Gift of Music, by Courtney Cheng

One Way Ticket

empowering women, families, and youth-at-risk through improved literacy, increased positive media, and tools for living.

By Clare Durant

The aisles of Bed Bath & Beyond are congested with college bound girls pushing their overflowing shopping carts filled with dorm room supplies with their moms closely by their side. College shopping, it’s one of life’s many milestones that flips a mother and daughters’ relationship upside down.

I still remember strolling down the aisle of the store with my arm reaching up to hold my mom’s hand as we shopped for school supplies for my first day of kindergarten. As we filled our shopping cart with glue sticks, a Barbie backpack, and markers it became more and more real to my mom that that day would be the last day that I would be at home with her all day. Shopping for college supplies isn’t all that different; it’s a new milestone that marks the last time I will ever truly be living at home.

These milestones remind me that everything in life is temporary, which is an unsettling thought. This idea has been clouding my mind all summer; the thought that once again I will be facing another major transition. This summer has felt like a drawn out period where I have felt like I have just been waiting for the next part of my life to begin. Everything I have done and thought about this summer has in some way been connected to the future. I have become accustomed to certain questions that substitute for the usual small-talk conversations about the weather or something when I go to doctor appointments or meet acquaintances of my parents. They would ask where I would be attending college, when would I be leaving for college, what I would be majoring in at college. All the questions pertain to the future. The questions begin to sound like white noise, a broken-record of sounds that are always there pestering you. I answer these questions with a half-genuine rehearsed answer and reply as politely as possible, trying not to sound too let the boredom of their question steep through my teeth. What frustrates me about these kind of questions is that people ask them to categorize you meaning that the answers to these questions reflect the type of person you are to an extent.

It is the first time that I have ever been so easily categorized by strangers. I guess I am still getting used to the idea that my identity is truly coming into formation and that who I am and what I do will lead into what I will do in the future. It’s real and it is happening now. Kindergarten began my transformations from just being a little kid to being a little kid and a student. The type of student I was in those early years predicated the type of student I would be in the future. College blends the student aspect with my personal identity. This mesh is something that I haven’t ever truly experienced before. It is the first time my professional and personal identity would be so close together and open for everyone to judge. I guess I like keeping people guessing to some extent. I like the whole “what’s she going to do next factor?” but more and more I have felt that go away. I like surprise and spontaneity and don’t like to be put in a box by others.

Broadcasting on the radio has filled the void inside of me that makes me feel like everything is so cut and dry. Radio is spontaneous and exciting the ability to send my voice through the airwaves and have the potential to influence and reach out to others is inspiring and alluring. I know that in order for me to be happy in the future I will have to continue to do things that I would otherwise be afraid to do if I were comfortable being categorized by others.

Once an Olympic hopeful, former captain of her high school debate team, and head of the school newspaper, Clare Durant now dreams of hosting her own television and radio show.