McCandless Project

McCandless Project

For my experiment, I curled my hair with and I went through Monday and Tuesday with my hair curly. Usually I wouldn’t do anything to my hair except blow dry it straight, which is how it normally looks. The reactions I received were mostly nice compliments, and some people asked me questions like how long it took to style my hair. Some people didn’t notice my hair on Monday, but they did on Tuesday or vice versa. Overall nothing really out of the ordinary was said about my hair. During the experiment, I felt as if everyone I walked past was looking at me because my hair looked different, but that was just me just being paranoid since I’ve never curled my hair just for school before. Since I’m not one to dress up for school unless I absolutely have to, I did feel awkward having it all fancy so I decided to wear a nicer top than I usually would. Honestly the responses I saw weren’t terribly surprising, although one person complimented my shirt but didn’t take notice to my hair at all. I found it funny because the shirt wasn’t part of the experiment but apparently it was untypical enough for me to be wearing it to get comments. Am I free not to conform? I think everyone is, but some people are just too scared to be so different. I on the other hand feel like I’m free not to conform because I was actually excited about doing something different. I wouldn’t do anything super life-changing like becoming a vagrant, but the right changes are healthy and everyone needs it in order to experience new things. But I definitely would not take nonconformity as far as Chris McCandless did.

Quote

The quote I chose was, "Reality is a prison, imagination is the only way out." I chose it because I like the way it's written, so simply put it sounds almost poetic. I think it applies to a lot of people whether they realize it or not, since it's important to be creative and have your mind run its course when you're feeling stressed or unhappy. This quote represents me because often times I just need an escape from reality, and my outlet is drawing. With drawing I can put anything down on paper, letting my imagination run wild especially when my real life is making me feel down in the dumps. I believe that in order to remain poised in life, we must have something we can do that has absolutely no boundaries. To achieve this we can imagine anything within our grasp. If I lived every moment based on that quote, I feel like I'd make some irrational decisions because if reality is a prison, then it must also discipline us. And reality keeps us anchored to our morals, so if I did everything based on my imagination, my life would spiral out of control since I wouldn't really think of consequences to some bad decisions.