What if I told you that I believe in lake-monsters? Nessie, Ogopogo, Nahuelito, all of them. I expect that some people would relegate me to fringe science. Nonetheless, I stand by my original statement. I do believe in lake-monsters, though perhaps not in a form that the declaration implies. I believe that biologists customarily relegate lake-monster research to pseudo-science, and sociologists typically avoid the subject due to its scientific connections. Thus, the academic community misses out on one of the world's more interesting subjects. Across the world, towns nestle along these lakes, each uniquely absorbing legend into their daily lives. It is in this regard that lake-monsters do exist, in the whisper on the docks, and the scuba gear rental shop, and the photograph in the tourism bureau. I hope to travel to these places in a worldwide encounter with lake-monster culture.

Before I get carried away and you conclude that I am intellectually swimming in a far-off sea, let me tell you my history. First, I can't swim well. Second, you see, I am one of many children who grew up on the New York side of Lake Champlain, a body of water that is supposedly home to a lake-monster. This particular creature even has a name: Champy. While I have yet to personally confirm or deny the existence of Champy, I have painted pictures of him in elementary school; I have gone to baseball games and laughed at Champy mascots; I have dog-paddled back to the motorboat with great haste after falling off my water-skis. To me, and others from my town, Champy is real, regardless of whether or not he physically exists. To use the terms of postmodern theorist Jean Beaudrillard, the legend of a lake-monster constitutes a simulacrum, whereby the surrounding effects of the mystery become more real than the debate over whether or not lake-monsters really exist.

The secrecy of deep water has captivated me since I was a child. I was eight and digging through dinosaur books when I found a drawing of an immense prehistoric sea turtle and was so entranced that I named my cat after it - Archelon, though everyone else called him Archie. Like my cat, I struggled with the fear of water and thought that my bones were too dense for swimming. But how often our fears feed our fascinations! My fear of the deep meant that I was especially taken by novels like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and television shows like SeaQuest. These may not have cured my fear, but my imagination was insipired and I refused to accept boredom as a natural state of mind. Before long I dreamed of visiting islands on the other side of the world.

Although I leapt at the prospect of spending four years of college in Tacoma, on the other coast of the United States, I never forgot the quirky lake-monster mystery in the quiet small town where I spent my first eighteen years of life. Now, as I am about to finish college, I am torn by two different desires. I want to travel and experience the world around me, but at the same time, I want to rediscover my hometown and explore what made my childhood special. I've decided that the two do not necessarily compete with each other. I have a plan.

Living with a lake-monster is not all that uncommon. From as close as Canada and Scotland to as far away as South Africa and Australia, people all over the world participate in what I call lake-monster culture. By traveling to these places, I can simultaneously learn about far-off new places and, by comparison, my own hometown traditions. In each of these places, the legends leave footprints on the minds and souls of its residents, whether or not monster-sized footprints can be found on the beach.

The next question would be: how do we capture the spirit of these residents? During my summer research in New Zealand last year, I managed to tell many narratives simply through photography. However, I can speak first-hand of the danger of misunderstanding the culture of a foreign place. I was introduced to the flag of the indigenous Maori people by a tour guide, who told me that the triad of red, black, and white colors represented evil, humanity, and the divine. At first I was convinced, but suspecting that there was more to the story, I spoke about this to an elderly Maori man in a nearby town. He vehemently scoffed at the story as "rubbish." He invited me into his home to patiently explain the full context of the colors, how they represented the Maori creation myths of sky father and earth mother, each combining to create the spiral of life on earth. I pondered both stories for a long time, wondering which was closer to the truth. Then I realized that other cultures contain generational gaps and contradictory opinions, just as our own does. Indeed, therein lies their vitality.

It is particularly important to see beyond ideas of purity and authenticity in the case of lake-monster culture, where some are more interested in the science, others in the local identity, and others in the tourism market. Each person is uniquely correct.

I am especially excited to experience global lake-monster culture because I can finally bring math, computers, and the humanities together. My technological expertise can finally complement my appreciation for the nuances of cultural studies. Since returning from New Zealand, not only am I fascinated by the complicated nature of culture and tourism, I am interested in the patterns of graphic design which tourism uses to encapsulate culture. For this reason, during last year's fall semester I worked full-time at a co-operative learning course as an intern at a local graphic design company. On the technical side, I learned how to use advanced computer programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash. On the artistic side, I learned from my advisor, a fastidious professor of art, to consider my audience and the message that I convey through artwork. I became conscious of important design concepts such as color theory and typography. Along the way, I also discovered a global community of cutting-edge designers who use the Internet to express a striking balance of textual and graphical imagery. With this as inspiration, I decided to make a web page to explain the effects of cultural tourism in New Zealand, using nearly 200 photos that I had taken with a digital camera. All of this background is important, because I hope to take this medium of expression to a new level with lake-monster culture. Now that I am comfortable both with artistic computer programs and with graphic design, I can create an interactive presentation that conveys far more than a slideshow or an academic journal article ever could.

This is an important objective. Having grown up amongst the legend of Champy, I am alarmed at essays and biological articles of lake-monsters. These texts pursue greatly detailed scientific theories about how a monster could or could not exist. Yet the local community is usually ignored. I believe that these scientific, dehumanizing explanations come at the expense of important humanistic context, and neglect the greater, more interesting subject.

I believe that a yearlong Watson excursion will provide me with an even greater appreciation for culture on a personal level, and provide me with the experience and inspiration to continue my education to a master's degree in geography. But perhaps more importantly, I want to better understand my own hometown culture.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzshe was once known to have muttered, "Battle not with [lake] monsters, lest ye become one, and if you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you." I believe that this quote explains much about understanding and accepting the unknown. We cannot fight the idea of a lake-monster, lest we become shy to the subject, and remain in the murky waters, misunderstanding the surrounding reality. After all, what would it mean if the Abyss gazed also into us as we peer into the lake? If a lake-monster was to covertly surface its head and watch the hullabaloo that surrounds it, I feel that the creature would find all of this as humorous, fascinating, and inspiring as I do.