Digital Commons Network^™

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?, Ryan A. Bonner

Student Publications

This memoir investigates the roots of my core anxiety, the incessant but impossible ability to achieve perfection. It is framed by my experience getting a second tattoo, which is a line from T.S. Eliot's modernist poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and ties together both my internal struggle and my affinity for physical pain. This memoir draws a line between the past and the present, seeking to find a connection between struggling with anxiety and engaging in self-mutilation as a source of relief.

Everything, Hannah M. Frantz

Student Publications

This is a memoir piece that details a tumultuous period in my life between departing for my study abroad experience in Rwanda and Uganda, struggling with what I encountered there, and then attempting to reintegrate into the same life prior to my departure. Specifically, it focuses on my time in northern Uganda, and a women I met in an IDP (internal displaced persons) camp who really made me think about what my role should be both there and at home. This piece explores a number of themes including guilt, blame, and, ultimately, a certain amount of forgiveness.

Just Another Girl, Julia D. Marshella

Student Publications

A non-fiction piece that explores the causes of the author’s depression while in college. While she is able to pinpoint specific events that have led to her unhappiness, she realizes that accepting her life in spite of these obstacles will allow her to move forward.

Cultured, Cara L. Dochat

Student Publications

This memoir piece comprises three parts, each of which tells a humorous and perhaps slightly embarrassing story of interpersonal upsets the narrator experienced while studying abroad in Europe. Their telling exposes the narrator as a naïve American tourist, despite her conscious attempts to be culturally sensitive and respectful. The intent of this piece was neither to make a political statement about being American in Europe, nor to present yet another trite account “the best four months of [my] life.” While my primary goal was to share these stories for their entertainment value (if self-effacing), my hope was to transform the …

Conception: A Personal History, Kathryn Rhett

English Faculty Publications

November 19 is Remembrance Day in Gettysburg, the day that Lincoln dedicated part of the battlefield as a cemetery for the Civil War dead in 1863. That year in July the dead lay on the battlefield, on the farmers’ fields planted with crops and in the summer-green woods where they had taken positions behind boulders and tree trunks. Some lay covered with dirt, and others just lay bare to the weather. When land for a cemetery was set aside, the townspeople moved the dead to proper graves.

As a citizen of Gettysburg more than a century later, I carry no …