An Inconvenient Truth: Most likely to be a Serial Killer

One of the best parts of finishing freshman year was creating on and voting for Academy superlatives. Through our Facebook group, my class listed 'most likely to work on wall street,' 'most likely to be a teen mom,' and 'most likely to get 3 hours of sleep in the next 3 years,' the one which I unfortunately ended up winning. As we've read Heart of Darkness, I discovered one to be added to this years life: most likely to be a serial killer or a psychopath.

A main part of our discussion of the story revolved around how far people can be pushed, and who is the must susceptible to losing humanity and their sanity. Mr. Kurtz, who had been described as a intellectual and genius, with wondrous talents in writing, painting, entrepreneurship, and speaking was pushed to his limits before a common Russian man, or the majority of other Europeans. Did his intelligence, while helpful at home, serve as a detriment in Africa?

What really struck me was when someone said sometimes you can push yourself to the edge, and find wonderful new things to explore at the heart of yourself, but sometimes it's empty, cold, barren. That's a scary thought, and the folks who want to reach that edge are usually the learners and the students. We’ve all heard modern day examples of Kurtz’s, where the criminal is a genius and has done good things but takes one wrong turn, because their brain overshadows a sense of right and wrong. Voldemort, from Harry Potter such a character, as described by Garrick Olivander in the first book, “After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great.”ile helpful at home, serve as a detriment in Africa?

I consider myself to be a relatively smart person, and I know that I have strong morals and opinions. Reading this book and hearing these stories make me question myself, am I really as selfless as I’d like to be? How would I react if I was put in these situations? Would I keep my restraint, or would I lose it on a heartbeat? Am I going to be ruthless from knowledge? The scariest part is that I have no idea.

In addition, there’s the possibility that my classmates could exhibit

these tendencies in all of their glory and brilliance. There’s a stereotype about Academy kids that we’ll all go on to change the world and make it a better place, but in 30 classes of 30 kids, has there ever been a bad egg? I consider my peers to be some of my closest friends, and I’d never doubt any of them, but could I be misinterpreting someone? Could someone in the class of 2014 end up on America’s Most Wanted instead of most successful?

While these thoughts are scary, both my classmates and myself are if anything rational and logical people, and we care. If an issue were to ever arise, I have faith that we could help the struggler through his/her issues. Kurtz was all alone in the Kongo, without any help or familiarity, but we will always have each other.

Blogging Around: Anya and Lizzie

A response to Anya’s blog concerning organization, and how she felt it helped her other responsibilities and clutter differently

Dear Anya,

I must say I’m shocked that you don’t like organizing! You always seem composed. I’m the opposite way, I like to organize things when I feel begin to feel overwhelmed, instead of when mess is really overflowing like you seem to. I have a habit of whenever I know I have a lot of homework; I have to clean my room before I start otherwise I can’t sleep or concentrate. I can almost always see the glass surface of my desk!

Even with our differences, I completely agree with the conclusions you drew from organizing your desk – places that we keep lots of ‘stuff’ and where we spend a lot of time should be taken care of, so that they can take care of us. Cleaning can take a load off of our shoulders, even if it doesn’t count for a grade or benefit us students when submitting college admissions, It’s a matter of looking at the big picture, which in our hectic lives gets lost,

I loved when you said ‘I realized something after this simple project of combing through and tidying my desk: organization can also be a way of letting go of unnecessary things.” That’s an idea that I’ve never considered before. When I clean, even while I like it, it’s just one thing to check off my list, but you see it as much more than that – it can ‘check off’ other things too, because we then realized what’s important to us after we explore all of our memories.

I wish you luck on your organization, and I doubt that your burdens will ever be too heavy. Have a great weekend!

-Charlie

This is a response to Lizzie’s blog about women in Shakespeare, and how insight about them brought her new respect for him.

Dear Lizzie,

I agree that you and I are lucky to live in a (for the most part) accepting society where we as young women have rights and strong futures ahead of it. Oh, how society has changed!

I remember when Mr. Allen brought up women in Shakespeare, and having a similar reaction to you. Growing up in the twenty-first century has shielded us from things that really aren’t that old, like the suffrage movements and women accepted in the workplace. Connections don’t happen as easily, but when they do, it’s like turning on a light.

It’s just another angle of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, but I found in interesting how in King Lear, and in other plays like Macbeth, the strong female leads are also two of the main antagonists. When the female is the protagonist, like in Romeo and Juliet, she was weaker and more of the traditional female character, I certainly haven’t read enough of Shakespeare’s works to see if this is true for everything he’s written (and I could be blatantly) wrong, but I think that for now, it could be indicative of the social norms of Shakespeare’s time that he could only push so far.

Either way, I hope that women who saw his plays and read his writing took away some of his female characters’ strength the way you and I do growing up with characters like Hermione Granger and Maximum Ride.

I hope your surgery went well and I’ll see you on Tuesday!

-Charlie