Emma Symanski (she/her)
Self-Bio: Can I come back to you with this one?
Year of div 3: 2020
Name of div: Teaching English Through a Photographic Lens
summary of your div 3 : I designed and taught a class for English Language Learners about Photography. I also photographed and interviewed my students. The end result was a book (it would have been a gallery show, but COVID) that included the portraits and stories of the students, documentation and summary of the classes, and the student work created throughout the class.
Hampshire influence: Well, it still feels very recent that I was at Hampshire, and sometimes I still wish I was because now I am feeling pretty lost if I’m being honest. I have been looking for a job since graduation with no luck. I’ve had a few part-time gigs that have not been related to what I want to be doing. I wish I could make some sort of project/class of my own design like I did for my Div III, but money seems to be the driving force determining what I can and cannot do. Hopefully this answer will change as time goes on, but right now I mostly feel jealous of my past self when I felt I had the freedom to do what I wanted with all the resources Hampshire was able to provide for me to do it.
What place on campus was significant to you? : I like this question. I honestly went to the Library a lot to study, so that feels significant, just based on the amount of time that I spent there (specifically on the third floor either in the Kiva, or the computer lab). Also, I really enjoyed the photo building as I also spent a lot of time there, specifically in the upstairs digital lab, where I often worked as a monitor, but I also did a lot of my own work up there. I always thought it was a very peaceful and stimulating space, especially later in the evening and at night. Also (I know I’m giving more than one, but now you have options aha) I really enjoyed the pick-your-own flower garden. This really helped me get through my first semester, because it was always somewhere I could go to do something nice for myself. I really do love flowers a lot, and so it felt very special to always have some in my room as I was adjusting to this new and kind of scary way of life. And then I kept going back throughout all my years at Hampshire. Both for myself and others. I liked bringing people there to pick flowers as an activity to do with someone. I would pick bouquets specifically for other people-there were so many options that each bouquet felt very unique and curated by me, depending on what I was going for. A lot of the bonding I did with who is now my closest friend from Hampshire was over this flower field. I brought bouquets with me when I would go visit people in Providence and New York. I even did a small photo project on the flowers once. Also, I would dry the flowers using coat-hangers to keep them forever in bottles (I now have some of these with me in Minnesota), so I guess these flowers have seen a lot because of me and probably so many other people… Now that I’m finding so much to say about this flower garden, I suppose it probably seems like the most significant, haha, so I’ll describe this place below.
Describe the on-campus place as you remember it.: There are several ways to get to Hampshire’s pick-your-own flower field, but the way I remember going the most was entering from the path behind Greenwich, which became very convenient my last year at Hampshire, when I lived in those mods. It was almost always a beautiful walk, by some fields of rhubarb or raddish, and then through a little bit of woods, which would be especially stunning in the fall when the trees were all sorts of colors. Finally after a sharp left turn out of the woods, there it would be: rows of pinks, purples, yellows, oranges, and reds of all different shades. I loved that the field seemed to be on a hill, so that I could see far beyond it to the rest of Hampshire’s farm and to the road. There was always some bees flying around and sometimes other intriguing insects. Up and down the little dirt rows I would go, slowing creating what seemed like a work of art in my hands.
What place off-campus was significant to you?: The ceramics studio at Umass. I took two ceramics classes throughout my time at Hampshire, and so I spent I don’t know how many hours there making things, but I absolutely loved it. It was very therapeutic to work so much with my hands in a way different than I had needed to for anything else I was doing at Hampshire.
Describe the off-campus place as you remember it: The outside of the building was cool looking. A lot of glass. And there was a cool art sculpture thing visible through the second floor window. Going in through the main door, I would then go left down a long hallway, where the lockers were, until getting to the end of the building where the ceramics studio was. There was wheel-throwing on the right and a bigger hand-building room on the left. Also, the glaze room was in the back of the hand-building room, and the kilns were behind that.
February 6th, 2021
Dear me a year ago,
I’ve thought a lot about which of my past selves most needed a letter, which is also kind of silly to think about, because to me, writing to a future self makes a lot more sense. I’ve done that before‒written myself a note to me in a year about where I hope I’d be and wondering what I’d be doing. Then I can open it when I become who it was for and read it from who it was from, and that’s actually pretty cool…but writing to a past self? Does that even work? I think writing to a past self is really just reflection‒don’t know if I’m stating the obvious here, but I’ll take some good direct reflection any day…so here we go.
Dear me a year ago,
I bet you didn’t know
that even though
you had it all thought out
it really wasn’t gonna go
to plan.
The real trick though, was that you thought it was all going as planned before COVID “changed” everything‒yeah right.
Dear me a year ago,
So I took some time searching for physical evidence of what I was doing, how I was thinking and feeling and who “me a year ago” actually was. Also, when I say a year ago, I mean the beginning of 2020, when I was well on my way to shaping my Div III, entitled Teaching English Through a Photographic Lens, thinking
I knew exactly how it was going to turn out and every small thing I needed to do to accomplish this. This was when I thought I had one of those “Five year plans.” I was going to have this amazing gallery show and graduate after three really hard years of, you guessed it, planned out work, fully optimized to be both financially and timely efficient. I had driven basically my whole life from Minnesota to the east coast in my friend’s car that January because I thought after graduation I was going to move in with my partner into her apartment in Providence and get some sort of teaching job for two years while she finished school. Afterwards, I would go to grad school and she’d follow me there, whether that was in Arizona or Spain, and then after that we would be ready to take on the world together. Of course this plan sounds silly to me now, but I’m not judging.
Anyways, I was looking for evidence…and I didn’t find much. There’s actually a huge gap in my personal journal, from January to May to be exact, and I never usually go that long without writing. I looked through my other notebooks I used for school and my Div III and my planner, and all I really found was notes and to-do lists about my Div, all very objective. I couldn’t find one thing that explained how I felt about all these things I was doing. I guess I was on auto-pilot. I could see the end and how I was getting there and I was just doing. Well, that’s all about to shift.
Dear me a year ago,
It’s funny cause I don’t really have anything
to say to you, “me a year ago,” there’s kind of no point because you’re just gonna be me in a year and you’ll see how things go. But I do have a lot to say to myself now, knowing how I’ve changed.
Life is but a sequence of events. Every action has a reaction, but a reaction is actually just another action that causes another reaction, so what’s the original cause? Nobody really knows; we’re just stuck in life’s cycle.
I don’t mean to sound pessimistic or like we don’t have any control of our lives, because I think we do. But only the ones who want that control and want to make a difference and make “big moves”‒those are the ones who are already destined for that. If you’re thinking it now, you’re gonna make it happen. But you gotta LET GO of everything you think is “not going to plan,” cause it is. Everything is happening for a fucking reason and as soon as you fully embrace that, that is when you become in charge of your own destiny. I don’t know how I’m gonna get there but I know I will if I keep trusting my reactions to actions that keep making more actions and accepting everything as it comes‒EVERYTHING. I mean it. Planning is a reaction, and it can lead to more actions, but you gotta trust that the ultimate plan has already been made. And isn’t it exciting to reveal more of that plan every day? Every day you get to find out more about what life has in store for you or rather, what YOU are making happen for yourself. Like wow. That is just incredible.
So, to dear me a year ago,
I know you are going to be so disappointed when you think “your plan” is foiled, and you’re going to be so mad at the world for making you change it. And that’s okay because you will have needed to feel that way and go through that process (which is still happening by the way) in order to get to where you are now, today, and to continue to get to where you are going.
You’re going to do a lot of letting go and a lot of accepting, but not right away of course. First, you might feel like you wasted your college experience now that so many realities that occurred then aren’t possible or are now toxic or were always toxic but now you’re realizing that. You’re going to feel like you have regrets and wish that you had made some different choices. You’re going to feel scared that you missed out on opportunities because you were in an unhealthy and consuming relationship. You’re going to realize that you compartmentalized who you were in and out of this relationship, which allowed you to still get so much out of your college experience, and for that you’re thankful, yet, this also will make you think that you don’t know yourself because both identities you took on were not fully “you.”
Regardless, eventually you will begin to see that everything needed to happen that way, it couldn’t have happened any other way and there’s no reason you should hold onto anger, shame, sadness, or regret related to wanting to change that. All that does is hurt yourself, so you’re going to work on letting that go and accepting it all. Going to Hampshire was right for you because
you’re here now. You met all the people you needed to because they’re in (or out of) your life now. Everything you’ve done in your life has been “right” because it has already happened and led you to where you are now.
The more I think about this, the happier I feel myself getting, and trust me, you’re not going to be happy for a long time, heck, I’m still working on it. But I’m getting better, and a big reason for that is what I keep repeating: letting go and acceptance. And with that, I am able to look forward. I am able to plan‒I love planning. I am able to make goals. Embracing and taking charge of your own destiny isn’t about feeling discouraged because everything is “going to happen a certain way that you have no control over.” It’s about knowing your power and striving for the things that you want to happen, while knowing it’s okay when something doesn’t happen that way.
Dear me a year ago,
The funniest part of the concept for this letter is I know for a fact that if I was actually able to tell you all this a year ago, you wouldn’t have listened to me at all. You were and still are very stubborn. You will always only be able to “figure it out” on your own accord. You see the truth in what your friends and family have been trying to tell you for years now, but you had to come into seeing that truth on your own. And I think that’s beautiful.
With care,
Me today, because who knows who I’ll be tomorrow.
What We Remember 