Who I am
I am a freelance journalist who writes about accessibility, culture, language, education, and their intersections. At Yale, I study Linguistics and Chinese, but I’m currently taking time off to freelance write. My work has appeared in the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Teen Vogue, the Arkansas Soul, the Taiwanese American, the Yale Daily News, and the Yale Logos. You can find links to my work here.
Outside of my writing, I do college consulting/personal essay editing, speak at schools about applying to college, and collaborate on language-related research for various Yale projects.
What is dear y’all?
I started this blog as an open letter to my community in Arkansas. Though I dreamed of going to an Ivy League school for my entire life, I realized through the college application process that I had no idea what life would be like after I got in. Most people around me had no answers for me either since most people went to local colleges or straight into the workforce. As I started at Yale, the questions only multiplied. In addition to navigating the world of emailing professors, signing up for classes, and living away from home, I found out I have aphantasia, the inability to visualize (or more accurately, I found out that other people were visualizing).
My experience starting college wasn’t straightforward, but I want yours to be. College doesn’t have to be scary or confusing. It’s really the uncertainty and lack of information that makes it that way. At dear y’all, I hope to offer a glimpse into college life and relieve some of the anxiety.
If you have questions, would like to collaborate on a project, or recently found out you have aphantasia, I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me at contact@dearyall.net or get in touch here.