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HONORS PORTFOLIO STATEMENT
The girl came into UW as a pre-English major. At least that was what she told everyone. It was true that she hadn’t enjoyed in-depth literary analyses that much in high school--at some point, can’t a story just be a story? she remembered thinking—but college would probably be different.
But she had a secret. It kept on nudging her, and she kept on pushing it away. Not now, she would say and she shushed it back into its corner. She tried not to think about it very much. It was too scary, too big, and she was somewhat superstitious about the whole thing. So she distracted herself by thinking about other, easier things. Winter quarter, she took a class on water and society that was interesting enough that she declared an environmental studies major in the spring. She thought the path toward a stable income with the degree would be useful...and maybe if she had a part-time job in the field, she would have time to do other things, too. Other things. The secret perked up its ears. Spring quarter went fine, except that she was bored of biology and felt like climate change was an obscure concept she would never be able to completely understand in the way her professor wanted her to understand it. So summer quarter, she decided to take a break and enrolled for some fun classes, one of which included beginning short story writing. The secret sat up. So the girl took the class with Professor Shawn Wong and received what she felt was a well-deserved 4.0. By then, the secret had grown, and it was almost too big to fit in its corner. Bits of it intruded into other parts of her head, and one day she asked Shawn Wong about creative writing as a degree. He answered vaguely, and she came away with the impression that you had to be really, really good to get into the undergraduate program—which at UW was offered as English with a creative writing emphasis—and that you had to be really, really, really good to get into the graduate program. She had no idea where she stood and didn’t want to delude herself into thinking that a 4.0 in beginning short story writing actually meant anything. After all, it was only beginning short story writing. No prereqs or anything. But still, sometimes she would absent-mindedly browse the internet and find herself comparing creative writing programs at different universities. Sophomore year came round and she registered for a class on rivers and beaches, a ballet class, and a poetry writing class. She found that she really enjoyed learning about fluvial processes and thought about switching to earth and space sciences, or maybe geology. Both required physics though, so she decided to pass. Ballet turned out to be both good and bad—good because she had been missing dance, but bad because every day, her body reminded her that she would never be able to do ballet as well as she had in high school. It had changed too, and she was uncomfortable with some of those changes. She realized that her 16 years of training had been for essentially nothing. It was a depressing thought and unfortunately was one that reoccurred quite frequently. In line with the theme, her poetry class was not much better. She didn’t particularly like poetry, and she was bad at composing it. She didn’t understand how there was such a discrepancy between the quality of her prose and poetry, and at one point, she thought that maybe she had lost her touch completely and couldn’t write prose anymore. The secret felt bad watching her cry, but it couldn’t do anything to help. It had shrunk a little and was getting ready to hibernate for winter. It was also just in time to miss statistics and chemistry, so she had to deal with those subjects alone. Finally spring rolled around. The secret was still drowsy though, when she registered for Frances McCue’s honors Morocco class. The course was writing-based, and she was at liberty to write as much prose as she liked. So she did, and the secret purred, completely awake and content while the girl composed a 13,000 word story about a house in Morocco. She was so happy, she even forgot she was taking economics that quarter. Towards the end of the class, she asked Frances what she had asked Shawn Wong. Frances smiled and spoke, and the girl came away with the impression that maybe she could get into an MFA program. Transferring schools at this point in her undergraduate career would be too much of a hassle, and she thought that finishing up her environmental studies degree at UW would probably be fine. After all, she had an MFA to look forward to. |
Above is a story of some of my time at UW. Of course, it doesn’t end there, and there are many other details about my self-identity as a writer that I had to leave out. However, starting to actualize my path in creative writing has been amazing- it is really what has been getting me through my undergraduate career.
Not surprisingly, a creative writing theme runs throughout my portfolio-- you can see it in the form of my artifacts that over the years, place more and more emphasis on creative writing in non-creative writing classes. At the same time, you can see the emphasis on environmental studies decreasing-- a representation of my increasing ecophobia (feeling of powerlessness to prevent cataclysmic environmental change) and decreasing interest level in the degree. While I wouldn't have chosen another degree to complete, I feel like the program is disjointed and tangential to my environmental goals, which are mainly to connect to nature in the field and learn about natural history in a hands-on setting. Its broad range of courses and interdisciplinary viewpoints are interesting and can be useful, but my accumulation of knowledge of the environment has generally felt very superficial and ineffective.
While lately I have been feeling more optimistic about the environment (even thinking about side-jobs for my gap years that involve being outside in nature and on trails), I consider the most important theme of my portfolio to be creative writing.
Not surprisingly, a creative writing theme runs throughout my portfolio-- you can see it in the form of my artifacts that over the years, place more and more emphasis on creative writing in non-creative writing classes. At the same time, you can see the emphasis on environmental studies decreasing-- a representation of my increasing ecophobia (feeling of powerlessness to prevent cataclysmic environmental change) and decreasing interest level in the degree. While I wouldn't have chosen another degree to complete, I feel like the program is disjointed and tangential to my environmental goals, which are mainly to connect to nature in the field and learn about natural history in a hands-on setting. Its broad range of courses and interdisciplinary viewpoints are interesting and can be useful, but my accumulation of knowledge of the environment has generally felt very superficial and ineffective.
While lately I have been feeling more optimistic about the environment (even thinking about side-jobs for my gap years that involve being outside in nature and on trails), I consider the most important theme of my portfolio to be creative writing.