The Sound of Solitude (or Lack Thereof)

Before I begin divulging the thoughts that first led me to scribble up another entry, let me update my readers (the ones I like to hope are out there) on the notable events of the past week or two:

Many of my friends have recently begun complaining about having to cram for midterms, so I'm going to assume that my first semester of college is about halfway through. My best friend has either finished her first semester of nursing school, or is damn near to finishing it-she's in an accelerated program. The weather has grown cold, and the clouds have been crying a lot lately. I empathize with them in the wake of fall's quick farewell. The forecast is predicting one to three inches of snow tonight, and while that's not much for an Erie native, it's enough to dampen the mood.
Last weekend, my "fiance" visited. I say "fiance" in quotes because our "engagement" is one with a promise ring. There is a lot of distance between our physical beings, but none between our hearts. Regardless, seeing each other has become a scarcity and a bit of a chore. Before last weekend, I hadn't seen him in three weeks, and as anyone can imagine, the difference can arouse strong emotions. We graduated from the same high school this past spring, and unfortunately had to separate for college, but he wanted to get a ring on my finger before "those college boys" had a chance to get any ideas. Nothing formal has been announced, since we don't think his family would take us seriously at all, but we do eventually plan to enter some sort of marital pact together eventually.
I've rambled on that for far too long.
While mon petit chou was in town, I took him out on a local dam in the kayak for his first ever paddling lesson. He did very well, and we enjoyed the completely silent scenery together. We also cooked a few meals together, watched a couple of movies, and visited my campus. It was a lovely weekend overall.
Over the past week, I've been learning the value of time management, and I've been nipping a lot of "to-dos" in the bud. I caught up on a lot of work that isn't due yet-but it never hurts to turn things in early. I also had my major planning session, which was partially productive and partially a waste of my time. The "mentor" I met with appeared to be nothing much more than a washed-up upperclassman who couldn't care less about what I knew or didn't about the courses I needed to take. So I tracked down my advisor for my major and scheduled an appointment with him to fill in the enormous caverns left by my nincompoop "mentor". More to come on that at a later date.
I've also been itching to attend some sporting events of some kind, so this week, I'll be making an effort to see what's going on on campus.

Now, on to the meat and potatoes of "The Sound of Solitude (or Lack Thereof)":

As any college student will, I've been reading some passages and essay fragments for my comp class, which seems to be solely comprised of being told what to read, leaving for a day, coming back, writing an essay on the closing paragraph, and leaving again. Very lame. I wondered aloud to a neighbor today what exactly I pay for as a student, but I digress.
One of the passages I read this morning was one regarding supersaturation-the desensitization of the general modern population to the constant barrage of media and sensory stimulation. The article was justfully entitled, "Supersaturation, or, The Media Torrent and Disposable Feeling" by Todd Gitlin. In a short preface, the article notes that Mr. Gitlin obtained his B.A. in mathematics from Harvard, his M.A. in poly sci at the University of Michigan, and his Ph. D. in sociology from Berkeley. The preface also tells the unconcerned reader that Mr. Gitlin is a member of the Greepeace board of directors, highly published, a Vietnam War protestor, a professor...what it doesn't mention is that the man is a windbag.
When I say, though, that he is a windbag, I don't mean that the article is bad. I just mean that it's far too wordy. However, I swam through his sea of poetic BS and came back up with a pearl. The gist of the excerpt is that we as human beings are spending more time than ever (six hours and thirty-two minutes per day for the average child) in front of the television, listening to recorded music, lazing on the internet, etc. At the end, Gitlin features a call to action, stating that "who we are is how we live our time...We vote for a way of life with our time. And increasingly...we are in the media torrent...more inhabitants of the wealthy part of the world have the means, incentives, and opportunities to seek private electronic companionship. The more money we have to spend, the more personal space each...[person] gets. With personal space comes solitude, and the solitude is instantly crowded with images and soundtracks...life experience has become an experience in the presence of media." Extremely true.
I often find myself growing tired of the constant noise pollution of American culture. I can only imagine how other cultures must feel because, sadly, Gitlin mentions that Japanese children spend more time in front of the boob tube than American children. The land of the samurai..converted to Vanity Fair.

What this has to do with solitude is that I feel aloneness (if that's a word) is important to concentration, centration, and the healing of the soul. No one ever gets to be truly alone these days, and it's becoming evident to me that this is the reason many of my classmates are failing. Lack of solitude, I feel, is also responsible for many of the stresses in the lives of my more adult friends and family. One can only multitask for so long.
I have always been a vehement fan of sitting alone to think, which, as anyone can imagine, has been the butt of many jokes in my social lifetime. What students aren't getting, though, is that the more we assault our majestic brains with meaningless garble, the less useful and enriching information we can take in. By studying with our ipods in our ears, while browsing myspace or facebook, or doing whatever else we do while we study, we're imprisoning ourselves within the confines of lives not fully lived. We truly have become the generation of surrogates-surrogate lives. These media-trampled, wasted existences have sapped our wings and forced us to become lazy, unhealthy, obese, sloppy, pale-skinned, delicate-eyed wimps.

So I'm going to begin a list. In this list, I will compile every lesson I have learned in college.

Item #1: Live life. Don't be a slave to mass media. Get some fresh air. Enjoy nature. Be alone. Pray, reflect, observe.

Saving Some Things

This is something I had posted back in my senior year in high school. It was the heading article of my underground newspaper, which started as a result of my consitutional rights being effectively violated. I'm erasing it from my myspace blog, and thus decided to preserve it here:

Deep breath.

Last night, I came home from my usual Thursday night bible study to find the 23 February, 2009 edition of Newsweek. The front cover caught my eye at first, with images of cave paintings on a yellow background, and the headline, "STRESS COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE". But when I read into the magazine, which I don't normally read, another article caught my eye: "Teens, Nude Photos, and the Law" by Dahlia Lithwick (a version of the article can be found at Slate.com, according to the magazine).
I was no stranger to the concept of "sexting"-"the clever new name for the act of sending, recieving, or forwarding naked photos via...cell phone", according to Lithwick. And this article isn't the typical fire and brimstone, slap-a-sex-offender-title-on-the-kid, but it really got my gears turning. The author of the column claimed that, as determined by a survey done by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only one teenager in five reported taking and sending or posting nude photos of themselves, but that sexting has become an "epidemic".
And this is where statisticians should be slapped. One in five. That's one fifth, equivalent to, for example, 20 students out of 100, which truly can be a formidable number in some student groups. But what this article fails to notice is the ABSENCE of sexting. One in five speaks to me, and it says that four out of five students, four fifths or 80 out of 100, are not participating in the sexting craze. It's yet another one of those examples of typical media that pisses me off-in the words of John Mayer: "When they own the information, they can bend it all they want."
But, ladies and gentlemen, they don't own the information. The information is out there for you. The article goes on to talk about legal intervention in instances where teen girls texted their nude photos to classmates, namely boys. Three girls from PA were charged with disseminating child pornography, and the boys were charged with possession. Lithwick states that the girls are "14 or 15". A teen in Indiana is facing felony obscenity charges for sending one photo. Two other teens, one from Ohio (age 15) and one from Michigan (14), are facing felony charges, and many others have pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Instances like these have occurred all over the United States, and many of these young people, if convicted, are branded as registered sex offenders, sometimes for up to 20 years.
There's an argument later in the article about the charges involved with the taking, sending, recieving, saving, forwarding, and viewing of these photos-everyone involved is charged. Even those who may not have been involved at all and were just the unfortunate recipients of a forwarded photo. Then Lithwick talks about the appropriateness of police intervention in sexting cases in relation to threats or cyberbullying, using the example of a Massachusettes incident wherein a naked 14-year-old's buff was sent to more than 100 phones. We've all heard of cases like these. And frankly, I think that the kids taking and sending their photos deserve that kind of reaction from their peers.
But not from the law.
In this new millenium of technology, liberation, and frivolous lawsuits, a certain HUGE level of personal responsibility has been negated. With technology education undoubtedly comes education as to the level of danger in posting one's personal information, or personal images, on the web or on any electronic device. Though the teenage years are those in which many young adults begin to discover their sexuality (when 48% of boys lose their virginity, as do 29% of girls), which leads to the feeling that sexting may be risky, fun, sexy, and daring, there is still a medieval belief that these discoveries lead girls (mainly) into a state of victimhood (if that's a word). These boys, however, are not generally sexual predators-they're just testosterone-motivated youngsters with raving libidos. And we've all been there. Many of us are still there. This belief that girls have fallen victim to sexual pressure imposed by male (or otherwise) peers is simply a sidestepping of the level of personal responsibility that SHOULD be being assumed in these types of situations. The only victimized ones are those girls charged for "manufacturing, disseminating, or possessing child pornography', when the boys the photos were sent to are merely charged with possession. I agree when Lithwick asks, "If the girls are the real victims, why are we treating them more harshly than boys?"
The article ends with a call to parents-to "remind their teens that a dumb moment can last a lifetime in cyberspace". Lithwick also says that "judges and prosecutors need to understand that a lifetime of cyberhumiliation shouldn't be grounds for a lifelong real criminal record". And this statement rings true.
But it's all deeper than that, even.
This may or may not come as a surprise, but the American people-the readers, viewers, and consumers-are the real victim. We've all been victimized by ourselves in that we've allowed ourselves to be fed this bogus information without a single grain of salt. We've allowed this victim attitude into our homes, lives, and belief systems. There is nothing, NOTHING that resembles a victim in a girl who's willing to remove her clothes and photograph nature's gifts so she can send them to some boy in her class who won't remember her ten years from now-unless his record is still spotted from the incident. It is her decision and her decision only.
In this day and age, sexuality is far too open and far too liberal for these girls to not be informed of the dangers and consequences of teen or premarital sex. Most girls understand the entire mechanation by the age of 16, at the very latest, and, ideally, should have a developed sense of self respect. What this sexting "epidemic" reflects is a lack of values.
And it begins in the home. It begins with materialism in the parent. Long hours at work mean larger paychecks, larger houses, and louder cars. But they also mean damaged children, like it or not. If the adults of our nation, those people who should be teaching us to step up and run the country when they're gone, could let go of this gluttonous hunger and live at reasonable means, I'd be willing to bet my eyeteeth that this issue would begin to dissolve rapidly. Sexting wouldn't be the only thing to disappear, though. Divorce rates would probably fall, teen suicides and substance abuse cases would become more scarce, and teens would perform better in academic arenas. Stunningly, the nature versus nuture debate, one of my personal favorites, comes into play here. Psychologist David Hebb has been quoted as asking whether length or width contributes more to the area of a rectangle, and in this case, he was a genious.
Then it moves to the law. Simply stated, these people need to be paying attention to actual predators and criminals. I for one have a personal distaste for the law and those who enforce it, simply because many laws are poorly written, and those who enforce it often are not aware of their own rights. And many laws actually restrict our constitutional rights. I digress, though. These charges are more frivolous than those imposed by the woman who burned herself on hot fast food coffee.
Then it moves to the most important people involved-the kids taking and sending the photos. Yes, we are kids. Yes, we do dumb things. That's the reason we're not legal adults until we turn 18. We need that buffer zone to make mistakes, however drastic they may be, and to learn from them. That's the process of self-discovery. But kids, you're not off the hook. With these mistakes comes personal responsibility. We've got to man-up when we're wrong, follow through with our consequences, and lay in the beds we make. If it's unappealing, then we don't do it again. That's called maturity.
After that, the ball is in the court of the adults involved. A level of understanding is in order-everyone is a kid sometime in their life, and everyone does dumb, regrettable things. Compassion is necessary, and so is discipline, but not in a legal form.
Moral of the story: The law should be ashamed. So should the teens who are sexting recklessly. They deserve public ridicule if they are foolish enough to participate, bollocks to hurt feelings. Personal responsibility needs to be taken up, and maturity needs to happen. The hammer NEEDS to fall in this country.
Or this country will fall.
I'm still confused as to why, however, these principals who allegedly discovered the photos were violating the privacy of these students and looking through the phones. Lockers are one thing. Personal cell phones are another.

A Fine Beginning

As it stands, things in my life are screwed up. I'm a freshman in college, and as such, I've decided to document my findings over the next four to eight years so that I might look back, should I so choose, and perhaps even laugh.

My name is Lisa. I like to use my middle name because it's poetic, but not wordy, which contradicts who I actually tend to be. Pleasant. I'm an artist-a painter, to be precise. I enjoy and create music of all sorts; I play many instruments. I don't take no for an answer. And I'm a little more...unconventional...than most. That's my favorite adjective to use when I describe myself.

I'm a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown campus. By senior year, I hope to be up at main campus. It's not for grades that I'm not there-it's the extra $13,000 a year. My major is in Psychology, and my minor is in Sociology. I'm currently planning on becoming a marriage counselor sometime in my future.

I'll keep this entry short and sweet, as just an introduction to my journey. I plan on (hopefully) updating once or twice a week. So I guess this is where we all sit back and enjoy the ride.