I wasn't planning on posting this, but my professor really enjoyed it, and Alanna told me to and I trust her judgement (XD), so I thought I might see what feedback other people have for me.
I just started college, and one of the classes I have to take is required for all freshmen and is called CORE 110 K: The Human Experience. Despite the weird title, it's basically an English class. We're doing 3 units this semester: Origins, Love, and Education, and the things we read all correspond with one of these units. Currently, we're on the Origins unit, and one of our assignments was to write our own "Theme for Core 110" based off of the poem "Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes, which we read in class. The text of the poem can be found here:
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/English_B.html It didn't have to follow that format, but simply take inspiration from the poem. Here is what I came up with. (I've edited it slightly to remove some personal details like the name of my current city)
My “Theme for Core 110” (Theme for English B)
Alternate Title: “Chameleon Girl”
Down the hall from me, someone is blaring music.
Ke$ha, I think.
She sings that “we are who we are”,
but I’m not sure that I believe her overly-autotuned voice. “We are who we are”?
What does that even mean?
And if we are who we are, then who am I?
Among my friends, I have many names.
Allison, of course, and
Broadway, and Hobbit, and Ari, and Arabella (the latter two would take far too long to explain)
I’m the dramatic one, the innocent one, the nerdy one, the thoughtful one.
The shoulder to cry on, a giver of good hugs.
The responsible one, the overachiever.
The one who’s going places.
I’m the girl who was born in Chicago, but grew up in a town in Michigan pretty much identical to this one.
(but I’m still homesick)
I’m the girl who memorized Aladdin before she was even two years old, the girl who makes friends with her teachers, the girl who has always stayed up far too late reading.
I’m the girl whose informals for this class will probably be far too long because I never stop talking.
I’m a mass of contradictions—the outgoing nerd, the shy theatre major. In short, a chameleon.
And yet with all these titles, I have no idea who I am.
Perhaps I am what I read, Lord of the Rings and Narnia and Wicked.
I am Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson and J.K. Rowling.
Maybe I am the characters that I admire so much—Josephine March and Frodo Baggins,
Or maybe I am the pages I turn so eagerly late into the night,
New, glossy ones in the book of Shakespeare sonnets my AP English teacher gave me as a graduation gift and worn, dog-eared ones in my Tolkien books, well-loved, that once belonged to my mother.
Or maybe, as an actress, I am the roles I play.
I am Constanze Mozart in Amadeus, Frenchy in Grease, Gertrude in Seussical.
I am a Faery in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I am Belle in A Christmas Carol (twice!)
Maybe I’m the notes in the music I sing.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s okay that I don’t know quite who I am yet,
And that my identity comes from so many different sources and names and objects
that it’s hard to tell where one part of my personality stops and another begins.
After all, this is college.
We’re all chameleons here.