College Writing

After hearing Sarah's commonplace entry and discussing journals last week, I was curious to go back and see what I had written during college. I wrote quite a lot (even for an English major) and most of it was very personal. I had a professor who asked us to hand in two pages or more of writing every Friday and he would read a few aloud on Monday; the point was to write without being graded and it started in me a lingering interest in confessional creative nonfiction that went beyond this one course.

I don't remember feeling that there were personalities battling it out inside of me, but I do remember being preoccupied with perfecting myself. I could not decide what I was going to study and what I would do as a career. I was the (gamma?) girl with too many options, terrified that if I chose one path to the exclusion of all others I would limit myself and be miserable:

"There is something else I thought about a lot during Thanksgiving break and again during winter break. It’s depressing to me to see what happens to some people when they get older. Right now I feel like I can do absolutely anything I want to, I’m not stuck in a job or any particular way of life yet. There are things I don’t like about myself, but I still have time to fix them. I have time left to do a lot of things, and my mind is quick and my body works the way it’s supposed to . . . . I like the way I am now, and I want to stay this way. I won’t mind having more responsibility and less freedom or any of that, but will hate to lose the flexibility and sharpness I have now." (1.20.2006)

I was steeped in self-analysis, rethinking my behavior from four years previous, and from four weeks previous:

"Tonight my best friend and I sat in her room, finished a bottle of wine, and talked about religion for a while. The wine was not good, and it was worse after having been kept in a Nalgene bottle in her fridge for a week, but our conversation was excellent, as it always is. That is part of why I love her so much, because I never feel dissatisfied when I go back to my room after we’ve talked about something serious. She doesn’t do that thing that some people do, when they’re not really interested in the topic at hand – let the conversation pause for a minute, and then shrug, say “well, whatever” and start going off about some guy they met or how they’re nervous about the exam coming up. She rarely agrees with me, but that doesn’t matter much because if she did what would there be to talk about? " (2.23.2006)

"If it had been the first time this happened, I would not dislike myself as much as I do now. To make the same thoughtless, selfish mistake twice, not only with a friend but also with someone that I cared about deeply and at times thought I was in love with is, to me, inexcusable. There is absolutely no way to justify the fact that I was more interested in what I was getting out of the relationship than what the consequences might be for my friend. I look at this and I think, “I am so different from the kind of person that I want to be”. So yes, buried under my self-affirmation and pride in my independence, I dislike myself for the way I act and the way I treat other people. I doubt that I will ever be a wise or even a good person, and I am afraid that I will continue to use my friends and hurt the people I love.

What I hope is that after this year of repeated mistakes, self-doubt, and self-examination, I will have finally learned something. I have gained experience, certainly, and become very aware of my flaws, and I think that I needed to see what came of my decisions before I could begin to do anything about it. While I doubt this is the last time I will ever hurt someone, I have realized that it is not enough to know myself. There is value in experience, but it means nothing unless I also learn to treat other people well." (May 2006)