No longer geared toward the middle--or maybe I am the middle, in which case I'm sorry

I believe that one of the fundamental defects of American culture is instilled within us the moment we begin our first day of public school. Yes, this defect is shamelessly government-sanctioned and widely accepted, tacitly or otherwise, by the nation at large. This defect is the quest for mediocrity where it is always best to suppress the best for those at the bottom in hopes of reaching the nothingness that resolves at the exact average of every discipline. This is not to say that value and attention should be reserved exclusively for the best and brightest, but society cannot progress if its most talented members are restrained for the sake of the self-confidence of those that are less inclined in a particular area. All aspects of education and training in America should be geared upward. In other words, we need an education system that can enlighten those students who struggle the most without hindering those that struggle the least. This is an ambitious goal and one not likely to come to fruition if the priorities of our society continue down the desolate path of mediocrity.
I am so thankful to finally be in an institution that seeks to stretch the limits and push the boundaries upward for all students regardless of what that true average may be. Although this is nothing like the real world, I intend to enjoy this new challenge while it lasts. I am fully aware that I am not anywhere near the top of the intellectual ladder at the University of Pennsylvania, but this fact inspires me to try harder rather than discouraging me from trying at all, and I hope that the rest of my peers both here and in other institutions of higher learning feel likewise. Someone will always be better than each individual at something; this is an inescapable fact. But it is only when this fact is used as a motivation rather than a deterrant that it can produce any good for society as a whole. The United States would be nowhere near as advanced as we are today if our predecessors had taken the same shameful attitude toward the achievements of others as we have been raised to do today.
Wishing to be great, wishing to be the best accomplishes nothing without the hard work and dedication it takes to get there. And pulling those residing at the top to a level more attainable to the average person is not the equivalent of creating an equality of achievement. No satisfaction or pride can be attained through such a practice. Oppression is oppression whether it is geared toward political liberties or the quest for knowledge.

General Catching Up With Some Pictures

The more formal and politically themed blogs are intended for my writing seminar class on the Meanings of Democratization, but I still intend to keep people posted on the goings on of my life as I have time to do so. Honestly, I really don't have time to do this right now, but I have been reading dry political journal articles for the past 3 hours and needed a break anyway so here I am.

This is a picture of my wonderful bureau that fits everything I would ever need it to and more.

And this is a picture of my sink (which I'm so glad to have), Yaffa blocks, microwave, and all of my very collegy food. I've almost been here a month and look how clean!

I took this picture at night so it is not as effective as it would have otherwise been, but you get the point that I have lots of windows and a nice shelf that I hope to eventually put some plants on.

These are my two desks which create a ridiculous amount of desk space that everyone envies, although you can't really tell by the picture.

This is my little study nook "couch" Note the lamp that I have poking through the bed.

This is my new rug...it's pretty self-explanatory. I am posting this photo to provide more evidence in support of the general cleanliness of my room.

The one messy touch--this is the top bunk that I scale my bed to reach each night. It's simply too hard to make so it will stay in a constant state of disarray.

Last night I went to my first Fighting Quakers football game, and it was no WVU game but a good time nonetheless! We lost against Villanova in a close game that we nearly pulled through in the final seconds.

This is the Penn Helmet golf cart that rides a lap around the track everytime we get a touchdown.

This is the Fighting Quaker himself crowd surfing from the bottom of the stadium to the top. If you look closely you can see the toast covering the track in the background.

Well, unfortunately that's all I have time for now, but I'll post some pictures of my friends and I soon with a more thorough update of what I'm actually doing.

Can the People of Russia read this blog?

In his book The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria illustrates various characteristics of illiberal democracies around the world. In doing so, he frequently utilizes Russia as an example of a "democratizing" nation with illiberal tendencies. Although Zakaria offers a plethura of examples to prove his theory of the rising correlation between democracies and illiberal ideologies, one fact in particular that occupied no more than a sentence or two out of a 264 page book struck me above all others. As of the year 2000, 57% of Russians approved of the media censorship imposed on them by Vladimir Putin. As Americans, I think we assume that everyone in the world desires the types of freedoms that we cherish so much, and it is only a matter of time before the rest of the developing world begins overthrowing despots, holding fair elections, and protecting individual rights. However, if this is the case, then how can we reconcile our beliefs with the idea that a majority of Russian citizens not only tolerate, but prefer, government ownership and censorship of the media?
The thought of desiring a paternal government to methodically determine everything I see, hear, and read is so foreign and genuinely terrifying to me that I reread the statement multiple times before I was satisfied that I was reading it correctly. Have the people of Russia been brainwashed to the point of believing such practices to be acceptable or is there a fundamental difference in their culture to account for their believing in something that would seem downright absurd to the typical American? I do not possess the answer to this question, but I think that it is fascinating nonetheless. How do you impose individual rights and freedoms on a people who do not wish to accept them? This is certainly an interesting point to ponder. Maybe some parts of the world will never be democratized, and more importantly, maybe that is not such a bad thing. If liberal autocrats work better than popularly elected presidents in some regions, than it would be an act of homicide rather than benevolence to force the country into the unwanted realm of constitutional liberal democracy.

What are we voting for?

What is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? To hear how they squabble back and forth in Congress and in the news media, someone who did not possess much knowledge on the subject would assume that the two parties had vast differences in opinion and each had a clear, consistent philosophy of how the country should be run. However, when you dig through all of the hype and see the situation for what it really is, you find that neither party is as disparate from the other as they would sometimes have us think. Republicans, who typically campaign on promises of fiscal responsibility and small government, have been spending money as if every new day may be their last, a practice that has greatly expanded the powers of government. Moreover, the majority of the Democratic party voted for a war they no longer support, but beyond this fact it is difficult to make many generalization about the Democratic party of today, because it seems to be unable to definitively determine what, precisely, it is trying to accomplish as a party.

This is the bottom line. The United States government is becoming a system run by career politicians whose livelihoods depend on the outcome of every election. This is creating a terrible incentive for politicians to raise a finger in the air to determine which way the wind of popular opinion is blowing to make unstable and inconsistent policies based upon the mood of the time. Some may say that this is a good thing, because it appears to be equipping the American people with a more powerful voice in the political sphere than has ever before been possible. However, the United States government was founded as a representative republic for a reason. We the people are supposed to vote for the candidate who we believe will act in the best interest for both his constituency and the nation at large. This form of representation was meant to curb the fleeting passions of popular majorities to ensure a long-standing, stable government.

I believe the worst consequence of a system where the leaders of a nation are tightly tethered to the opinions of the constituents is that the people can never truly be sure who they are voting for when they cast their ballots on Election Day. When the campaign is over and the individual has been placed in office, how are we to know who this person is and how they will perform beyond the general feelings of each and every moment. Laws and policies are long-term decisions that cannot be formulated under a short-sighted framework of government. I am a staunch believer in individual rights and the potential for greatness that men possess, but I also recognize the impracticality of running a pluralist society as diverse as the United States on the opinion of an electorate that cannot possibly know all that is required to make viable decisions on every issue, great and small, that must be made to run an effective government.

To that end, beyond the fact that it may not be good for all branches of our government to be controlled by a single party, I do not believe that the outcome of this November Election will be as pivotal as many individuals (mainly those whose jobs depend on the outcome) are claiming. As long as polls are conducted and politicians continue to rely on them, the American people will be unable to predict what they are voting for regardless of whether the candidate is red or blue. In politics, the truth is oftentimes precisely what the people do not want to hear and this is at least partially responsible for the mess we find ourselves in today. Unfortunately, I cannot be certain that a search for honesty above popularity will be a fruitful one as I feel that muddled politics is simply bound to be the next "great" American legacy.

Culture Shock

While volunteering at a music festival this summer in the mountains of New York, I was given the opportunity to meet a diverse group of amazing musicians, hippies, and an array of uncategorizable, fascinating people. One of these individuals, my supervisor for the less-than-glamorous Traffic & Safety Crew, took me under his wing that weekend and gave me some advice. He warned me, as many individuals did that weekend, to be careful and to prepare myself for culture shock, because I was a "country girl" moving to the "big city." I must admit that I disregarded this proposition as backward and foolish at the time. I may be from West Virginia, and I may enjoy camping at week-long acoustic music festivals, but that does not render me completely ignorant to the ways of the world and the "big city." Right?
Obviously I knew that living in West Philadelphia would be drastically different from my rural/suburban town in West Virginia. After all, at home I knew many people who never locked their doors and a flair for "high fashion" constituted a trip to American Eagle or maybe even some designer stores like Abercrombie & Fitch an hour away from home in Pittsburgh, PA. This is not to say that I come from an entirely backward hick town in the sticks of West Virginia. I do not intend to paint the wrong picture of my daily life, as I believe it to be fairly typical. However, I do want to stress the simplicity and down-to-earth nature of my hometown of Wheeling, WV (with the exception of the small yet powerful, nouveu riche despising, old money affluence of the elderly community with whom I rarely had to interact with outside of scholarship interviews).
Upon arriving to Penn, I was pleasantly suprised to find a group of wonderful people who have become my friends as well as my neighbors. The first time I called home a few days into New Student Orientation I raved to my parents about how shocked I was to discover that these people were not pretentious or overly-arrogant as I may have subconsciously feared. I believe I told them that by simply talking to these people it was indiscernable whether their families resided in the top 1 or bottom 10 percent of the nations economic ladder.
But then we decided to go shopping in Center City.
This isolated experience has truly been the one and only time that I have felt legitimately out of place here at Penn, but I felt slightly out of my element nonetheless. My friends were oogling over designers I had never heard of and spending money that I may never have on clothing I would never want. I took advantage of this situation, however, by attempting to gain a new perspective from it. When I was done rifling through the sales rack I asked my friends about the towns they came from where this was commonplace, places where, as my sister agreed when I told her this story on the phone, we thought had been grossly exaggerated or nonexistant. I don't mean to say that they were wrong in what they were doing. It is just something that is so far from anything that I have ever known that it caught me off guard and left me in a state of awe and confusion.
After the shopping excursion was over everything returned to normal, and we went right back to the more pleasant culture shock of intellectually stimulating conversation that I hope I never take for granted. However, that tiny glimpse into a world so different from my own brought me back to the warnings given by my supervisor back in July that I had so easily brushed aside. I realize now just how detached I have been from all of the beautiful (and not so beautiful) differences in cultures, ideas, and ways of life found in the world around me.
When I first arrived at Penn I had worried that I would not have anything of interest to contribute from my own perspective. So many people here come from so many fascinating places and have done so many intriguing things that I must admit to have initially hesitated when people first asked me where I was from. However, I am finding that my perspective is both different from what some of my peers have experienced as well as valid. I have discovered that people can learn from me as I hope to learn from them and experience this "big city" and all of its diversity for all that it is worth.