The Last Goodbye

The end is finally upon us, eh? Like every year’s end in high school, when I look back, it seems to have gone quick as a jackrabbit and laboriously slowly, all at once. The annual Acada-Welcome in the SAC might as well have occurred when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and yet, my first time saying, “No, I’m a senior” could have been yesterday.

I’m one of those people who can’t fully understand that an end is imminent until long after I’m gone and I have a chance to miss it. I didn’t shed a tear about leaving middle school when I hugged all my friends and favorite teachers goodbye, nor when I walked out of the building for the last time; in fact, my face was graced with a happy little smile. I was onto better things, of course, so the sadness was put off temporarily. The tears only fell after my first week of high school, when I felt overwhelmed and sorry that I hadn’t really told middle school a proper goodbye. And I’m sure the same will happen with high school, and with Academy. I’ll be in my dorm next year, doing what college students do, and then some memory will sneak up on me, about the time Mr. Williams said the world homoerotic, or when Mr. Meyer told the story of his dog Chippers, or when Mr. Field’s little son revealed his wife’s pregnancy to the whole class before the Fields had told anyone else, and I’ll feel a pang of regret or sadness that I’m no longer a part of that world.

And I know I’ll be in classes and make some reference to Howard Zinn, Jared Diamond, Emily Style, or Tim O’Brien, and when everyone stares back at me with a funny look, I’ll know I’ve truly left. I guess that’s all a part of graduating, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But I have this overarching fear, you see, that I’ll come back to visit high school on break, and when I greet my teachers, their eyes will reveal that they don’t remember me, despite the warmth of their welcome.

I don’t want to be forgotten. And as a corollary, I want to be remembered as someone who really cared, about learning, about my friends, and about my time spent in those poster-filled classrooms. Because I truly, truly did. I will always remember every one of my Academy teachers for the relationships we’ve developed and for how much I’ve learned from them, taking something different from each amazing year of instruction. I’ve been taught to question everything and to challenge ideas, others’ ideas, my own ideas. I’ve grown more than I thought possible, and I admire everything my Academy teachers and classmates have achieved and will achieve. So to be forgotten would be at odds with how I feel—I will always be an Academite, I just don’t want the Academy to leave me behind, to say goodbye to me. But deep down, I know that my relationships with each teacher and student were strong enough to withstand the test of time. We started the year off in English class with an exploration of memory, stories, and truth. Now, as the end approaches, the truth is that I'll remember the stories of moments from Academy for the rest of my life.

So any future freshman questioning whether the Academy would be the right fit for them, my answer is simple: no matter where you start, Academy will become a part of you as much as you are a member of Academy. Your classmates will become your family, your teachers will inspire you, and you will remember those four years for the rest of your life. Without a doubt, joining Academy was the single best decision I made in my four year high school career.

Thank you, Academy. I’ll never forget everything you’ve done for me.

Do You Know Your Frenemy?

Hey hey there party people! Anna here. This week, I've handed the task of posting on my blog to my friend Jordyn, who has her own blog about music. Check it out here! Enjoy her post!


"Hi there! My name is Jordyn, and I am guest blogging for my friend today. Since her blog focus is interpersonal relationships (and today is my birthday), I figured I'd say something about some of the people that make birthdays the best: your friends. I spend a lot of time with my friends; we like to go out, hang out, and just be together. But according to one of the surveys I took in 17 Magazine, there at many different types of friends -- and I can't even be sure my best ones are even all that close to me.

A couple of weeks ago I was thumbing through an old magazine looking for a specific picture to show my mom, and I came across a survey, "Who Are Your Best Friends?" It had questions like: how often do you spend time with your friends, what do you like to go out and do with your friends, and what do you like to discuss with your friends (kind of like this one). So I checked all the little boxes that applied, and looked at the "results", and the magazine writers' analysis. According to the results page, none of my friends were actually my friends. Why? Because we like to discuss TV shows that we watch together. 

Does discussing something as simple as a TV show that we like to watch mean that we're not really friends? It's not like we don't discuss other things - heavier and more important issues - because we do. But I think that there is some value to being able to talk about things that aren't so important. It's the same way that a student needs a ten minute break while writing a twenty page paper; it gives people time to relax and take a break. So I think that, while it may be superficial and a "filler" conversation, it shows that people understand when their friends need to take a break. A conversation about something silly like a TV show or song may not have much real depth to the actual conversation but it may have depth depending on the nature of the friends. At least, I know it does for me."

With which race do you identify? (Mark all that apply)

From the Population Reference Bureau's Questions on Race in the Census (2010)

The blog Sociological Images recently featured a post about the past and present of the US Census, detailing the change from 200 years of enumerators to the past 40 years of mail-in surveys. The ultimate effect of the sudden shift away from sending government workers out to collect a family's personal information with a *knock knock knock* on their door was... an explosion of race.

Not literally an explosion, as race had existed in the United States since its foundation. Rather, certain races suddenly multiplied while others shrank in number, undergoing changes to the racial population on par with a major ethnic cleansing. Only no such occurrence took place. The truth was that the enumerators had classified the US population's race based on sight-- a first impression. But in 1970, people were free to self-identify their race, causing the astronomical changes that augmented the Native American population by 110%, for example. No longer were people just white, black, or brown.

This post got me thinking about first impressions of race today, 40 years after the aforementioned change, and their implementation on the most recent census. A good friend of mine (check out her blog here) is half-Indian, half-Norwegian, giving her a slightly-darker-than-olive-but-lighter-than-black skin tone. I have been approached by countless classmates over the last five years asking me whether she is Puerto Rican, Arab, half-Black, or Mediterranean. This, along with the changes to the census, obviously proves that you can't categorize a person's race and ethnicity merely by sight.

Speaking on a personal level, I was treated as French in France, was assumed to be Italian in Italy (I got babbled at a lot, but they stopped when I responded with a petrified look), have been asked if I am Russian, Irish, German, and more. Sure, they're all predominantly white countries, seeing as I am clearly a white person. I admit, lots of white people look like they can be from anywhere. But if it's so difficult to discern from sight, why am I not afforded the chance to tell the US government with what race I identify? If I were given the chance on a census, I would call myself what I am, Eastern European or Czechoslovakian, over just "white".

Ultimately, since the census has made such important changes as to allow self-identification, why is it that "white" is still a category? Isn't that as culturally insensitive as calling everyone from Central America, Latin America, India, and the Middle East, "brown"? I don't think of myself as being the same as a person from France, England, Russia, Finland, or Greece; I have very different cultural and ethnic roots that help to define my identity within America. Different races of people from the Asian continent have nine categories on the census, which is a fantastic change.Yet why are all of us white people (with subtle but definite differences in appearance) still lumped together? Thoughts? Post them below!

The College Dilemma: A Changing Reality

Forget March Madness! It's College Madness for all the fourth quarter seniors in my school district; ever since the April 1st notification deadline, everyone wants to know who got into their first choice school, who was placed on the dreaded wait-list, who got a scholarship, who is majoring in Psychology, History, Chemistry... In my home, college is the primary topic of conversation, and I have my own answered questions about my personal situation. The one I just can't shake is "what does a college education even mean for a future in society?"

During the generations of my parents and grandparents, college was definitely not as important as it is marketed to be today. More often than not, people went to trade school or skipped college entirely, finding stable careers despite only having a 12th grade education (at best). My grandfather was among the few who went to technical college. He became an engineer and had a long and prosperous career. My grandmother, however, never went to college, and instead focused on her chosen life as a stay-at-home mother.

My parents' generation picked up on schooling in order to have a better life than their parents did. Both my mom and dad attended their only-choice school, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. My father went on to graduate school for Architecture and my mother recently earned her Master's degree, working now as an employment coach for underprivileged young adults.

The generations before me whisper of success stories as far as the eye can see (or the ear can hear). In my family, it's clear to me that higher education has bettered all of our lives. Yet I'm no longer convinced that going to college is the instant way to ensure a better life than my parents' generation. The rising cost and competition in admissions are making college a different struggle than it was in the past. But because this "Harvard example" of success is slowly becoming the American standard, what will happen to those who choose not to attend college, or cannot?

I mean, it's a genuine concern; the cost of all of the schools to which I applied is around $60,000 per year, a shockingly steep price for a pursuit with a "terrible return on investment", as my mother says. And what if an American citizen's true calling lies in careers that don't require much higher education? What if they choose to work as a plumber or a construction worker (some of which have higher starting salaries than a recent law school graduate)? Will the educated look down on them as the bottom of the social pyramid?

With the rate things are going, I think the social pyramid will invert somewhat in regards to careers and higher education. The fact of the matter is, students and families won't be able to put up with $200,000 of loans at the age of 22. College graduates won't furrow their brows at the kid who decides to join the military or go to trade school instead of jumping into a 4-year college. And attending a certain college over another won't mean what it used to. Something's gotta give. And it will.

Society and the Man Behind the Mask

In two months, my school district will be performing its annual spring musical, Phantom of the Opera. And since I realized that this is my last chance to get involved, I decided that I had to metaphorically give my track team the middle finger (in the kindest way possible) and sign myself up to play in the pit. So I did. And I have to say, I'M SO EXCITED I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF ANYMORE.

Needless to say, I've been thinking a lot about the plot of the Phantom of the Opera; I fell in love with it in 2004 when the movie version came out, read the book on the plane to Israel when I was 11, laughed for days at "Phantom in 15 Minutes", then went to see it on Broadway in Chicago in middle school. After that point, it faded out of my focus for a a few years. Until now...

It has since dawned on me that we need only look at the main conflict in the story to sneak a peek of society's dirty laundry showing beneath its t-shirt declaring tolerance: the negative perception of the physically deformed.

Think... the Phantom, the Joker from The Dark Knight, Freddie Krueger from The Nightmare on Elm Street, Shakespeare's Richard III. All were the villains of their stories (or were perceived to be by the mainstream societal consciousness), and all were vanquished in the end. Oh, and how could I forget: all had a physical deformity. Phantom was missing a nose and other parts of his face on one side, Heath Ledger's Joker had severe scarring on the sides of his mouth, Freddie Krueger was a burn victim, and Richard III was a hunchback.

After a little research, I found that assigning negative character traits to the physically deformed was a staple of the past for our society; historical canon only serves to reflect a deeper cultural understanding that deformed people were considered to be inherently "wrong" and unworthy of a role as a perfect protagonist. But is this still the case? Do we still demonize people with physical deformities? More importantly, would we notice if we did?

Nowadays, medical advances have provided inroads in fixing many birth defects and other acquired deformities. But with more surgical options available, those who cannot be treated by these means may just find themselves in a worse place than before; with fewer and fewer fellows, they may just end up more isolated and more stigmatized for not being "worthy" of correction.

Yet the opposite is also possible: as society tends toward the liberal in what concerns social issues and the perception of human difference, people may reach a new level of openness in understanding physical deformities and accepting them in our cultural definition of beauty. It has happened before, and it can happen again.

The truth of the matter is impossible to say for sure; I'd like to think that the latter will become the norm, but wishing doesn't always culminate in reality. What do you think will happen? Have you seen examples of either of these outcomes?

Careful! Your Oedipal Complex is showing.

One of the most well-known aspects of Freud's theory of the psychosexual stages of development is the Oedipal Complex, named for the title character in the Sophocles's ancient Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex. It states that many young boys between the ages of 3 and 5 feel desire for their mother and therefore feel anger and animosity toward their father, a competitor for their mother's love.

In the years since Freud published his theory, much application of his ideas has taken place in conjunction with modern and past literature and history-- psychologists and anthropologists like Clyde Kluckhohn, Weston La Barre, and Margaret Mead have expanded and applied this theory to the early history of man and to traditional folklore, involving everything from the development of traditional patriarchy and marriage laws in tribal societies, to a psychoanalytic treatment to Shakespeare's classic tragedy, Hamlet.

When thinking about the Oedipal Complex, I inevitably begin to apply it to modern life: is the Oedipal Complex still relevant, almost 100 years after Freud postulated it? Subsequently, has our modern technology world quashed all context for Freud's theory? Can the Oedipal Complex be applied to changing familial relationships?

Considering the fact that technology now mediates almost all of our social interactions and that only about 25% of families in America are nuclear, the stage for the Oedipal Complex may have changed. The way I see it, I need only attend a family gathering to see my toddler cousin reach for his mother, sneakily trying to pull her cell phone out of her pocket to play with the touch screen. It's almost shocking how easy it is to set a baby down with an iPad and watch them wile away the hours, leaving the child entertained, happy, healthy, and without a strong connection to their parents. And the societal changes don't end there. According to the 2010 census, 115,000 households in the United States consist of same-sex partners with children, and of those households, roughly 30% contain adopted children as opposed to biological children. Freud certainly couldn't have predicted that!

The questions come down to this: when a 4-year old is more preoccupied with Fruit Ninja than his mother's affection, is there any possibility for the development of an Oedipal Complex? When a family contains two dads, two moms, a single parent, or non-biologically related families, is there any possibility that a little boy can cling to the parent of the opposite sex in competition with their father figure? Some psychologists don't think there is, namely those who belong to the movement among behaviorists ending in the conclusion that the Oedipal Complex is only of the 20th century.

Summing it up, all evidence seems to point to the fact that an Oedipal Complex can't exist within the framework of a landslide shift in the necessary interpersonal relationships. Even more prevalent than the statistics are the "shivery yuckies" I feel when I think about little boys in love with their mothers. And yet, even with all this evidence on my side, I still find myself wondering if perhaps this psychology that has been mapped in history for hundreds of years can't find a way to survive the modern era. So what do you think? Is the Oedipal Complex innate, or is it socially contextual?

Understanding Interpersonal Relationships

A typical familial relationship between my father, my big sister, and me.

I've spent half of my school year posting about instances of interesting interpersonal relationships in the news, in history, and in literature, but I've only recently realized that I have never written a post about the topic itself. Maybe this is only happening now because lately I've been in a very meta mood, but regardless...voilà!

Interpersonal relationships, in their simplest form, involve the social connections made between people; these obviously include romantic and family relationships, but also some that might be missed, like the relationship between a teacher and a student, a pastor and his congregation, several families of neighbors, a pair of identical twins, or the President and the people of the United States. Sociology, psychology, and anthropology all make use of an understanding of interpersonal relationships in their research and practice. This field of thinking is limited to an undefined number of people, but generally transitions to international relations when concerning populations of people, nations, and MNCs/NGOs.

However, a few aspects remain the same when considering relationships on the people-to-people and nation-to-nation level: dominance, submissiveness, interdependence, and vulnerability. Essentially, there is usually, but not always, someone who is more prevalent in the relationship, someone who listens to and obeys the dominant person or group, a reliance on each other, and a feeling of weakness without the relationship that helps to sustain it.

Such relationships can be harmonious as with a couple that has been married happily for 50+ years or two life-long friends. On the contrary, they can be tense, as between two colleagues competing for the same promotion forced to work together. They can be necessary, like when a group of nations allies together against destruction by another force (think WWI). Or they can even be dangerous, as is the relationship between a drug dealer and their clients.

Using these universal tools of analysis for interpersonal relationships and even international relations, it is possible to analyze the people and nations in the books we read, the movies we watch, the news we hear, and in our own lives. Applying a more scientific approach even makes it possible to quantify that which seems to be beyond rational comprehension. It's all a part of the analytic approach to people and to life.

The Faces of the State of the Union

Jackie Bray stands with Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address.

As you probably know, on January 24, President Obama delivered his third State of the Union address to Congress. And whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, or a die-hard Ralph Nader supporter, you were subjected to the rhetoric in his speech (assuming that you were, in fact, listening to what he said and not just staring at the orange hue of John Boehner's face for over an hour). Maybe what stuck was his repeated use of the phrase, "built to last", or his delightfully tacky joke about spilled milk. Perhaps it was just his unique speaking style that made the entire country feel infallible for 70 minutes.

Personally, I absorbed how often he brought up the stories of ordinary American citizens. Yet that alone would not have stayed with me for long; it was the surprise of settling in for a story about the perhaps-fabricated struggles of *insert name here* from Middle of Nowhere, USA, and then BAM! I was looking right into their surprised face. It was unsettling initially, to say the least, because I actually felt guilty for doubting the truth of Obama's words when I saw that these people were not just rhetorical devices.

For this reason, I would argue that the use of Jackie Bray, Bryan Ritterby, and Warren Buffet's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, were the strongest rhetoric in his speech last week, in the same way that "Joe the Plumber" redefined John McCain's 2008 political campaign.

The strategy is not unique to politics. Everyone has seen the long commercials for UNICEF that present the name and dirt-streaked face of a weeping African orphan left to raise his five siblings, infected by malaria and HIV and without hope. While this example takes on a decidedly more depressing spin than those in a political campaign, the basic idea is the same: choose a person to represent a larger group, give them a name, give them a story, and give them a face to prove that they're not hypothetical. A play on pathos, if you will.

Thus the questions remain: why does this strategy work? Why have such diverse organizations been able to exploit this rhetorical strategy when everyone has seen it before? And why does it continue to surprise me?

The truth of the matter is that as a world, we've become unaccustomed to having to look at people. With the ease of telephone and online communication, face-to-face interaction is less important than ever and eye contact is becoming a memory of a bygone era.

I always thought I was immune to this loss on interpersonal interaction; after all, I speak competitively every weekend, where connection with the audience is essential. But I realized that while I can dish it out, I can't take it. Sure, I am able to express my point while locking eyes with my listeners and appealing to every sensitive bone in their body, but I can no longer sit comfortably as someone uses those strategies on me. I am a citizen of this changing world like anyone else, speech team or not. So to see the people who were being referenced, to put a face to the symbol, unsettled me. And if this is the case, this rhetorical strategy's power will grow as we continue to become a faceless society.

Capote's Masterpiece: In Cold Blood

Written by Truman Capote and published in 1966, In Cold Blood follows the true story of the murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959: After hearing about this quadruple homicide and before any killers were implicated, Capote and his friend Harper Lee traveled to Kansas and took thousands of pages of interview notes, which he then synthesized into a true-but-somewhat-fictionalized account of the people involved and events leading up to this tragic event.

Let me start out by saying that I loved this book. I think the most apt word to describe it is "page turner", for that it truly what it was. Yet it's not a mystery as many murder novels are, because from the beginning, you are introduced to the entire Clutter family, as well as the two murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. The plot thus unfolds as the events start to make sense: it's not "whodunit?", but rather "whytheydunit?".

In a literary sense, one of the main things I noticed is that the story is characterized by juxtaposition. Starting with the recreated last day of the Clutter family, the events are juxtaposed against the musings and plannings of the two murderers, who often delve back into their pasts to justify their actions and give the reader a sense of why they were doing what they were doing. After the Clutters were murdered, the focus switched to the fleeing murderers and their continued crime spree juxtaposed with the agony of the evidence-less investigation. Everything came together to make one stellar novel for a blogger exploring interpersonal relations.

Basically, this book is pregnant with people relating to people: the Clutter family relating to themselves, Herb Clutter's kindness to his employees (one of whom told Dick about the Clutter's whereabouts initially, which ultimately ended in their deaths), Nancy's gentle nature that caused her to be revered among the other youths in the town, Perry's rough relationship with his dysfunctional or dead family, Dick's abuse of the trust of his simple-minded his parents, the town postmistress' hatred of the gossiping neighbors... Pick any character, and a complex web can be drawn relating them to everyone else mentioned in the novel.

But the most poignant relationship between people in In Cold Blood concerns the residents of this sleepy town (population 270) and how the murder changed their lives. Neighbors who knew each other for thirty years began gossiping and speculating that the killer was among them; the crime was as mentally harmful to random townsfolk as it was to the remaining members of the Clutter family. Truman Capote puts it best when, on page 5, he says,

"At the time, not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them-- four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives. But afterward, the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again-- those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers".

I give this book 5 stars out of 5. From what I understand, the film version is gruesome (though I've never actually seen it). But this book is tasteful when addressing the violence of this crime, getting into the mentality of the act rather than the gory details. It's simply fascinating.