By Brooke O’Connell ’14

Prompt: The John Doe University Honors College is not your typical honors college. Here, we encourage students to be curious, open-minded, imaginative, and adventurous. Tell us how these adjectives would work to describe you.

            I am not your typical person.

I am so curious that I counted the licks to the center of a tootsie pop and stood out in a field for days to see if I would be abducted by aliens. I sailed to the Bermuda triangle to see if boats really disappear. I put a tracker on my socks to see where they go when they disappear from the laundry and joined a group of ghost hunters. I climbed into the cages of animals at the zoo to see what it is like to be looked at by people from behind glass. I rented a backhoe and dug up my backyard to see if I could find any artifacts from the civil war and I dressed up as a man to see what it looks like in the men’s bathroom. I stowed away on a NASA space shuttle to look at Earth from space and I followed Captain Jack Sparrow’s path to see if the fountain of youth really exists.

            I am so open-minded that it doesn’t bother me to see two men kissing. I see nothing wrong with an 18 year old dating a 45 year old. I don’t think monogamy is the only way and most illegal drugs should be legal. I am friends with both liberals and conservatives and I wouldn’t judge them for having an STD. I have friends that are super rich and friends that are dirt poor but I think both are just as fun. There isn’t a race I wouldn’t date and I practice every religion. Color jokes don’t bother me and neither does nudity. I think everyone is a little bisexual and I don’t judge anyone on welfare. I would try any type of food, even if it is exotic or strange-smelling. I am open to debating beliefs with anyone at any time and I think there is some merit to astrology, tarot card reading and fortune telling. It is very possible my political views may shift radically at some point and I enjoy and appreciate all types of music.

I am so imaginative that I contemplate the question, “what would you do in a zombie apocalypse?” at least twice a day. I write children’s fantasy stories in my spare time. Every day I play dress-up but I am never the same person twice. I often close my eyes while walking down a busy street and try to picture what is around me. I invent new recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner using only three ingredients and I orient the furniture in my house to my Feng Shui daily. I often contemplate how to defy gravity and film award-winning short films on the weekends. I build forts using every pillow and blanket I can find and model them after classic Roman architecture. I devise plans to get rich when I’m bored and tell bedtime stories that have at least three chapters. Every month I release a new invention that sells for millions and paint a one-of-a-kind mural on the side of a building.

I am so adventurous that I built a raft like Tom Sawyer and floated down a river. I negotiated with Yemen warlords and climbed the Himalayas. I got my pilot license and scuba diving certification in the same day. I have set foot on all seven continents. I have gone heli-skiing in the French Alps and dove with whale sharks off the coast of South Africa. I biked cross-country in the United States… twice. I have ridden elephants in more than two countries and participated in a carnival parade in Brazil. I tangoed in Argentina and scuba-dived the Great Barrier Reef. I have taken a bush plane ride across Africa and crossed a glacier on foot. I have climbed an active volcano in Hawaii and bathed in the Ganges. I spent 24 hours in the jungle… alone. I taught English in a foreign country and shook hands with the Dalai Lama. I have sky-dived and enjoyed a freshly rolled cigar in Cuba…

…but the truth is that I am not and have not done any of this. I am not some superhero created from the human imagination. I am a kid growing up in suburbia from a modest background who needs to sleep, eat and do my homework. Don’t ask me who I am.

Ask me my dreams. Ask me my aspirations. Ask me who I will be.