I kept seeing the word choose. I don’t think this was a conscientious effort to make me feel as it did. It was an effort, in my opinion, to make a point to me, about how she felt. That word quickly wore away on my nerves each time I read it, trying my best not to take offense that I am going to assume wasn’t meant. But on at least three papers that I can recall, that word was written in there, directed at me specifically in two instances, and just glaring there in my eyesight which was constantly drawn to it as if someone had highlighted it with the most attractive method of highlighting in the world.

Choose? CHOOSE!

I came to regret getting back essays not on the basis of grade but for that word. I know it is involved with other papers I threw away and didn’t keep, so one day, as I read over a response to one of my essays, and printed off another, I slipped a piece of paper into that one to turn it in. My English Teacher had good intentions, I’m still willing to believe that. Here is what that paper said.

“I don’t choose.

Instances: 1st essay, narrative essay: On the comment that I have not looked or sounded my age for years, the question “By choice?” is written beside it.

Neither was by choice. I’ve always been uncommonly tall, (or I was until a year or two ago) I’ve always felt and acted older than I was and I’ve had a deep voice since puberty. The long hair and facial hair came by age 16, at that point, I hardly think that they SHOULD make me look Older, but by current conventions, they do.

Number two- Research summary

“Why do you choose to be classified as such?” In response to
“People with long hair always get the classifications stoner, sissy or fairy.”

Why do I choose to be classified? Quite simply, I don’t. I choose to live my life as I want to live it, it’s the other people who are doing the classification, I do not classify myself as a stoner because of my long hair, because I am not one. I know that about myself. The outside world has the ability to do so because they have the free will to think whatever they wish, and certainly exercise it.

If I don’t exercise my own free will in response, then they are winning.

Number three- This one wasn’t directed at me, but I keep seeing the word Choose. On my Essay proposal for my second essay, my preliminary thesis was “How you seem to be seen can gratuitously affect your social life.” Above the word seem was written “Choose?”

I don’t write about how people choose to be seen because there are few people who can successfully choose to be something. If all people could be seen anyway they want, then this class (with a base topic of self image this semester) would have a very different topic. “

And above all else, I certainly didn’t choose to be this kind of person, the kind who so many people hated.

Why do I choose?

Sheesh, I wish I could.