Moving

This upcoming week, my family will be relocating. We're staying in the Greater Boston metropolitan area though, so it won't be a massive difference in terms of location. 

As the days creep closer to move out day, I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic. I didn't expect to feel this way. I've been wanting to move a while, thinking a little change is always good. I've never moved before and I'm going to be 18 this year. The fact that I've never lived elsewhere, or will I probably ever live in a single house for as long as I have in this one, comes as a bit of a shock. 

I also think about the running and walking routes I've established throughout my town over the years. I know these routes by heart and by mileage. I always know where I'm going and I can speak with confidence that I can navigate most areas of town easily. But this will take a while to become accustomed to in our new town. It's a lot larger first of all, and secondly, I've never really spent a significant portion of time in that part of Massachusetts. I'm excited though. Walking through the neighborhood, I've begun to map out where everything is, how the streets are connected, and how I can get most easily from place to place. 

I've never been deeply connected to my current town, but even then, I'm familiar with it. The mere comfort I feel walking through town, knowing exactly where every store is, and exactly what every store sells is beautiful in itself. Yet when I think about all I don't know about my new town, I suppose there's an adventure around every corner. 

Finally, it's the way I know my own house. It's a familiarity I will have to relocate. At night, I don't need a light and I find the door from my bed. I can locate how close my bed is to the window even in the dark.

Nonetheless, I'm excited for some change. This is a pivotal moment in our lives for so many reasons. On top of what's happening in the world and in my family, I'm also a rising senior. It's like a wave of things just hitting at once but resuming peace once the wave passes. We're at the top of that wave right now. 

One of the hardest realizations

One of the hardest realizations I've come to accept lately is that a "before" and "after" of COVID-19 will be apparent. 

This week, I began taking an online course called the Future of the Business World, tailored to the recent happenings globally surrounding the health pandemic. I've completed just my second day of the two-week program and it's become quite apparent that the world of business will change. And beyond business, it seems that life will no longer return to the pre-COVID identical state in any industry. Retail will be different. Will people have to shop virtually? (imagine shopping at Bloomingdales and virtually riding up the elevator and walking around the jean section) It's likely that remote work will become more substantial within the upcoming years, as it's possible for nearly 32% of our current workforce to work from home? I suppose this remote work trend has been taking root for several years already and COVID-19 has merely accelerated its necessity. Touchless pay programs like Apple Pay will likely take on greater usage, as well as automation which builds economic resiliency. What about remote school? How will we have to rethink education so ensure similar or better quality of learning? It's quite staggering to see how middle and elementary students are expected to retain only 70% of their reading gains and just 50% of their mathematical advancements made this past year due to the extended summer and therefore fewer hours spent in school. 

I've been grappling with all these trends we may see within the next couple of years and it's hard to imagine that there really will be a new normal. Restaurants will be operating at a lower capacity. You might not be able to go to sporting events. Sports themselves may change during the season, particularly with contact sports like football. 

What's perhaps most amazing to me is how technologically and societally advanced humans are given our ability to adapt and how helpless we suddenly become during this pandemic. Humans have evidently lost a degree of control during this pandemic, something few things have been able to do. These are clearly unprecedented times. Unprecedented times with a before and an after. Sometimes I imagine I'm in the future remembering the pre-COVID life, how we used to eat indoors at restaurants and be able to see peoples' faces when we passed them on the streets. That would be a drab reality. 

The Grapes of Wrath: one of my favorites of all time

Last week, I finished The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I'm going to be 18 years old this year. I'm going to be graduating high school this year and I just finished a full-year course on US History of which an essential component was the Great Depression of the 1930s. It's about time I took a look at The Grapes of Wrath. 

Agitating. That's how I would describe how many parts of the book made me feel. It angers me how migrants were treated. All they wanted was a little bit of land. A little bit of food. But they were ostracized, deemed "Okies" and insufficient to live a decent life. "And while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the new barbarians wanted only two things–land and food" (233). Steinbeck organizes The Grapes of Wrath in a back-and-forth narration about one family and brief, philosophical interludes. Page 233 is part of that interlude between the narrations of the Joad family. These interludes are what agitated me the most. They have a minimal amount of speech but are deluged with rich descriptions about the western lands, the Dust Bowl, the famine, and most importantly, how Okie families reached out to help each other during their journey west. At first, I was quite confused as to why Steinbeck chose to organize his novel with the disconnected narration and the interludes. I later realized that he chose to "disconnect" the reader from the Joad story with interludes and speak more broadly about issues of inequality because the Joad's are one family that represented hundreds of thousands of other families moving westward. That's what makes The Grapes of Wrath so grand: it simultaneously tells the story of one family while representing the experiences of hundreds of thousands of others who wanted nothing more than a little land and some food for their families. 

Disgusting. Another adjective to describe how I felt at particular parts. What drew the most repulsion from me was when the police officers intentionally planned to wreak havoc in the government camp, which they otherwise couldn't enter. During one of the weekend dances, a man snuck into the camp and tried to cause a riot over choosing a dancing partner, which, as planned drew the police to the gates of the community. I was also very much disgusted by how the police officers treated the migrants, degrading them to anything but human. And this is quite a timely statement, considering the ongoing protests against police brutality in our nation today. As I was reading The  Grapes of Wrath, I couldn't help but think, wow, one hundred years later the system still has not changed. Police brutality isn't new. It's a flaw in our institution that existed even during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

One of the most important themes I took away from The Grapes of Wrath was dignity and insistence upon being treated like a human. The inequality that eroded the 30s society was fueled in part by people's need for basic necessities like food but also by people, who were economically marginally ahead of the majority, and their desire to maintain whatever difference existed. This is why I was touched when the migrants began helping each other. Families would reach out and share what little food they had left and they would travel together to find work. 

I was honestly surprised by the mellow ending Steinbeck chose. I thought the book would end more in a tragic light, similar to Of Mice and Men. But I suppose the Joads – or the migrants, rather – and their desire to preserve whatever decency they may have left allowed some of them to just make it. I will never forget the stress I felt as a reader learning that the Joads were once again on the road to find work. I think in total they must have found around four to five jobs, none of them prolonged or well paying due to the influx of migrants wherever the slightest inkling of labor could be performed for an even smaller sum of wages. "When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it… If that fella'll work for thirty cents, I'll work for twenty-five. If he'll take twenty-five, I'll do it for twenty" (283).  But the Joads never lost their sense of humanity or dignity throughout the book. Even in times of struggle, they maintained what they felt to be the right thing to do. In times of crisis, they epitomized what it means to be human, even when others don't treat you like one. 

This is one of those novels you don't stop thinking about when you're done. Certain scenes are still clear in my head, thanks to Steinbeck's vivid descriptions, and I can still almost feel the emotions of the characters in particularly dire situations. I rarely read a book and think wow as I'm reading it. Every chapter in The Grapes of Wrath simply had so much content and so much to absorb both intellectually and emotionally. As Penguin Classics wrote: "perhaps the most American of American classics". 

The next chapter of your life

"You cannot start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one" -Michael McMillan

Farewell to 2020

Farewell to the class of 2020. Yesterday, they officially graduated from Andover. 

I've written about this before but it's odd to me how high school brings youth from every corner onto one campus for four years. During probably the four most formative years of our lives, we grow tight-knit even as the grades above and below us form their own generalizations about the character of our class. People in the class form friendships and alliances with each other and some even go so far as to declare a serious relationship. For four years. Four years of strenuous learning, development, and growth later, a class parts from the steps of Samuel Phillips Hall. Clusters of people will end up going to universities in close proximity geographically and others will permanently end ties by virtue of career and location. Nonetheless, it intrigues me how Andover becomes the commonality between people who continue a brewing friendship and those who never see each other again. It's as if we all have something to hold onto that brings us back to 180 Main St.

Granted that we return to campus in the fall, my class will become the senior class. Though crazy to think about now, every year is just part of a cycle. It's a cycle that doesn't stop, with a new graduating class every single year. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that eventually 2021 will be the graduating class in that cycle. Being the oldest people on campus will be odd too. I've noticed how the seniors typically live in their own little bubble. It seems that after college apps, which take up the better part of the fall and winter, people are so "out of it" that it's hard to regain their footing and keep doing Andover. 

I'm excited for the class of 2020, though I was never able to fully say goodbye or congratulate my friends in that class. I hope these amends can be made in the near future.