Who am I? 1

One of the high schools I attended required incoming freshpersons to write a paper titled "Who am I?"  These papers were fairly big deals for the kids, and a source of much stress.  Every year, there were rumors of kids trying to photocopy their student I.D. cards and turn them as a clever meta-essay, but none of these rumors were ever confirmed by me.*

These papers were then read by the student at the end of their four years at the school.  I guess the goal was a forced existential examination, but given the vast gulf between the person I was in my senior year of high school and the person I was in the fall of my first year of college, I can't imagine that this would have been particularly fruitful for the students. 

Since I started attending this school with my sophomore year, I did not write one of these papers.  I have plenty of written paragraphs that can only really be described as journal entries from the last fourteen years, a great many of which are thoroughly public as blog posts.  Leafing through them traces a character arc that I doubt is unique among the lives of American consumers aged 18-35.  Looking back at my various journals, paper or digital, is a great way to remind myself that while I may be unemployed, at least I am not as much of a chundernozzle as I used to be. 

Who am I?:  I make two u-turns and hold up traffic on a one lane road to move a turtle off that road.

* I never cared enough to even begin the process of asking my advisor about the grading process for these papers.