University Life Archives

Dealing With the Anxiety-Inducing Experience That Is College

By : Audrey October 4, 2020 Comments Off

Before I moved into college, I had a completely different piece in mind (even just saying the word “piece” makes me feel professional but, I am very much not so). I wanted to write about LGBT+ representation in animation, which I still want to do, but I am feeling quiet sidetracked at the moment. So yeah, almost three weeks ago I moved into college. College, especially during this time of living in a pandemic, is a strange place. As a freshman, there’s this great task put on your shoulders of having to find how you fit into the vast community. On top of that, you have to figure out where to go all the time (which I am terrible at). Once move-in starts, there’s pretty much this scramble to meet

Communication And Default Expectations

By : Sequoia Beaver August 2, 2020 Comments Off

Being in only about one significant romantic relationship for my whole life, I had never explored whether or not I was possibly anything other than straight. I was fortunate enough that I didn’t face any familial pressure on the subject either way. Even though most of my family falls somewhere on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, I had always assumed I was the “societal default” or a cis-gendered heterosexual woman, probably due to the “othering” that goes on in media of the LGBTQIA+ community. As a college student, I have taken gender and sexuality studies classes before, but I had never looked internally, only externally. Recently, I took a class called Biology 30: Human Sex and Sexuality (fondly referred to on campus as “dirty thirty”). This class was taught by the youngest

Finding Myself

By : Ethan Jacobs June 8, 2020 Comments Off

The time had finally come and I was headed to college; I was ecstatic. I’d waited years for this moment. College would be my chance to start over, to make new friends, to find a second home, to form a new identity. It would be a chance to escape the lie I was living, a chance to uncover my mask, a chance to face reality, a chance to transform my life. It’d be one of the best years of my life. But, that’s not how it went. The small university had little diversity, half of my tennis teammates were homophobes, and I didn’t feel like I belonged. My team, who I had to spend many hours a day with, mainly consisted of white upper-class frat boys with a strong superiority

How I Found Queer Community Abroad

By : Kieran Byrne May 22, 2020 Comments Off

I spent my junior year of college studying at a university in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. I was ready to face the typical study-abroad type things everyone deals with: speaking a foreign language every day, making new friends, learning to navigate a new school system, and paying rent to a crabby French landlord. I anticipated all that, but I didn’t expect the new ways I would think about my identity and sexuality. An experience I hope is common among queer people is once you have your sexuality more or less figured out, you have the luxury of not needing to think much about it anymore. In my college town in Michigan, I had my identity figured out. I knew what it meant to be a gay man there.

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Category: University Life

Dealing With the Anxiety-Inducing Experience That Is College

Communication And Default Expectations

Finding Myself

How I Found Queer Community Abroad

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