Profile Final Draft

As she sits down in her living room, preparing herself for an interview, Jessica Jane Beightol admires the art that covers the walls of her house.

She focuses on a charcoal drawing of a gasmask that she recently handed into her professor. While she thought it was one of her best works of the semester, her professor liked the drawing for other reasons.

“ I really liked the drawing,” Beightol said. “And then my professor came up to me and told me that it was one of the coolest looking dogs he’s ever seen.”

By displaying this painting, Beightol proves that art mimics life. Beightol is a girl who is not always understood by people and throughout the course of her life has been viewed many different ways. But just like a work of art, the more time a person spends trying to figure out the artist’s true intentions, the more rewarding their understanding of the work will be.

Standing 5 feet 8 inches tall, Beightol shows off her artistic mind on the canvas that is her body. Multiple piercings cover her ears and she mentions that even more can be seen underneath her clothes. Her hair (which seems to change on a weekly basis) is currently red and flows down to shoulder length. Tattoos also help to cover the skin. Blue stars creep up the right side of her right foot and stop abruptly at her ankles and she is sure to show off a tattoo of two angles circling each other on her lower back in dedicated to her grandparents.

Whether it was growing up in the small town of Monroe, Wis. or the time she currently spends at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Beightol has always held an artistic view on life.

Born Sept. 30, 1984, in Superior, Wis., Beightol never got to know her biological parents. She was adopted when she was six months old and immediately moved to Monroe to live her life with a new family.

“A question people always ask me is if I’d ever really want to find out who my parents are,” she said. “ It’s like yeah it would be good to know who my parents are for biological reasons but I don’t have much of a desire beyond that.”

While her parents adopted her at a very early age, it was Beightol’s grandparents who took care of her throughout most of her life. Struggling to make ends meet, Beightol’s parents were constantly working to be able to pay off the bills. So she spent the majority of her time growing up in her grandparent’s home.

“I pretty much lived there all the way through high school,” she said. “ When I was young my grandparents always picked me up from school and when I got older I ended up getting a job at the local country club, which is where my grandpa also worked. Basically I was always around them.”

During her time with her grandparents, Beightol became strongly attached to her grandfather. She always looked toward her grandfather for knowledge and insight. Some of her fondest memories were the times when he would teach her how to play dice and cards.

She grew closest to him because her family is primarily conservative and share little enthusiasm for viewpoints that are not similar to theirs. With her laid back liberal views on many things in life, Beightol found it easiest to associate with her grandfather.

Last year Beightol faced the hardest time of her life when her grandfather would teach her one more lesson, how to deal with death. Not only did she have to deal with the loss of her first close family member but with loss of one of her greatest friends as well.

“Out of anyone in my family I am most like my grandpa and that means a lot to me,” she said. “It was one of the most tragic things in my life and it was really hard because he was the coolest family member I could relate to.”

Finding ways to relate to other people was hard for Beightol during certain periods in her life. With the coming of high school Beightol found herself not hanging out with the popular crowd.

“I was kind of like the Goth kid in high school or I was at least labeled with that clique,” she said. “A lot of the times I would just sit and read books because I wanted to get good grades and kids would not really give me the time of day.”

It was during her high school years that Beightol would first experiment with drugs. She started to smoke marijuana and while she says she has no regrets, her drug use did temporarily set her back.

“I just wanted to see what it was all about,” Beightol said. “But one day these two stoners ratted on me so they could make a quick fifty bucks and I got expelled for one semester of school.”

That event would be the catalyst for one of the darker times in Beightol’s life. That day she had to go home, face her parents and tell them the truth about what happened at school.

“My mom started crying and instantly made me go see a psychiatrist,” Beightol said. “And then when my mom told my dad what had happened he said that they should let me sit in jail.”

However, time would eventually heal all wounds and things would smooth over between Beightol and her family. Beightol is now able to look at the past situation with a sense of humor.

“It’s just one of those things the family doesn’t talk about anymore,” Beightol joked. “Luckily one of my cousins has become a huge drug addict, so everyone in the family has pushed my situation under the rug.”

Since attending UWO, Beightol has found it much easier to fit in. And while she definitely enjoys the life that college provides her, she still misses her closest friends from high school.

“All my friends now are in college and there really are no cliques anymore,” Beightol said. “But I met some people in high school that I know I’ll never meet people like that again. I really miss them.”

In 2008, Beightol will get to chance to make her parents proud when she hopes to graduate from UWO with a degree in film. Currently in her fourth year, Beightol is focusing hard on her film major and art minor. She hopes to someday be a cinematographer and work behind the scenes on big-budget films.

“I want to work on the artistic aspects of a scene,” Beightol says. ”I’d also like to do anything with Tim Burton. Anything with that really crazy claymation stuff I think I would find really interesting.”

Beightol is looking forward to fulfilling her potential in the future and hopefully someday landing the job of her dreams. With some of the obstacles she has already had to face in life, Beightol’s success seems like a very attainable goal.







Six way different
1) Gender
2) Adopted
3) Ethnicity-Hispanic/Caucasian
4) Different Majors- Journalism/Film
5) Divorce- My parents are separated hers are not
6) Expulsion-She has been I have not.