Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/7/2010

6 Word Memoir

One of my favorite things about the FBomb is the pure story-telling that goes on here. I mean, I love writing my own rambling rants about my thoughts on feminism, but I think the coolest thing about our community, and the far-spread reach of the internet, is the ability to learn from each other. Hearing other people’s stories is how we grow.

My friend (specifically my friend’s mom, but I’ll go ahead and give both of them the credit) showed me this website – SMITHteens.

SMITHteen is the “younger cousin” of SMITH Magazine, which “celebrates the joy of passionate, personal storytelling.” Both magazines are “homes for storytelling of all forms, with a focus on personal narrative.” Most notably, though, they are the creators of the Six-Word Memoir Project – which is just what it sounds like: your life/day/minute in 6 words.

Here are their values, which I think are pretty honorable:

• We believe everyone has a story, and everyone should have a place to tell it.
• We believe storytelling gets more interesting, surprising and fun and when you experiment and play with its many form, from putting the experiences of pregnant women on pickle jars to making nonfiction webcomics about Hurricane Katrina.
• We think it is an amazing time for media makers, one in which content is often bottom up rather than top down, aspirational, populist, forward thinking, and most of all, participatory.
• We have created SMITH as both a place for professional and never-before-published writers, artists, and photographers, bound together by a passion for storytelling.
• We believe the storytelling playing field should be a level one.
• We believe in making and encouraging better media, not simply more media.

So this is my challenge to all of you: share your six word memoir here (and in the comments below, because it’s more fun that way). It’s not only a way to be creative and really stretch your mind (putting any experience into just 6 words is pretty difficult) but it’s such a cool way to build community and for teens to realize they’re not alone in whatever experience they’re having. Feminist in nature or not, sharing is caring and it can be fun.

So I think I’ll start it off. My memoir for this week (and especially today) is:

APUSH is the grim reaper’s scythe.

APUSH = the Advanced Placement United States History exam = why I haven’t posted until today = why you should start studying at LEAST  a month before the test, not 4 days, especially when you also have to think about AP Lit.

I hope that the aforementioned procrastination makes a few others studying for their exams feel a little better. We’re all in this together. And for my wonderful European readers who are probably going “WTF are AP’s and why do I care?” (which is a terrificly valid question) here is wikipedia’s explanation. Also, I hear they are the equivalent of European “IB’s” but I have no idea if that’s actually true.

I DIGRESS. 6 word memoirs (aka what Twitter should be)…GO!

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