Class Notes Become a Love Note

Markiesha is taking organizational behavior class. An assignment asked that she know herself as a way to understand how she worked with others on team projects. She found poetry in her note to self.

The Most Dangerous Question…
By Markiesha “Patrice” Ollison SMG ’14

The most dangerous question I have ever asked myself is, “Markiesha, who are you?”
But really like who are you?
Sometimes it’s as if I don’t recognize all of who I am anymore.
My potential is growing exponentially and not even half of me fits in the mirror anymore.
My ideas extend beyond my head so much that when I entered the room they had to open both doors for me to step through.
But this isn’t a poem about my ego or my infinite self-confidence,
No this is about how people won’t accomplish this receive this gift of self-exploration, and I won’t make my this a declaration about free education, because we all know that knowledge is free, so what we pay for instead is security,
See I’m paying for my identity.
The possibility of understanding who I am and what I stand for
The young woman who walked through that door
Started college three years ago unsure of who she could become,
Who she would become,
Who she is.
But she had hopes and aspirations
Had planned to become proficient in the broken language of education
Just like so many others she had grand ideas of how to unite a divided nation
Because she was tired of being the only that one students looked at when her teachers would talk about segregation
While this vision hasn’t vanished, it’s been moved to a distant location, but not forgotten because this young women has ignited a new motivation discovered her passion for fashion.
She can style circles around all men who swear they are Christian Dior meets Godsend that’s my confidence talking again,

Her dreams are more creative than Walt Disney’s imagination
She’s in the business of making her dreams work
Not working to make her dreams come true
There’s a difference between those two
Only a few can understand it.
I didn’t come to college to pave roads that might lead me to my destination
Or a location where I could be content, no.
I came here to reinvent, to innovate, to design the best version of myself
and wear it as a uniform as I draw up the blueprint of where I know all roads point to.
I am the dream,
This the truth.
And so the only answer I have ever been able to draw up is Markiesha