Written by Es Say
It’s 2021! Finally! Happy New Year to all the people who made it out alive and for those who did not, may we never forget them. Now is a good time to check in on friends and family. Make sure that cat your grandmother gave you back in your senior year of high school is doing okay too. Furry friends are important too! I have heard back from a good four or five people myself. These greetings mostly consisted of new year’s resolutions they’ve heard about on Good Morning America or recycled mass texts they stole off of Facebook. As an amateur writer and professional struggle bus driver, it only makes me cringe a little. Seven curt email denials and three drafts of the same two assignments later, my nights can finally end. College is not like they tell you. But yes, the old saying is right that writing doesn’t pay (…well) and artists often starve.
For the people who know that, for the people who know what I have gotten myself into, they offer their condolences by titling their head away from inquiring about my educational goals. But the one question I seem to be getting a lot is, “how you doin’, girl?” To be honest, I am doing just fine.
So, that is what I tell them. This practice also seems to be a running theme among the polite politics of academia and bigger business. How many times a day at the office have you heard, “Oh hey, how are you?” while they search for your nametag or any other identifying characteristic that might help them remember why they cared to ask you such a question in the first place? Do they really care? Who is to say? “How is school?”
“Fine.”
“How are things at home?”
“Fine.”
“How is that club you are a part of?”
“Fine.”
“Do you still talk to so and so? How’s she doin’?”
“Fine”. As they stir the last bits of oatmeal or instant coffee into their community mug of hot tap water with a plastic spork broken off from a Weight Watcher’s meal, I ask myself the same question, “How you doin’, girl?” I am maintaining and that it the truth. My hair is growing, my bank account is stagnant (but not at zero), and for every member of my family that will die this year, at least two more will be born out of wedlock. I am not failing. But like many others, it has not been easy.
I cry in silent, dry heaves as my airplane ascends not because I am southbound for another wake but because I do not like being around people anymore. Having my hand in so many big people’s little baskets has become my college profession. Some sense that and give me sympathy eyes and empathy texts. Others think that it is admirable. I tell them it is sometimes. I am really good at making it sound like what I do for a living is important. Classes and social circles I no longer feel a part of, but breathing is easy, and the schoolwork is light. Representing one in a collective, having my name on this precious magazine is the application of good pressure.
I have learned so much in so little time about reaching and getting my name out there. There is a place for the weird, the wired different. Collaborating with a group this size for me is uncomfortable. There’s a lot of cooks stirring this one pot but that what keeps this soup for the college writer’s soul fresh. The thyme, the dill, the rosemary, the sage, they all mesh in flavor after a good bit of dry down. I take a spoonful of my peers’ encouragement with each word that I type. I have also been led to take up graphic design after seeing the excitement I get in producing art when there’s not a requirement for it. Drawing outside the lines of group work, dry humor in the Zoom group chat, pennies for my thoughts on Breonna Taylor’s death, at least I am still alive. For that, I’ll say I am doing just fine.
