WP4
Spring semester of 2023, I was considering taking a gap year. Each month, I was struggling to afford my rent and basic living expenses while working part time as a full time student. In addition to dealing with a number of other personal struggles, some new and others years in development, I was questioning the path I’d chosen for myself and invested so much time, energy, and resources into, I was questioning whether I’d even chosen it. I only had one year of undergrad left, and ended up staying, largely for fear of not coming back.
One of the most heartbreaking things about being in college essentially for writing (as a Journalism major) was being made to dread writing. What once came naturally to me, what was my preferred mode of expression, became soiled with perfectionism, stressing over deadlines, and attempts to meet standards carved by white supremacy and classism. Further, the inaccessibility of the majority of texts I was engaging in my classes made me question who I was being trained to write for, and who I wanted to.
This class, and Professor Dissinger’s pedagogy helped me to rediscover my passion and purpose for writing. I was challenged, uncomfortably, to define my own standards and rediscover my own voice–to ask myself “What do I want to write about?” To think, in my undergraduate years, I’ve had so few opportunities to do that, to choose the story I told. I immediately felt supported in, if not encouraged to take on a risky and disruptive topic for my writing assignments, one that excited me and I wanted to contribute to the dialogue around.
What came of WP2 was pleasantly surprising, to say the least. Fascination with the life experiences and viewpoints of those I come in contact with has been a part of me since I can remember–as a kid, I would film “talk show interviews” with my friends and family members on my iPod Touch. My plan for WP2 situated me in my comfort zone just enough to still welcome creativity and improvisation. I thought of incorporating music near the last minute, and fell so in love with the final product, and the ideas for further development, I ended up embarking on a bit of a passion project I plan to continue.
If I’m being honest, I don’t think I’ll fully be able to reconnect with the immense pleasure I once found in writing until I am no longer in school. However, I enjoy the tedium of editing, and I’m thankful for the experience of WP2, and more broadly, my time at USC for helping me realize and put into practice a love for visual and audible storytelling as well, for documentation. A friend of mine, last year, said she’d noticed it seemed like undergrads’ minors said a lot more about their passions than their majors. This is definitely the case for me–a double minor in Cinematic Arts and Folklore and Popular Culture (an anthropology minor), and my WP2 project was the closest thing I’ve done to ethnographic work. After dipping my toe in, I am excited to immerse myself in that world, in my own way.
I decided I was going to go to college for journalism when I was 11, and didn’t start to question it until my freshman year at USC. But, I’ve come to realize in recent years, I have a deep fear of wasting my time. I felt like it was too late to change my mind, without so much of what I’d energized for years being for not. Looking back, I’m of course like “Girl, you were literally 18 and a first year.” Still, I wouldn’t go back and change anything, but this class, and WP2 in particular, taught me not to fear changing my mind, going back and starting over, or trying something new. If I see every experience as valuable, no time is wasted.
I feel gratitude to this course, and to Professor Dissinger for inspiring and energizing me as I close out the undergraduate episode of my life; it was so needed. And I feel gratitude to myself for learning to embrace imperfection, mediocrity, fatigue, during one of the hardest years of my life, without quieting my voice.
