Success is not linear. The moments of "failure" that lead us to our low points force us to build up the strength to climb to the top. Some people stop at a lower peak and appreciate the view, never to climb a higher peak. For this reason, you can not judge yourself based off of the goals of others. Ask yourself: Is this my goal or is this X's goal? You can work for twelve years towards a goal, but never achieve your goal because it was too narrow and burnout. Max's story took us through the emotional peaks and valleys of his life as well as his Everest climb. To quote Tara Westover, the valleys "give your life shape." Embrace the valleys and allow them to help you reach your next peak.

While I would not call Perseopolis a traditional bildungsroman, it is a coming of age story. Satrapi grew up in a time of conflict, and even into her adulthood, she faced conflict. Marjane Satrapi's Perseopolis was published in a post-9/11 society. Due to the influence of Persian and Western culture, Satrapi never felt like she completely fit in. Her country's government rejected Western culture and enforced islamic extremism on to the Persians. This created an inner conflict in Satrapi that caused her to detach from those around her. As a result of this, Satrapi became an adult earlier in life than others. Later, when Satrapi moved to France as an attempt to assimilate, but she was still not able to feel accepted into the culture. Throughout Satrapi's life, she was always at war, as a pawn and at war with herself. At what price, does collective conflict override the dignity of individuality.

Dear Sarah Catherine,

I am writing to you from the future. This too will pass. There will be times that you wonder, "God, what is the purpose of this?" Remember,"This will give my life shape." If everyday was good, you would have nothing to write about. Keep writing. Don't stop. You will leave the small bubble where no one likes to write, except for your teacher, and find a whole world of people who not only like to write, but also to read. Don't let the haters get to you. Keep going. Put yourself out there and see where life takes you. You will go further than you could ever imagine.

Love,

Yourself from Seven Years in The Future

As a little girl, I loved to read. Any book I could get my hands on, I was reading it. Books were a way of traveling through time and space. I learned so much about places I could never travel to. Books led me to creativity. We go to school to become educated, yet in that education, many lose their sense of creativity. The loss of childhood. Books taught me how to keep my child like wonder alive. We can sit and analyze books all day long, but how often do we sit down to enjoy a book?

The scene from Girl, Interrupted that constantly replays in my head is when Susana's mom sits in her car, crying and smoking a cigarette, while her daughter takes a taxi to the mental hospital. That moment must have been heartbreaking for both Susana and her mom, but this scene forced me to question the accuracy of the gender roles portrayed in Girl, Interrupted. The only tears seen falling from anyone's face are the tears falling from a woman's face. In fact, the only emotion shown by men in the film is anger. The men in this film are the ones who hold the power. Men police the women's mental and emotional expressions, yet they can not clearly express their own. Susana's doctor, a man, does not listen to her, but uses the information Susana's father shared with him to send her to Claramore. In Claramore, women run the institution, but any time that a patient has an outburst, men rush in to physically restrain the patient. Are men enforcing the gender roles which were projected onto them at a young age onto women? How does this influence women's healthy expression? The projection of emotional suppression produces the "big girls and big boys don't cry" and perpetuates health emotional communication. Women and men should be encouraged to expression their emotions in a healthy manner.

Dead paper. I have taken for granted the concept of dead paper. Dead paper can not talk back to you. Dead paper does not challenge you. Dead paper can not silence your ideas. Dead paper just lays there and lets you walk all over it with the pen. Writing has been an outlet for my thoughts since middle school, and no matter how cringe worthy the story is, the dead paper is there. Yes, we, the living, pick the words a part in classes and creative workshop sessions, but we, the living, force the dead paper into that realm. When the pen begins to dance across the paper, the dead paper is not suddenly brought back to life. While the medium may make us, the writer, feel alive, our feelings do not resurrect the dead. The dead paper allows us, the writer, to lay our feelings and thoughts to rest, peacefully or not. I'm thankful for the deadness of the paper. Finally, there is a space where I am not constrained. I can take my thoughts any where or leave them in their place. Writing on other living mediums, such as this blog, do not provide the same relief as the scratching of a felt pen across a whole lot of dead paper. We can write digitally all we want, but there is a beauty in taking the time to handwrite on dead paper.

Charlotte Perkins Stetson laid to rest the silencing of mother's experiencing postpartum depression on dead paper. On the dead paper, there was not a doctor saying, "You are fine. You are making this up." The dead paper allowed Stetson to put the "rest cure" to rest. The dead paper forces readers to deeply ponder before they respond. Each word must be carefully crafted onto the page, and before swirls of the pen can happen, the responder must reflect on the words of the author. The response can't be rash like an internet comment. The responder goes through the same process as the author. The dead paper serves as an equalizer.

Thank you, Charlotte Perkins Stetson for exposing me to the dead paper.

The last sentence and the first sentence of a text often pack a punch. Woolf's writing follows this pattern. Woolf challenges the hegemony by entering gender into the mix. The "she" Woolf refers to in this sentence is Judith (114). Although, the reality of Judith was not accurate as she was fictional. All of the great women of the past and present are Judith. People fight for internships and jobs under the guidance of excellent leaders in various fields. Woolf's final sentence highlights and reinforces the previous statement. The "worth while" of having worked for such an excellent writer would be enough to begin many individuals careers. Often positions that offer this amount of experience do not pay well or are obscure like Woolf mentions. The last sentence of A Room of Ones Own" serves as a reminder and equalizer that the opportunity to work for a woman remains as valuable as working under a man of the same status.