In tenth grade, I was given an assignment to finish the story The Lady or the Tiger by Frank R. Stockton. For those of you whose memory of the work might be a little hazy — mine certainly was before I decided to reread it for this editorial— the basic premise is that a young man is imprisoned for loving a barbaric king’s daughter. The young man appears in a public trial where he must decide to open one of two doors. Behind one is a beautiful lady. Behind the other is a vicious tiger that will kill the young man. The story ends with the king’s daughter — a princess— glancing toward the door on the right. Her subtle gaze is noticed by her lover and he opens this
I sat in my tenth grade English class—tapping my foot—nervously awaiting the moment I would be asked to read my ending aloud. Up until this point, a few students had done so — telling PG stories of the young man opening the door to find the young lady. The princess was so in love that she wanted the man she desired to be happy. One student wrote about a friendly tiger who decided not to kill the man after all.
Finally, it was my turn. I took a deep breath and described an ending complete with blood, guts, betrayal, and murder. The princess, so overcome with grief at not being able to marry her true love, sent him to the tiger. Then she killed her father for forcing her to make this choice. She lived happily ever after as the ruler of the kingdom.
When I finally looked up from my sheet of paper, I saw looks of horror, shock, and disgust on the faces of my classmates. They weren’t quite ready for all the gore. It was in this moment that I realized my words had incredible power and also that most tenth graders don’t understand the intricacies of true love.
In some ways, I’ve spent the last four years — three years at Conn (fun fact: I’m a transfer!) — running away from my identity as a writer. I declared as an International Relations major, tried to learn Spanish, and pretended that I would work for the foreign service or become a lawyer. But instead here I am as a senior, writing religiously for The College Voice, taking English classes for fun, and attending NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute in June.
Though our futures are as uncertain as the ending of The Lady and the Tiger, I think that with a little luck and a lot of support we end up where we’re supposed to be. Tenth grade was the first time that I felt proud of my writing, but fortunately for my self-esteem, it wasn’t the last.
Writing for this newspaper has given me the courage to interview people I would normally be too shy to talk to. It has given me a platform to write creatively. It has opened up a space for me to inform the Conn community about our environmental initiatives and connections with New London.
There have been bad poems, scrapped articles, late nights, blank screens, and fair amounts of critique along the way, but I’m here now. I have an answer to the dreaded question: What are you doing with your life?
Writing doesn’t always come easy to me, but it is what I’m supposed to do. Without this paper and the people who run it, I probably still would have figured this out. But it might have been ten years down the road, while reading the New York Times on a flight or preparing court notes.
