Due anytime before you submit your first essay:
1. 2-page self-portrait
2. 2-page portrait of your target audience.
3. 1-page query letter that describes your essay to a magazine or journal of your choice.
4. 1st conference
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Self Portrait, in words
Who am I? Well, that happens to be a question the strikes my mind far more frequently than I feel it should. But I suppose that there really isn’t any perfect answer for how one is supposed to define and describe himself or herself; opinions and perceptions vary as much as the people are that form them. I could go on about my family or my majors or my age level or my gender and there still wouldn’t be any clear perception written here with any accuracy as to my person. However, the groundwork can still be laid within my choices of words and with the smile on my face as I turn this in.
The best way to start, I suppose is that I’m a child of God. I don’t mean this as excluding but this is the most important way in which I identify myself, as God’s child. I heartily agree that despite personal beliefs and choices we are all God’s children, and this has ingrained in me a very real sense that everyone is a person and ought to be treated as such. Since I am human, I’m bound to make mistakes (though I know who to ask for help) but I have a sincere wish to treat folk equally, not celebrating celebrities or looking down on the lowly; since God doesn’t judge me until I’m dead, should I really be judging others? I don’t like to put people in boxes. Again, I recognize that this will still happen since this practice is ingrained in our very nature and society. The point I want to make with all this lays in that this is firstly how I see myself and I build up personal impressions from this solid cornerstone.
I have an honest love of learning and exploring the different perspectives of the world around me, if not always the school’s way of presenting it. Since everyone is a person and with their own state of mind, I’m still curious to hear what they have to say, whether or not I agree. I want to understand and be understood perhaps above all else; psychologically, I’ve been told a few times over that our first and basest need is acceptance. There will always be those that I cannot understand, either motivations or perspectives, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. I’m currently studying Biology and Creative Writing because these are two subjects I’m passionate about. The world around me is astounding in its simple complexity with millions of tiny parts working together to form an amazing whole; one small piece removed from the puzzle and an ecosystem or the human body or a story can collapse in a fantastic implosion of matter or words. Finding myself in such wonder interlays an interesting sense of being so small and at the same time a new gravity of size.
My name means laughter and was picked because it means laughter. I love to smile and joke, feeling a special need to share my upbeat nature, just for a smile from someone else. I’ll sing “I’m alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic” at breakfast (which wakes me up quite well) to earn a few groans, but even if they’re throwing a wadded napkin at me, they’re still more alive and grinning. I love hugs. I have a really nasty habit of not thinking things through before I start speaking; partly why I enjoy writing so much is that I can change it before presenting it. I write for fun and because I’ve got something I want to share. While I love to be in groups of people, I shut down when the group is too large. I can be quite contrary (for example I like to talk but I also love to listen to others). When I’m quiet, my friends tend to think that something is wrong. In my version of the world, the sky has no set color. I enjoy time to be quiet and introspective as much as time to enjoy the company of friends. I love meeting new people. I don’t think I have it in me to outright hate someone. I’m easy-going unless I’m wound up. I like to give and to sing. I’m a sister. I’m a daughter. I’m a friend. I screw up all the time. I have a side of me that seems dark and remains suppressed but for the times I let my mind wander that direction. I’m looking for ways to improve myself. I have many flaws that I need to work out.
Who am I? I’m still working on it. But I think I’ve got enough of a grounding to work and explore the potential and possibilities that I may never fully grasp.
I like traveling alone. I like long, monotonous car trips and four hour layovers in airports. During these times I don’t reach for my cell phone to catch up on the lives of friends who I haven’t heard from in a long time. I make those kinds of calls when I don’t have the time—like the week of finals when I have an overwhelming amount of work due. But for some reason, when I’m traveling and have all sorts of time that should be boring, I don’t want to use it for any practical purposes at all.
The train is sliding along the track somewhere between the District and Fredericksburg. The skin of my thighs itch a little from the stiff upholstery of the cushions and I can imagine the miniscule, red indentions from each fiber that will cluster together to make a rash on the soft skin of the back of my knees. No one will notice because it’s 6 a.m. in the morning and not many people are on the train. I imagine how crowded the VRE going towards D.C. would be compared to the silent one that I’m on now; everyone is staring tiredly out the windows.
A twelve year old boy sits across from me and stares out the window, holding a single canvas sack in his arms. He’s wearing a faded, white t-shirt, the kind of jeans that are outdated in their wash and cut—a bright, royal blue and high waist, and what looks like a gray-striped train conductor’s hat. A woman with long, frizzy brown hair wearing a jean jumper with a purple turtleneck underneath and her sullen looking teenage son sit across from the other boy—their seats facing each other. The majority of the car was empty—so it surprised me that the twelve year old chose to sit across from the two rather than find a seat with a three row radius from anyone. An old man, with feather-like white hair, who seems unable to contain his gums or random thoughts, sits in the seat in front and across from me.
Even if it wasn’t 6 in the morning, I still would prefer to be traveling alone. I don’t know what it is about it that intrigues me so much. Sometimes it’s nice to not have to involve yourself—to still be around many different people—but just fall into the background and observe. I can feel my spine sinking into the back of the chair, my head tilts against the giant window. I pull my head away from the window—the vibrations of the train make me feel like my brain is being jostled around. I don’t like being reminded that I’m comprised of bones and tissues that comprise organs. I like to become unaware of my body on trips and melt into my mind—feel like Emerson’s invisible eye. My being disperses into the air and becomes unseen by all.
The jeans that I’m wearing are faded and loose, they don’t cling closely to my curves, and I’m wearing a charcoal gray zip-up fleece that is a few sizes too large. It has been washed so many times that little balls of fleece lint are gathering on the outside. My hair is up in a smooth bun—not really messy or dirty—it doesn’t look shiny and soft like it does when it’s clean. I have on absolutely no makeup that will rub off when I wipe the sleep out of my eyes. I feel completely comfortable, as if I could be watching a trashy yet satisfying reality show like the Bachelorette and eating Blast-o-Butter popcorn with my mom in our living room. I feel completely mundane and insignificant—but I promise this isn’t a bad thing. I really like to feel like this when I travel alone.
Now, I’m driving with friends on California One, our rented Ford Explorer twisting and turning with the terrain. The two lane highway stretches along a cliff, with a straight drop down to the ocean on one side and a wall of green, craggy mountains on the other. Pollock, Rachel’s aunt, enjoys speeding along the natural bumps and turns of the road. My friends let me sit up front since I didn’t have a turn the whole time we were in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Now, I feel like I could take off through the large windshield and fly up onto a tree on the highest mountains, then jump down to the sea lions basking in the sun a hundred feet below where the rocks meet the water. I haven’t seen terrain this unique and pretty since I’ve driven through the Austrian Alps, when I was amazed at how the grass was so green that it almost glowed neon and how the cows had floppy ears.
“I remember the first time I drove on Highway One, with my family when I was 15. It made me realize just how big the world is,” Pollock said, reading my thoughts “And, it made me realize that I had to get out of the Midwest when I graduated.” Pollock’s springy curls bounce along each bump, her small hands rest lightly on the steering wheel.
Pollock stops the car at one of the many look-out points and the five of use file out. We look at the sea lions below and how the water splashing against the rocks lightly sprays them with water. We look off into the ocean and along the coast, how the mountains seem endless. Then, we stand up on a rock and take a picture.
It’s nice to travel with companions when you’re experiencing something new and unique or going on an unexpected adventure. Sometimes, the presence of others can help to validate the intensity of the situation and they can help you realize things about the experience that you wouldn’t realize on your own. Also, it can be nice to have a guide when traveling so you can make the most of the experience. Without knowledge of the area, it is hard to know what is worthwhile seeing. Even if you have a guide book, it is often better to have the assistance of someone who knows the area well and has already explored and made errors. I often find it hard to establish adventures for myself unless I have an accomplice. On this Spring break adventure to California, my three friends are my accomplices and Rachel’s wild aunt is our guide.
I always wonder why my aunt, uncle and cousins enjoy renting a condo in Florida, but spending their whole time at the small pool. I wonder why someone would travel all the way from Missouri and rent a shore-side condo just to do what they could be doing at home.
“Don’t you like swimming in the ocean?” I asked my cousin John.
“No, I don’t like the goopy things that stick to your feet on the bottom,” he replied.
I remember how my family would rent a condo in Florida every summer, as well. We’d get up early and go out onto the beach in the soft morning light. We’d swim in the lukewarm water that was cloudy with the silt from the bottom and pick up sand dollars with our toes. It always amazed me how different the living sand dollars looked from the ones you can buy in She Sells Seashells, that were bleached white and had ribbons, lace and googly eyes attached to them. Alive sand dollars are a rich, tan color and almost seem to have a very short layer of fur, kind of like suede. When you turn them over, their millions of legs move together and their center gulps for water that isn’t there.
In the afternoons we’d go out into town and have lunch and shop at the souvenir shops, or maybe drive around to nearby islands. It would often rain during this time, and if it wasn’t raining, my dad would just not want to be outside in the heat of the afternoon. My dad who refused to wear sunscreen on our cruise to the Caribbean and ended up becoming so pink from being burned that he had to wear the one pair of pants he had with him, his Dockers, on the beaches for the rest of the cruise.
As a little kid, I loved the souvenir shops that sold shirts, shell creations and key chains, the restaurants with boats in bottles lining the walls and looking at old people’s summer homes and thinking that the old people wouldn’t be able to enjoy them fully because it’s harder for them to move about. I couldn’t see why anyone wouldn’t run out to the beach in the morning and bury their grandmother in sand then run away laughing. And, this is still a hard one for me to answer because I still like making the most of my trips when I travel. I’m not to the point in my life yet where I’m so stressed out by everything that I need a break to do nothing. But, I guess for my aunt and uncle it was nice being able to do the same exact thing they could do at home, but in a different place. The distance separates them from their world of stress and reality. When you’re stuck in a foreign place with only a checkable suitcase you don’t have to worry about cleaning your house, your job or anything that would normally stress your mind because it’s not physically there to worry about. And, even if you were worrying about it, it wasn’t physically there to get done.
I always think of the train ride between the District and Fredericksburg to be like a journey, even though the train ride is approximately an hour and fifteen minutes—considering the engine doesn’t break and have to be replaced in the middle of the trip. I feel somehow daring when I descend the escalator to the trains from Union Station or step onto the platform in the cool morning air in Fredericksburg. I’m about to embark on Jacque’s Grand Adventure, I think as the train starts to jerk away from the station. I try to quickly get beyond the unsettling thought that I’m leaving something important behind. Glasses? Check! Psychology Book? Feel the rectangle imprint of it against my shin through my overly stuffed backpack. Cell phone charger? Um. . . yes.
I pull down the little tray table from the seat in front of me. I decided not to take out my laptop because I’m always afraid that the weight of it will break the hinges of the weak, plastic table top. Instead I place a book that I won’t read, my ipod, cell phone and VRE ten trip pass on top of it. It’s probably safe to look about and stare at people now—it’s about twenty minutes into the trip so most people have had enough time to become situated in what they’re doing: reading, sleeping, gluing their eyes to the laptop screens while intermittently loosening their ties, yelling at their kids for leaving the sound on for their electronic games, and having loud and rude conversations with their husbands. The people that really bother me are dressed professionally and have many loose paper documents spread over their tray and the seat next to them. I think, what if they become jumbled—or worse—a page falls under your seat and is either stepped on by someone with soiled shoes or slides further down the train car as we climb a hill and is never found again? I like having each of my travel companions sitting neatly on the tray in front of me—one, two, three—I keep track of each item and will return them to my bags about ten minutes before the train is due in Fredericksburg.
I feel as though I should be sad because I just broke up with my boyfriend. But, for some reason I’m not as I skip through songs on my ipod. I’m enjoying the solitary moment right now where I can be quiet and not have to engage in social interactions. I can be in close proximity to people without engaging in them or their lives. Sometimes I learn a lot about people through their conversations with each other or on the phone, or their outward and obvious actions. Other times I have to make up stories for why they’re on the train and where their final destinations will be. Is she married? How old are they? Is he satisfied with his life? Will I ever be satisfied with my life? I never notice people staring at me—well, besides creepy old men and perhaps young guys. And, I have a feeling I wouldn’t know what to do if someone was probingly staring at me the way that I stare at them. How can people not be at least slightly interested in the lives of others?
The twelve year old boy looks up earnestly at the woman across from him and asks “difficult trip?” in a light, southern drawl. My eyes widen slightly as I stare at the boy and the listen to the conversation that follows. The woman’s eyes crinkle as she responds to the boy. “So, had you a fun weekend?” he asks smiling enthusiastically at the weary ten year old who is shooting a withering look over his hand-held game. “Did he finish all his homework for today?” he winks at the mother “I always make sure my little brothers finish their homework before going outside to play.” I’m completely baffled that a twelve year old boy would be talking in such a manner—mature yet somehow condescending and untypical for his age.
As I listen to the friendly boy babble on, I learn that he has a fiancé and would like to join the military “to give service to his country.” He just got on the train in Quantico where he was visiting his cousins and he’s on his way back home to North Carolina. I then realize that he must not really be a boy—although he has the stature and features of a twelve year old. I begin to theorize on why he looks so young. . . Maybe he was incredibly sick as child and his growth was stunted. Or, maybe he was just born with a slow development. Didn’t I study some sex-linked abnormality in Psychology of the Exceptional Child in which a boy is born with a weak Y chromosome or something? Or, maybe he’s just a crazy kid and has it stuck in his mind that he’s twenty-three when he’s actually twelve. He did seem slightly socially awkward.
I like how involved I become in my surroundings on trains without actually participating. In the end, I rarely ever find out where the people are going or why they’re going there. There is so much sensory information with the changing scenery outside the train and the interesting people inside the train. We’re moving—but yet I still get the sensation that I’m not really going anywhere. Instead I’m suspended somewhere in time where I can become invisible and observe a microcosm. And, we’re all many different people, with different purposes, that are randomly put together. But we all have one commonality—the train.
The Skin I’m In
I am a woman. I am a daughter. I am a feminist. I am a writer, an artist. I am human. I sneeze when the sun is too bright. I dance to music in my head. I have scars and curly hair. I analyze things and people too closely, and sometimes not enough. I am a giver and an activist. I am concerned and frustrated. My life story is messy. I idolize Aretha Franklin and despise Andrew Jackson. I am a product of my parents and I am grateful.
I am all of these things, but they do not begin to explain me as a whole. I am not easily summed up. Maybe the summation of me does not exist yet because I have yet to fully grow into my skin. Maybe it doesn’t exist because I wear several different skins and I haven’t figured out how to bring them all together. I wear the skin of a feminist and believe that marriage is an institution, a tool used by our patriarchal society to keep women under man’s rule. At the same time, though, I wear the skin of someone who wants to eventually find love and to be loved in my lifetime. I wear the skin of anti-big business and I hate the men in suits who have their hands deep inside our government, but, at the same time, I am an avid cigarette smoker. I feel incredibly hypocritical every time I take a drag, but I’m reminded of summer when I smoke. It’s not the smell of the cigarette when it is first lit, nor is it the smell of a long exhale, it’s the smell of old smoke on my fingers that lingers indefinitely that reminds me of warm summer nights. The contradictions continue. I wear the skin of my mother and the skin of my father. From my mother I am part Choctaw and from my father I am Scots-Irish. My appearance tells anyone I’m white, but I identify myself as Choctaw. This contradiction feels irreconcilable.
I grew up learning about the injustices that Native peoples have suffered over the centuries, but I haven’t ever applied that suffering to myself. The suffering that the Choctaws have endured has just floated above my head as a truth but in an abstract reality. I am not a full-blood Choctaw, but Choctaw blood is still apart of me. My brother and I have never felt excluded from the family and we have never been told that we are not Native, but our physical appearance would beg to differ. My brother and I are not enrolled in the Choctaw tribe, but most of my family, including my grandmother, is not enrolled either. Some Native people feel enrollment is necessary and one of the true ways to identify oneself as Native. My mother believes enrollment does not determine how Native one person is compared to another. For many years I did not call myself Native American. For standardized tests I checked the box that said “WHITE” because that is what everyone else checked. In high school I started to check the box that said “NATIVE AMERICAN”, but sometimes I felt guilty.
This identity crisis is the most troubling to me. I blame white people for the suffering that Native Americans have and continue to endure, but I cannot fully exclude myself from the white culture. My mother reminds me, though, that I am merely two generations away from the Federal Indian Boarding School days, an assimilating and acculturating experience imposed by this country’s great white government that my grandmother endured, and I am attending a well-known liberal arts college. I wear the skin of my grandmother and other relatives who suffered separation and dehumanizing treatment by our government, but I’m learning to grow a new skin that encompasses all aspects of myself and my heritage.
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