Adieu
While I have always found it tremendously tedious and boring to write academic papers about topics that I care little about, it has always been relatively easy for me. I find out some information about the topic and essentially regurgitate that information in my own words for someone else who evidently knows way more about that topic to gauge. It was how I was taught to write. We read books in middle school which our teachers had read hundreds of times before, trying to pick up on the small clues and symbolisms the author had left behind. It was necessary of course, I could then analyze writing to find its deeper meaning, but it is quite clear to me now that the writing I did then was not in my own voice. Instead, it was in the voice of a 13-year-old, who knew his way around a thesaurus trying to sound convincing and intelligent enough to get an A. That sort of writing never fulfilled me. However, never before did it occur to me that I would have the most difficulty writing about the one thing in the world that I can confidently say I know more about than anyone else on the planet, myself.
This semester happens to fall around one of the most crucial periods of my life. It is beginning to feel to me as though the consequences of every decision that I have made, both positive and negative, are coming together to help me celebrate my leap out of the safety of the plane of adolescence and into the unknown abyss of adulthood. Not only has my writing guided me through unknown circumstances, but it has led me to think deeply and introspectively about who I am, what I want, and where to go next. The latter being the one question I still struggle with. However, through that same introspection, I know that being confused about my future is okay.
During the fall, I wrote a lot about creating and although I was very busy with school and a job, this class allowed me to take the creative liberties that I was not able to due to my heavy workload. My journey to creating is my journey through life. I know that when I am creating, I start with an end goal but, as I lay each brick down crafting my pathway there, the twists and turns take me to a new destination, an even better one than I had originally planned. This doesn’t mean the end product is always the best, it could even end up being bad, but on the way there I will always have learned a new thing, there is never a wasted second. As simple as it sounds, you can’t grow without learning, something I have only realized after making countless errors in my 4 years here.
My scholastic journey in college has been another creation of mine. One of which I have continued to learn on every mile traveled even after rerouting several times to get where I want to be. Graduation has always been the goal of course, but I can tell now that as a freshman I really had no idea what that meant. In my interpretation now graduation and the all valuable degree that comes along with it isn’t an end to my education, but just a key to open the doors to all the conversations, lessons, and teachings I want to be a part of in the future to facilitate even more learning and growth for myself.
I believe even more important than what they taught me academically alone, my wanderings through these last four years have taught me how to have my own voice and opinion on the different and important things I am learning both in school and outside of it. Don’t get me wrong I am still learning about myself and who I am every day, but I now know how to confidently state my thoughts and opinions when it comes to matters especially those close to me.
This semester alone I have written three full projects and created other modalities to go along with them about different aspects of my world that are important to me. Furthermore, in those papers, I was able to reinforce why I thought those topics were important with outside sources and even some sources that I had created myself at different points in the semester. No longer am I writing to learn how to write in a specific voice that caters to someone else, but I am able to share parts of myself with the world, the way that I want to share them.
Reflecting on this semester and the previous ones that got me to this point, reminds me of another short excerpt that I wrote in this Writ 340 class. We were asked to go outside and photograph something that stood out to us. I walked around for a while and remembered the one thing that I had been trying to put out of my mind the whole time I had been at the university, the trees are painted red.
A part of me was angry at my dad for sharing that fact with me the moment I stepped on campus, but now I am very thankful. I felt as though I was painted red too. An imposter that didn’t belong but forced themselves to fit in. As a freshman who had already missed his first two semesters on campus due to the pandemic, I was ready to drink the Kool-Aid and be a member of the Trojan family. However, now I realize, that with that comes some serious responsibilities that can even include calling out the university that I now call home. I am no longer painted red, but I am a Trojan through and through, and on this journey through self-discovery especially during the latter part of this semester, I now know the importance of continuing to find and use the voice that this university and this class has instilled in me.
