Mapping - Shayna Zema
When I was younger, my mother always used to ask me: “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” Naturally then, while conducting research in Ecuador a few years ago, I jumped off a bridge. I did this because, well, others were doing it. I had been exploring a small Amazonian town with a map I’d been given in the capital city. However, the map wasn’t serving as the type of guide I needed. I quickly realized that where I found myself, and what was to befall me, wasn’t indicated on it. Majestic mountains unrolled to the right and roaring rivers sprang forth to the left. I saw teenagers hopping off an old bridge into the water below. I moved closer, carefully taking each step on the steel bridge beams. My legs began to tremble. My stomach was in knots. I was terrified. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and jumped to join the others. As I hit the freezing water hard, the experience hit me equally as hard back. I could never have imagined that my leap into the Amazon and the small community encountered there would be a part of my journey. Four years later, after designing my own concentration in geography, I have learned much about how we Brown students understand maps. Today, I’ve come to realize that sometimes we need to make our own maps to reach our next destination.
When we arrived at Brown, we were excited, stimulated by our diverse courses and classmates. Some of us may have memorized maps of campus. Others may have ventured around their new surroundings without guidance, confident that fate would help them navigate. Still, we all got lost our first days here. But as one of my favorite professors once told me, we never really get lost; we only explore. It can often seem easiest to keep our feet and minds planted firmly on familiar territory. Nevertheless, all of us here have pushed beyond the limits of our comfort zones.
Brown has given us a wonderful, frightening opportunity to be the cartographers, mapmakers, of our own education and of our own selves. Cartography is a skill; it calls for us to understand how our experiences, interests, and commitments stand in relation to each other. And doing that wasn’t easy. We received advice from our peer advisers, academic mentors, caring deans, and, of course, parents to guide us in surveying the terrain of Brown. Ultimately, though, many of us have found that the maps from others haven’t been as helpful as those we made for ourselves.
At Brown, we have drawn our own, individual maps, and followed them across disciplines. And, for most of us, this has not been a straightforward process. Yet, we have all donned our armor, or sweatpants, taken risks, and ventured into unchartered lands to pave our own paths.
Brown itself, for all of us, was once an uncharted land. There is a student among us today who was scared when she arrived here. She didn’t know how to get to the Ratty, what activities to join, or who to ask for help. Yet she thought she had a plan, her family thought she had a plan, but really, she was lost. Or rather, as a Brown student, she was “exploring.” Like comedian Stephen Wright jokes, she had “an existential map; it had ‘you are here’ written all over it.” She started studying philosophy, then math, switched to business, and today, graduates with a degree in psychology. Some of us might have stuck closely to our initial plans. But all of us have found ourselves in new places that challenged what we thought we knew, as we drew our maps here. Look around. This student is sitting to our right, to our left, and, surprise, in our very own seats.
We have chosen what to study, where to work, and how to spend our limited free time. We have learned how to make our maps legible to others through a rich variety of mediums, whether through algebraic expressions, theatrical performances, or scientific investigations. Moreover, we have learned to interpret the maps of others at Brown and beyond, sometimes flipping them upside down in order to understand them from a new angle.
As we map and re-map our lives, we never lose what we had learned at each point on our expeditions. Every place transforms us and becomes an essential, irreplaceable part of our journey. We have all made some wrong turns along the way too, yet those turns have helped us arrive at the place where we are today. Members of the class of 2015, we are strengthened by our differences and united by our own, unique maps.
This past winter, I traveled with the university’s support to Puerto Rico to complete research for my capstone, culminating experience. I was alone on the open road. I stood rummaging through the several maps my professor had given me, desperately searching for the way to my next destination. I marked lines on the roadways in red ink, hopped back in my car, and drove. Road-tripping for a couple of days on the island confirmed for me what I had learned at Brown. I met new, amazing people, in mountain valleys and on sandy beaches, who made me question where I come from, and where it is that I am going. I needed to relinquish control, to let go, and know that whatever I had written on my map could and, ultimately would, change. And that’s okay. My former roommates let their maps lead them to research HIV disclosure in Rhode Island prisons. My current neighbor used her map to find neuro-structural indicators for ADHD. About a month ago, I bumped into someone who I haven’t seen since our first year. She has directed her career to focus on tomato reproduction in a warming world. All of these maps are different from each other. We have trusted ourselves to draw our own maps and, sometimes, simply took a leap of faith, even if not off a bridge to spite our parents.
Maps can show us the best way to get somewhere; but as Herman Melville reminds us in Moby-Dick, sometimes true places can’t be found on paper. Today, all of us are beginning to make our next move into a world not yet mapped. So lets venture forward, putting into practice the values of independence, determination, and courage we’ve gained at Brown as we mark the first “x” on our maps. Only remember, lets do it in pencil, not red pen, because there’s always room for change.