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magazine

Volume 8, No. 7 JANUARY 21, 2008

2 FIRST CALL JAnuARy 21, 2008

FIRSTLOOK

COnTRIbuTORSeditor-in-Chief: Michael Sall • editors: TiM PoTenS, Benny laiTMan, erica ToBin, Dan DeuTSch • Chief design editor: charlie iSaacS • Chief art editor: Dan MarkowiTz • Webmaster: TiM PoTenS • business manager: AnnA TolMach • distribution manager: Valeria TSygankoVa • treasurer: rachael huTchinSon • features manager: KAthy wang • reCruitment manager: riVka Fogel • marketing manager: Jun Park • artists: DAn MArKowitz, yue wu Columnists: TiM PoTenS • Writers: AlyssA songsiriDej, Christopher wArD, VAleriA tsygAnKoVA, Anne huAng PhotograPhers: Brian ShMerling, Michael Sall • layout artist: VAleriA tsygAnKoVA

COnTaCT

first Call, kelly Writer’s house

3805 loCust Walk, PhiladelPhia, Pa 19104WWW.firstCallmagazine.Com

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the notebooktim potens

A flood of mAil

hAikus

cAmpAign snApshots

on the joys of diversity

baby’S FIRST CauCuS8

IT’S a wOndeRFuL TRadITIOn

10

alyssa songsiridejAlyssa heads home to the Really Im-portant State of Iowa.

Tim struggles through a journey of self-discovery, love, and the purchase of a new notebook.

Valeria spends winter break drowning in college applications.

Better hurry, only 293 days left.

cover: GIRaFFe, bRIan ShmeRLInG

valeria tsygankova

the editors

the editors

anne huang

Christopher Ward

15 photo spotlightmiChael sall

16 crossword: meet your cAndidAtesthe editors

Anne thinks about the little things that make us diverse.

4

Christopher finds solace in the seem-ing downers of a Christmas season ritual.

comic: glAss hAlf emptydan markoWitz11

3FIRST CALL JAnuARy 21, 2008

LeTTeR FROmThe edITORS

edITORIaLPOLICy

FIRST CALL IS The undeRgRAduATe mAgAzIne oF The unIveRSITy oF PennSyLvAnIA PubLIShed eveRy oTheR mondAy. ouR mISSIon IS To PRovIde membeRS oF The CommunITy An oPen FoRum FoR exPReSSIng IdeAS And oPInIonS. To ThIS end, we, The edIToRS oF FIRST CALL, ARe CommITTed To A PoLICy oF noT CenSoRIng oPIn-IonS. ARTICLeS ARe PRovIded by ReguLAR CoLumnISTS And wRIT-eRS. They ARe ChoSen FoR Pub-LICATIon bASed on The quALITy oF wRITIng, And, In The CASe oF CommenTARIeS, The quALITy oF ARgumenTATIon. ouTSIde oF The edIToRIAL And oTheR edIToRIAL ConTenT, no ARTICLe RePReSenTS The oPInIon oF FIRST CALL, ITS edIToRIAL boARd, oR IndIvIduAL membeRS oF FIRST CALL oTheR ThAn The AuThoR. no ConTenT In FIRST CALL unLeSSoTheRwISe STATed RePReSenTS The oFFICIAL PoSITIon oF The AdmInISTRA-TIon, FACuLTy, oR STudenT body AT LARge oF The unIveRSITy oF PennSyLvAnIA.

firstcallismwelcoming 2008?

more like escaping 2007.supporteD by the kelly Writers

house

Dear Pennsters, Welcome to 2008! Much has

changed since we last spoke. As per tradition, First Call has enjoyed many improvements over the winter break. We’ve boosted our artillery of editors and managers, revamped our features and content, and are expect-ing to re-re-re-introduce First Blog within the week.

But most i m p o r t a n t l y and astound-ingly exciting is the introduc-tion of yours truly as First Call’s new Ed-itor-in-Chief! I’m as excited as you are, too, but try to control your enthusiasm. Having only written one article, let me just take this moment to introduce myself: my name is Mi-chael Sall. Ok, that was easy.

Much has changed in the world beyond First Call as well. As we’ve all been recovering from exams and enjoying our holiday traditions, like Chris contemplates in this issue, Election 2008 has gotten downright nasty. Hillary BROKE DOWN un-der stress, Obama was VERBALLY DESTROYED as a fairytale, and Mitt Romney still has INCREDIBLY PER-FECT HAIR. While Obama and Huck-

abee took the Iowa caucus by storm, as our proud Iowan Alyssa reports, Hil-lary snatched New Hampshire; Rom-ney: Michigan and Nevada; McCain: South Carolina and New Hampshire. We feel for you, Ron Paul, as well as for the rest of the candidates, who

we’ve paid homage to in our Cam-paign Snap-shots.

Whether or not you’ve been as glued to the media these past few weeks as us, we’re all prepar-ing ourselves for a new semester. At

least, Tim is hoping to get himself more organized, and Valeria is taking a break from her time in the Penn Ad-missions mailroom this winter. Anne, too, is happy to return to the wonder-ful diversity that is Penn. Smiles all around.

Plus, we’ve thrown in some Hai-kus, just to get the ball rolling. So en-joy! And we look forward to offering you another perfect year of First Calls. Yes, that’s right, perfect.

Sincerely,Michael SallEditor-in-Chief


The nOTebOOK

tim potens: potent potablesA Student’S VerSion

I’m going to be completely honest. I’m not a very organized person –

at all. I really hate to admit that, since I like straightening and reorganizing things and, well, I’m an engineer. But all that surface order doesn’t obscure the fact that I really am an organiza-tional nightmare. My family under-stands this fully well. I received a set of desk organizers for Christmas, and as soon as I got back to Penn, my mom informed me by phone that I had left half of my clothes at home. So much for careful packing.

Moving from high school to col-lege, I only had one organization tool that I could really rely on and actu-ally remember to use regularly: a notebook. No planners, no calendars, nothing complex – I liked writing lists of tasks in a copybook as a reminder of what was due. It may not have been the most elegant solution – long term projects become tough to conceptual-ize without a calendar and there was a lot of crossing out and big arrows – but it got the job done. However, as the increasing demands of college courses became apparent, I knew my jury-rigged organizational habits couldn’t hold up.

What’s a poorly organized en-gineer to do when he needs a new strategy for keeping track of tasks and appointments and assignments? Go to the Internet of course! Suddenly I found myself in a position where the vast majority of my classes demanded that I spend large sums of time in front of the computer, programming or researching or weeping. So, the natural place to find a new organi-zational tool was obviously from the wonderful people at Google. I set up my Google Calendar, filled in all my classes, added a few other important things like Penn’s academic calendar, and then proceeded to rarely check it ever again. Keeping information like this online simply wasn’t tenable. I know wireless internet access is sup-posed to be ubiquitous nowadays,

but you try fighting with Whnowire and AirPennNet and the inevitable avalanche of Windows errors while checking where you’re supposed to be at 3:30.

I couldn’t abandon my computer entirely though – I’m still an engineer, mind you – so I looked for some offline solutions. Most of what I needed to record was little reminders and notes about assignments, information not necessarily tied to dates, so I decided to forego calendars and try out Sticky Notes for your Desktop. This setup al-lowed me to make any sort of note I wanted and leave it right in front of my face while I was stuck at the com-puter. Success! Or something close to it at least. These digital Sticky Notes worked for a while, until I dropped my laptop (several times) while trying to check the desktop one-armed while moving across a room. Luckily it suf-fered only a little critical damage, but it was becoming apparent that having all of my organization on a computer (or PDA or cell phone, for that mat-ter) wasn’t going to work. It was sim-ply too difficult to turn something on and check a screen regularly, in part because of my unavoidable clumsi-ness.

After forsaking electronic orga-nization, I needed a quick solution or else I’d be forced to sharpie my class schedule onto the back of my hand. I decided to make the jump (and what a long creative leap it was) to regu-lar sticky notes. I could take quick notes and stick them in an obvious place where I would be forced to be reminded: the wall over my desk, the monitor of my laptop, my face when I went to bed. This solution held up for a while, until the sticky notes started to lose their stick. Sticky notes are a great tool when they stay where you want them. They are not a great tool when they all fall into a pile or disap-pear under desks.

I needed a little more ground-ing than all these free flowing notes,


tim potens is a junior in engineering.you can write to him at potens@seas.

and it was then that I stumbled across one of the simplest but most innovative ideas online: the Hipster PDA. Take a stack of index cards, clip them together, and… well that’s it – an instant, cheap, por-table storage device. Ignoring the fact that there’s a little bit of a discontinuity in the name (Are listen-ing to indie music, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, and shuffling index cards honestly all part of the same stereotype?) this idea seemed to be flawless. I could carry this little stack around with me ev-e r y w h e r e and quick-ly be able to make notes or look up something I had recorded before; this structure was well suited to my note-tak-ing, list-making style. This was it, the ultimate organizational solution that would put me back on track – I knew it was a winner. And I did hang with it. I even have my hPDA in my back pocket right now.

But still, even now after trying and trying to use it for weeks and months, I don’t think I’ve really taken hold of this tool. I carry it all the time, sure, and I write down important pieces of information (like textbook ISBNs in the bookstore to look up on Ama-zon later, say), but more often than not I ignore it. Maybe I’m just afraid of spraying the cards everywhere in a public space, or just too lazy to work the little binder clip whenever I need to check something. Either way, it’s not really working. All this time, as I bounced between tricks and strategies, I kept feeling a pull towards my old ways, and I would occasionally make

a tiny foray in that direction. Just a quick hit, that’s all I needed – just enough to get my schedule back on track. It pains me to say this out loud but I must: I am a notebook junkie.

Nothing else works. Nothing is as simple and easy to follow as a big list in a copybook with dates, instructions, and a few arrows. If I need a calendar, I draw one. If I need a weekly planner, I split the page into pieces. If I need to do a quick integral (which does actu-ally happen) I can just turn the page and start math-ing without having to find another tool. The notebook is the most efficient, most effective, most re-silient all-purpose multi-tasking and organizational device known to the modern world. Well, at least for me. FC


a FLOOd OF maILvaleria tsygankova

nAVigAting the exceSSeS of college AdmiSSionS

Working in the Penn Admis-sions mailroom over winter

break, I probably saw more mail over the course of four weeks than I had seen in my entire life. From 9 to 5, the mailroom staff opened and processed thousands of letters, ranging from applications and tran-scripts to Penn-themed watercolors and painted 10-foot banners. While most letters we received contained a straightforward assortment of stan-dardized forms, we were also plagued by hundreds of packages from over-zealous applicants that contained entire three-ring binders of color-coded information, complete with 20-page résumés, captioned photo-graphs, chapters of novels, amateur art projects, and what seemed like every doodle they had ever drawn in the margins of their notebooks. And it was my job to sort and manage the contents.

For a freshman not so far re-

moved from her acceptance to col-lege, the whole process was still cov-ered with a beguiling aura of mystery. Working in College Hall, however, gave me an insider’s view into ad-missions, despite being as distant as I was from the inner sanctum of the Conference Room I walked past ev-ery morning where the real decisions were made.

At the same time, my view was an outsider’s view – outside of the process itself, removed from any personal attachment or concern for applications and transcripts, able to look at the whole thing from a more disinterested perspective. Where one year ago the fact of applying to col-lege seemed like a rite of passage, standardized yet shrouded in mys-tery, common but so personal, it was now completely routine, ordinary, and familiar. No application was special. Every single one was treated with the same indifference, annoy-

ance, or disdain, often depending on the amount of gratuitous supple-mentary material enclosed.

I was surprised by the irritation shown toward these supplements – the CDs, slides, portfolios, books, and drawings – not only by the mail-room staff opening and processing them, but also by the admissions of-ficers who would come into the mail-room to pick up mail and chat. Why did these people, the very ones who I thought were supposed to value the unique facets of each applicant and appreciate additional informa-tion, show signs of annoyance at the supplementary material they had to evaluate? The students were just doing what they were asked to do, I thought.

It seemed cruel to me, to give a student the opportunity to send in his entire life on paper, and then to not really care about it as much as an entire life deserved. By the end of


my stint in the mailroom, however, I found that handling the products of this self-centered outpouring made a very good case for the cynicism of the people who worked in admissions all year long. To understand their per-spective, all I had to do was process a few thousands of letters and shed my residual high-school naiveté about college admissions.

For the high school senior, the opportunity to shine in front of the admissions committee is individual and momentous. You get forms to fill out all about yourself, and you’re sure that whoever receives them at the admissions office will read them all with interest and reverence, lis-tening to the CD of you playing the clarinet with a parent’s proud look in their eyes. You’re convinced they want to know everything there is to know about you. Your entire being is consumed with thoughts of how you measure up, and what other piece of information you could provide to sway their decision. Of course you need to show them everything, be-cause applying to college is a once-in-a-lifetime event – and what if it’s your rendition of Charlie Parker that wins them over.

But for the admissions officer, a college application is probably just one in tens of thousands from across the country and the world. The amount of clarinet performances, charcoal drawings, and photography portfolios included no doubt makes it difficult to find uniqueness and tal-ent in everyone. For the applicant se-duced by the Artistic Supplement, it might be even harder to believe that maybe not everyone has talent. It’s what my brief brushes with the peo-ple who have been inside the Confer-ence Room lead me to believe.

While I understood why so many people fell for the impulse to docu-ment their lives and why they ex-pected everyone to find this informa-tion as important and interesting as they themselves did, I still couldn’t help wishing, while I opened enve-lopes filled with arts and crafts, that I could tell them: Maybe behind those closed doors of the Conference Room, your lovingly crafted origami Mickey Mouse will be admired. But, I can’t help thinking that there, as

they do here in the mailroom, your efforts will just irritate people, if not get you laughed at.

It was bizarre to see how ex-tremely self-centered anyone could be tricked into being. The application process is tuned for it, but it seemed to me that the people who work it are not. Of course, the complaining in the mailroom can be explained by a bunch of college students and their

supervisors doing tedious work. However, I preferred to think of it as a conflict between human nature and the college application process. Maybe people just aren’t suited for the complete egocentrism demanded by its excesses.

valeria tsygankova is a freshman in theCollege. you can write to her at valeriat@sas

haIKuS

Rush is here againPeople go to eat and eatThey don’t pay a thing

Some frats like to drinkSome are just really big dorks

Watch out for those ones.

Girls stand in the coldAs all the guys walk by them

Haha sucks for them

Frats are for the boysSororities are for girlsSome are in between?

Hemos, Pats, Genos,White Castle, Franklin Fountain,

Just a few rush foods.

Open rush is awkwardMen hitting on other men

Closed rush is here now

Binge drinking is funBut not when someone throws up

Today my room smells

We are tailgatingWe have two dirty strippers

We even have pot

As a frat brotherWe get girls for freshman guys

Girls from Drexel work

So much alcoholConsumed in only ten days

I hope you die, liver

The worst part of rushHappens when it finishedBecause then pledge starts

A few years agoI licked a stripper’s nipple

A rush myself then

Keg stands on a busBecome pretty common place

They are pretty sweet

O M G, hi youI like love the shoes you have

Girls rush sucks a lot

I got drunk last nightAnd hooked up with a fat chick

What is there to do…

The only time thatI am encouraged to getPhone numbers of guys

the editorsin honor of ruSh

FC


When I tell people at college I’m from Iowa, I get a lot of con-

fused looks. “Whoa, haven’t heard that before,” is the usual response. Iowa is not a place people think about a great deal.

But once in every four years Iowa becomes a Very Important Place. A Place that draws headlines across the globe, the kind of Place where, if you are a resident, you will draw looks of envy, especially from Political Science majors. This is because every four years the Iowa Caucuses take place.

The Iowa Caucuses, for the po-litically challenged, are the very first election in the presidential nomina-tion race. You may have heard New Hampshire go on about how they are “The First Primary in a Nation.” True, they are the first primary election, but this is because a caucus is a very different creature than a primary. I didn’t realize how different a creature until my very first one.

I’m pretty apathetic politically. The last time I can recall getting ex-cited about any political issue was when I was in eighth grade and I had to argue about nu-clear energy in a class-room debate. This class opened up a whole realm of is-sues I’d never even thought of, and it was quickly clear which side of the issues I

stood on. Conservatives reminded me too much of my wet-blanket father’s “can’t do this, can’t do that” attitude. (As it turns out, my father actually is a conservative. I try not to hold it against him.) Liberals were for gay rights, and my favorite relatives were my two aunts in Wisconsin, and in general the liberal ideas went along with the Everybody’s Equal slogans that had been pumped into my brain since I was five. The only thing I didn’t agree with the liberals on was affir-mative action, because I didn’t want anyone giving me a hand because of my race. (Later I learned that, as an Asian-American, no one is going to be helping me out because of my race. My over-achieving peers and I get no pity in the academic field.) From then on I considered myself Liberal, and haven’t really worried about it too much since.

When it came time to register to vote, how-ever, I stuck with Inde-pendent.

At that point I realized that, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Repub-lican, almost all politicians are full of crap. I didn’t really want to associate myself too strongly with any of them. Voting in general fell to the back of my mind, lacking the priority of say, the next episode of Heroes or where my next meal was going to come from.

Until this fall when the same question kept popping up: Are you going to Caucus?

I suddenly realized this wasn’t just any election, this was an election that made Iowa Really Important. And I am completely gung-ho about Iowa being Really Important. Partici-pating in anything that made

my home state seem a little cooler was up

at the top of my priority list.

S o , when I

Baby’s First Caucusalyssa songsiridej

falling in love with iowa


wasn’t watching every episode of Ar-rested Development or eating tor-tilla chips, I spent my break going to Democratic candidate rallies in poorly-ventilated middle school. I watched debates online. I listened to my friend’s older sister, a Hillary Clin-ton campaign worker, talk on and on about “HRC” and Bill Clinton’s appar-ent affinity for Pizza Hut Pizza.

All this work, and the night be-fore the Caucuses I still had no fuck-ing idea who I was going to stand for.

And when I say “stand for,” I mean it, literally. And here is the reason why the caucuses are different than a pri-mary. You don’t just wander into an elementary school and punch in your choices on a computer, oh no. The Caucuses don’t work like that.

Instead, I wandered, confused, into the high school near my house with my mother, an “HRC” supporter, and we were herded around the halls by teenagers in “Rock the Caucus” T-shirts as if we were sheep. I was herd-ed into a line to change my party af-filiation to “Democrat,” and then I was herded into a stuffy cafeteria with my fellow voting cattle.

Everyone was clustered into little groups around campaign signs be-cause see, in a Caucus you don’t vote with your finger, you vote with your whole body. You literally stand under-neath the sign for your candidate of choice, and they count your heads and hand-mail them to Caucus HQ. It’s a very low-tech, non-confidential system based on the idea of com-

munity and that, here in Iowa, we talk to each other. It’s quirky and weird and pretty much sums up my state entirely.

Walking into the cafeteria with everyone huddled under signs as if they were in elaborate, politics-driven cliques, I still wasn’t really sure who to vote for. I’d canceled Edwards out be-cause I simply didn’t like him and had spent the night before stuck between Hillary and Obama. I even resorted to taking an online quiz designed to match me with the candidate I agree with most on the issues. It told me to vote for Dennis Kucinich. My friend from high school begged me to stand up in a corner, alone, and in front of my mother, neighbors, and high school classmates, scream, “I SAW A UFO, TOO.”

After looking back and forth at the Hillary and Obama supporters like a high school freshmen look-ing to decide the rest of his/her high school social life, I sat for Hillary. I’m not going to lie—part of me was re-ally intimidated by the idea of sitting with the Obama supporters alone, awkward. The biggest objection in my head, however, was the realization that Obama has been in Senate almost as long as I have

alyssa songsiridej is a sophomore in the College. you can write to her at songsin@sas.

been in college, and when it comes to campus life I am still a huge doofus.

When I left the caucus, pleased that the hard part of my presidential election decision was over, I suddenly wanted to live in Iowa forever. I never get this feeling, and at first I thought it was some kind of gag reflex, like I was going to vomit. But no, it was merely an overwhelming sense of love for the place I can call, on my voter’s regis-tration card at least, home. And I was also sad, because it is likely that this is going to be my first and last cau-cus. As much as I love Iowa (I know this is a shocker, but I really do love it) I have no desire to spend my adult-hood there. I have a lot of other stuff to do before returning to the place of my childhood.

And other places have other things to offer too. Weird food items, parades of cross-dressing firefighters, and a surprisingly small Colonial bell are just a few things Pennsylvania has to offer.

But how many places have an election that sounds like a naughty part of the human anatomy? FC


IT’S a wOndeRFuL TRadITIOnChristopher Ward

A modern ghoSt of chriStmAS PASt mAde PreSent

After overcoming the nervous ten-sion that is predominant in the

days and hours preceding one’s final exams, I returned home for the winter break in an antithesis of my prior un-ease. The holiday season, now that my head could be freed from thoughts of textbooks and study sessions, had un-officially begun. Or so I thought. With three days before Christmas I still had this indescribable feeling that it did not seem like Christmas. Despite the decorated tree, the hung stockings (mine of course being the one with Cook-ie Monster still on it, a remnant of my child-hood) and the media’s guarantees that buy-ing diamonds and expensive cars were assurances that one’s relation-ship, marital or otherwise, was secured during the holidays, the season had not re-ally begun for me. After some head scratching, some soul searching, and re-grettably, yes, some carol singing (if you count singing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by the Blue Oyster Cult in the game “Rock Band” as caroling), I finally understood my lack of the holi-day spirit: I had not watched Frank Capra’s classic movie “It’s a Wonder-ful Life.”

Watching the follies and later redemption of George Bailey amidst the working class town of Bedford Falls was a holiday tradition for my family and I, one that probably dates back to my childhood. With age (as if a nineteen-year-old can legitimately talk about such a thing) came a better appreciation for the movie; what once seemed bland and unforgiving had later become relevant and, yes, for this

ordinarily dry well, a bit tear-jerking. But as I watched the movie for the millionth time and grew overcome with a wish to sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” I thought to myself: why is it that of all the many movies that take place during the Christmas sea-son “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with all its depressing themes of failure, suicide, and the collapse of the small town eco-nomic structure, continues to be aired

by NBC during this time? Why has a movie that

takes place in the

postwar Forties meant so much for so many people, enough to be recognized as a Holiday classic? How is it still rel-evant?

Like a broken record played every year during December by the agents of the problem itself, the media, the constant lament of the commercial-ism of Christmas, seems an issue we complain about ourselves. Yet, pardon the pun, we buy into it like drones made ecstatic with talk of sales, dis-counts, and whatever Oprah Winfrey commands as being apropos for gifts on her show. Now I am not trying to

condemn any and all buying of gifts, but I think presents, whether a jet-black Lexus or a discounted cashmere sweater with a red dot on it, are poor and incomplete tools for expressing one’s love or gratitude to another and are thus not worth the anxiety felt by many during the holiday season.

It is hard to say who is at blame; at mass during the break the presid-ing priest in his homily suggested that Bing Crosby’s song “White Christmas” was the catalyst for the future trivial-ization of the Christian-based holiday. Now I can neither confirm nor deny the verity in this claim, so I will let you

the reader make up your mind. It seems to me, though, that

“It’s a Wonderful Life,” with its focus on community

and the hu-manity of the

season over the superficial

and greedy, as headed by the

miserly Mr. Pot-ter, seems to be

what we all wish Christmas was like.

Its simple message of people coming

together to help out their brethren, that

everyone, regardless of class or occupation, is

intrinsically important in keeping together the fabric

of the society in which they occupy, seems like good ad-

vice that comes every holiday season. Yet, this advice is appreciated

then and there, then forgotten for the rest of the year until the next holiday season. George is toasted by his war hero brother as the “richest man in town,” thus affirming that oft-repeat-ed sentiment that wealth is not a dol-lar currency but rather, if “Hallmark” sentimentality allows me, one of the heart and manifested in one’s rela-tionships. So in this sense one can see


dan markowitz is a freshman in engineering. you can write to him at idaniel@seas and visit his website at http://www.defectivity.com.

the universality of the movie’s themes - that of feeling irrelevant in the whole scheme of life, that man lives as a sin-gular unit with no effect on anyone and is thus insignificant as dust.

I suppose, even for a student at Penn, that often, unless one has an impenetrable confidence, one can feel lost, irrelevant, even swallowed up by the thousands upon thousands of students and faculty that inhabit cam-pus day by day. Even if one is not the sole proprietor of a penny ante build-ing and loan like George Bailey, there comes a time when a period of self-reflection leads one to question one’s status in life. While this might be a crossroads faced at a later age and not for one approaching the cusp of their dreams as a college student, it is even now something that may spring up, even if only an afterthought. But even so, maybe for some of us the realities of one’s home conflict with the im-measurable dreams and goals one has for their future, one that is often de-void or even shunning of their roots.

In this sense, then, these overarch-ing principles of the movie, regarding life and how to live it, even fit into the contemporary college student’s life. Like Harry Bailey, George’s brother, one is given opportunities, achieves a myriad of successes, and is thus faced with the crucible of abandon-ing one’s home or returning for what might seem, as George feels when his ambitions take a backseat to the fam-ily business, like an entrapment in a less glamorous and dream-crushing

existence. Therefore, the last scene becomes not a reaffirmation of money as the numerical indicator of success and personal fortune but rather as a signifier for a deeper meaning. That is, that no achievement is too small and that riches supersede the some-times tyranny of money and its idol-ization. And while this outlook might crush or at the least conflict with the sentiments of some of our best Whar-ton-ites, it seems that one’s paycheck cannot reflect however much success one truly has achieved. Despite the

real possibility. When these modes of escape should one day become futile, pointless, and even concealing of what truly is important, what will I do?

And so having the movie broad-casted every year at the same time is much appreciated, for us humans are forgetful and repetitive creatures. With hope forming in the somewhat melodramatic ending of the angel Clarence gaining his wings and the town stepping up to help an old friend at the eleventh hour, this movie is not a depressing tradition like watching a

mere superficialities of the setting, time period, clothing, and technology that all grew obsolete well before the commencement of this century, it is the feelings, the sentiments, and the emotions that remain timeless and relevant for everyone.

It is easy to get lost in appear-ance, in the tangible parts of life and lose sight of what truly is important. I know for me, a habitual workaholic who finds books and assignments to be a fitting refuge from the other parts of life I much rather wish to avoid, the sufferings and frustrations of Jimmy Stewart’s character are a scary yet very

post-stroke Dick Clark host his New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Rather, it is a reaf-firmation of life when we as a human race need it the most. Families and re-lationships are not the sum of dollar transactions, but rather of the interac-tions that bound each other as depen-dant, cohesive units. The challenge, then, is to remember these things all the year long. I suppose in this case, a better comparison to our forgetful state would be Uncle Billy rather than George.

Christopher Ward is a sophomore in the College. you can write to him at wardct@sas.

While this outlook might Crush or at least ConfliCt With the sentiments of some of our best Wharton-ites, it seems that one’s payCheCk Cannot refleCt hoWever muCh suCCess one has aCtually aChieved.

FC


On The JOyS OF dIveRSITyanne huang

going Beyond ABercromBie, JeSuS, And VolleyBAll

As college applications trickled in this past winter vacation, ambi-

tious, idealistic students probably submitted essays about their resolve to solve the Middle East conflicts or the impending doom that gentrifica-tion will inflict on lower-class youths. When I applied to colleges, I avoided the “why diversity is important to me” school of questions. I had noth-ing soulful or profound to say about that. I’m sure we were expected to talk about how friendship with someone outside our race had changed our life. We were probably supposed to write something warm and fuzzy so that college admissions officers could pat themselves on the back about the re-wards of affirmative action. Person-ally, a lot of my friends from an early age have been outside my race. I’ve never felt that interracial friendship was anything novel or odd, much less something to pat myself on the back about.

To me, diversity is so much more about the little ways in which we dif-fer. You might not personally find the diversity of musical tastes, shoe sizes,

or clothing choices deep, meaningful, or worthy of much serious discussion, especially when I’m sure others my age are more focused on their future careers as brain surgeons, or on the proactive little steps they have already begun to take to improve interfaith relations and promote interfaith uni-ty. Not to challenge or disrespect the well-deserved attention towards those serious matters, but I’m more preoc-cupied by the trivial little things that enlighten someone’s world and self-perception.

A friend of mine did choose to address the diversity question in her Common App. She wrote about how, in elementary school, her feet felt clumsily oversized because she was surrounded by dainty-footed, por-celain-doll-like little girls. Entering a more diverse student body in high school, however, she was delighted by a discovery she made on a bowling ex-cursion with her volleyball team: they, too, shared her shoe size, and some, in fact, had even bigger feet. Her essay was partly inspired by a Grinnell sam-ple. In it, a girl celebrated the contri-

bution of her exceptionally small wrist to the diversity of any community.

Although I don’t recommend be-ing proud of especially tiny wrists, there are healthier alternatives to di-versify a community. My younger sis-ter has noted, too, that there seems to be a greater variety of students in her high school than in our elemen-tary school. “People here actually have interests,” she exclaims. “There are people who like musical theatre, and writing. And they write poems!” By contrast, the interests of all her grade school classmates fell under two cat-egories: Jesus and volleyball.

As indifferent as I myself would be to a proliferation of poetry-writing peers (verse has never been my cup of tea), I can sympathize to some ex-tent with her experiences in moving up from one level of schooling to the next. When I was part of an after-school day care, I became nervous ev-ery Lenten season. In a largely Catho-lic program, I felt like the only kid without ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, and shifted uncomfort-ably as everyone else asked me what


I had given up. I felt singled out as I was served meat during snack time while everyone else abstained. It con-fusingly made me feel less American, but my later experiences confirmed that the feeling was unjustified. You see, in high school, there were Jew-ish people in addition to Catholics. Observing the full process of Lent no longer felt like a requisite for being a true American.

The smaller and thus more in-sular a student body population you find yourself in, the less likely you are to find people who share the same in-terests as you or enjoy doing the same things that you do, especially if your tastes like a little off-kilter. You just end up spending much more time playing volleyball than you would like because that’s the only thing anyone else is willing to do together.

At least with a greater variety of personalities, we can furthermore take comfort in the discovery that—yes—there are always freakier people out there than ourselves. When I first entered high school, I thought the people there were a lot more indi-vidualistic than the ones I had been exposed to in elementary school. Ev-eryone in elementary school had been so… mainstream. But in high school people listened to all this alternative, indie, and underground music I had never heard of, and I felt as if everyone else was clad in unconventional attire except for me. Fearing that I had sud-denly become bland amongst a bunch of weirdoes, I decided to play up any quirks in my personality (though of

course, ever remaining “true to my-self ”). Suddenly being “messed up” had become fashionable (I blame the emo trend). As much as this further plagued my insecurities, the impor-tant thing was the confirmation that there were… alternatives. That peo-ple did not fall under two categories: those who wore Abercrombie and Fitch, and those who did not.

But as idiosyncratic as every-one appeared when they first started high school, with their dramatic hair color changes and personally rede-fined sense of social boundaries, they all seemed to converge into the same indistinguishable identity by the time we graduated. It seemed that they had only felt compelled to assert some kind of novel persona as a cry for at-tention freshman year. Was it all a fa-cade? As they all became more alike, I felt that anything that I had originally perceived to be surprising or unusual about them was just surface-level. Un-derneath it all, they were just… nor-mal. And the options again became narrower. When you’ve been with the same limited set of people for so long, it can feel as if those were the only types of people out there, as if no one else had a different political leaning, set of hobbies, or attitude towards ac-ademics. Plagued by youthful insecu-rity, everyone else eventually adopted whatever viewpoint was fashionable.

Fortunately, your definition of “everyone” shifts as you move from one set of people to a larger one. In college, there are some people whose attitudes and outlooks don’t corre-

spond with the ones I had previously encountered. I know I shouldn’t need external validation when my opinions fundamentally differ from others’, but it’s nice not to feel like a freak once in a while. In high school, people always told me that I talked about random, weird things—why others deemed to be my usual “philosophic” rumina-tions (not a designation that I found particularly flattering). I’ve heard those comments less frequently so far in college. I don’t know if the four years of high school effectively wore out my eccentricities, or if, since we’re not stuck with the same people all day long anymore, I’m just not saying the same random, weird, things to the same weird, random people anymore.

At any rate, in college I’ve met a few people who ask even weirder, more random, and more uncom-fortable questions than I—and with greater persistence. Somehow all of my eccentricities suddenly pale in comparison. Maybe diversity is just a conspiracy to make freaks feel nor-mal, without forcing them to compro-mise their original personality. Who knows? Maybe I just haven’t gotten to know the people here well enough. Perhaps I’m yet to discover that their behaviors, too, spring from the same insecurity, self-consciousness, and anxiety about fitting dictated the leanings of my high school peers, but at least, for now, any such tendencies are manifesting in different, if not, re-freshing ways. FC

anne huang is a freshman in the College.you can write to her at anhuang@sas.

articles.Photographs.Opinions.Cartoons.Poetry

to [email protected] we’ll print them.


michael sall is a junior in the College and Wharton. you can write to him at sallms@sas.

PhOTO SPOTLGhT: Attic, By michAel SAll


meeT yOuR CandIdaTeSAcroSS3. Lawyer turned actor turned Senator turned actor.4. Chair of the DNC who ran in 2004 and screamed like a madman.5. He could have run, but he’s too busy saving polar bears.12. This Democrat is really boring. And from Delaware. Go figure.13. Electronic voting machine company.15. Bill is going to make a great First Lady when she’s President.20. He loves the Constitution. Almost as much as Jesus. Or Chuck Norris.21. The last person any Republican wants support from.22. Ran last time, but endorsed Obama over Edwards, his running mate.23. ESPN anchor turned angry MSNBC host.24. Tim from Meet the Press who weilds a whiteboard on election day.25. The Granite State, and the first primary state.

doWn1. This state is known for two things: corn and caucuses.2. Haven’t heard much about this Green spoiler yet.6. Former Alaska Senator, turned crazy old man.7. Mayor running for President. Thank God it’s not John Street.8. He loves the Constitution. Almost as much as the gold standard.9. Get ready for Super-Duper-Mega-Ultimate ______!

10. His first name is actually Willard and he ran the Olympics.11. He’s running for change, and Oprah loves him.14. Governor of New Mexico who really wants to be VP.16. The bow-tied pundit _____

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www.FIRSTCaLLmaGaZIne.COmand post your comments. So we feel popular.

Carlson.17. Mayor who might run for President - and pay for it all himself.18. He saw a UFO. Seriously.19. He’d probably be running if he didn’t have a machine for a heart.

magazine - university of pennsylvania · valeria tsygankova the editors the editors anne huang...

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