BEDFORD BULLETIN: Will This Be On The Test?

This is a column that I wrote last January, and it is the one that I am most proud of. I think it speaks to who I am as a person inside, and how I really feel concerning colleges and the future.

 

Today, I am having trouble thinking. This year, it has become a usual struggle for me: I try my hardest to do schoolwork, but I really am not engaged in any of the material.

    And I must admit, it troubles me. I don’t know that I have ever felt so detached from my academic learning environment. Unfortunately, I think I know the culprit: college.

    College has gotten so much more real this year, from adults getting too close to my face and cheerily asking, “Where ya thinkin’?” to my friends and I studying for the SATs, to the guidance counselors coming in to talk to us, and I feel somewhat lost. There seems to be a frightening undercurrent amongst my friends that has arisen: we are competition for colleges.

    This year, we have started to focus more on grades. And GPAs. And SAT scores. And extracurriculars. And whether or not we are the president of any of the clubs or organizations we are involved in. And community service, not for the sake of helping others, but for the sake of college applications.

    We’ve started asking our teachers, “Will this be on the test?,” a question that I heard a couple of weeks ago when discussing the lives lost in the Holocaust.

    We have developed the worst side effect of wanting success: we have ceased to learn.

    It is a dire reality, isn’t it? But you can bet, one of us will go to an Ivy League.

    Maybe even two.

    The other day, I received a test back. Unhappy with the result, I was instantly distraught, knowing for sure that I was not going to be able to attend the college of my choice based upon this grade and how it would affect my final grade and my other grades and it would inevitably affect my college acceptance which would inevitably affect my ability to get a job and then I would have no job unless I went to Harvard Law and without this particular test score, Harvard Law would be unattainable and I would never be worth anything in the grand scheme of life and history and religion and literature and science and Ican’tbelievethisishappeningtomewhatdidIdotodeservethis.

    I had not even looked to see what I had gotten wrong. I only saw my score.

    I stopped asking questions, even when I had them, because I heard that my teacher gives quiet kids better grades than talkative ones.

    I apologize. In a column called “Life at BHS,” this is not much of a life to lead.

    I, like many of my peers, have gotten so caught up in the race for college acceptance, that I have forgotten what it means to be a person. I stand on my soapbox in my own little corner of the Bedford Bulletin, supplying morals and life lessons in the hopes that people will think, while I have not actually thought for some time.

    And I am sorry for that.

    I have cared so much about my grades, that sometimes, I don’t listen unless I know it will be on the test.

    And I can hardly believe myself.

    Education is not about grades, Harvard Law or SAT scores. It is about learning; it’s that simple. True learning is not assessed through tests, colleges or prestige. Failure to recognize the virtue of learning, is to not learn at all.

    As an American student, I am taught the many workings of the world. I have the privilege of learning about everything in society: its ecosystems, its civilizations, its friends and its enemies and its imperfections. It is through learning of the world that we learn of ourselves.

    If we are to learn purely for the sake of learning, then there is a good chance that we will not know everything, something that many have trouble with. Students believe that the SAT assesses all knowledge derived from textbooks, not what we have “truly learned.” Therefore, in order to attain a perfect score on the SATs, students must know everything and nothing at all simultaneously, solely for the interests of appealing to the college system. This is a method that students must accept in order to gain entrance to the college of their choice.

    I must choose to learn.

    I will never know everything. In fact, there is a good chance that I will not know anything about some subjects.

    There is a good chance that I will never get a perfect score on my SATs. I may never be able to comprehend multivariable calculus, although I am certain I could not have comprehended that anyway, and I will probably never be a lawyer, physician, and astronaut at the same time.

    But, maybe I’ll ask questions when I have them. Maybe, I will see what I got wrong on tests before I wage war with the world over my scores. Maybe, I will spend more time daydreaming without worrying what those idle moments might do to my GPA. Maybe, despite imperfections, I will change the way someone sees the world. Maybe, I will see the world differently as well.

Maybe, I’ll be happy.

    And, if I am happy, then it is a pleasure to have learned anything at all.

A Random Fact To Break Up The Wall of Text

My World In Pictures: Old Man on the Mountain

My World in Pictures: Old Man on the Mountain

    The Old Man of the Mountain is the symbol that is etched into the nickel of every New Hampshire state quarter, mainly because that is our only claim to fame. That, and a town called Weare, spelled W-E-A-R-E, a joke that the natives never seem to grow tired of. “Where ya from?” “Weare.” “Where?” “Exactly.” And, save these two landmarks, we have a thriving industry of summer homes and tourism, the roots of which are planted in Bike Week and Shark Week, seven days of Hell for all the evangelicals and everyone else who hates unnecessary piercings, tattoos, and man-eaters. And I’ll let you in on a little known secret: the man-eaters aren’t the sharks or the bikers.

Believe it or not, the Old Man of the Mountain has always been a popular tourist spot for motorcyclists, exasperated mothers, and around 70,000 Toyota Priuses with Vermont license plates and coexist bumper stickers for about as long as anyone can remember. I couldn’t tell you what it is about him, but there is something about a rock formation that just gets people going.

The Old Man now looks like a Hollywood failure in desperate need of Botox. After an astoundingly depressing rock slide, his nose and features came tumbling down, leaving the slight indentation of a personified life in its place. Those in New Hampshire were crushed, naturally. The death of symbolism is always crushing. What do we have to worship if not for our idols? How many times had the average resident seen the wise silhouette of the old man in the mountain, the prominent curvature of his forehead domineering over an endless expanse of pine trees, the words “Live Free or Die” in a sweeping banner below him? Too many. Too many indeed.

I remember that my grandmother cried when the Old Man fell. So did all of our grandmothers. Live Free or Die did not have the same ring to it if it could not echo from the Old Man’s face, etched into the granite. The Old Man, a symbol of our rather angry sounding motto, had died. Maybe, he did not live free.

Some were surprised. Did we not attain the freedom we had so often toted with us as our life slogan? Were we, too, doomed to die without liberty?

“Ma, you know it’s just a rock, right?” Mom told my grandmother over the phone. We weren’t natives, she said, we would never understand what he meant.

And we didn’t. It was the only hint of fame anyone in New Hampshire had ever had, unless they have known Seth Meyers or Adam Sandler. It may be an inherent desire to be known, to be understood, and without the Old Man looking over his kingdom, the reality of the situation was that his lost people had to cling to their forests to be understood by the outside world. He was gone, and with his crumbling nose and forehead fell the liberty of understanding that the elders clung so heartily to. The Old Man proves it: the death of symbolism is what we grieve.

Word Count: 515, because every picture is worth 1,000 words, but the Old Man is only half a picture.

 

 

The Weaver: A Short Story

   The first adult decision that the man ever made was the only one that would assure he would never have to make another decision again. Permanence replaced wisdom in his mind as he swallowed the pills one handful at a time. After all, the man had run from wisdom long ago. And it did not chase him. It sat patiently, waiting to be found once more. The man was going to die, a feeling he wanted to pass over quickly as he lay on his bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling, waiting for his eyelids to droop into oblivion one last time. He descended into sleep with a slow burn in his chest, counting the ticks on a distant clock until he could hear nothing more.

    The man was sure it was over. It had to be. The clock was gone, and as his eyes cracked open, he knew that he had awoken in a place completely foreign. There was little light in the room, but he still squinted, as if the lethargy of the morning had heavied his eyes. He rotated his shoulders, peering silently about the emptiness, covered in shadows. Occasionally, a spill of light would shine through onto the white walls, speckling the white paint with yellow, blinding rays of sunshine. The man found the origin of the light after hearing a sudden cacophony of noise coming from behind him. He rose to his feet and about faced. There stood a thirty-foot tapestry, at the graceful hands of a woman sitting behind it. The hands stopped, and the woman crooked her neck to the right, her wrinkled eyes resting on the man.

    “I wasn’t expecting you,” the woman said, her hands resuming their work after a brief pause.

    “Where am I?” the man asked.

    “You will know soon,” the woman said. She smiled warmly, the crinkles around her eyes deepening as her lips parted. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

    The man furrowed his brow. “No, should I?”

    “Not necessarily. Maybe if you came when I called for you, it might be different.”

    “Who are you?”

    “I am the weaver,” the woman said. She propelled the shuttle through the warp, slamming down the frame in such a raucous that the man flinched. “And you, you are early. Why are you early? Early people leave holes.” She gestured past the tapestry to the speckled wall, the light catching the small holes in the tapestry, shining forth in beams. The weaver’s craft was chaotic, threads of every color woven together without a set pattern. The man had not known much of looms in his past, but he knew that the finished product needed some semblance of order, and the hodgepodge jumble of color had a rather blinding effect on the man once he watched the threads intertwine.

    “What do you mean? What am I early for?” the man asked.

    The woman giggled. Her eyes fixed onto her right hand, pulling the weft once more through the tapestry. She held the it with the thumb and index finger of her right hand, the left gently fumbling through her pocket. Her left hand gripped a pair of golden scissors that caught the light like the holes of the tapestry, casting a sparkle of melancholy sunshine about the room. The blades clashed with one another as they opened and cut the thread in her right hand. She let the tail drop toward the floor, placing the small golden shears back inside her pocket.

    “This is your world,” the weaver said, her aged hand gesturing to the chaos of the tapestry. The colors seemed to blend together into a rainbow monopolized by red, others peeking out in the disarray when squinted at.

    “I... I don’t understand,” the man said.

    “This one,” the weaver said, grabbing at a weft wound with black yarn. “This one is you.”

    The man reached out to touch the weft as she began to weave it into the loom, her hands working slowly as she started to wind.

    The weaver looked up at the tapestry, hanging from the ceiling. Its gargantuan height overwhelmed her as her eyes approached the top, her neck craning upward to fathom it in its entirety.

    “This is your history,” the weaver said, “it is everything that has been, and everything that will be. You are nothing but a string in the universe. Your life runs from one end of the loom to the other, winding between others on the way.”

    “You mean, the people I meet are--”

    “Yes. They are here. They are wound in the loom with your thread for eternity. That is why you are so troublesome to me.” The weaver looked toward the man as she said this, her hand pausing less than a quarter of the way along the frame.

    “Me? Why?”

    “You’re early. You are not supposed to be here so soon. Your thread has not nearly crossed the loom; you are not done yet,” the weaver said, her eyes burning into the man.

    “But, it’s thirty feet tall! One string can’t make a half of a dent in this!” the man said, raising his voice to the weaver.

    “No? Look,” the weaver said, her hand pointing once more to the wall. “One frayed string falls through. One string is always enough.”

    “So there’s a little hole. That is my own decision,” the man said.

    “Is it?” The weaver pointed to the warp, still fixed near the beginning of the loom. “Look at the threads that you have left to cross. You have barely even started!” The man looked at the strands of thread, multicolored and waiting patiently to be woven. “What will they do? Always be one row short? It will never be complete!”

    “Sure it will,” the man said. “No one will know if it is one row short. No thread is that large. No one will know.”

    The weaver looked into the man’s eyes. Her eyes were gray and cloudy, a storm brewing within the irises. “You will know.”

    The weaver sat quietly, looking at the splotched and lonely wall. The man looked at the threads which had yet to be crossed. He wondered who they were.

    “There is a life beyond the senses. Beyond what we see. Beyond what we feel,” the weaver said, her left hand entering her pocket once more.

    “Seeing is believing,” the man said, laughing to himself.

    “Life is not seen. It is woven.”

    The tapestry began to make more sense to the man as he stared longer into its colors. As he fixed his eyes onto the thirty feet of the universe, chaos faded into the oblivion.

    “Since you have come to me so early, I suppose I will have to give you a choice,” the weaver gripped the golden scissors in her hand once more.

    The woman squeezed the scissors in her hand. She raised it to the man, who stood beside her, dropping the scissors, glaring from the sunlight, into the man’s hands.

    “You may cut your thread. But know that the tapestry of life will always be short a row on your behalf.”

    “Okay,” the man said. He raised his hand to his tread. The scissors quivered, shivering as the blades moved nearer. The man cleared his throat. A row missing. A whole row missing. The blades grated against each other in reluctance as they opened, and groaned even louder as they slowly began to close.

    “Or,” the weaver said, “You can leave your thread. See where it takes you.”

    “I-- I can’t. Life is too hard. I’ve tried it and--”

    “And no one ever said it would be easy, did they?”

    “No, but--”

    The weaver leaned in toward the man. “I have met a lot of people whose threads have reached the end, and not one of them said it was easy. They said it was worth the struggle. How will you ever know if it was worth your time if you stop now?”

    The man still held the scissors up to the thread, the blades shivering and shaking more violently than ever before. He closed his eyes, and waited for a sound. For a moment, he was unsure what he had done.

    The floor clattered. He had hit the floor. Or, maybe he didn’t. The man opened his eyes: no, he didn’t. The scissors had fallen to the ground, making a dent in the floor. He peered anxiously in the direction of the thread, not knowing whether or not it was still intact.

    The weaver whispered in his ear, “If you’ll excuse me, John, I have a lot more weaving to do and an appointment in a few minutes. I suggest next time you come to see me, you make an appointment.”

...

“John! John! Can you hear me?”

    “John! If you can hear me, please talk to me. This is Dr. Phillips.”

    “John. Can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me. This is Dr. Phillips.”

    John nodded. “The tapestry. You can’t see it.”

    “What? What did he say?”

    John’s eyes were bombarded with the lights of a hospital ceiling, his stretcher moving with a low roar down the hall. A team of doctors surrounded him.

    “John! What did you say?”

    “The weaver. She weaves a tapestry. You’re a thread. I’m a thread.”

    “What?”

    “I don’t know. He took an entire bottle of Zopiclone, Larry. Does it matter? He’s talking.”

    “I guess not.”