Read this, and you’ll be impressed at how put together I am. Oh yes, and “This,” was written in fall 2006, an exercise in my creative nonfiction workshop. I believe it went something like this: “Write one true contributor’s note, and one false.” I’ll let you guess which this is! 
(Apologies for it being in one huge block of text. But I thought I should keep it true to its original form.)
Alyssa Martino was born and raised in Massachusetts. She attended Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, where she often had a great deal of difficulty making up her mind. “Soon, you will have to make some very challenging choices,” her parents warned before orientation. However, Martino preferred to ignore the decisions at hand. For instance, she had always been told that she must eventually pick a major. Yet somehow, even by senior year, she remained concentration-less. Instead, she took courses from every department, whichever she felt necessary. She slyly told professors that she was a (fill in the blank) major in order to get into their upper-level seminars. Also, she brushed up on her knowledge of various subjects during her free time so that she could spout out endless random facts. No one else knew the exact longitude and latitude coordinates of Transylvania (she once took a geography class). Few others also had memorized every date and place associated with World War I (she weaseled her way into a few history courses, too). Additionally, Martino refused to pick her roommate and fill out a housing form. Instead, she lived in the Edge Café, sleeping on tables and storing her clothes in boxes carefully disguised by their labels. While her socks were hidden in cottage cheese containers, she reserved dressier attire for larger boxes that supposedly housed granola. The chefs soon came to realize her trickery, but felt quite sympathetic towards her, unanimously agreeing to turn their heads. Later, her habitation here turned out to be fairly beneficial, as Martino was soon able to prompt one custodian to pick out her outfit every morning. Martino also never decided whether or not to go abroad. Instead, she braved the cold winters of Hamilton for four straight years, which she soon found to be a major problem during junior and senior year when she moved into a study cell in Case Library, the only building on campus which lacks a proper heating system (despite its recent construction). Come senior year, Martino blatantly disregarded the non-stop inquiries about her plans for after graduation. As a matter of fact, she was still silently wondering whether or not they’d let her graduate in absence of a major! President Chopp miraculously agreed to let Martino leave, exclaiming, “If we don’t get rid of this young lady right now, we may never do so!” After graduation, Martino was still at a loss for what to do and where to go, and thus, she didn’t. Unbeknownst to anyone, she remained at Colgate, lingering in discreet corners and sometimes sneaking up on students in Cooley Science Library and offering to write their essays for Professor Brice’s workshop. Through strange circumstances and her spite for decisions, Martino ironically chose to remain at Colgate forever: still without major, still without room, and still indisputably indecisive.
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I invite everyone to try this fun prompt, and submit the results in the comments section, if you’d like!
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