I first envisioned this course as a collection of Oxford’s authors. The texts themselves, in my mind, varied indiscriminately, with the common denominator being that every author in the course had attended Oxford in some capacity. Yet as I have come to the end of this course, I have found my initial impressions of the course to be very close minded. While several of the authors on the syllabus did attend Oxford as students—with some even working at the university itself—others have never graced the university’s halls, buried themselves deep in the libraries or walked down Broad Street at dusk. Rather, they conceptualized Oxford as an external place, an idea, a feeling. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, for example, helped me understand Oxford from an outsider’s perspective, specifically through the people who attended it and their tendencies. The Glitter and the Gold, although not my favorite piece, helped me understand the aristocratic tradition that permeates the city and everything around it, as well as the great and old traditions which yet survive past the relevancy of the English gentleman class. Those who did attend Oxford, but did not write about it explicitly (Tolkien, Carroll) helped me gain a sense of the culture. Elitist and proud, yet magical and rich all the same.

Coming out of this course, I desire to know more about the people who have not attended Oxford in a “traditional” capacity (Robert Browning, of course, being a fixation of mine that I have to mention, lest I stray from my academic tendencies throughout this study abroad. He did not formally attend Oxford, however, he was the first formally recognized honorary fellow at Balliol College, which I had the pleasure of visiting). I also want to explore Oxford as a place in the world consciousness as I mentioned before—a place, an idea, and a feeling. Ironically, before coming on this study abroad trip, I read the short novella Welcome To Our Hillbrow. The novel does a marvelous job of conceptualizing place as a living being: Hillbrow, Tiragalong, and Oxford. These three places, at first, seem out of place next to each other, almost at odds. But when put together, they reveal a common denominator of human ambition. A consistent search for greener pastures, whether that be on the streets of Hillbrow, the motherly embrace of Tiragalong, or in the Jude the Obscure pub in Oxfordshire, England. I would like to explore more novels about place. Not just Oxford, but other great cities. I want to see the ways that they shape people. I want to see the ways in which they may shape me, too.

Undoubtedly, Oxford has shaped me as a writer. I came into Oxford shaky yet sure: I am three years and four novels deep into the query trenches. I have a sizeable following on social media, yet no book deal to show for it. I write my poems and prose in the dark, all while wondering if they will ever see the light of day. I thought, initially, that coming to Oxford might intimidate me, even discourage me, as an author. I do not have the “Oxbridge” degree. I don’t have some of the industry connections other authors do. And I certainly do not have the level of skill that some of my favorite authors do. My insecurity led me to believe that this city would spit me up and chew me out, naming me fraud, and banishing my writing to the dark corners of the Earth. Thankfully, none of my dramatic fantasies (or, more accurately, nightmares) came to life. As a matter of fact, the opposite came to pass. I was incredibly motivated after visiting Oxford and learning of its tenants. In many ways, visiting the university and submerging myself in its culture helped to humanize it. No longer was it some floating palace of knowledge, eternally out of reach, but just…a school. Of course, I am simplifying it greatly here, but my point still stands. Oxford was just a school. My favorite authors were just massive nerds who had a way with words. I am already three-fourths of the way to becoming one of them.

With this in mind, I also have no doubt that I have changed beyond just my initial perceptions of this course. That is, after all, a part of growing up. I feel that when people turn 18, their lives suddenly reset and they must start all over as they discover who they are, but they must grow up in a different way than a child would (“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me,” 1 Corinthians, 13:11). I have grown up on this trip. My ideas about the future have not so much changed as they have expanded and stretched to fit around my growing ambitions. I thought, as many people have thought, that I was forever confined to one path. Now, after attending Oxford for the first, and hopefully not the last time, I see that I can be greedy with my choices if I so desire (nothing worth having will ever be easy). Academia is but one path. Advocacy is another. Learning unites me in everything I do, besides my passion. And in the spirit of multidisciplinary academics, I can pursue them all and more vigorously. This revelation has granted me peace. My path forward is not completely clear, and for the first time in my life that excites me rather than terrifies me.

Oxford will always be a part of my life, one way or another; I am a creature of habit and half-returns. No matter how hard I try, I always end up coming back to places that feel like home. Texas, I discovered, is one of them. This trip taught me that I value my home more than I thought, even despite its ugliness. With that in mind, I have no doubt that I will return here as well, if not for the romantics and allure of it, then for its imperfections. These classes have taught me that place is more a part of the man than he is a part of it. I came into this wanting experience, and I got so much more than I bargained for. I wanted to test the limits of my ambition, and I have stretched it so far that I can scarcely see the end of it. I wanted to drown myself in Oxford’s tradition of literature and language, and by swimming through it I have learned to love the water more than land (though it is to the land that I will always return). This class has been an experience like no other, and I will carry the courage I gained by taking it with me as I chase my future.

I’ll have to catch up with it, one way or another.

It is a romantic sentiment to be sure. But I think the word desire is missing something—a certain kind of violence that waiting can bring. Perhaps that’s where “de” comes in; it is not just a waiting, but a taking. A verb of motion implying that something is being ripped away from my very being as I bathe in the coldness of the stars above. My desire is agonizing, as it is not fixed on just one point in the starry sea, but upon thousands, and each one bites into me with frosted teeth as I wait, and I wait, and I wait…”

I wrote these short paragraphs in my journal just a few days ago. Usually, my journal contains my private affairs, and I would be beside myself if its contents were ever to be revealed to the public eye, but I felt a strong compulsion to share these sentiments today. In a world which seems wrecked with grief and lacking, it feels silly, almost immoral, to hold any semblance of desire. Yet it is desire that makes us human. Whether that be desire for fame, for love, for recognition, for peace, for the small and the material, desire does not make us any less human. It makes us more.

As I have come to the end of my all too brief study abroad in Oxford, I have had to come to terms with my own desires. Coming up on my Junior year of university means I have a lot to think about—graduate school, jobs, internships (which I have already had and have but always crave more of), friends, memories, time and its fleeting nature, tests, applications, leaving, returning, wanting for things I hope desperately to achieve. Mulberries fall and litter the ground with purple blood, staining my shoes. Heat comes and goes in waves, giving me a taste of the home I temporarily left behind. And I am left in the middle of it all, wondering where I am going next, seeking the path I have laid out so carefully for myself, yet rearranging its stones along the way.

The future is a frightening thing, dearest reader. I know that is not an original sentiment. Everyone fears what they do not know, and almost nothing is more unknown than the future. I can lay every foundation, chart every goal, and yet my future is still variable. That frightens me. But as a vessel for wanting, it also invigorates me. For what I desire most in this life is to live it. Experience is the most beautiful gift. And I want them all. I am afraid of not achieving all which I desire, but I am also excited by the idea that I will get something else in exchange. Something I didn’t even know I wanted until I had it. Does that make sense? This journal entry was a late-night ramble, and this article is no different. I just wanted to put my thoughts out there in the hopes that someone might see themselves reflected in them.

Ambition and desire are painful. They are beautiful. Dear reader, I desire so many things. I desire love. I desire intellect. I desire success. I desire peace. I desire so many things that are obtainable, yet somehow seem just out of reach in this present moment, in this sojourning of stargazers, “I desire violently, and I wait.”

I recently ventured out on the troubled seas of classical adaptations. Specifically, I watched Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The film has garnered a lot of attention, in no small part because of its infamous director and massively talented cast. Yet in equal measure, the film has also garnered itself a lot of controversy on many different fronts, with the internet once again dividing itself over one simple question: was Nolan’s Odyssey any good? And, my dear reader, after taking much more time than I would care to admit to mull over all of my disappointments with the film, I have many thoughts. (With that in mind, it would be good to prepare yourself for a sort of personal Odyssey through this review).

Adaptations, for me, have always been a tricky topic. There are some adaptations that I absolutely adore (Gregory Peck’s To Kill A Mockingbird movie adaptation is absolutely incredible) and some adaptations that I despise (Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a blight upon the earth that I would rather pretend that never existed in the first place). Classical adaptations are even more difficult. For starters, there’s the argument of whether or not the adaptation should adjust itself to fit modern moral and cultural standards. What messages can be gained from these works? Can they be adapted to modern life? What should and shouldn’t be adapted from classical media? How do we tell stories that originally existed in a context thousands of years ago?

These are all tricky questions. Yet, for the most part, they can be solved in one of two ways—complete faithfulness to the source material, for example, is one way to go about it. It may take way more time than a three-hour film to adapt a large text such as The Odyssey, but it is not impossible to adapt faithfully given the time. The other way to solve this issue is to challenge the source material itself, to interpret it, and make something entirely new out of it. Either way, the adaptation should be able to stand on its own and make commentary, whether borrowed or new, for itself. My criticism does not necessarily lie in the adaptation of the text itself (although it would be easy for me to pick on due to my academic background as a Classics and Latin student). Rather than accurately portray the original epic, the film clearly seeks to present itself as an interpretation of The Odyssey instead of faithfully adapting it, which I do not mind in theory for the sake of artful commentary. Had it been done well, I would have actually enjoyed this take on the classic tale.

Had, of course, is the pivotal word in this review. To me, the film unfortunately fails in all aspects of character depth and portrayal, most devastatingly in regards to its women, which, had they been treated as actual characters rather than props for the bland and otherwise uncomplicated men of this film, could have actually carried the message Nolan was attempting to send.

I want to make my stance clear: I do not think that this is the worst film ever made. In fact, there were a few shining moments that I thought were exceptionally well done. However, most of these moments were overshadowed by the film’s many flaws, most of which had to do with Nolan’s treatment of his female characters. Moreover, the narrative’s tendency to warp around Odysseus and sacrifice character depth massacres its potential as a rich commentary, which is a shame when considering the importance of the film’s message. Where the film fails, and where the bulk of my criticism lies, is not due to the film failing as an adaptation, but because the film fails to stand on its own—even separate from its classical contexts.

A mediocre man

‘Tell me of a complicated man’

is the first line of the Greek epic The Odyssey as translated by Emily Wilson. The entirety of the first line (ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ) which invokes the Muses in this tale of a multifaceted man who wandered far and wide invites the reader to immediately regard Odysseus, the subject of this epic, with a degree of suspicion. Odysseus is not presented to the reader as a typical ‘white knight hero,’ but as a clever, cunning, and ruthless man who leads the Greeks to victory on the shores of Troy. However, the Odysseus we see in Nolan’s film does not resemble this complicated man at all; instead, this Odysseus is painfully uncomplicated, with Nolan whittling his character down to a disappointing stub of guilt and weakly-portrayed post traumatic stress. The Odysseus we see is not clever. He does not trick the Cyclops by giving him a false name. He does not spit in the face of the Gods with his witty tactics. He does not, throughout any of the film, give into the old and famous hubris which drives him and his men into ruin.

As Wilson most ardently asserts in her review of Nolan’s The Odyssey, ‘the Homeric epic was already an adaptation’ by the time it was written. To that point, adaptations needn’t follow the original as a translation does, which is a point I gave earlier in this review. I, and many others who disliked or gazed critically upon Nolan’s film, do not dislike the film just for its blatant faithlessness to the original points of the text. Instead, my problem lies with the film’s lack of complexity and trust in its own audience, especially in regards to Odysseus’s character. The narrative of this film bends itself excruciatingly around Odysseus’s morality, snatching away moments of reflection and character depth only to replace them with empty tears. Odysseus is a grief-stricken man. He spends the entire film reflecting and repenting for his sins against Troy. Yet not once do we see the narrative condemn him.

My dear reader, if you are at least partially versed in the realm of creative writing, you will be familiar with the phrase ‘show, not tell.’ In short, this phrase means that a writer should allow the narrative to show the reader the meaning and interpretations of the text itself, such as a character’s personality, morality, or goals, rather than blatantly telling them these things outright. Nolan’s film rarely shows us anything, if at all. The central message of the movie is a commentary on the ‘collapse of an age’ while also being inherently anti-war—in a way, it parallels the poem Ozymandias by Percy Shelly (who I hate, but still love the poem), which shows us that no empire, no matter how grand, can last forever. I agree with this messaging, and had the film been more artful, I would have thoroughly enjoyed seeing this kind of messaging in the context of The Odyssey. However, the film lacks the essential subtlety that makes thematic messaging effective. Rather than trusting his audience to wean this message from the film’s events, Nolan consistently bashes the viewer over the head with its purpose, even going so far as to directly reference the collapse of the Bronze Age at the end of the film (‘Our age of bronze is collapsing’). It’s clear that Nolan doesn’t trust his viewers to understand the consequences of the film, and so he instead has to spell out his intentions through cringey dialogue and flat character writing.

Chiefly, the film doesn’t trust the viewer with Odysseus’s character. Rather than making him a complicated man as the original poem suggests, Nolan completely strips Odysseus of character other than a vessel for guilt. As I mentioned before, we do not see his intelligence, wit, or cleverness. We do not see his hubris, a crucial flaw that leads to his downfall, as he travels home to Ithaca. I would even hesitate to call his guilt an internal struggle, since we do not see Odysseus in any other state other than repentance for the entire film. I am not against Odysseus feeling guilty about what he has done—on the contrary, I actually really enjoyed the anti-war angle that Nolan tried to take with his character guilt. However, when the character you are attempting to channel as a vessel for such a complex message is not complex, then the message falls flat. Even more, the narrative repents for its actions against Odysseus just as much as he repents for his actions against Troy. The narrative is hesitant, if not unwilling, to condemn him in any way, especially in regards to the anti-war messaging. Odysseus is a person who had an idea—an idea which led to terrible consequences—and feels guilty for it (sound familiar? If you’ve watched any of Nolan’s other films, then it should). But he is never condemned as a perpetrator of suffering. The narrative makes an excruciating effort to apologize for Odysseus rather than letting him experience any real consequences. The events of the movie seem to happen to him rather than happen because of him, and that is a distinction that is vital to Odysseus’s character. Nolan’s Odysseus is not a complicated man—he is just painfully mediocre.

Helen of Sparta and other forgotten women

One of my biggest gripes with this film is Nolan’s treatment of women. For the most part, I felt as though they were used as props for Nolan’s underwritten men, and any information the audience did receive about their characters was loudly shoved in their faces with little room for interpretation. There is one exception to this, however, in Circe’s character. Samantha Morton put on a generational performance during her time on screen, and I thoroughly enjoyed how visceral her anger felt. The line ‘go back to your disguises’ after Circe breaks the curse on Odysseus’s men still gives me chills every time I think about it. Nolan’s choice to make her less seductive and more crone-like also added a lot to the scene, especially since it showed the desperate violence of men toward women. It doesn’t matter what a woman looks or acts like—men will always be an equal threat. This directorial choice in the film was one of those few moments where Nolan actually showed his audience the consequences of war and the depravity of men toward women. Consequently, it was also one of his most effective moments in the film. Unfortunately, however, this treatment was not dispersed evenly amongst all of the women of The Odyssey, a choice which left me deeply disappointed long after the film was over.

Helen of Sparta, or as she is most commonly known, Helen of Troy, was masterfully acted by Lupita Nyong’o, and I have no issues with her performance or portrayal of the character. Where my issue lies is the writing of Helen and all the other women in this film. Rather than being fleshed out as a comprehensive character, Helen was used as a meager plot device and verbal punching bag for Menelaus, her husband. Rather than being a fully human character, Nolan reduces Helen to the unfortunate trope of “female victim” in a way that makes her character feel flat and lifeless. She provides a little bit of context for Telemachus and the viewer of the film, but beyond that, she is little more than a victim of war. Clytemnestra, also played marvelously by Lupita Nyong’o, suffers a similar fate. We get a short segment detailing the sacrifice of her daughter and her killing Agamemnon as revenge, yet just like her sister, Nolan ultimately only uses Clytemnestra as a device for female victimhood. Where there could have been a fascinating parallel for Nolan to explore between the two women (especially with them being played by the same actress, a common technique used in Shakespearean plays to connect characters with similar or opposing character arcs), they are reduced to nothing more than unfortunate victims, rather than the powerful, cunning, and strong female characters we know them to be in their respective texts. In this way, they act almost as props for the men—props to give them information, props to make them look good (in the case of Telemachus, who shows concern for Helen) or bad (in the case of Menelaus’s unfortunately massacred character, who seems to bitterly resent the woman he went to war for) or marginally worse (a meager attempt by Nolan to make Agamemnon look like the bitchless loser and fraud that he is, which ultimately failed since he was more focused on appealing to the “aura farming” masculinity rather than Agamemnon's actual character).

Calypso equally disappointed me, but not in the way Helen and Clytemnestra did. She was stripped of nearly any character at all, even that of the grieving mother or wife, and instead used simply as a storytelling device for Odysseus and the viewer. I could not, for the life of me, name a single character trait that defines her. She gives Odysseus lotus flowers to make him forget, yet we have little to no motivation as to why she would want him to stay. She eventually encourages him to remember his past, and then he leaves, and he forgets her along with the audience. Calypso is such an interesting character to explore because her motivations and actions are so morally complex. Whether the author decides to portray her as a villainess or as sympathetic is up to them, but here, Calypso is portrayed as neither. Instead, she provides helpful exposition to Odysseus, and then is swiftly forgotten by a narrative that never cared about her in the first place.

Penelope is complicated for me. I thought that Anne Hathaway did a great job acting her on screen, despite my initial trepidation toward her casting. Nolan frames her Penelope as beautiful, mysterious, and grieving. He attempts to go the female rage route with a monologue she gives to Telemachus about ruling a nation, yet, once again, anything we know about her character is told to us directly by the film. We do not see Penelope acting cunning or making decisive decisions or even grieving her missing husband (with whom I thought she had very minimal chemistry with, if at all). Most of the time, she is sat behind a curtain, weaving or watching, as the suitors prowl the undecorated halls of the kingless palace. And this is exactly how Nolan treats all of his women—tucked away behind a metaphorical curtain, washed out and scrubbed of anything that could make them interesting characters.

Athena, in this way, is also complicated. I actually think that Athena’s double appearance as both a goddess and a slaughtered Trojan priestess could have been a very interesting take—had she been written better. Athena almost never speaks, and she appears rarely in the film either to nod or stare judgingly at Odysseus whenever the audience is meant to understand that he feels guilty about something. Somehow, Nolan manages to turn even a goddess of war (who, mind you, played her own violent tricks on the Trojans during the war) into a female victim, an almost impressive feat when I stop to really think about it. I don’t mind that Athena is or becomes a projection of Odysseus’s guilt; what I do mind is that her character lacks agency and, just like Calypso, serves as a plot device for us to understand Odysseus’s mediocre character. Giving her more dialogue with Odysseus or even just a larger presence in the film could have made Nolan’s intention with her character so much more powerful. Watching as Athena gives him advice—first to be ruthless, to harden his heart—to slowly ridiculing and even despising Odysseus for his mistakes could have been such an interesting development. Instead, Athena was also shoved behind Nolan’s mystical curtain of underdeveloped female characters, left to sit as he beheaded any remaining aspects of a fully developed character.

At the end of Ithaca

Again, my dear reader, I would like to reiterate: just because I had a lot of critical thoughts about the film does not mean that I despise the film entirely. The soundtrack was to die for. The cast did, in my opinion, an excellent job at acting out their parts. Yet even that was not enough to save it for me. The entire project felt underdeveloped, especially in regards to character and theme writing. I truly do think that the message Nolan was trying to send is a good one, and I am also glad that the classics are getting their moment in the sun again. But at the same time, I am also allowed to mourn the film that could have been with this kind of budget and directorship, if only better choices had been made. I apologize for the long review, but hey, what is Substack for if not a place to throw my thoughts out into the void? I only hope that, if you actually made it to the end of this long tumultuous journey, that you learned something from this article (or at the very least found comfort in the fact that there are people out there who aren’t glazing this movie to high heaven). Rest now, dear reader. After reading this review, you’ve earned it.

References

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0135

I am a woman constantly in motion, and for good reason. When I work, I usually do so to the sounds of the students bustling outside of the six pack or to whatever podcast suits my fancy at that particular point of the day, and I almost always switch spots for a better view. When I drive down long, winding, Texas roads through the flat fields of my home and the Tuscan hills of Austin, I never fail to have music blaring through my speakers, often interrupted by the staccato of conversation from my passengers. When I walk to class, I habitually have my headphones in, listening to one of the aforementioned podcasts or playlists or some hype music (usually on the way to exams) to help me get through the day, and I prefer to stop by the Welch vending machine tucked away in the corner for a cold drink (even on cold days—Texan habits die hard I fear).

Stagnation, and its sister Silence, are two of my most well acquainted nemesis. Because in between the hustle, bustle, and noise of the city, I am forced to reckon with the dark pit that are my thoughts—or, rather, the thoughts which like to circle around failure. Going to a university such as UT means that the people around you are always achieving. LinkedIn is one of my most feared places to venture, since it always seems that someone from my school, or even my department, is announcing a shiny new internship or glorious academic award. Writing is no escape either. I am constantly surrounded by celebratory announcements about new agent signings and book deals. Amidst my happiness for my peers and contentment with my own position, I find myself struggling, staggering, to keep up, even as I accomplish my own worthwhile achievements. Going online provides no respite either. There’s always someone better than you, younger than you, who is accomplishing something that you wish you had. Jealousy is inevitable. Anxiety even more so. And to a college student floundering about in her early twenties, it’s absolute hell.

In the age of hustle culture, it is easy to feel behind. Especially as a young adult. After all, this is the prime of our lives, and we will be damned if we do not make the most of it. Go! Live! Dream! Are the cries of those around us, droning out any bit of self-assurance we might have and replacing it with a frantic desire to be The Best. But just as Icarus fell short, so too do I and all the others miss the theoretical mark of success, grasping for a mythical sun that we will never reach. Time is fleeting. Youth is short lived. And glory, just like in the days of old, is even more of a rarity. Roman soldiers post life updates on LinkedIn from Cannae. Newly-graduated students flock to the battlefield that is the job market. Terror resides in both prospects of slaughter. Dear reader, I am sure that you are just as anxious as I am. Even my poetry, which is meant to be written for leisure, represents the anxieties I have surrounding my perceived lack of time. (Bear with me, dear reader. It is a short and unedited piece I wrote very many years ago):

To Time’s hand I beseech,

“Give me more so that I may live,”

Yet no matter how much I reach,

Time has nothing left to give.

- The Endless Pursuit.

In summary, I’ve spent the majority of my life feeling like I was running out of time. As a young writer who got the jump early on her creative career, there was a certain marketability that came with my youth. “Teen Writer” was a label that garnered enough impressive attention; “Teen Author” was a label that turned heads and produced sighs of awe. I wanted that title—and in a way, I got it. I’ve written five books at just 20 years old. I run several social media accounts and, if this article is any indication, plan to expand my online presence. This, at least while I retained that title of “teenager,” was enough to soothe me. But when the “teen” title slipped away with the last fleeting moments of my childhood, I felt that same urgency return again tenfold. Suddenly, I was not just running out of time; I was all out of it. Dear reader, there is nothing more jarring than realizing that all of your expectations have been subverted in both disappointing and exciting ways. As a child, I always imagined my late teens as being fun and romantic and filled with publishing deals and book tours (never mind the logistics of leaving high school to go on tour for a novel that somehow managed to top the bestseller lists). Of course, reality quickly caught up with me in that regard, but I still felt that I had time. I was young and eager. Yet when I turned 20, things were different. I had never had my first kiss. I was still querying my novels three years later, and I had no book deal in sight. I had not gotten that viral video on social media that would change my publishing career for the better. The museum of my failures was vast. And I was, it seemed, all out of time.

Except, I wasn’t. And I’m still not. I remain an achiever—ambition is just as much a part of me as my eyes, hair, arms, or legs. I am nothing without a constant hunger for knowledge and the skills gained in the pursuit of knowledge. However, as I have entered this new chapter in my (young) adult life, I have come to a point of reflection. Age, youth, experience—as helpful as they may be, they should never be points of objective comparison. Because no one path is the same, just as not accomplishing something when you thought you might does that mean that it will never be done. Time passes anyway. So, I can either choose to continue down this road of constant self-imposed inadequacy, comparing myself to my peers and bathing in the frigid water of my failures, or I can choose to sit. Take out my headphones. Block out the noise. Let myself breathe.

I will let my museum of failures turn into a vast river, each moment of my life a colorful stone sitting in between the silt. And when I look at that river, dear reader, I cannot tell the difference between my accomplishments and my failures. Nor do I wish that the current of my life would flow any faster than it is now. I am content to sit on the banks of my existence, running my hands over the rocks, and seeing how many new shiny pebbles I can collect—failures and all.

Because I am 20 years old, and I am not behind.

Subscribe now