A Decision is a Hard Thing to Make



A senior:

When I was five years old, I learned the right way to pirouette—to lift from my “core” even though the relevé was in my toes, and to follow one spot with my gaze, twisting my neck as far as I could and whipping my head around as fast as possible, so that the instant not focused on that one spot was almost inexistent. This is how dancers stay in balance when they turn—their bodies spin at dizzying speeds, but their minds are concentrated effortlessly on one point in the distance.

I think back to this time in my childhood and am relieved that I’ve had dance. It must have been strange for Vittoria, who had been my ballet instructor for 2 years by then, to teach me these foundations of her life’s art, because I didn’t like to talk to anyone. If I didn’t want to communicate through language, at least I had a mode of expression through movement.

My grandma Jean has four children. Two of them married Caucasian Americans, and the other two, my mom and my older aunt, both married men from Beijing. I recently learned that she highly disapproved of all of these spouses—she wanted her kids to marry Chinese Americans, just like them. I don’t think it’s because she particularly disliked Americans, Caucasians, or Chinese people, but because she wanted her children to fit into the strange realm of American culture, but still preserve their roots of heritage.

Apparently her feelings against these mixed marriages had been strongly asserted. My aunt says that she had a white boyfriend who knocked on the door to pick her up once, and my grandma chased him out with a toy gun, threatening that if he ever came back he’d really get it. Thinking of my grandmother, it’s difficult to imagine her acting this way. She’s one of the nicest and calmest people I know. Most of us grandchildren call her “Lao Lao”—maternal grandmother in Cantonese. My cousins D and J do also, even though their maternal ancestors “came over on the Mayflower.”

I was born in Manhattan on December 5, 1986 and lived with my parents on Pineapple Ave in Brooklyn Heights. They decided to move from Brooklyn to Beijing two years later, and for a few months we could visit my dad’s parents and siblings daily. My mom was pregnant with my brother at this time. One day I started punching her in the stomach speed bag style, and when she asked me what I was doing, I said that if I had a brother, I knew my parents wouldn’t love me anymore.

Eventually he was born, though, and we became a special family at this time, since my mom is American, and was the only woman that anyone knew who wasn’t constrained by China’s One Child Policy.

In the spring of 1989 the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. Beijing had been overwhelmed with rioters and the government was issuing orders to halt public transportation and close off the country’s borders to prevent anyone from entering or leaving it. Panicked, my mom gathered a few of our things in a bag, and prepared to flee the country. No one had cars in Beijing at this time, but somehow we knew a man who was a cab driver, and he picked my mom, baby brother, and me up from our apartment to take us to the airport. My father had to stay behind, because he is a Chinese citizen, and therefore banned from leaving the country.

My mom says that I sat in silence during the whole car ride, but that my brother was screeching and crying. She was worried that the officials wouldn’t allow her to take my brother to the States because he was born in China and she hadn’t yet filed for his U.S. citizenship. She continued through the motions of customs and security at the airport, however, and when asked for our passports, she asked the man ahead of us in line—who happen to also be Chinese American—to hold my brother so she could free her hands. She took my and her American passports out of her purse, and before she could think of an excuse as to why my brother didn’t have one, the official let us go, presumably thinking that the Chinese American man holding my five month old brother was our father, and that my brother was American too.

A junior:

I am a daughter of the rough, injured, and proud mountains and I am in love with wind, with its freedom, its motion. I don’t know how to bring together my desire to be rooted like a mountain and my longing to be free as wind.

I want to be stable and wise as the mountains of my homeland, but I also desire to be free and traveling like the wind. I want to belong to the land, feel it under my feet, make my weight and my influence known, sleep on the land, sit on the land for eating, chatting like people at home. I also have a dream to fly away, to be free of bounds and belongings, to consider the world my home.

I want to be reserved and mature, but I also love to express myself, to be childish, to dance and sing and paint and see everywhere.

Mountains and the wind, conflicting metaphors, have come up in many decisions in my life and will continue to affect my life. Mountains represent stability; wind represents freedom to move. Mountains represent quiet and loneliness; wind represents the ability to join the crowd. Mountains represent a desire to be influential and noticed; wind represents invincibility, flexibility.

Coming to Smith was a windy decision; planning to go back and stay rooted in my country is the mountainous part of me. The strong longing for wisdom and maturity comes from my love to mountains and what I have learned from them; the fresh and alive yearning for being childish, being carefree, being a traveler draws me to the wind.

I want to build a home, have children, be stable, have a job, enter politics, start a movement, always reach high, reach the sky. I want to work for the best, be the mountain, be noticed like it, be grounded like it, be a source of pride for my people, be seen by the world. I want to be strong and rough and unbreakable and resistant like mountains.

I want to fight for change, make sacrifices, forget about personal pleasures, be a source of hope and confidence for the lonely, for the oppressed, for the fighters of freedom. (In my country, people take their sorrows to the mountain; they use it as a shelter, as a starting point for resistance.) I want to be with people but for them, not only of them. I love mountains: their height, calm, beauty, wildness, strength, wisdom, agedness and strong presence.

But there is another part of me that wants different things. It is strong too. That part of me is scared of being trapped -- trapped in a career, in a house, in a family, in a political game, in a duty. It wants to live free and almost invisibly. It is more like me. It is soft and childish. It enjoys little things, and more than anything, it enjoys the feeling of displacement, of leaving, traveling, seeing things, discovering things, living simply, living free. This part of me is less confident and more scared. It is scared of loving only one person, one country, one place, because it has seen loss of places, homes and people many times. It doesn’t fit in one place anywhere, it fits in everywhere.

This part of me loves adventure, the unknown, the unseen. It is like a wind, it doesn’t want to carry one single message, fight for one idea. It is afraid of being wrong. It isn’t bound to anything, it doesn’t belong to anything, it pushes me to travel, it keeps the yearning for discovery alive in me. It wants to be mixed with people and be flexible. It wants to travel from village to village and be unknown but to know about people. It wants light, it wants laughter, and the songs. It wants to play with wind, with water, with life.

It is playful, free and adventurous. It doesn’t want to be there for other people to rely on; it wants to carry only its own weight. It wants to run away from war, from hardship, to gardens full of flowers. It is immature, it is irresponsible, but it is also part of me. I feel it.

A senior:

Part I

If you had asked me what I would write my narrative about at the beginning of this week, I probably would have said something like the year I spent living in Mexico. Or maybe I would have written about the faith journey I’ve had throughout my time at Smith. But I never would have said that I would write about my family. This workshop is supposed to be about figuring out my future and my family isn’t my future; they’re my past.

But if my family is just my past, why have I found myself writing about them again and again in this workshop about life after graduation? I’ve been writing about my family taking in foster kids throughout my childhood, often extending our family to eight people. I’ve been writing about adopting my little brother. I’ve been writing about my dad’s struggle with bi-polar disorder. I’ve been writing about our big cross-country move when we piled everything we owned, including two cats and three guinea pigs, into a budget rental truck and an ’82 Toyota van and drove from Vista, California to East Hartford, Connecticut the summer before I started high school. These are all events that have had a profound impact on who I am, but they are stories that I don’t often tell, because they’re complicated.

When I left home for Smith, the stories became even easier to not tell. No one knew anything about me or my family, so I was free to be whoever I wanted. People would believe I was whoever I said I was. I never lied outright, but I kept quiet about a lot of my past, or told simplified versions of things.

After years of selectively sharing my past, it has been startling to me that it has come up so much this week, a week I intended to spend figuring out what the next step in my life is. What does any of this have to do with my future? Why am I thinking about it so much right now?

The truth is, I don’t know. I am an avid journaler and pride myself in self-analysis, but even I can’t seem to puzzle this one out. I want to neatly tie it all together. I want my narrative to be a few paragraphs about my past, a few paragraphs about the identity I have created at Smith, and then a conclusion about how they fit together and what it means for my future. But the connection between my past and my future just isn’t so black and white.

Maybe the connection is guilt. I feel bad because after all my parents have sacrificed for me, my worst nightmare is moving back in with them after graduation.

I felt so happy living in Mexico and I want to go away again to experience something new. I feel hungry for travel and the excitement that comes with navigating a new place. But at the same time, my brother is eleven and I can see the disappointment in his face every time I head back to school after one of my short trips home. I miss going to his band concerts and hearing his stories about what he did at school And guilt isn’t quite the right word, either. It’s that I love my family and I just wonder what I could be missing out on by moving somewhere far away.

But then again, I don’t think it’s just a little twinge of guilt that is making me think so much about my family at this point in my life. I think it is something deeper than that. I think it is part of a bigger question about what it means to be an individual. I never thought that that was something that I struggled with. My parents aren’t overbearing or controlling, so I’ve never felt a lot of pressure from them to make a decision one way or another. They’ve always come around to support me in whatever I do. I’ve believed myself to be a completely separate entity from my family. I thought the unique identity I had formed for myself at Smith was further proof of my individualism. But now, as I reflect, I’m not so sure that I am as free from the question of where my family ends and where I begin as I thought I was. Does my past make me who I am, or is it the choices I’ve made and experiences I’ve had, or some combination of them both?

So those are my half formed musings about my family. While writing the narrative about to this point, I’ve felt a little resentful because my family was taking up so much of my brain when all I’ve really want to write about is my dreams for the future. But I’ve decided that I don’t need to feel torn and agonize about whether I should write about what I really need to write about (my family) and what I want to write about (me as an individual), I can have my cake and eat it too. If I don’t know how to make my past narrative fit with my future narrative, that’s ok. I don’t have to choose one or the other, I can write them both. So here goes part two.

Part II

In my intro to anthropology class as a first year, we watched documentaries and read ethnographies about cultures all over the world that were struggling with war, poverty and discrimination. It was pretty intense and every day after class my friend and I would have to decompress by walking home together and mulling over the atrocities we had discussed in class. We often wondered if we could ever make a difference. We concluded that we would have to have careers that worked for social justice, because there were so many things wrong with the world that the only way to make any kind of dent would be to devote ourselves completely. Studying in Mexico for a year fueled my desire to do something productive, something that would have a positive impact on people’s lives. It also instilled a strong desire to travel and live in new places. This sort of dreaming was so easy to do while I was in Mexico; something about living in a new and exciting place allowed me to imagine equally exciting post-graduation possibilities.

But coming back to Smith senior year brought back the old doubts about whether I could or should embark on new adventure after graduation. I had played around with the idea of doing a service program like the Peace Corps or the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, but coming back to Smith made we wonder if I choose something a bit more “career oriented.” Everyone around me seemed to be doing something practical. It feels like everyone I know already has an investment banking job lined up, or at least a couple of interviews. Those that don’t at least have a list of all the possible publishers and advertising agencies where they’d like to submit their resumes. When I mentioned to members of my family that I was interested in doing a year or two of service after graduation, the raised their eyebrows and asked if I ever planned on getting a job in the real world. This has all got me thinking that maybe I should drop my women’s studies class and take statistics instead, or that I should be looking for a job where I can start putting away for retirement now, not barely squeaking by on a stipend from a service program. This would be success.

I’ve been thinking that my ideas about traveling and doing something good are too idealistic. But when did “idealistic” become such a dirty word? I am idealistic and that’s what gets me excited about life after Smith. It’s not something I need to apologize about. When I tell people I want to do a service program next year, I hear myself justifying it by saying that it will be good way to use my Spanish again and that it would give me good work experience. Both of these are true, but they’re not the main reason. The reason is that, after twenty-two years of taking, I want to give. I want to make a difference and I don’t have to preface that statement by saying, “I know it’s really idealistic but…” I’m tired of feeling shy about what brings me joy. If I start settling for less that what makes happy now, what kind of future will I have? I don’t know my ultimate career goal right now, so I don’t know what the best path is to follow, but I know what I want to do next year, so I’m taking the risk, accepting the consequences and seeing where I go from there. Being true to who I am and living without regrets is what I consider success.

A senior:

“You choose.” That is the meanest thing anyone can ever say to me. While agonizing over what to write this narrative about -- should I do something about strength, conformity, possibly a metaphor about rosaries in my basketball sneakers, etc. -- it finally hit me. I needed to confront the predator that has plagued my very existence since birth: indecisiveness. Maybe then this demon would finally go away and leave me to effortlessly make clear, concise decisions and plans. First, of course, I had to decide if this was indeed what I wanted to write about. I mean, a “narrative of success” with a negative connotation? I carefully weighed the pros and cons while simultaneously napping, and after two hours (not all spent napping), finally decided to gain the courage to…ask Dean Walters’ opinion. Case-in-point.

See, this is another issue, the evil cohort of indecisiveness: self-doubt. Great. Perfect. TWO negatives. Is that all I can say for myself after living twenty-two years on this earth? After Dean Walters’ approval and encouragement of my idea, I decided, actually decided to go with it.

Decision-making started getting difficult for me in the womb. Plagued by the possibility of severe health complications, my mother had to decide whether or not to keep me. I consider myself a part of her at that time and thus a part of the decision-making process. It was a very stressful time for me, making the first decision of my life and all. However, I’m here and I think I made the right choice.

But once I was born, I was immediately labeled the “golden child” and treated that way. I tried to please everyone without disappointing, so as to not debunk my golden child status. It has been all downhill from there.

As a child, I would always have a difficult time deciding whether or not to go to sleepovers. I didn’t want my parents to feel alone without me, but I really wanted to spend time with my friends. The responsibility I felt and still feel to others plays a major role in my decision-making process, and usually takes precedence over what I want. Guilt, or if you went to Catholic School for nine years and would like to call it “Catholic guilt,” is a major setback for me.

When I was able to read, indecisiveness crept even more into my life. This was because I could now read the menu at restaurants and would have to make my own meal choices. It was as if I was being punished for honing this new skill. It seems as though when I progress in life, decisions become more and more difficult to make. First grilled cheese vs. a hot dog -- now what to do after I graduate from college? So unfair! I’m sick of progressing and being punished for it! To this day I am taunted for being the only one at the table not ready to order. Stressed and overwhelmed, I usually shout out something random at the last second, but not before asking the waitress’s opinion.

When it was time for me to go to college, it became apparent that I had a serious problem. Ultimately choosing between Smith and the Coast Guard Academy, I was basically choosing a lifestyle. I agonized day and night, asked everyone I knew what they thought I should do. When they responded, I quickly decided on the alternative. At the end of it all, I realized, why in the hell had I even considered the Coast Guard Academy? An alum had encouraged me to apply, so instead of saying no, I had obliged and mysteriously been accepted. But did I really want to be there? Absolutely not. I had applied to appease others.

My indecisiveness stems from this weak sense of self. I am never sure what the correct decision for me is in society’s eyes, so I let other people persuade me one way or the other. That way, I don’t have to make a decision for myself. It is probably partly so that I will be accepted, partly because I don’t want to disappoint, and partly so that I don’t have to take full responsibility for the repercussions of my decision if it turns out to be the wrong one.

I have never felt more indecisive than during my time at Smith. I’m not sure if it is the competitive environment, or the importance of the decisions I am making. Probably a combination of both. I am always the last one of my friends to set my schedule at the beginning of the semester, waiting the full two weeks before being forced by the college to make a decision already. In the meantime, the poor souls I call my friends must listen to every pro and con of each class and professor I am considering. I bore them with such ridiculousness because I can’t make a decision, but a little part of me always wonders if I unconsciously feel my problems are more important than theirs. It’s as if my life takes precedence over their lives; they should focus on me until whatever I am struggling with is resolved. Am I constantly bugging them, and do they just tune-me-out after a while? Maybe it’s my “golden child” persona creeping in whenever I need people.

This year has been no different. Actually it has been different -- more difficult. I have made and am making some of the hardest decisions of my life. Trying to prioritize the different compartments of my life into what is important and what is not is a trying task because everything is important! Do I take that leadership position that would be a great experience and help me develop important skills, or do I turn it down to spend more time with my friends? This is our senior year and our time together is precious.

Not all things in my life are about my indecisiveness. I am not curled up in the fetal position rocking back and forth all day deciding what to have for dinner. I know I am independent, strong, and capable. I like to think that some of my indecision comes from me trying to be a good person. For example, not wanting anyone to feel upset, or just trying to get the most out of my life. I often ask, why can’t I do both? And sometimes, I can.

In my little world of yo-yo thought, I know I can make one solid decision. I know what I ultimately want. I yearn for it, dream about how it would feel, and what kind of person I would become if I had it. This one goal trumps all other goals. “She just wants --” to be sure.

A senior:

I got tired of lying about who I am. Yes, I’m grateful to philanthropists who have supported my academic career since high school. Through their support my mother did not have to worry about the already low tuition at my public high school, nor about the more expensive book fees. Through their support I discovered the world, having lived the first seventeen years of my life holding onto my mother’s apron as they say. I had never gone to boarding school before that. The first few months living at my aunt’s house during the summer were some of the most challenging moments of my childhood. And still at that moment when I was offered a chance to leave, none of this came to mind. I was very, very excited.

But in another way, I didn’t have a choice. The year I left, there were four scholarships for Norway, India, Canada and the U.S. The final candidates were chosen from a pool of more than a thousand students who sat for the end-of-high-school exam that year. How could I or my family turn down such an opportunity? The decision wasn’t just about us.

When I was in New Mexico, the growing pains continued. True enough, all of the two-hundred students in the international school had traveled from afar, and we were able to empathize with one another. But there was a lot of personal grieving as well for our mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, food, that red soil that you just wanted to kneel down and kiss but couldn’t.

I sat on a shrink’s couch for the first time. I cried aloud, and with more force, than I’m yet to see again into my roommate Anna’s arms. Poor soul, I know now that she had no idea what to do with me for me and was terrified!

The school I went to, the United World College, has the grandest ideals: to have international understanding, to be committed to international understanding at that, to build bridges and resolve conflict (and I mean on the scale of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). We basically understood that we were to become the leaders of our own countries and the leaders of the world. Somewhere in the fabric of this beautifully embroidered world view, I – and maybe others, too – ignored the necessity for healing. You can’t just bring Palestinians and Israelis to the table and expect them to shake hands. People have tried that for three decades. Both sides have lost so much, people are still hurting and living in fear. Their psyches have been affected and even skewed, and mine has, too.

I don’t even know the full spectrum of what I have to heal from in order to build bridges as I move forward. I have lost – part of a beautiful country. Their frontier was leaving us jammed in the (beautiful) mountains - they are beautiful, I’ll give you that – with only eleven percent arable land. Over the years, we have seen so much erosion, and climate change tells the unending story of droughts and famine.

I have lost, we have lost, a culture that was vilified out of existence. Our society was so beautiful and always contained what the West brought in as “new ideas:” sex education, giving birth, faith, healthy living and exercise, social and political organization. But just because our system didn’t look like their own, ours was less worthy and now we have neither system. We are caught somewhere in between, and in order to move forward, everyone needs to get their bearings: figure out where we started, the change that happened and how to take the next step.

When I left home, I was given an incredible opportunity for growth. Separated from my mother and left to make mistakes out of ignorance, thereby gaining a great sense of accomplishment when I figured it out. But now I have to stop. I have to stop taking things just because they are offered. In these twenty-three years, an individual has formed, with her own opinions, her own desires, her own ideas about how things should be done. And yet it seems that someone is always there, threatening to put me on a leash. That voice, those voices, say, “American medical schools are great. You have great medical schools, too, BUT there’s a lot of violence in South Africa. With an American M.D., you can practice anywhere in the world, blah, blah, blah.” Well, what they don’t say is that American schools are long and expensive. What they don’t consider is that I will be navigating the system. Wherever I choose to be, I will be living and breathing that life every day, and maybe I don’t want to. Regardless of powerful people’s intentions, this is not some chess game where they are the mastermind and I am the pawn. Growing pains - I will be the one suffering from the growing pains, and I want to choose where I will be and how I will do what I want to do.

A senior:

It took me until college to realize that the quintessential American town I came from was such a unique experience. Bayside is a suburb inseparable from its neighbors, and the city it echoes is too far away to actually know. I grew up in a world where right and wrong were more or less clearly defined, or so I thought. The expectations were high, and I set my own expectations, both for myself and my community, even higher. My town was filled with yellow school buses, successful sports teams, manicured lawns, homecoming queens, and school orchestras that traveled to the Czech Republic. The views of the mountains, ocean, and ferry boats are absolutely spectacular. Opportunities were readily available: to participate in extracurricular activities, to be academically challenged in the public school system, even as a “gifted and talented” student. Anyone could be happy, successful, and rich if they just applied themselves…and wore the right clothes, lived in the right neighborhood, and cracked the right jokes. Anything was possible.

Fortunately, my family was a good Bayside family, and we worked together to maintain beautiful flower and vegetable gardens, and even my dad took piano lessons and my mom participated in book clubs. They, too, carried strong values for a good education, and life seemed to run seamlessly, with family ski trips and quips about tidying one’s room.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I came to realize my family’s façade, much like my town’s. My parents never discussed emotion or examined personal struggles in depth. The stories were of the strength of independence and of success and possibility. I came to internalize their valuing of emotionally and financially supporting oneself. If I quit anything, I felt like a failure; when I was actively involved, I felt like a success.

During the years I was in elementary school, my family went on a “big family vacation” each year. We traveled to Scotland and Costa Rica, Turkey and Greece, and learned about American History, driving between Maine and Georgia. Some people argue that it’s a waste to travel with kids because they’ll never remember the great places that they have seen, but they were some of my most influential childhood experiences. First of all, my parents could find amazing beaches to swim at, even if I had to put on sunscreen a million times and wear a t-shirt while swimming. Second of all, they seemed to meet all of our needs for food and shelter as well as finding things for us to do with only snip-its of the languages we’d learned from cassette tapes during dinner in the weeks preceding our trips. But most importantly, they showed me a larger world, where people ate different things and toilets didn’t work in the same way, but where people would welcome us into their shops for tea and backgammon and the kids liked to color and play, just like me.

By the time I was in high school, I partook in sports, music, and community service, like many of my peers. I earned good grades, but not even the best when I tried. I struggled between the conflicting goals of differentiating myself and trying to fit in. I felt like I was distinguished from my peers in both positive and a negative light, for both my leadership positions and awards as well as my lack of a boyfriend and my “disinterest” in attending the monthly school dances. I relied on my friends to share laughter and secrets.

I spent a lot of time in these community service groups-planning projects and reaching out to parts of the community with which I had never previously crossed paths. I think it joined me together with peers with similar values and helped me feel needed and important. One of my friends and I got so into it that we planned and presented a workshop for middle school students about the importance and the benefits of actively partaking in service learning.

I sent out applications to escape the idealistic high school that was not turning out to be ideal for me, and to explore the world. I landed in Switzerland for my junior year. A kind person on the airplane taught me to count to ten in German, the language I would work to command over the coming eleven months, and I joined a new family, a new school, and a new community, whose values and expectations would take the whole year to try and understand. Though I did study abroad again in college, I think that it was really this experience as a sixteen-year old struggling to define herself that really awoke me to the possibilities and the differences of expectations that people could have for me. Every time someone questions my values and beliefs, I have to decide whether that person’s case is convincing enough for me to change my opinions, or if my original idea is reinforced and solidified. It was also really my first “chance” at financial and emotional independence, as I had left my friends and family behind in the United States.

Coming home for my senior year was a bit like walking into an American movie. It was still a “wonderland” – I continued to excel at sports and music, and was challenged by my AP classes. But I also felt worlds apart from it. Seeing as if I had new eyes, I found my high school friends stratified into a caste system of stereotypes. In the course of our twenty-minute lunch period, groups of friends would squish around a single table, pulling seats away from other tables until only one person remained, sitting alone in a busy cafeteria.

Now, as I’m thinking about careers and what I want to do with my life, some of those high school values are still salient. Despite my personal struggles of identity in high school, I still feel a strong need to give back to the community and world which has given me so many opportunities. My community expects me to excel at what I do. I had the privilege of growing up in Bayside as well as going to Smith, and I still expect myself to give back.

A senior:

Once upon a time there lived a woman who we will refer to from now on as All Powerful Being. Before attending the Prestigious Progressive Idealistic Institution of Higher Learning, she never thought she would marry and was hopelessly devoted to perfection in academics. Her teachers considered her the “golden child.” After a brief encounter with a boy who shall not be named, who dominated her life and prevented her from making friends, she found outlets for her independence in running, bird watching and chorus. After graduation her magic powers consisted of being a literate reader-editor extraordinaire, which she put to good use conversing articulately with the unsuspecting youth of her kingdom about the power of words, and covering their pitiful attempts at literary analysis with red pen marks, single-handedly upholding the integrity of the English language.

On Mother’s Day, a very special day, the All Powerful Being gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with golden curls and bright blue eyes. The girl was a bubbly, smiling, bundle of energy and joy. Her name was Juliana. On paper the girl appeared to have a charmed life in many ways. She was white, heterosexual, able bodied, from a two highly educated parent upper middle class family in a wealthy, safe town with a good school system. She came from privilege. There were so many things going for her. How could she do anything but succeed?

Any woman who gives birth on Mother’s Day is granted the first wish that comes into her mind. All Powerful Being was so enamored of her beautiful baby girl that her first thought was that she wanted this girl to remain a child forever. All Powerful Being got her wish with the consequences for better and for worse. All Powerful Being was an incredible mother who taught her children many things and cherished taking advantage of teachable moments and reading to her children. Her daughter, Juliana, turned out to be a responsible and happy young adult. All Powerful Being regretted that she had to give up her magic powers as literate reader editor extraordinaire and transform them into magical powers as “Household CEO.”

After the daughter reached the height of 4’10,” the spell started to take its toll. The girl never grew taller and never developed a “real women have curves” body. The girl yearned to appear wispy and sophisticated and to be a part of the adult world. She spent time talking with teachers at recess, and with older relatives at holiday meals, instead of talking with cousins. The girl carried herself with dignity and did not make a big deal about her height. She felt no need to compensate for her youthful appearance by wearing high heels or dressing up in fancy clothes to make her appear older. This attitude enabled her to go through school without being picked on.

The All Powerful Being, who herself had gained self confidence and a feeling of power from running, had seen her daughter’s stamina and recognized the potential to give her daughter the same sense of independence and assurance. She encouraged her daughter to try running. Juliana, influenced by her internalized expectation that absolutely everything was worth trying at least once for a little bit, agreed to start running. She fell in love with the sport and was soon so addicted to running that she became antsy if she did not get a chance to get out and run.

As Ms. Juliana ran alone on the levee along the Connecticut River one morning, the sun was just rising to her right. Because of the angle of the sun her shadow cast long across the water, making her look tall. Something special about the way the light hit the water caused a rainbow bubble to form around her on the grass by the river. Her arms pumping, her stride long and powerful, she was moving under her own power. She felt like she was on top of the world.

Juliana felt very privileged to come from the background she had and to have the opportunities she was given. She wanted to give back to the community by teaching the next generation whatever she could. Being faced with the image of a body that looked like that of a preadolescent every time she looked in the mirror did not help her feel competent. Her students stood next to her, measured across with their hand to compare heights and then pointed out “I’m almost as tall as you.” Juliana felt frustrated and no longer wanted to be a child forever. But maybe she did. Juliana liked to act goofy, was easily entertained by small activities, and had a short attention span just like the preschoolers and early elementary school students she wanted to teach. Perhaps being a teacher would help her tap into her inner child, but still require her to be the adult. Young children respect authority and anyone who is older and would love her unconditionally. Juliana felt comfortable in the classroom on the floor or in furniture made for children which she fit into better than the large furniture in the classrooms at the Make Change the World Institution of Higher Learning.

Juliana had a pretty strong female role model in the All Powerful Being, but she grew into her own person at the Make Change in the World Institution. Being at a women’s college let Juliana make close friendships without the constant obsession over boys. Juliana did not feel like a wispy sophisticated woman whom men would be interested in. She looked like a child, for goodness sake. Finding a life partner was not on the top her priorities, yet although she loved romantic comedies and romances in stories. The All Powerful Being had found her match without really trying at the end of college, and Juliana felt confident that she would find the right one without the drama of dating. For the moment she was content to focus on developing her body through running and her mind through academics.

The Make Change in the World institution got Juliana to think critically about education as a means for community building and social constructivism. Education and learning for its own sake were valued at the Make Change in the World institution. Teachers could make a positive, valuable difference in the world. Education was not just seen as a profession to fall back on if something more prestigious didn’t come along.

A junior:

The forming of words put together to produce a life. A life filled with pain, struggle and depression. A way to live a life: by being positive and appreciating all that you have. Then there is another way, one that views life as negative and not worth living. This way was all I have ever known. My writing expresses and represents my life: poems, memoirs and journal entries. These are pieces of me, of my soul, and they have saved me. They are my life-savers, my tools for survival.

Now, at this point in my life, I want to change. I don’t want to be negative, sad or bitter concerning life. I don’t want to dwell on what I’ve lost or what could have been. I don’t want to be selfish. I want to look at what I have and appreciate it. I want to be strong and confident. I want to be what my mother has hoped for me. I want her to be proud of me. Being happy is my goal, and what I most desire. With this new self, I will have the ability to achieve happiness.

With this aim and plan in mind, I find myself at a crossroads, in a contradiction. By being happy and positive, will I betray the self that I have come to know and accept? Changing my attitude would mean looking at my writing as the representation of a bad self. But my writing helped me to survive and to continue living when I left helpless. How could I look at it with disdain? To me, the most beautiful poems are about sadness. How could I write about happiness? I would lose my creativity -- and how could I live without that?

I guess no matter how you change for the better, you still lose something of yourself in the process. In order to change my life for the better, I had to let go of my father. I still mourn his absence. Knowing that someone whom I adore, who has a face similar to mine, is aging and getting closer to death without me, is hard. But I had to make that sacrifice to create a better life for myself. I’ve come to terms with the loss of a parent, but I don’t think I can let go of my writing.

What is a life without struggles or mistakes to learn from? Now I feel that I am embracing my pain and depression. With my poems and memoirs I have honored these emotions and damaging experiences. I have learned so much as a result. The life I have lived so far contradicts with the changes that I want to make; I am confused when I try to understand who I am.

I guess the point of life is not knowing. No one knows what the future is going to bring. Life would not be worth living if it were otherwise. I am still struggling within myself to find the answers to the endless questions of my life, but I guess its okay. Or maybe it isn’t. I don’t have the answer to that question either.

A junior exchange student:

Now, I am in America. It has been already four months since I came here. Living in America and meeting new people from all over the world had been my one of my biggest wishes since I was in elementary school student. Whenever I watched American movies, especially about schools, they were so fascinating. Students looked like they had so much freedom in school; they did not need to wear ugly and uncomfortable school uniforms, and they could have any hairstyle they wanted. “Oh my god,” I would think, “there is even a couple kissing in the school hallway!” That was unimaginable in my country. I liked watching shows in which girls talked about their prom dates, and got dressed-up. Everything looked so fun – and they didn’t look like they were suffering from examination hell.

Some of my friends went to high school in America, but I could not. My parents said, “You are too young to be apart from us.” So it was my dream to go abroad during college, to study in America. Finally, I became a college student at Ewha Womans University, which is in South Korea. There was an exchange program, which meant our college would give students opportunities to study at American colleges. It looked fascinating to everyone; we could even go to private colleges while paying our regular tuition -- which was a lot cheaper than the tuition at Smith. It was pretty competitive to become a visiting student at Smith, so I tried really hard to get high grades.

For the first few months here – actually, still – it was pretty hard to understand what American people were talking about. Some people speak really fast. It’s different in other ways, too. Students are willing to say their opinions and they feel free to talk to professors. There is a real couple kissing on the street.

Now that I am looking at those real people -- not at movies – it’s pretty interesting. The most interesting thing is that all students live on campus. They can hang out and talk whenever they want, which is really nice. I sometimes miss my friends and parents in Korea so much, but many people I’ve met at Smith have been so nice to me. I am lucky to have the chance to meet people from all different backgrounds, and to have made one of my biggest dreams come true: Being a visiting student and living in America.

An ADA Comstock Scholar:

She spent so much time giving and nurturing, intuitively knowing others’ feelings and needs. She attended without thinking, without prompting, without needing to be asked. Giving was receiving. It was a gift, a talent she possessed. It was who she was.

She began having small twinges of inner pain, an emptiness that hurt. What is this? What does it mean? What is necessary to care for and nurture this discomfort? She shrugged her shoulders and carried on with what was set out in front of her. Unknowingly, she gave more, got less, and all the while she thought she was filling and nurturing this discomfort deep within herself.

The twinges began to grow larger, the emptiness deeper, it opened up to a great dark abyss. It hurt more and becoming increasingly difficult to shrug off and march on. An inner voice said, “You need to take care of yourself.” But instead, she gave more and more, without being selective, depleting her energies. She was unconscious and unaware, doing only what she knew so well. She had no plan, no direction for herself. “Go where you are needed, huddle them all in close, and make sure everyone is feeling good, well cared for.” Some of them demanded from her, others expected, and some were just there. She continued to nourish others, dispensing her last drop. The good feelings she had felt through this endless nurturing did not last as long, they were not as fulfilling. She became tired, a tiredness that was bone deep. A tiredness that sleep could not quench. She did not understand, she was dancing as fast as she could. Why was this not working as well as it had been?

She had inner conflict, mixed feelings, messages and thoughts. Some said, give to your parents, give to your friends, and take care of those you love. If you see a need, take care of it. But she was empty. She did not know who she was. Worst of all, she did not know where others ended and she began. Others said, “Take care of yourself, be good to yourself, and ask for what you need.” She had no idea what that meant. Take care of yourself; she did this by taking care of others. Be good to yourself; how selfish. Ask for what you need; never, if others do not give to you freely it is not authentic, they do not want to, and you are not worthy.

But a day came when she heard the voice of inner wisdom: “Take care of yourself like you take care of others. Tell yourself you are an important, worthwhile person who deserves to be cared for and nurtured. Be as kind and loving to yourself as you are to others. Nurture the nurturer.” This would be her only way out of the lonely and destructive place where she was quietly dying from the outside-in.

An Ada Comstock Scholar:

I’ve taken risks all of my life, even after the childhood accident that left me no longer able to run or practice ballet steps or to roller skate – which was my life. The passion I had for dance and skating would be internalized and redirected. Cerebral risk-taking was now for me.

High school introduces me to the Debate Club: I apply and am accepted. I enjoy it and excel at it. Then one day, I see a television show called Private Secretary. “Susie McNamara,” the character who plays a hotel manager’s secretary, is much smarter than he, more organized, and does her job and most of his job - in spite of her boss. That’s what I want to be when I graduate, a secretary – personal, private, or confidential – it doesn’t matter. Of course, this is during a time in U.S. history when businessmen (yes, men) were not hiring women like me (a woman of color), and if they did, it was as office cleaning women. No matter. A secretarial job is what I want and that is what I’ll get several times in my lifetime, with different titles. I will work in a Fortune 25 corporation (correspondence supervisor, then promoted to stock transfer agent ), toil in a highly prestigious international academic foundation (Fulbright scholars), languish and resign from the only women’s foundation at the time (personality differences between me and the woman director – she was a tyrant and I wasn’t subservient enough), and mentally stretch in a world famous copyright law firm (as legal administrator).

Way to go, Edie! But, what is the next risk you will take? Why not tutor English to college students from different parts of the world? They need help with increasing their English skills, and you have the time to offer help. Viola! You are named the 2005 Volunteer of the Year for your community college, and are entering your sixteenth year as a volunteer English tutor.

And yet, the adventure of traveling was missing. Through the Elderhostel Program I will find a service program that needs and wants me. Hooray! I have chosen to go to the Navajo Reservation in Cameron, Arizona, fifty miles north of Flagstaff, to tutor elementary age students. But, I hate children. They are a blight on the planet. Yes, but these children have never met any people who did not live on the reservation. This is a dream come true: I will be on an airplane going over 600 miles per hour, I will see a real Indian reservation, and they need my English skills and anything else I can offer the children.

Please God, don’t let any teacher ask me what “present-perfect-continuous” means, because I have not been formally trained as an English teacher, and I do not know the answer.

Not to worry. The kids are adorable, funny, and smart and they love all of us, even me with my very obvious limp. They want to know what states we come from, how far we’ve traveled, if we have children “like” them, meaning the same ages, and last, if we will stay with them and not leave.

Maria is one of the most beautiful little girls I have ever seen. Her hair is black with navy blue highlights; her skin color is darker than mine, like the darkest walnut, and she has the biggest and most lustrous brown eyes God ever created. All of the tutors – perhaps twenty – are asked to sit with the children in the cafeteria during their lunch period. Maria sits next to me, and at the end of lunch she grabs me around the waist and holds on for dear life. She looks up at me and says something in Navajo. I am told that she is saying that I am her black mother. How can that be?! I hate children. How can she feel that way about me?! She doesn’t know that I am thinking, “I wish I could take her home with me.” It doesn’t matter. I hug her back and she holds me tighter.

Almost before we know it, the two weeks have gone and we have to return home. I arrange to stay an extra day to return to the school, visit all of the teachers, help the children in each classroom ... and see Maria for the last time. The day ends; the children file out of the classroom and pile into the bus.

Where is Maria?! I am frantic. I must say goodbye. I find her in the third bus and she runs to me. We hold each other for a few minutes. The bus driver clears his throat and I get off the bus. Maria and I wave to each other, but my tears blur my eyes. Maria is gone. Someday very soon, I must return to the Cameron School and, if possible, find out if Maria is all right.

Do I want to write about Devon? I don’t think I have the strength, but here goes. We were told before we reached the reservation, that Navajo children are not touched, kissed, or spoiled the way America children are. To this day I do not know if that is true. I do know that a boy at the school was very hyper and may have had some sort of attention deficit disorder. In the beginning, I spent a great deal of time calling Devon’s name over and over again to get his attention. Naptime for him and the other children was a nightmare. He couldn’t seem to sit or lay still enough to fall asleep. I decided to lay down with him. As he lay flat on the floor, I stroked his back then his stomach. Amazingly, he fell asleep for the full half hour naptime. The teachers, children and other volunteers got a chance to relax because Devon was asleep and not racing around the room being disruptive. At other times, I simply held Devon and rocked him until he fell asleep. After the first time, other children wanted their backs and stomachs rubbed or they wanted to be held until they, too, fell sleep. Oh, to be an Octopus.

What new risks shall I take now? Almost as an afterthought, during the course of this exercise I wrote down that I would like to return to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and tutor English in Cameron again, or go to Australia. Working with the Aborigines – good lord, what have the English or the English language ever done for them? After seeing a show on the indigenous people in Maori, New Zealand, I thought about going there, too. Perhaps after I am certified as a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, I will apply to all three places. With determination and perseverance, I can network with Smith alumnae who live around the world and may know of such opportunities. I would definitely commit to such tutoring/teaching projects for two years. But what about opening my English Language Tutoring Business?

What am I afraid of? What are the personal risks of living in a foreign country so far away from my family and friends? And do I really want to run another business? I love work, but not the administration of a business – buying paper clips and sending out invoices was not for me.

The excitement of seeing students’ happy and confident faces when they’ve done a good job at pronouncing a word correctly or writing a complete sentence gives me the same excitement and rush that I feel when a jet plane is racing down the runway before taking off – before soaring into the sky. I love to soar!

An Ada Comstock Scholar:

As a 58-year old senior at Smith College, I have been immersed in questions about the future. However, recently, I took a brief look at what I have learned from the past. I realized that sometimes people have conveyed great wisdom to me, and they have often done so without verbalizing it. They have instead conveyed it simply by the manner in which they have lived their lives. And there have also been times when a crisis or ordinary circumstance holds a nugget of wisdom unappreciated until years later. The following examples are recorded at random here in hopes that others might appreciate some of the wisdom which has blessed my life.

Barb, the First Boss:

It is ok to say “No”. Strong women often say no and they often do not.

It is good to serve your own well being—it allows you to give more freely to others.

Vera, the Fourth Boss:

Try to solve problems before seeking help. You will feel more empowered and the solution may be more creative. On the other hand, avoid a life of crisis management; seek help in a timely manner.

A sense of humor is more fun than perfection or a clean desk.

One can choose to die, and it will be magnificent.

Debbie the Dirt Eater (after eating dirt when we were six): Plants have a close relationship to dirt, but what works for one being doesn’t necessarily work for another.

David the Bully (first grade): If you are going to say something unkind about someone, say it to their face or not at all.

Grandma: Good sex is good.

People on airplanes:

If a person hurts you, are they to blame if they are incapable of being any different?

Your mother has hurt you. Your mother is never going to change because she can’t change. You are not your mother.

Mac the Mentor:

Disappointments and unrealized goals are often the soils that make you bloom.

Part of being intelligent is recognizing an opportunity when you see the sun glint off something among the stones. Run back and look at those sparkles which catch your inner eye—there could be a jewel there.

It is ok to make money. Greed, not wealth, is the culprit. In terms of money, one always has the choice of taking the high road or the low road. There is a belief that good people should not desire to make money. On the contrary, it is the idealistic, generous people who should make money because they will share it and be wise guardians of its power.

If you believe that all your decisions are in stone then they will become the prison walls around you. Decisions and their results often depend on circumstances, not your efforts. One type of decision making doesn’t fit all problems.

If you have been severely hurt, mistreated, or tortured by the forces of evil and madness, you can still triumph—choose to live a meaningful life.

Bad Bill:

Love does not grow in toxic soil. Toxic relationships become sludge in your life and create all the associated effects of sludge.

Fred the Irishman:

Sometimes laughing at inappropriate times is important.

Don’t forget to sing and dance, and ask others to share such with you.

Periodically run wild in the woods and be out of control.

What a joy it ‘tis to take off that business suit and jump buck naked into the Bay.

A good joke can disarm your opponent and often builds bridges.

Howard at lunch: Expect change to be good. Change ( challenge ( creativity.

Emma the Mentor:

Synergy exists, accessible through consciousness. Synergistic events are like sign posts. Watch for them along the journey.

Use all your tools for making decisions: intuition, rationality, research, and consultation.

Intuition is a subtle melody at first, barely discernable in the background, but with practice it becomes a symphony.

Consciousness is knowing the reasons for the changes you make and the relationships you accumulate in your life. It is also the source of eliminating clutter and toxic people from your life.

Barbara the Mentor:

Getting things done in good times or crisis requires focus, flexibility, planning, and perseverance.

Being strong doesn’t mean you never ask for help.

Always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

You can do absolutely anything you deeply desire to do.

Jo Ann the Mentor:

Maybe the dividing line between work, play, and education shouldn’t be there at all.

If you have to accept a job you dislike, there is no reason why you can’t alter that job in some way to make it better—think of it in terms of improving poor soil.

While you are worrying about time passing by, it does.

If you want something, speak about it with clarity. Otherwise, you’ll get what somebody else wanted.

Rumi: It makes absolutely no difference what another person thinks about you.

Thoreau: If you want to know the Truth about your life, spend a lot of time alone in the woods or by the river examining the laws and the relationships of Nature.

Waiting room of a hospital, mystical experience: The existence of Spirit shows up at unexpected times and in unexpected ways in your life. Try to call it in when needed.

Jack the Client: There is rarely any decision which cannot be deferred for 24 hours.

Don the Yoga teacher:

We don’t change without consistent introspection and delving deeper. It is our responsibility to pay attention and cultivate our own awareness. The right answer for one is often the wrong answer for another.

Observe your own fear and develop a relationship with it. This will subdue reactivity.

Responding with moments of silence can sometimes empower you more than speaking your response.

If you want to understand who a person really is, watch them struggle with their self-expectations.

Milton the Scholar:

Beauty and education often intersect and take you on a glorious journey.

Mike the Course Leader:

If you have a dream and someone says “no”, be persistent. Stand in the question of “what if”.

Quit stepping over things which don’t work in your life.

Anne the Writing Teacher: Pay attention. Tell the Truth.

Me, the Organizer: Once a year make a list of what is working and not working in your life. Know that you don’t necessarily have to take action immediately; this will defer any anxiety which might minimize your ability to think and plan effectively.

Title of painting on gallery wall at Cape Cod Community College: Judging yourself on experience outside of your own.

Yoga Scholar George’s 14-year old son when asked how to explain spiritual matters: Gee, Dad, isn’t it all about whether you learn to love or you don’t?

The following are poems that students wrote in “Get a Life” Workshop writing exercises:

“She Just Wants” Poems

A senior:

She just wants to meet Virginia Woolf

To ask her if Nicole Kidman hit the nail on the head with her portrayal in “The Hours”

Or whether Ms. Woolf considered herself to be a bit more regal, or fair? ...

She just wants to know how Virginia Woolf prefers to be addressed

As Virginia, Mrs. Woolf, VW, Lady of the House, Virgie

And could she be playful sometimes? …

She just wants to ask Virginia Woolf how it feels

To be so widely read and admired around the world,

And did she know, and did it matter,

As she slipped those huge rocks into the pockets of her housedress? …

She just wants to touch Virginia Woolf

To know if her tears taste salty too,

And are her hands soft or rough?

And did she like to touch? And did she like to be touched?

She just wants to chat with Virginia Woolf,

Cup of tea in hand;

To ask whether she liked Marlene Dietrich,

And did she feel that America was too self-righteous,

And what did she think about when she went for those long, winding walks? …

She just wants to see Virginia Woolf

And to know,

Did she wonder? And did she smile?

And did she hear the whistle of the wind,

Lying awake in her canopy bed at night?

A senior:

She just wants to feel complete, not always, but sometimes. She knows it is impossible to feel whole and complete all of the time.

She just wants to be stronger and braver and more mature. She wants to be noticed, respected and trusted. She wants to be loved and admired for her wisdom by wise people.

She just wants to be free. Free from conflicting desires and free to do things. She wants to run and dance in the rain and sing loud. She wants to have the freedom not to pay attention to what others think about her.

She just wants peace and a home near her parents in her own country. She wants many books, a small garden, a bike and a job that makes her happy. She wants to enjoy the summer evenings when the weather is heavy with smell of Jasmine. She wants a good poetry book and a cup of tea. She wants a good companion whom she can trust in.

She just wants her country to be peaceful and she will do everything she can to bring peace. She wants her family united and together and her friends happy.

She just wants to be in a world with less bad news, less poverty, no wars and many happy children.

She wants to be able to run away whenever she is tired. She wants a place where she can hide occasionally and she wants to travel.

A senior:

She just wants to be confident.

Speaking loudly in a large group,

commanding respect. So sure of

herself that she doesn’t waste time

wondering what everyone else is thinking about her.

She wants to take risks without lying awake at night

calculating every possible outcome of her choices,

flicking on the light and

reaching for a pen to

write endless lists of pros and cons.

She wants to

speak

act

be

without doubt.

She wants to make a choice and stand by it,

no explanation,

no excuses,

no justification.

She wants to know.

She just wants to be confident.

A senior:

She just wants to be respected

Not given a children’s menu at restaurants

Not carded at PG-13 movies

Not mistaken for a child in a class of children she is teaching

She just wants to be recognized for who she really is

Not patronized or told how young she looks

Not looked at in surprise when she reveals her true age

Not patted on the head and told she is cute

She just wants to be seen as a competent adult

not be judged based on her appearance

not shy about asking for help reaching something on high shelf

not seen with her feet dangling inches from the floor while sitting in class

If you knew her then you would know

Know that she can bound up hills and probably run faster and farther than you can

and admire her for her endurance

know that she loves working with children and has potential to change their lives

and admire her for her dedication and compassion

know that she is a proud daughter of a mother who is an All Powerful Being and a father who is Just Plain Dad

and admire her for her strong roots in a stable loving family

know that she went to a “women’s college without boys not a girls school without men”

and admire her for self assurance and semi-feminist ideology

know that she does not lie, drink, or swear

and respect the choices and decisions that she has made

know that she chronically arrives early and wonders where everyone is

and admire her for her punctuality

She just wants to be respected without needing to put up a façade of a tall, glamourous, risk taking woman to get what she wants

“I Am From” Poems

A senior:

I am from the mountains. My childhood traveled from the city to the countryside, from the crowded streets to a garden full of birds, rain and trees and a little stream where I put my feet in to feel the cold fresh water.

We traveled. I left the dolls behind and all the toys I had. There was war in my hometown. We couldn’t stay. There were gunshots every night and mother was worried.

When we went to another city and we stayed in the house with the big garden, things changed. I was afraid of airplanes because they were loud and they would bomb and probably we would have to travel again.

I am from a war torn country, but it has beautiful mountains. The garden was big. We didn’t have electricity, so mom burned wood to cook. It smelled good, although the smoke bothered my eyes.

I was a bad child. I wouldn’t listen to mom, not like my sister, and mom shouted at me. Father didn’t; he thought I was smart and he asked me to read poetry to him, loud. I would read to his friends, too. They would be impressed and they clapped for me.

I didn’t like my grandmother. She didn’t tell us stories as much as other grandmothers did, and she always blamed mom for not having sons.

Mother always worked. She was in the kitchen and she cooked and prepared and took care of my father when he was sick. Grandmother always complained.

I would escape to garden sometimes. I sat by the pond and looked at the reflection of sun in the pond. I would follow the direction of leaves with my eyes.

We immigrated to another country. We had to flee for a safer, better life. My English teacher was tall and handsome. He liked me because he didn’t have a sister and because I always did my homework and got good grades.

I am from the mountains; they are high, proud and silent. I am from the garden; it sings and dresses in a thousand colors. I am from the northern part of my country; people are polite and hospitable there. I am also from the capital; it is loud and crazy and exciting.

Mom wants us to be proud and reserved.

Father likes us strong and hopeful.

A senior:

I am from places I don’t remember

Manhattan/Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights/Beijing/301 Buckmister Drive in Norwood, Massachusetts.

I am from homes with kitchens that have cutting boards and rectangle knives and stoves that cook

Eggs in many forms.

I am from places that snow in winter, where the crunch of fresh steps is not unfamiliar.

I am from smells of lilies, mothballs, sun-block, ballet shoes, running shoes, heat, crispiness,

sunshine, brownies, and tears.

Shy, bossy, pretty, poor, sweet, creative, mean, secretive, lazy, scared, selfish, rich, reasonable, disobedient, happy, cold, scared, distant, free, restless, independent, stubborn, calm.

I am from a house where I hid for hours in a basement closet or slept in the bathtub when I was

Mad at my parents.

A junior:

I am from:

The south,

A place where snow falls and mountains are tall.

Where food is hot and flavorful.

I am from:

A loving family

With incredible friends, and undeniable loyalty.

I am from

A world of peers

Where no hierarchy of maturity exists.

Where expectations started high and have only gotten higher.

I am from

Beautiful and eclectic music

And more activities than necessary

From a home, not a house.

I am from

food and motion

Events and everyday

I am from the land of "timing and audience"

Where everything has an appropriate place

I am from

Respecting and admiring the past

Where building upon, is valued above starting over.

I am from tree hugging and big city enrapture

From independence

Only because I know my support system is always beside me.

I am from

Star gazing and embracing science, math and books.

A hungry for knowledge place, that is never satisfied.

Where their expectations are nothing compared to my own.

An ADA Comstock Scholar:

I am from thunderstorms in the night, and bird sounds in the morning.

I am from “no you can’t” and “you should”.

I am from a prison of lies and ignorance,

Freed by the beauty of nature and the kindness of others,

By the sounds of cicadas, by the smells of ragweed and cows.  

Blue-sky country roads and wheels spinning in the yellow sun.

Red  tractors, cornfields, fried chicken, and banjos—that’s where I’m from.

Pudgy, little girl, black-long curls bobbing, pink cheeks of shame.

I am from my mother’s polyester personality, from her prison of pain,

her smoke-filled brain.

I am from my father’s coveralls tending the strawberry patch,

And his rose garden of pastel love;

I am from then. I from now.

I am from nothing and everything.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download