Being a general biology major at my home institution of Saint Xavier University, I have been taught that even the smallest molecule within our own bodies can cause an instantaneous reaction; a grand statement so minute that it can affect a human’s entire way of being by either improving one’s life, or, by being the factor that leads to one’s ultimate demise.
The immense tapestries of stories that I have absorbed from words themselves, be it through novels, poetry, nonfiction titles, newspapers, or simple, handwritten letters from loved ones, all imprint in me the same idea of sudden, yet vital chemical reactions that biology has instilled in my mind.
Whether it be the euphoric high of two characters falling for each other romantically without realizing it, or the equally low depths that a true loss of love can evoke within a character, their passionate modes of speech shine through my eyes and ring through my ears as I live my own life, shaped by the deep convictions held by their authors who were experts at examining and notating the human experience of emotionally intersecting reactions.
As a little girl who was homeschooled for much of my elementary school years, I wasn’t much of a functioning conversationalist to anyone who wasn’t in my immediate family. Making friends was especially difficult, not because of the lack of kids my age that lived in my neighborhood, but rather, because of my own inability to express and synthesize the jumbled letters and phrases that were escalating in my mouth, waiting to be exhaled into the air around me.
My dad, noticing this, gave me an extra homework assignment after putting my brothers to bed one night. He gave me three sheets of blank printer paper and an almost out of ink Bic pen, then said, “Write to me about your life so far. What is it like to be a six year old in those pink shoes and polka dot shirts you love to wear everyday?”
This was a true challenge to someone who was as undescriptive as I was. I closed my eyes and began to imagine the ordinary life that surrounded me. I could see the sturdy maple tree that my grandma had planted swaying in the sweet, Chicago breeze. I could smell the stinging aromas of vinegar and soy sauce from the chicken adobo my grandma was cooking upstairs. I could feel the television in the living room burn my face with the bright glow of its moving pictures. That was when I opened my eyes, and began to write.
This first ecstatic moment of allowing myself to experience the immersive power that words could have over me is still conveyed through the syllables I examine during my current time in college, where I serve as a writing consultant on academic papers for the student population. Whoever walks through the doors of my workplace, be it a senior who needs assistance framing a research thesis about how first generation American minorities experience generational clashes with their foreign-born parents about mental health, or, having an impromptu discussion with freshmen about the intersections between religion and taking social action in the pursuit of diversity, each peer that I meet with challenges me to change my own perceptions of the knowledge I do have, as well as the knowledge I have yet to obtain through an education based on a continuously changing conversation between myself and the vast world around me.
The two tutorials that I wish to study at the University of Oxford, the English Novels and Poetry, as well as Politics and the Media, would be a vital part of my self-education of further understanding the vast reactions the written and spoken word can have on the human mind, soul, and experience, and, as a future physician, instruct me in the most vital ways of how to care for another human being through an understanding of how people, both fictitious or living presently within their own flesh and bone, can have moments of gain and loss that may cause our paths as individuals to cross. It is through these conversations, both written and spoken, with loved ones, complete strangers, and within myself, that I hope to remain a student, both for the rest of my life, and for a term at the University of Oxford.
By Emilia Ramos