I hate small talk. My voice gets unnaturally high, I suddenly forget everything interesting about myself and I anguish over whether or not to risk a joke. Unfortunately, my immediate future is full of it. As one alum succinctly put it, the first semester of college is an endless cycle of “name, major and where you’re from,” but at least I can respond with “the Weather App city.”

It’s ironic that, after four years of high school, I’m still exactly where I started when it comes to small talk. Between writing columns and investing more in fashion, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to define myself in increasingly specific ways. Now, I’m about to restart in a new setting, with no established expectations for how I’m supposed to act or what I’m supposed to say. What’s the first thing people should know about me? Should I practice the art of saying “Let’s go around and introduce our pronouns”?

Defining myself to others used to feel more straightforward. I’ve always been the “writing kid,” a title that originated with an unrecognizable version of me. I picture myself looking back on a long road filled with stills of my life — scribbling in my Claire’s diary, typing up my first poem, leaving comment after comment on my old work just to convince myself that I’d changed. Like the centerline, writing runs through all of it. 

But as my confidence developed, so did my fragility. Writing was my “thing,” but it was also the extent of my relevance. Coming into high school, I was terminally insecure, convinced that if I didn’t maintain my reputation, I’d become obsolete and a betrayal to my potential. I was terrified of other shapeless demons as well — having to lock in and study for exams or tripping and falling down MVHS’ many flights of stairs. High school was an intangible test of my willingness to take the plunge, and of my writing habit to continually cushion those falls. I was convinced I’d crash and burn.

At the same time, writing’s continual role in my life has shown me how much I’ve grown around it. I’ve ditched the overwroughtness of my first “Why I Write” essay in favor of hard-won conversationalism. Journaling helped me address the Gender Question at a time when I didn’t feel like I had anyone to turn to. But the biggest difference is that I’m excited, not intimidated, by my future as a writer. While visiting an advanced poetry course, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that that was the kind of intellectual environment I wanted to be in. Regardless of my proficiency right now, I won’t back down from the challenge of ending up there eventually.

I still grapple with a lot of those writerly crises that I mistakenly thought would define me. After months of procrastinating on my college essays, a friend remarked that I was often paralyzed by the idea of writing one because I didn’t think anything I wrote could be a culmination of everything I was. I still don’t think I can, though I’ve tried, and this column is another version of that. At this juncture — the end of high school, which feels like it should be a definitive boundary — I’ve realized that there never will be a complete culmination of who I am in one condensed essay. After all, that would mean peaking when I still have so much more to learn.

While I can appreciate how far I’ve come, I can’t grow complacent in my cycle of passive reflecting. Toni Morrison famously advised her creative writing class at Princeton that “I don’t want to hear about your little life.” The irony isn’t lost on me, though as I leave the Bay Area bubble, I’ve been aspiring more to this standard — not to rely on writing as an egotistical crutch, but to articulate topics beyond myself and expand past the comfort of self-centered rehashing. Though my little life has gotten me this far, I need to push my skills further, so that my work — and my impact — can create a life of its own. 

So I’ll bear the temporary awkwardness of small talk if it means being able to connect with someone on that next leg of my journey. In the meantime, I’ve started a brief Notes document of quaint fun facts in case I ever need a refresher. Though I know I’ll continue to write, I hope I’ll be just as unrecognizable four years in the future as I am now to my past self. Sometimes, I imagine how I would introduce myself to that version of me (is now a good time for the pronoun circle?). There are a million things I could explain — how to believe in my abilities more, how to layer clothing, how to cherish the priceless moments ahead — but one thing remains consistent: I know she would be proud of me.