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The Fantastic Books That We Don’t Read in School
By William D’Angelo, V Form
Imagine you were Batman, or had the abilities of a great and powerful sorcerer, or a divine being who granted you powers each day. You could rule the world with this magic, or save it, or grow your hair back. You could escape your way of life and create a new one. This is fantasy: a world in which everyone is his or her own hero. In Berserk, the protagonist, Guts, fights an impossible battle against the god of causality and fate: The Idea of Evil. It might be difficult to call Guts a traditional hero. He is motivated by rage and hatred and the burning desire for revenge against his former comrade-turned-devil named Griffith. However, this (more…)
The 5 Minute Professor
By David Baek, IV Form
In Ms. Millet’s AP World History class, students were given an opportunity to showcase a topic to their class that they had chosen themselves to teach, for an exercise called the “5 Minute Professor.” Such topics were, “How is steel made?” and “The philosophy of Adam Smith (capitalism).” Given approximately a week to prepare, I scrambled the Internet and books in the library to search for any information on the philosophy of Adam Smith and its impact in world history. Using all my free time, I was able to understand Adam Smith’s ideas by reading some of the articles in his major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth (more…)
Living My Life for Myself, Not Grades or My Parents
By Jazzy Randle, V Form
This past semester, I spent my time at the Mountain School in Vershire, Vermont. The Mountain School is a semester school on an organic farm that enrolls forty-five students in the both the fall and spring terms. When they presented at St. Mark’s my freshman year, I knew that this would be a place for me to be challenged and to learn more about myself. The mission statement of the Mountain School is “To cultivate a diverse and interdependent community (more…)
Genuine Thoughts After a Diversity Conference
By Payton Nugent, IV Form
I am white. I was born with pink, peach toned skin. It’s a strange experience when someone puts a variety of ethnicities in front of you and tells you to choose. Based on the color of my flesh and my seventy-five percent Irish heritage, I put myself in the white group. On December 5th through the 7th I attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Washington, DC. I signed up to go because of my interest in learning more about leadership. I figured that this conference could give me insight on how to be a good leader. I didn’t even pay attention to the diversity part, and, in all honesty, I barely even knew what the word meant. I had no idea (more…)
June in Beijing
By Showjean Wu, Chinese Faculty
St. Mark’s recognizes that a global education is a critical component of a 21st century education, so this past June we launched our first trip to China to offer our students the invaluable opportunity to enrich themselves in China’s rich culture and language. For two weeks, three St. Mark’s students visited Beijing, China with me. V Formers Brittany Bing and Jasmine Randle, and IV Former Taylor John enjoyed a fascinating and informative stay in China’s capital, one of the most populous cities in the world. (more…)
Stand Up and Be Counted: The Butterfly Effect
By Jeniene Matthews, English Faculty
If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. ~Chaplain Peter Marshall
It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act. ~Dalai Lama
Can the flapping of a butterfly’s gossamer wings, which occur over a flowerbed in Texas, result in a snowstorm in Ireland? While I know it sounds like a ridiculous question, experts on the theory of chaos say yes, it can. This phenomenon even has a name: The Butterfly Effect. The flapping of the wings represents a small change in the initial state of the system (the weather), which causes a chain of events that can lead to a large-scale phenomenon (a snowstorm). This “Butterfly Effect” can also be analogized, I believe, to those little acts that we do that ripple out and make a difference whether we know it or not. It is the idea that everything is (more…)
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