The following is my college essay. I wrote it for all my applications in 2018, and have not been denied any school. I have just been accepted to my top school, The University of Rochester, on March 1st.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” This question pulls me out of my trance. My eyes dart around the room to see my peers watching me, and the teacher waits expectantly. Whispers echo throughout the classroom. The clock ticks: 8:02. What do you want to be when you grow up?
In blond pigtails and a plaid dress, I remember the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Without missing a beat, I responded. I remember the posters, mine with my pigtails and the word PALEONTOLOGIST. I had a love for dinosaurs and a strong passion for reconstructing the past. Hand in hand with my mother, we left the Pre-K classroom.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” My second-grade teacher scribes on the board. I titled my page ASTRONOMER, my handwriting as chaotic as the cosmos. I don’t want to dedicate my life to the past, but rather focus on the future. There is so much to learn. I wrote down my response with constellations sketched in the margin.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” My fourth-grade teacher looks at me over the book in my lap I had been buried in during the lesson. “I’d like to be an author.” To create a whole new world, to make people feel something is what I want to do. Even if fiction permits only a temporary escape from reality; it is worth every moment.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That was our prompt. I could hear conversations from other sixth-graders. Then, I turn to my mismatched assembly of peers, meeting blank stares. The prompt is repeated in an effort to begin, and I stop myself before I say my answer. The teacher meant an occupation, but the only word that came to mind was kind. If you are kind, people have no reason to dislike you. Kind people don’t feel lonely in crowded rooms.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” My geometry teacher inquires. She says I show potential and asks if I intend to pursue a STEM career. I want to tell her I don’t believe I could be a scientist, a mathematician, or an engineer. I make so many mistakes, and stumble over my words when I try to speak. Every action is overthought. If there is one thing I want to become, it is smart.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” A friend texts me at 12:14 am. “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I send back in reply. I had, though. I don’t want to look in the mirror and see who I am now. I want to be beautiful, intelligent, and kind. I want to write words that make people gripped by emotion, and no matter bones below or stars above, I want to learn of the world in which we live. Tears in my eyes blur the text on the screen, others roll down my cheeks. Everyone else sleeps.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” The clock ticks to 8:03. Those few fatal words reverberate through my mind. When did the question become not what I want to be, but who I want to be? “I don’t know.” That’s not true. I’m lying through my teeth and I know it, but how do I explain to a room full of strangers that the only thing I want to be when I grow up is different, to be better than I am?
PROMPT: Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.
Sitting on my desk in front of me are seven battered Moleskine softcover sketchbooks, each one representing six months of my life in collage, graphs, personal anecdotes, ticket stubs, and thousands of sketches representing thousands of reality-tv obsessions, seasonal decorations, and countless profiles of strangers that I’ve seen in cafes and on trains in the last three years. Not only can I trace my artistic development since my freshmen year, these notebooks also serve as a personal roadmap, tracing the backstory of one [my full name]. Take, for example, sketchbook #7. There is a sticker for a coffee shop in Spokane, Washington affixed to the front and a map of Tahiti’s main island taped to the back. This journal starts in the June before Senior year, continuing on until this very moment. That particular summer was especially tumultuous, with a then undiagnosed mental illness coloring my artwork in chaotic shades of panic, my writing dripping with despair that stumbled into unbridled rage that freefell into hopelessness, leaving me shattered at the bottom of a dismal pit. Really, cheery stuff. But as green watercolor blobs accompanied by white charcoal capsules cut with element number three waltz out of their clear orange bottles and across this depiction of my subconscious, hope emerges. On a slightly less bleak note, #2 contains some portrayal of Jared Padalecki, my favorite actor when I was fifteen, for every day of the year. I was utterly obsessed, given over losing myself in a pop culture oblivion. #4 has more than its fair share of raunchy fanfiction involving Oscar Wilde and Robert Baldwin Ross. My favorite part of #6 is a massive two-page spread that traces the entirety of geological time from the Early Cambrian to the Holocene. Each one is a quantifiable reflection of the hundreds of different people that I have been in the last four years.
Hello everyone! I’ve had some questions about the assignment schedule I posted here.
The idea was born out of my desire to eliminate the “Oh shit is that due tomorrow?!?!” late night moments of panic. I knew I wanted to have one master list of all of the things I needed to get done. Something about having absolutely everything I need to do written down and in front of me makes a challenging semester seem less daunting and more doable.
The best part about this schedule is that you can tweak it until it works for you! I chose to use Excel because it was more flexible than writing it in my planner, and I could add/delete tasks as the semester went on (and as professors changed the due dates a million times).
During syllabus week, I go through each syllabus and list every task, reading, assignment or exam from the beginning of the semester all the way through finals week. By the end of the week, I have a comprehensive list of what I need to do for every single class, all in one place. I’m getting ready for the new semester and thought I’d walk everybody through how I organize mine:
Completed: mostly because I like to mark tasks off as I complete them, but also because it made it easier to quickly scan and find where I’m at in the list.
Type: I used this to discern between assignments and tests or quizzes, which I put in bold. I also put in the readings I assigned myself, and projects assigned by teachers.
Due Date: Alternating colors to block tasks by due date, so you can see at a glance how many things you need to do for that day.
Assignment: Quick description of the task or assignment. I put in any information given by the syllabus about the material the test covers.
Class: Color coded! Amazing!
You can add or delete the categories to fit your needs! I’m adding a “Grade” category this semester. Let me know if anyone tries it for the new school year, and as always, send me an ask if you have any questions!
So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”
Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”
So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.
That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.
When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”
And that? That gives me hope for the future.
Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”
When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?
And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.
“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.
Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.
That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..
So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.
And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”
glue stick, magazine scraps, stickers, glitter, etc.
HOW TO:
1. Decide your purpose.
What’s it for? Who’s it for? Will you have a theme? What kinda music/genres fit with that theme?
2. Compile the tracks into a playlist on iTunes.
FILE > NEW > PLAYLIST
Here are sum tipz for compiling your tracklist:
I like to vary old + new music, genres, moods, etc.
To make it flow, I like to place the songs in an order where each song somehow compliments or contrasts the previous track.
Include a good mix of familiar tracks and new finds.
Live versions of familiar songs are always a good idea.
DO NOT BE SCARED TO INCLUDE CHEESY POP SONGS.
Consider movie soundtracks ! Those are ALREADY like mixtapes!
15 songs is a good # of tracks to shoot for.
3. Burn the CD !!!
Insert a blank disc into your disc drive.
FILE > BURN PLAYLIST TO DISC
4. Wait 4 the disc to burn.
Grab a big ol snack while u wait. Make sure you don’t bump your computer while the disc is burning or the driver could fail.
5. 🌸 DECORATE YER COVER, HUNY 🌸
This is obviously my fav part nnggg. My biggest tip is that collaging takes tons of practice to get a feel for. The person you’re making the mix for will love it NO MATTER WHAT, so don’t sweat it.
Here are some of my biggest tips on art directing yer new creation:
I start by cutting out a little less than 5″ by 5″ piece of plain card stock to act as a solid background.
A good title can MAKE a CD (and lend itself to some solid visuals).
Have a small collection of magazines + clippings to go to for inspiration. My favs are 1980′s Nat Geo’s, “Oh Comely” (a British rag). and NYLON.
To get my clippings, I look through a few issues and clip ANYTHING that relates to the vibe of my mix in any way. Sometimes I have a color scheme in my head or a specific imagine or mood. That guides my pics, but I’m always ready to deviate if something else grabs my eye.
Sometimes simple covers with a big graphic and some dope patterns/color blocking are more appealing than wild ones, so don’t overthink it ~
6. GIVE THAT BABY AWAY!
Here are some covers I’ve made to give y’all some samples:
If you follow this how-to, be sure to tag me in yer pics <3 !
So for my advanced editing class this semester we had to make a “montage edit” where we combine footage/media from 2-3 different sources to create a final product with a completely different intended meaning than the original.
When they ask me what you remind me of, I am usually speechless. Not only because your love freezes the words inside me, but it also chains them to the ends of my bones and then hangs them on the hooks of my nerves for extra support.
You are in more ways than one, a silver chain. Your arms strong; cold steel-like shackles to grip me my soul, lest it will float away in the sea of sinners. Because you like the hardest steel, have let your soul through the blazing purgatory fire and now you hold me captive between the clenching of your teeth, hoping to now liberate me from my sins.
So I lie their solitary, stripped and stationary on the floor of your marble eyes and stare into the granite orb in between, hoping they’ll suck me into their dark, inviting abyss. And yes, I crave to plummet down that black hole because although I am afraid of heights, I am terrified of selling my soul to rust. So I lie here still, fantasizing about my free fall because as long as I am free to spread my arms about, I will swallow my fear and make snow angels in the air until I fall down into the water in your eyes.
Because freedom, you think, is your greatest sin and bondage, I think, is mine.
