In the Bible, Hell is a place of eternal fire. To me, Hell is my freshman year statistics class. I understand that to some people, that is an offensive thing to say, but I didn’t spend four years in the LDS church to be told what I can and can’t say about Hell. Besides, I’m sure most people reading this were not in that statistics class besides me. Actually, there were two statistics classes, because I failed the first semester! To be fair, I wasn’t exactly winning any perfect attendance awards, so I’m giving that class the benefit of the doubt, even though what I was present for still haunts me.

Second semester, however, was a different story. I dragged myself out of bed every Monday and Wednesday at way too early in the morning to get sassed by a middle-aged man who couldn’t teach a rock how to stay in one spot. My professor would begin writing notes on one subject, then switch to another, then go back to the previous subject, then erase everything and keep talking about the second subject, and it was like running a triathalon every morning. At the end of every class, my notes were a series of meaningless, disconnected scrawls.

One day during class, he had just erased the board mid me -and everyone else- writing something down. He muttered something about it not being that important and continued droning on. I was pretty frustrated, so I began doodling in the corner of my notebook. I wanted to draw a bird, but I am artistically challenged, so I just started drawing random shapes that could be mistaken for birds. After a few attempts, the bird that is now plastered all over my website came to life. I drew a speech bubble and wrote something snarky, like “I’m going to drop out of college,” and continued doodling. A few moments later, the girl to my side tapped my shoulder and showed me what she wrote in her notebook. She not only agreed with me about wanting to drop out, but she complimented my bird. I don’t know who she is to this day, but I credit her with starting my obsession with drawing this bird.

Since then, I’ve drawn this bird all over my hoodies, receipt paper, Trader Joe’s paper bags, and now, this website. It was just a bird at first, but people started calling it a chicken. So, I guess it’s a chicken? I just call it Bird Guy though. Whatever it is, it makes me happy and in a weird way, I feel seen whenever I draw it.