I'm Thankful (for a classmate)

        One of the people I appreciate in 6th period English is Barni, a freshman/frackie. We've been in the same division for two years already, and her antics are always amusing. She's smart, relatively friendly, and we've had enough classes together since 7th grade to be on pretty good terms with each other. This year, we have Instructional Support together, and she helps out with my questions about work and vice versa. During 6th, we sit next to each other everyday and group work assignments get done pretty easily and well between us (and, sometimes, a third person).
        (She also tells me what we do in Mr. Bauer's Chem that day.)

        Thanks, Barni :D

Celebrating Myself

Transcendentalists believe that society with its horrid, wicked, corrupt, Mother Gothel ways peer-pressure a person’s individualism into a smaller and smaller block until it ultimately disappears altogether. Though traits such as religion and politics are often the big culprits that immediately spring to mind, there are also little things (Uggs) that set a certain standard for normalcy (the Common App) and leave the individual no real choice except “this or die”.

My initial reaction at the phrase “celebrating [my]self” was “birthday parties!” because what better way is there to express how awesome and loved and individual you are based on the annual date of your birth? But then in the next moment, I realized, Well, there's only a couple of millions of other people with the same exact birthday, so maybe not.

A little more thinking (maybe about seven seconds' worth) and I realized that, well, there's a better and much more profound way to approach this. There are many different ways to celebrate many different things, but for an individual to celebrate himself, would it mean simply differentiating himself from others? If so, then what differentiates two people more than the way they live life and the decisions they make? The little (and big) yes-or-no, this-or-that decisions we make everyday reflect our ideals, our history, our personal versions of reason, and they help paint a larger picture of who we are as individuals.

Ultimately, what's a better way to celebrate yourself than by showing the world who you are?

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe--born Edgar Poe--was a 19th century American author and poet. He was born to considerably humble beginnings, a family that wasn't anything already particularly special and parents who left him and his siblings either willingly or by death. Poe was then adopted by John Allan, a family man who was also a trader of many different types of goods.

As he grew up, Poe went through periods of education (his highest academic achievement being one year at the University of Virginia) and enlisted in the United States Army. He was eventually discharged, though not long after, his brother died, resulting in Poe turning to literature as a career option. It was a difficult time to be a professional writer in America at the time as there was a lack of copyright laws; however, after several attempts, he eventually succeeded in making a decent name for himself.

His literature is categorized as Gothic, and often contain themes of mystery and supernatural events or beings. It also contains many big-as-life themes, including mourning, premature burial, and life and death themselves. A few of his well-known pieces include The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart.

Along the way, he secretly married his cousin, Virginia, who so happened to be thirteen while he was twenty-six. Poe continued to write, but when Virginia fell ill with which we presume to have been tuberculosis and eventually died, he was reported to have become erratic and alcohol-dependent. About two years after Virginia died, Poe passed away as well, and the number of speculated causes are many. It is said that in the last few years of his life, his mental state slowly deteriorated to the point where he didn't want people to understand the true meanings of his work, but would become angry if they misunderstood. Yet, of course, dozens of decades later, it's interesting to note that we are still attempting to draw from his literature, though now, we'd have to wonder whether or not our analyzations are making Poe writhe in his grave or not...

What is an American?

     By definition, an American is "a native or citizen of the United States".

     True.

     But then, the question is why don't we ever answer "American" when people ask us our ethnicity? Caucasians whose families have been here for generations may say "white", and if you press for something more specific, chances are they might launch into, "Well, I'm part Dutch, French, Italian, British, Russian, Polish, Scandinavian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian...".

     It's not much, but I have a theory. Compared to the rest of the world, the United States is relatively young. It was fortunate enough to have been born with an adolescent rebel mindset, and not unlike a certain child born out of adultery, it is fresh and new and unbiased (well, from one perspective, anyways). At some point, it became a "melting pot", a congregation of many different types of people from around the world. When you have a newly arrived group of people, you're not going to expect them to be in unison already.
    It's the equivalent of having a certain year's tributes gathered up in The Capitol; you're not going to ask them where/what are you because it's quite obvious that they're in The Capitol and they're one of that year's tributes. Instead, you'd probably ask what district are you from, because it's the one that they can give you an answer to without an accompanying look questioning both you and your existence. From this viewpoint, it's simply logic and a tad of human etiquette.

     However, if the United States isn't an "ethnicity", then where did the other ethnicities come from? Other countries, yeah? But what's the difference between all the other countries and the US? Why are their native people automatically deemed "[Country]-an" by us and their emigrants?
    The answer, I believe, is simply time.
    The other countries in question have had time to establish their racial features and culture, while I return to the fact that the U.S. is incredibly relatively young. But doesn't this kind of mean that "American" will eventually be an ethnicity too, just like all the others? The races of the world will begin to meld here, slowly but somewhat surely, and before long (maybe a few hundred, thousand years), the ethnicity of this country will be that of all the other ethnicities in the world combined.

     Basically, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great(x100)-grandchildren may travel abroad someday and be presented with the question of, "So what ethnicity are you?" in some language or another, and--who knows?--they just might say, "American."

The Modern Puritans

     The first thing that leapt to my mind when I heard the words "modern Puritan" was, "Mormons!" (and totally not because I saw the Book of Mormon just last month).

     To put it simply, Mormons are a group of people who follow the religion of Mormonism. Mormonism is classified as a subcategory of Christianity, but they differ in significant ways (i.e. the first Mormons followed the Young [pun intended if italics wasn't enough of a hint] American Moses to Sal Tlay Ka Siti, Utah in 1844). Their Broadway representation portrayed them as wholly faithful people with traditions and beliefs as cemented and varied and strange as the next sector of Christianity.

      But then I started thinking, and before long, I realized that hey, wait, aren't a lot of religions in some way restrictive on their believers and, to some degree, intolerant of other beliefs or ideas? Aside from the friendly, do-gooding Mormons, certain churches (read: Westboro Baptist) come to mind when the word "intolerant" is brought to the table.

      But then I kept thinking, and after a little while, my head started going around in fuzzy circles, which is when I know I need to take a step back and take a clearer look at the heart of my problem: the idea of the modern Puritan. Okay, well, what was a Puritan? What defined them?

     The most general, all-around description off of the top of my head is, "group of people exiled due to their extreme religious beliefs".

     Okay, well, the word "extreme" is subjective, so how about just "group of people exiled due to their religious beliefs"? And, well, that kind of phrasing reminds me an awful lot of the Holocaust. And if the 1930s and '40s were only about seventy or so years ago, then that's moderately recent, right?

     Right, maybe not, since smartphones didn't exist back then and any time before an iPhone is practically prehistoric.

     Maybe there are countries or areas in the world right now in the year 2013 A.D. persecuting people due to their religious beliefs, but none are turning up in my mind, so what else can I do but go to Google?

     According to an article on Rome Reports, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world thanks to the intolerant governments and citizens of China, Cuba, North Korea, and the like.

     ...Right, so we're back to the Christianity bit.

     But how about taking the idea of the Puritans beyond just persecution? How about just "oppressed people"? After all, the Puritans oppressed themselves in many ways due to their own traditions and beliefs.

     And that is when the stork delivered my epiphany.

     In a very liberal way of interpreting the phrase, we are all "modern Puritans" in just about every aspect of life. We are all oppressed and held fast by laws, authority, physical and mental capabilities, and/or morality. Kids must be educated, I can't sparkle naturally in the sun like Edward Cullen, and none of us should beat people to death with a sledgehammer somehow made from the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan while high on crystal meth while in the United States of America.

     To be perfectly honest, for a while, I thought that I had nothing in common with the Puritans in The Crucible. However, I realize now that I do, and despite how "well, duh" it is, the fact is that we are all simply  human.

John Proctor: Hero or Stooge?

     According to Merriam-Webster, a hero is a) "a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities" b) "the chief male character in a story, play, movie, etc." c) "a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability" or d) "an illustrious warrior".
     According to the same Encyclopædia Britannica, a stooge is a) "a weak or unimportant person who is controlled by a powerful person, organization, etc." b) "a performer in a show who says and does foolish things that other performers make jokes about".

Meet my hero/stooge chart which will help determine the fate of John Proctor's legacy.

Hero | Stooge

     |

     |

      Although Proctor was arguably the "chief male character in a...play", he was no demigod prowling the farms of colonial America and he wasn't portrayed as a soldier or shown to have had any sort of military affiliation. That alone cancels out most of the definitions for "hero".

Hero | Stooge
I     |
     |

     As evidenced by many scenes and actions, Proctor was a man of his own virtues and possibly the most realistically imperfect man in the entire play. Did he have his flaws? Yes. He cheated on his faithful wife with their teenage servant. He was not a hundred percent faithful to the Puritan religion. He was brash, temperamental, and stubborn.
     Was he brave? Yes. He accepted his affair with Abigail, but he was strong enough inside to understand that what he was doing was wrong and had the willpower to completely shut it down, even if there was a small part of him that didn't want to. He ripped up warrants and confessions and made petitions. He stood up against the Salem court and pointed his finger where nobody else pointed.
     But, was he admired? Did the townspeople of Salem really respect him? If evidence shows that they ultimately refused him and instead went with the words of adolescent girls (a decision that resulted in his execution), is that really a hero or just a martyr? 

Hero | Stooge
I     |
     |

     Despite his persistence, courage, and logic, he was still condemned to death with eighteen other "witches". Politically, this means that he was weak and unimportant. He was controlled by the townspeople, the court. For a certain period of time, Abigail was also the puppeteer of one of the strings binding his limbs. He personally did not accomplish the task of saving Elizabeth because it was the Puritans' values that saved her (although, indirectly, I suppose you could say he did because he was the one who impregnated her...), and he achieved nothing as far as his second desire of wanting to save his friends either. He instigated guilt upon Danforth and the others towards the end, but not enough to save the remaining convicts who were sentenced to death, himself included.

Hero | Stooge
I     | I
     |

     The second point needs a little more metaphor, but bear with me here. At some point, the Salem Witch Trials became a circus, a performance. Abigail and the girls raked in the fame as the lead actresses; Danforth was the ringmaster who raked in the cash. Proctor was much lower than them on the ladder—maybe he was one of the clowns who are the butt of all the physical and verbal jokes? And though Abigail and Danforth didn't literally turn him into a laughingstock, they saw him and what he stood for as a joke of an obstacle in their way to their personal goals. He—along with many others—was a victimized performer in the circus that was the Salem Witch Trials.

Hero | Stooge
I     | II
     |

     Though of course, these terms and his actions are largely subjective. The humane part of me that read John Proctor's story would say that he was a hero, a martyr, a heroic martyr. However, dictionary definitions and the people and story of Salem would likely deem him as a stooge, and  in this case, that is also the label I'm putting on him.

Arrivals...There Goes the Neighborhood

       Academic Center kids at Whitney Young are sheltered.

       Yes, they spend passing periods with about two thousand high school students (who are sometimes literally twice their height) and attend elective classes with same said two thousand high school students and take mostly honors classes as middle schoolers. Yes, their middle school years are much more similar to that of scary, intimidating high school than most other seventh or eighth graders in the country.

        Yet, they also all take the exact same classes (with exception of electives) with the exact same teachers. This allows for the comparing of homework answers with just about any one of the other one hundred and ten people in the grade. This allows for group test cramming at lunch and general complaints about the difficulty of Mr. Moran's Geometry course. Friendships are quickly created and easily kept because two years of forty weeks of five days of six fifty-minute periods of no one but ackies can do that. The teachers purposefully plan out their assignments together so as to not overwhelm them. (They also get to see all the major school productions. For free.)

And that is why freshman year usually hits them so hard. Suddenly, everybody has different classes, different teachers, different schedules. The teachers aren't aware of the rest of a student's schedule, so they all simply make due with giving them assignments every single night. The masochistic ones who joined a sport discover that no matter what they do, they cannot get more than six or seven hours of sleep at night. Once the realization that they have to actually pay to see the Company or AAC show this year hits, that's when the full weight of frackie depression drops down onto their shoulders.

           But amidst all that, there’s still another change. Seeing their frackie friends in or out of classes is suddenly a rarity in itself, but at the same time, it's too much work and also several shades too awkward to try to befriend the abrupt abundance of sophomores in their classes...or the new freshmen who have already separated into cliques.

The arrival of the rest of their high school graduation grade is something significant, and it’s debatable as to whether or not it’s a bad thing. It symbolizes all the other aforementioned problems and uncomfortableness that suddenly arose. It symbolizes that the ackies are officially freshmen and no longer middle schoolers even if they did complete their freshman course load in eighth grade. It symbolizes the threads of their old social webs unweaving. It symbolizes new relationships just around the corner. It symbolizes change—a lot of unsure, hesitant change—because in the blink of an eye, the Academic Center kids who were the class of 2013 in just June are suddenly a class of 2017 that is five times larger and so much more intimidating and a spontaneous melding of the “cultures” that belong to frackies and non-frackies.

I don’t even know seventy percent of my grade's names anymore. All I do know is that with the new freshmen's arrival, our small, close-knit neighborhood has suddenly become a village. (Of course, who said that, "Arrivals...there goes the neighborhood," necessarily has to be about the neighborhood in question "going" for the worst? Sometimes, things simply have to make way for better things.)

Me

My name is Lillian (occasionally misspelled as Lilian or Lilyann) Hua (commonly mispronounced as Hoo-ah, Hue-ah, Hurrah, Ha, Hue, Huaaaaaaaaaaa! [insert karate chop], etc.) and I made this blog and am writing this post about myself because my English teacher told us to.

The truth is that I never know what to put down when I'm prompted to "tell [you] about [my]self". Do I write that I'm an ackie at Whitney Young High School who's officially one-third done with her time here but is already sick of the school? Do I mention that at the time of writing this that I am also literally sick?

I'm not sure where the part that I say that I've been a swimmer for about half my life goes, but it's probably somewhere after the initial introduction. If I mention that, then I might also bring up that I ran cross-country and track during seventh and eighth grade, and never knew before then that you could drown in air. If I feel like poking a bit of fun at myself, then I could also mention that I don't have much ball coordination at all and that, for a swimmer, I ironically don't have much upper body strength.

I could also include other stuff that I do—for example, supporting certain stereotypes by having practiced piano for a very long time. There's also the bit about being a practitioner of the ancient art that is glowsticking (read: swinging glowsticks around on shoelaces), loving Disney movies, being a bit of an audiophile, and also not knowing how to register service hours. 

But that's all hypothetical. Now to get to writing about myself...oh. Wait.