you would think that after two years of blogs i would find myself more prepared with all of these blogs, not waiting until the day that they are due to actually start writing them. but i guess it is a good thing, life getting in the way that is. when i look back on myself, walking into this room for the first time, it feels like he isn’t the same person who is now pressing on the keys of this keyboard, writing this final blog post, but i guess in a way i wasn’t expected to be that person, i guess in a way i’m never going to be the same person twice, the crazy part is i think i achieved what i wanted here, in a way where i think im ready to start achieving better things someplace else.
“hi, im cooper (he/him) i enjoy classical art, writing poetry, and cooking. My favorite authors are hanya yanigahara, dorian gray, and mary shelly. and my main goal is to one day be someone elses favorite author. i hope that through this blog others are able to peer into my inner mindset and understand me through my work.”
this was the bio that i gave myself when i first got here and learned that i had to write blogs once a week, which looking back after almost an entire year of only doing them once a month sounds like a crazy achievement.
looking back on what i wrote about myself, a lot of it is true, i still love to cook, write poetry, and read. and i still love every author that i have on that list, but now i get to add names, names like donna tartt, charles bukowski, and stephen chbosky. i also get to say that i don’t think i need others to “peer into my mindset” or whatever i was saying to try to explain away the insecurity that i had with my own writing. but i think i have grown enough as a writer where i don’t think i need that anymore, if someone says they understand me because of my writing, great, but if they can’t, then maybe they weren’t supposed to.
i came to msa wanting to get published, win awards, create pieces that i loved, and i did that, and a lot more, and now that im sitting behind this screen for one of the last times, with a lot of blogs that im proud of and just as many ones im not, i know that i am not the same person as the guy who wrote that first blog about A24, i am now a person who knows that i will never be the same, but am i happy that i got to be that person for a bit, because if not i wouldn’t be who i am now
not the person who is able to create pieces that he is proud of, or the person to not be ashamed of who he has become, and certainly not the person who is about to move across the country.
it took a long time for me to realize what it was going to take for me to keep growing, it took a long time for me to realize that 821 miles and studying under the best writers in the country was what i needed, but i guess you never really do until it is staring back at you in the face.
so as i look back and begin my final paragraph on my final blog for my final year at the mississippi school of the arts, i’m happy to know that i’m not just another person pushing their fingers against the keys to fill space and get ready for the next person, im happy to know that i wasn’t just another person in this chair, and im happy to know that i don’t think ill ever stop growing, ever
later,
cooper
The junior-to-senior evolution at MSA needs to be studied.
The Regular Show pic at the end was cruel, to be honest. I also saw your blog title and immediately thought of Hamilton, so I just wanted to apologize for that. All jokes aside, this is so wild….like this being graduation but also everything, y’know?