An Anthology of Moments: A Final Reflection

     

Moments: On the Road

    Ahh, quotes! My one true love! I love quotes because they express beautifully exactly what I feel. In fact, I have a quote journal that compiles all my favorite quotes. 

      As you may have noticed through my profound love for quotes, I’m an avid reader, not writer. However, my favorite kind of writing is free writing—a blank paper, my thoughts, and I. Why? I’m also an avid over-thinker. Therefore, I love the idea of expressing myself in a beautiful and profound way; this is how I’m influenced by my love for quotes. I aspire to be featured in someone’s quote journal.

Moments: Family

            The creation of this blog has been an amazing ride. This blog, An Anthology of Moments, has been my way to express myself in a beautiful and organized way. It has allowed me to branch-out in terms of my writing by allowing it to be exposed to a large number of people. It is liberating to write something you believe is important and deep. It is also extremely fulfilling to feel like what you write—my thoughts and ideas—actually matter, even if to a few people. Just the mere possibility of being someone else’s quote in a quote journal is priceless because, if that’s the case, it means someone has related with me somehow. Hopefully, I’ve helped or changed their life like many quotes have done for me.

Moments: The Girls (minus Sabrina)

                                                 ****

Moments: Missing Girl (Sabrina)

This will be my final post for this blog as part of a literature course. Hopefully, I’ll have time to write some entries in the future since this has been an incredibly rewarding opportunity that I wouldn’t trade for anything. By far it had been the best course work I have come across in years. This writing experience has made me grow. Through this blog, I’ve been able to discover many things about life, love, happiness, and my journey through life. Thank you for being a faithful audience up to this point, and I encourage you to tune in periodically to see if I’ve uploaded anything.

In the sprit of quotes and the end of one journey (this course), a few words to reflect on from Nicholas Spark’s novel The Rescue that will, hopefully, shed more light on the meaning of this blog’s title. Here’s to individual moments that, when compiled, make up the person and their journey.

“People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.”

Moments: Learning Something New

― NicholasSparks, The Rescue

More on Life Lessons: How a Literary Contest Ceremony Taught Me of Life and Death

48th Annual Literary Contest Award Ceremony.

         When somebody dies and you attend their funeral, you always take home the little piece of hard paper folded in half. On the front you find a religious image; inside you find a message—usually a prayer for the deceased. I

still keep my grandfather’s, and, even though he died 6 years ago, I can still remember the words. One piece in particular said: “He left, but he has taken with him our love . . . and the memories of the moments shared . . . But also . . . he has left us the precious present of having known and loved him”. These words resonated in my head after the 48th Annual Literary Contest Award Ceremony.

            The ceremony was sponsored by the English Department of the General Studies College of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Two girls from my English class had won a price, and it was great to go show some support. However, this was not what primarily caught my attention. The ceremony was dedicated to honoring the life of a deceased professor of said department. His name? Mark Wekander.

Photo of Mark Wekander featured in the ceremony's
Power Point presentation.

            I did not know the professor, but it was incredibly moving to see his coworkers, the other faculty members of the department, remember his legacy. His latest poems—published posthumously—were read by students and analyzed by a professor from the department. Additionally, various professors, as coworkers and friends, shared wonderful memories of Mark.

Not only did Mark Wekander leave a written legacy; he also left a human legacy, much like my grandfather did. This last legacy is his most greatest achievement. Although I never knew him while he lived, I an honestly say I admire Mark Wekander. He is the expression of what I hope for in my life: to be remembered with love.

When my time comes, I want to have left a legacy. I don’t want my life to be meaningless; I wish for more. I wish for greatness—whatever type that might be. I want to be remembered as Mark Wekander was: a successful person; a loved person; someone that leaves behind the present of being known and loved. When I die, don’t cry on my grave. Instead, talk about the memories we shared for they will forever live in your heart as Mark Wekander’s.

A Life Lesson From Nerves

Participating on the previous panel.
Sadly, I have no photographic evidence of
the second panel.

         My mom always used to say that there was still decent people in the world; that it’s not that the world’s gone bad, just that the bad makes more noise than the good. This notion was then supported by one of my communications classes were I learned that people pay attention to tragic subjects because this is what they like, even if they don’t admit it. I believe this is true in all aspects of our life.

            If you know me or if you’ve read most of my posts, you probably know or have gotten the notion that I’m a perfectionist. Why? The answer’s simple: the bad—your mistakes—is what people remember. Therefore, I don’t want to give any leverage to anyone; it makes me feel vulnerable.

            On April 15, 2015 I had to face my fear head on. This was the day I participated in the 5th Anual Student Research and Writing Conference: Student Collaboration and Contributions Across the Disciplines. As you may recall from a blog post I posted yesterday, I was moderator and participant of a panel featured in said conference. In this post, I stated I didn’t feel nervous, but rather powerful. This day I also participated in a different panel of the conference, and my story in it is a completely different story from the previous panel.

Dr. Seuss
Image retrieved from:
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/epicrapbattlesofhistory
/image/4/48/Seuss.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130731172643

The panel was titled Perspectives of Puerto Rico: A Journey Through Cyberspace. As part of it, my group and I had to give a presentation on the perception of Puerto Rico online. I can’t exactly pin point the reason why, but I felt completely nervous before stepping on stage as well as during officiating the presentation. Usually, if for some reason I feel nervous before walking on stage, when I step on it and utter my first words, I break the ice, and the nerves melt away. This time this did happen. While on stage, one of my favorite poems, “Oh, the PlacesYou’ll Go!” by the marvelous Dr. Seuss: “. . . there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants”. I felt as if I was paralyzed. A terrible feeling of dread that something was about to go wrong clouded all my senses. Logically, this threw me off balance. My mind went blank, and a material I had known for weeks now seemed gibberish.

Maybe it was delayed nerves from the first panel since I hadn’t felt nervous at all at any point of the panel I moderated. Maybe it was the loss of control. In the previous panel I had control: I was the moderator—the one that called the shots. I don’t know how, but I got through it and, I might add, with minor mishaps compared to how nervous I felt.

"Oh! the Places You'll Go! book cover
Image retrieved from:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en
/0/07/Oh,_the_Places_You'll_Go.jpg

Nonetheless, I felt ashamed of myself. I was disappointed of giving a presentation that was less than perfect. I was afraid of having let down my teammates. I was afraid of having let down my professor who worked so hard to constitute this panel.

The good thing was the experience helped me remember there’s always room for improvement. No matter how confident you are one minute, doesn’t guarantee you won’t feel nervous the next. Likewise, in life, nothing is guaranteed. One minute everything will be perfect, the next they’ll be the complete opposite. It’s our duty to learn to cope and learn from those experiences; that’s the best we could hope for.

My Experience as a Moderator

        Participating in a conference is no easy feat, yet it has been one of the most rewarding up to date. As a public relations and advertising major, I live for communicating. Standing up on a stage and relating with the audience has always been something that I’ve loved. My English professor, Dr. Cynthia Pittmann, gave me the rewarding opportunity to expand my experiences, not only on an academic and professional level, but also on a personal level.

Q&A Section of the panel.
My fellow participants and I (far right).

         Last week the College of General Studies of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus celebrated the 5th Anual Student Research and Writing Conference: Student Collaboration and Contributions Across the Disciplines. My entire class and I had to participate in a panel about Puerto Rican perception online (to read more about this, visit my blog post on the experience by clicking the hyperlink), but only four us had the honor of participating in an extra panel about identity. The panel was titled Interrogating Identity: Home, Language, and Differences. In it, we had the opportunity of reading the essays on identity we had concocted for class. My essay, The Fingerprint of Identity, talked about how language, the notion of home, and history influence our one of a kind identity and it’s expression, behavior. However, not only did I get to read a work of mine, but I also had the opportunity to be the moderator of said panel for which I committedly prepared for in advance. I spent hours obsessing over a Keynote presentation that I’m incredibly proud of, and I also crafted a script for the event.

         Back in high school I was chosen various times to be moderator of various activities, but I had never been given this honor in college. It was a truly rewarding experience. Being moderator thrilled me and made me think that I must be doing something right. For me, a person who is constantly doing the best she can do in all she does, that is a big deal. Usually people would mind the extra work that came with the job, but I didn’t mind it all. At the risk of sounding like a workaholic, I can honestly say I enjoyed doing the work. Additionally, now, looking back on the experience, I’m grateful for the work, not because I liked doing, but because of the way I felt on stage.

        Being on stage gave me valuable experience for the major I’m specializing in, public relations, and the career I wish to pursue, law—two professions where being a dynamic, outspoken person is everything. Additionally, being in charge of that panel made me confident of my skills, something I seldom believe in. I know my skills, but I doubt them often because of the kind of person I am: an over thinker. When on stage, I like the person I am, a confident one that feels proud of herself and like she can do anything. 

        I put great amounts of effort into the panel, but what I got out of it was so much more rewarding. I grew academically and professionally, but more importantly, I grew as a person; that’s the best we can hope for: to grow from our experiences. After all, as this blog suggests, we are a collection of moments we’ve experienced.