Who Am I?

By the time you are reading this, the answer may have changed. What can I say– I am a 22-year-old, soon to be recent graduate who has never kept the same taste in men for more than six months at a time. The easiest answer to this question has always included my credentials: A public relations major at the University of North Carolina (at Chapel Hill).

They say that college is the best four years of your life. Well, I don’t know who “they” are, but over the course of my time in attendance, I’ve been repeating that mantra religiously to justify the tumultuous ups and downs that come with being a student. Every semester thus far has presented a new set of challenges to navigate, if not in the coursework itself then manifested in social or environmental adjustments. But isn’t that what makes it so fun? No matter what painful or joyous circumstances, a student’s clock resets in a matter of months. We are free to be malleable, to mold our identities as rapidly as our shifting surroundings.

It is this malleability that leaves me excited and anxious for the future, and it is part of the reason I have decided to start writing. I know where I have been, and I know who I have been. I can recall the experiences that I have had and the people I have met who’ve shaped me along the way. I want to pay them tribute now. Before I take the next step in my life– before I leave this place that I have called home for the past four years and begin a new revolution of time not segmented by semester and break– I want to remember who I was and how I got there. Maybe it’s a creeping sense of nostalgia, or a feeling of serendipity, but something tells me things are about to change faster than ever. So, assuming that is true, and because the question of who I am has never been something so easily summed up in a moment’s time, I would like to invite you on a journey of self reflection.