To Walk Between Worlds

This project is an unfinished exploration into my experience as a woman in engineering while studying here at WWU. While there were many good moments with my peers, there are also plenty of occasions where the things I heard or saw left deep wounds in my heart. Many of these moments I struggled to properly recollect, in which they become this sort of fantasy story or are just left as notes in brackets of things I meant to finish writing out, but never could fully bring myself to. This project is split into several main sections, with smaller chapters under each. These sections start with the Sky Dragons, which is the taking off point for myself as I tried to fly free from the nest of my home life and was meant to more fully explore why I wanted to become an engineer in the first place. After that, we have the Stone Dragons, which is where I was seeking community among my peers. The Water Dragon chapters explore my feelings as I am tossed through a tumultuous year, and how little control I had over what was happening. These chapters also include song lyrics for some of my favorite songs, ones that apply well to the situation I was in, and also ones that came up while I was writing this project out. I was going to annotate the song lyrics to better discuss some of my points that I felt went unfinished in the various essays of this work, or parts of the story that don't fall cleanly within any of the other narratives, but ran out of time so its just the lyrics for now. The Fairy Dragon chapters were about finding a new community of people who only seek to uplift me and each other, and then contrasting that experience with what was happening during the Stone Dragon chapters. Finally, there are the Forest Dragon chapters, which were meant to signify how I came into my own power, and where I'm going after this. I consider this project to be extremely incomplete compared to the story I actually want to tell, and the quality of writing I think it deserves, but this will have to be something I revisit later on. I really wanted to focus on the artwork I was producing alongside this writing piece, and I did still have to finish my engineering degree, so there just wasn't the time I was hoping for. But with what is here, I hope you as readers can find some enjoyment amongst the horror.