I’m sick right now. The last time I felt sick, I thought I just had a cold, but it turns out the real reason I was walking around sneezing and hacking up a lung was because of good ol’ COVID-19. Today, I woke up with the same sore throat I’ve had for several days and a scratchy voice. Clearing my throat was no use, so when I turned to the person next to me in my morning class, I stopped two words in to cough rather violently, then pounded my chest twice, and with a blush, declared quite sheepishly, “Oh my God, I think I’m getting sick.” Luckily, my classmate was very gracious and did not shrink away for fear of catching the inconvenience presently afflicting me. Walking to lunch, I had another short bout of coughing accompanied with the intense urge to gag, and then upon entering my dorm, in what I thought was the privacy of the stairwell, doubled over to cough again, but this time to additionally capitulate to the nagging nausea that had accompanied me in bursts throughout the day. However, I was not alone and a fellow East Hall resident descending the stairs had to watch me in horror before quickly escaping past. So aside from the grossness of feeling icky, being sick in college is really just embarrassing.
I also have so many questions. Like why does the supraclavicular lymph node (thank you, Google) on my left side hurt but the one on my right doesn't? Is it because I wear my backpack on one shoulder? Why now? And why do I feel like staring into space? Do I need fresh air? Should I go on a masked walk or will that make my symptoms worse? Does my stuffed octopus like it when I hug him? Did sleeping with the window open make me sick? Will beef jerky help me feel better?
On top of that, I think I have some degree of brain fog because I opened up a can of Klarbrunn about half an hour ago and for the life of me cannot remember where I put it. I live in a small dorm room, so there aren’t a lot of places for carbonated drinks to hide, but so far its location has eluded me. In fact, I paused from writing this blog post to look for it a third time, but still no luck so far…
Ahhh…I found it. It was on a shelf above my head. *Sigh* I suppose problems like these are primarily short people conundrums. Anyway, this post has mostly been about being sick in college, but I’m going to make a shift right here and talk about one of my courses that gets me thinking.
Remember the morning class I mentioned coughing in? You probably do because it was like three paragraphs ago. But, if you don’t, you can just reread the third paragraph above this one and voila! now you do. The course is called The Personal and/as Political and it looks at the memoir/essay-like writing of many different authors and the greater implications of their work. We had our first writing exercise today answering the question, "do you consider yourself a writer?" I really had to think about this one. I eventually said yes, but unconfidently so. I mean, I don’t write as often as I believe real writers tend to. I also don’t write a lot just for myself. When I do, it doesn’t see the light of day. Some of it’s really bad, cheesy, and fluffy. Some of it is really good. Some of it is just okay. But I tend to see writing as a form of art and an important vehicle of self-expression. Most of my writing is for an audience: those of you who are reading this, or the government, or my professors (who may be reading this too). If you are one of my professors or have been one of my professors, hey :)
But I digress, generally, my writing is very functional. It’s for you all, for people in another country, or a way to show I can form an argument and defend it. So yes, in the general sense I would consider myself a writer because I write. But I wouldn’t immediately self-identify with the term if I were to label myself. I think if I were writing just to write, the label would feel more like an embodiment of myself. If I were writing just because it’s something I do, like eating, breathing, and sleeping, I would call myself a writer then. But I wonder, dear reader, if you would consider yourself the same?
If you come to Oberlin, you get to ponder more thought-provoking questions like these, just sayin’.
