“No Judgement”

“Barefoot and a bottle of wine

You can stay with me tonight

You don't have to change when I'm around ya

So go ahead and say what's on your mind, on your mind

When you're with me, no judgement

You can get that from anyone else

You don't have to prove nothin'

You can just be yourself”

--Niall Horan, “No Judgement”

9-14-2019. Picture books and big bad wolves and Little Reds, oh my! Thanks for never being afraid to be silly with me. I love you guys so much that I just want to eat you up!

Look at me popping in with a song that isn’t from the mid-2010s, lol! Niall Horan just dropped this song last month, and when I heard it, I thought, “That’s who I want to be!” Not Niall, necessarily (but, also, yes), but the person who makes people feel safe. After our Christmas party this year, I realized that maybe I say a lot of self-deprecating things, and I think I do that for a couple reasons: 1) I’m terrified of coming off as a pretentious, “holier-than-thou” bitch (which I know I have the potential to do) and 2) because I feel so comfortable with you guys that I know you won’t judge me for having those insecurities. And I really hope that’s how you feel around me.

8-12-2019. Sometimes  in grad school you just need a Wine N Cry.

I know what it’s like to feel like you can’t tell someone something, and, if you’re like me, that eats you up. Once I say something, I feel so much relief. Sometimes I joke that I just need 20 minutes to cry about something, and then I’ll be fine. I’m not a feeling bottler by any means. (Such a Pisces move, right?) And I just want to remind you that you’ll always have a shoulder to cry on and a couch to crash on as long as I’m alive. Even if our GroupMe goes quiet and you delete your Facebook, you can always reach out to me in 2 or 5 or 10 or 25 years, and I’ll be just as excited to hear from you as I am every time I pass you in the hallway.

I hope those things don’t happen, though. I hope we use the GroupMe from time to time. I hope I can follow your many, many successes on social media for years down the road. Because, like I’ve said before, I made a home with you guys, and no matter what changes, I’ll always remember grad school with fondness because of you—and not everyone can say that, so I think we’re very, very, very lucky in that regard.

I mean, we’ve seen each other do some wild things. You’ve seen me dance with no rhythm or sense of what to do with my body. I’ve done karaoke even though I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. I’ve turned onto an exit ramp and almost killed myself, Noelle, Molly, and Lexi (infinitely sorry about that, guys!!). Dustin and Jacque are always casually just getting up at open mic nights and bearing their souls in their writing. And let’s not forget the time Nick asked Anne in 801 if we could call the professors “mom” and “dad” or when Mikayla said, “Bad wives make husbands go down” while talking about Coraline in Phil’s Children’s Lit class. Or Rebecca’s “goblin urges” that she likes to tell us about: throwing things, cramming all the food into her mouth, hitting someone. There are so many crazy things that have happened that we could hold against each other, but we just laugh it off. Because we genuinely love each other—even if we tease a little.

10-31-2018. I had known you guys for 2 months when I captioned this with "OHANA" on Instagram. I guess I've always known that you'd be some of the most special people in my life. Thanks for proving me right. I'd choose you as my family time after time. 

2-8-2020. February Birthday Bash.
I'm in love with the way we love
each other.

My favorite part of “No Judgement” is the line in chorus “You don’t have to prove nothin’,” because I feel like, in so many other aspects of life, we have to do just that—or we feel like we do. The Imposter Syndrome is so real. We feel like we have to prove that we deserve to be in grad school. We have to prove that we’re a good enough/smart enough writer. We’re graded on the same scale, applying for the same schools or jobs, submitting to the same conferences and journals. It’s so easy to get bitter and competitive—and we’ve heard the stories about the cohorts who have done just that and had it tear them apart. I can’t imagine grad school in such a toxic context. If we were like that, I don’t know that I would finish the program. It sounds so unbearably miserable. But one thing that I’ve heard Mikayla and Jacque repeat over and over is, “You’re a person, and people deserve _____.” Sometimes that blank is “grace” or “to be loved” or “a break.” In this case, I’d like to say that people deserve to feel safe. Comfort and safety aren’t things you “earn” by being the best or the smartest or the most-published; they’re, I think, a prerequisite for being the best version of yourself you can be. If you’re not comfortable at your job—in our case, in our cohort—you’re always going to be looking over your shoulder. You’ll be afraid to ask questions and grow and learn. And, if you’re going to grad school, it’s a waste of your time and money to go to school only to come out without having changed.

Your love and friendship has given me the space to be wrong—something I’m absolutely terrified of—and to admit that I don’t understand things (especially postmodernism and trauma theory and how to creatively write anything). But I don’t feel like I have to understand those things to be loved by you. I’ve always been the “smart girl” in school, and that became such an ingrained part of my identity that I started to associate “not knowing” with “not being good enough.” That’s part of the reason I want to take a gap year before I pursue a Ph.D.; I want to see what I’m like outside of being a student, even though I know that academia will always be an integral part of me.

So, when you’re with me, there’s no judgement. Heaven knows we can—and do—get that from every other facet of our lives. I’m so lucky to have a safe place with all of you, and I hope I can and have and will continue to repay that for the rest of our lives.

Love ∞,

Me