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My name is Devan Coggan. I am 19 years old, and I am a journalism major at Northwestern University. I am originally from St. Louis.
Sometimes I blog about stuff.

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  1. I have a very close friend named Alexandra Tashman. I say “close” in the emotional sense of the word; she lives two time zones away in the city of Los Angeles. We met in the summer of 2010 at the Northwestern University National High School Institute: Journalism Division, but everyone just calls it Cherubs.  Tashman and I bonded when she tripped and knocked a stack of dirty plates on top of me in the cafeteria… on the first day. She sees the world in a way I wish so many others would, and life was a bit cruel to let us meet and then keep us so far apart. All the same, she’s the kind of call-in-the-middle-of-a-midnight-crisis friend that I feel lucky to have.  Anyway, she was showing off her fancy new Toms today, and they were so cool that I just had to post them. They were some sort of December present from her boyfriend, hand-painted by a friend. (Her birthday’s the 24th, and there’s Christmas and Hanukkah and all sorts of holidays… I don’t remember which one it was.) But they’re seriously the coolest things I have ever seen.  If anyone ever wants to get me something like this, I would hardly complain. I wore my Star Wars t-shirt today (mass-produced… lame) and ten minutes after I left my dorm, two random guys complimented me on it (win). Imagine what kinds of guys I could pick up with these. But the point is that this is why I love Alexandra Tashman: she wears Toms with Han and Leia painted on them. She’d prefer to have been born in a different century, but she knows that the 80’s were the best decade. She gets way too passionate over fonts. She knows everything there is to know about music and art and politics and culture. We’re planning on getting an apartment in D.C. together at some point and collecting cats named Alderaan, Hoth, Dagobah… Maybe two named Gallifrey and Skaro just for some variety. We hate all the same people and have crushes on all the same historical figures. At one point we were listed as sisters on Facebook, but now we’re in a civil union. She’s witty and sweet and cynical and kind and wise beyond her years, and she brings out the best in me.  Cheers to sisterhood. And someone get me those shoes. 

    I have a very close friend named Alexandra Tashman. I say “close” in the emotional sense of the word; she lives two time zones away in the city of Los Angeles. We met in the summer of 2010 at the Northwestern University National High School Institute: Journalism Division, but everyone just calls it Cherubs. 

    Tashman and I bonded when she tripped and knocked a stack of dirty plates on top of me in the cafeteria… on the first day. She sees the world in a way I wish so many others would, and life was a bit cruel to let us meet and then keep us so far apart. All the same, she’s the kind of call-in-the-middle-of-a-midnight-crisis friend that I feel lucky to have. 

    Anyway, she was showing off her fancy new Toms today, and they were so cool that I just had to post them. They were some sort of December present from her boyfriend, hand-painted by a friend. (Her birthday’s the 24th, and there’s Christmas and Hanukkah and all sorts of holidays… I don’t remember which one it was.) But they’re seriously the coolest things I have ever seen.  If anyone ever wants to get me something like this, I would hardly complain. I wore my Star Wars t-shirt today (mass-produced… lame) and ten minutes after I left my dorm, two random guys complimented me on it (win). Imagine what kinds of guys I could pick up with these.

    But the point is that this is why I love Alexandra Tashman: she wears Toms with Han and Leia painted on them. She’d prefer to have been born in a different century, but she knows that the 80’s were the best decade. She gets way too passionate over fonts. She knows everything there is to know about music and art and politics and culture. We’re planning on getting an apartment in D.C. together at some point and collecting cats named Alderaan, Hoth, Dagobah… Maybe two named Gallifrey and Skaro just for some variety. We hate all the same people and have crushes on all the same historical figures. At one point we were listed as sisters on Facebook, but now we’re in a civil union. She’s witty and sweet and cynical and kind and wise beyond her years, and she brings out the best in me. 

    Cheers to sisterhood. And someone get me those shoes. 

     
     

  2. I grew up in a world of make believe.

    Every week I went to the St. Louis County Library and sat on the floor near the shelves, reading each spine, looking for something to captivate me. I read every Redwall, every Nancy Drew, every Three Investigators. I read entire series that I have now forgotten the names of, but the details remain: dragons and murders and seers and trolls and mages and detectives.

    I explored dusty cupboards with Coraline, I swept down the Mississippi River with Huck and Jim, and I spent a hot, lazy summer in Alabama with Scout and Jem. I, too, broke into the Metropolitan Museum of Art to find out more about the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and I, too, got down to business to defeat the Huns. I walked the ramparts of Redwall Abbey. I explored the markets of Agrabah. I wandered through the forests of Athens with Hippolyta and Puck. I’ve seen Narnia and Rivendell and the forest moon of Endor.

    I stayed up way too late with a cheap book light, covers pulled over my head, book balanced on my knees. I drafted long novels in terrible handwriting, writing myself into the stories I loved so much. If a story I fell in love with was part of a series, I read every book, watched every film — all to keep the story alive. I wanted it to last as long as possible.

    There’s always that old belief that it’s unhealthy to get so wrapped up in fairy tales. It can’t be healthy to want to be somewhere else all the time. I know I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog, but my ex-boyfriend always got so exasperated when I got wrapped in dreams of far-off countries and cultures. But I disagree. There’s nothing healthier.

    I am a better person because my imagination ran wild. I know perseverance and I know faith and I know honesty and loyalty and truth. I know the value of curiosity and raw emotion, but I know a logical mind can almost always triumph. I know how hard it is to do right when everyone else is doing wrong, and maybe it’s childish, and maybe it’s silly, but I gather personal strength from the fictional characters I have grown to love. Meg Murry found her father and Frodo destroyed the ring and Inigo Montoya defeated the six-fingered man. If they can do that, lord knows I can deal with whatever my life throws at me.

    So I’m still waiting for my letter to Hogwarts, and I’m still waiting for the Dread Pirate Roberts to sweep me away to his ship, and I’m waiting for that impossible blue box to land in my backyard. They may never come, but I will wait. And if I wait, and if I don’t lose hope, know this: I will find something fantastic. Because these fictional characters have given me a taste for the impossible, and I will never be the same again.