A Rejected Scholarship Application

by Will St. Pierre

Applications to be no more than 2 pages long, double-spaced. They should be formal and easy to read. The tone is to be familiar, yet professional. Applicants are to write poignantly and relatably about themselves for an audience that is most likely made up of people who can relate to a very small set of experiences, namely wealthy white cisgender ones, and have not been forced to develop empathy. Applicants are to express a sincere interest in and passion for The Advancement of Education in Your State. Please address the following questions:

What is your gender?

Well, it’s hard to explain. I am not a woman, and I usually tell people that I am a trans* man. I don’t feel like masculinity resonates with me, or gives a particular insight into the way I relate to the world. I haven’t found a very satisfying way to express my gender outside of the binary, so I often describe it as a vector: trans-masculine, a sort of direction without an endpoint. A direction, of course, along an over-simplified spectrum, but it reflects some of my indeterminacy: I know more about what I’m escaping from than where I’m going. I guess the main point is that I really haven’t taken ownership over a gender yet, but I hope to develop some clearer ideas with more exploration and experimentation.

What is a hardship you’ve overcome?

Having menstrual cycles. They’re really terrible, I don’t think people talk enough about how terrible they are. I used to get bad cramps and not be able to eat much, and I pretty consistently missed school a couple days every month. The dysphoria that came with them was also pretty debilitating, and sometimes I ended up in a place of self-destructing or just kind of suffering for a long time after the heavy bleeding was over. And the birth control really just made everything worse, terrible headaches and all. I had to learn to talk about them, because I was missing class because of major pain and dizziness when I first started that medication but one of my classes had a really strict attendance policy and was unskippable. I went even when I was suffering from extreme mood changes and having a lot of trouble eating. I was too ashamed to actually talk to my professor, and I’ve had to learn since that it’s ok to say things like that, even without a doctor’s note or a diagnosis.

Talk about an individual in your life who’s been key to your success so far.

My entire chosen family. I’ve encountered a lot of peers at my university who share experiences of marginalization, and I’m inspired a lot by how glad I am to walk into classrooms and see them. There are a couple people in my life who I’m not ‘directly related’ to, but I refer to them anyways as ‘family’ or even specifically have adopted as a parental or sibling-like figure. I have a sort of rough relationship with my recognized biological family. Really, I remain very critical of the role family structure has in our society of upholding patriarchy, heteronormativity, and racialized, colonial, and generally capitalist norms of ‘proper’ relationships in the private as opposed to public sphere. But I still appreciate the level of investment these people have shown in my life by describing themselves as tied to me that way.

What are your plans for after graduation?

In my undergraduate degree I’ve encountered a lot of really terrible professors who have been major barriers to my learning. To some extent, my plans after graduation are to be not that. In a more concrete sense, I want to study in an academic field which is invested in talking about the needs and creativeness of people like me. I’m interested in pedagogy and using power as an author, academic, and human to name and resist harmful systems, starting with my own experience.

Do you affirm that these are true and honest answers?

            As true as I can possibly write them.

About the Author

Will St. Pierre (will.stp.me@gmail.com) is a Junior at the University of Washington. He is a gender-fuzzy trans-masculine queer, and glad to have this opportunity to write in a way that reflects that. While he is majoring in English and Physics, he has interests in Astronomy, Gender Studies, History, Education, Theater, and Creative Writing. He is currently finding his voice in a variety of extracurricular writing, acting, film criticism, and role-playing projects. Will's other hobbies include wearing blue flannel, reading science fiction, taking walks, losing things, taking even longer walks to find lost things, and being too gay for directions anyways.