#me

Post date: Dec 6, 2016 3:00:12 PM

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with collecting diaries and journals, especially at the book fairs that would occur. I never actually kept up with recording anything or my life (unless you count my really embarrassing recording of every episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch back when I was like 7) I didn't see the need to record life, I had lived it.

Then I got old.

My family has a rather interesting dichotomy of really great trivia memory but really bad life memory. So this eportfolio is as much to showcase who I am to the world (or just you) as much as it is a way for me to record who I am. One of the more interesting ways this comes out is in my journal posts. I can reread any post and see where my mind was as I wrote it. Within the Marco Polo post I can tell that my mind really was on my own experiences travelling while also trying to root out my own biases that I still have both for and against my own culture and way of life. The election and its aftermath has uncovered a lot of problems both within my own bubble of interactions as well as on a national standard. Reading Marco Polo's travels helped me recenter on how travel can overcome a lot of preconceived notions of how the world works.

In much the same way, my post on Abelard and Heloise brings me back to when I was writing the post half asleep in the kitchen at my polling place in Michigan. It's an odd time stamp on what was going through my life at that point. Abelard was a weird discussion point the entire day where everyone there was optimistic about the outcome. Through this anecdote, I can always look back at what I wrote and, after puzzling out exactly what the hell I was reading back then, I can remember parts of my life that usually fade quickly. We rarely remember the homework specifics of a class, rather we remember the big picture. By preserving for a lifetime the little quirks and thoughts of the here and now, I can always look back at this and see how far I've come and how far I've yet to go.

When thinking about how to organize this reflection, I skimmed my journal posts and my various pages and realized a couple things. This page is uniquely me and I don't actually remember doing most of this website. But the more I looked, the more I realized that my continued editing and adding to this site added me into it. My first posts, like that on Odysseus, is boring and kinda bland. It's really only after I hit the Aeneid that I start interjecting with my own voice and therefore with my own life. That was also when I really started to look at my site as something beyond a class assignment. Like my life, it won't ever be finished, as experiences never stop, life never stops. I could tell that I had decided my site would be a reflection of me and my likes. That's why my bucket list is proudly displayed and why my home page is a weird mashup of art and travel. This became my place to put favorite or found quotes, instead of my notes app on my phone.

Since I have to graduate someday (I'm just not gonna think about it yet), I know that this site will stop being completely academic and more like a conglomeration of who I am, who I was, and who I will be. The process of creation will never be complete, because there is always something to add.

I started this site with vague ideas of what I could include. Now, it's just a weird mix of me, and that's all it needs to be.