21 minute read
Signed Athletes
omari foote associate editor 2 years as a C&G journalist
1. Give school your all from the beginning to the end. One thing this pandemic has taught us is that you don’t always have the time you think you do. Don’t want until you are in your final stretch to start giving school your best. It is much easier to get ahead, than it is to play catch up. Whether it’s working hard to get your grade from an 89 to a 90, or staying up the extra half an hour to proof-read that essay, go the extra mile now. 2. Friends come and go. When I was a freshman, I remember it like it was yesterday, I said to myself, “I wonder how many of us are going to still be friends when this is all over?”. I am here to tell you that many of us did not remain friends. During this time you are going to grow into a young adult. Differing opinions and interests, will cause some of your friendships to slowly drift. Don’t worry, it’s natural and as long as you handle it like the mature young adults that you are growing to be, everything will go smoothly. Trust me when I say, ghosting the other person because you don’t know how to deal with confrontation is NOT a good idea. But, starting unnecessary arguments over miniscule issues isn’t the best idea either. Some friendships will last, others will come just as quickly as they go. That is okay and you should not feel ashamed about friendships ending. The only thing that should worry you, should be the way you handle the friendship. If you handle it poorly, that will be what leaves a sour taste in your mouth. 3. Don’t sit at home for four years. I am definitely an introvert. I prefer to sit home and spend time with myself, because I am one of the best people I know. However, I have had my moments where I stepped out of my shell and spent a wonderful time with other people. Fellow introverts, I am not saying that you have to attend every party, but I am saying that it won’t hurt to say yes to hanging with friends. You and I both know that your mom didn’t tell you no, you told you no. You never know, you may make some of your most unforgettable moments.
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4. I know I just told you to branch out and make moments, but it would only be right that I tell you not to force it either. It is always okay to chill. Not every event has to be attended. Not every assignment will be perfect. Not everybody on your story needs to see what you think is funny now. If you spend too much time trying to make a moment, you will miss all that is sitting right in front of you. Our generation is highly competitive, so I know that it is easy to constantly compare, but sometimes it’s best to give yourself a second to just breathe. This time goes by fast, so it won’t do you any good stressing yourself through it all.
5. Lastly, be yourself. I know it is really cliche, but it’s true. This is a wonderful time. Take this time to learn things about yourself. Learn what makes you tick, what makes you smile, and what makes you want to do better everyday. Then learn all that you can about the people around you. Take challenges on with an open mind. There are some problems you can’t avoid, but highschool has a lot to do with how you make it. You are going to cry, you’re going to face pain, life will not always be easy. But, I urge you to push on, I promise you won’t regret it. You are worth living for, despite all that may be going wrong. █
Reader, here goes my second attempt at writing a senior editorial after realizing that my first was not fit for such an occasion. In this time of relative isolation, now seems the perfect opportunity to reflect and perhaps discover. In the habitual chaos of our lives that preceded this pandemic shutdown, one often has little time to reflect on their life, too concerned with the petty trivialities that define us. So, I’ll use this platform to call you to reflect on your own life.
Ask yourself this: who are you familiar with that is truly connected to their feelings? Who knows precisely their desires and ambitions in this life? I would argue that very few people experience this form of self-awareness. To be so in tune with oneself is not narcissistic, it’s liberating, as it helps us navigate the turbulent waters of life with confidence and a steady heart. The needless distractions surrounding us prevent self-awareness, or perhaps we intentionally distract ourselves from the difficult conversations we wish to have.
The point I wish to make is that because of our lack of reflection, we often enter into a line of work or profession that is unfulfilling. We perhaps enter into a job to make ends meet, soothing ourselves by claiming it is only temporary, only to wake years later and realize that a life has been wasted. We never thrive in the monotony of an unfulfilled life, rather we merely survive. And is that not what distinguishes our species from others? The ability to thrive and not just survive? We are given only one life on this Earth and I am confident that if we do not perform what we love – what we are passionate for – then we will regret our choices because if we save happiness for later, it may never come. The heart wants what the heart wants – there is no denial of this universal fact. Suppression of our innermost desires only translates to pain. L.M. Montgomery wrote in Anne of Green Gables, “Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive – it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there?” The universe is cleverly infinite, allowing humans to indefinitely discover themselves and their world. Biologist Richard Dawkins erroneously declared in The Blind Watchmaker, “[Our existence] once presented the greatest of mysteries [but] it is a mystery no longer, because it is solved.” Such a pessimistic view of the world is never helpful, for humans were built to enjoy mental stimulus. Thankfully, I argue that Dawkins’ argument is not of sound logic because here we stand, nearly three decades later, still discovering, still growing.
At the cusp of a new experience – college – us seniors have limitless opportunities before us, just out of our reach, ripe for the taking. I urge that we must not restrict ourselves, rather, take risks, live in the moment and thrill of change. Be a soldier, not a refugee, of this moment. Grasp your life by the hilt and battle forward. Never fail to take the road less traveled because those who allow fear to dictate their motives are cowards held hostage by the unpredictability of life. As a chemist would proclaim, “Experiment!”
Reader, take this time of isolation, and reflect. Are you living a life of fulfillment, or do you survive, day by day? There’s a reason we question young children about “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Certainly, we do this to inspire them, to deepen their passions. Their fascination is not a symptom of naivety, rather, it is evidence of a fire burning brightly within their being. As adults (or near-adults), that fire has not been smothered by the drudgery of life. It is merely obscured from view. Cormac McCarth wrote in The Road, in all of us, we must “keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
If after reflection you find yourself trapped in the monotony of life, remember, roses do bloom again. Flowers are not characterized by their ephemeral charm but their relentless and reoccurring beauty. It is never too late to reflect, discover, and thrive. Change is a constant of our lives, and with tenacity, anything is possible. Rediscover that long-lost passion of yours and dig it up. Dust it off. Dreams don’t often come true. Wouldn’t it be nice if they did? █
lucy brumbaugh 4 years at HIES
Acouple weeks before corona-cation started senior advisories were asked to come up with 60 things everyone should do at Holy Innocents’ before they graduate. They ranged from silly to serious and were a mixture of things we had done and things we were planning to do in the 9 weeks before we graduated.
9 weeks. 9 weeks isn’t that much time, but to the class of 2020 it was everything. It was senior sports seasons, final performances, special chapels, lunches, and a myriad of other senior activities. 9 weeks of complaining about little things or wondering how many diseases resided in the couches in the senior commons. 9 weeks of senior pranks, college celebrations, and memories. 9 weeks of doing things for the first and last time.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get those 9 weeks. They were taken away by an act of God, an unforeseeable circumstance, and it hurt. It still hurts. It hurts how every other class will get those 9 weeks (God, I hope every other class gets those 9 weeks). It hurts that we worked so hard for so many years and the best part of high school didn’t happen. We feel cheated, disappointed, angry, and sad.
Some of us have chosen to embrace the hurt. Others have buried it. No one can really pass judgement because no one else’s senior year has been cancelled due to a worldwide pandemic caused by someone eating a bat. How people grieve is a no judge zone.
For me, I embraced the hurt. I cried. I lost myself in the “life’s not fair” and “why me” thoughts. I love high school and was so excited for the last 9 weeks; from the fun activities planned for us to the fun activities I got to help plan, I was ready to give everything the special class of 2020 twist. I grieved those activities, I grieved time with my friends, and I grieved time with my teachers. I wasn’t ready for my time at Holy Innocents’ to be over, but I didn’t have a choice.
The thing is, although we haven’t been in person, Holy Innocents’ has continued to celebrate us. Although things have changed, the senior class has not been forgotten and the school has not simply moved on. That made me realize that I wasn’t just grieving because I was scared of the change that came with transitioning to college, or sad that I lost time I thought I had, I was grieving how happy Holy Innocents’ has made me. my favorite people. I would go into my teachers’ classrooms after school more to chat than for extra help. I normally was at school at least a couple weekend days a month because there was honestly no place I would rather be. Holy Innocents’ has always loved me and I loved it right back.
But our time together got cut short, and while I will always be a Golden Bear, I have to move on to another stage of my life. I don’t know exactly what is going to happen to those 60 things that the senior class came up with 9 weeks ago, but here are my most important 4, one for each year in the best upper school ever.
Get involved. Join a couple clubs. Run for Student Council or honor council, the worst thing that can happen is that you lose. Pop into a hootenanny or Donuts and Devos every once in a while. You’ll meet some of the best people that you wouldn’t know otherwise.
Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself. Earlier this year, I dressed up as a hotdog and MC’d a pep rally. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made and one of the most fun things I have done at Holy Innocents’. I know it’s easier said than done to not be afraid to embarrass yourself, and I was DEFINITELY nervous, but if I had let my fear control me, I would have missed out on a great opportunity.
Ask people how they are doing and actually listen to their response. You will make a new friend, have a great conversation, and probably brighten their day.
Act in a way that will get you a shout out in Coach Dunn’s sermon. Coach Dunn is everywhere, and although he loves each and every one of us, he knows exactly what is going on in the upper school. In his sermons, which usually happen twice a year, he talks about love and happiness and tends to give examples of upper school students who exude those qualities. Try to be one of those students. Hearing him say your name from the podium is one of the best experiences ever. █
Music has been a part of human culture and development throughout the course of history, it is a factor of life that changes and grows the same way we do; music tells the story of our lives and our advancements in this world. Each generation has their own way of compiling their stories, for the 1960s it was records, for the 90s it was mixtapes and for the 2000s it has been playlist after playlist. Everyone has their favorite song, the one that makes them want to kick of their shows and dance around the house singing at the top of their lungs and everyone has their least favorite song, the one their skip when it comes on or causes them to flinch when their hear the opening notes. Memories work the same way, we have so many in our heads all compartmentalized under different names and categories, Lunches with Friends, Funny Memes and Jokes, Dog Stuff, Lyric Videos, that’s why we relate memories to music. Each one of us has our own personal memories and experiences that we can recall or “play” whenever we want, but we have to know how to take the good with the bad and ugly. I’m saying all of this because we are all trying to get through the audibly, emotionally, mentally challenging playlist that is 2020, desperately pressing the skip button to get through this terrible mashup of everyone’s least favorite genre of music.
The year started off well, good background vocals, nice beat, promising lyrics, but began to sound like nails on a chalkboard combined with Styrofoam being rubbed together and quite frankly we’ve all had enough. However, as much as you may hate this song, I ask you to pause and listen. Although we may not like the circumstances, this quarantine may have been exactly what the world needed to restart. We’ve all been on fast-forward though our lives, so we never get a chance to stop and smell the roses, or rather listen to the music. I encourage you to take this time to pause and reflect on what is going on in the world around you, think about your relationships, goals, dreams, anything that doesn’t involve the anxiety of what is currently happening. Yes, everything right now is frightening, but I urge you to not let the anxious control your life, now is not the time to cower, it’s the time to come together to make a change in our lives. Now is the time to listen to the background vocals of your life who have been telling you to take a break, to try a new hobby, to try and be the best version of you there is; I’m not saying that you need to be trying to cure cancer or end world hunger, I’m talking about just making a cup of coffee and taking a mental break on the couch, just take the time to reset.
I understand the soundtrack of 2020 so far has been dark and foreboding, and it feels like we have no control over the situation, but you have to remember that we are all in control of our own lives. We are the ones who press play, pause, and rewind on our lives, we have the power to write our own song lyrics and to make our own music. I ask you to not dwell on the grim tones playing in the background, but instead play something happy; make memories with your family, dance and sing, sleep ‘till four in the afternoon, do whatever makes you happy and turn that into the soundtrack of your life. Life is like a playlist, there are songs and events we dislike, but there will always be the songs that make us grin from ear to ear with joy, I ask you to listen to those and turn them into wonderful memories. █
asia harris 4 years at HIES
nubia udoh 4 years at HIES
I’m going to be pretty vulnerable here: for my entire life, I’ve been terrified of being average. In elementary and middle school, I was always deemed one of the “the smart kids,” though I hardly ever felt like one. You would’ve thought that comparing myself to others was one of my biggest hobbies, I did it so much. “God, why couldn’t I get a 100?” “Why couldn’t I have made that insightful comment?” and so on and so forth. Like many other kids who aimed to get the best grades, I was a staunch perfectionist; so much so, that I would beat myself up every time I failed to get a perfect score on an assignment or test. Nothing was good enough for me. Scored well on a project? It was easy anyways. Received an award? It must have been favoritism. It was miserable, and suffering from severe test anxiety only hindered my ability to salvage the iota of self-worth I needed to keep myself somewhat sane. I felt that I was stupid, and thus, completely worthless.
Even in my years at HIES, I have struggled with extreme perfectionism. I remember my sophomore year was when I had my first significant encounter with academic “failure” (or what I thought to be failure at the time). Determined to overcome my math anxiety in an effort to prepare myself for my dream career in physics and astronomy, I decided to take Geometry Honors. I did everything I thought I needed to do to perform well; I did all of my homework, studied for quizzes and tests, and sought help when I needed it. However, I still managed to struggle in the class, and I was devastated-- I had never struggled in a class before. That year was hard for me because I felt like I was an idiot, and suffering from severe depression didn’t help. I asked myself: “What kind of astrophysicist struggles in a Geometry class?” That year, I got my first B in an academic class.
As I typed that last sentence, my mind was just screaming: “And what of it?” I’ve moved past thinking that perfection is success.
I’m here to tell you that being smart isn’t what makes you a good person or a valuable adjunct of society. And making good grades isn’t what makes you smart. Of course, school makes it hard to believe this; as making good grades could determine what opportunities you’re afforded, or how capable others think you are of achieving great things (how smart you are). However, this is just society’s way of satisfying its obsession of categorizing people into quasi-manageable boxes, which happens to be, unsurprisingly enough, complete bullshit. This perfectionist model that lots of us impose upon ourselves and others reinforces the myth that everyone takes to schooling the same way, or has the same chances to attain the same quality of schooling.
Don’t make the same mistake that I did and obsess over fulfilling some flimsy philosophy about what intelligence is. The reason I was never good enough for myself was because there was always someone who made better grades than me or who I thought was more talented than I was. This will almost always be true for everyone, so there’s no point in striving to be perfect; it’s a moot point and you will drive yourself insane in the process. Smart does not always equal good, and it makes sense; it takes an intelligent person to be as cold, calculating, and manipulative as some of history’s cruelest figures.
Intelligence is something you’ll find that’s way more fluid than society makes it out to be. No, you don’t have to be a math whiz or a programmer to be smart. Lots of people have genius that can’t be circumscribed by academic limits. For example, resolving a conflict with quick wits and tact, lacing words together in writing that describe profound ideas, and finding humor in the bleakest of situations. Nonetheless, during my sophomore year, while I was receiving help for my depression, I learned that being smart or being the best isn’t the only, or the most important, part of being a successful and influential human being. Traits like creativity, compassion, and empathy are essential ingredients, even more so than intelligence, to becoming a successful and happy person. Being the smartest or best at something pales in comparison to being satisfied and happy; and if you don’t believe me, it doesn’t take wits or (much) skill to make friends, love yourself and others, and develop a positive paradigm for your life that flouts misery and perfectionism.
So, the gist, if you didn’t feel like reading all the way through, is that life is more than trying to get the best grades, get the most awards, and be the smartest person in the room. You are more than your accolades. Reject perfectionism, explore what makes you special, and strive to be a more wholesome, happy person! █
My time at HIES has been amazing. The past 15 years have been better than I could have ever imagined. It is hard to pin down my favorite thing about Holy Innocents. I have loved all my years at HIES, but my favorite times were in high school. Freshmen year I slept at school for a night with the BBQ club. We cooked out all night, slept in the freshmen hallways, and then got up the next morning and served BBQ all day. I also started dressing up as HIGBY Freshmen year and have countless memories from that. Junior year I got the chance to help plan Holy Innocent’s first ever Silent Disco. The end of junior year I got chosen to be co-head of our schools Activities Committee. I have had to most amazing time being on student council this year and spending countless hours planning events for the school. I got to help plan our first ever homecoming parade this year and be a part of the schools 60th anniversary celebration. It is weird because I remember celebrating the school’s 50th anniversary when I was in second grade on grandparent’s day. It’s crazy how fast time has flown by. The school means so much to me, and it’s not only because all of our fun events. It’s the people you pass in the hallway. It is seeing Dunn in carpool every morning no matter the weather. It’s the smile on the campus shop ladies when you walk in for a chicken biscuit. It is walking through Groesbeck during lunch on a Friday and hearing the Hootenanny from down the hall. It’s seeing Ms. Shunarah’s smiling face when you are going to check out early. It’s seeing Mr. Cornwell walk into you class to sub. It’s watching Jareij (I know I spelled it wrong) dance during a pep rally. Its hearing Weir on the morning announcements talking about ice cream novelties. Its officer green smiling at you in the hallways. Its Ms. Rowe telling you to be quite in chapel. Its Willie giving you a fist bump in the hallway. It is about always having someone to chat with in the hallways whether if it’s a teacher or a student. Holy Innocent’s has one of the best communities, and that is what makes it so special. From the students, to the teachers, and to all the other faculty members. We even have the best sage dining staff. Holy Innocents isn’t the best because of its soggy hallways, or amazing tests. It’s the best because of the people who are inside. As a senior this year, I saw this more than ever. Having spring semester of senior year online wasn’t ideal. However, the senior class didn’t have to go through it alone. We had the college counselors making an Instagram for us, we had student council and faculty members put together a farewell video for us, and we even had a final lap drive through planned for you. None of this would have happened without this amazing community, and without our wonderful dean of course. The zoom classrooms haven’t been ideal, but everyone has made the best out of the situation. I am not ready to let go of Holy Innocents yet and I don’t think I ever will. All I have to say now is, HI till I die. █
