda Sus" parody, earning himself thousands of followers and millions of likes. He started building a community on TikTok, then started live streaming on Twitch, where he gained more followers. My little brother's career as a professional social media influencer has become a huge part of my family's lives. Everyone helps out with his platform in some way, and we have met the most amazing people there. Personally, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this digital community. I get to interact with young kids every day and help them navigate life; it makes me feel more prepared for my future career as a teacher once I receive my bachelor's degree.
Living in a digital world can be crazy. It can feel trapping and destructive. It can feel excruciatingly lonely. But it can open doors to wonderful opportunities and connections.

Feminist Theory in “The Story of an Hour”

 Hello one and all!

As a full-time uni student that’s also very dedicated to her job and personal projects, making new blog content isn’t always a high priority. I’ve also felt a shift in the kind of content I’m interested in making recently, but in general I’m struggling to find the heart to make new content. However, this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but have only done a few times in my senior year of high school, and now we’re going to start doing it more often!

As a long-time English and writing student, you can imagine I have written many pieces for school, be it literary analyses, narrarives, or something else. Many of these I really love and feel would be a good fit for the blog. This also helps me post more consistently even when I don’t have time to write a whole new piece.

The following essay was written for my critical theory class, about the iconic feminist writer Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” If you haven’t read the story yet, read that first, and then check out the feminist messages and symbols I found in the story. Please leave comments about your own thoughts on the feminist ideas in the story!

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Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is a groundbreaking piece of American feminist literature. The story is about the role of women in society and expectations placed on them. This is a large role of feminist criticism, which looks into the way gender affects our world and the way it is portrayed in literature. When “The Story of an Hour” is read through the feminist lens, there is clear message of the subtle repression that women face in society. This story illustrates the gender roles and expectations that have been forced on women for centuries, and how the only truly safe place for women to be free of these expectations is with themselves.

Feminist theory is a study of how gender affects the world, and how the world affects gender. Literature has a great deal to do with society’s view of the world; stories are representations of reality and the things that people think and care about. Thus gender portrayal in literature can create a reality of either strength and freedom or judgment and pressure. An important concept in feminist criticism is the patriarchy, which is a unit of standard power in the world that causes negative effects, such as oppression or negative societal expectations as opposed to choice. Understanding the patriarchy is essential to understanding feminist criticism, because it is the general cause of why the world has issues in the way it views gender. Patriarchy is the general, if unspoken, enemy in “The Story of an Hour.”

“The Story of an Hour” is a piece about women that defy expectations, whether publicly or privately, giving women a more diverse and inclusive representation in literature. The story begins with the protagonist, Louise Mallard, being told of her husband’s untimely death. It is implied in the third paragraph that Mrs. Mallard already goes against the grain of the expectations of women upon receiving this news: “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment….” (Chopin) This quote automatically implies that women have expectations put upon them by society to behave a certain way. This is something Mrs. Mallard is having to deal with even in the face of a personal tragedy. When considering the effect the patriarchy has on the behavioral expectations of people of all genders, this statement shows the courage of Mrs. Mallard in breaking out of the norm, and gives a wider representation of the many different ways a person might react to the loss of a loved one.

As Mrs. Mallard goes to her room to mourn her husband alone, the setting reflects a beautiful and peaceful feeling that is not expected of her, but that is true nonetheless. While it is said that a “physical exhaustion haunted her body,” the scene is described: “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air…. The notes of a distant song… reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds….” (Chopin) Despite the tragic news she just received, Mrs. Mallard experiences beauty in her first moments alone. When looked at through feminist criticism, the text is thick with symbolism of the freedom women desire to give themselves versus the roles the patriarchy wishes to force on them. The blooms on the trees, the song being sung, and the birds calling are all clear signs of life, while Mrs. Mallard is at the beginning of a new life for herself. The rain, which is frequently a dreary symbol, is described as “delicious.” Other people aware of Mrs. Mallard’s situation might see the rain as a symbol of her mourning, but to her it is beautiful. Only outside the confines of the patriarchy, when she is in her own company, is this able to be realized. The sky is generally bright. The sentence in which this is described is given its own paragraph for emphasis. The patriarchy would have women like Mrs. Mallard standing in the shadow of their husbands, able to only have life attached to a husband and not have one of their own. In the blue sky Mrs. Mallard is able to see in the private of her bedroom window, that shadow is gone.
    The subconscious, based on Freudian psychocriticism, is what begins Mrs. Mallard’s awakening to the unexpected joy of her new situation. As theorized by Sigmund Freud and expanded on by others, people have a subconscious that makes them able to think even when they are not consciously thinking. Mrs. Mallard experiences this as she starts to calm, “except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.” Between sorrow and joy, Mrs. Mallard has a moment of numbness that allows her subconscious thoughts to come out. Whether or not she had before realized it, having a husband came with expectations for Mrs. Mallard, some that were more constrictive than she would like. In their article, “It’s a Man’s World: Re-examination of the Female Perspective in Chopin’s ‘Desiree’s Baby’ and ‘The Story of an Hour,’” Adisa Ahmetspahic and Damir Kahric describe it as thus: “It would appear that Louise’s gender dictates her rules of conduct; that is, her role as a woman in the nineteenth-century American society, and moreover her position of wife in her own marriage would force her to lament her husband’s passing.” (Ahmetspahic, Kahric) The thought had not previously crossed Mrs. Mallard’s mind that life could be joyful for her following her husband’s death, because that was not a possibility in a world run by a suffocating patriarchy. Only in this subconscious moment does she realize that this is a chance for her to experience a freedom that she hasn’t known, at least since before marriage. It is then described, as she is transitioning from subconscious to conscious thought, “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky….”

At this point in the story, Chopin illustrates through Mrs. Mallard’s experience that it is only in their own company that women are allowed to experience the freedom they desire. As Mrs. Mallard becomes more aware of what she is feeling, it is described as a feeling of surrender when she comes to the realization, saying she “abandoned herself.” The pressures of the patriarchy dictate so much of what people do. It is only by making herself free that she was able to accept what her real desires were, that she wanted to choose to be joyful rather than sorrowful. She even has to push back the urge to question if she is feeling “a monstrous joy.” It is a constant fight for women to push away the gender roles that the patriarchy has placed on them and others. However, Mrs. Mallard chooses to indulge in the unusual, which is what she really wants.
    Over the next few paragraphs, Mrs. Mallard revels in her newfound freedom. This is described by Ahmetspahic and Kahric as “the story of a heroine who, at least within the course of an hour, manages to harbor thoughts of a life created in an alternate sphere.” These visions of freedom that Mrs. Mallard is experiencing are so opposing to the patriarchy that it is not even described as reality by most. The gender roles that have been forced on people for centuries have become a strong part of reality, so that when freedom in gender roles is expressed, it seems like a fantasy. At times she feels to question her joy, but she is always reminded of the true feeling of liberty that she is facing for the first time, saying, “There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.” Despite the fact that she had been loved by him, this moment was not about him at all. This was a moment purely about her, a moment in which women were in charge of their own narratives. This is not all to say that the intentions of men are all not good, but it is rather to say that it is not always, if ever, about the intentions of men. The people affected hold the most stock in the situation and are the ones that should be listened to. In Mrs. Mallard’s marriage, it appears that she felt powerless in her own situation, even though it had as much to do with her as it did with her well-intended husband. Thinking of the limitations put on her by her marriage, it is narrated, “A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.” (Chopin)
    At the conclusion of the story, Mr. Mallard comes home, apparently not being anywhere near the scene of the accident where he was supposedly killed. Upon seeing her husband, Mrs. Mallard is killed by her heart disease, overcome with shock. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of joy that kills.” (Chopin) When looking through the lens of the patriarchy, this is so. The reality forced on the world by the patriarchy dictates that a woman can only be happy when married to a man. In Mrs. Mallard’s reality, the one where she is allowed to choose for herself, she died of heartbreak. This again has nothing to do with her husband; it is really about the situation that Mrs. Mallard is in where the voices of women are drowned out by the voices of men. Having a husband meant no longer being her own person, and after the joy she had just experienced of newfound freedom, the rain in the sky turned bleak, and she died of shock. She still did what she was expected to do in the beginning–die of heartbreak–but she did it in secret. Patriarchy shifts the world view so that people see only what is considered normal. In the safe secrecy of her own mind, Mrs. Mallard died from the loss of freedom.
    With feminist criticism, Kate Chopin’s story illustrates the safety that women find in themselves and nowhere else. Patriarchy affects people’s relationships with gender and other aspects of identity, painting a picture that is not accurate to the personal relaties of individuals, which are vast, despite fact that many different aspects of identities are shared among people. The reality of this individualism in women was well illustrated when Chopin wrote: “She saw beyond… years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.”

Works Cited

Ahmetspahic, Adisa, and Damir Kahric. “It’s a Man’s World: Re-examination of the Female Perspective in Chopin’s ‘Dess Baby’ and ‘The Story of an Hour’.”The ESSE Messenger, vol. 29, no. 1, summer 2020, pp. 23+.iree’

Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature to Go, edited by Michael Meyer, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, 13-15.

New Year, New Me: "i thank You God for most this amazing day"

 Hello one and all!
I really enjoyed last year's post celebrating the new year. I used to not really understand the hype, but I so do now. While the turn from one year to the next is not a magical reset button that makes everything perfectly fine again, while we can't expect the year to be inherently good on its own, I do see the magic in celebrating a new year. As I said in last year's post, there is something absolutely glorious about a new thing, a new opportunity. That's beautiful, and that's worth celebrating.
As most of you know, I choose a song to be my theme of the year. The songs in the short time I've done this tradition have included "(Just a) Simple Sponge," "Sad Girls Club," "Bring on the Monsters," and "I Am Enough." Usually, these songs were all easy and natural choices. I would hear them or think of them and know that they were the songs I needed to be the theme of my year. This year, however, was different.
2021 was difficult, and I'm honestly exhausted from saying that, but that doesn't change the truth of the statement. It was way harder than 2020 was for me; it wasn't even a contest, really. It was probably the hardest year I've had since 2016, the only year in my life that can kind of compete with it. So at the end of 2021, I think it was hard for me to choose a theme for 2022 because there were so many things that I felt like I needed that I didn't even really know where to begin. I just felt empty.
In 2021, my favorite girl band, Cimorelli, rereleased and did a whole new campaign for one of their songs from the early days of the band, "You're Worth It." This was almost the theme of the year. My strong self-worth that I take way too for granted had seemingly diminished. I faced a lot of health issues that drained me. There were a lot of traumas that I had uncovered that year that left me simply feeling empty. This song is pretty cliché and basic in its message and writing, but I felt like I needed cliché and basic. I felt like I needed to go back to square one and just remind myself that I was worth living a happy life. I frequently reduce myself to my appearance or view myself as a production to be put on for other people. But none of that's true about me, and I think I needed the reminder. I in particular was drawn to the lyric: "There's so much that you've been through that nobody knows, so many things you never show." I felt misunderstood and lost in my darkness. It was worse than people even could understand. I'm remembering one time during the summer that I was at work and my mom called me. She was discussing my well-being with me, and asked a couple times if I was okay. Once even saying, "You're okay, right?" I said yes, but I couldn't even do so without crying. I didn't know how to tell people how poorly I was doing. I needed my worth to be reestablished. Those things were addressed further in last year's therapy, which lead me to reconsider my song of the year.
I began to wonder if instead "Hope for It" by Cimorelli needed to be my song of the year. I am literally just today starting to find words that adequately describe the whole of what I just went through in therapy. It was fascinating. I went in talking about the shameful feelings that I had associated with my missionary service. On my mission, I had been so open, loving, and trusting with people, especially with people that I normally never would be. It was a gift from God. But I put expectations on myself, as did others, that I wasn't supposed to think about God's greatest gift to me. I tried detaching myself from the past, saying no to everything I'd ever gone through and trying to pretend it didn't happen. That surely contributed greatly to the complex feelings of loneliness, shame, and misunderstanding that I was facing. I wasn't making myself open to the truth. A lot was based in my issues of self-worth. Just as much, if not more, was based on my damaged trust. I was so angry at all of my old missionary friends. They had so much of me. I was able to be open with them in ways I had never been with anyone before and hadn't been since. This anger turned into absolute resentment. Why couldn't I get that back? And worst of all, why them? I'm okay with the fact that people go in and out of my life. But the people that know intimate details about me, I want them to be the ones that stay, the ones that are there all the time. While I still talked to missionary friends on occasion, I didn't as frequently as I would like to with people that know me terrifyingly well. Or rather, people that don't know me terrifyingly well anymore, but kind of used to. I felt like I had changed so much, and they had so much of me, and I was outraged that every time I would talk to them, they would say something about the version of me they had known. Something that was no longer true at all. It broke my heart, and they would have to sit and wonder why I suddenly looked sad in the middle of our conversation. I was intimately known and at the same time not known at all by people that once were the best friends in my life. All of that led to a severe lack of trust. I didn't want to share any of myself with anyone else ever again.
The lessons learned from discussing these feelings in therapy (which previously I couldn't even say out loud--thank God for that saving grace of being free to say the truth) were beautiful. First of all, my missionary service was a gift from God, and I knew that. Anyone that wanted me to suppress that and never think about it ever again didn't have my best interests in mind. It's a gift from God, after all! There were great experiences and lessons learned. Remembering them could be a new spiritual experience in themselves. And while this brought up problematic emotions for me, it was still a great way to bond with people. It is not good to say no to gifts from God. They are the most beautiful and precious things everywhere! Denying remembering my past would be denying a gift from God.
We of course talked a lot about my trust issues, which are many and deep. It's something I still have to practice a lot and something that many days I still don't want to practice at all. But we talked about letting myself learn to trust people, because I have to do it slowly, and that's all. I can evaluate how much I trust a person based on my relationship with them. As I evaluated my relationships, I saw a lot of boundaries. I realized that is something I'm really good at. I am good at saying no to things and people to protect myself. As a person with anxiety, this has always been in my nature, but it's gotten even worse over the past year or so. It was almost as if I only thought about things that I say no to. However, my boundaries are only kind of in my control. I can control how I keep them, but people break boundaries sometimes. That's how abuse happens. It's heartbreaking, but it's true. I wonder if there's a cycle of boundaries being made and then broken, which leads to more boundaries and walls, which can also be broken.
Boundaries are important, but I have those down. What I realized is that I have trouble with what I say yes to. I have absolute control to my yeses. What I intentionally do is where I hold my power, and that can bring me more happiness than anything else! I hadn't even noticed that I was really bad at saying yes.
I've made saying yes the focus of my life. No relies too heavily on other people. I've said yes to so many more things. I prioritize my writing, education, religion, and job because I say yes. I am finally living my dream of doing a study abroad/writing retreat this summer. I am working hard to make my dreams a reality. This is because I am saying yes in ways I wasn't able to before.
This led me to think of "Hope for It." It's about how when life gets hard, we trust God no matter what comes and push forward. We hope for good things even if on the surface it seems like there's nothing good to hope for. But saying yes is all about hoping for good things. Only through hope can those yeses exist.
That was my song for 2022 on New Year's Eve. But during the first week of January, I couldn't get a different song out of my mind.

This is Me Trying: The First Time I've Genuinely Tried Really Hard in School

 Hello one and all!
While it's been a hot minute since I've written a post, much to my dismay, it's because for the first time in my life I've actually been working really hard in school.

I've always done well in school, but never because I did more than the bare minimum. It's amazing that it took me most of my adolescent life to realize I was a genuinely smart person. I started learning how to read at age three, and a lot of that was self-taught (with the help of a dear friend--thanks, Reader Rabbit). I was reading at a high school grade level years before I ever started high school. And most books aren't written at such a high grade level, so for any of you teachers that think it's a good idea to have your ninth graders read a book that is their exact reading level for their book project, think again--books aren't typically written for college level readers, whatever that even actually means.
Anyway, I got my first B in second grade. That was pretty earth-shattering because I was proud of my straight As, but after a few years of being on the A/B honor roll, I realized the straight A train had long passed, and that I would  never be there again. It was disappointing, until I realized I didn't care. I didn't study for math tests. I wrote one draft of an essay and called it a day. I got good grades on all of those things.
Despite all of that, I only realized that I was smart when I was fifteen. I was in a chemistry class, with a teacher that was disliked  by all the students and parents alike (she was a mad intelligent woman, but that very thing can sometimes get in the way of someone being a good teacher), and most people that I knew always said that chemistry was difficult anyway. Let it be known that I did terrible, at least by my standards, in my biology class the year before. (I got a C. When I had a grade check for choir late in the year, she wrote "could do better" in the notes section, and I saw that and knew it was true, but science in general and biology in particular is so boring to me that I didn't care to pay attention enough to try harder. It's like my brain was physically incapable of focusing on any of it.) That science is the absolute worse subject to study in my humble opinion. That everyone said they understood physics better, which I was looking forward to since it was the science of color guard. (LET IT BE KNOWN--PHYSICS WAS FAR WORSE THAN CHEMISTRY. I DON'T CARE WHAT THE HATERS SAY.) But chemistry was rather understandable to me. One fateful day in that class, we were working on a group assignment that was pretty difficult. All of us were struggling to understand the topic and find answers to the questions before us. As we worked it out together, it all of a sudden made perfect sense in my mind.
I started writing as quickly as I could on the paper. I told my group I would explain in a bit, but I needed to write in silence for a moment so that I could get it all down on the paper, because I  knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't have it anymore.
Once I had written everything down, once I could see it in front of my face and thus had no chance at forgetting it, I started explaining it to the other students in my group. I completely understood it, and after a while, the rest of them did too, or at least they understood a little bit.
That was the first time that I realized that I am naturally, genuinely, really, really smart.
Which of course explains how I have never had to put much effort into school, ever. I was usually 25 out of a 500-something students in my class. The people above me, many of them very good friends of mine, cared a ton about their grades. But I certainly didn't. If I could graduate, as far as I was concerned, I was good.
My first year of university was pretty easy as well. I did a special program called Jumpstart that was nothing like normal college, which I only learned after returning from my missionary service. Then college got hard. But even then, I didn't start putting in real effort until last semester, 2021.
The classes I took were creative writing in the genres, intro to literary studies, theatrical design, methods of teaching English, and intro to critical theory. The majority of these classes meant a great deal to me.
The literature class definitely wasn't for me. I mostly took care of other responsibilities in that class, although I did read a lot of good stuff in that class. However, I learned that there is more of a difference between analysis and interpretation than I realized. I'm really good at analysis. I still don't know what interpretation means. Even if I say "this thing in the text means this in real life," that's not enough? Everything in literature means something, but apparently people that study literature instead of writing want things to mean even more.
The design class taught me that I am definitely not good at design. I'm definitely a director, because I know what feeling I want to be portrayed, and I have general ideas (like "blue is an important color in this scene"), but that's about it. I feel like my design concepts were a lot weaker than a lot of other people in the class, but that's nothing I didn't expect. I was surrounded by a lot of talented people, and it was great to learn from them! I did learn, though, that of all the design elements, I kind of have a knack for lighting design. I surprised myself during an online class discussion by writing very passionately and with great insight about lighting. So if I have a talent or future in design, it's there! Which is good, because my current job involves lighting design from time to time, even if it intimidates me a little bit. Maybe I should try it more often!
My theory class was a really big deal for me because it's what helped me realize that studying English was for me. There were many years of my life where I didn't want to go to college, and I didn't make the decision to do until my mid-teen years. It was around sixteen years of age that I made the decision to attend university, knew that I had to study creative writing because it's been the only thing I've cared about my whole life, but didn't want to at all. In my junior year English class, we did a unit on critical theory. I was not looking forward to it; it sounded like the worst thing in the world. What really worried me about it, though, was that my teacher said that critical theory is a large amount of what you study if you major in English in college. I knew that I would major in English, so this sounded like a nightmare.
But once I got an actual taste of it, I absolutely adored it.
My group studied and presented to the class about archetypal theory. (Which is a theory I absolutely adore, and I'm studying it a little more this semester--but I'll get to that later.) A short version of archetypal theory is that characters in a story fall into a certain role (hero, shadow, mentor, etc.) and follow the general same story arc (the Hero's Journey). This is based on the idea of the collective unconscious, that there are some things that humans just know because that's the way it's always been.
I loved it, like I said, so that was a relief. But the purely magical part was when the time came to present. As we were explaining the collective unconscious to the class, they kept asking questions because they didn't really understand it. Other members of my group would make poor attempts to explain it, to no avail. Since this is the basic foundation of archetypal theory, that was an issue. Finally I spoke up. (Most of you know by now that I am a pretty quiet person, and I was especially in high school.) I said, "You know how there are people that are afraid of spiders, and they're like, 'I can't explain it; I've just always been afraid of spiders. They've just always freaked me out'? That's what we're talking about. There are some things humans have just known from the beginning of time, like, some spiders are extremely dangerous, so humans have feared them from the beginning of time, and they still do whether they understand it or not. That's the idea of this theory."
The looks of understanding on their faces was priceless. Thanks to what I, the most quiet person in the class, had said, people understood this theory. I think that was the first moment I realized I really would be good at studying English. As I look back on it, because I certainly didn't know it then, that was my first successful moment with teaching too.
So while it's standard, I of course was overjoyed to have the opportunity to take an intro to critical theory class. It's what really got me into the idea of studying English, after all. I'm so glad I got to learn about theory on a deeper level and all the different ways it influences the way we read and the way we live. I also had the best professor ever. Dr. Dib is a SoCal fashion queen who brought snacks for us during exams, used Alan Menken songs as examples of post-colonial theory, is an absolute meme lord, recommended great books for us to read, brought us snacks during exams, and taught me the Arabic word for "welcome back from your shower." (I can't remember what it is, but it's my favorite word in the history of ever. I need to email her about that eventually.)
I took creative writing in the genres last semester, my first creative writing class of my college career. (Many thanks to my high school for offering me my first imaginative writing class at seventeen, which was such a joy for me.) I remember sitting in class on the first day before the lesson had started. I looked around at the other students, realizing they would all read and critique my writing. I work hard to make myself unashamed of that, which is really difficult for most people, but this was a scary feeling. Complete strangers would have to read my work and talk about it right in front of me. I thought to myself, I am in a very vulnerable situation.
But then I thought about that same thing again: I work hard to make myself vulnerable with my writing. I know that no matter how a writing career goes, it doesn't happen without absolute vulnerability. If you don't feel powerless, terrified, and weak at some point in your writing career, there's no way you're doing it correctly. But since I know that's true, I go out of my way to put myself in uncomfortable writing situations, just so I can make the best of them. Because I know that's how this goes. I thought about how I have made myself kind of used to the feeling, and I looked at the other students and knew that more than likely, most of them had not put themself through the necessary turmoil to get to the point of acceptance that I was at. And we were all going to do it. We were all in an incredibly vulnerable situation. And I knew that knowledge made me the strongest person in the room. As I continued through the class and saw how scared so  many of my writing classmates were, despite their obvious talent, the truth of that knowledge was confirmed.
I met amazing writers, got to read incredible examples of work, and I felt myself become a better writer. I read differently now, and I've gotten new ideas for stories and writing techniques that have really helped me grow. I am overjoyed with how my first writing class went.
All of those classes were hard work. But the one that really got me was methods of teaching English. It's a 4000 level class, and I am more or less three years away from graduating. That should have been the first indicator that I was in way over my head. It's typically the last class that English educators take before they start block and student teaching. I am nowhere near that part of my education. It's a small and intimate class, which was really fun, but I definitely felt like the odd one out most of the time since everyone else was so far along in their education.
This class required a lot of lesson planning and other activities to help us become teachers. We filled out mock applications of what we would have to do to get our teaching license. We planned a six-week unit full of lessons based on texts of similar themes. It was hard work. It took everything in me.
But I had never wanted to try for my education this hard in my entire life. As I thought about why that was, I realized it was because in this class it was the most obvious that my education wasn't my own. With everything I did, I thought of my future students, and I just wanted to make everything as amazing as I possibly could for my kids. The stress of lesson planning kept me up at night. I talked to my friends and my dad all the time about how I just wanted to help my kids, how I didn't know anything, how I wanted to make sure I planned the standards right so they were understandable for my students.
I'm grateful I took this class way earlier than I was supposed to, at the end of the day. For one, I now understand lesson planning and other essential parts of teaching in a way that I didn't before, so now I have years to think about it and practice it before I go out and do the real thing. That makes it a lot less intimidating to me. The second reason is because it taught me how to be a good student.
For better or for worse (usually for worse, but it has its good moments too), for a good portion of my life I have struggled to care about pretty much anything. There's a lot of factors that play into that, but it definitely explains why my interests are so few. I don't have the energy to care about anything else. But while I cared about my education before, I now care about doing well in it, and about working hard in it. And let me tell you, last semester I learned that caring about things isn't fun. The anxiety I got from worrying about my grades was a new kind of pain to me, and I don't know how so many of you have been doing it for all this time. It's not pleasant in any capacity. But I know it's worth it. And last semester was a rough go. Sometime next month I'm gonna have an appointment with my academic advisor and see how many of those classes I have to retake in the fall. (I think I passed them all, but honestly, it was such a rough run that I can't be quite sure about all of them.) But while that was true, it taught me the lessons of what to keep doing and what to fix. I know how to succeed for the rest of my college career now.
This semester I'm taking mythology (that's where the archetypal theory comes back into play), beginning French II (DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TAKE A YEAR OFF OF STUDYING YOUR LANGUAGE is all I'm going to say), American literature II (I'm drowning in reading, but at least Mark Twain really is as good as everyone said), screen aesthetics (essentially watching a lot of movies and pausing them every two seconds), and foundations in education (I failed this class last year, but now I have a professor that actually makes sense, as well as control over my depression). I'm also taking Jesus Christ and the everlasting gospel at the religious institute. It's awesome. I'm working hard the first week in, and good things are happening for me. I'm staying ahead.
Let us always remember that some things are hard, but that's what makes them priceless. I barley got out of last year alive, but now that I have, I have lessons that I'd never take back.
Thanks and much love!