A while later.

I received an email this morning with a spam comment on the post below, and remembered about this blog for the first time in a while. The post below was written a few months shy of two years ago.
A lot of things have changed since then.
For one, my interest in pursuing a career in literature led me to an internship this previous summer at a respectable literary agency in Manhattan called Trident Media Group. At that job I was able to read the works of aspiring authors and it was in my power to decide if their manuscripts could make it to the next level of reading, the literary agents' assistants. I still can't decide if I loved it or hated it. I love the idea of being a literary agent, getting to work hand in hand with authors of my choosing to help them get their creative dreams published into the world. I interviewed a few of the agents during my time and found that they all really enjoyed what they were able to do for aspiring authors. But the idea of working myself up to the top by having to deny so many more people their dreams, it was a little bit heart breaking at times. One particular author wrote an amazingly heartfelt cover letter explaining what his story meant to him and how hard he had worked on it. However, the novel itself was nowhere near the caliber of work that I would be allowed to pass on to the assistant. My reader's reports on the manuscripts were not supposed to take into account how I personally felt towards the writers in question, but my opinion on the text of the novels only.
Along with this experience, I've also become much more interested in the idea of my original major, International Studies. I'm currently four months into a nearly half year study abroad program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As far as developing nations go, Argentina is better off than a lot of the countries farther north in South America, though it has its fair share of problems as well. Being here as led me to a strong interest in International Development as a focus for my major.
Because of credit situations, I am officially an international studies major with a spanish minor and literature minor instead of majoring in Literature. After this semester, I need about 20 credits to graduate and so I am taking next semester off to work and intern, and then returning to finish out my two semesters of senior year. I could easily obtain a double major in Literature by attending school next semester, but the idea of saving 25,000 on tuition outweighs the benefits of having a dual degree.

The biggest change in the past two years in regards to my previous post is that my mentor and boss, Betty, passed away a little less than a month ago. She was 95 years old. I had not seen her for at least 5 months before that, and she was already under in-home hospice care when I finished work for Spring semester in May. It was an email I was waiting for, but still did not expect to get. She'd been sick before, with heart problems early August of 2009, and after working with her in the hospital for a couple of weeks she was back at home and as lively as ever. She always said to me when she finished her memoir, she knew she would be finished with her time on earth. We finished working on that for the most part in March of this year, right before she had another brief hospital stay. Following that, she was under hospice care and the only work I could really do was stay with her and read her poetry. She started writing new poems about her feelings on dying, and editing some of her old poems to incorporate the same sentiments. The experience of it all was difficult for me. I knew every word of her life story from having worked on editing it with her, and I knew she lived a complete and full life with which she was satisfied, but I was not done listening to her.
The moment I stepped out of her home in May I braced myself for the fact that I would never see her again. Every email update from her son I opened carefully dreading the words "Betty passed away today". In September I received one stating that she had a stroke, but that she was ok. It seemed she would always be ok. And then the first week of October, the first email in my inbox was subject heading "Betty's Memorial Service". The text of the email said nothing to explain what had happened, only that the service would be a few weeks later at the Quaker meeting house beside her apartment building. My only regret is being a continent away when it happened. She was an amazing teacher who encouraged me in everything I did, including my own creative writing and poetry which she insisted I read to her each day.
Coming across this blog, especially the post below, has allowed me to remember her a little bit more as she was before I knew she was dying. It has been a while since I've had the chance to do that.

Where I'm Going, or at least where I think I'm going

I'm not really sure where else to post this. I have a journal, but it seems too private. I have a poetry blog-esque thing (allpoetry.com/ccmeame) but that doesn't seem the proper medium either.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future. My future in particular. No matter how much the people around me say "You don't need to know what you're doing with your life right now", I can't help but think I do. It seems that people are reaching the thresholds of success at younger and younger ages now than ever before. Maybe its only because I'm young now and haven't hit any defining moments that I feel this way. But maybe it's not. Maybe the concept of "enjoy your youth" has gone out the window with our generation. I try to think it hasn't, but I wonder sometimes what I need to be accomplishing to one up the person who does think fun while young is an idea left to our predecessors. While I am sitting around with friends laughing, there is a person preparing their resume with job after job of quality experience builders.

Luckily I've come to terms with the fact that I am in the wrong major early enough. And luckily I did so while working at a job that is a "quality experience builder". Since October I've been working with a 93 year old woman here in DC, editing a book about her life that she is writing for her grandchildren. We take a half hour break each day for tea and discussion, and within that half hour I've learned more from her than I have from any of my professors at college so far. In one of our daily teas a few months ago she planted the idea in my head of editing as a profession. I took it as a polite word to an employee and never really addressed the idea again until recently. Each day at tea she reminds me of her idea for my future, and each day it seems to be more appealing. AP Language introduced me to memoirs, made me realize everyone has a story. Now I know what it is like to be part of that story, part of the process of writing it down for everyone else to hear. I imagine myself sitting next to Jeanette Walls as she details her childhood. I see Frank McCourt lying in the bed that my boss lays in searching for a magnifying glass to read the words he wrote in the paper's margins. And Betty Morris, the beautiful 93 year old, tells me about her aspirations when she was younger and how her first husband held her back, and about her love when she was older with a second husband who left her far too young. 

I can't see myself anywhere else these days. I want to hear every story first hand and have a role in how it is shaped onto the paper for the rest of the world to read. Being an editor or publisher was never a thought on my horizon until Betty Morris. I was an international studies/ communications double major with a minor in Russian. Now I'm a Lit major with a minor in Foreign communication studies focusing on spanish. I'm not sure where my life will go, but I'm a little bit surer since I've worked for her.

I'll leave off with a poem she wrote, in a book of her poems that she gave me:

"Growing Old, Indoors"

This is the last year, quite. I know the years

and this will be the last of them, I know

when still I will remember with my tears

the earth so brown with sand and white with snow.

I will forget the pastures and the stir

the corn-stalks make against the wind at night.

I will forget, though none is lovelier

the locust blossom's turn from green to white.

Like luster of the rain that drops from trees

in sun-lit glitter when the wind has passed,

scattered and loose are all my memories.

Even the hill of stars will go at last.

Or will earth keep me, six-foot down, aware

of what I am forgetting, being there?

"Brave New World" vs "1984"

In "Conclusion: The Two Futures" from The End of Utopia, the novels Brave New World and 1984 are discussed and compared as to which would be more probable to occur in today's society. I have to side with the author and say that Brave New World is a more likely utopia, or dystopia for the world we live in now. I know I personally would go along more with a society who rewarded me for nothing than a society that punished me for everything, and I like to think I'm among the majority in that opinion. The article mentions that "more than any other novel of its type, Brave New World is continuing to approximate the social and political whole truth as the present turns into the future almost one might say to the point when this novel will express the whole truth of a lamentably truth-empoverished time". In other words, this novel, more so than other dystopia novels-including 1984- speaks to a future that is increasingly approaching until a point where the world predicted by Huxley could come true. "Test tube babies" are already increasingly popular, not to the point where they are manufactured in bulk and not raised by parents, however in vitro fertilization shows the potential for that to develop. The world Huxley envisioned is not only more likely to happen, but more efficient. As opposed to Orwell's world, which the article points out is "simply not efficient and all other things being equal efficiency leads to stability as inefficiency leads away from it". 1984 has too many opprotunities for failure within its system, regardless of the extraordinary cautions the government put into place. The majority of the population consists of a subclass, the proles. While the proles did not realize their power in the novel, the potential for an overthrow by them is still very plausible with the society they live in. Also, the practice of releasing "brainwashed" prisoners back into society is on that lacks efficiency. A potential lies in that practice for a person that still believes everything they used to before "Room 101" to go back into society with the knowledge of where they went wrong before and start rebelling all over again. Huxley sent his rebells off to Iceland, where they could think freely without influencing anyone else. Being high in society in Brave New World, one receives endless pleasures, and those who are low in society were born with out the understanding or really knowing their position. Being high in society in 1984 still holds the same fears and worries that those low in society have, and those low in society can't even think about the fact that they are low without commiting "thought-crime". The article states "the power of pleasure has the advantage of being more stabilizing", which is evidenced through the more effective government put in place in Huxley's Brave New World.

Funding for Arts in Education

The cause I am strongly in support of is funding for the arts in education. Because of the fact that subjects such as music and fine arts are not "testable" subjects, the funding in them has been greatly decreased under the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools who have subpar grades on tests and are losing funding as a result make cuts in the budget of art programs because they do not improve upon test taking skills. However, I don't believe that a life can be measured in the tests that are taken and possibly failed. In an increasingly scientific and mathematical world, creativity is hard to come by. If all the classes which encourage creativity are eliminated due to cuts in funding, very few inspiring new creations will exist. Education is supposed to prepare students for life, and life is not tested by scantrons or essays, but by experiences. Art creates for more valuable experiences than math or science. However, math or science can easily be converted into questions for a standardized test, so therefore they are more important than art. At least, in the eyes of education policy makers thats the case. I do not believe that because music and theatre and drawing cannot be graded through a scantron they are any less important. In fact, that makes them more important. The purpose of those fields is simply to educate- not to prepare for a test. Students participate in arts because they have a genuine enjoyment or will to learn. In order to remain a society of independent, free thinkers who follow what they want, the arts need to remain well-funded and supported.

Designer Babies: Where is the line?

In the 21st century, the role technology plays in life is ever-increasing. Through genetic engineering, that role could evolve to include not only how we live, but how that life is created. Intelligent people on both sides of the issue argue the pro's and con's regularly. So, the question becomes: are the many negative sides to genetic engineering worth risking in order to acheive the positives that could result?
There is a line that is fairly blurred between where genetic engineering should be and where it should never attempt to go. Many can agree that on one side is the elimation of autism and downsyndrome, the lessening of risks for cancer and other genetic diseases, and numerous other hereditary mental and physical illnesses. However, even those things toe the blurry line a little too much. The average cost of this kind of genetic engineering is much more than an average couple could afford, let alone a lower income couple. A rich family, however, would have no trouble paying the bills that would come along with designing their own children. Because of this, autism and the other related diseases would not be completely eliminated in any way. They would just be less prevalent in upper class America. The rich generally choose causes which in some way are relevant to them to support and donate money to. If the rich could genetically alter their children to be disease free, all the diseases they no longer have to deal with would have much less funding for research. In the long run, even the biggest positive genetic engineering has could potentially be a negative that seperates the classes even more than they presently are.
On the opposite side of that blurred line, where the obvious negatives reside, is where much more can be found. Not everyone in the world is fit to be a parent, and even less are fit to design the child they would be a parent to. The term designer baby conjures up images of a factory spewing out blonde haired, blue eyed beauties by the bus load. They would all be disease free, with great personality traits, and the best genes money can buy. Except of course for that one child, with the crazy parents, who created a sociopath. That, and much worse, could be possible as a result of genetic engineering. As if parents don't live vicariously through their children enough to begin with, they now get to create the perfect child. They get to make a baby that is, essentially, what they've always wished they had been. The role of a child could change over time from a human being that requires love and attention to a thing that is required to live up to the expectations put on it at design. And while the designer child might not have disease or physical flaws or personality traits that make life more difficult for them, the pressure to be the perfect creature they were created to be might end up too great.
There is a blurred line. However, even the blurriness cannot hide the dangers genetic engineering poses. The cons outweigh the pros in a large way, and even the pros have their flaws. In order to perfect genetic engineering, boundaries must be set that prevent some of the great threats it has.