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(by espenbakketun)

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I started my college career, my major in public health, by making a zine. A zine about teen pregnancy and abortion laws--- what would be one of many many projects about abortion access throughout college. However, in making the zine, I realized I was kind of good at it, and more than that, it was a wonderful means of expressing information.

I have gone through a lot in college, not just learning academically, but finding myself in all the friends and the experiences that have shaped me for better or for worse. Many people in my major say that all of our classes are the same--- that they are at repetitive and unhelpful, that they are common sense. However, I find that those peers do not thoroughly engage with the material, and yes, of course some of the material repeats itself, even unnecessarily, and yes, some of the classes are not the best. However, in all the classes I've taken throughout college, whether for my major or minor, I have learned so much, whether through my own analysis of research, going above and beyond expectations, or simply doing the course work as directed. Of course, not all of it was my favorite or even applicable to my future career at all, but I still believe it was worthwhile. In some way or another, every assignment---however theoretically useful it was to me---was equally important because it got me to where I am today, and of course, that's a philosophy I probably carry when it comes to all sorts of things in life, but there weren't nearly as many harms in my education as there have been in the rest of my life, so the designation of some seemingly unimportant things as important was much easier.

All this to say that I have learned a lot in college regardless of what my peers may tell you, and I have become a more cognizant and full person despite whatever hiccups and major traumas have occurred along the way. I am now about to graduate and making a zine again for my final project, incorporating dbt skills into everyday college tasks and taking it from a much less clinical lens, making the language and format much more accessible than usual. Because despite all the psych system abuse I faced in my past (and my belief that my medication is one of the only reasons I have recovered to any extent), dbt skills allowed me to live in the days where every minute felt like a year--- to get through trials of medications and severe allergic reactions, to survive until I could live.

However, as I add the finishing touches to my zine---different decorations and images to each page---I recall all that isn't told in this zine or even the "about the creator" page. It doesn't tell the reader that the front and back cover are made from one of my emergency room discharge papers where I faced so much fucking trauma just for being in pain and I feared that I would not be okay again for the foreseeable future, where sunlight felt like a distant memory even though it had only been hours since I had last seen it. It doesn't say that the cardstock backing of many of the little images is from the packaging of my microwaveable Annie's mac and chesse containers or how at one point, I refused to buy microwaveable mac and cheese because I thought it would taste so much worse, and even though it tired me out, I would always opt to make it on the stove less often with more difficulty. To me, stove mac and cheese was worth it...until I dislocated my shoulders doing the dishes and could not continue scrubbing at all because my arms ceased to work, so now stove mac and cheese isn't an option unless my friends make it, and I've actually come around to the the microwave kind; I've perfected the recipe; I like it now. It doesn't say that I almost cut out a piece of my orgo exam scrap paper because it was some of the only pink paper I had, even though I'm so proud of that exam I considered framing it. It doesn't say that this zine is so important to me that I almost cut up my prized orgo exam scrap paper because it was merely moving a piece of paper from one sacred thing to another. It doesn't say that I made myself painfully dizzy working on it over and over again, but that I kept going with all the complexity I had originally planned because I wouldn't be able to live with myself had I not. It doesn't say that I took one of my purples in one of the pride flags on the front from a box of gauze I bought because my home health always forgets to give me any. And it doesn't say that the first two pages were destroyed by my powerchair, so I'm lucky that I scanned them ahead of time.

It doesn't tell my journey or the journey of the objects that make it up, but in the end, I hope the care I put in results in a work that is even greater than the sum of its parts (it doesn't tell you I learned the phrase "greater than the sum of its parts" from a book I read in fourth grade either). We are all made up of pieces of other people, and if we all made a collage of our hopes and our educations and our lives, the pieces would likely come from some important objects, and that isn't some sort of metaphor about choosing important things, but rather that the objects we have around are the ones we turn into art. So I will continue to work on my zine with my body that has long since deteriorated when compared to the one that could make mac and cheese on the stove. I will recall the value of everything I touch and that messy minds and rooms can coincide with beauty more often than I may think. I will remember that in my freshman year of college, I would have never thought myself to be a writer, and even though imposter syndrome comes and goes, I cannot imagine not being a writer---not having it be such an integral part of who I am. So we will stare at our green lights and find peace in what we hold in our hands and make zines out of pieces of our lives and hope that it all makes sense more than it did a couple years ago---even if it still feels like things are falling apart, even when they really are.