06 May 2012

{Guest Post} By Ben Neal

As Free As My Hair: My college experience and personal formation as told through my hair.

Hello!  My name is Ben and I have known the beautiful Katie since freshman year.  So when I received a message from her asking if I wanted to write a blog my instant reaction was HELL YEAH.  Since I am senior this year at SU with Katie and I have an abnormal love for reminiscing, I kept coming back to the idea of reflecting on my college experience and the many transitions I have gone through.  Now you may be thinking that relating this to my hair is super dumb or really vain but I think hair can liberating and has allowed me to externalize emotions or internal feelings about my life at the point.  Through this post, I hope you get to know something about who I am and how, at some level, I have let my hair reflect where I am at in my life.

The starting point:  High school

When I got to high school, I had grown my hair out and it is what we now call “the swoop.”  I had the original Justin Beiber haircut and will probably have neck problems later in my life for flipping my hair so much.  People knew me by my hair and people liked it.  Above all though, I liked it.  But I think at the core of who I was at that point was trying to “fit in”. Even though I had so much fun in high school, I definitely was trying to just fit in.  Not make any waves.  Just get by.  The swoop was safe (and warm since I have really thick hair).  I had the swoop for most of high school and any haircut I got was either a variation of the swoop or ended up returning to what the swoop originally was.

Picture 1.  The “swoop.”  And yes.  I am wearing a Panic! At the Disco shirt.

Picture 2.  Sophomore year swoop.  I’m so athletic.

The only times I had to drastically change my hair was when I had to cut it for the plays I was in.  I was usually REALLY defiant to cutting my hair. One defining moment in my mind though was when I was cast as Jack in the musical “Into the Woods.”  My director specifically had a meeting with me to tell me I needed to cut it short and dye it red (more carrot orange).  I think that she was expecting some serious backlash because when I instantly responded with “Yes.  Totally” she was surprised.  I was ready for a change and short red hair was definitely a change for me.  My first taste of something truly different was not long lived as the swoop came back by the start of freshman year.  The summer before freshman year was a weird summer for me and the swoop came back as something comforting and stable.  I did grow a beard though as college was a time to reinvent myself in a way and start becoming more “mature.”

Picture 3.  Me as Jack singing the ridiculous song “Giants in the sky.”  Fun fact:  I have that scarf and still wear it sometimes…embarrassing?  Probably.

Freshman Year

Freshman year was a crazy one.  A lot happened and it began with the swoop and a beard.  The facial hair has been around ever since  (mostly due to my laziness and distaste for shaving).  But the swoop had been around for so long that I couldn’t take it anymore.  I needed something else.  I was in a weird place in my life and was questioning a lot.  As much as I wanted stability, I could not find it.  The summer before consisted of some drama in terms of relationships with people and more had been following me to college than I had wanted.  So over winter break, on a whim, I asked my dad to give me a buzz cut and metaphorically free me.

Picture 4.  In my residence hall room doing homework…or playing Neopets.  One of the two.  I haven’t checked them since…so they are probably pretty hungry.

Picture 5.  My sister and I making gingerbread houses during winter break.  Also visible:  my widow’s peak.

Sophomore Year

Sophomore year’s motto was “being a sophomore” which meant to just to have fun and not worry about things.  It was our Seattle University version of Hakuna Matata.  I don’t want to say my hair was boring but it wasn’t anything too special.  By sophomore year I had come to terms with my sexuality and through my experiences on retreats and leadership activities, I had truly started to become comfortable with who I was.  I felt supported by the group of people I had surrounded myself with and was in a really good place.  So throughout sophomore year I was growing my hair back from the buzz (which I had done again in the summer) and had a period of ease in my life.

Picture 6.  Halloween of sophomore year.  I was a vampire and my friend Kate was a robot programmed to love.

Picture 7.  End of sophomore year on our way to Sasquatch.  Me and one of my best friends Maggie.

Junior Year

The one word that comes to mind when I think of Junior year is “busy.”  I had a lot going on and my days usually lasted from very early to very late.  I don’t remember sleeping very much last year.  My hair was a little longer and I had made a jump and actually started using hair product.  My hair usually was in a hat though because I usually didn’t have time to fix my hair every day.  I like to make hats and have quite the collection now.  I spent a lot of time with the same group of people during junior year because we were on a committee that helped plan retreats.  Wearing a hat really encompassed my thoughts because I was focused on everything that I had to do in my life and could always just throw on a hat.

Picture 8.  Some of the core people I surrounded myself with as we dance on one of the retreats.

Picture 9.  Hatz.  And dancing.  Pretty much my junior year in a nutshell.

Senior Year

Now we are here.  Senior year.  Crazy.  Almost ready to graduate and I am trying to determine what my next step is.  Looking to the future, I started to grow my hair.  The goal: ponytail.  Since my focus was the future, my hair reflected an “end product.”  I did accomplish a little baby bun but after spring break, I couldn’t take it anymore.  What I realized was that I wanted the long hair since I had never had it before but I complained about the process the whole time.  I wanted to be at the destination without taking the journey which is so contradictory to everything I had learned in college.  We have to stop and truly live in the moment because it’ll soon pass.  We should still live with goals or dreams, but we have to also love the journey there.  I didn’t enjoy growing my hair out and needed to cut it off.  I was doing it for the wrong reason.  Since I am graduating in June, I need to have a goal like graduate school or a job but I also can’t be only focused on what is to come.  I have to enjoy the time left I have in college and love the people around me because if I don’t, I will look back and see the chances I missed to share a laugh with someone or do something crazy or truly feel alive.  So I went to Rudy’s Barbershop to get the hair out of my eyes, start the quarter with something new and remember who I really am.  And wherever my hair goes next, it is ready for what is to come.

Picture 10.  My long hair and I on the beach.  Days before I cut it off.

Picture 11.  My  hair now.  Ready for what is next.

 I am so proud to introduce  to you all my dear friend Ben Neal. Ben is the dreamiest of all dreamboats. As he mentioned before, him and I have known each other since freshmen year through our involvement with campus activities and since then we have discovered shared interests in dancing, laughing, and Zac Efron. Ben has a kind and gentle soul and though I run into him sporadically on campus while he is giving tours, I really do have so much love for this guy. He’s pretty much the “face” of Seattle University. It was interesting to see how both him and Ashley  wrote about the end of their college years in two different ways with Ben using his reflection on personal hair styles to resemble his growth.