“Sweeter Than Fiction”

“And when they call your name
And they put your picture in a frame
You know that I'll be there time and again
'Cause I loved you when, when you

Hit the ground, hit the ground, hit the ground, oh oh
Only sound, only sound that you heard was "no"
Now in this perfect weather
It's like we don't remember
The rain we thought would last forever and ever (forever)

There you'll stand, ten feet tall
I will say, I knew it all along
Your eyes wider than distance
This life's sweeter than fiction”

--Taylor Swift, “Sweeter than Fiction” from One Chance (2013)

Touchstone 2019-2020 Staff.
This life with you all is sweeter than fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, if I do say so myself.

I knew when I started these blogs that it would start to get really emotional around this time. I’ve kind of been building the posts, and these last few weeks—just prepare your hearts, okay?

This week, I’m going to let the song tell the story—our story.

It starts off all too familiar for grad students: “Hit the ground, hit the ground, hit the ground, oh oh / Only sound that you hear is "no" / You never saw it coming / Slipped when you started running / And now you've come undone.” Grad school has felt like that at times, where everything seems to be going against us, be it deadlines overlapping or a massive amount of reading that comes the same weekend as a new batch of essays to grade or a paper gets rejected or your committee wants major revisions. Sometimes it’s so much that it gets hard to breathe. But the whole point of the song is the line in the pre-chorus “Someday you won't remember / This pain you thought would last forever and ever.”

That’s what I hope for so desperately that it hurts. That, someday, all the struggle will be worth it. I’ve seen the work you guys have done. I’ve read your papers and short stories and WIPs; I’ve heard your thoughts on teaching methods and literary classics and new theories—and you’re all brilliant. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: we’ll “make it.” Whatever that means for us, I know we have the courage and the talent and the brains and work ethic to get there. I also know it’ll be hard and that we aren’t done falling down or hearing “no” yet.

8-18-2019. Babes with books looking for a story as good
as our friendship. No luck so far. 

But the great thing is that the song doesn’t stop with “someday.” We in less than 4 minutes, we get the whole story. By the third verse, we’ve done it: “What a sight, what a sight when the light came on / Proved me right, proved me right when you proved them wrong / And in this perfect weather / It's like we don't remember / The rain we thought would last forever and ever.”

Maybe it’s selfish and egotistical, but I am definitely Taylor Swift in this song. Mikayla once told me that one of her favorite things about me was how much I enjoy celebrating people, and that’s what this song is all about. I’ve believed in you guys since Day 1. I don’t really know why. Maybe I’m naïve or idealistic or too trusting, but from the first time you uttered your goals, I knew you’d achieve them. At our Christmas party at my apartment, Jacque basically said the same thing about me, that she had never met someone who she so believed would do what they said they would. It’s funny that I’ve never thought that about myself but that I so actively think that about all of you.

Okay, okay, we’re almost done. I’ll skip to the bridge. It’s the part I quoted at the beginning of the post, the part that most makes me think of you guys. God, Taylor Swift writes the best bridges in all of pop music, and no one can change my mind about that—the bridge is what I’ve always wanted to say to someone, and it’s such a fitting message as graduation comes around.

(Please re-read the epigraph now.)

10-22-2019. We ended up getting 2nd place, but I wouldn't
trade the experience for anything.

Pictures and frames and “I told you so’s” and me cheering literally as loud as I can. Because, here’s the thing. No matter the distance that comes between us, I will always be your number one fan. (I know, I have many fan clubs to keep track of.) And, if you ever need a pick-me-up or an ego boost, come to me. I’ll believe in you even if you don’t believe in yourself. Because I’ve seen you fight to get this far, and I know you’ll keep fighting. I promise I’ll love you just as much when you make it big as I do right now when we’re all lowly grad students just scraping by.

Fittingly enough, this song is one the soundtrack for the movie One Chance. I don’t know what the movie’s about, some opera singer named Paul Pott who won Britain’s Got Talent. James Corden and Julie Walters (Molly Weasley) are in the movie, apparently. But that’s not the point. I think the it’s a fitting title for us, because I swear that all you guys need is one chance to prove yourselves. You just need one chance that works out, and, if you can catch that first break, I know you’ll take it and run with it and that you’ll go so, so far.

It’s like my “fanfiction” that I wrote about us and put in group chat a couple weeks ago (reposted here to refresh you):

“I can't help but imagine this group chat in like 20 years, and Rebecca is our publisher, and she's juggling V's book tour and constantly in here reminding us about deadlines, and we joke that "Lexi won't start her chapter until the day it's due," and Dustin is the model author and meets all HIS deadlines for his next best-selling novel, and any time we need a Marxist lens we just @ Cailey, and Mikayla is always here to explain the trauma theory that she wrote and revolutionized Children's Lit with, and Gina and Nick are always trading ideas for their scary horror novels, and Noelle knows that she can always ask any of us to Zoom with her students, and when Molly does she convinces them that she and Noelle are married, and we make plans to go to conferences together where we'll catch up with all our old profs and new colleague-friends and sit at the same table during the closing banquet and giggle the whole time.”

It seemed pretty well-received. (You guys must just be used to my random outbursts of idealism and perfection.) V said, “Katie, I love this for us.” Cailey said, “I feel like you just write fan fiction about all of us and it was a really fun experience to read.” And Rebecca said, “I used to write stories about me and my friends in middle school like going on quests and dying brutally and the stories were all published in the school newspaper.” (That means she approves of me writing fanfics about us, right?) (And then Molly replied with, “You [Rebecca] consistently have the most insane yet least surprising stories I’ve ever heard,” which is honestly so true.) At the very, very least, it feels like a plausible future and something to daydream about while we’re chilling in isolation for who-knows-how-much-longer.

Some of us are writers, both creative writers and scholars. Some of us are future teachers and publishers and librarians. And these aren’t easy things to become. Years of grad school, multiple rejections, grueling years of “paying your dues” to the industry—none of that is easy. But I have to believe that our future makes all of this worth it. And I firmly believe that nothing any of us ever write will be as good as our own story.

9-25-2019. My first great self-insert fanfic was set in Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny (1942, 1972) universe. (I still stand by it. I would run after you. Well, maybe not run, but I'd find you.)

I know fiction is an escape. I’ve opened a Harry Potter book to get away from reality more times than I can count. I’ve dreamed of magic powers and unshakeable friendships and the power of love for my whole life (okay, since I started the series when I was 7). I especially go for fiction with happy endings, because I know real life doesn’t always come with that guarantee, but I think fiction should. (I don’t read fiction for the hard truths or real life! That’s why it’s called “fiction!”)

But this life, for me, really is sweeter than any fiction I could ever come up with, because it’s ours. Because I’ve gotten to share it with you. And because, now that you’ve found me, you’re stuck with me forever—and all of my endless encouragement and excitement and hope for our lives.

Love ∞,

Me