Life Update!!

It's time for a life update! And the biggest update is that I GRADUATED!!!

Yes, I am now officially and alum of Roberts Wesleyan College. For those not in the know, I got a BA in Studio Art and minors in Communication and English. All such useful, job-getting focii, am I right? But honestly, I'm completely happy with my degree and I can't wait to find the right MFA program and continue along the path of fine arts.

My senior year was spent working toward a capstone body of work to be a part of the Senior Show. I made five books and one collaborative wall piece, pictured below...

The Allegory of the Box

Invincible

The Binding of the Strong

The Legend of the Feathered Serpent (front)

The Legend of the Feathered Serpent (back)

(un)Requited (right half mine)

There's one more little picture-book, The Prince and the Knight, but the outside isn't very exciting to look at and I don't have pictures of the inside yet. I spent the first semester conceptualizing and making Invincible (and procrastinating), and the second semester making the four other books and - the weekend before the show opened - making (un)Requited with fellow Capstone student Bri. It was sort of a last-minute contribution when we realized there was almost an entire wall still empty, but lots of fun and very rewarding - a splashy, abstract break from the more precise craftsmanship required for bookmaking.

 Being pretentious (probably) while I explain my work to Dr. Mrs.

Me, Bekah, and former art student Brittany, my awesome buddies!

So what happens now? That's the big question. I used to think that when I graduated, I'd take off for parts unknown to volunteer with organic farms, or turn this into a travel blog and make big bucks off of it. Those are still goals of mine, but right now I'm not doing anything super drastic (for the sake of my mom's sanity). Right now I have a FABULOUS internship in Rochester with Afterimage, a magazine/critical journal for photography and media arts. Pretty soon I'll be starting work at LUSH up in Eastview Mall, which is a little shop that sells handmade cosmetics and bath and body products.

After that, who knows? Hopefully an apartment in Rochester, maybe an apartment in Boston, maybe a year or two of spontaneous travel, working and paying my way as I go (don't tell Mom. Hi Mom, I love you!). I guess I'll just have to wait and find out!

My greatest accomplishment as a Comm. student: photobombing Dr. Mrs.

Serendipity is for Real

What were the chances? One tiny, unimportant decision about where to sit in class led to all of this.

Let me explain. I am terrified of cool people. The problem is, my coolness radar is pretty crappy - basically anyone who is quiet and aloof and bad at making eye contact, combined with some level of fashion sense, gains a cool star in my book. Which means every introverted pseudo-hipster in the history of hipsterdom is "cool" and therefore untouchable. (The irony being that I am quite introverted and have been described as dressing like a hipster. Does that make me cool? Hmm... to be determined.)

Basically, if I see a cool person, especially in the context of picking a seat for class, I will sit as far from them as possible. A seat that affords me a good view of their greatness without actually having to interact with them will do nicely. I can admire from afar, but not speak to them. That would be too much for my tender little self-esteem to handle.

BUT! That all changed the first Wednesday evening of spring semester, 2013 - in retrospect, one of the most important days of my life. I'd been waiting to take Creative Writing FOREVER because it's, like, my thing. But when I got to class it was almost time to start and there were a lot of people already there. My options were limited. I could sit in the very back, next to some brooding athletic types - even worse than introverted hipsters - or I could sit in the almost-back along the side, right between a good friend of mine and - horror of horrors - a cool person.

I recognized her vaguely from high school, although she'd lost the orange hair. She had gorgeous smokey eye makeup and a ratty green knit sweater (swoon!) and, coolest of all, a satchel with the Union Jack on it. This girl was straight out of the European street style runway. So it was with great trepidation that I sat down, turning immediately to my friend to try and diminish some of the glare of the stranger's immense degree of awesome.

Of course, then I learned the truth. Mel was a great writer, and well spoken, and, yes, a snappy hispter-esque dresser (she'll hate me for using the word "hipster" to describe any aspect of her person, but too bad). But she is also an enormous doof. Her word, not mine. Like me, she is introverted - thus the suave, distanced expression that dissuades immediate conversation, an expression that I, too, have perfected. But she likes car racing, of all things, and hardcore rock music, and European football. She plays a mean guitar and she likes to cook delicious food. But mainly, she's a doof. The "cool" was just a facade, but frankly I'm relieved. Because it was the doofiness that led to the midnight premier of The Hobbit, and cooking shepherd's pie for me, and convincing me to go on the Art in Context trip to Germany that summer.

And that, well. That changed everything.

Thanks to that one little decision to sit next to Mel in Creative Writing, I made some amazing friends on the Germany trip (especially Brit) and rekindled my love for Europe. Thanks to her I've made some amazing memories - not just in Germany, but in America, too: eating at the Old Toad pub and then sitting and chatting for hours about everything and nothing; dressing up in black graduation robes and running around Mel's front yard playing a very clumsy, hysterical game of Quidditch for the entire population of North Chili to see; traipsing around Munich in the endless rain; and, best of all, baking shepherd's pie and stuffing our faces with Mel's amazing cooking.

The chain works like this. Because I met Mel, I met Brittany, and because I met Brit I had a connection with Bekah, who has become another of my dear friends over the past two semesters. They say you meet the friends you'll have for life in college. I never really believed them. I have friends, sure, friends I'll probably talk to and see many years down the road. But I don't make close friends easily - the kind that stay up until all hours talking on skype or snapchat, the kind that will come over when you're sick and hold your hair back while you puke everywhere, or tell you the truth when you ask does this make my butt look big? (The proper answering being, yes it does, and it looks fabulous.)

But now I do. Suddenly my shell was pried open, all because Mel got a fingernail inside and two more people jumped in before I realized it. Because my friend waved me over and said "Hey, sit next to me!" and I conquered my fear of the cool stranger and sat there anyway. (Thank you, Smudge, you really deserve some credit, too.)

So, thanks. You three are my Wonderwall (whatever that means). My BFFs, because if anyone deserves the title it's you guys. I love the word serendipity. It's not just a pretty word anymore - it's proof that the happiest of accidents really happen, and maybe that Somebody up there is giving me enormous gifts when I least expect them.

On Disappointments

Disappointment. The best way to close out the year, amiright?

One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn as I grow up is how to accept being disappointed. As children, when we don't get the things we want, we kick and scream and pout, or sulk, or grow defensive and churlish and refuse to share our toys. Sometimes I think adults act the same way, or at least we wish we could! But part of growing up is about facing that twisting, gut-wrenching pain and refusing to let it control us.

Some things are harder to stomach than others, I admit. When a job opportunity falls through, or when you don't quite manage the GPA you'd hoped for... those are hard, but in the end, it's one more step towards your eventual future. As a senior, I'm struggling with the reality of my economic situation: namely, that I'll be starting from practically nothing once I graduate. I will have to swallow my pride and accept the fact that I'll have to rely on my family for support, both financially and in my living arrangements. I'll be holding a diploma in my hand, but I won't quite be free from reliance on others to keep me on my feet. Don't get me wrong - I'm infinitely grateful for that support, and I know a lot of people don't have that blessing. But then I look at my little brother, whose mechanical engineering and/or physics degree will open manifold doors to financial stability.

Me, I got a Bachelor's in art. I'm looking forward to the cardboard box.

Joking aside, those disappointments can sometimes be easier to handle than others. At least I know I'll have a roof over my head and a skill set that will get me places, as long as I'm willing to dig in and work my butt off (spoiler alert: I am). Other disappointments - cultural, social, etc. - can strike harder blows. For instance, a story you cherished since childhood, that helped shape your creative aesthetic, that guided you to a very specific dream and desire for the future, being completely butchered in cinematic form. That hurts. Yes, it's "just a movie" (whatever that means). Yes, it had its good moments. But was it really too much to ask to expect a little less mind-numbing violence and orc-slaying?

Yes, I'm talking about The Hobbit. Don't judge me. Or do judge me, if you like, but swallow this first: movies are important. All cinema, blockbusters and indie films alike, have a place in the vast web of the human storytelling, a past-time I've devoted my life to in many ways. And it's not just a past-time, either. It's the gauge by which we measure human culture and creativity, a way to reimagine and comprehend a world that is often incomprehensible. Through the filter of stories, we can look back on our history and catch a glimmer of what the lives of our ancestors looked like. King Arthur and Robin Hood; the Epic of Gilgamesh; the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm; all of it is the recorded history of a world we've never seen, a world imagined by our predecessors and laid over the "real" world like The Wizard of Oz painted over with Technicolor. In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien,

"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?…If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"

I remember when I first heard that they were making a movie of The Hobbit. I'd grown up on it, and on The Lord of the Rings (and, eventually, the films). I was a freshman in college, working late at night on a project for Foundations of Digital Media when I saw the news article online. I walked back to my dorm feeling as if I walked among the stars. I was so excited I was shaking. It took me hours to fall asleep, mostly because I was trawling the internet for any and all evidence of potential cast lists and scraps of pre-production information. If Jesus himself had returned for the Second Coming, I don't think I could have been more frantically thrilled.

Oh, sweet childhood. The innocence of youth. The first blush, the naivete, the ignorance. They say that the anticipation of something is usually better than the thing itself, and I have to say that in this case, it was completely true. I attended the midnight premier of An Unexpected Journey the as a junior fresh out of fall semester finals, with two people I barely knew at the time (but have since become some of my dearest friends.) It wasn't perfect, I admitted, but what book-based movie ever is? The LotR films were fantastic, but even they had their flaws. I ignored the naysayers that claimed Jackson was in it for the money (three films out of one little book, but hey, he was using Unfinished Tales, right?), and just enjoyed the high.

It was probably all the anticipation that made my first viewing of The Desolation of Smaug such a flop. Looking back, I'm not sure what I was expecting; but endless, poorly-cut action scenes and about five full minutes of Bilbo screen-time wasn't it. (Isn't it called The Hobbit? I'd almost forgotten what Martin Freeman's face looked like by the end of the movie.)

So I was pretty miserable. My only consolation was that they had at least managed to cram one decent female character into a storyline populated with exactly zero. When a character that wasn't even in the original text saves the film adaptation, you know something's not quite right.

Suffice to say, it was a hard pill to swallow, but I've learned from my mistakes. No one should be elevated to godlike status, regardless of their position. I'd hoped, given the evidence of his previous work with The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson and his associates would be able to produce a fine piece of filmography that would revive my childhood memories of sitting at Dad's knee while he read aloud to us about Gollum's Cave, the treacherous paths of Mirkwood, and barrels out of bond. That didn't happen. But, you know, sometimes you don't get what you want. Sometimes you don't get lady dwarves (because really, if it's so hard to tell the difference between their men and women, I'm sure it's not impossible that some of Thorin's Company could have been female); sometimes you don't get a gentle giant who serves up mead and honey on bread with willing good cheer; sometimes you don't get to see Bilbo Baggins dancing around the forest, invisible, singing silly songs to madden the giant spiders. Sometimes you just have to make do.

Sometimes, you have to do the work yourself.

As a part of the wider online community, I can say with great confidence that a generation - my generation - is growing into its own. A generation made of writers and thinkers and artists who are tired of the same-old ways of Hollywood and our sexist, racist, homophobic cultural norms. These creative young people are the novelists and actors and film directors of the next few decades, and I am thrilled and fiercely proud to be one of them. Maybe The Hobbit movies aren't all I hoped they would be, but even Tolkien himself is not the end-all and be-all of good fantasy literature.

So, a toast: here's to strong female characters that are not reduced to a trope; here's to queer characters that don't exist purely for comedic purposes; here's to characters of color that overcome whitewashing in film. Here's a toast not to the new year, but to the next ten years, the next twenty. May they see a revolution sweep over our cultural norms and the storytelling of our modern world.

Why I Support LGBTQA* Rights

I know I just said this is a personal blog, a place to talk about myself in all my self-absorbed glory (ha), but I figure certain issues and topics are very important to me, and play a role in who I am as a person. So that's my rationalization. Yesterday, October 11, was National Coming Out Day - the twenty-fifth anniversary of it, in fact. Coming out as in, coming out of the closet. Coming out as in, "I identify this way, this is who I am, and if you don't like it, feel free to leave me alone." It's a sore subject in America at the moment, especially in the circles I run in. The conservative Christian circles, that is. But regardless of how many friends or how much respect I may lose, I still want to celebrate the 25th anniversary of National Coming Out Day by saying that I support "gay rights" (the more common colloquial term, and less of a mouthful than Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Asexual-Etc.) wholeheartedly, unashamedly, and regardless of my religious upbringing.

But first, a disclaimer: for me, gay rights - whether marriage, or adoption, or simply the right to walk down the street holding hands and not be harassed for it - is not a religious issue, but a social one. Feel free to tear apart the theology on that one. I know it's not the done thing to separate our faith and the rest of our lives like some neat little compartmentalized box, but note that I said it's not a religious issue, not that it isn't an issue of faith. BUT I'm already off-topic. Bottom line is, I'm not here to talk about my theological views of homosexuality. I'm here to talk about why I support it, from a social standpoint.

And having said that, I'm going to totally talk about it: the reason why I started even thinking about supporting gay rights, which is directly related to religious organizations. Yep. I support gay rights because of the Church - gasp, shock, dismay.

I was pretty sheltered on the topic of certain failings in Christian culture until I came to college. Turns out, for every "love the sinner, hate the sin" conference, there are two hundred people lined up with badly-spelled signs dragging God's love for all people in the dirt. Might as well be the Romans spitting at a certain Lord and Savior they all claim to follow. Part of the reason I need to love and accept LGBTQA* people, wholeheartedly, no pious strings attached, is that so many people are unashamed of their intolerance. When I discovered the existence of Westboro Baptist, with their wretched theology on gross display for all to see in their web address "www.godhatesfags.com", I was so disgusted I spent a while doubting the goodness of human beings - but only after I'd spent a lot of time wondering if it was just a big trolling joke. Surely no one, regardless of faith or creed, could ascribe to such vitriol. Ironic how a religious organization can make it so clear that we are fallen.

But I promised that this wasn't a religious issue (clearly it is, but shhh), so I'll move on.

According to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, more than 400,000 kids are living without permanent families in America. 115,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 40% will wait in foster care for over three years before being adopted. Adoption by gay couples is legal in some states, to varying degrees, but illegal in others. It's hard enough for opposite-sex couples to go through all the rigmarole of paperwork and adoption procedure, but same-sex couples face another kind of prejudice and preventative law entirely. It's been proven by experts that the children of same-sex couples are "just as likely to be well-adjusted as those raised by heterosexual parents." (Thank you Wikipedia. Yes, there is a source.)

Where am I going with this. Ah, yes. I support the right of same-sex couples to adopt because A) WOW look at that huge problem of children without homes we have in America, and that's not even looking at the orphan problem worldwide; and B) there's that interesting factor that same-sex couples are incapable of accidentally getting themselves knocked up. There's no unplanned pregnancies in a same-sex relationship, no struggle over abortion or the upheaval that occurs when two unprepared people find themselves having to support another human being regardless of their financial or emotional fitness for the task. Gay couples have to plan, in excruciating detail, for the ways they can have their own family. It's not a matter of "whoops, baby en route," but of "what's the best way for us to start a family?"

(Disclaimer: accidents don't automatically mean the parents can't/won't support or love the baby just as much as if it was a planned pregnancy. But sometimes, it does.)

I have a private joke with myself that homosexuality is God's solution for overpopulation. More seriously, I believe in evolution, and I believe that God engineered it, that it's an intended part of his creation - so why not engineer a potential way for humans to mate that would help curb overpopulation and take care of all the unwanted children who need homes and families? I dunno, seems feasible to me.

There's a lot more I could say, a lot more research and stats I could whip out, but I won't. Because underneath all of that jargon and science and psychology, there is only this: why are we so fussed with fighting something rooted in love, instead of fighting all the myriad of things in this world rooted in hate? Bottom line is, for me, it's silly and pointless to march against love. And that's all it is. It's not AIDs or perverts or fishnet stockings, it's not butch or queer or I'm a panromantic asexual genderqueer undergoing hormonal transition, it's not signs or parades or nightclubs or prostitution or unsafe sex or my-kid-is-gay parental self-help books.

It's just people in love. Human beings bonding over coffee on rainy Saturdays, or cuddling up to watch the football game, or taking a vacation to Disney World. Ordinary, boring, everyday. Wonderful. Just like boy meets girl, but without the sexist stereotypes.

I have another little private joke with myself (I have a lot of these): the real reason homosexuality freaks people out is because our society is so bound up with gender roles we don't know what to do when a girl cuts her hair short, or when a guy is brave enough to admit that pink is his favorite color. I'm an ardent feminist (not a feminazi, there's a difference); I'm as much in favor of eradicating centuries of male-dominated patriarchy as I am of legalizing the import of Kinder Surprise Eggs - in other words, a lot. (Don't mind the facetiousness, I can't help it.) So that's probably another reason I'm so much of a supporter of LGBTQA* - because equality is equality, regardless of gender roles. I spent a few years working at a daycare, and the amount of pink and purple plastered all over those poor little girls made me weep for future generations of stereotyped young women and men pressed into their perfect cardboard cut-out boxes like Barbie and Ken dolls lined up on display shelves.

But that's a topic for another day.

In conclusion: people are people, love is love, let's focus our efforts on something a little more important than eradicating people who don't fit the gender and sexual orientation binary. Like, I don't know, feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked, or visiting people who are in jail. Jesus thought the pariahs of his day were pretty cool - I will willingly give up my life savings to bet that he'd be chillin' with the crazy half-dressed folks hanging off gay club floats for Pride Parades worldwide.

The Journey Itself is Home

Events seem to be coming together to conspire against me. I spent the weeks leading up to school griping and complaining about how I didn't know where I would end up after college, forgetting that I do not exist in a black hole. Time has meaning, and carries on as it always has. I will not step into college, blink, and step out of it again with no progress to my character or person.

I mean, college is progressing at a frighteningly rapid pace (um, it's almost October? When did that happen?), but we still measure it out in hours and days and weeks, not microseconds. There's still time to figure it out.

To be honest, one of my biggest freakouts was directly related to grad school. Did I want to jump right in, or take a break from structured education? How was I going to pull together a portfolio of my writing as I simultaneously pulled together a senior art show, readings for three upper-level Lit courses, and tried for my first 4.0? The answer, of course, is that I wasn't. To finish my college career with a bang would require more emotional stamina and mental fortitude than I'd heretofore expended, and I was going to have to give something up, or I'd never be able to sustain it.

Yes, an MFA in Creative Writing is on my list of life goals (a list I refine every couple of months). But now I'm in no particular rush to complete it.

I started this blog as a way to record my journey through senior year and beyond, figuring out the path my life would take. So even though updating it feels like a constant cry for attention, I'm going to do it anyway, because I want to be able to read through it in twenty years and laugh at myself, and doubly appreciate the path that led me to wherever forty-one-year-old me will be. Yes, this is my first update in weeks, and we're already a third of the way into the semester, but hopefully I'll be a little more profuse in future.

I said earlier that events were conspiring against me, but 'for me' is definitely more accurate. This entire school year is screaming in my ear GET OUT THERE! Two of the three literature classes I'm taking focus heavily on the theme of travel, and right now we're reading a fantastic travelogue by William Least Heat-Moon about his voyage across the US solely by water. My novel-in-progress centers around a Lewis and Clark-esque journey across post-apocalyptic America. I keep stumbling into conversations with friends about their plans to move to Germany or the UK, to work in the missions field in Romania, or to find some way of escaping the humdrum expectations of society and just wander.

In the first day of World Lit II, our professor encouraged us to read the coming travel-based books with an eye not to the intended destination, but to the journey: "The road itself is home." It's probably freaking my parents out to think of it, but that's exactly my plan. Whether the road is literal or figurative, I intend to face the oncoming uncertainties with an attitude of joy and curiosity, content to walk strange highways merely for the sake of exploration.

When I was a kid, I had this insatiable desire to see what was beyond the horizon. Whatever furthest point I could see, I wanted to walk to it and find the next line of trees or hills or mountains, just keep going until I'd seen all there was to see. I doubt I'll ever see every square mile of land the globe has to offer, but even a fraction of that would suffice.

On Facebook I mentioned WWOOFing, and so far that's the tentative plan. When I graduate in May, I hope to WWOOF my way through a significant portion of the US. Then I'll try for an internship with Culture Magazine. After that, who knows? All plans are subject to the unpredictable whims of life.  And that's part of the fun.

Fear and Community, and the Power of Prayer

For those of you who don't know, last night (Sunday) was the first worship service with Foot of the Cross, the student-led worship ministry here on campus. It was outside, a beautiful warm evening on the steps of the library with a small band, a nice big gathering of students, and of course our lovely Student Chaplain, Kelsey. I'll be perfectly honest: I went mostly to support Kelsey, both personally and in her campus ministry, and also because a lot of my friends were going and I didn't have anything better to do. It's not that I hate worship, but I'd gone to church once already, and two in one day is a bit much - even for a pastor's daughter. (The horror!)

So, the first bit was good, a tad loud at first but nice: your typical worship set with some really great keyboarding by Pearce's worship leader Tim, and a faaaaaaabulous lead singer whose name I don't know yet but will hopefully find out. She was amazing, especially with the smoky, jazzy rendition of an old-hat "nineties worship song" (you know the ones). I wasn't regretting going, exactly, but I wasn't really super into it.

Then the first set ended, and Kelsey came out to introduce the next thing: a time of prayer and contemplation, whether in groups or alone - but to change it up, she'd provided chalk for us to write our requests and struggles anonymously on the cement in front of the library steps. One option was to trace our handprint wherever we'd written down our prayers, and other people could come and put their hands over it while they prayed for our need.

At first I was like, "Aww, that's cute, that'll be a fun way to go around and pray for people in community and connect physically as well as symbolically."

Then I wrote down my prayer request and started bawling.

Well, I had two, and it was really the second that got me. The first was regarding my dear friend who is going to serve in Romania for nine months once she graduates in December. Then another came to me, like it was dropped into my lap: I don't know where I'm going after school. Handprint.

There was something about that handprint that made it, suddenly, intensely personal. I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that, especially among my junior and senior friends who haven't quite solidified (or even thought about) their post-graduation plans. And as I scrawled it out in bold capitals, traced my hand (which, with chalk, turned out rather fat with stubby, disproportionately tiny fingers), and stepped away, it became strangely anonymous: as if someone else had written it, and I'd turned around to see it just there, perfectly formed and speaking straight into my heart.

I didn't realize until that moment the depth of my fear. As children raised at the turn of the century, we are used to having our lives planned out for us. It's a formula perfectly designed for success until now, post-recession and still struggling: preschool, kindergarten, first through twelfth grade, graduate with good grades and maybe some good AP scores, take your SAT, go to college, get a 4.0 (or as near as you can), graduate.

Fifty years ago, boom. Instant job. Or at least, a direct path to follow, guided to a perfectly packaged life: career, spouse, kids, dog, house, car, white picket fence. The American Dream.

Now, there are no certainties. There are plenty of people writing about the millenials, about those people coming into their own in a post-Postmodern, economically struggling society: my generation. I won't rehash it. But I will quote one person, a girl around my age, responding via email to a Reader's Digest article an issue or so back that talked about how we, the millenials, are "rewriting the rules for success."

From where I stand, there is no success. Only survival. 

I don't know where I'm going after school. Standing there looking at my confession, bright pink and all caps on the ground at my feet, I realized how scared I really was. All advice, senior year excitement, and grad school researching aside, there is great fear in not knowing what comes next. All my life, I've followed the prescribed route as much as I could - and this is where the ocean falls off the edge of the earth, and there are no more landmarks.

I thought that was bad. Then, people started praying for it. I went around, doing my own hand thing on other requests - some anonymous, others not so much - and out of the corner of my eye, person after person knelt and put their hands on the words I had written and brought them before God. It was no longer my burden. It belonged to them, to all of us, this fear: the fear brought by the end of the road and the beginning of wilderness.

In chapel today, Dr. Paul Stewart said something like "Roberts tells you that coming here will give you everything you need to succeed" in probably the most sarcastic manner I've ever heard someone recommend an education. (If you didn't go to chapel, you missed out.) The truth is, Roberts may give us an education, may set us on the path to wisdom, but that doesn't guarantee "success" as Americans have traditionally understood it.

I can do without the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids, but I'd still like to have some idea of what comes next, and the not knowing is far scarier than I realized until I actually wrote it down. I'm a writer by nature: the words I put down "become flesh" in a near-biblical way, finding life and truth from the very act of laying them down next to one another. When I wrote those words, they were manifested in a way they hadn't been before, revealing themselves to me as a burden that I didn't fully realize I was carrying.

The cool part is, I'm not the only one carrying it now. Writing it down, giving it up to others and to God, spread out the weight of it and made it easier to bear. I had my little crying jag, along with about half the people in attendance, and we came together and comforted each other. Life is full of uncertainties: just looking at the writing scrawled in multicolored chalk in front of the library steps made that clear to me. This generation has some crazy times ahead of it as we test the waters, fighting to survive, to succeed, to be someone. That fight, I think, will be one of the most important and most life-changing things we ever do. What comes after is up to God.

To that girl who wrote in with her chilling statement, I would say this: maybe, in this new era, survival is success. Let's keep our heads above water, ladies and gentlemen, and see where this year takes us.

In Which I Become SALTy

I am not a people person.

That's not to say I hate people (although I do, sometimes - but generally as a whole, in a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin kind of way). I actually think people are pretty cool, in all our crazy diversity and different ways of processing the world. But I'm also an introvert, and for a long time, I let that define the way I interact with others and the way I view my own social sphere.

Coming into Roberts Wesleyan College as a freshman, a lot of that was turned upside down. I was living on campus in a dorm with my best friend and twenty-two other girls, and I was surrounded constantly by others: in classes, in chapel, at mealtimes, or just walking down the path to the next item on my agenda. At the time, it was an epiphany, a bit of a coming-out-of-my-shell moment.

Then sophomore year rolled around, I moved back home to save money, and everything regressed. I let my early morning work hours and my five-minute separation from campus restrict me, dividing me from campus life and everything that was going on with my friends, with events and clubs and general college life. In a lot of ways it felt like I was even more introverted than before, seizing onto my own natural inclination to retreat and bow out of responsibilities, out of public appearances, out of any kind of varied social life. My focus was purely academic, and while academia is always a good thing, without the tempering environment of what "college life" really is, in all its varying guises, I was missing out on a lot - spiritually, socially, and emotionally.

Don't get me wrong - it wasn't the new commuter status that was separating me from the college environment and community. It was my own reluctance to meet new people, embrace new experiences, and really get everything out of my college years that I could.

Last spring, my friend Brittany (another Brittany - they just seem to flock to me) hosted one of her annual campfire/swimming parties for our group of friends. It had expanded a little bit since I'd last hung out with them, and now included a girl I knew vaguely from a few previous gatherings - a transfer student from Alaska, of all places, who was super friendly and outgoing and apparently didn't require a two-year holding period before metaphorically embracing me as a new friend, as I sometimes feel I do. Somehow or another she'd discovered I liked to write, and before I knew it I was agreeing to apply for a position on the Beacon staff, the RWC student-run newspaper.

Whaaaaaaat. Involvement? Social... interaction? Being a... a LEADER, what is that?! Being on SALT? I couldn't even remember the words that went into that flavorful anagram (it's Student Association Leadership Team, I'm now aware).

A few weeks later, I got the email telling me I had been selected to be the Assistant Editor, under my new friend Victoria as Editor-in-Chief. For the entire summer, I didn't let myself think about it. I was excited to be working on a project like the Beacon with two people I knew would make an awesome team, but I was nervous about being on SALT, a very visual team on campus that interacts with tons of people and essentially helps foster the community at RWC. So, no thoughts. None. The occasional email and text regarding the Beacon or SALT were mere blips on my radar screen.

Then, suddenly, it was the penultimate week of August and it was time to start training week. I hiked to campus with my enormous purple backpack in much trepidation, uncertain of what to expect and terrified of all the new people and weird activities that I figured would be par for the "team building" course. (I wasn't wrong, but I really didn't have any reason to be worried).

Upon approaching the bus, shadowing a few of my friends who were also on SALT, I was faced almost immediately with an unfamiliar kid in a baseball cap who, in almost any other setting, I would immediately label as "dodgy trouble-maker who's always late to class" - and he introduced himself, asked my name, my year, was I on SALT, welcome to the team et cetera. The friendliest, most welcoming dude I've ever met, and I'd been ready to clam up and profile him entirely unfairly. (I might have been right about the trouble-making part, but it's all in good fun.)

The rest of those few days, spent at Lighthouse Christian Camp, were simultaneously the longest and shortest days of my life. They were packed with sunshine and lounging by the lake, hilarious games that broke the ice and put me at ease, and - most importantly - a group of people that I foresee will quickly become some of the best friends I'll make in college. By Tuesday, packing our stuff to return to Roberts, I was deeply regretting that I'd waited until my senior year to become truly involved and invested in my own college experience and the experiences of others.

I'll be honest: I wasn't looking forward to my senior year. All I saw ahead of me was hard work, the endless planning and drudgery of commuting (even if I am closer nowadays), and the big scary finality of graduating and have no concrete plans for where to go after that. I still see hard work, but now it's in conjunction with others who will support me and work with me in our various tasks, both shared and solo. I still see the mildly annoying requirements of commuting, but now I have a bike and a community on campus I'm eager to get to and be a part of. I still see graduation, a red letter day in May marked on my massive day planner that's already scarily full of dates and details, but now the time between here and there is an amazing lineup of opportunities, developing friendships, and crazy adventures that will, I believe, have a positive and long-lasting impact on who I am and where I fit into the fabric of this world.

This was a deep one, guys. Sorry. But in the process of one weekend, I feel like my entire set of priorities shifted and solidified, and I'm excited about it. Introversion and shyness are no longer the deciding factors in my life; they don't define me, and I won't let them become my weaknesses. Instead I'm going to cultivate a love of working with other people and being part of a huge social and academic community, and not let myself stumble into the trap of sealing myself from the outside world. Right now, RWC is my family, and I'm looking forward to helping support and nourish it in the unique ways that I can bring to the table.

Today, one of our SALTy folks, Randie, gave an awesome devotional on 1 Corinthians 12:15-26, which talks about the importance of the parts of the body (of Christ) and how they fit together/need each other, even though they're all different. I think I'm finally ackowleging my part in the RWC body. It's gonna be a great year.