Growing Pains

   Whoever saw Lagniappe Potpourri 2011, (this year), knows that the theme was CHANGE. Change is hard to do. Life is never constant. These were the reoccurring messages throughout the show. And while Lagniappe is a comical variety show, the message always seems to be such a present one in our lives as we journey through high-school. The most recent change I've noticed in my life has to do with Halloween. Last year, I planned my costume a good month ahead of time and had it all laid out a week before I wore it to school. This year, when people asked me what I was dressing up as, I found myself not only not knowing, but not caring. It's depressing to admit that I don't care about Halloween anymore, but it's true. I take this to mean that I'm growing up.
   A change that I haven't yet accepted is the fact that the local Glencoe upscale drugstore, Parkway Drugs, has been bought out by Walgreens. My mom went in there today to get her monthly fix of cinnamon Altoids and found that they were gone. No, not temporarily out, just gone. While that is an unpleasant change for my mom, the biggest issue is that Walgreens actually assured the staff of Parkway that they would all be able to keep their jobs, then pulled the rug out from under them a few days later by firing the two pharmacists, who are beloved figures in Glencoe and have been working there for a very long time. This harsh change has created such an uproar in Glencoe that people are vowing to boycott Walgreens/Parkway. While change is inevitable and oftentimes a natural thing, sometimes people have control over it. And in this situation, the Walgreens administration is entirely to blame.

So You Think You Can Blog

Please assess "Race to Extreme Lack of Sleep"

   Think you can blog? It's harder than it looks. You have to walk the fine line of discussing controversial subjects while trying not to offend anyone too severely. Blogging has really increased my awareness of the world around me and how everything is connected in it. Everything we talk about and learn in class can relate to current news in so many ways. As I look back on my blogs, I see that I have been able to let loose within my writing as the quarter progressed. At first, I was writing in a very formal fashion, and not about anything I really cared about- for example, my "Titanic Once Again" post. But now I am able to break out of that constricting shell and discuss whatever inspires me. I've also learned that I don't need to write a long post in order to get my point across. The length really doesn't matter, as long as I'm effectively bringing up a point and stating my opinion on it. Something I definitely need to improve on is providing links and real-life examples to back up my statements. I usually talk about one thing, relate it to class discussion, and provide one link. In almost all of my posts you can find the phrase, "In class we talked about..." While this meets the basic expectations of our blog assignment, it's not going "above and beyond" whatsoever. I highly recommend blogging to people who don't already, because it can expand your view of the world and it's a great forum to express your opinions and even your personality. It's become something that I really care about weekly.

SHIRT

   As you may have noticed, I put this title in ALLCAPS because it is such an important issue that I think we, as consumers in the United States, choose to ignore. The fact is, so many corporations and clothing manufacturers today use sweat shops. As much as we don't want to believe that slavery still exists, it does. It's hard for us to know exactly what to buy and where it came from without spending a lot of time looking into it, but it's something that we should be able to if we don't want to encourage the use of sweat shops. As an American buyer, I know that I can be really lazy sometimes in terms of shopping. The typical American consumer is the same- lazy. But we need to start being aware of where things come from instead of just buying whatever fits or whatever we want. In class, we read the poem Shirt by Robert Pinsky. This truthful poem exploits the horrors of sweat shops and modern slavery. I think we all need to read this over and over until we really understand how important and present this issue is today. Then we can start doing something about it.

Denote This

   I've noticed that many students, including myself, in our American Studies class have been blogging about Race to Nowhere lately. I'm not surprised because many of us can attest to the ridiculously overwhelming pressure that is discussed and studies within that documentary. But today, I would like to review the topic of connotation versus denotation that Doc OC has blogged about in An American Studies. In class, we talked about, or rather, argued about the meaning of the word "housewife" in the context of American Pharaoh. This word was used to describe Florence Scala in her "grass roots" movement in which she confronts the mayor. While some argued that this word carried the implication that Florence and her female followers were useless and unintelligent, I completely disagree with that. I think back then, as Doc OC also said, the word "housewife" was generally a neutral word in terms of connotation. Today, connotation is still an issue. As a high school student, I am affected by implications of harsh words spoken about others. One such word that really bothers me is the word "gay". I know that the student body as a whole has been lectured on the negative way we use this word, and how it can hurt others. But I don't think many people listen. I still frequently hear people using this word that used to mean "happy," to say "weird," "bad," "embarrassing," and anything that you would not want to be associated with if you are homosexual. Connotations are significant in the language of young people. We have to be careful about how we use certain words because language is so powerful in our society, and we never know who we might be hurting.

Race to Extreme Lack of Sleep

    First of all, I would like to apologize for posting this so late. I've been sick for the past week and I don't think it's an exaggeration when I say that my thinking skills have been like a bowl of mush. Last night I stared at a floral place mat and laughed for 5 minutes. Who knows why. I've been diagnosed by my dad, who is an ER doc, as having a common cold. But I question that diagnosis. Maybe it's not the change of weather or sharing of water bottles with friends that has caused me to be congested and physically exhausted. Maybe it's the stress of being a student, even worse, a Junior at New Trier High School. In class, (or at least what I haven't missed in class), we've been talking about the overwhelming pressure we, as teenagers, are under. Last year, we were under some minor pressures but the switch to this year's challenges makes sophomore year seem like sitting on a cloud being served by fairies. This year, it seems as though the highest priority on all of our lists is COLLEGE. Everything we have learned about taking the "journey, not the destination," has been shot down completely. The message "Screw the journey" is hidden within every application, ACT prep course, and pamphlet that is being shoved down our throats. Just from seeing the trailer of Race to Nowhere, a documentary about the college and grades-related pressure high school students are under, I recognized myself in many of those stressed out, broken down students being interviewed. The disturbing fact that 6 kids at their school had committed suicide in one year didn't even surprise me that much. I'm sure our parents and grandparents went through many of the same stressful experiences as we are now, but I definitely think it has gotten worse as competition has increased between young people worldwide. These days, how can we even compete? And is it worth it to bust our butts so we can brag about going to Princeton?

As Racist As Ever

   As we reviewed and discussed Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in class this week, I wondered if it's true that we are just as ignorant about race as we were when we enslaved innocent people for the color of their skin. Since this past week we basically entered the study of the horrific slavery period in the United States right after hearing a lecture on Obama's speech about the prevalence of racism today, I couldn't help but connect the two in a way that shocked me. We may not be enslaving people or supporting the idea of "white superiority" in a lawful way anymore, but people today still judge people for the color of their skin, the religion they believe in, or where they were born. As many people pointed out in class, stereotypes about races and religions still exist in a strong and unjust way. Someone even gave the example of cops pulling people over in suspicion of their race.
   This also brings to my mind the fact that any middle-Eastern-looking person in an airport has to arrive 3 hours ahead of time because we all know that they will be strip-searched and questioned thoroughly. This all relates back to 9/11, an earlier post blog I posted. We think we are so much better today than we were hundreds of years back. But the only difference is that we are separating ourselves from these "outsiders" on our own time, rather than with hateful laws. I think we need to progress much, much further as a society in order to be done with racism once and for all, and I don't think there is any argument that could be made and supported against that. What good does racism do, but separate people based on physical judgments?

Into the Mind of Chris McCandless?

   Last night, I watched Into the Wild: the Sean Penn version. Before we began to watch, Sarah "QT" E told Jackie and me that she had discussed the movie with her dad after he watched it on his own. He commented that in the book it was uncertain as to what caused Chris to die, except for a few speculations. In Penn's adaptation, the poisionous potato seeds were 100% at fault in his death. The movie started in images of Chris McCandless, (played by Emile Hirsch), exploring "unknown" territory, clearly loving it. Not too long after the movie had begun, we made a realization. Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor had chosen not to show the film in our class because they didn't like it, especially Mr. O'Connor, (as Mr. Bolos stated). They didn't go into a lengthy explanation of why they didn't like it but mostly blamed it on the fact that Krakauer, the narrator and a potent voice in the book, was absent in the entirety of the movie. But the three of us, watching the movie, also realized that the portrayel of Chris, though very realistic and believable, may not have been the real Chris at all. Since McCandless's tragic life wasn't well-known until after he died, Krakauer had to base his portrayel of Chris solely off of what people told him in interviews or what he had determined from artifacts of Chris's life. In the book, it is clear to the reader that we will never really know who Chris was or how he acted during that time of his life where he was alone in the wild. But in the movie, choices must obviously be made about the character, and these choices may be completely off-base. I did like the movie in terms of plot, character development, ups and downs, and all of the typical factors of a good movie, but I now see what Bolos and O'Connor were talking about. It would be nearly impossible to make a movie out of a book in which the main character, (other than Krakauer), is an ambiguous figure.
   In class this past week, we have been discussing the specific words selected in textbooks, and what is the meaning behind them. We studied an article in a certain textbook in which the Native Americans were clearly portrayed as the vitcims and the "white settlers" as vicious, violent, beings. No matter how unbiased texbook editors and authors want to be, ultimately, their opinion will always show through.
   It is apparent in the matter of Sean Penn's Into the Wild, that even he could not help himself in his bias. He made Chris's parents look like they were entirely to blame for Chris rebelling against them by showing a scene in the movie in which they fought violently. Penn obviously had his own strong opinions about things when writing the screenplay. Not only did he have to deal with his own views, but he also had to worry about the views of the audience who would watch this movie. I believe that the movie only highlighted the beautiful and heroic parts of Chris's journey, in order to appease the typical American audience. We can never assume that a piece of literature or art is unbiased, or true.