A Room of My Own

I was going to write about one thing, until I read some of the prompts on the main blog- and I still might write about it later. But the one prompt that inspired me for at least the first part of my entry is the idea of having a room of my own. It's probably safe to say that I'm not the only one who feels that it is important to have a space of one's own.

Quite honestly, one of the things I look forward to the most when returning back to college is decorating my dorm room. Why? There are two reasons: 1.) it's really fun and 2.) I can decorate it so that when someone walks into the room, without looking at any pictures of me in it, they will know that it's my room. This year, the main focus of my room is the huge Italian flag I have draped on one wall and a map of Italy on the other. This is completely representative of my time abroad in Rome. It was a period in my life in which I will never forget and had made friends there that I plan to keep in touch with for the rest of my life. Along the same lines, there are posters of London that line my walls, which is one of my other favorite places to visit and a city in which I can also recall some great times in.

The second major focus in my room is all of my music posters. As I mentioned in class on the first day, I selected the 80's as the period in which I would have liked to have lived in, mainly because of the music. Music is an important part of my life. I have one wall that is totally covered in posters of The Police, Duran Duran, U2, and Coldplay from the floor to the ceiling. There are also various other items in my room that I could point out and someone would say, "Yep, that's Lauren's room" such as my leopard print futon and my random DVD collection, but all these little thing make up a bigger picture, and that bigger picture is me.

Aside from the decorations, this room is my sanctuary. This is my little home away from home that serves as more of not only a place to sleep, but it's more of an all-purpose room. It's not only where I sleep, but also where I study, socialize, and relax. Despite having many distractions in all different corners of the room, it's where I, believe it or not, study the most. It's comfortable, and I have purposely designed it that way. I find it more conducive to be comfortable and relaxed when it comes to studying, rather than locked away in a sterile library. I reminded of Sander's essay about the center, and in terms of the center for me at Saint Mary's, my room is it. This little room in Le Mans Hall is a room of my own, and without it, I'm sure I would be lost without a center.

The second thing that I'm going to touch upon is this whole aversion to women thing. As I senior, I can say that just about every year I have seen the theme of misogyny rear its ugly head in either one class or multiple classes. While I was reading Woolf, I grew increasingly irritated going through chapter three because I kept seeing sentences time after time that expressed the inferiority of women when compared to men. Some examples include on page 41, "Women are poorer than men because- this or that" and on page 42 it talks about the abuse of women in the history of England, and again on page 46, "Women cannot write the plays of Shakespere." I want to make clear that I am by no means a feminist. But this kind of talk really aggrivates me deep down.

Thinking about it, I can come up with at least two reasons why this sort of backtalk against women really infuriates me. One reason is probably due to the fact that I go to Saint Mary's College- an all-women university. I am surrounded by girls who are doing the exact same thing as the boys across the street, and perhaps we even do it better. I am being taught by female professors that have gone on to get masters and doctorates that some men only dream of doing. As a woman, I am empowered by being here at Saint Mary's because I am surrounded by the success of women and I know that women can do exactly what men can do. Perhaps, I've known that longer than I've realized, which leads me into my second reason why it irritates me that women are given a bad rap. The second reason is because of my own mother, who bothered to start a company with my dad dealing in heating and air conditioning, which is a field that is not traditionally dominated by women. She gave it her best shot and now, it is a successful company. She did this while raising my brother and I, which wasn't easy because we were so young. She often tells me that she would go to meetings while my brother and I played in the lobby of whatever building she was in. In my world, that's a huge thing. The bigger pictures is this: anyone with a mother (all of us, unless some of you were dropped from a spaceship) knows the importance of a mother. And that in itself is the one thing that trumps all male occupations because there is not a price tag you can put on motherhood.

I realized that even since the time of this book was written, women have come a long way and I shouldn't even be stressing about this because it's been proven time and time again that men and women are equal. However, there are still things until this day in 2009 that show that is not necessarily the case. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to change in the near future.

The Shot

It was kind of difficult to come up with a good metaphor to describe writing. I used to enjoy writing for leisure in an old blog I had, but I gave it up before I left for Rome last year, as I had a public blog to maintain for my family and friends to read about my travels abroad. With having limited internet access and the travel blog to write in, it just made it difficult to keep the other one updated, and I, unfortunately haven't gotten back into the swing of these. Perhaps one day.

Anyway, when thinking about writing and how I go about it, the one thing that came to me was a shot- not from a gun, but the kind you get from the doctor. The standard procedure for getting a shot is making the appointment to see the doctor. I compared that to the assignment being handed out. The due date, or the shot date, is set. In the meantime, I try not to think about it because I think about how painful it is going to be. There are certain points from the time of the appointment until the moment the needle is injected, or from the day the assignment is given out until the time where the paper is printed out where I do end up thinking about it, but for the most part, my mind drifts across other ideas and plans.

Then the day comes where I have to write this paper. I cannot procrastinate any longer. It has gotten to the point where I know I will inevitably pull an all-nighter to get it done. The writing is where the actual shot comes in. Like the shot, it is painful while writing, but a good kind of pain. There is something satisfactory about working under pressure. But much like the shot, everything gets done in one-fell swoop. No planning. No thinking. Just doing. And when it's all done, there is that relief that it's all over. It stings a little bit, much like the next day after an all-nighter is a bit of a pain, but whatever it is, it's all done and there is no turning back.

The effects are also similar. Either you can feel really great after this shot, much like you can feel really great after you spent all night on this paper and received a fabulous grade. Or you can feel terrible if you received a slightly lower than expected grade after slaving over this 13-page dissertation or suffer from horrible side effects from this shot, similar to what a flu shot sometimes does. In the end, it's all about satisfaction, and generally, that is the feeling that best sums up the writing experience for me. The satisfaction heavily outweighs the sometimes painful process of spending hours at one time on a paper, and knowing that I put it all together in a presentable package is good enough for me.