“I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the
difference…..”
Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the chaos and struggle of
a journey that we forget where it all started in the first place. Two weeks ago
I received a beautiful reminder.
It was my soon to be sister-in-law’s 21st
birthday and Andy and I paid her a surprise visit while she was studying in the
library at Carroll College. I don’t honestly think I’ve stepped foot inside
that building since graduating. We wandered the two floors, weaving in and out
of bookshelves and study cubes, trying to find her. We walked by a shelf containing all of the
bound theses that seniors from over the years have slaved away at to finish. My
eyes scrolled over the book spines desperately searching for my own name.
Finally, on the shelf with the other 2009 theses, I saw my last name and thesis
title etched into the blue binding. I pulled it off the shelf and then stood there
for a moment just staring down at the book in my hands.
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As I was finishing up my junior year of college in the
spring of 2008, I was asked if I was considering doing a thesis. I learned that
I could only graduate with honors if I completed a thesis. Having maintained a
4.0 GPA my entire college career up until then, it seemed like a terrible waste
if I didn’t graduate with honors. But what would I write about?
At first I proposed writing an analytical piece about female
authors from Montana and how the region influenced their writing…..or something
like that. I figured I would sort out the real details later. I jotted a brief
description down on the application, had my advisor sign off on it and
submitted it. I was officially writing a thesis! I didn’t spend a single minute
afterwards thinking about that fact though or my undeveloped topic.
Then one summer afternoon, just before I was to begin my
senior year, everything I had planned changed.
I was struggling to repair a broken friendship with someone
at the time and was emotionally distraught over what to do. I found myself
driving up to the tower on the top of MacDonald Pass—I needed to clear my head.
I got out of the car, sat down on some crumbling concrete steps with a notebook
in hand, and begin writing. I don’t know how long I saw there writing, but when
my pen finally paused, I glanced up and felt an answer click inside me. I knew what I was going to do for my thesis.
As soon as school began at the end of August, I immediately
approached my advisor and told him I wanted to write a collection of poems for
my thesis instead. I was told I would need to write a minimum of 20 poems for
the project. A thesis without any boring research involved? Seemed like I’d
found the easy way out……….I couldn’t have been more wrong.
For the next 8 months, I poured everything I had into
writing those 20 poems. I didn’t have to spend hours hunched over library books
or scrolling the internet for research sources. My sacrifices were much
greater. I wrote 20 poems about people and events pulled directly from my own
life. And let’s just say, I didn’t pick the happiest of moments or the most
loving of individuals to reflect on. I had a tattered and tear-stained notebook
I filled with the often aimless thoughts of my mind and slowly crafted them into
works of art. It was exhausting. It was heart-wrenching. It required me
breaking and giving up pieces of my soul in order to do it. And the worst part
was, I workshopped many of my poems during writing classes in school. Whenever
students or my teachers said something critical, I knew deep down that they
were just discussing the words on the page. But to me, it always felt like a
personal attack on my life because the poems were taken right from my life.
Just before Christmas, I found myself paging through a
booklet I’d made of the poems I’d written thus far. It was to be Christmas gift
for someone who appeared in several of the poems. As I was reading back over
them, I was overwhelmed for the first time in my life with a feeling I thought
I’d never ever find. It was passion. I had finally discovered my passion and
knew that being a writer was what I was meant to spend my life doing. That
moment alone made all of the work thus far and the months of work I had yet to
do before graduation all worth it.
A few weeks shy of graduation, I walked into the library and
handed a lady my thesis, in its entirety. I knew I should have felt relieved
and exhilarated like all of the other honors candidates. But what I felt like
was that the real work was only just beginning. My thesis wasn’t an
accomplishment to me—it was the inaugural step of a journey. It was something I
simply felt compelled to do. And everything about me and my life since has been
different ever since.
Seeing my thesis in the library that night reminded me of
how much effort it took for me to come to the realization that I am a writer.
And seeing my words bound up in a hard back cover, inspired me to keep doing
what I’m doing until I can walk into any book store in the world and pick up a
copy of my own book. Choosing the path of a writer with any amount of
seriousness absolutely means taking the road less traveled. But I have been walking
that path long enough now to know with certainty, that it will truly make the
difference in the end.
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| The graduation poem I unknowingly wrote to myself |
