Mairead Hynes

MAIREAD HYNES

Hearth Member-At-Large

Historian, Teacher, Binder-Maker

What is your story?

So my story has two parts, and neither of them really work without the other.  The first part is that I skipped four grades in high school and went straight to college.  That part is hard to say because it makes people uncomfortable and they ask a lot of repetitive questions (“Wait, so you never went to prom?”).  The other part of the story is, I didn’t graduate college at 17 or 18 like most of my friends—I failed out, stopped, went back to school, and graduated at 23.  That part is hard to tell people because they tend to give me reassurances that make everything worse, like “Don’t be so hard on yourself, you were just too young” and “Come on, what can you expect from someone that age?”  So most of the time I just leave out both parts, say that I went to high school in Virginia and college in Connecticut, and keep the whole painful, beautiful, exciting story to myself.

What do you make? 

Ok, so this is going to sound weird, but I make the most AWESOME binders.

I have a binder of lesson plans and worksheets (I teach English at a high school in Japan)

I have a binder of Really Gay History notes (from the summer after college when I thought I wanted to study gender history forever)    [now I’m not sure what I want to study forever– it’s a big decision, ok?]

I have a binder of every electricity bill I’ve paid since I moved into my own apartment

I have a whole shelf of binders at home from the second part of my college education, the good part, which my mom calls my “4.0 shelf”

I have a binder of JLPT prep stuff (the JLPT is the big Japanese test)

I have a binder of notes on my current Secret History Project—I’d tell you, but it’s a secret.

They’re never going to hand on anybody’s wall, but man, if you want a moving truck full of binders, you know who to go to.

How did you get involved in Miranda’s Hearth?

I’ve been there from the beginning, since back when it was just Miranda and an painted acoustic guitar in our mom’s basement, and a bunch of really good ideas.