When I was in Fourth Grade a woman came in one day and gave us all a test. The test was supposed to determine which half of our brains we used more, and learned better with, and so forth. Everybody answered the questions, filled in the little bubbles on the answer sheet and the woman graded them and told us what it meant. All the children got their test back with a big "left" or "right" written at the top. The students started dividing themselves up, the way kids do, left-brain kids talking with left-brainers and rights with other right-brain kids. I got my test back, and looked down excitedly to see which group I belonged to. "Both." Both? What the hell is this supposed to mean? The woman came over and explained to me that I am one of the rare people who use both halves of my brain equally. Ummm. . ..okay. She said it was a good thing, but all it meant to me then was that neither one of the groups would take me. I've always felt out of place. For a long time i was the brain of the class, getting answers right, and so on, but that never mattered to me as much as it did to some of the other kids. I never joined the Beta Club or shit like that. People tell me I'm smart and I guess I believe them, but I don't think that it is as important as people make it out to be. The only good being considered smart ever did me was that it let me skip the last 2 years of high school & go to college early, so i didn't have to waste more time being surrounded by people i didn't like, doing things that bored the hell out of me, & being heckeled by teachers who thought i was going to light something on fire because i was wearing a leather jacket with metal studs and patches on it. You gotta love the reasoning in the education system. Anyway, I never fit in with the intellectual people in school because I made good grades, but I didn't give a shit about them, and because I never put much value on appearances. I can understand their way of thinking, but I just could never live it myself. On the other hand, I have had friends who threw everything away, just to get rid of the parts that they hated. So many of my friends didn't care about school at all. They were fighting against something huge, something they didn't even know how to begin describing, they just knew that they were angry. I understand that, too. So many times I have felt something indescribable inside me, so much frustration, such a strong need to get away, to break free. What did I need to break free from, though? I never quite figured that out, and since I want to have as many choices as possible in my future life, I stayed in school (even if i didn't show up a lot [hell, i still made all As. either i'm smart or the school system is really fucked up. damn, i guess that means i'm not smart]) and now i'm going away to begin my third year of college. So, i'm gonna someday get paid to talk about languages in a college classroom (yeah, i know i need a doctorate) & young people will get graded on how well they listen to me. I think i should be able to slip in quite a few subversive messages during the span of my career- "in the dative case, remember, the form of 'der' that you need to go listen to Anti-Flag & Dropkick Murphys until you can think for yourselves use is 'dem'." I also plan on becoming a tattoo artist & perhaps piercer. I love the thought of what my business cards will look like: "Dr.____ ____, professor of German at Blah University. . . Tattooing done on Tuesdays & Thursdays." I used to read a hell of a lot. I still would, but i have so much required stuff in classes right now that any enjoyment has gone. I'll proably read again this summer some. Now that i leave the house more often than i used to & have more than one friend, I seem to always be busy anyway. It's interesting to note how one reads less as one gets out & lives more. I'd still like to be a writer, though. Hell, at least now i can write & have life experiences to back it up, instead of just things i've read about. Hmm... what else? I could get philosophical: The existentialist views of Heidegger differed from those of Sartre & Kierkegaard mainly by the emphasis placed on... oh wait, not that type of philosophical. . ..I am a mixture of everything I have ever come in contact with-people, books, events, and ideas. The person I am now is the result of everything I have ever seen, or heard, or read, and so on. Books, in particular, have enhanced my life to an extent I can not express in words. I remember so many multitudes of worlds, lives, and events that in reality only exist as typed words on paper. That is not true, though. These places, these people exist. They exist in my mind and help to shape the person I am, and who I am becoming. I am a 18 year-old American girl with a mostly shaved head, but I am also Gregor Samsa, Siddhartha, Simone deBeauvoir, Ophelia, and a Tralfamadorian from Slaughterhouse-Five, among thousands of others. Music is also a large part of my life. I listen to everything from Mozart to punk rock & oi!.

here's a picture of me right after i shaved most of my head (you can't really tell, though):

ooh, look. . . yet another picture. . . (damn, i look stupid here. i wish i had a better picture of me, but hell, i see myself everyday, so i never found a need to have pictures taken).

(i know, i know.. . . .cheesy, but hell, for all i know you could be imagining me to be some kind of waif-like goth girl with glitter eye shadow or a hippie chick with huge breasts or maybe a preppie girl who has perfect blonde hair everyday (not that there's anything wrong with blonde hair, mind you, just that kind of perfect shiny-smooth-curled-under-at-the-ends-ness sort of scares me). ...alas, i am none of these things. as you can see, it is just me in a groovie ghoulies t-shirt. [a good & kind of an amusing band to see live, by the way])