Everything Happens for a reason

I’m too often lead to believe that everything happens for a reason. Maybe I’m missing a logical fallacy here. Or perhaps I just don’t notice how nothing worked out just fine on those days where things seem to be spinning out of control.  I’ve come to realize how holistic I am.  I often see random connections between different things, or perhaps I just hope certain things happen. A while back, I wrote about this idea…that everything happens for a reason. Between then and now, my logic has been working to fully experience this idea and wrap my head around. I’d sort of forget the notion for a bit, and then return to it when something relevant in my life occurred. Last week, there was a dance at school, and after my experience at the end of the dance, I don’t think I will forget the idea that everything happens for a reason. 

Andover has dances quite frequently, and at the closing of every term, there’s a semi-formal. Getting ready may be the best part, as everyone in my dorm is helping each other get ready and it’s simply amazing to see everyone dress up together after a term of hard work. The process of dressing up is made a cultural element of our school along with taking photos…lots of them…before our party. The funniest scene I’ve been to is going to a party within the first 30 minutes to find an empty dance floor and a huge crowd of people taking photos at the entrance.  We’re young. And we like to take photos. However, last weekend, I decided not to bring my phone with me because I somehow came to the conclusion that dancing with a phone in one hand was inconvenient. I left my phone in the pocket of my jacket, which was hanging up with all the other jackets. I remember being frustrated when I didn’t have my phone to take photos. I kept saying to myself, “how could you have left your phone in your jacket?” After that evening, it turns out leaving my phone in my pocket was one of the better impulsive mistakes I’ve made in a while. When the dance was over, I went over to the coat racks to find my jacket and I couldn’t find it. After searching (and much panicking), I realized that someone had probably taken it. It’s worth a pretty penny, but I realized that probably must have mistaken it for theirs since it’s a popular jacket at school. 

Thank goodness I hadn’t been able to take those photos at the party! If I had, I would have lost my jacket and have had to walk back to the dorm in 20-degree weather with a sleeveless dress. I used the handy-dandy Find My iPhone app to recover my jacket and true to my initial notion, someone had mistaken it for theirs on the coat rack. 

Perhaps things may seem dire in the midst of them. Maybe I failed that one math test as a wakeup call for me to study more for the following one. Thinking for the benefits of the future has been a primary focus of mine and I place this odd faith on some eternally existent fate that each of us is predestined to follow. Failing once, or not getting something once in the moment is okay, as long as I take something away from it for the future. The present matters…but it really prepares us for the future. 

Is this what the real world looks like?

This term, I’ve been doing a community engagement (Andover’s version of community service) called Bread and Roses Cooking. The first Wednesday of every term is when I head out with three other people who are part of the event and we make a salad for Bread and Roses. Bread and Roses serve meals to people who stop by in a hope to help those living in poverty. It continues to impress me how the organization has been sustained for so many years simply through donations from locals. Bread and Roses is able to provide a full three-course meal to every person who walks in through the door. My experience this term doing Bread and Roses Cooking has been very positive. My peers and I are usually very quiet when we’re cutting up the vegetables but on the road, we tend to have some great conversations. 

The teaching fellow who drives us to and from Bread and Roses went to Deerfield so he has a pretty similar account of high school to us. Something that I’ve noticed quite a bit through high school and even in middle school is the “social hierarchy”. There always seems to be the same couple of people who do similar things and act a similar way who are on the “top” of the social hierarchy. Moreso, I’ve found that the social structure which develops within classes almost never shift and that people usually fall into proportionally similar places between middle school to high school. 

Why is that? As a student, we never talk about social hierarchies though it’s tacitly understood by most. I’m curious, of course, there certainly are going to be social hierarchies after college when we’re in the workforce. In any field there will be those who dominate and who rise to popularity through external factors beyond their knowledge or work ethic in a particular field. I wonder how these échelons will be different than high school. Is it still going to be the male varsity athletes on top? I’ve felt like from middle school to high school I’ve almost fallen into the same échelon even though I’ve switched schools and I’m older.  Perhaps this is a natural and inevitable fallacy of an individuals persona, and merely the type of person we are influences how we’re perceived within a large group. 

I wonder how this plays out in the real world. I sometimes believe that Andover is an accurate representation, a simulation almost, of what it’s like to be in the real world. Even though it’s only high school, there are certainly times where I, as a woman, feel judged more harshly as a woman. There are also times where I, as a woman, do really like the certain stereotypes in the real world apply even on our campus. I think implicit biases are also a reality on this campus as they really are anywhere else in the world. When I told our teaching fellow about these points, he told us that there certainly will be social hierarchies in the workforce. They’re different than how they look in high school, though age plays a bigger role. He told me that often times people don’t care about it as much. Still, I have this innate feeling that Andover does embody in part a liberal version of what the social scene in adulthood may resemble. Maybe our teaching fellow is right: we just shouldn’t think too much about it. 

Take care of the minutes

 

Ann Savchenko https://unsplash.com/search/photos/sunset

"Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves" -Earl of Chesterfield

The side we don't see

Once we get a certain age, I’ve noticed there are things we do not tell people about ourselves. I would suspect that each and every one of my peers at school has stories and hidden talents that no one on campus knows about. I remember in elementary school, it felt as if everyone knew everything about everyone. Oh yes, this person did this over the summer, met this person, had Christmas dinner with this person, this person accidentally spilled chocolate milk on his shirt etc. Elementary school seemed to be those years where we seemed to share everything about ourselves and about our families to all our classmates. People didn’t bother as much with the details; most people were too preoccupied sharing their own stories to listen to others. 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed how more and more people I’m friends with have secret talents, secrets, and niches to their personalities that I had only found out recently. For example, one of my friends in my French class has already done two triathlons…and when I sit there in class, I never knew that about him! Or my other friend in my fitness class who runs an energy drink business with his brother. I had dinner with one of my closest friends at school last night, and she told me that she’d published a research paper last summer. When I heard this, it blew my mind. One of my closest friends had done research and published a paper in physics! What’s mutual about these examples I’ve mentioned is that their hidden aspects of people I would have never recognized at a first glance, or even after being friends with them for a while (over a year), only now have I found out about their inner selves, the people they are outside of academics, or off campus. 

There’s this adage: people are not how they appear to be on the outside. I suppose for a while I never believed that saying, maybe because I was still young. When I was younger, I believed everyone would tell me everything. But as I’m beginning to experience now, most people I’m going to meet are truly very interesting people. Most have stories and histories few people know about because people chose to keep it hidden. That’s something I didn’t pick up before. And the amazing thing is: if I just stop and open my ears, I’ll probably learn something interesting.