In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World

You have the power and control to be whatever you want to be, no matter where you start in life.

Oh hell no, I thought. I am not wasting my first kiss on some guy who's skipping out on our first date.

I thought the movie was the best piece I’d ever done when I made

I eventually loosened up a little bit and grudgingly had to admit that the Jonas Brothers sounded pretty good. After

be apart. Despite getting rejected by my top-choice school, I was starting to really believe in myself again based on all the positive feedback we continued to get on our videos. And besides, I knew I could always reapply to Emerson the following year and transfer. • • • College started out great, with the best part being my newly found freedom. I was finally on my own and able to make my own schedule. And not only was Amanda with me, I’d already made a new friend before the first day of classes from a Facebook page that was set up for incoming freshmen. I started chatting with a pretty girl named Chloe who mentioned that she was also going to do the film and video concentration. Fitchburg isn’t located in the greatest neighborhood, but the campus has lots of green lawns and old brick buildings that look like mansions. My dorm room was a forced triple—basically a double that the school added bunk beds to in order to squeeze one extra person in. I arrived first and got to call dibs on the bunk bed that had an empty space beneath it. I moved my desk under it and created a little home office for myself. I plastered the walls with Futurama posters and made up the bed with a new bright green comforter and matching pillows. My roommates were classic male college stereotypes—the football player and the stoner. Their idea of decorating was slapping a Bob Marley poster and a giant ad for Jack Daniels on the wall.

When I woke up, Cat had already left but there was a text from Mike, asking me if I wanted to meet him in the lobby for breakfast. I felt gross and hungover, not to mention all of the butterflies in my stomach from the thought of just being near him, so I wasn’t sure I could handle keeping up a conversation all by myself. I wrote back Sure and then immediately texted Whitney and asked her to meet us so I wouldn’t have to be alone with him. When I arrived, they were bright and awake and alert, and I felt like a total zombie next to them. They teased me about my constant groaning about how sick I felt. But the truth was that my stomach butterflies were brought on more by how strange I felt around Mike. He seemed totally fine, like nothing had happened last night, but I kept stealing glances at him and thinking, You were my first kiss! In the light of day, it was hard for me to fully accept, because even though I was finally able to talk about my feelings with my friends and Nicole, I was still partially removed from that part of myself. We

this is the story of my life so far. I get that it’s kind of odd for someone my age to be writing a memoir, but I feel some responsibility to help inspire and comfort anyone out there who is facing challenges similar to those that I went through.

It’s not about where you start but how you finish.

It’s not about where you start but how you finish. I think it’s important to take your experiences and grow from them rather than become a victim of your circumstances. Nothing productive comes from that mind-set.

Small things can lead to huge changes, and if those changes end up being obstacles, try to learn from them instead of letting them crush you. There were many