This episode features Katie Engelmeyer, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about Katie Engelmeyer on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/fall-2018-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 32 students told stories about false narratives.
This episode was originally performed in August 2020, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live via Zoom.
This episode features Katie Engelmeyer, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about Katie Engelmeyer on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/fall-2018-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 32 students told stories about false narratives.
This episode was originally performed in August 2020, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live via Zoom.
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I'll be your host for this episode of Campfire at Home recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. Almost every month, we gather at the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live it from the everyday voices that live around us. Campfire at Home is how we bring that live storytelling experience to you wherever you are. In this episode, I have something special for you, as I always try to, because we have stories to share from the capstone event of our recent Advanced Storytelling class, featuring Grace, Katie, Lizzie, and Nokie. These students signed up for the class way back at the beginning of 2020, and we held one class in April in person, and then the pandemic settled into our bones as a reality. We postponed the rest of the classes to the summer. We were thinking hopefully we could return to in person classes by then. And when it became inevitable that the pandemic would continue to wreak havoc on our daily lives, we went ahead with holding the class online. All this to say, this has been a long time coming. Over six class sessions, after a brief refresher on what we'd learned in Intro to Storytelling, this class took a deep dive into ensuring that as public speakers, our intentions align with our impact. We also practiced learning to really listen and love our own voices. Students also practiced giving and receiving constructive peer feedback throughout the course. This process required deep reflection centered on the season theme, false narratives. The story you'll hear in this episode represents the storyteller's interpretation of the false narratives theme and how false narratives have impacted their life. This brings us to the Campfire at Home episode you are listening to right now. This episode will highlight one of our four student storytellers. You can catch the other storytellers by subscribing to Campfire at Home, wherever you get your podcasts. And now let's head to the Campfire to listen to Katie's story on false narratives.
Katie Engelmeyer:The sun shown down upon us from its perch in the Mediterranean sky as we tracked through the city of Rome. My class and I had taken a weekend trip led by our instructor to Rome from where we were studying and pursuing our degrees in architecture in Florence, Italy. We were doing a semester abroad. And as we trekked through the city of Rome, we saw so many things. Um, it was almost as if we were trying to see everything in 48 hours, which is just impossible. By the time we got to our last stop at Trajan's Market, we had seen things like the Campidoglio, which was a plaza designed by Michelangelo and the Trevi fountain. And, um, we saw the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and the Pantheon, and I was just having a wonderful time surprised at the feeling that Rome was more attractive to me and like a home base to me than Florence was. Um, and during my time in Trajan's Market, that really only solidified for me. It was our last stop of the day. And once our instructor departed for the evening, we were able to do whatever we wanted. Um, however, it was a weird time of the afternoon, too early for dinner but too late to really do anything else. And so we all decided to take a rest. It was much needed. It had been hot that day and something you don't realize about the stones you walk on until you're in t he situation is that they do retain that heat. And so you get heat from above and from below, and it's somewhat inescapable, even in the shade, because that shade was once in the sun. A nd so we sort of sat in a shady or part of the market. And as we were sitting there though, I was growing more and more restless. I couldn't believe that we were taking precious minutes to just rest. U m, even though that's important and a h ealthy thing to do. In my brain, I wanted to go and do more and see more because I actually was also studying archeology. Not while I was abroad. That was a semester totally devoted to architecture, my first degree. U m, but archeology was a study I took up during my second year in college, after I realized that maybe architecture wasn't the choice for me. It was the sensible choice, and, even though I was getting cold feet, I was not committed to those feelings enough at the time to really stop pursuing architecture. I wanted the security of knowing I had a job waiting for me a fter s chool. It was nervous for me, u m, to think about, you know, what would I do with my degree if I had pursued a rcheology as an actual, u m, as my, as my degree, instead of just a second major. And so you can understand now why I was just absolutely loving R ome. I loved looking out the old meshed with the new and the urban fabric, how it interwove the a rcheology with the modern life of the city. And it was just fascinating to me and the building we were in was fascinating to me as well, but I didn't really realize that. I wasn't present enough to realize that until my friend Eleanor and her partner Aaron got up and left the group to take a walk on their own. And I was like,"Wait a second. I can do that too. I can still think for myself. I don't have to just do everyone does." And so I decided to take a walk too, in a different direction. And I found myself on a portico surrounded on one side by small market stalls that would have been used by the vendors during the ancient Roman times. You see Trajan's Market has also been coined the first shopping mall because it was a permanent structure that was made for a marketplace and it had multiple levels to it. And it was truly an incredible structure. It had all of the classic Roman, u m, trademarks, like the, u m, barrel vault and, u h, a nd the arches and bricks and cement, which believe it or not, the ancient Romans used a lot of cement. And I think they created some that or discovered it. And so you see it a lot with ancient Roman ruins. And so I was just really enjoying being in this space and also noticing the traces that the people who used to occupy t he space left behind, like the marks on the floor where the divider between patron and customer w as that every day. And, you know, those marks on the floor were special to me because they were the way that those people left some of their energy in the space. It takes energy to lift that barrier and put it back in place every day. And this was the sort of philosophy that drew me the most to a rcheology. It was the energy that it took to make the clay pot and then the energy that was used, to when it was being used and left in it, that was then transferred to me when I excavated it or looked at it in a museum or was in that same place at the same, not at the same time. That's impossible, but, you know, I was in the same place as all o f those people. And that human connection is so, so important to me. And I was feeling even more connected with people as on my right side, there were arches that were open to below. I was on the second level and I could hear people milling through the Roman Forum and also t hrough Trajan's Forum, which was literally right beneath me. And I could hear them speaking all of their different languages, and I really felt connected and that this was the place where I was to be in this moment. And while I was thinking all of this, I could also hear the notes of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, sort of wafting up from below. There was a street performer I could point out. And, u m, as I was listening to this, I was thinking about how sentimental it is to me and looking at Trajan's Column that was also in Trajan's Forum, which I could see from the marketplace, and looking even further beyond a t the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the man who unified the country of Rome, and watching the sun gleam off of i ts golden statues and i ts marble surface. And all of a sudden, without any warning, really, I had tears rolling down my cheeks, and I t ucked into one of the market stalls for a little bit of privacy and just let myself feel the moment because I was alone. There was no one else in sight. And before I knew it, I was Kim Kardashian ugly crying in the middle of this marketplace. And there was really no stopping it. I just let it go. And like the tears were rolling down my cheeks. I could feel my face turning red. The snot was just like, i t's coming out of my nose. It was disgusting. I'm so glad no one saw it. U m, and as this i s happening, so unprovoked, I was asking myself,"What is the cause?" Was I hungry? No. Was I thirsty? No. Was I tired? Yes, but that wasn't it. But maybe it was that I was tired, but not in the physical sense. I was tired of pursuing something that wasn't for me, c ause screaming in my head, all I could think was,"I l ove the old things. A ll I want to do is appreciate the old things. I don't want to make new things." And what really happened in that moment, even though to anyone on the outside, it just l ooked like a blubbery mess, and if you had been able to read my thoughts at that moment, it probably w ould h ave been completely incoherent, but what really happened in that moment was I decided that I needed to stop making excuses to remain in a career path where I didn't belong. Some problems I had had with architecture that had been mounting for awhile really crystallized for me in that moment. And I just decided to quit ignoring them. And so as soon as I returned to Florence, I went ahead and switched my degree t rack so that I could have more flexibility in my last semester of college. And as I walked down the aisle and across the stage on graduation day, I was so nervous. I did not feel at all prepared to enter into the job field, that I didn't even know what I wanted to do. I wasn't ready to enter the real world at this moment in time. B ut what I did know is that I was going to be happy. I was going to be able to get up and go to work at a place where I l oved, at a place where I had the opportunity to intern the past semester, because I gave myself that flexibility and I was going to have to work seven days a week to make ends meet. And it was going to be tough. And I had really sacrificed that foundation, not really foundation, but just stability that I had thought was so necessary. But what finally occurred to me is that I couldn't buy my own happiness. And so it didn't matter how much money I was making or how stable my life was. It just mattered that I could get up and do what I was being paid to do every morning. And even though I exited that stage a nd that chapter of my life not knowing where I was headed, it completely paid off as this past week I just started my dream job, and it'll be a wonderful stepping stone into an incredible future. And I can only thank myself for giving myself that flexibility and also letting the city of Rome speak to me in that moment in Trajan's Market. Thank you.
Steven Harowitz:And that's a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our Advanced Storytelling graduates by subscribing to Campfire at Home, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard and you're able, please leave a review. It helps others find our podcast and it supports our students. If you were listening to tonight's episode and thought that's pretty cool, well, we'd love to have you come out to an event or take a class. You can visit cmpfr.com. That's C M P F R.com for all the details. And whether you live in St. Louis or nowhere nearby, there are ways to take classes and attend our events virtually. You can find out more cmpfr.com. That's C M P F R.com. As always a big thank you to the Campfire team, our podcast producer Jeff Allen, and everyone who these live events. Tonight's stories were recorded live on Zoom from across the country. Thanks for listening to Campfire at home. And thanks for letting me be your host. I'm Steven heroines until next time.