So I guess universities have to be selective because you can't just admit any riffraff that wanders in off the street, but it really makes me feel whorish, like: "This is why I feel I am deserving of you to take my money." Anyways, this is the essay I put on my application to the University of Washington where, should I be accepted, I will be starting in the fall.
As a closeted teen in high school, you would have found me an unhappy person. Considering my Roman Catholic upbringing, the shame of my sexual orientation was a tremendous weight; I thought of it as an albatross, a crime against nature. It’s difficult to quantify how exactly this burden affected my nascent academic career. I think the effect was indirect. It depressed my self-esteem and, as a consequence, imbued my worldview with nihilism: I was indifferent to success. Still, I managed to graduate with fair grades.
The fall following graduation, I attended the Evergreen State College. I attended for only one school year. The reason I chose not to submit my transcript from that institution is because my experience there was not an academic one. I had carried with me the same shameful burden and self-destructive attitude, and instead of attending to my studies, I experimented in self-medication. At first I could rationalize my drug use in moderation, but it progressed until classes were just the times in between getting stoned. The irony of this was my hedonistic indulgence was an attempt at self-annihilation, at non-being, but, as remained closeted, I was already a non-entity. I was trying to erase myself even though my true identity had yet to exist. After a year of making bad decisions, I made a good one; I elected not to return to Evergreen. I moved back in with my parents and declared my year in Olympia a failure, but I regretted nothing. The aggregate of those experiences cemented the clear and sober sense I have of myself today.
In January of 2000 I moved to Bellingham to assert my independence. I love my parents dearly, but I knew I had to escape their influence if I was to discover how I was. I also knew I had to sever ties to my Catholic heritage because I could not belong to an institution that was not The next five years was a revolving door of low wage jobs and aborted attempts at academics; I alternated between the two. I’d work for a time in a local kitchen, scrubbing dishes, cooking food, and then the restaurant would fold. All told, I worked at three failed restaurants in those five years. After each failure, I enrolled at the local community college, but I could never progress past a quarter or two. Every time I dropped out it was with the knowledge I was not ready to succeed academically, not because of success was beyond my potential, but because I was not striving to achieve my own goals. It seemed I was always placating the expectations place upon me, not the ones I place on myself. I loved Bellingham. It was a great place to be an adolescent, but if I was to become an adult I knew I would have to leave. The place held no future for me beyond the line cook jobs I had scrabbled through for those five years.
During my final year in Bellingham I entered a romantic relationship Mitch, with a man twenty years my senior. After a brief courtship, I moved back down to Seattle to cohabitate with him. This was an unprecedented change for me. While I had come out of the closet shortly after moving to Bellingham, and all my friends and family were accepting and supportive, I was unconnected to any gay community there. It seemed to be a loosely connected clique where everyone knew everyone, a clique that, besides mutual recognition, had no underlying sense of cohesion, no unified gay identity. Consequently, I was left with no gay identity. This changed when I met Mitch.
Mitch was a much of a mentor to me as a lover. He introduced ideas of queer theory and queer history, and his wide circle of friends welcomed me without condition. Mitch was always so surprised at my lack of knowledge of gay culture, he instituted the idea of a “gay card.” If I was ignorant or inexperienced in any quintessential gay phenomenon, he would say, “We need to punch that hole in your gay card.” And then he would make me watch whatever cinema or read whatever literature that was the lesson for the day. We often attend cultural events under the same guise. At any social occasion, I was always the youngest person in the room, and my gay card was frequently tested. As much as I studied and immersed myself in that culture, there was always a divide between me and the older gentlemen that I could only understand vicariously: I never knew anyone who died of AIDS. I listened to their anecdotes, their oral histories, and came to understand that this commonality was gave this group of men the sense of responsibility for one another. While I was in Bellingham, all the gay people I met were college-aged or a little older. They were aware, vaguely, of this thing called AIDS as having occurred sometime in the past, but lacking this touchstone, this thing of overwhelming prevalence, there was no impetus to cohere or to think about one another.
Shortly after moving down to Seattle, I found employment at a local microbrewery cleaning and filling kegs. Within two years I had ascended to a position of management and was the most senior brewer on staff. While I found my co-workers affable and the work adequate, I was not intellectually satisfied. I knew had reached the upper limit of achievement at the brewery so I decided to explore other options in school while staying on at the brewery half time. The difference between this foray into academics and my previous attempts was I was going into it with my own expectations, my own goals. I took classes that held interest to me personally, not ones that would necessarily look good on a transcript. The fulltime student/part-time brewer arrangement worked well for me. I felt I was being of use while still working toward my future. Unfortunately, with the economic downturn at the end of 2008, the brewery felt it was no longer feasible to keep a part time employee, and I was laid off. This turn of events forced me to face the academic path I was pursuing. I felt like I was finally achieving my potential, and any career I chose, I could meet with success. Although I enjoyed studying writing and the visual arts very much, I decided that a career in science would be the more pragmatic decision; it seemed much easier to have a career in science with hobbies in the writing and drawing than the other way around.
I decided to major in Chemistry because I’ve always found chemistry to be the most fascinating of the physical sciences. Chemicals make up the universe. I am applying for a transfer to the University of Washington because I want to continue my education, and by the end of this school year I will have taken all the Chemistry classes available at my current school, Bellevue College.
As a closeted teen in high school, you would have found me an unhappy person. Considering my Roman Catholic upbringing, the shame of my sexual orientation was a tremendous weight; I thought of it as an albatross, a crime against nature. It’s difficult to quantify how exactly this burden affected my nascent academic career. I think the effect was indirect. It depressed my self-esteem and, as a consequence, imbued my worldview with nihilism: I was indifferent to success. Still, I managed to graduate with fair grades.
The fall following graduation, I attended the Evergreen State College. I attended for only one school year. The reason I chose not to submit my transcript from that institution is because my experience there was not an academic one. I had carried with me the same shameful burden and self-destructive attitude, and instead of attending to my studies, I experimented in self-medication. At first I could rationalize my drug use in moderation, but it progressed until classes were just the times in between getting stoned. The irony of this was my hedonistic indulgence was an attempt at self-annihilation, at non-being, but, as remained closeted, I was already a non-entity. I was trying to erase myself even though my true identity had yet to exist. After a year of making bad decisions, I made a good one; I elected not to return to Evergreen. I moved back in with my parents and declared my year in Olympia a failure, but I regretted nothing. The aggregate of those experiences cemented the clear and sober sense I have of myself today.
In January of 2000 I moved to Bellingham to assert my independence. I love my parents dearly, but I knew I had to escape their influence if I was to discover how I was. I also knew I had to sever ties to my Catholic heritage because I could not belong to an institution that was not The next five years was a revolving door of low wage jobs and aborted attempts at academics; I alternated between the two. I’d work for a time in a local kitchen, scrubbing dishes, cooking food, and then the restaurant would fold. All told, I worked at three failed restaurants in those five years. After each failure, I enrolled at the local community college, but I could never progress past a quarter or two. Every time I dropped out it was with the knowledge I was not ready to succeed academically, not because of success was beyond my potential, but because I was not striving to achieve my own goals. It seemed I was always placating the expectations place upon me, not the ones I place on myself. I loved Bellingham. It was a great place to be an adolescent, but if I was to become an adult I knew I would have to leave. The place held no future for me beyond the line cook jobs I had scrabbled through for those five years.
During my final year in Bellingham I entered a romantic relationship Mitch, with a man twenty years my senior. After a brief courtship, I moved back down to Seattle to cohabitate with him. This was an unprecedented change for me. While I had come out of the closet shortly after moving to Bellingham, and all my friends and family were accepting and supportive, I was unconnected to any gay community there. It seemed to be a loosely connected clique where everyone knew everyone, a clique that, besides mutual recognition, had no underlying sense of cohesion, no unified gay identity. Consequently, I was left with no gay identity. This changed when I met Mitch.
Mitch was a much of a mentor to me as a lover. He introduced ideas of queer theory and queer history, and his wide circle of friends welcomed me without condition. Mitch was always so surprised at my lack of knowledge of gay culture, he instituted the idea of a “gay card.” If I was ignorant or inexperienced in any quintessential gay phenomenon, he would say, “We need to punch that hole in your gay card.” And then he would make me watch whatever cinema or read whatever literature that was the lesson for the day. We often attend cultural events under the same guise. At any social occasion, I was always the youngest person in the room, and my gay card was frequently tested. As much as I studied and immersed myself in that culture, there was always a divide between me and the older gentlemen that I could only understand vicariously: I never knew anyone who died of AIDS. I listened to their anecdotes, their oral histories, and came to understand that this commonality was gave this group of men the sense of responsibility for one another. While I was in Bellingham, all the gay people I met were college-aged or a little older. They were aware, vaguely, of this thing called AIDS as having occurred sometime in the past, but lacking this touchstone, this thing of overwhelming prevalence, there was no impetus to cohere or to think about one another.
Shortly after moving down to Seattle, I found employment at a local microbrewery cleaning and filling kegs. Within two years I had ascended to a position of management and was the most senior brewer on staff. While I found my co-workers affable and the work adequate, I was not intellectually satisfied. I knew had reached the upper limit of achievement at the brewery so I decided to explore other options in school while staying on at the brewery half time. The difference between this foray into academics and my previous attempts was I was going into it with my own expectations, my own goals. I took classes that held interest to me personally, not ones that would necessarily look good on a transcript. The fulltime student/part-time brewer arrangement worked well for me. I felt I was being of use while still working toward my future. Unfortunately, with the economic downturn at the end of 2008, the brewery felt it was no longer feasible to keep a part time employee, and I was laid off. This turn of events forced me to face the academic path I was pursuing. I felt like I was finally achieving my potential, and any career I chose, I could meet with success. Although I enjoyed studying writing and the visual arts very much, I decided that a career in science would be the more pragmatic decision; it seemed much easier to have a career in science with hobbies in the writing and drawing than the other way around.
I decided to major in Chemistry because I’ve always found chemistry to be the most fascinating of the physical sciences. Chemicals make up the universe. I am applying for a transfer to the University of Washington because I want to continue my education, and by the end of this school year I will have taken all the Chemistry classes available at my current school, Bellevue College.
