The Waitlist
Grace Wolfe Spring 2017
Table of Contents... 03-06................My Contribution
13-14................Queering the Community
This Must be the 15-16...............Essay Review 07-12...............Place
A continution in my interest...
I
found out in the middle of the day, just after Chemistry class. For weeks I had been running home during any open period I could and checking the mail for my decision. My heart dropped when I shifted through the mail and saw just a lowly letter from Reed Admissions. Expecting the worst, I ran inside and called for my mom. I couldn’t open the letter myself, so she ripped it open for me and told me. Waitlisted. Before she could even attempt to calm me down, I turned away and ran to my room, shedding my backpack and clothes along the way—doing anything that would make it easier to breath. When I reached my room I turned off all the lights, climbed into bed, loudly sobbed into my pillow, then promptly fell asleep for seven hours. And as far as moping goes, that was about all I did. When I awoke, I felt eerily content. Motivation surged through my body, which is something
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I hadn’t felt since submitting my applications. It surprised me how normal I felt. Reed is my dream school. For months it has been all I could talk about, everyone who knew me knew my sights were set on Reed. When I first visited last fall without any intention of attending, I accidentally fell in love. Since middle school I had been all about attending college in the East Coast, so this sudden admiration of a school in Portland perplexed everyone. Being on campus feels like I’m already home, so the possibility that I might not get to experience it ever again is terrifying. But, in a strange way, my waitlist decision makes me excited. I now get to show myself even more to the community I love, something I didn’t feel I could fully get across in the Common Application. I know that I am a perfect fit for Reed, and now I get to create even more content to prove it. So, once I woke up from my nap on that fateful day, I went upstairs to my mom and told her I was okay, and ready to get started.
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My Contribution to the Reed Community 03
I
am sick of writing supplement essays. For five months of my life I toiled over numerous college applications, shutting myself away just to get them done on time. Every school I applied to asked why I chose to apply. It pained me to write complete lies; I didn’t have any reason to apply to these schools besides as back ups to my top choice. The reason the essays were so difficult to write was because I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else besides Reed. My application for Reed was incredibly easy to complete, my passion to go there guiding me through the essays. I have a clear vision of what my life would be like at Reed, and I’ll talk about it with anyone who asks. Unlike my other supplement essays, when posed with what I would contribute to the Reed community, I know the answers right away. I’ve milked it for all it’s worth, but magazine is truly my passion. Through my experience on my high school magazine staff I was able to find my niche and become empowered. This is something I would like to share with others, so I would create an entertainment magazine modeled after what I’ve done in high school. This publication would be different from the Quest and the Grail as it would be more focused on design, photography, and opinion writing. I’d like this publication to be a platform for queer people, and also give a voice to minority students who feel they don’t belong on the larger publications. As a Native American in journalism I feel like I’m in a primarily white game, so I’d like to bring my experience to help others in the same place as me. This magazine would be more than just a journalism outlet, but a platform for people to creatively express themselves without many strict rules. I believe a publication like this would all-around boost moral on campus for both the readers and the staff members.
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In addition to the magazine, I picture myself involved in the community as much as possible. I’ve come to know the Reed community well, and it’s a place that nurtures the same creative intellectuals I want to be surrounded by. I plan to do a myriad of things that Reed has to offer, like hosting a radio show at KRRC and participating in the improv group. My influence would not only address the social community, but the academic one as well. Flipping through the anthropology section of the course-book I was invigorated. Classes like The Anthropology of Sex and Gender are exactly what I dreamed about when imagining college. The interdisciplinary field of anthropology at Reed presents me with the ability to study other interests that contribute to
my major and interests. Because this is something I see my career in, I intend to reap all the benefits that attending a small, elite institution like Reed can give me. I hope to work along with professors to publish work even before I graduate to not only get my name out in the world, but also Reed’s. If I were to attend Reed, I would never shut up about it. I would want to spread my love of Reed around as much as possible, so I would sign up to be a tour guide and host prospective students. I want to show interested Reedies how wonderful Reed is, like I’ve had the chance to see. I know that if I’m accepted to Reed I will never stop giving my love back to the school, through my influence in the community to my academic accolades.
“I know if I’m accepted into Reed I will never stop giving my love back to the school”
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Open the Door: a Playlist Let ‘Em In // Wings Say Yes // Elliott Smith All My Loving // The Beatles Song for the Asking // Simon and Garfunkel I Want You // Mitski Dreams // The Cranberries All of Me Wants All of You // Sufjan Stevens This Must Be The Place // The Talking Heads
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This Must be the Place snapshots of a day at reed
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ast summer I went on my first date, and it was with a boy. I’d gone 17 years without any romantic relationships, but I just chalked it up to finding all boys boring. The boy I was with had been my friend since freshman year, and my friends pressured me into this date just to “get it over with”. They’d always wondered why I never had a crush on anyone. It hadn’t occurred to me until someone brought it up. I drifted through school without the drama of relationships, and I thought it was because I was more mature than everyone. But, I figured I should go on a date before college, so I agreed when he asked and tried to get myself excited. I still remember his sweaty hand awkwardly fumbling into mine when the movie started. I’ve always been a romantic—more about the concept than the execution—so I expected some sort of electricity to hit me when we touched. Instead, I became overtly aware of how large and sticky he was. I spent the rest of the date rigid in my chair, my anxiety clouding my ability to enjoy the movie we were watching. Thoughts that I often kept out of my mind began bouncing around in the darkness of the theater; it upset me that I never felt completely comfortable around men, and that none of them interested me. But through all this, the word ‘lesbian’ never came to my mind. It wasn’t that I completely ignored LGBT people—I’d been actively involved in queer communities both on the internet and in Omaha. I had been a part of my school’s chapter of the Gay-Straight Alliance and attended every meeting, rubbing elbows with the queer community at Westside and learning their stories. My activism was rather passive, consisting mostly of shutting down homophobic remarks from peers and promoting sexual diversity in the magazine I am a part of. However, it wasn’t as much as I wanted to be, because I always felt uncomfortable as an ‘ally’. I felt that anything I would do wasn’t my place to say, and that if I was too open in my activism I would be called queer, which scared me. I assumed I was
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just deeply rooted in a homophobic mindset, which also upset me because I knew it didn’t feel right. This was something I struggled with throughout middle school and the beginning of high school, but at a certain point I decided to ignore it and deal with it at a later time. And that “later time” happened to be at the Dollar Theater on 125th and Center. I spent the whole time stewing, but I don’t think my date noticed. Things were made much worse when I outright rejected his advances when he tried to make a move on me in the car afterwards. He didn’t look too hurt about it, but my internal struggle over the fact that I didn’t want to kiss him made me want to cry. After he dropped me off I ran straight to my bathroom, fell onto the cold floor, and finally let the tears I’d been holding back come out. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Later that summer I fell in love, and it was with a girl. Suddenly, I felt more comfortable in my own skin than I ever had; I didn’t realize I had been lacking this security until I accepted my own queerness. It didn’t take meeting the “right girl” to show me. It took days, weeks, and when I think about it, years of struggling to reach the ultimate conclusion that I am a lesbian. With this knew found confidence that I was being completely genuine, I dove back into the LGBT community, ready for a new and powerful chapter of my life. When I attend college in the fall I plan to be completely out at my campus and a full fledged member of the queer community, using my strengths to further educate and promote pride. When I look back on that fateful first date I had, I cringe. But I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, because it forced me to acknowledge my queerness and led me to becoming the empowered member of the community I am today. I plan to go forward with what I’ve learned and share my experience with other people going through the same thing, because some aren’t as lucky as me.
The Summer I Found Myself
accepting my queerness and finding community 14
Mental Illness in Literature an example of my ability to write an analytical essay
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here’s been a few times in my life I’ve felt blind rage. The feeling is like no other, and it’s terrifying when I engage with that part of myself. When I think of my most embarrassing outburst, my mind goes to last year in Honors American Literature. As I sat in my small group discussion, listening to the girl across from me talk about Holden Caulfield, the last thing I wanted to hear came out of her mouth: “Holden’s depression isn’t real, he’s just crazy.” For a moment my mouth was agape, but then that familiar rage boiled up and I couldn’t help but tell her she had no idea what she was talking about. I knew I was overreacting; her ignorance didn’t warrant my inappropriate outburst. But still, I sat stewing for the rest of the class, keeping my eyes trained on the window trying not to cry. It felt like a personal attack, like she was ranting about me and not a completely fictional character. When I first read Catcher in the Rye my freshman year, my world was transformed. Never before had I come across a character like Holden. As someone with depression, seeing representation of a person my age going through the same thing was comforting. What’s unnerving, however, is how he’s misread by most people. As I’ve discussed the book with people over the years I’ve guarded Holden like he’s my child, because of the special place he holds in my heart. I know that many other teenagers feel the same way, and that’s why the book has been incredibly influential. So, when I walked into literature class that day, I was ready to defend the presence of Holden’s mental illness with my life. The girl in my class said he was crazy but I knew the truth: he’s simply a depressed kid trying to get through adolescence. Upon seeing Hamlet on
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the syllabus for AP Literature this year, I expected the same argument to arise. Even though I hadn’t read the play before the unit, I knew there was a constant debate over whether or not Hamlet was insane. After class I talked with my friends and saw most of them felt he was acting irrational. Once again, I saw a parallel with Holden and knew it was him coping. However, it’s understandable people come to this conclusion by society’s long standing stigma with mental illness. Naturally, we think this kind of behavior isn’t based in any reality, but in actuality the power of these two pieces is that they’re detailing human life, and with that comes mental illness. Although these pieces were published centuries apart, both Hamlet’s and Holden’s struggles are often misread by a society that stigmatizes mental illness. The action of the play begins when Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his dead father. Whether the ghost is real or not doesn’t matter—its presence gives Hamlet purpose and is a way of coping. Most cite this as the beginning of Hamlet’s descent into madness, but seeing a ‘ghost’ after the death of a loved one is a common occurrence. When he’s visited by the ghost in his mother’s room, he’s under an extreme amount of stress and is acting irrationally. The ghost appears due to Hamlet projecting his fears and insecurities, not because he’s gone insane. However, as the play moves forward, Hamlet’s “antic disposition” (I, v, 170-172) becomes more present as his paranoia grows into mania. In the beginning of the play, Hamlet plays the part of a madmen to derail everyone, even explicitly stating it in his talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind
is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw” (II. ii. 368-369). He also shows a level of clarity when apologizing to Laertes: “What I have done / That might your nature, honour and exception / Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness” (VI, ii, 228230). By recognizing that the way he’s acted could be seen as crazy, Hamlet is demonstrating a level of understanding that would be impossible if he was actually insane. Although he falls into a mania in the middle of the play, we see by the beginning and ending that Hamlet is consecutively coherent. His assumed madness is a product of depression set off by the death of his father. In both his soliloquies, Hamlet contemplates suicide, which is a huge indicator of his depression. Not only this, but his pessimistic view of the world has left him with no other options but death: “To die, to sleep—No more, and by a sleep to say we end / The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to” (III, i, 60-63). In the very same soliloquy, Hamlet makes it clear that the society he exists in is worse than death: For who would bear the
whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes. (III, i, 71-75)
This inclusion of society’s flaws exemplify Hamlet’s weariness of the world around him and present another rational reason for his supposed madness. But while Hamlet’s disposition has forced him into giving up, Holden’s is still searching for meaning. Throughout the entire book Holden moves aimlessly, interacting with the world around him in deeply meaningful ways. His difficulties lay in growing up; the death of his brother made him grow up much sooner than he was comfortable with, and it’s thrown him into a depression. He’s trying to get out of this depression by constantly seeking connections, from the prostitute to when he’s leaving school: “What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of good-by.
I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse” (Salinger 4). The only person he feels any real connection with his is younger sister Phoebe, because she holds that innocence he’s so desperately trying to find. He spends the whole book trying to restrict the children he interacts with from growing up. “I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see [the f word written on the wall]. . . I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it” (Salinger 201). The writing on the wall angers Holden so greatly because he doesn’t want children to grow up, like he was forced to. The language that’s used also gives reason to why Holden could be seen as crazy. It makes sense that people think he’s crazy due to the rash way he acts and the language he uses, but his overall manner shows he’s extremely depressed: “Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddamn curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see my again” (Salinger 197). Holden literally feels like he’ll just fade away, which is an accurate description of how it feels to be depressed. Signs of depression are often confused with schizophrenia, especially before modern times. Along with this, if mental illness is even recognized at all in media, it is portrayed incorrectly. The stigma on mental illness has evolved over time, but none of it could have occurred without the continued presence of it in literature. Shakespeare specifically was one of the first and most influential writers to highlight mental illnesses. His characters are whole-heartedly human, and by including struggles with issues such as unrequited love or depression he continues to relate to people. This hasn’t changed in modern times, with books like Catcher in the Rye. To an extent, Holden is the modern Hamlet. This isn’t a direct parallel, rather an example of how two characters written centuries apart hold similarities because mental illness is and will always be present. With this other layer of understanding, Holden isn’t just an angsty teen spending a bunch of money around New York and Hamlet isn’t a revenge-crazed maniac. Instead, they’re two human beings, dealing with grief. It’s the way society reads the characters that illustrates a stigma. But through characters like them, it makes it easier to destigmatize mental illness and find solace.
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The End