Introduction

My name is Julianne Faur, and I will begin my second year at UNL in the Fall. Writing feels natural to me, an action that screams sheer humanity. From a young age, I was taught by my English-major parents that writing is not something about which to get nervous, but rather, to embrace. As a young girl, I was scarcely nervous about anything; my outspoken demeanor, in fact, typically earned me more disdain from adults than respect. For example, I vividly recall my nine-year-old tomboy self playing a heated game of soccer on the playground with all the boys, only to be interrupted by Sister Ann, who commanded that girls and boys were no longer allowed to play together at recess. My indignation fell upon indifferent ears, and I was rendered a nascent feminist without a proper mechanism for dissent.

Fast forward to high school, wherein the cerebral tools of critical thought dropped into my longing lap. Liberated, I could finally organize my questions and inform my own answers; I discovered that no one could interrupt my line of thought in an essay. But truthfully, I required a bit of discipline; fortunately, I found a place on the speech team as a competitor in Persuasive Speaking. I composed my first speech about the lack of women in American politics with upmost enthusiasm, convinced that any dissenting tournament judge would be a sexist. However, I was now not only constrained by a ten-minute time limit and presentation of solid evidence, but also by the technical norms of Persuasive Speaking. A winning speech would also require: a topic that was unique, highly agreeable, and too vague to come with a solution that could be pragmatically implemented; memorable jocularity, effectively eliminating the plethora of somber issues facing the world today; and an impassioned personal anecdote intended to amplify the urgency of the speech topic. Frustrated but also grossly competitive, I would devise a winning speech to go out of high school speech with nothing less than an deafening bang. So I slaved over my masterpiece about political ignorance in America; as it turned out, I won the first tournament of the season. But my glory high immediately plummeted when the girl who had also written a speech about women in politics last season somehow wound up with a speech about political ignorance in America. Once she started beating me, I knew I needed to write an entirely different masterpiece. I wrote at least five different speeches, each of which could not live up to my own standards; then, crippling anxiety and subsequent panic attacks ended my speech career.  I never thought that writing would be something about which I would get so painfully nervous.

At present, both my writing and I have come a long way. Intellectually stimulating classes and zealous professors comprised a welcoming environment that challenged me to produce my best writing as a college student. I can finally articulate my concerns for feminism, homophobia, the rule of law, and the problem with a generally uninformed citizenry in a democracy, never mind a global super power like the United States. Currently, I write to discern a perceived disconnect: America in theory versus America in practice; a “colorblind” justice system and a shocking trend of dead, unarmed black men at the hands of police officers; and, ultimately, a country in which equality is entirely feasible yet disappointingly unlikely because there is no clear consensus as to whether or not the current state of the social union is a problem. I write to shed light on the profound grey areas permeating the dignity of my generation. Writing to address such topics no longer makes me nervous. In fact, the only thing I am afraid of is failing to do so.