Like every graduating college student, I had a lot of conflicting feelings coming into the last semester of my undergraduate experience. When I walk across the stage in May, I will receive a diploma representing my academic accomplishments. However, that fails to encapsulate the entirety of my college experience. So, I decided to make a “diploma” of sorts to represent my emotional growth and change. I decided to create a representation of how I have changed to hold in my hands.

 

So, why crafts? I have always been into crafts. I call it crafts not art for a reason. I don't really feel as though I am a creative person and rather I just enjoy creating things based on a model.  During college alone, I have painted canvases, DIY bookshelves, journaled, made friendship bracelets, and started doing needlepoint. A novice in many but an expert in none. 

 

So, I have a varying level of experience across different mediums and I felt it was reflective of how I felt about different areas of college. Academics never scared me, but I still struggle with social relationships. I love cross stitch and how straightforward it is but crochet is still witchcraft to me. 

 

So, this is a collection of 6 essays with 6 accompanying pieces. I was thinking about the emotional journey college was while both writing and creating these. They are designed to work together to show that crafts have always been relevant in culture, but that they were also a way for me to express myself.  This is designed to show the fun parts, in finished projects, and the difficult parts that I wanted to hide, like the back of embroidery pieces. 

 

On paper, I think my college experience has been very good. I was involved in leadership for several clubs while maintaining good grades. I was able to explore my interests through a variety of majors. I had incredible internships with amazing mentors. I am going to law school after graduation and am looking forward to my future. 

 

However, I do not feel as though this tells the whole story of my college experience. I feel like these past four years have been lonely. I have lived alone for two years, I am very comfortable being alone. However, loneliness is something I have carried with me for a long time. I love having a unique set of academic programs, but it is also isolating because I do not feel as though I have anyone to relate to my experiences. This project explores these connections and contradictions to explore how they shaped my college experience. 

 

This is a piece that is inherently personal and influenced by my background being different from most of my peers, as a queer mentally ill military child, which I explored in depth during my sophomore year and can be viewed here. There are some very obvious parallels in that work and this one and acts as a time capsule for who I was two years ago.

 

I write this as both a letter of love for my college experience and a piece for any student to read. College doesn't have to be the best years of your life and if you are struggling that is okay maybe the next step is to find what crafting is for you.