Intersecting Struggles
By Brittany Bing, VI Form
Feminism: a word so heavy it often feels like an elephant in the room when mentioned amongst a group of people.
Feminism pisses people off. Feminists are supposed to be man haters and bra-burning idealists who think that women are superior to men. As ridiculous as the stereotype sounds, the true modern feminist doesn’t believe that women are inherently better than men. Unlike misogyny, feminism simply refers to one’s belief in the equality of the sexes. Of course, feminist ideals are exponentially more complex than just wanting equality. Over the summer, I explored these concepts in depth at the Independent School Gender Project held at the Hotchkiss School.
As a veteran conference attendee, I knew what to expect. ISGP is a small, all-women’s conference (more…)
Want to Be More Creative? Get Immersed in Nature!
By Hans Zhou, V Form
Today’s children only spend around 20 minutes outside per day. The number of visits in both national parks and nature-based recreation has steadily declined since the 1980s. Social media and technology are taking away opportunities to go out and explore nature. The modernized life we are living now is much better than the one our ancestors had in terms of medical care and living standards, but are we missing out on the benefits and beauty nature might hold for us? A study by Strayer and University of Kansas psychologists Ruth Ann Atchley and Paul Atchley has shown that immersion in natural settings could improve creativity. The study involved 56 people: 30 men and 26 women at an average age of 28. These subjects were divided into eight different groups to participate in hiking trips without any technology from four to six days (more…)
Modeling H1N1’s Impact on the United States’ Population
By Lucy Cao, IV Form
The infectious disease, H1N1, that I have modeled, includes six compartments: susceptible 1 (S1), susceptible 2 (S2), pre-infectious, infectious (I), diagnosed and recovered (R).
Susceptible 1 and susceptible 2 refer to the two groups in the susceptible population: S1 is children and the elderly, while S2 is the rest of the population. Children and the elderly are excluded from the total population and placed in a separate compartment because they are more vulnerable to the H1N1 virus and have a greater chance of getting infected. Thus, the rate from S1 to infectious is bigger than the rate from S2 to infectious. I calculated my rates from the susceptible compartments to the infectious compartment with the formula β*S*I/N, in which β is the rate of transmission, S is the population of susceptible, I is the population of infectious and N is the total (more…)
“It’s Complicated”: Relationships in “Interpreter of Maladies”
By Marcus Permatteo, IV Form
In the short story “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri, both Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi have complicated relationships with their families. Each has a spouse and several children, yet show unfaithful qualities toward their families. Due to these unfaithful traits, their love for their families is questionable. As the characters reveal their feelings in the story, however, it is clear that Mr. Kapasi loves his family more than Mrs. Das because he makes continuous attempts to save his marriage, he is faithful to his wife, and he continues to love his children. Mrs. Das does none of these things. Mr. Kapasi tried to save his relationship with his wife, while Mrs. Das did not. Neither Mr. Kapasi nor Mrs. Das have loving relationships with their spouses. However, it is clear that Mr. Kapasi tried for a long time to make things work (more…)
The Top Of My Head Was Taken Off: At The Dodge Poetry Festival
By Sarah McCann, English Faculty
Poet Ezra Pound called poetry “news that stays news.” I subscribe to that. William Carlos Williams admonished:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
but men and women die every day
for lack
of what is found there.
And Emily Dickinson, one of my favorites, wrote, “If I feel as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” (more…)
The In-between World of Chaplaincy
By Rev. Barbara Talcott, School Chaplain
I am a School Chaplain. “That’s a church person, right?” Well, no, not really—but yes, kind of. “Oh, so you’re a school person.” Yes, but also not really. It’s kind of complicated. To be honest, we chaplains don’t fit very well into any of the categories most people are comfortable with.
I knew from the start of my process toward ordination that I was called to be a school chaplain, but I didn’t realize until after I was ordained how unusual that made me. Chaplaincy is definitely a job that other ordained ministers—and even most churchgoers—have trouble understanding and appreciating, because although many of us have been ordained by the Church, we don’t work in churches. In fact, we spend much of our ministry serving people who are non-Christian, and even non-religious. We have very different rhythms to our weeks and years, and because of our school responsibilities we (more…)
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