I am surprised at how easily I find myself in a leadership position sometimes – I think oftentimes it is simply that other people feel too lazy or afraid to hold that responsibility and so I take it from them without thinking. I am a coxswain on my rowboat since I am on the crew team. I would do anything to help build this team up and get to NCAA, which this team has supposedly been striving for for at least the past couple of years in which we didn’t place as well in competitions. But supposedly, according to those who have been on the team the longest – it’s a race between the field hockey team and us – and I would love to see my fellow team members heading to the Rec early in the morning to hit the gym.

We’re earlybirds, definitely, and that keeps the team together under a positive attitude. I suppose another thing that helps me lead is that I definitely take time to listen to my fellow rowers on the boat, though my coach tells me that is not advisable from now on. I definitely explain to them in more or less detail about the drills we are doing and am acutely conscious of when my timing is off. (I am the only one on the boat speaking, usually, and the word you will most often hear me say is “row!”)

Therefore, I can definitely improve upon my level of assertiveness leading the team – since most people trust me to be in this position. Coach trusts me, the other coxswains trust me, and I have a feeling the other rowers like me a little better after water practice – if only because they aren’t so physically exhausted after being with me and because I try to listen to them complain anyway.

Above all, I hold this leadership position in pursuit of a common goal we have as a team. I wouldn’t necessarily mind being the one to do the physical labor, but there is more of a demand for brains than brawns at this point. We can’t win a race without someone steering the boat. And even I will be running around on race day trying to figure out what different events I’m going to cox in – there’s a limited supply of us. Also having gotten a new coach, it seems to be a good luck omen that there are two new coxswains in training, one of whom is already planning to transfer out. After this semester, the most experienced coxswain is leaving, and I will have the responsibility of coaching the newbies in a year, I bet. It is a fast learning curve, but I never stop to think whether I am up to it. I am not going to think how I will be in a year, but I’d better soak everything I’m learning in right now. Now is the moment. That’s the hardest part.

I don’t think about an ideal group, to be honest. I like to think what I can contribute to the team and where I see the team members and me going towards. I like to sympathize with the people whom I’ve met and look to the personal qualities of those who have been on the team the longest – so we can feel camaraderie still fifty years from now at college reunion – hopefully it’s not too awkward! – and so that Stony Brook crew may become known for what it is – individual, made up of the unique efforts of everyone on the team.

I was taken back instantly by this writing prompt to what video I watched at orientation along with my other ITS freshmen. It was a video about sexual assault, which is the kind of assault talked about in Maribel’s story. One striking image was that of a person lying unconscious on the floor while another stands over them, pouring tea down their throats. In this kind of instance, I think it will be most helpful if someone else uses humor to make the assaulter look idiotic. Most harassment doesn’t necessarily require the use of force to make them stop, because they are intrinsically motivated. Therefore they must be intrinsically persuaded.

Although I have been part of an intervention as recently as last week, nothing fruitful came of my telling the “authorities.” Unfortunately, not all situations are able to be settled out by a third party, especially if the assault has already taken place. The girl was taunted by vulgar verbal comments, and the boys were just walking away, laughing among each other, as if their mouths weren’t connected to their brains. The fact that the object of their “desire” was also walking away from them in the opposite direction did not seem to be of importance to them; after all, assault is in the fabric of the music videos they watch when they eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.

When I told the residence hall advisor what had happened, she and her friend said there was nothing they could do unless she also reported the incident. So it turns out that bystanders have limited power when it comes to influencing the outcome of a potentially damaging event. Our society is a strange mix of acting Big Brother, being friendly to strangers, and being nonchalant about issues relating to all teenagers.

So next time I’m talking to the residence hall director, not advisors, who are just young people like me who probably are those same nonchalant people I talked about. Sometimes all it is is confiding to someone you find more agreeable than the alternative.

Maribel speaks to herself slowly and carefully, as if she’s measuring out what other people are saying. She makes many lists to remind her to do certain actions, so I would say she is compassionate to her ability to learn. She shows delayed understanding of situations, so sometimes she asks people to repeat what they have said so she can write them down for reference. I would say making lists, although odd to strangers, would have helped her remember the names and addresses of the people close to her.

My inner voice is not at all similar because I hate making lists that jump from one thought to another. Instead, I write in prose form most of the time, and let my mind wander off to various topics at leisure. This helps me to relax and to focus better on something more important, such as listening to a teacher. Of course, there are times when my attention needs to be given more than 100%, such as when I’m taking a test, in which case I won’t be able to free-write. But free-writing would probably be good preparation for a test, and I try to do it on my weekends, in addition to sleeping in. Free-writing may be more important than sleeping in to my brain health. I prefer napping to sleeping in anyway.

In short, I don’t talk to myself very much, unless it is a flight of the fancy when I am looking at a future, more sophisticated version of myself who handles situations much better than I can currently. In that case, I imagine the kind of things I would say to the people I know now, and how I would act all superior in subtle means. Other times, I freeze up out of nervousness that I’m doing something wrong in the present, which is no help to anyone. I should try to fix this habit, which was probably born out of how I was raised. Before college, I didn’t feel like I had much freedom at all.

College is definitely helping me to master my internal dialogue, because though I wasn’t particularly plagued with it in the first place, I have more opportunity to let my thoughts roam, and looking at the world around me is for me an aspect of internal dialogue.  Since no one is breathing down my back about the various choices I make, I feel less inclined to hesitate before jumping in the boat with others. And if my imagination is just another healthy way for my subconscious desires to surface, then I will keep it flowing.

Therefore, there are two main ways that my internal dialogue is helping me now and one way I can improve on.

The girls around me don’t talk to me much, but sometimes they try to impress me by telling of the same high school experience – banal topics like what their experience on drugs were, for example. I have a quality about me that can bring out more insightful experiences with people than they would otherwise share with me. I was at Trader Joe’s asking a salesperson where the fruit and veggie cleaner was when she started talking about her mother’s traditional apple cider vinegar.

I like to think of myself as a chameleon, weaving myself in and out of the different fabrics of people’s existence. Casual conversation is an aspect that would have made high school more interesting, but I don’t doubt I will have a lack of it here. I can also use my love of people to create study groups which weren’t possible in high school. In study groups, we will explore the variation of human thought on a single idea.

I do not want to be a mathematician who gets paid to sit at a desk. If I have to, I will talk to the next generation of students. It is mean to copy people’s work, but just as artists borrow techniques that are thousands of years old, so will I borrow from other people to find the most efficient solution to any math problem. For now, I apply myself to the humdrum routine I’ve almost gotten used to as a two-month-old adult. Once the boring bit is over, as in the solo trips to the library poring over unfingered textbooks, I want to be able to point to someone I know and say, “See, we studied this in class!” and hold up a pinecone (to demonstrate the Fibonacci sequence or some other sequence I haven’t learned yet).

I am surprised at how many New Yorkers I found in Stony Brook, not just city folks but people who call Albany mid-state. My best experience exploring unknown state territory was this summer, when I went kayaking. I never knew the Adironack park could have so many influences. It may be the first national park that includes both private and public lands, roughly half and half. There are few things tying the towns together, but there is an annual canoe race for both beginners and experts, the 90 miler. In a documentary about the park, I saw how a girl hardly out of elementary school could persist for the entire race, or three days. I’ve noticed on my trip that the people are welcoming of foreigners, because tourism is a big moneymaker there. Likewise, the race is open to people of all abilities, and to the person setting up the event, it’s fun to see who has practiced and who has just jumped in the boat.

I used to be on the swim team but it was the hardest sport I’d tried, so of course, I gave up, still being extremely young. Maybe I’ll join the sailing team because I went to Schooner summer camp in New Haven harbor once. I forgot everything, though remembering how to tie knots could have come in useful. The main reason I would like to do water sports is so I can revisit the Adironacks, which happened to be my favorite vacation ever with my family. I had never been out on a lake so deep by myself, and next time I’m there, I’m going to tip over on purpose so I can learn what it takes to swim ashore.

I am majoring in math because I think it’s challenging, as all languages are. I always liked languages and when I was younger I thought I was going to be a writer. A friend told me I wrote really good stories on a Valentine’s Day placemat in elementary school. I want to see where this interest leads me because I don’t want to connect it necessarily to technology. Instead, I am thinking of a minor in art history because I was surprised to find the origins of math are also explained by a quest to understand beauty.

• compassion for characters in summer reading
• be myself
• ability to have discussions without arguing

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