[Week 15] On Memory

Washpen Falls,  NZ - July 2025

This week, it seems like every conversation I’ve had about writing, research, or graduate school circles back to memory.

It’s become something of a theme in my academic life—and in my personal one too. I’m endlessly curious about how memory works: what it preserves, what it distorts, and what it lets fade away. I’m especially interested in how memory is shaped, and how it’s decided which stories become part of our identity or are spoken as truth.

My wonder regarding these questions started with a math class.

Last summer, I signed up for a statistics course at a community college in Saint Paul. I was nervous about taking STEM courses, and isolating it over the summer gave me space to focus without the pressures of other courses. It would also transfer to the U pass/fail—so long as I earned a C or above, I’d get the credit without harming my GPA.

Manipulative? No.
Calculated? Absolutely.

Summer plans necessitated an accelerated timeline. I sped through the six-week course in just over two, with the help of friends, family, and long hours at the downtown tutoring center. It was mentally intense; one afternoon, instead of transitioning directly from math purgatory to the driver’s seat, I wandered into town to clear my mind.

When I eventually stopped, my line of sight filled with the familiar red brick walls of Bethesda Hospital.

Bethesda is a long-term acute care hospital. I was a patient there after my respiratory arrest in 2014. I spent weeks inside, weaning—glacially—from the tracheostomy.

There were kind people, and there were hopeful moments, but overwhelmingly, I don’t have good memories of that place. I don’t really have many memories at all.

When I was sick, my brain didn’t store experience in the usual way. If I don’t have a picture or a journal entry from a moment, my grasp of that part of my past is very limited.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If its fall goes unheard, did it really happen at all?
If it isn’t recognized or remembered, does it still hold value?
How can a forgotten memory carry any meaning in the present?

Bethesda Hospital - August 2014

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Later that summer, when I went to transfer my math credit to the U, I encountered something else I’d forgotten. Shortly after my discharge from Bethesda, I had enrolled in three college classes at the same institution where I did math.

This was not just forgetting content—I didn’t know I had taken the classes in the first place. Yet on my old laptop, I found assignments with my name on them. Papers written in my own voice, with no memory attached.

The discovery meant I could graduate from my current degree early, if I really wanted. But that would be beyond the point.

In 2025, I make memories in my own way, on my own time, and for my own self.

This week, my parents came to family night at marching rehearsal. We sang Hail! Minnesota together under the setting autumn sun. Yesterday, our third halftime show—the much-anticipated Mound of Sound—went off without a hitch. The Gophers even pulled through with a victory over Rutgers.

Taylor and I signed the lease for a house off campus. We’ll move in just in time to celebrate our anniversary. On Wednesday, he cooked tofu, and we continued (re)watching Game of Thrones.

The first Russian exam of the semester is in the books, and the first memoir for history class has been read cover to cover. I spent time on friendships, not with doctors.

Even in its small moments, my story is worth remembering.
Even if forgotten, it holds value.

Until next week,

Hannah