hi, everyone below, you can find my official (but quite boring) bio, why i’m in the m.a. program, and then some more extras that didn’t quite make the cut to either! vvv excited to meet you all.
skip to specific sections here:
the (boring) bio:
Alyssa Lian Bacay is a Filipino-American poet and memoirist from Jersey City, New Jersey. She works at Kean Jersey City, formerly New Jersey City University and her alma mater, at the Writing Center, where she has organized and hosted community writing events, including monthly Open Mics and an annual Book Fair. Her work has been featured in the Jersey City Poetry Festival, the Jersey City Museum of History, One Mic Stand with SJ, redrosethorns journal, and The Gothic Times. You can find her at @alyssalianb on Instagram.
the why:
hi, everyone! one of my favorite professors tends to start each semester by posing the same prompt to his students—i am here right now because. i find it fitting to start this semester, and this introduction, by answering with this:
i am here right now because of my love for reading, writing, and the community i’ve built around it. because of my mom’s obsession with harry potter (j.k. rowling’s political views aside), i was raised from a young age to love words. i remember growing up on percy jackson, piles of journals and stationary, and scholastic book fairs. and despite the rough patch i had with it in high school, in college, i found myself returning to literature and writing.
i started my undergraduate years majoring in computer science. my parents are both in the field, and i wanted to follow their footsteps; at the time, a degree in computer science promised a stable job career and more than enough money to provide for my family. in the end, though, i was convinced to pick up a minor in creative writing after one (1) class. to be fair: i was not very strong-willed.
from there, i found myself making opportunities to be around writing more. i worked at the writing center. i became an embedded tutor. i started a creative writing club. i hosted open mics, planned an annual book fair, attended events and workshops across campus. i was reminded of how much joy reading and writing brought to my life. by the time i graduated in 2024, the computer science degree i had started with did not quite fit the person i had become.
after two years working full-time at njcu’s writing center, i decided i could not let myself sit around any longer. i spoke with one of my favorite people on this earth, my mentor, edi giunta, and she suggested i apply to kean’s writing studies program. it was a very last minute decision—but i’m glad i did it.
back to the prompt: i am here right now because i cannot imagine a life without writing, and in taking up the m.a. in writing studies, i am become the writer i want to be.
the extra:
if you couldn’t tell, i love talking about myself (blame the aquarius sun and leo rising), and i wanted to include some other things that didn’t quite fit in my bio or writerly backstory!
i am avid collector of hobbies, including but not limited to: reading (duh), writing (double duh), journaling, coloring, playing music, gaming (board games and video games but also specifically magic the gathering and d&d), crochet, knitting, jewelrymaking, puzzles, and more
my favorite books are This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, Babel by R.F. Kuang, and If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura
i am a fiend for korean barbecue, salmon nigiri, and a sweet treat
i have a dog whom i love dearly and call my son (picture attached below)
thanks for reading!! and i can’t wait for the rest of the semester
This way, the new people can get that yapping (if they want), while the people who know me get to know more.
While too much didn’t change about my interests in the last few months (hence why new people should get that overview from the other post), there are some new things going on!
The rats. My lore with rats goes deep, but these rats are new in my life! My older sister Angel took them from her work so they didn’t die. And now we own them!
Nemo has the deformed paw, though that doesn’t stop her. She also has a bonked eye and is the one always trying to leave the cage when it is opened. She is kinda crazy, always running around the cage. But, she lets you hold her and can even go on your shoulder!
Then we have Remy, who is the calmer one of the two. Hates going out the cage/being held, in the sense she scrambles to get back in the cage. She loves to just be napping in the hiding places or blankets places in the cage.
There has also been some changes to my dnd lore. We had a lack of dms for a while and no one was stepping up. So now, along with being the secretary for the club, I will be dming for the club. I am scared to dm because it is for the club, meaning anyone can join. And there are some interesting players in the club. People who have messed with games in the past. I am really really hoping all the chaotic players avoid my game. I just truly have no clue how to manage all that yet. Just know if I get more stressed throughout the semester, it is either coursework or some stupid stuff happening in my game cause people can be really random.
One of the icebreakers last semester was something like “if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go”. Nowhere. I would choose others to go away from ME. Love my family, but in my house I do not have my own space. Angel and I share a room, but she also got the “cat room”. Where we first stored my cats, Luci and Beanie, while they adjusted. It was the “homework room” when we were kids, so it had desks and other school stuff for a while. Angel took over that room. My dad has his office in the dining room cause the dinning room table is used as space for whatever project Angel decides to work on (art, puzzles, Legos, etc), so it isn’t really used for meals. He works from home and is an amputee, so makes sense he takes a room on the first floor. So the both of them get a bedroom and an office. My “office” is also in the shared room, in this awful corner of darkness as it is surrounded by our beds. I got a break ONCE when they all left for a wedding, and I stayed home, cause I do not like going places with the others if given the chance to have freedom at home from them all. I also hate weddings. You only know like half the people there, if you happen to know your side of the family like that, and I do not remember anyone’s name in my family so heck no I am not going to a wedding. I got sick during my one week of freedom. So sick I had to get my grandpa to feed the cats, something that doesn’t even take five minutes. Angel, being an older sibling still, to this day, makes fun of me for getting sick during what was supposed to be a great time.
Why am I mentioning all this? Part of knowing me is knowing I am going to yap, but also cause I did take a vacation. Angel wanted to celebrate her birthday by going somewhere. People over the summer liked my blogs so hopefully I can give a little of that energy here, with this intro blog, before we get more academic (as the blogs will turn into stuff about the readings) I should have stayed home. Day one was rainy as what, but kinda fine overall. We tried to go to some IHOP and the place had one waitress, the older people waiting were being rude to her, so we just left and went to Red Robin. Then walked the boardwalk, which I know I would hate cause Angel is one of those people who likes to walk everything all the time and I like to walk to only the places I know I want to go to. Like in malls, Angel visits every fricken store ever. I go to the ones I know we actually like. She is also a walker that has ZERO spacial awareness and leaves you in the dust. She weaves around crowds never looking back to see if the people she is with could follow. We entered so many stupidly BAD boardwalk stores. And didn’t get a thing, cause the stuff was so clearly bad. You know where the stores were that we wanted things from? Right at the start of where we were. We past them all, as Angel wanted to walk the whole thing, just to get stuff at stores at the start. Since we were only there for three days I saw this as a waste, but I got taffy and fudge so I guess it was good. We also saw Peppa Pig, which Angel demanded we take a photo with.
Dinner was seafood, which I enjoyed and knew was going to happen as this was a beach vacation (Rehoboth Beach in Delaware). The other two (Natalia, my younger sister was also here and had her own ways of bothering me) complained about having to eat seafood.
Our hotel was across from a gay bar.
I thought that was going to be cool. We looked it up. It was truly for the men. Shirtless men city up in there. Angel said she would go with me if I wanted, and seeing those crazy photos made me not want to go at all.
Day two was beach day. I must have slept wrong cause for some reason I woke up and my hip hurt, which ruined day three but we aren’t there yet. I only like beach for the ocean. I do not want to be all sandy. Guess what. The ocean? Not allowed to go in. Life guards kept calling people back. Luckily, the hotel we were in was like a 30 minute walk. I just walked back once I saw that nonsense. On the way back I stopped to sit at some nature spots so it was still nice for me, but the entire reason we went here did not work for me.
I took a lot of photos of nature or other random things. Like hundreds. My dad (as Angel presented all the photos from the trip to him) said I don’t need to take a photo per second. But this could be the last time I go to this specific place, or the last time it will look this way. Gotta capture what I like. Just saying, there are a ton of photos from this trip, but you will only get a few cause I already am going to make this a whole yap. The others stayed at the beach till like 7 pm for some reason (we got there around noon). That is so many hours of just existing in hot sun and on hot sand, but they lived so. Good for them.
Day three was also supposed to be a rainy day, so Angel and I wanted to go to the town-specific museum while Natalia slept in. Day three was a Wednesday. You know what is closed on Wednesdays?
The museum, apparently. Then Angel decided we should go to one of the nature parks nearby. She, SOMEHOW, picked one of the harder trails that DID NOT LOOP AROUND. At some point, my hip hurt, but this was today’s activity so I kept going. At some point, there stopped being shade. Those who were there over the summer might remember I wasn’t that cold in HRI. I have always been warmer than my siblings, something Angel didn’t realize till I was way behind in the trail due to my hip starting to hurt with every step and because of how hot it is in direct sun. We had to turn around, but due to me being behind, I got to hear from the bikers passing us how much of a bad choice this was. “Walking this trail? They aren’t going to make it.” “Wearing black?” (shakes head) “I would never wear black out here” “Oh no… They still got a long way to go…” “Black? Yikes.” “Should’ve rented a bike, those poor souls” Mind you, I was DYING at this point, so this was NOT GREAT TO HEAR. And yes, Natalia and I were wearing all black.
Despite it saying it was going to rain, it didn’t. And the clouds were not where they needed to be to help ups. So Natalia and I were dying in the car by the time we got back and Angel kept saying she didn’t know it was going to be that bad, and that she wanted to go exploring some more as we spent 20 bucks to go to this. Natalia took us to Wawa instead. Later, after Natalia took a nap and I questioned my life choices, we went to some fake Dave & Buster’s, Lefty’s. It was trivia night so it was, I kid you not, FILLED with old white people. FILLED. We waited like 20 minutes to even see a worker. By the time we sat the last question was going, and right after that they ALL LEFT. It was like empty in that place. Cleared out. Besides the moments we spent chilling in the hotel yapping, this was the best part of the trip as we got to play some arcade games. We could have played more if Natalia was better at the duck claw machine. I wanted a rainbow duck, cause gay. But Angel saw a different duck that Natalia decided she HAD to get for me.
Balloon dog duck. It isn’t red, my favorite color, but it was pretty cool. We got a bunch of random ducks (luckily got the gay one) while Natalia tried for her creeper duck and my balloon dog duck.
We played a couple of other games. Natalia won enough at this random Rick and Morty game. She didn’t know what she was doing, but I figured out the game quick to realize she was actually doing pretty good. No one captured this since it was our last game with our limited credits, but she won us half the credit we used for prizes.
Natalia, since she won us the most, got a sloth thingy (cause she likes animals), cards (maybe because she likes Gambit, maybe she just likes cards idk),and a pirate flag (I jokingly told her to get it because it reminded me of Chloe Price, a character from Life is Strange. We spent most of this summer playing Life is Strange together). Angel got some annoying squeaking pig thing. And I got a red balloon dog, my favorite.
And then we got to do one more activity the day we were going home. An activity I was begging to do.
Mini golf, that was also in mostly sun. It was packed, we kept having to wait for people to play their games. The group in front of us was a kid and his grandma, and when we got hole-in-ones, the grandma cheered for us as we kept cheering for her (the kid was winning). The group behind us had an even younger kid and a dad. The kid was a little cheater, moving the dad’s ball. But, when we would mess up, the kid behind would say “I hope I don’t hit it like that”. The kid behind was constantly talking about what we were doing, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds. It was super funny. “They didn’t design the game well. She (talking about Natalia) hit the ball so well it should have made it but the walls messed her up” “They discovered the cheat of the game!” (there was a secret way to go for one of the holes “I want to hit it exactly like she did” (Angel got a hole in one) “They are really bad at the game” (Natalia and I took 6 hits on one of the holes” Both kids got more hole-in-ones than us adults (though the dad was pretty good at the game and probably would have gotten more if his kid didn’t cheat).
I think out of everyone, Angel had the most fun (she also won the game).
Would I go again? Never doing that trail again, that’s for sure. Natalia didn’t want to do many of the activities, and Angel leaves us behind to get where she is going. But, even though they annoy me a lot, I do enjoy my siblings enough that I would do something like this again. Even though literally everything I wanted to do went wrong in some way (yes, Angel did make many, MANY, jokes about this. Gay bar but for the men. Beach but ocean is closed. Museum, closed the day we wanted to go. Walk, Angel accidentally picked the hardest one. Mini golf, packed and in the sun at times) it was nice to be somewhere else, and bonding with them can be fun at times, even though we spend most of our breaks together cause Natalia also hates our mother. No alone time for me.
Anyways, this wasn’t really a description like I usually do. I usually just go listing things I like when told to introduce myself. But, since I already did that and gave a link at the beginning of this yap to that, I thought telling a story would be better. It might have been a way to get to know me, though if you are new you are probably confused on why my siblings wanted to get me a balloon dog duck. Point is, I am a yapper with a lot of interests and will happily explain more, but also wanted to give everyone in the class some new lore. And the vacation, being a new one, was the only real way I could think of to give a sense of me in a more fun way than just listing things I like.
To the new friends, hope you enjoyed your first of many yaps from me. To my forever friends, hope you learned something new. If not, you better have at least liked the story.
While moving between countries and enduring emotional challenges, writing became an outlet for expressing thoughts I couldn’t say aloud. This is another reason writing became a space where I could express myself and build agency. At that time, I was very timid and kept my emotions contained. Writing about my experiences and feelings through reflective papers and creative stories released all the emotions I had kept within. Not only did writing let go an internal weight, but it also became part of my growth and healing process. Through writing, I was able to see the person I was becoming.
Photo credit: Pinterest/Randilee
In my junior year of high school, my teachers introduced the idea of “finding your niche” to help us understand what path we might take in life and eventually what major we would choose in college. My immediate thought was, “Writing Studies, or something related to writing, because this is what I identify with.” After high school, I couldn’t come directly to Kean University, but I completed an associate’s degree at Union County College. After that, I transferred to Kean and completed my B.A. in English/Writing. After graduating last year, I decided I wanted to continue pursuing a higher academic level. I am pursuing an M.A. in Writing Studies because I feel it is the next step in my intellectual development as a writer.P
Photo Credit: Pinterest/wwwmaryamnaeemi11
Personally, I believe that completing an M.A. in Writing Studies would also honor my mother’s sacrifice. This is the future she envisioned for her daughter. More than just a career or intellectual goal, writing has become part of who I am. Every poem or piece of writing I’ve created holds a piece of my heart and mind.
below, you can find my official (but quite boring) bio, why i’m in the m.a. program, and then some more extras that didn’t quite make the cut to either! vvv excited to meet you all.
