Well, as stated quite a bunch on this site, I am a college student. A new media student to be exact (it’s kind of complicated to fully explain, but think of it as technology and art-it’s what taught me how to code!). One of the classes I am taking this semester is Material Distribution, which focuses on how media can reach other people (think stuff like posters, zines, mail). For that class’s final, we had to hold some kind of event and document it. For mine I decided to hold an open event where I get a bunch of people to work on one huge collage together. I made posters for it and put them all over campus (was hard work but I got my steps in!) and waited. I also invited my classmates and a reached out to a few of my friends on campus to boost attendance.

The day came and after setting everything up….. no one came to work on the project for like, an hour. I was starting to get really nervous, until one of my friends came. She was really excited to work on this project and brought a bunch of materials. We were debriefing for a bit before she got started on the collage.

I said that I was scared that this project was going to fail because I don’t have many close friends on campus, and I wasn’t even sure if the people in my class even liked me, or if they were just tolerating my presence to be nice.

I’m quite a self-doubter, it’s been a problem of mine for a long time. None of my classmates ever showed or gave off the feeling that they didn’t like me, but I still feel excluded from time to time (I’m a transfer while all of them have known each other for longer). Plus, I have a hard time trying to fit in and join a conversation without feeling like I’m interrupting anyone, since (again, self-doubter speaking) I think other people don’t want to hear what I’m saying.

She listened to me vent for a while, saying that she also feels this way too, and that she’s always gonna have my back. It felt really nice to hear that. She also managed to wrangle her partner and two of her friends to work on the collage. It felt nice to just sit with a small group of people and make are together. Eventually, I had to pack it all up, I had work, so I left the collage and the materials in a workshop on the upper floor of the same building.

The next day, right after work, I check in the workshop again to check if my stuff was still there, and to my surprise, one of my classmates was actually working on it! They thought the idea was really cool and really wanted to come. Actually, a lot of people were saying that, and it made me feel better overall :]