Losing My Self in I.S.

by Amanda Phillips ’05

I’d like to say that my yearlong Independent Study on women’s coming-of-age stories enriched my sense of self. I’m still working on that. I did learn — despite all the time I spent avoiding the big questions by working Microsoft Thesaurus — that I could complete a project of this scale.

Name: Amanda Phillips
Major: English
I.S. Title: Writing in the Margins: Formulations of Self in Three Autobiographical (Re)Creations of American Girlhood
Advisor: Joanne Frye

As an English major, I had free rein over potential Independent Study topics. I love the fact that in a discipline — English — that sounds so conventional, we’re very much encouraged to explore whatever path we see fit. In my small group of English cronies, one friend opted to write a memoir about her sisters, one wrote and acted in her own one-woman play, another wrote about mother-daughter relationships, one analyzed films as cause for social deviance, and another analyzed landscape as a catalyst for American identity.

Almost immediately, I knew that I wanted to focus my I.S. on women’s coming-of-age stories. I wanted — if possible — to use personal experience to highlight whatever insights were to follow. And I knew that I wanted my finished project to be a bold affront to established conventions (precisely what conventions would remain to be seen). I was going through a rebellious stage; I wanted to produce something spectacular.

My decision to write about women’s autobiography — specifically, autobiographical recreations of American girlhoods — demanded that I take on the multileveled task of considering autobiographical theory, three texts chosen for the project, and my own childhood, writing, and self. That, and a whole slew of social contexts and identity issues —gender, racial, socioeconomic, and national identity, as well as the persistent but often problematic idea of a fixed, coherent selfhood.

“It’s very complicated,” I can recall saying, myriad times, to friends and family members at parties, over Thanksgiving dinner, and at the Dragon, my favorite hometown bar. “I’m using three texts — An American Childhood [Annie Dillard], Bone Black [bell hooks], and The Woman Warrior [Maxine Hong Kingston] — and I’m looking at the way all these different factors influence the growing up process and the formation of a female self. Oh and I might use personal narrative you know, incorporate my own experiences because this is about autobiography.”

For the most part, these rambling explanations were met with smiles, nods, occasional yawns, and a few polite questions. “When is this due?” “Whose autobiographies did you say you were using?” At one point, over Christmas break and a poorly mixed martini, a high school acquaintance, an unsavory character known as Zeb, asked innocently enough, “So, uh, how long does this thing have to be?” “Oh,” I responded, feeling very important, “mine will be at least eighty pages.” “Damn,” said Zeb, “That’s nothing if you have a whole year. Write a page a day and you’ll be set.”

A page a day. I considered it. I also considered writing the whole thing over spring break. In the end, I paced myself well enough, in terms of the writing. Ten pages here, another five there. What I did not factor in, however, were the countless minutes and hours I would spend thinking about it, obsessing over it. The obsession took various forms. Some days, only the grade mattered. These days were bearable. If I do not get the grade I want, I told myself, I will be miserable. But I’ll get over it. I would then proceed to calm myself by highlighting the entire Word document and changing its font from Times New Roman to Courier New or Algerian. The page number would increase three-fold — as did, I convinced myself, my propensity to successfully complete such a daunting project. My favorite font was Old English Text. It was so grandiose, so purposeful. I pretended I was writing the Magna Carta.

On other, more complicated, nasty days, I worked myself into a frenzy over the intricacies of the project itself. I spent evenings in front of my computer, compulsively typing two or three words and deleting them. I would fret for what seemed like hours over a single adjective. Microsoft Word’s Thesaurus, as I’m sure a lot of you know, is helpful only to a point. Never mind my lack of a thesis, my lack of a single completed chapter! I needed another word for formulation. Thesaurus says: No suggestion. Another word for self? identity? Thesaurus says: individuality, distinctiveness, uniqueness. No, No, NO.

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