endless exploration

Everyone at Troy High is very nice. Students and teachers are careful to not offend anyone. People lay a protective film over others' feelings. Take this as a a good thing, if you wish.  As Bruce Forhnen, professor of Law at Ohio Northern University puts it, niceness is merely a "shallow set of habits and attitudes more concerned with comfort than engagement, ease than excellence, contentment than striving to do one’s best." In other words, niceness hinders students' potential to do their best in school, and consequently sets them up for failure in the real world. After all, no lessons are taught or learned if everything is sugarcoated. Niceness is simply another word for tolerance, a way to avoid challenging anyone, regardless of whether that someone is being reasonable or not. If one gets too comfortable with others being "nice" to him or her, the slightest form of criticism will seem harsh. Harsh criticism that will be taken as an insult and lead to ...

Kids learn everything from their parents. If our parents speak in a certain dialect, we, as very young children, develop the same way of speaking. The same goes for racism. According to Mahzarin Banaji, a renowned Harvard University psychologist, race preferences develop and become accepted embraced in children at the age of 3 in the matter of days. Days. In Song of Solomon, Guitar Bains hates white people. He associates sweets with white people, and it “makes him sick.” In fact, he doesn't even like to smell it. Even the brief mention of a baked Alaska makes him throw up. He emerges after his little episode with eyes “teary from the effort of dry heaving,” and suggests that he and Milkman get some weed, since “that's one thing [he] can have” (Morrison 62). Why is this Guitar’s reaction to something most people would be happy to eat? Because it makes him “think of dead people. And white people.” When asked how long he's been like this, Guitar explains how his dad has been ...

"Tell me something about yourself." Does anyone else get extremely anxious when asked this question? I mean, it's so simple yet broad that your entire life literally flashes before your eyes as you rack your brain for a response. There are tons of things I could say; what my hobbies are, what my favorite genre of books, movies and music are, where I'm from, my astrology sign, etc. So how do you provide a simple answer to a simplistic but complex question? Why is it so hard to provide a clear-cut definition of ourselves? There's so much that composes your identity and others will identify you based on your physical traits or how you present yourself, whether that be the color of your skin, the way you dress yourself, etc. And though your external features indeed say a lot about you, self-identification comes from yourself.  In order to have a foundation for self-improvement and growth, you have to understand yourself and how your mind and body work together. Kn...

Fashion is a way for females and males  people to channel their creativity and express themselves in whichever manner they'd like to. If a boy is wearing a shirt that is "too feminine," so what? If a girl is wearing pants that are "too masculine," so what? In recent years, massive fashion brands have been breaking these boundaries, encouraging individuals to wear whatever the hell they want, encouraging a sense of identity and self-admiration. After all, clothing is just a piece of colored fabric cut in a certain way to fit a certain shape. The above photo depicts Jaden Smith wearing a skirt, a piece of clothing commonly characterized to women. But look at his confidence, and how effortlessly he's rocking that skirt. Men can certainly wear women's clothing while maintaining their masculinity, something that many men are insecure about.  Here we have Harry Styles wearing a women's Marc Jacobs tropical print shirt. MEN DON'T HAVE TO B...

Some people don't want you to achieve your goals, to grow as an intelligent and insightful person. Believe it or not, even those who give you big, wide grins want you held back. It can be hard to tell, however, which one of your friends hate to see you succeed, and when you finally do, you lie to yourself that they really do want the best for you; it hurts when discovering someone who you've spoke so highly of isn't who you thought they were. As Fitzgerald puts it, it can be “invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.” In other words, it's disappointing when your judgement about something turns out to be wrong when you look at it from a different perspective. Whether that be a friendship, relationship, or even a career pathway, there are different sides to everything. But in order to reach your full potential, it's important to cut ties off with those who hold you down and befriend those who ge...

Don't lie. As much as we all claim to be free from judgement, we have all criticized someone based on their outfit, grades, diction, etc.; it's human nature. So in all of our defenses, being judgemental is a necessary trait of being human, as we must be able to evaluate situations and make important decisions. However, just because it's natural for us all, does not mean it's morally right. Nick, the protagonist in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald states that, "whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." (1). For all you know, that boy who wore that are too big for him has to wear his older brother's clothing because his mother could only work a total of 10 hours this week. The girl with the thick accent spends all her free time trying to improve her English. The kid who got a D on his history test had to work the entire weekend, instead of study...