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(10/22/14 7:38pm)
For decades, video games served one main purpose. From “Pong” to “Space Invaders” to “Super Mario Bros.”, games were created and shared to entertain. People played to have fun, to escape from the world for a few minutes, to engage with experiences that were competitive, interesting and enjoyable.
Slowly, however, games changed. More and more started including stories of varying complexity, and certain games began to resemble movies. The emergence of “Metal Gear Solid”, “Fallout” and role-playing games marked this new element of the medium and set the stage for more complex stories to arise in games in the future.
But these were still generally inaccessible. Think of the process it takes children to get from illiteracy to being able to read Joseph Conrad — there is a tremendous value in the end experience, but it takes years of hard work to get to that point. These early games were like that. The mechanics were daunting to learn, and players had to invest hours of playtime in order to reach the most valuable parts of these stories.
Video games today, however, do not require this any longer. The barrier to entry is so low that some of the most incredible games ever made require the player to simply tilt the controller and press a button. At the same time, they often include fully fledged, engaging and complex stories and experiences.
Games can last anywhere from thirty minutes to thirty hours. Dedicated players will often put hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into their favorite games. But not all games are built with this sort of lifespan in mind — many made today are small, contained experiences meant to be played in one sitting.
But what is most markedly different about many modern games as opposed to early attempts? They are now a legitimate form of literature. Yes, games can be literature. They explore deep, pertinent themes on a level reached before only by novels. They engage with social issues and require the player to think about the consequences of basic human nature. They present you with situations that are philosophically and morally ambiguous and make you come to your own conclusion about them. Games can now tell stories on the level of most acclaimed novels. “The Last of Us”, released in 2013, featured a story so moving and powerful that it received one of the highest average scores ever given to a game, it was made into a stage production and it is currently being turned into a film. Critics compare it to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, as it creates a similarly impactful, desolate world and explores the lengths to which humans will go for love.
But games go beyond what we consider to be traditional literature. They do things that are not possible in novels. Whereas novels tell stories to you, games can allow you to make your own story. You can become part of an ever-evolving web of narrative, choosing your own path through a story or even forging the story itself from your gameplay experiences. The “Mass Effect” series gave dozens of choices throughout the games, forcing you to choose the way you spoke to other characters, the people you saved from death and the way you fought your battles. The world would shift as you made these decisions, effectively becoming yours.
A game like “DayZ”, on the other hand, gives you a wide-open sandbox with the tools to create lasting narratives all on your own. There is no written story in this game, just a world and objects throughout it that you can interact with. It’s a survival simulator, and it compels you to find allies and build up your character so it can better survive against zombies and antagonistic players.
Moreover, games are also utilized to create art, something which has given rise to unique and powerful storytelling techniques. Flower, for instance, is simple but profound: in a series of beautiful, breathtaking levels, you control a petal that moves through the air and blooms other flowers. Bloom all the flowers and you bring life back to a dead city. It’s an incredibly simple premise and the controls are basic, but it explores issues of pollution, environmentalism and life and death.
Other games like “Journey”, “Proteus”, the “Swapper” and “Dear Esther” all try to create a rewarding experience with minimalist narrative design but rich and complex environmental storytelling. Games like “Papers”, “Please” and “Gone Home”, on the other hand, take two basic actions — working as a customs agent and walking through a house, respectively — and turn them into social commentary and emotional stories.
Games have never been cheaper or more accessible. “Proteus” and “Dear Esther” cost $15 max and can run on most computers, so there’s no need for expensive hardware. At the same time, they have grown and developed into literature in their own right. The literary and artistic potential for games is immense, and they have greatly diversified from their humble origins. Play a game and check this new literary form for yourself; they have taught me more than I thought possible just ten years ago.
Artwork by WIN HOMER
(10/08/14 6:09pm)
This year, I have not gone to a single party. I have not been involved in any of the party culture, I have only once even seen alcohol, and I go to sleep early on the weekends. Small gatherings of friends have supplanted loud, raucous parties. Video games, reading for fun and playing cards occupy my time instead of drinking, dancing, and yelling.
I have never felt more liberated.
The debate will never end: is it, or is it not, socially acceptable to party and drink? Should we discourage alcohol consumption and partying? Or should we allow individuals to choose what they want to do, to consume what they wish, to make their own choices?
At such a bastion of liberalism like Middlebury, general social attitude weighs heavily on individual choice, generally dissuading any attempt to moderate the choices of students in how to spend their time. Look at the tailgate fiasco, for example. A simple, relatively unobtrusive rule has had an incendiary and widespread response because the administration dares to try and regulate the actions of the students.
But maybe it is time to shift our focus. Maybe it is time to ask the hard questions, to take a long, introspective look at our community and wonder if such hardcore individualism is healthy for our community. Perhaps we should ask why we defend our supposed “right” to consume alcohol and to party so stubbornly. Perhaps we should wonder why, even with all that Middlebury does, the predominant social activity is still drinking and going out.
Why do people start partying in the first place? I believe that it begins during the first week of freshman orientation. Most people want to meet people and make friends, and most are very afraid of being caught alone and without a friend group. Partying is a quick, easy and ubiquitous way of meeting people. It allows students to bond where otherwise they would never have met. It’s an efficient way of filling up your phone with new contacts.
What this does, however, is eliminate other avenues of forging connections. Although students make friends with their hallmates by proximity, friendship building outside of the hall seems to have been left up to parties. Instead of creating deep connections, parties encourage shallow acquaintances.
But this is a common argument against partying, one that most people have heard of. But once you’re past your freshman year, when you do have a group of good friends, what is the harm in going out every once and a while? I argue that the harm is that people become dependent on it. It becomes the only method of social interaction, the only entertainment, the only occupation on the weekends. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays become cycles of going out, recovering, going out, then recovering again. That dramatically reduces the value of weekends. Go outside on a Saturday at nine in the morning, for example, and you will find the campus almost silent. The days become subordinate in favor of the nights.
Since I have quit going out, I’ve found weekend mornings to be valuable and rewarding. I’ve walked into town and enjoyed coffee at the café. I’ve taken trips to Burlington with my friends. I have read books for fun because the full days give me time to enjoy other activities. Hikes, games and trips are all open to me because my days aren’t spent recovering. I wake up at nine o’clock instead of one, clear-headed and awake instead of weary and in pain.
I don’t think that my choice is to superior to partying. Partying is certainly entertaining and fun, and I have many hilarious stories from parties I’ve attended. What I’m challenging is not partying itself, but the consistent and almost single-minded dedication to going out every weekend. People say that there is nothing to do at Middlebury, and that’s why people drink and party so much. While there are few college-sponsored events, this accusation of a lack of things to do is just wrong. There might be nothing to do at night — but a full day opens up a wealth of opportunities.
I challenge the students of Middlebury not to go out for a weekend. Wake up early, walk outside and breathe in the fresh air. Go get some food in town. Play a pickup game of football with your friends. Read a novel, write a poem or pick up a hobby. Get some friends together and cook dinner for yourselves and then play a board game.
Find the opportunities to forge truer, deeper connections with people. Take a risk and don’t party one weekend. Drinking and partying are not the only things to do here. Choosing not to party has made me happier and has allowed me to find my best friends at this school.
It is time to ask ourselves if partying is something we want to steadfastly protect. It is time to challenge ourselves to fill our time meaningfully and differently.
Artwork by SARAH LAKE
(09/25/14 3:11am)
Over the last few weeks, an internet blog has been making the rounds throughout Middlebury students. At this point, you’ve probably heard of it. Called the Middlebury College Disorientation Guide, the blog contains several posts outlining some of the problems with Middlebury’s approach to environmentalism and social justice. It’s an intriguing collection of articles that makes you think about what it means to be a Midd student, how we interact with our school, and how our school interacts with the world.
Certainly, the Disorientation Guide hits upon some hot-button issues that are popular in today’s culture. It raises some difficult questions about the aims of Middlebury’s investment. It calls out the college for being hypocritical with regards to carbon neutrality. It even attacks some of the most espoused beliefs on campus—that Middlebury is somehow unique, that going here is an unreproducible experience, and that students here have exceptional intellects and talent.
Although I agree with what much of the Disorientation Guide states, it makes some impassioned arguments that stray from the supported to the impulsive. It uses the power of fad social movements to make its points, relying on scathing attacks on elements of Middlebury culture that probably don’t deserve all the hate that the guide is leveraging on them.
For example, the guide wants us to ask ourselves, is Middlebury actually progressive? Do we uphold standards of social justice? The authors take the declarative stance that no, in fact, social injustices are reflected within the student body. But the question that this raises is if societal problems become a college’s problems. Is a college culpable if you can see stereotypes in its student body?
The disorientation guide is right in stating that the number of rich and white people at this school is disproportionate and, sometimes, shocking. But the guide also reasons that this makes Middlebury not actually progressive or diverse at all, insinuating that the relative lack of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity on campus is a choice the college is consciously making.
However, blaming Middlebury for this lack of diversity is misunderstanding the issues behind social inequality. What the authors of the disorientation guide seem to forget is that the disproportionate representation of the wealthy at Middlebury is a symptom of this social inequality, and most likely not a result of some insidious scheme to make money. It’s not necessarily Middlebury’s fault that the student body is as disproportionately represented as it is. We should not make the college responsible for systemic social problems.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to address them. I certainly think that the College can help out in local communities, strengthening schools and addressing the problems at their sources. After all, the best way to fix any injustice is not to slap a quick fix on it after the damage has already been done; rather, helping out at its root cause can progress toward eliminating the problem altogether.
But even though Middlebury has issues with diversity, all students share the common belief that Middlebury is special. Or at least, that’s what I thought people believed. The guide’s authors argue that, actually, the uniqueness of Middlebury is fake, and that our school is really founded on an elitist, archaic understanding of knowledge and wisdom. While I agree that much of the American education system needs to be fixed, and that there’s too great a focus on test-taking, the guide goes so far as to seemingly assert that intelligence is a social construct. “Meritocracy is not real,” it says definitively. Sure, there are different forms of intelligence, and there are many hundreds of millions of brilliant people who didn’t go to schools like Middlebury, but that doesn’t mean that the form of intelligence Middlebury emphasizes isn’t any less real.
We were accepted to Middlebury because we were talented in academics. Many of us were good at memorizing tables, formulas, and dates, but that’s not the only element of education. Middlebury focuses on critical thinking, encouraging us to challenge our professors, our books, and the thoughts of others. Even if it’s not unique, this alone makes Middlebury special. We are all talented in this form of intelligence, and our college serves to emphasize it and make us better learners, thinkers, and citizens.
The fact that we are all intelligent in this way and share in the same intellectual community doesn’t make us better than anyone else. The guide’s authors were right in that intelligence comes in countless shapes, and that we can learn from every person on Earth. However, that fact doesn’t preclude us from being exceptional. We are intelligent, talented, and dedicated. But the authors equate being exceptional with exceptionalism, intelligence with elitism. And yet, Middlebury students are often brilliant at what they choose to do, while at the same time recognizing the inherent equality in all humans. Being good at something doesn’t necessitate lording it over people.
The authors also suggest that, along with no one being exceptional, Middlebury itself isn’t unique. In other words, although we think non-Midd students won’t “get it,” in fact our community doesn’t provide us with anything special. I respond to this by asking them, what makes Middlebury not unique? It’s a special experience that only exists in one place, with one set of students and professors, with one set of values. Saying it’s not unique is far more disingenuous than saying it is. No one outside of Midd will understand that special and life-changing philosophy class you might have taken. That was a singular, incredible experience that only a very few people got to participate in. This isn’t a bad thing. Each college has its own unique brand of education and unique set of experiences it offers. If you click with your school, if you passionately love being a student there, you’ll have four years that no one else will ever experience. It’s yours and only yours. And that’s the beauty of it.
In my last column, I discussed how we have to be careful of slipping too far into the “Middlebury Bubble.” I believe that the Disorientation Guide is a prime example of the effect of the bubble on the way people perceive social problems. Popularity can cause rational activism to become irrational and impulsive. Disenchantment can become more of a person’s identity than a logical feeling about a system. Middlebury has its fair share of problems, but conspiracy theories will do nothing to solve them. Demeaning the incredible wealth of opportunities and the social activism that the college pursues will improve nothing. Instead, addressing problems in the most positive ways possible will help people and communities without harming the ability of the college to operate.
(09/10/14 8:26pm)
It’s often said that we at Middlebury live in a bubble. Our little college sits deep in the Vermont woods, hours from the nearest major city and 45 minutes from Burlington, a town that’s hard-pressed to consider itself metropolitan in any way. We’re insulated from societal upheaval and cultural turmoil by the miles and miles of Green and Adirondack Mountains and national forests. And although we’re all undoubtedly fully immersed in the digital age, it’s still far too easy simply never to hear of events around the world. Because we have little to no exposure to the rapid, interdependent world around us, news, announcements and changes can go unnoticed.
In spite of the physical and metaphorical isolation of Middlebury, however, the students here are passionate. Activists, politicians and advocates make up the college. Our 2,500 students are determined, talented and dedicated individuals who want to make a difference. But in our little bubble, this is often a challenge.
And so, what we get is constant small-scale political and social revolution in a self-contained, self-sustained, insulated environment. Instead of protesting the tax breaks for massive oil corporations, Middlebury students push for the college’s divestment from fossil fuel companies. Instead of raising awareness for climate change as a large-scale phenomenon, we call for better efficiency in our heating and cooling. Instead of attempting to tackle homophobia on the societal level, we hold forums, write articles and stage protests against rappers for using homophobic slurs in their songs.
All of these social movements help make Middlebury a more progressive place, welcoming to people of every background. This kind of behavior of students is what made Middlebury a bastion of openness and tolerance. More than this, however, these acts allow students to make a meaningful change in their community. Protesting the investment of Middlebury funds in fossil fuels gives students an achievable goal, one that can significantly alter the way that Middlebury interacts with the outside world. It’s a monumental task to take on homophobia in the United States — but asking whether it is acceptable to let a musician sing homophobic epithets at Middlebury? That’s something manageable. That is something we can change.
At the same time, this isolated, inward-focused community we created brings about its own risks. For example, it’s entirely too easy to forget that the rest of the world even has problems. I didn’t know that a Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared over the Indian Ocean until almost a week after it happened. It took Russia invading and annexing Crimea for a large number of Middlebury students to learn something was wrong with Ukraine, even though the country had been going through extreme turmoil for several months. Most of us probably would say that when we live at home, we generally try to have one eye on current events. But at Middlebury, that habit can slip away.
So we end up with this community of people all concentrating solely on Middlebury. Everyone wants to help facilitate change, and so social movements frequently arise. The biggest danger that arises from this bubble is that people lose perspective. When a protest or a movement catches the College’s eye, it becomes almost a fad to be a part of it. And when activism becomes popular among a group of people contained within a small community clamoring to help, it occasionally can blow out of proportion.
This sounds counterintuitive at first glance — a social movement gaining popularity is bad? But it’s too often true: the zeal with which students respond to these movements can have unforeseen, and sometimes counterproductive, consequences. The exclusion of contrary voices is often the most obvious of these. One of the generally overlooked harms of zealous activism is the growth of the divide between a group and the rest of the community around it. We do not want activism to be driven by an “us vs. them” mentality. That isn’t conducive to equality and open-mindedness in a community.
We have to break down the bubble. We have to, as individuals and citizens of this world, take it upon ourselves to understand global events. As a result of Middlebury’s geographic and social isolation, it’s not easy to acquire knowledge and perspective of the eternally changing world, but it’s necessary. Each of us needs to put in the time to follow the news, even superficially, just so we have perspective. The more we know and the more we are aware of, the more tolerant, inclusive and effective our social movements will be. You can’t change a problem without understanding the complex background and issues that made that problem arise.
(05/07/14 4:07pm)
The United States is growing, in general, increasingly liberal with each passing year. With this liberalization comes greater equality, but perhaps more importantly, a greater sense and understanding of how unequal our society remains.
Thus, people speak out. In greater numbers and with greater voices, marginalized groups are pushing back against the inequality that has plagued humanity for so long. I, as a human among other humans, cannot be happier seeing the progress being made and the steady march toward equality.
But with the rise of these civil rights movements come those who would perpetuate the division between groups. The alienation that some minorities or oppressed groups have felt through the years has rightly caused frustration and a desire for change, but this also seems to have created a simmering animosity toward the traditionally “dominant” group. In other words, there seems to be a perpetuation in our cultural discourse of an “us-vs.-them” mentality, which I strongly believe threatens the potential for an equal and tolerant future.
I am a Caucasian, upper-middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual, secular-Protestant, healthy American male. My mind is the result of white-, male-, and rich-privileges. Although I attempt to subvert negative stereotypes of these identifiers whenever I can, I cannot deny that I have been born into groups which held traditionally dominant roles in the past. But there has been a shocking amount of generalizing and even anger directed toward these facts of my birth over the years from people I attempt to talk to about equality. More often than I can count, when I state truthfully that I consider my beliefs in line with feminist beliefs, I have received the dismissive response, “Ha! You cannot be a feminist; you are a male. You cannot understand the adversity facing women.”
For people attempting to break down preconceived notions based on birth, this seems to me more than a little incongruous. True, perhaps I can never empathize with women because I have never lived in a matriarchal society and I will never be female. But emotional understanding is not the only type of comprehension. Sympathy is nearly as powerful as empathy and can encourage actions in a similar way. I absolutely sympathize with the mainstream feminist movement and women’s desire to achieve greater equality in society. I understand on a rational level the implicit oppression that the patriarchal anachronisms in the United States cause. Moreover, most men that I have met in my life share this wish to advance women and other groups because they understand, on a deep level, that inequality is inherently wrong. One does not have to be a direct victim of oppression to feel strongly that it is wrong and want to work against it.
Lately, I have noticed that divisiveness often goes even deeper and permeates even the way people discuss achieving equality. When people throw around terms like “white privilege” and “male privilege”, and sometimes even invoke them to explain some aspect of my life, I feel uncomfortable and demeaned. These privileges do exist, and there should not be such an imbalance, but I did not choose to be born the way I was. The criticism of such positive discrimination often strays from the general and becomes personal. All I, personally, had control over was how hard I worked and what I participated in. I still struggled through my own adversity, whether in the form of financial trouble, depression or anxiety. When I hear someone explain away a student’s success with white privilege, I feel angry. Society absolutely needs to be fixed, but I and most other individuals have done nothing to promote or flaunt our privilege and instead wish to raise everyone up to the same level for good. My point is, then, that criticizing privilege is one thing; dismissing success by stating that it is based upon that is another entirely.
Thus, what I have seen is a growing undercurrent of antagonism toward dominant groups that, while understandable, does little to further the quest for equality. There is a line between constructive and destructive protests, and that line is being crossed too often. Often heard among some groups, especially those online, are phrases like “crush the patriarchy”, designed to dismantle the male-dominated society that seems counterproductive to me. If a group wishes to advance, why would they attempt to do that by dragging back and disempowering another group? Why not push for bringing everyone up to the same level as the top, instead of bringing down the top to the lower level? This may seem a matter of semantics, but the way this is phrased truly matters. In other areas it is generally agreed that destructive rhetoric does little to achieve any good. For example, capitalism inherently produces income inequality, and a great many people would argue that that is detrimental. However, in discussions about how to fix the income gap, the most legitimate solution is not to “crush capitalism” but to hybridize capitalism and socialism to bring the lower socioeconomic classes up while gradually eliminating superfluous and archaic advantages of the wealthy. The same model should be true for civil rights movements. In my opinion, the best way to gain widespread attention and legitimacy for a cause is not to alienate other groups but to work to combine and progress together. Rather than calling for the destruction of a social phenomenon, instead push to fix it and promote cooperation among all people, truly cementing the truth that we are all equal as humans.
Artwork by CHARLOTTE FAIRLESS
(04/23/14 2:59pm)
I love to leave my window open in my room. The cool breeze, the smell of the trees and the rain, and the soft white noise of the voices of the people who socialize below all contribute to making my room feel open and more welcoming. I can barely sleep without it open — something seems off when the air is not circulating and it hangs heavy and stagnant over me, growing warmer and warmer throughout the night until sleep is impossible. The cold night air allows me to sleep better and longer, and as a result my window is open more often than it isn’t. In any weather, I let the air in to keep my room smelling fresh and feeling cool.
But every day, usually three or four times a day, depending on the direction of the wind, my room fills with smoke. This is not the smoke of campfires and fireplaces which suggests a wintry day huddled around crackling, burning logs. It is the acrid, sickly-sweet smoke of marijuana, or the bitter and rotten smoke of tobacco. I hate it. I hate the way that sometimes the smokiness gets so strong that I could swear that the air in my room is turning visibly polluted.
Tobacco is legal and marijuana should be, don’t get me wrong. But I should not have to sit in my room and wish to open my window to catch the fresh air, but then be inundated by the brutal, irritating smoke of cigars, cigarettes or joints. I should not want to let a breeze come in and receive a lungful of contaminated air instead.
Because of this, I ask the people who smoke to stop using the stairs and patio on the west side of Ross as a smoke spot. In fact, stop smoking at all in close proximity to a living space. Now, I understand all about the love of convenience and the overwhelming hatred of walking any significant distance that pervades our society, but this is ridiculous. The people who smoke have completely neglected the desires of many of the students around them. This is not just a matter of principle, either. Smoking outside residential buildings should not be done because of more than just some sense of manners. This is a matter of health, as well. I don’t have asthma, but my lungs are not the strongest, and I’ve coughed and had slight difficulty breathing some days because of the amount of smoke entering my room. Further, I vehemently dislike the smells of pot and tobacco, and have been woken up in the past because of the smoke.
Of course, the principle is important too. Is smoking so desirable that people cannot even be bothered to move another hundred yards away before lighting up? Or is it really just a matter of laziness, the perceived effects of secondhand smoke so slight that they do not carry any weight at all? Further, it is simply polite to refrain from partaking in activities whose direct, external consequences negatively affect the lives of others. Hopefully an objective third party or a majority of people would deem this harmful.
What is forgotten is that people, in a secure, cultivated community like Middlebury’s, have the implicit claim to live without distraction or harm. There is a reason why FYCs and RAs break up loud parties and enforce quiet hours. It is recognized that a safe, quiet environment conducive to sleep and rest is advantageous for the health of the students. But why is the sense of smell ignored? If a spill of odorous material occurred behind a dorm building, it would be cleaned up immediately. But does the temporary nature of pot and tobacco smoke make it acceptable to implicitly allow it? I believe not. I believe that we have the same claim to clean air as we do to quiet halls, and thus a no-smoking zone around residential buildings should be far more effectively enforced.
I simply want to be able to open my window and breathe in the air without inhaling smoke. I don’t want my lungs to burn when I try to smell the rain and instead get a lungful of polluted air. I want to be able to leave my window open at night and not wake up coughing, brought about by the bitter stench of the joints being passed around.
I simply want the smokers to put their products down, or to walk further away. And if that does not happen, I would like a smoke-free zone around every residential building enforced. It is absurd that this is not the case already, as it is illegal in many states and I believe in Vermont as well. But we need this. I’ve heard students complain. We just want the ability to breathe in clean air when our windows are open.
Artwork by CHARLOTTE FAIRLESS
(04/09/14 4:36pm)
In my short time here at Middlebury, I estimate that on average, I read about 400 pages a week for class. This guess takes into account those weeks when my professors assign shorter, but denser, academic papers, and those when a novel is completed every other day. Often, a seven-day period will require me to read upwards of 700 pages across several different books and articles. I willingly chose the literature/political science path, and so I accept this burden to an extent, but this experience is not exclusive to my situation. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard students lament the fact that they have 300 plus pages to finish in one night. Listening to these woes and experiencing my own, I have realized that the line between necessary and excessive amounts of reading has not just been crossed, it has been blasted through. Although there must certainly be reasons for it, such a practice does not seem conducive to either effective learning or psychological health.
First and foremost, a barrage of reading renders it nearly impossible to fully comprehend the significance of any one piece. Each time we read, we receive information, process it and analyze it, determining the purpose of the author. This is the system of academics and research that is generally second-nature to students. But the fundamental point of class time is to apply the author’s purpose to general mechanisms that operate within the world. Through lectures and discussions we take our analysis of the reading and attempt to reconcile the arguments contained within with the forces that govern the events we observe. We learn that each author presents a different perspective with which to study these events. The problem with a heavy amount of reading, therefore, is that we receive an excess of viewpoints. Especially in classes that cover previously unknown subject matter, a student can go from having no framework with which to study the subject to having a dozen over the course of a couple weeks. Many of those perspectives compete with each other; some are outright contradictory. Since there is simply not enough class time in a college system, therefore, how can a student possibly be able to come to a meaningful conclusion about the subject matter? Sure, often there is some underlying structure that the class teaches, but stopping at this severely undermines the import of the readings. The full application of any one argument is infeasible when confronted with the deafening array of different viewpoints and an overall lack of sufficient time to discuss it.
Heavy reading also lessens the value of the material. Remember very much of those first assignments at the beginning of the semester? I’m sometimes hard-pressed to recall much of the content I read last week, let alone two months ago. I have consumed so many pages of information since the beginning of the year that very little ever stands out. Books quickly fade to echoes; general points are occasionally brought up but substance is pretty much left behind. If this is the case, then, why do we even need to read the entire book or article? Would it not be more efficient and effective to simply read a passage or two that summarize the main points and clearly state the impacts of those points? I strongly support reading the products of the great minds of history, but if the purpose of these classes is to cover as many perspectives and arguments as possible then it would seem better served by heavily abridged reading loads. That way, they will be less readily forgotten and will not be lost to the incessant waves of information and rhetoric.
Finally, however, this practice often harms the psychological health of students. Every time a massive assignment is completed, another one is there to take its place. Although obviously procrastination is a factor, 300-page nights are the products of unending piles of books and articles that must be read. It is extremely difficult to ever not have those nights, especially with two or three reading-intensive classes. As a result, it is easy to feel behind, because there is no way to ever feel that the work is complete for a while, with another 300 page assignment due the next day. In addition, for me at least, this practice negates my desire to read for fun. After so much reading, I find myself unable to pick up a novel for enjoyment. My ability to concentrate on a written story is entirely eliminated.
I believe that something needs to change. Ideally, more discussion would take the place of some of the readings. This would allow the significance of each article or book to be more fully explored, and it would better solidify the importance of each author’s arguments for the student. Classes would be able to investigate the application of arguments more completely, furthering the understanding of the subject matter as a whole. Finally, it would significantly reduce the strain on the students and would give a little room to breathe to those like me who want to read for fun again.
Artwork by JENA RITCHEY
(03/19/14 3:45pm)
I love to be alone. There is something so valuable about solitude, something so unique and singular, that I make a point to find it wherever I can. If I can find time to be alone, then that day is a success. Eating lunch by myself is the very least of the ways I can find solitude. I walk into town by myself, spend time with my thoughts at one of the cafés in town, and sit for hours in the Grille with nothing but a book for company. These moments are irreplaceable.
As is probably clear, I am an introvert. I gain energy from solitude and feel exhausted by social interaction. Going out on a weekend is overwhelming and often emotionally taxing. I don’t just like being alone, I need it for my mental health.
However, I am convinced that the benefits of solitude are not exclusive to introverts. Those who feel most at home surrounded by crowds of people could find time alone to be just as profound as I do. If we eliminate the common perception of solitude as unnatural and daunting, then the advantages become apparent for everyone.
The reason why people are so averse to the idea of being alone is that it is associated with feelings of loss and aimlessness. Solitude forces you to confront the situation of having no one around, no one to support you and talk to you, no one to respond to you. There’s nothing to externalize your thoughts. Instead, being alone creates an entirely self-contained sphere in which nothing exists except your own mind. And this is frightening. You involuntarily inspect your thoughts far more than usual, as every conversation is one-sided. Without the direction of others, you are forced to decide for yourself.
In other words, you have to trust yourself, and this is often difficult.
So, when we’re alone we feel this perceived loss of the people we normally surround ourselves with. But the truth is that aloneness is not the same as loneliness. There is no loss involved with solitude. It is simply the acceptance of you as the only actor within a certain moment.
When I find solitude, I feel separate, as if civilization continues around me, but I simply stepped aside and let it go. Nothing affects me. My worries fall away and leave me clear-headed and aware. I notice more without the distractions of others. In the aimlessness of being alone, I feel free to wander. To be without a goal is liberating. It allows me to focus more on where I am, where I am going, who I am and what I think.
When I walk into town or around campus by myself, I am truly not focused on anything else but the world around me. I notice the feeling of the air entering my lungs, the sound of birds calling and the wind rushing past my ears.
To step away—that is the ultimate benefit that solitude allows. The isolation from others insulates you from the chaos of social life. It enables you to sit in quiet, even if loud noises surround you. This is the quiet that comes when your mind is the only source of information, when no other stimuli are influencing your thoughts. This is the quiet that comes from acknowledging your existence as an individual.
We must detach our concept of loneliness from that of solitude. They are two very different concepts. The first is what we feel when we have lost someone, when that someone is gone for a significant amount of time. Solitude, on the other hand, has no loss attached to it. There is nothing to fear from being alone, because it is merely temporary. We fear solitude for those moments we might miss with friends, but as a result we forget about the most fundamental relationship we have: us with ourselves, our thoughts, our minds.
I seek moments alone because they give me clarity. They let me feel singular, apart, like an individual. They make me accept myself, and I invariably feel revived and enlightened. I believe we should all seek solitude for as little as a few minutes every so often. Maybe then we can recognize ourselves, who we are, and what really matters in our lives.
Artwork by JENA RITCHEY
(03/05/14 5:01pm)
We need to change the way we interact with each other. Words are disconnected from speech, and the subsequent loss of emotion, rationality, and intent that comes with them has harmed all of our relationships.
But everyone has heard the prophecies of the end of all meaningful interaction, how society has become so far removed from any physical connection is lost in the hollowness of words. Or, as some say so eloquently: the internet is terrible, get off your phone.
I’m not writing this to say that. I’m a child of the internet age as much as anyone in my generation. I love it and everything it enables me to do. If anything, I would recommend that we use the internet more. Contribute to it, make it a better place and expand our online “personality”.
What I argue now, though, is that we need to find a way to eliminate those quotation marks around “personality”. A presence on the internet must become fully fleshed-out and dynamic. A digital personality should have just as many facets and shades as a physical one. The internet problem is not one of overuse, but of misuse. It is not that we are too entrenched in online interaction, but that those interactions are static and flat.
This is an understandable product of the rapid integration of the internet into our lives, but it is certainly not permanent. When we gained the capability of ubiquitous digital conversation, we lost a crucial element of vocal speech: the ability to be lazy. When we speak out loud, our vocabularies can be limited, but our words can still carry countless different meanings. An incomprehensible grunt can convey dozens of different emotions. Based on intonation, the same sentence can be sincere, insulting, sarcastic, self-deprecating, joyful, melancholic, or whatever else. The rise and fall of pitch is what truly defines our meaning when we talk. Words are often secondary.
But when we write, intonation does not exist. Nothing matters but the words. As a result, it becomes much more difficult to illustrate emotion. What a sentence sounds like in a mind is not a representation of what it sounds like typed.
No one would disagree that authors can often evoke emotion purely from the words they use. Anyone who has ever taken an English class and analyzed a poem knows that a single word can have several different definitions and a dozen different connotations. A phrase on a page can objectively mean the same thing but carry an entirely different weight depending on the synonyms chosen.
If we were to deliberately choose our words, then it is reasonable to assume that textual conversations could become much more deep and expressive. We need to play with words and the structure of our sentences, experiment with the punctuation and expand our vocabularies so that the feelings ingrained in each word, and not just the definition, convey our meaning.
The verbal carelessness we have right now is why our online personalities are so superficial. So much of our individuality comes from our physical presence. Our facial expressions, movements and quirks cannot be replicated on a computer screen. An online personality is therefore fated to be a crude shadow of the self.
Words can change this. Just as a character in a novel can feel lifelike and real, so too can a person seem alive and true online. Choosing the words to describe something shapes characteristics. The more varied a vocabulary, the deeper the person appears. As a personality develops, it is far easier to view him or her as a real person, and not just a line of text. The real danger in online interaction is anonymity. People feel like they can get away with saying anything and often do not fully comprehend that there is a human behind the name and picture on the screen. This separation of online name and real-world person happens subconsciously all the time, and few are able to avoid it. But when one diversifies and expands one’s online personal to better reflect oneself, it does not matter if the screen name is real or not. The myth of anonymity is gone. A person will generally act more like himself and will treat others in a way more indicative of who they are.
Each line of text we type is meant to express something. But so much evocative power is lost by removing intonation and pitch that that expression is often ineffective. In the ease of online communication we forget how dynamic words are. A sentence typed flippantly can be perceived seriously. Someone attempting to make a joke can just as easily insult their audience. But just as authors are able to control their meaning through their word choice, we can control them online. When we choose our words deliberately, we bring more of ourselves into our interactions.
Artwork by JENA RITCHEY.
(02/19/14 6:51pm)
My parents often ask about my future and about what I’m doing to prepare for a career. Most of these conversations descend into arguments, during which they become frustrated with my steadfast uncertainty about what I want to do. During one such discussion, my father exclaimed in frustration, “Where is your ambition?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have any.”
As can be expected, my parents were not happy. They said that bosses were going to take advantage of me, that I would never succeed and that I was doomed to a life of tedious mediocrity in a low-level career without any fulfillment.
But I spoke the truth. I have very little ambition, at least in the conventional sense. Sure, I have my hopes and dreams, but I don’t have the passionate urge to go farther and achieve more.
And I don’t understand why this is wrong.
I have a lack of ambition because I work so hard on the present. There is nothing more for me than what I have today, because nothing else exists. Every little thing I can do to simplify my today makes each moment more peaceful and joyful.
Ambition is the desire for more. But I’ve never understood why it is a barometer for success in the workplace. It never stops; there is always something more that could be gained. Sure, I am motivated to move beyond poor college student status, but there is a definite endpoint to this movement in my mind. I want a life that allows me to fill out my world with understanding, not to achieve greatness.
We need to let some of our ambition go, to be content with where we are at each moment. The archetypal student at a college like Middlebury is highly-driven, passionate, motivated and never satisfied with what he has. But a student can be passionate without being highly driven, motivated but still satisfied. There is too much emphasis on what we don’t have, and not enough on what we do have. We are rarely encouraged to enhance the lives that we already live. Too many times I have been told to go outside of my comfort zone and try new things. Obviously that is a good idea. But it has been perpetuated to an extreme. To speak metaphorically, society now encourages us so strongly to look at the world as a whole that we miss the flowers right in front of us. The lives within our comfort zones hold so much unbridled potential for learning. Our routines allow us to pass through each day half-blind, so that we miss so much. Instead of looking forward, we can look around. We can invest more attention in our classes, attempting to get as much out of them as possible—not for the sake of a degree but for the sake of better understanding ourselves and our lives. Instead of constantly casting ourselves out to find new acquaintances, we can instead attempt to establish and grow the friendships we already have. With a greater understanding of our immediate, present lives, our ability to push outward into new experiences becomes not so much a violent upheaval of what is familiar but rather a natural extension of who we already are.
The way I look at it, ambition makes each day nothing more than a step toward something greater. It undermines the value of each individual moment. It makes a day a part of a whole, rather than the whole itself.
But when we take each moment as something to be explored, investigated, enjoyed and lived for its own sake, our lives expand in turn. When we get the most out of our lives as they are now, the end result is still success. Even without ambition, you still end up with the tools to shape a career—just instead of searching for success, you search for peace. And where peace goes, contentment always follows.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH