The Raab Writing Fellows Journal

In this collection of personal narratives, Main Character Syndrome sets out to shift a traditional approach to personal narrative storytelling by considering events from perspectives and points of view other than my own. The collection offers essays that chronicle experiences from my life detailing relationships with my family as a child growing up in Orange County, CA; my experiences in community college, navigating life as a “stay-at-home daughter”; and lastly, adjusting to a four-year university environment where I grappled with the inevitable changes to my identity. Retelling my personal experiences through perspectives other than my own allows for introspection and making peace with past situations that have felt unresolved or ambiguous. Through revisiting events from perspectives and points of view other than my own, the narratives offer insights into empathy, forgiveness, and the complexities of identity. Practicing empathy, a true understanding of another’s feelings, even when they don’t align with our own, ultimately grants freedom and a healthy detachment from past experiences. This project creates space to see myself from an outside perspective, which allows me to give myself the same compassion I am giving to others by retelling these stories through their eyes. Playing with perspective challenges the audience to consider their own daily interactions, stories, and moments in life where hopefully they too can pause, detach, and forgive. Main Character Syndrome explores the notions that truth is a subjective concept, forgiveness is the first step towards freedom, and that identity is consistently transient.

Understanding Why We Spin is an ethnographic exploration of the art of disc jockeying, the many types of DJs, and the historical and technological changes to the art form. The art of music curation and demonstration has taken many forms over the past decades from being a strictly radio hobby, to “scratching,” to now being a day-to-night job for any age and gender. In my project, I will be interviewing the Santa Barbara DJing scene to understand the DJs’ inspirations, experiences, and most importantly, their desire to choose a passion that can come with immense pressure and vulnerability because when curating music, a DJ is displaying the way their brain hears and values music on a silver platter for everyone to enjoy. While understanding the art of being a DJ, I will also highlight the marginalized groups who lead the way for acceptance in the music sphere and allow the art of music curation to be an accepting space, and what that means for us music lovers.

CTRL: A Critical Examination of the Wellness Industry is a research project that studies how the commodification of well-being has negatively impacted 21st-century American society. The Wellness industry, a multi-trillion-dollar entity with sectors ranging from beauty and weight-loss to mental wellness and wellness tourism, has co-opted concepts of self-care, monetized them, and turned massive profits. The success of the industry hinges on the idea that self-optimization—calculated critique and individualized improvement—is the same as self-care, yet it is that same notion that ultimately undermines the prospect of commercialized wellness fostering true well-being. By examining the history, evolution, and consequences of the industry’s growing cultural relevance, I intend to shed light on the darker potentials of an industry that is perceived as a virtuous force promising comfort, care, and control in volatile contemporary times.

This project aimed to examine social media habits and perceptions of three distinct generations: Generation X (born 1965-1979), Generation Y (also known as ‘Millennials’) (born 1980-1994), and Generation Z (born 1995-2009). The starting premise for the project was that three different generations would have three distinct experiences and perceptions of social media depending on the social platforms they were initially introduced to and those they currently use. I used open-ended questions and conversations to prompt the interviewees and delve into their social media experiences, usage, and stories. Despite similar cross-generational reasons for selecting and using specific social media apps and platforms, in the end, Instagram remained a consistent, albeit conflicting, platform throughout all the interviews and not without reason. Self-perception, media literacy, and child safety were issues that ranked high for all interviewees, regardless of their generation. More specifically, this project highlights the interviewees’ concerns surrounding bias, specifically the “Third Person Effect,” or an intense desire for education regarding the use of social media and its effects on children, younger generations, and the neurodivergent due to privacy and misinformation concerns.

Pure silence is not simply the absence of sound. It is the piercing memory of it, a raging void that howls with mimicries. Even when I cannot hear, my world is never fully quiet. “In the Absence of Sound” is a collection of creative short stories, poems, vignettes, and images centered around my experiences as a deaf individual with cochlear implants. My hearing is dependent on technology, but not even the most cutting-edge scientific advances can replace natural sound. I have lived my life not quite hearing the entire conversation, relying on lipreading and other aids to compensate where my hearing falls short. Through this project, I explored and reflected on the struggle of being surrounded by conversation, while comprehension is just out of reach. It can be lonely to be caught between the hearing and deaf worlds, even as they cut and bleed into one another. But the hard-of-hearing community is vast, and more often I find myself encountering others with similar experiences. With the support and understanding of my friends and family, I appreciate my hearing more every day. Sounds that were once artificial and tinny are now beautiful melodies. I hope this project is a glimpse into the deaf experience.

How do you survive in college? When I arrived at UC Santa Barbara as an undergraduate student, there were a couple of orientations and information sessions on various resources, but no one to actually guide me through the process. As a result, I had to rely on myself to learn how to juggle all of my responsibilities as well as cope with stress from various other sources. I’m still searching for the answers as I get closer to graduation. However, I want to help those who follow me by offering something I never received – clear and flexible guidance. The College Survival Guide will revisit my unique experience as an international student, who came to the University of California, Santa Barbara at 17 to start the next phase of my life. By looking back on my experiences as an international student, I plan to create a guide that invites the reader to explore who they are and what choices they might make as a reflection of my own lived experience surviving and thriving at university. My message to you is this: stress is like our own shadow – we neglect it while it is part of ourselves – instead, let’s embrace it and reconcile with it. If you are a new student at UCSB, then this guide is meant to help you navigate through the challenges of college life.

Swallow is a collection of three fictional short stories that follow several Asian American women at different stages of their lives. The stories pay homage to the complicated feelings defining the experiences of Asian American womanhood. From dating struggles to unexpected career paths, these women grapple with gendered and racialized expectations in their quest for authenticity. Informed by both my own experiences and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, my project examines the intersections of gender and race and how they play out, both subtly and dramatically, in the everyday lives of Asian American women. Although their stories differ, the characters in Swallow deftly clean up the debris of historical stereotypes while working to redefine modern ideological constraints. Despite navigating feelings of dissonance in their bodies, they eagerly embrace the hope that change promises. Swallow offers stories about living between cultural, gender, and racial stereotypes and about what it means to be liberated even in the face of the absurd.