Today we read an essay written by a woman who had Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.). In the essay she wrote about how after having the illness for so long she was used to walking with a brace and a cane and was actually confused on how people were able to walk without them. Walking with a cane and wearing a brace, having little feeling in one of her hands is her normal and as she states in the essay she’s used to it. Everybody has their own normal, and they are all different. What exactly is “normal”? For me it’s going to school and being classes with students who are older, then coming home to my sister who has reached the age of wearing my clothes without telling me and my parents speaking in Spanish when they don’t want my sister to know what they’re talking about. However, for some of my friends it’s going home on the CTA and speaking only polish the minute they get into the door. Everybody has a different life with different people in it; therefore everybody has a different normal. For some people being totally healthy is normal, while for me, being epileptic and taking medications is normal. I know people who, for them, having only their mom involved in their life is normal or having divorced parents is normal. And while you could argue that a lot of people have divorced parents or have single parents, I don’t have either of those. So if one day I woke up and my dad just wasn’t apart of my life anymore, I would be really freaked out because that’s not my normal. We all have different “normals” and thank God for that!
In the short amount of class time we had this week, we talked about the dumpster diving story. While going over this Ms. Damlos stated that most of the time we don’t realize that homeless people weren’t always homeless. They didn’t always stand in the middle of the street with a Popeyes cup asking for change and they didn’t always go through dumpsters looking for food. The truth is, that this mentality, of presuming to know people based off of what people based off of what we see applies to everyone you meet. This is more commonly applied to, as we saw in class, homeless people, or maybe people of a different nationality or religion and we automatically assume to know what type of person they are based off of those things. But the truth is, on the first day of school when you meet new kids in one of your classes and you that one girl who is wearing heels and a frilly dress with a headband, you think “wow! Now she’s obviously a try hard!” To say that you have never made assumptions about someone based off of what they wear, after having only one conversation with them, or only hearing them talk in class would be a complete lie. Mainly because it’s our human nature to want to classify people and fit them into a category. Categories like “a princess”, “a nerd”, “a basketcase”, “a jock”, or “a delinquent.” That’s so much easier than actually getting to know someone and their life, right? No; it’s not because at the end of the day “we’re all a little bizzare. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.” –Andy the Jock
Today, we spent the class discussing examples of words such as Amphibology and Euche. If I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t even know how to pronounce these words and was thinking to myself “when am I ever gonna use this?” However, when it came to talking about the examples of what these words meant it became much easier to understand. Phrases such as “go to hell” and “You’re a psychopath!” are all examples of words on that vocabulary lists, but they’re also very commonly used phrases by teenagers. The truth is all those words and all the examples we gave of them are all apart of basic teenage language. All too often teenagers use examples paraeneticon or cacophony without realizing what they’re saying. Now, saying I’ve never told anyone to go to hell or used “a harsh combination of words” would be a lie, but sometimes we say things and the impact they have never even dawns on us. Sitting in class thinking: “why do I have to know all these words?” got me thinking about words in general. Every time we talk, we obviously use words, the words we say and how we say them we’re telling a story. The story could be something as simple as how our lunch went or the huge fight you got into with your boyfriend; either way we’re telling a story. And eventually, this story that might seem so important or insignificant at the time, it’s all a part of the bigger story that is us, and our lives. So while the truth is I probably will never use this week’s vocab in my daily life ever, I will use examples of them, to tell the people I know and the people I’ll eventually meet in life all of my stories
This week we've been reading Joan's Didion's accounts, reasons and stories of her many years of keeping a notebook. Today we discussed how Didion states she's bad at keeping a diary but has kept a notebook since she was five years old. after discussing and thinking more about the difference between a diary and a notebook, I realized most teenagers nowadays keep a notebook or diary...of sorts. Most my friends have twitter accounts and one of the first things you do when you meet someone you like is say "well, do you have an instagram? what is it? Lemme follow you." The truth is most, if not all, teenagers are keeping a notebook or diary through their phones. When someone is having a bad day, you can usually tell by the the things they tweet. If somebody sees something cool, they'll take a picture of it and post it on instagram. Through the photos we put on our instagram accounts that reflect they people we hang out with and places we go and the the things we tweet that reflect thing as deep as our ideologies or as simple as how our day has been, most people in the 21st century are keeping digital notebooks or diaries. While I personally do keep a diary, even though I never write in it, the idea that we are actually documenting our lives through the vast channels of social media and that that in a way is like Joan Didion keeping a notebook in the 1960s is pretty cool. And if you think about it I'm sure Joan Didion would've had a great twitter with a ton of subtweets about all the crazy drunk people she saw talking to cats and about "Estelle". As a matter of fact, in the 21st century it's actually a lot harder not to keep a certain form of a notebook or diary then we think. |