The third

In the last reply to my original question (first reply is here), I remember wondering if the general "of course" response to my question was due to our generation, or to our colleges, or maybe just due to the general public growing disaffected with authority. Well, I don't know if this one answers my question but:
I was surprised this week when I got an email from someone who I know who was born in the 50s. And this is her take on it.

Has media's influence on your view of politics changed it for the better?
In several ways, media's influence has changed my view of politics for the better. 

I feel there is always someone out there who can put what I am thinking into words and language better than I can. Like you sometimes don't know what you think till you hear it come out of someone else's mouth. These "someones" are often the 'average Joe's' that the newcasters push a mic in front of. I feel this is a better influence towards politics because it stretches me to dig into what I really think.
Another way is in TV shows where actors seriously or humorously actually "say it out loud". Which may be something you thought but never put out there in words. I think of the show Last Man Standing before the election where Tim Allen plays the husband who is clearly Republican and his wife obviously Democratic. These shows make it feel ok that you can have different political views than that of your family and friends. This to me makes the media influence a better influence since if you have ever actually been in a political argument with someone it NEVER feels ok. 

I also feel that media influence clearly gives us as "we the people" a way to spread the word. I believe there are many instances in politics where it is important for "we the people" to actually have an idea of what is happening in the political venue. Cover ups, not telling the whole story and hiding our heads in the sand really don't make for a very good image of our historical "we the people" image. What good are the "people" if we don't keep an eye and ear to our "governors". I think that the media investigations into politics is a very good influence for us to keep track of the people we elected into politics.

For the worse? 

Without being too ying/yang, I believe that media has also changed my view of politics for the worse. I think of ALL of the negative ads yet again before yet another election and I find myself not only "not liking" the other candidates but also "not really liking" my choice of candidate either. Here, for me, those negative ads turn me off from all partisan aspects of politics. Many people I have spoken to as well are turned OFF by this negative media influence. It may not be the media writing the material but shouldn't they be accountable for what they broadcast.

Another very negative influence the media has for me regarding politics is when newcasters and papparazi splash us with personal issues of politicians that are not related to politics. This results in defaming said politicians by conditions in their personal lives that have nothing to do with their jobs. As the years go by the media seems to know and tell more about these people than "we as the people" really need to know. It is a fine line as to what we should know and what is splashed about.

Just this year I happen to notice another negative aspect of media's influence on my view of politics. An out of state friend mentioned a political billboard along his travels. The negative ad not referred to in my state was now here at home. I refer to how close we all have become. We not only converse with our co-workers, family and friends locally but also state and globally making what is happening far away known all over and quickly.

Another aspect of the negative view of political media coverage pertains to "news" put forth before facts and accountability are even considered. Is is just me that thinks NEWS is synonymous with TRUTH...it should be, did it used to be? Where ever the news comes from...paper, radio, tv, internet sources, I believe it SHOULD be synonymous with TRUTH and not GOSSIP. We rely on media to be the voice for the rest of the people other than ourselves, therefore I believe truthful it should be.
Can you recall a time when your view of politics hasn't been defined by what's on television or are there other strong influences on your view of politics? What are they? Note: Media defined as TV shows, magazines, new-paper, radio and TV (Assuming internet sources as well?) 

I don't recall, of course that doesn't mean it wasn't there, the negative display of politics thru the media when I was growing up. I remember the news was the NEWS and you respectfully paid attention to the professional individual on TV. From the news announcer to the politician I believed it all to be factual. Was this a youthful obscure memory or is indeed the media these days taking us on a roller coaster ride?

Besides tv, the internet has brought to my home many aspects of politics. Articles coming from any and everywhere are at my fingertips. It is no longer "if you see it...it is so" however and the negative side of this is that often by the time I have read the article I have already formed some sort of opinion and I assure you that due to my source I am not confident it is entirely based on the truth. 

In summary, I find that media's influence on my political views are some good and much not so good. I feel the media has one of the most valued jobs to do in our global society today. I believe that if we are informed by facts and followed-up articles with accountable reporting and researched topics we can be a connected community. As time goes on overall I feel their influence on us has run amuck due to their often unnecessary, slanderous and haphazardous ways and styles of reporting. I would challenge media to report and advertize as I remember as a child....NEWS = TRUTH. 

Thank you Moss for this discussion question.

Reply 2:

Here's the original Post.

And the first reply.


And now, the second reply is by my very good friend Anna, who has survived half a decade of being my friend:

Dear Moss, 

Here is my opinion on this matter, 

Over the course of my life, until very recently, I have not really done too much with politics. Once I got to be in high school and through college my response to politics has changed more. I have become more involved. After taking an introduction to sociology class and studied how media is everywhere and that it influences almost every way we think I do think media has changed how I view politics. I know for the most recent election there was a radio commercial that skewed how I was going to vote for president because it dealt with an issue I am currently involved, college. When campaign teams turn to issues like that I do not know how I could not fall for campaigning of that nature. As I sit here writing this response I cannot think of a time when media changed my idea of politics for the worse. I think how nowadays with all the campaigning that people do is a bit ridiculous and at times makes me want to not vote but I do not think the media advertising them has affected my view of politics. For the most part I think the media has done a very good job of conforming to my view of politics. While I was growing up I saw myself as a liberal but now that I am in college and trying to make my own life I see myself more conservative. For our society today I think a lot of what is presented in the media for political view does have a lot to do with liberal or conservative views. Some examples that I have seen presented in media are television shows, radio ads, stories in newspaper, and some magazines. Most of these sources of media are things I found interesting or examples of how other people with similar political views were expressing themselves.

Thanks Anna!

I'm starting to see a trend here: For one, only college students have replied. Right now, admittedly, that's two out of two. But I am seeing that we have noticed how much media changes our opinions of politics. Now, that could just be the classes we're taking. But Anna goes to college in Wisconsin, whereas Cthulhu goes to college in North Dakota. So it's not one specific class or professor. It could also be the admittedly liberal views of most of the colleges that I've been in, but acknowledging media's influence isn't the realm of the liberal, exclusively.

Media's influence is a fairly obvious assumption to make these days, which I say says something rather important about the skewing of details in the news.

One of the questions I have is: Has this always been around? Or is it a fairly recent development going hand-in-hand with the proliferation of media?

First Reply

Thank you to Cthulhu (name changed by request), who was among the first to toss me an answer to my question. Earlier this month, Cthulhu actually did accidentally write a research paper. Funny story.


At any rate, here was the original Plea For Help post.


And here's what Cthulhu has to say about it.

Hi Moss, 

"...but should you accidentally write a research paper, I won't judge." had better not be a jab at me! ;) As for your questions: there aren't many sources for political information that I'm aware of that have not gone through one of the various media you mentioned above. My view on politics in general have been shaped by what I've read, seen, and researched. If we are talking about a single issue, there is the potential to find information about it if one looks hard enough (interest groups and journals come to mind), but usually the most accessible source is one of the media you listed above. I cannot recall a time in my life where my views on politics have not been at least somewhat influenced by the media. I do try to at least research what I hear and verify facts, but when not all the facts are revealed through these sources, it makes it very difficult. Again, this is my view on politics itself, not the issues being raised for vote. 

If you mean my political views, I would argue that my political leanings are NOT shaped much by the media (different than my view on politics), though there is definitely some influence. As mentioned before, I look for facts when choosing what side of an issue I'm on. It takes time and a BUNCH of Google-ing to find unbiased sources (usually I compare and contrast what I see on the various candidates/issues websites/distributed literature and then look for outside studies, depending on the issue). This is difficult and requires a lot of effort to make sure I'm not reacting to the stories and appeal to emotions rather than the data and logic. Essentially, it's a bunch of (sometimes really fun) critical thinking. I firmly believe that when given this freedom to choose our leaders and our rules, it is our responsibility to inform ourselves, not to just rely on others informing us. It's a little like bedtimes as an adult: I'm completely free to stay up as late as I wish, but my choices have consequences that I need to understand and acknowledge. 

This part has changed since college. After doing some honors coursework, I've learned that I cannot take information presented at face value (we cite things in papers for more than just avoiding plagiarism!!); I must do my research and reach my own conclusions. Before college, my views were shaped by largely what I heard on the news and read in the papers. My views themselves haven't changed much, but I am definitely more informed (and more confident in the information I have) now than I was four years ago. 

Sorry for the rambling; I didn't edit. HA! No accidental research paper for you! (please read that last sentence in the Soup Nazi voice, if you'd be so kind) 

Hope this helps! 

Cthulhu

Thanks, Cthulhu, that helped a lot!

A request for help:

A plea for help:
For one of my Hon. classes, I'm doing a blog-related thing. I'll ask a question; all you have to do is answer it. I won't even ask for references, but should you accidentally write a research paper, I won't judge. This can be from anyone. I'll put your answers on my blog. And hopefully I'll get an A.
I've also got a share-able link here, for anyone who wants to share it with friends.

However, here is the question:

For the purposes of these next few posts, we’re looking at media’s influence on your view of politics : has it (media’s influence) changed it (your view of politics) for the better? For the worse? Can you recall a time when your view of politics hasn’t been defined by what’s on television, or are there other strong influences on your view of politics? What are they?
Note: Media in this case will be defined by such things as television shows, magazines, and the news (paper, radio, and tv)

I would enjoy it if you emailed it to my yahoo email at taimeloche @ yahoo . com

Then I would read it and post it here!

If you have any requirements for posting, I would also follow those. 

Thanks!

Depressed-You is an Idiot

I'm going to say first that if you have depression, and you think talking about it will be triggering, then stop. And go here instead.
Or here.  

For the past few years, I've been having issues with depression.
Apathy and insomnia is the worst of it lately, but it's all bad.
I like to say I'm a writer, but I can barely explain what depression feels like, because you read books about it and look at web md's symptom pages (warning, going to web md's symptom checker may cause you to think you have leukemia), and you still can't quite grasp it.

But, okay. Here's my attempt at explaining depression - for me, at any rate.  For those of you who already know, skip down a few paragraphs.  Go ahead.  That's where I'm talking about how I'm dealing with it.  Shoo.

I find it easiest to compare depression to a migraine, because I've had my fair share of them (that's a lie.  The only "fair share" of migraines a person can have is none.  I have had way too many migraines.) and it's easier to explain a migraine (ow, ow, my brain is broken and I can't see) than it is to explain depression (ow, ow, my brain is broken and I can't see because I've been crying for the past week).  For one, it's easier to be funny.  You can be more open about migraines, because we don't have the same stigmas about physical pain than we do about emotional pain.  With depression, I feel like I can't be as funny about it because while I can compare a migraine to evil little gremlins driving spikes into your brain while playing *shudders* country music, I can't say the same thing about depression without sounding, ha ha, crazy.

Depression is like having a migraine for three weeks months years and not having any Excedrin.  Straight up.  Sometimes you're listening to music that you like and the migraine goes away for a few hours, or you're talking with people that you actually like and you forget that your head hurts.  But the one surety for those entire three weeks is that it will come back.  

Depression is like all of those scenes in horror movies where the heroine is bashing away at the villain with the baseball bat screaming "Why won't you die?"  And then the villain stays around for the next 8 terrible sequels.  

The important thing to know about depression is that sometimes it does go away, and sometimes, with help, it stays away.  But in my experience, it comes back.  And sometimes it creeps up on you, so that you don't realize you have depression until you're lying on your friend's couch staring at the wall crying.  And then you can talk about it, because depressed-you isn't the same as you-you, and you-you has the ability to talk about what's wrong.  Depressed-you is a proud idiot with a mental illness.  Don't Listen to her.  

Here's the part where I talk about what I do.  What I've been doing.  Those of you who skipped down, welcome back to the party.  The depression party.  We have black balloons, but our confetti is made out of glitter, which is the prettiest confetti, and we stay up all night because when we go to sleep we have really bad dreams.

What I do is I figure out what triggers me.  And I avoid it.  I tell my closest friends that I have issues and we work on it.  Together.  Community is the thing that helps me the most, honestly.  Lately I've been working on a blog where I talk about the sort of things I avoid talking about here.  It's depression-me's blog.  Even though I'm fairly sure no one reads it, I like thinking that when I'm older, and better, (and famous and popular and rich, because this is my fantasy, dammit) maybe some kid will hear me reference that blog, and look it up, and maybe they'll read it and think, "Dayum.  If this lady is so effed up, and ended up so cool, then... I guess there's hope for me."

That's what helps.  That's what keeps me going.  I don't want to change the world.  Just someone in it.  I make goals for myself.  I want to be at my cousin's graduation.  I want to write a book.  And one day I want to read the last book of the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.    And it's going to be awesome.

Jaded

This was written for a class November 15th 2012:

"I wrote a small piece during class October 15th: 'Let me posit a theorem: None of this fucking matters.

Everyone in politics, media, public, it's all just grand gestures and petty thievery on a stage.

Real life continues on as normal; the winter comes sooner every year, the weather changes, people die and live and farm and breathe. And it doesn't matter who wins because nothing really changes. I hear people say that “in the old days...” what? The nature of people remains the same. There is always a minimum of voices for a majority of votes and very little individuality.

Say Candidate A and Candidate B are running for office. Say Candidate A wins. Guaranteed, there will be a war (well, a conflict. War isn't politically correct). There will be a scandal (potentially life-changing for someone). There will be at least three protests per term about an issue that everyone will think will change the world in some deep, ineffable nature. Change is set in stone.

Now, Candidate A won't be able to do anything, because the new rising feeling in the nation will be the politics of Candidate B's party, and even a portion of Candidate A's party will be stricken by an uneasy feeling that perhaps...just perhaps...all of their posturing and strutting about change and bettering oneself, all of the acting onstage about traditions and in morality plays is just that: Acting.

Off-stage, our candidates behave just like people. They make mistakes, they lie, and - possibly the most unforgivable sin in America - they are wrong.

And nothing will change.'

This was before the election; and I find that nothing has really changed. I came into college angry, ready to fight the evils of the world and raise up justice to its previous place on top of the world...only to find that it's an impossible task to raise up thin air. You can't fight yourself.

I've been taking too many classes designed to make me angry, designed to make me stand up and say “This isn't right and here's what I'm going to do about it”. But here's the thing. No one person changes anything. People are agents of change; that is to say, change will happen no matter what one single person does. Because the human race is, while fairly static in some respects, remarkably fluid in others. The existence of change is something that is guaranteed; something that is, in fact, never going to change. King Arthur's knights existed nowhere but in the imagination of a lonely child. Don Quixote is a better comparison for the human race – endlessly tilting at windmills.

The difficulty lies in the fact that all media, at heart, is a story, and all stories try to explain something. It doesn't have to be a story that's true. What matters now is our pleasant fiction that a story that meets all of the pieces of evidence is true. What matters now is how badly we want to believe certain things. There are no monsters under the bed. You will walk home safely (and if you don't, you're obviously doing it wrong). No one really dies (And it's almost certainly someone's fault if they do). All of our parents are understanding and innately born with the gift to lead (and if they aren't, they're doing it wrong). At some point in your life, you too will transform into this rare creature, this adult, and you too will have the authority to solve the world's problems. And if you don't, well. You're obviously doing it wrong. With this much privilege, (we are the golden children of the world, after all), this much wealth and opportunity – if you don't take advantage of it, there is obviously something wrong with you. You're a deviant, a radical, worse, you are lazy.

The media gives us certain images, certain archetypes of people: the hero, the warrior, the bright protector, against the sneaky, the conniving, the small and the dark. We aren't expected to choose favorites, like in a football game; why should we have to, when it's already done for us?Yes, I am cynical. I am jaded, I am angry, and I am perversely proud of it. And I'll cheer for anyone who I know isn't trying to manipulate me. Which isn't a long list at all anymore."

Meaning

I wrote this a while ago on Facebook for a few friends. I figured I might as well post it up here as well.

Life does have meaning.
I know that sometimes it is hard to see it, and sometimes it is harder still to know that you do, but it does.
There is meaning in the way that branches curve against the sky, in the way that the sunset sometimes lights up the horizon in a last burst of color before dropping down, in the way that sometimes it doesn't. There is meaning in a child's laughter and a grandmother's tears.
There is meaning in the way that a dog will sometimes look up at you with such a look of devotion... and immediately afterward eat your favorite pair of slippers.
There is meaning in the knowledge of friendship and in the possibility of friendship.
Life has meaning.
People might read this and completely get what I mean.
People might read this and not understand it at all.
And you know what? There's meaning in that, as well.
The quest to find meaning in the world is everywhere in history and myth - it's a common human striving.
Some people have to find meaning on their own, and some people have to be shown it, but it is for everyone.
Usually this quest for meaning takes the whole of your lifetime, and too many people are brought low by hopelessness long before they ever find it.
Do not be brought low by hopelessness.
Your life is your own.
Your life is what you make of it.
The human life span is something like seventy years and it is a waste, a waste, in not appreciating that length. Too many people are influenced by the romanticism of suicide, the lure of helplessness and hopelessness, and they splinter those seventy years into fragments.
And I have no sympathy for them.
There is always hope if you are willing to take it.
The possibility for failure lies only in your willingness to quit.

So don't give up.
Find your own meaning in the feeling of a friend's hand in your own, the smell of the air after it rains, the bright colors of the sunsets and sunrises in your life. When it seems as though everyone is trying to shape you into a mold, think about hope and perseverance and the bright future that lays ahead of you if you are willing to make it.
The future is never set in stone, and you are never what others tell you that you are.
You are what you make of yourself.
The responsibilities, the joys and the sorrows, the highs and the lows, the hope and the moments when it seems that all hope is gone, the friends, the lovers, and the mentors wait for you, at a point somewhere up ahead in your life. All you have to do is reach out and take them.

Chik fil a: My sentiments

Alright.

My sentiments on the Chik-fil-A debacle:

-Everyone. Calm the HELL down.

-Personally, I wish that everyone liked each other, and respected each other's views. While I'm at it, I'd also like a pony and Venezuela.

-That said, that would be really boring. You get the most interesting things from the edge of conflict. The desire of something that's impossible can make possible the improbable.

-The main problem with both sides of this issue is that we don't want to be tolerant anymore; we want to be *right*. And we want the other side to admit it. And maybe grovel for a few years. It's the human condition to be an overbearing jerk.

-The idea of free speech is being dramatically overplayed here. While I have the freedom to say one thing, everyone else has that same freedom to disagree with me publically. The line is drawn where we start actually becoming a menace to society: like if I yelled "Fire!" in a theater. Because that creates more conflict. Don't bitch about free speech and then turn around and tell me that I can't say what *I* think, because that isn't how the world works. It's at such a point of conflict right now that it's essentially a non-issue, because it feels like everyone this thing has the same opinion on it. And I'm pretty sure that opinion is "I do what I want."

-I believe in gay marriage. I believe in free speech. I believe in a lot of things. I also believe that my moral stance has NOTHING to do with what I use my wallet for. I am a college student. I work so that I can afford school. If the food that I eat happens to come from somewhere that is run by a person whose opinion doesn't align with mine, I. Don't. Care. If that makes me a hypocrite, then so be it, but I am not at the point in my life where I can afford to care where my 5 dollars are going.

-That said, I've actually never heard of chik fil a before this past two weeks. Every time you protest something, you run the risk of giving it the "underdog image". And people love the idea of championing the underdog.

-But really, my main point is:

Everyone. Calm the Hell Down.

-I welcome responsible comments and discussion.

My definition of responsible is subject to the cruel whims of whichever book I happen to be reading at the time, but feel free to play the lottery and tell me why I'm wrong. Or right.

Goddamn Karma

Me: Ladidahdidah going to work Lahdidah


Bike: YAAYYYYYY HILLLLL!


Gods of Karma: I think lockpique is having far too good a week.


Other Gods of Karma: Yeah, it's disrupting the balance.


More Gods of stupid jerkfaced karma: We'd better step in fast.


Dumb pointy rock: I don't like where this is going, guys...

Gravity and Physics (Because they're ASSHOLES, pardon my English): We ruin EVERYTHING!

Bike: Oh no!

Me: @#&^%*^&*&%(_)*(&*^#$*&%*^&(&$$*

Bike repairdude at Scheels: Yeah, your innertube has *techy repair-term* and your spokes are *techy repair-term*, and we need to make sure the *techy repair-term* has *techy repair-term*, so instead of the 6 bucks you thought you'd need, it's gonna be more like 25.

Me: Okay, I guess I'll pick it up tomorrow, and in the meantime, WALK everywhere.

Inner Me: #$%^&(^$$^#_(*^*%&%#@$&(*^$%#&^%#$%#^@#%!

Gods of Karma: YAAAAAAYYYYYYYY

Blameless bike which has done nothing wrong: AWWWwwwwwww. :'(
So yeah, Gods of Karma. You made my bike cry. Hope you're happy now.

Stop Killing Our Future

I was talking to a friend about Ron Paul, because he(the friend) is now a delegate for 2000 people (be afraid. be very afraid).

He said an interesting thing in passing, and he probably had no idea that I'd seize upon that stray comment, so don't blame him for this rant. 

Ok. So he and his friend were talking to the senator being elected (Sorum.) and mentioned that he was pretty cool – a stand up guy – but also mentioned that he (Sorum) didn’t really pay all that much attention to a “couple of kids” until he realized that they were in charge of 2000 votes. That is - until he figured out they had actual power and influence upon his position.


And okay. I get the popular preconception of the teenage years being stupid and hormonal and not political, but come on. I’m nineteen. I’m in TPS (Ten Percent Society), FUND (Freethinkers of UND), Honors, VP of CrWC (Creative Writing Club) , SPILL (Supporting Peers in Laidback Listening), volunteering to help with an engineering outreach program next week, and I’m working with the Nonprofit Group on campus. I play D&D and read Howard Zinn and Genome for fun. I’ve been quoted in our newspaper twice – once on CrWC, once on the Interfaith Fair. I wrote a letter to the editor when I was twelve, asking for a horoscope designed for kids. I know self defense, I write - a lot, and I have a job offer from the multicultural center here. I’m undecided, yeah, but I know damn near every building on this campus, which lunch room’s the best for food (Terrace), seating (squires), quick (MarketPlace), and always open (Wilkerson). I’m a voter. I’m eligible to join the military. I critique my friends’ papers and stories, and I’m almost always available to give advice. I pay taxes. I am, for all intents and purposes, an adult, and so are most of my friends. You want to know the best thing about coming to college? It was the fact that, for once, my professors actually wanted to hear me talk. They wanted to hear me think.


College is the first place where I have realized that some of the things I’m saying are something new and might be right. College is the first place where I have realized that some of the things I’m doing are right.

Experience shouldn’t count for so damn much unless you constantly use that experience. I’m probably not going to argue with Hawking about Physics, or King about writing horror. But I know that I know more about certain ideas than some of my older colleagues, and I will not back down from them just because they have been alive longer than I have. 


Once upon a time, length of life used to mean that you were more evolved – better at survival, and not getting killed. But that was before medical advances and technology and better hygiene. In 21st century America, being older than someone else means that either your genes haven’t yet missed something important while self-replicating, or your doctor is good.

This is a serious problem in America, where kids are killing themselves because it’s the only way to get people to listen. When did teen suicide become the new way of expressing yourself? It took two years and nine teen suicides for Bachmann’s home district to lift the “No Homo Promo” Policy. Nine. 

We are killing our future.

Kids are smarter than you think, but they believe adults. What you tell them impacts their beliefs, their choices, their future. And when you tell them that the only way for them to get your attention is by killing themselves, they will listen to you very well.


I don’t have a solid solution. I hope someone comes up with one soon. But I think it’s pretty clear that we need one soon. The issue isn’t so small as LGBT bullying, or the religious diehards at my school who think it's funny to write that the Freethinker group here is going to hell. And yeah, that ticks me off. But these are symptoms of a larger problem.


The issue is the fact that no one is listening to the kids. “A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell 'em for a dollar/They're worth so much more after I'm a goner/And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'/Funny when you're dead how people start listenin'” goes the song – and it’s true. It has become a case of too little, too late – especially for the nine casualties of the “No Homo Promo” policy.


We need to stop using children as our weapons in a war of miscommunications and bad policy.


You need to respect kids.


Because we're more powerful than you think. And once we realize that, we won't be the future.

We'll be the present.

Midnight Ramblings

It's midnight. Or whatever.
I'm sitting on the blue fluffy thing that takes up much of the corner of my floor. The lights are dim; I've only got one on. My door is closed, so I keep sneaking uneasy glances at it out of the corner of my eye; something I'm not fully aware of. It's a little cold, but I can't quite justify getting up to put on a sweatshirt, or pajamas.
My room's kind of a mess. My roommate and I just reorganized it, and so there's an abandoned chair in the center of the room and the floor is littered with a small, neat pile of dust, candy wrappers, bottle caps and broken pencils. My roommate's bed is empty; she's working, or rather at her family's house, asleep by this time of the night.
The halls are dimly lit and largely empty. There are no voices, no running. Just the occasional noises from upstairs and the opening and closing of the heavy doors at the ends of the halls betray the fact that there are people in the building. It isn't total silence; there's a clock ticking in the corner of the room, and my computer is humming softly; but it's the closest to ambient noise I'm going to get in a college dorm room.
My keyboard pauses, then clicks softly as the refrigerator (small, mildly battered, and close to my seat) kicks in with a heavy whir.
I suppose I've been doing some thinking.
I'd like to find a major. You can't really graduate with a degree in Undecided, or even Facebook. My past opinions on majors, thus far, have been: Civil Engineering, English, History, Computer Science, Criminal Justice, Humanities, Psychology, Creative Writing, Anthropology and Religion. And even though I know it's not possible, it would be lovely if I could just apprentice myself to someone, or if I could take a pilgrimage out to a desert to speak to the Oracle, who would tell me what I'm fated to be. I'd like someone to tell me what to do, and at the same time, I'd hate it with a passion.
An apprenticeship would be nice, though. It seems like a very clean transition to adulthood. Apprentice to Journeyman, complete a masterwork, become a Master, take an apprentice. Cycle.
I suppose I'm mostly just sick of being treated like a child. I'd like a clean cut to adulthood, a public ceremony accepted by society, that people can look at and say, "Oh, they've got their journeyman papers. Okay."
Too many laws and conventions are in place in our Great Country that are targeted solely at age groups. And that's all very well and good, I'm sure, if all people were to mature at the same rate.
But I know people who have passports, un-limited driver's licenses, insurance, cars, houses...and who I would not trust with my brother's pet cat. Likewise, I know people who are in high school who shouldn't have to live with their parents anymore because of the simple fact that they've already surpassed them in taking care of themselves. This isn't always the case. But it is often enough to invalidate the weight placed upon age in our society.
And so I'm sick of not quite being sure of my status, when some people ask me for advice and some people feel obligated to force it on me, when some people listen to my words and hear what I have to say and some people ignore my words as "just another teenager." Wisdom comes with experience, but experience bears only a superficial connection to age.
To that effect, I'm not returning home this summer. I'm not working at my dad's work. I'm not living in the house that, every time I step through the threshold, miraculously transforms me into a much younger person. I'm staying up here, getting my own job, and living on my terms (which aren't likely to be that radically changed from the present.) It's partially an effort for independence, partially my own attempt at journeyman's papers (though when I moved 700 miles away, I feel I could have passed journeyman then) and also partially an experiment. Do I need to return home in order to validate my independence?
I'm giving up hills and trees for this. I'm giving up some friends and some Italian cheese.
But I'm doing it anyway, because this will be, in my opinion, my test for journeyman. And when I pass it, nothing will really change on the outside. But I'll get a hella more confident in my adult status.