As a college student, I think it is essential that I challenge myself by pushing myself out of my comfort level in order to learn. Last year, I was comfortable in my stable friend group, my major was clearly mapped out in my head, and I had a concrete plan for my future. This year, much has changed. I have become much more independent of my friend group, tried to branch out in meeting more people, especially in being an RA in a freshman dorm. I have integrated myself more with the basketball team, I have changed my major, and I have embraced higher expectations from my two jobs. And, although I have learned much from these challenges, I desired for a Hillsdale experience in the most holistic way. I wanted to produce something – claim something as my own. So, I signed up for two music classes: private piano lessons, and voice class. Having taken piano before, I had already known what to expect in myself. However, I really did not know if I could sing well or confidently in front of people, so taking the Beginning Voice Lesson forced me out of my comfort zone.
Throughout this semester, I have learned to incorporate my singing into the habits of daily life. In the past, I have had experience with singing. In elementary school, I took lessons with a homeschool teacher in a big group of people. In middle school, I joined my church’s middle school choir. When I listened to music with my sisters, we would all make it an event and sing-along. In addition, both my parents play the guitar, and every so often the whole family would come together to sing. Now, since I have been away from home, I have missed the joys of singing because I had not yet formed habits or groups with which to sing. After joining Beginning Voice Lesson, I have been able to see more opportunities for me to sing. Even though I have not gone out of my way to form new habits, I have been more aware of my voice and how I can incorporate sharing it in my daily life. At church, I have begun to be more conscientious of my voice and how I sing. I have been able to find more joys through singing at church because I make it a point to sound nice and confident. Also, I have attended more music events at the college because I have been more attentive to the music programs at Hillsdale. Thus, through taking Beginning Voice Lesson, I have been able to expand my horizon and experience things which I would have normally missed because I have been exposed to music. Now, my voice has given me more ways of being joyful. When it is nice and sunny outside, I love to be active and play sports outside. But when it is rainy, gloomy, or cold, I can’t really do much of that. Instead, I know I can always go to a practice room inside and sing. Singing reminds me of all of the fun times I have had with my family. Especially when I listen to and sing Indie Rock songs, I am reminded of the times I drove my siblings to the beach with the car windows rolled down, and the times when I was the DJ on one of our big family road trips. Thus, through being more aware of my voice and music, I have been able to remember the little joys I once shared with my siblings and family. Embracing my new ideal in experiencing Hillsdale in the most holistic way has helped me approach life at school with much more joy. Through singing, I have been able to remember the fun times with my loved ones, even though I will not see them for a long time. This summer, whenever I get homesick and want to think of the great times with my family, I now have a solution. I can sing the old campfire and Indie rock summer songs I used to sing with my family and remind myself of the emotions of happiness and joy and feel when I am with my family.
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Last week, I discussed the line people need to walk with social media. I suggested that people need to be able to recognize when social media are appropriate to use, and when using them becomes an obsession. Now, I would like to continue this discussion and give more reasons to my claims. Social media become an issue when people prioritize social media over real life situations, giving media an unordered amount of attention. The dangers which result from an obsession with social media are not worth the temporal pleasures people experience through them.
The world is ordered. Once order is lost, chaos reigns. This is obvious through almost everything in daily life. When people pay attention to things that do not really matter, they may find it difficult to finally face the important things because their minds were not well prepared. Similarly, Love is ordered. When we love something out of its order, we glorify that thing, and can easily become used to treating that thing that way. For example, when we honor a good above an obviously greater good, we lose sight of the proper value of things and unjustly give attention to things. In Augustine's Confessions, Augustine discusses the hierarchy of goods. He states that all things are good in their proper place. So, food and drink are good. They both nourish our bodies and make us feel good. We get a certain amount of satisfaction when we eat and drink. Having friends is good too. We also receive satisfaction from relationships with others. But we do so in a much more meaningful way through learning, sacrifice, and charity. However, Augustine states that when we place our love for food and drink above our love of friendship, we inordinately love food and drink. We become obsessed with that good and undervalue what rightfully is a better good. Ordering our lives well also includes ordering the love for the goods in our lives. Social media, albeit a good in this world, are things which can easily be mistreated. Once people start replacing the love they have for social media above the love for actual conversations, they undervalue real relationships and obsess over something too much. You may say, however, that social media is a way to enrich your relationship with someone else. And while this is true to a certain extent, depending on social media for all of the development of a relationship is dangerous. Social media, due to the fact that people who use it so often, can easily be a place where people falsely feel close to their "friends" or "followers." Through pictures and posts, you may feel like you are close to someone. But because there are no actual interactions, the only thing you learn about the other is facts. You miss every other good thing in a relationship with that other person. You feel as though you are right there with them, but you are not. You are by yourself on the couch, watching others live their lives separately. Social media can give you a false sense of being close with people even though in reality you are not. Thus, when people spend more time on social media than with people, they learn more about other people's lives than other people in actuality. In another sense, Social media are dangerous because they force habits on those who are used to using them. Social media, as I mentioned earlier, gives people access to information–quick information. Through snapchat, people can see what others are doing just through the quick tap on the phone. And especially now, with snapchat's fairly recent News stories, people have easy access to a lot of quick information. Though oftentimes morally reprehensible and disgusting, these News stories supply the snapper with quick and easy stories just through the tap of a finger. It makes accessing the news much simpler. But also, it makes the reader accustomed to quick information. Through getting used to accessing information this way, with little time to actually process and think about the new information, the snapper may get lazy and desert other ways he gets news. He abandon critical thinking skills, eventually even just accepting what he says as true and never really finding out a truly accurate answer. He may get used to not asking himself "why," which will ultimately hurt him in the long run. In total, social media, although a good, is a low good and must be treated thus. It is a way we use to communicate with one another, but it is merely a way. Once social media replace actual conversations, we have messed up somewhere. But it is not too late if you feel like social media have enslaved you. You can always just take a break from it. Periodically deleting apps on your phone may help you take space away from social media. I often delete apps off of my phone months at a time to ensure that I never become addicted to some. Using social media does not make you a bad person, but just like everything in life, goods are ordered, and are so justly. We must be careful to honor their places. Social media have evolved exponentially in my lifetime. Through technological advancements, we are now able to send and share pictures with the people we love to help them understand our lives. Often, I use social media to share my experiences with my family back home. Through Facebook, I upload pictures of dances and adventures for my Facebook friends to see, and through snapchat I send snippets of my life to my siblings. These two things have fundamentally shaped my experience as an out-of-state student, and I would be completely different without the use of these applications. However, while these things have been beneficial to my relationships with other people, they have not had the ability to replace the human requirements of a good relationship. Whereas seeing other people through their posts on Facebook can help shape the physical image in the mind, actual human encounters are necessary to form and maintain real relationships and real images of the other person. On Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, many people become satisfied with how many likes and comments they get, believing that their image is shaped into a popular one. They post pictures that make them look attractive, smart, or important, and create an image of themselves through how they are marketed. Then, those who see their posts take in that representation and interpret it their own way. Through these two things, personal marketing and interpretation of that marketing, social media mimic people's natural ways in representing themselves and forming judgement. But it is not a mirror-image reflection, and in no way replaces the essential consequences from face to face experiences. Through likes and comments, we get a surge of happiness, but it soon dwindles into nothingness because it is missing something essential to relationships--the human experience. Through face to face experience, we present ourselves how we are in reality, and our beholders judge us for the way we are. When we receive compliments from people in reality, we are able to partake in a physical experience with someone else and share in the same experience. Real experiences with other people are much harder to forget than fifth comment on your last Facebook post, and leave us with the memory of an interaction with a real human being. When notifications on the phone start replacing the "hi's" and "hellos" in daily life, we start feeling lonely and forget about other people. Now, you might say that you like social media not because you like posting things of yourself so that your friends can somehow share in your story, but because you like participating in your friends' lives. Be careful. Through just scrolling through facebook or tapping through snapchat, we may feel like we are closer to people by knowing what they are doing. But again, this does not replace face to face experience. We merely take in information and form judgements of other people without getting the full story. And, we may get caught up in worrying about our lives in comparison to others' lives. Through seeing other people's stories on snapchat and Facebook, we remove ourselves from our duties and responsibilities to our friends by the fact that we aren't there physically with them, experiencing what they are experiencing. It is harder, then, to respond to other people's experiences because we are not physically there with them. So, while Facebook and Snapchat have helped me stay in contact with my family, they will never be able to replace that loving embrace with my sister, or that surf session with my brother. Nor will I ever get the same amount of satisfaction from a "happy birthday" post on my wall than from a shout out from a friend in public. From keeping an eye on how much I use social media and restricting myself from certain apps during the school week, I have been able to be more intentional with my relationships with others and more productive in my responsibilities at the time. How to be intentional in all that we doWhile I was in Spain, I learned a very important lesson. I haven’t exactly lived by this lesson every day, but it has shaped my viewpoint towards many of my activities. In Spain, the people are practical. If they work, they focus all of their attention to their work. When they relax, they generally do not worry about other things. In other words, they focus on the task and the situation at hand, and do not worry too much about future or distant things. When applied to our daily lives, this lesson of intentionality can be very beneficial.
Once we become intentional about the things we do, we find clarity. In school, I used to go to class and take notes, but not try to memorize the lessons or themes. I would put that off until test preparation. But now, I have found that if I keep my brain very active in class by trying to memorize the lessons, thinking of questions to ask, and being much more involved with the class, studying for tests becomes less stressful. I comprehend the material much better and understand each small lesson in the bigger picture of the class. Thus, through understanding the role each lesson plays in the bigger concepts, I learn the material better. To be intentional, we must keep the bigger end in mind. In class, sometimes it is hard to stay focused. But it is important to remind ourselves that we are here to learn. Doing homework, writing essays, and taking notes has been the way we have chosen to learn, but the end goal is to comprehend the material. Once we recognize that, it may be easier to understand the roles each activity plays in our steps of learning. We should try to be fully focused in the tasks at hand. When we are doing homework, we should only think about homework. When we are working out, we should focus on working out, and not with what we have to do afterwards. When we are socializing, we should focus on our relationships, and actually relax so that we are refreshed for the next thing which will come. Being intentional in everything will not just help our strivings in academics, but it will help with everything we do. It will increase the amount of energy and focus we can place in each of our commitments because we won’t feel exhausted from thinking about each little thing so much. It will also give us a peace of mind in knowing that we did the best we could with what we had. And that is probably one of the most important benefits. Most people’s harshest critics are themselves. So, once they can overcome any negative mental battles and recognize that they did the best they could in their situations, then they will be able to be free from their harsh criticisms. John Milton was a famous 17th century poet. He is most famous for his epic, Paradise Lost, but he also wrote many brilliant shorter poems in preparation. From his Familiar Letters, we know that he felt called to write this epic, but that he hadn’t yet felt prepared enough to write about the Fall of Man. Through writing shorter poetry, he determined that he would be ready for his great work, and arguably one of the greatest works in British history. One of Milton’s common themes to his writing is the importance of the transcendence. This idea, which has been explained by many thinkers and Church Fathers, has shaped the Liberal Arts. Through believing in something which transcends pastoral reality, people have a basis for forming their arguments. In seeing that the things of the earth fades, it is easy to see the validity in Milton’s claim that there must be something which transcends that which fades. Milton argues that people should focus on the things which transcend, such as God and soul, rather than things which ultimately will not have importance, such as earthly goods and fame. Milton was not the first to argue this viewpoint. Many of the philosophers of antiquity argued this idea. In the Phaedo, Plato responds to questions for his lack of fearing death by simply stating that it is in the office of the philosopher to consider the afterlife, and ponder death, thereby preparing himself for death. By the time death comes, he should be well prepared in thought by philosophizing his whole life. While Plato believed in a different vision of the soul than Christians like Milton, he was right to focus on things eternal than mortal. Further along in Western Tradition, Church leaders discussed the right treatment of earthly goods. St. Augustine of Hippo famously wrote about ordinate desires, and the hierarchy of goods. In St. Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine argues that everything is good in its order. For example, Love is good and from God, but when human love is placed about the love of God, through various means, it is tinted and becomes sinful. This applies to other goods, such as food or earthly possessions. God gave humans food and earthly things so that we can survive, but when these objects are placed above God, they too become distractions from the Good and therefore are not good anymore. Milton builds on the argument of the powerful eternal glory over earthly goods through his rich poetry. Many of Milton’s poems allude to the great thinkers of the past, and enhance their arguments with iambic pentameter, or blank verse. He argues that mirth is a means for us to live, but he chooses melancholy. He uses light and darkness to highlight the Truth in God and the lies in the devil or inordinate desire. And he describes Jesus as a powerful yet merciful savior. A few of my favorite poems are On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, and On Shakespeare. In recent years, the term “adulting” has skyrocketed in its use to mean the responsibilities associated with being an adult. “To adult” means to take on the responsibilities of a normal adult, such as doing the laundry, paying bills, working a steady job, etc. Many people have started using this word as a verb in their dictionary to express their transformation from living within their parent’s care to living on their own. It is not altogether uncommon to hear someone who just payed off their first bill say, “Man, I just adulted today.” Or, if someone admits to tiredness after being responsible for themselves from doing grown-up things, such as buying and cooking their meals, cleaning up after themselves, working, and exercising, they might say, “I adulted too hard, it’s time for Netflix and ice cream.” These examples display how the use of this word can have a negative effect on the attitudes towards becoming an adult. It is good to recognize this growth from parental reliance to independence as an accomplishment. However, bragging about this change, which should be viewed as a difficult but necessary one, glorifies the difficulties associated with being an adult to an unhealthy extent.
Becoming an adult and accepting the responsibilities with it can be a challenging thing, but it is also a challenge which everybody has to go through, and one which ultimately should be anticipated. Once someone reaches the legal age of adulthood, they should be ready for independence. Around the age of fifteen, many teenagers will start working odd jobs, such as babysitting or walking dogs. Some may even work more official jobs, such as working at restaurants or clothing stores. At the age of sixteen in most states, teenagers can test for their driver’s license, and learn how to transport themselves to their own activities. But even perhaps more importantly than driving or having a job, teenagers start understanding the world at deeper levels. They have more advanced thought processes, and have already formed judgments about their upbringing–agreeing and disagreeing with certain things. Thus, after experiencing life for eighteen whole years, people should be ready to take care of themselves. They have most likely received an education, had the opportunity to work, and been able to think about things at a more advanced level. Through using the diction of today’s culture, young adults glorify the challenges they face, and more easily succumb to complaining or abandoning their responsibilities. Throwing about the “verb” of “adulting” in daily speech shows that doing that which is expected of someone should be praised instead of assumed. It gives something which should be accepted and anticipated–independence–a negative connotation, and thereby drains youth from their anticipation of independence. While in Europe, I decided to keep Snapchat to stay in contact with family and friends, deleting other social media outlets to concentrate my focus in the now. Snapchat is an app which allows users to send pictures to friends for a certain amount of time. It is used the most among the youth, giving them opportunities to send pictures to friends and share their experiences in life. I particularly like Snapchat because I get to send and receive pictures to my little siblings and close friends every day. However, Snapchat has evolved from an app used to only send personal messages, into an outlet for people to connect with other “snappers” around the world in the form of global stories. While this may seem really great – people get to see other people in other areas of the world – it may be dangerous if people only watch the stories, instead of reading educational articles, to get to know other cultures because they are only getting the viewpoint of the youth, which misrepresents the country or culture as a whole. Even potentially more dangerous, Snapchat has recently allowed companies to post daily stories on the Snapchat story feed, even if each user does not add the company and choose to follow it. With just a finger’s tap on the screen, users can easily access articles, blogs, and posts from these companies. So, what’s wrong with that? Well, by letting users, especially young people who probably do not yet have a holistic view of the world, read these articles, Snapchat and these companies unconsciously shape the minds of the youth. The quick and easy news is not always factual, or even evocative, making the user used to not having to think too much while reading it. In addition, many of the articles falsely advertise the contents, and many still are extremely poorly written. I have been shocked by so many of the articles, and yet, these articles are so easily accessible, it seems so harmless to just click them and scroll through. If these news substitutes were only about harmless, nonpolitical subjects, they would possibly just negatively affect the user by making them accustomed to using little thought. However, not all of these articles are of innocent content. Much of the content of these stories would be considered as immoral by principled people. Yet, perhaps because mainly only youth use Snapchat, parents do not realize and do not know what their children are reading. Snapchat evolved from an app used to communicate personally into a news source which targets the vulnerable youth. In a time of growing political division, or hardship, it is important that our youth equip themselves with the skills necessary for the future. Namely, reading, writing, and discussing using sound logic. But, if our youth becomes accustomed to being spoon-fed poorly written, illogical articles, it may be harder later in life to ask the tough questions and logically make good decisions. One way to combat the new Snapchat news source is to read and write good articles. Through making the real news appealing to the youth, and through encouraging the youth to broaden their news sources, they may be better prepared for the future. If not, if our youth become comfortable in accepting things, they may wake up in reality too late to realize their rights have slipped away to the sideline.
On the eve of Saint John’s feast day, many Spaniards have fiestas, celebrating this saint with firecrackers, fireworks, a special type of cake (Coca de Sant Joan), and more. Even though many Spaniards have stopped practicing their religion, this tradition has been held sacred throughout the country. It is pretty common for families in every city to gather together in the town squares and eat, walk around and talk to friends, and light off fireworks. However, each city has its own unique way to celebrate this day. In Reus, Catalonia (the city in which I have been staying), the city sponsors a five day festival. This year, Saint John’s feast day was on a Friday, so the festival started on Wednesday night and finished on Sunday. At night, starting at around midnight, bands and DJs are stationed at four different stages and play until the morning. Stands selling food and drinks separate the music stages. And people walk from stage to stage, listening to the music and choosing which friends they want to stay and dance with. This week, I celebrated the eve of Saint John’s feast day with my host family and their friends at their restaurant in the city of Salou. The restaurant is located right next to the beach, with a patio facing the Mediterranean sea with a view of part of Salou’s curved coast. When it began to get dark, people started to light off fireworks. At around 10:30, we ate dinner on the patio with the view of the enchanting ocean and the fireworks. After dinner, the children of the family walked out onto the sidewalk to light fireworks, and we all watched as they added their fireworks to those of the rest of Salou’s. On Saturday, I celebrated the feast of Saint John again, but this time I celebrated it with friends in the city of Reus. At around 10 at night, we walked around outside at one of the plazas downtown and sat down at a bar. Later, we ate dinner at one of the friend’s apartment flats near town. At 12:30, we left the apartment for the festival. At this time, I was already tired because I am accustomed to going to bed at a decently early time. But it was definitely not too late for others. I was far from the youngest person there. There were people of all ages at the festival, including kids in middle school up until adults in their fifties or sixties. I was surprised that there would be that many young people at a festival, but, being that Reus is pretty small, the atmosphere at this one was familiar – people were constantly shouting across the field, greeting old classmates and friends. Once I started listening to the bands with so many of the other young people of the town, the energy at the festival refueled me and I was able to stay awake dancing with new friends until early morning. At the festival, two acts stood out to me. The first was a drums group made up of people with all different ages that played a couple songs unique to Reus and Catalonia. This group was really fun to watch because all of the people in it seemed really passionate about their songs and city, and also really seemed to enjoy playing for everybody. But they were also really fun to hear – the drums were really energizing and upbeat. The performers danced to their own music, and fed energy to a crowd equally excited to hear their music. The second act which stood out to me was a band which mixed traditional Spanish dance music with more modern sounds and beats. In many of their songs, they started off with a Spanish dance beat, and then blended in a dubstep/trap electronic beat. They successfully integrated the traditional music with the new electronic music, without taking away the value of either. So far in Spain, I have learned many things about cultures, people, myself, and life in general. One of the things which has helped me learn this much so far is experience. Through experience, I have met really neat people who have been open to share their lives and traditions with me. Even though I have made some mistakes in Spain (waiting for the bus in a more dangerous part of my town, initially not understanding the Spanish way of greeting people, or directly translating specific words from Spanish to English), it has been through these mistakes that I have been able to learn. While travelling in Spain and the Czech Republic this summer, I have noticed language’s important role in everyday situations. As an agent for communication, language helps shape other’s opinions of us. When I have talked to people in these countries, language almost immediately indicates that I am a foreigner because of my strong accent. Usually I get asked many questions after people find out I am an American, especially one from California. But, once I get passed that point, and perseveringly persuade people from these countries to speak their language with me, they start to focus much more on my words than on my background. Thus, it becomes increasingly important that I represent my arguments in a grammatically correct way, otherwise my representation of my argument will reflect onto the argument itself. For instance, when I seem to struggle to talk about something merely because I might not know the verb form structure, which tense to use, or the vocabulary, it is quite normal for the listener to subconsciously think that I may not understand or know what I want to say, and jump to the conclusion that I am not too intelligent. But people from other countries are not the only ones who do this. I do this all of the time. I focus on the way people say things, and the way people write, as a way to judge the validity of their arguments. If people present something in a grammatically incorrect way, it seems quite safe to assume that that person did not receive a great education and does not know how to use their language correctly. Then, that inference can be made onto their argument as well. If they had not been educated well enough to shape their sentences correctly, could their thoughts and logic processes be incomplete as well? Perhaps. In Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine writes that the Truth does not lose its validity based off of its presentation. Even if it is presented poorly, in essence, it still is the same. But people can more easily ignore its importance if it is disguised as something unintelligent. Thus, those who really seek to know the Truth will look past the presentation because they believe that Truth transcends its presentation in human form. Thus, for messengers of Truth to educate those around them, it is important, and even necessary, to spend time in its presentation so as to convince the listener, or reader, that what they are saying has importance and implications. When I have struggled with presenting my political ideas and arguments in different countries, it has been easier for my companions to dismiss my reasoning because it didn’t sound smart or convincing. To them, I sounded like a child, thus they associated my ideas as those that a child would have. Winning these arguments has been difficult, and gaining enough courage to start one even more. Thus, it has become my responsibility, as a person seeking for Truth, to try to be an intelligent representative so as to be heard and received well. |
Jessica De GreeJessica teaches 5th grade English and History as well as 11th grade Spanish III at a Great Hearts Academy in Glendale, AZ. In addition to teaching, she coaches JV girls basketball and is a writing tutor for The Classical Historian Online Academy. Jessica recently played basketball professionally in Tarragona, Spain, where she taught English ESL and tutored Classical Historian writing students. In 2018, she received her Bachelor's degree in English and Spanish from Hillsdale College, MI. Archives
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