Where do I begin? Well it all started on May 28th 1991 at 8:58pm. There I was, just released from the dark prison that some call the womb…too early? Okay, okay. Well my name is Macie and I am a University of Florida alumna with a B.A. in Liberal Arts & Sciences, focusing in History, with a minor in Sarcasm. I was born in Florida, had short adventures in Santa Cruz, CA and Olympia, WA, and now reside in Portland, Oregon as of March 2015. It really is as awesome (and weird) as people say it is. And don’t even get me started on the food! I mean, I think it’s a well known fact by now that Portland has the best food on the planet, right? Did I mention that I love food? No? Well food is definitely at the top of my list of interests. Other interests include, traveling, reading, skateboarding, and exploring.
So I looked up the definition of passion online. Two definitions came up so I will list them both. The first defines passion as “a strong and barely controllable emotion.” The second is “the suffering and death of Jesus.” In this case I will be describing the first definition of the word, because I'm definitely not going to describe the Passion of the Christ.
My passion is World War II and the Holocaust. I mean I did dedicate my whole college career to the subject. I have an obsession, a “strong and barely controllable emotion,” to know everything about the Holocaust and World War II.
In college I studied abroad twice, first to Munich, Germany, then to Poland. They were the most amazing trips of my life. I literally spent almost all of my money, I even took out student loans, to go on these trips and let me tell you, they were worth it. Seeing these chilling places I had read about, seeing remnants of what used to be, there is no way to describe it.
Where did my passion begin? Let’s see, I have always been interested in WWII for what feels like forever and it probably stemmed from my love of aviation. (When I was younger I wanted to be a pilot but that dream got lost along the wayside.) Same goes for studying the Holocaust. I have been interested in it ever since I can remember, well ever since fifth grade… I remember being assigned to read Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and being obsessed and wanting to learn more. It also made me only want to read non-fiction books when it came to the Holocaust and WWII. (Number the Stars is a work of fiction)
On that note, I guess you could say that a passion within my passion would be books. They are like Pokémon, but instead of “catching them all” I want to collect them all. I spend so much time in libraries and bookstores I could live in them. If they had endless supplies of burritos and pizza it’d be a done deal. Anyways, back to the books. Libraries are awesome, but there’s just something about having your own books, being able to re-read them whenever you want and not worrying about someone else has checking them out. So even after reading a book from the library I would go and buy it at the bookstore just incase I needed to read it again. My boyfriend would say I have too many books, like that’s even a real thing (rolls eyes). I actually had to leave about a quarter of my books in Florida when we were moving to California because there wasn’t enough room in the car. So now you know how much a weirdo book hoarder I am.
Before I conclude this awesome insight into my passion I will leave you with a story about my dad and I, who by the way is one of the coolest dads in the history of dads and I should know since I’m a history major. One summer my dad and I took a road trip up to Pennsylvania. On the way back to Florida we stopped in Washington, DC and I made my dad stop at the United States Holocaust Museum. After we went through the museum and we were walking out the door, my dad turned to me and said he was proud to be my dad. He said that if I wasn’t so passionate about this he probably never would’ve had the opportunity to come to this museum and have the experience that we had there. This was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
