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Although I've been posting writing on Serendip since at least 2001, I've never put a photo here before. I've always felt as if my writing here was for the people I already knew who were also posting. But since lots of us are meeting for the first time and our assignment gave me an invitation to choose an image, I did. (I also wanted to prove to me and you both that I could actually navigate the process...)

This is a photo that was taken of me on the "set" of a performance that I made in Philadelphia. It took place over ten or twelve square blocks, featured the Benjamin Franklin Bridge as a character, and had about 50 actors in it. That play, which was called ACROSS, constituted the deepest playing in the city that I'd done up to that point. So, it felt appropriate for the work we are doing in our esem. 

I chose this picture of a sunrise over water because I believe that, as a frosh, I am able to begin again. In college, we can re-write who we want to be and start again, just like a sunrise beginning again every day. When I was little, we would go visit my grandmother in Maine in the summer time. I would always get up early, come up the stairs, and find my grandmother sitting in her living room, or on the deck with a cup of tea for me, watching the sunrise. She watches the sunrise every morning with her tea and this sunrise reminds me how she takes her time in the morning to slow down and enjoy the beginning of each day. The sun and the water in this picture both play a part in calming down life for me. I love sitting on the rocks in Maine and watching the waves crash around me. The ocean is a powerful force, but it can also be very calming, reminding me how small I really am in the world, and yet, how big an impact I can make if I really try.

There are a few reasons I choose a profile picture of a perched hawk. The first is, simply, I don't tend to put my face on the internet. Most of the people who I would want to keep in the loop regarding my everyday life, can just as easily get an email with a picture than they can look it up on facebook. The second reason, similarly, is that I really like birds of prey, and hawks in particular; they are among my favorite animals. This particular hawk seemed to be paying rapt attention, which seemed fitting. Finally, although this is rather subconscious, there is something fun about having a representation of the self that has certain cultural assossiations; a reference to something or someone the person with that picture would like the person seeing it to remember and connect to. I generally think that when one has a profile picture with cultural associations, then whenever the person with that profile picture demonstrates some small amount of one of the qualities associated with their profile picture, then that quality becomes strengthened in the reader's memory.

As you can see my avatar is a pan full of dessert. But not just any dessert, they are monster magic cookie bars! I'm very proud of these, they are one of my most successful and most delicious baking adventure products of the summer. It's a joke amongst my friends that before last spring break I did not know what boiling water was. And like most rumors, there is some element of truth to that statement. I grew up in a single-parent household where my mum did everything she could so my sister and I could have a number of opportunities. As a result when she came home from work she did not cook a meal from scratch, even though she knew how; she simply did not have the time after working all day to pay the bills, then dedicating the evening to our education. Thus, I never learned how to cook. But this summer that all changed. I spent the summer at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center(SERC) on a research base in rural Maryland, where there was no dining hall, no parents feeding me, I had to provide for myself. So with the help of my housemates and the internet (of course), I learned how to cook and bake a large variety of items ranging from delicious desserts of every shape and size to more savory options like calzones, steak, rice pilaf, and cultural dishes from Nepal, Columbia, and my home state of Texas, just to name a few. And I must have learned something great because not only did I survive the summer, but now I have a newly ignited passion for cooking and baking!

Anne said that we must introduce ourselves, so I guess I'll do it here. My name is Tessa, and I'm almost nineteen years old. I have lived permanently in Geneva, Switzerland since 2004 (before Europe was Chicago). It's always been the plan for me to move back to attend college in the States. My avatar is, at face value, an overfed ginger tabby sprawled out on a pink blanket. Said overfed ginger is one of my cats. His name is Merlin. I swear we haven't been giving him more food than his brother, Rémy. Merlin just prefers the sedentary lifestyle. I chose him because I was known in high school as the Cat Whisperer. I could get any stray cat on campus to snuggle up and follow me around. I love my kitties so much, I wrote my application essay to Brown about my tabbies (didn't help me get in though). Merlin is my spirit animal. We genuinely enjoy each other's company and always seem to know when the other is in distress and act accordingly. 

I miss him a lot. I know this all sounds odd, like I don't enjoy human company. That is not the case. I love humans. Just on some days, I enjoy cats more. 

I am a city girl. I've lived in a city for almost my whole life, and was taking public transportation by the time I was in preschool. Where I'm from, our transport is run by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, known by locals to be called Muni. Most San Franciscans have a love-hate(mostly hate) relationship with Muni rooting from the changeable train schedule and the crowds that often come with riding a common route. One reason people love Muni is that is provides them with something to complain about. I chose this username because Muni is how I accessed all that my city had to offer, for which I'm very grateful. Despite this, I couldn't bear to put an image of one of those trains as my avatar (See the distaste shining through?) so my image is a combination of some other things I love. It's a small piece of a digital painting of mine, and shows my love of art and my love of horses at the same time. I'm looking forward to finding my way on some new public transportation!

Fun fact: The title of this post is similar to a line from a song by Journey, a band from SF.

My avatar is a picture of a bridge at a nature preserve near where I grew up. It's a very calming and happy thing for me. It was a place to think and not be disturbed by the anxieties in my life. I'm not a very "outdoorsy" person, but there's something about just walking around that I really enjoy. I love standing on the bridge and watching the water rush by. I love seeing what's on the other side and continuing my journey. That's how I view my changing ideas of gender and sexuality. I had a Catholic upbringing and grew up in a conservative community. Gender roles were very strict (even taught in school) and people were very closed-minded about sexual orientation and gender identity. As someone who did not completely fit these narrow roles, it was frustrating. I am now happy to be part of a community that is more welcoming to people of different sexual orientations and gender identities. I've crossed a bridge into a place where I can continue my journey of trying to understand others (as well as understand myself).

First of all, I like this photo because it is funny. A lot of my friends said I jumped like a frog, and some said I photoshoped this photo (actually I didn’t). This photo was taken on a snow mountain. That time, my friends and I chose to climb the mountain rather than take the ropeway. I am a lazy person actually, so I was really kind of unwilling to climb, but I did enjoy it. I always have conflicts in mind. I want to know the unknown, because it can bring me surprises, but I don’t want to know the unknown, because it may bring me bad surprises. I want to stay at home watching my favorite TV shows and relax all day long, but I want to engage in college learning too. Anyway, like everyone on the earth, there are many different me living in me. This photo shows an energetic Amy, a funny Amy who looks like a frog, maybe even a high jump expert Amy (but actually not╮(╯3╰)╭), the me that I love most.

For my avatar, I chose a picture of my cat, Tuna. I chose this because my pets are an important part of my life, and of my family. I've had my three cats since the moment they were born, since the stray we adopted ended up being pregnant with kittens. It was a lucky accident and for the past 9 years my family has taken care of and loved these creatures that came into our lives most unexpectedly (perhaps we give them too much love, if their size is any indication). If I were to relate my pets to any notions of gender, I would say that my cats are the manifestation of my maternal instinct. I have no desire to raise children of my own; even when I was a child, according to my mother, I never dabbled in fantasies of motherhood with baby dolls or playing "house". However I express the trait of nurturing, which is typically deigned feminine, with my pets. While I defy societal norms by choosing to remain childfree the values I hold which are perpetuated by my gender's role in society are still present.

My name is pretty bland- in fact I have the most common first name in the class of 2017. When I looked my last name up in the phonebook in second grade, I found 200 listings. So when I was born, my parents wanted to give me a more unique middle name. They chose Juneau, after the city in Alaska where my mom went to high school. It seemed like a perfect choice for an Esem about cities. I chose a picture from a trip to Juneau, with a bus in the foreground. I like the colors in the picture, and the misty mountains in the background. Public transit makes me think of cities, as well as my own trips downtown, often on my way to fun events. Busses are a way to access a city, as is this class.