Baby Face

            Can you think of any new parent that would call their baby ugly? Because I couldn’t, that is until my American Studies class last week. We read a paper in which a mother said she thought her newborn daughter was hideous when the doctor gave her the baby for the first time.

Personally, I always thought parents were programmed to think their child was beautiful. But apparently a parent doesn’t have to think that highly of their kid. I recently read an article where a man sued his wife for having an ugly baby. He sued on the grounds that she had plastic surgery before he met her, so he never knew how ugly she was. Shockingly, the judge agreed that this baby girl was, in fact, ugly and that it was the mother’s fault. She had to pay the husband $120,000 for having an ugly baby.

            I was astounded in class when we read that the mother thought her child was hideous. I was even more disgusted to hear that a man would go as far as suing his wife for having a baby that he thought was ugly. If people are this harsh towards the looks of their own babies, what does it say about our society as a whole? I think that people are becoming too obsessed with appearances instead of focusing someone’s personality. In this case, the man didn’t even stick around long enough to get to know his daughter; he took one look at her and ran for a lawyer.  

Who's Wise?

            Yesterday, my sister showed me a Ted Talks entitled “Barry Schwartz: Our loss of wisdom”. I found this particular speech to be both eye-opening and inspirational and I encourage all of you to watch it. However, I understand that most of you don’t have 20 minutes of your life to spare on a daily basis, so I am only going to recommend you to watch from the first minute to around 5:47. For the insanely busy bunch, I’ll give you the cliff-notes.

            In the time block I’m talking about, Barry Schwartz shows the list of things that a hospital janitor is responsible for, none of which involve human contact. Despite this, the other people in the hospital dictate how these janitors chose to do their jobs. One item on their list is to vacuum, but Schwartz explains how one janitor chose to avoid vacuuming a communal room when they usually would because a family who spends most of their time at the hospital was napping in that room. Another janitor cleaned the floors of a room where one of the hospital’s patients who was in a coma was staying in twice in one day. Obviously his job description didn’t require this, but he did it anyway because the patient’s father didn’t see him do it the first time. Schwartz defines these janitors as wise because they know how to improvise, how to use their moral skills for the right causes, and how to make the exception to every rule.

 

I think this picture from Humans of New York captures what Barry Schwartz is trying to say. Both the bus driver and the janitors are improvising to go beyond what their job requires. This bus driver calls his bus “The Party Bus” and tells jokes, sings happy birthday to his passengers, and encourages everyone to smile at the person to their left. All of these things, I’m sure aren’t included in his job description, but that doesn’t stop him. He, like the janitors, is trying to do whatever is in his power to make the lives slightly better for the people who are benefiting from his services.

            This made me wonder why when you ask someone who the wisest person they know is, their answer usually isn’t a janitor or a bus driver. Instead the answer is typically more along the lines of a lawyer or a doctor. As Barry Schwartz said, “Wisdom depends on experience”, so why do we consider certain people wise when we don’t know the experiences others have had?

What's My Name?

 In American Studies last week we discussed how a single word could impact the meaning of a sentence. For instance, if you changed “the man died” to “the man was murdered” you have completely transformed the sentence. This got me thinking about how a single word can be so important. What first came to my mind was my name. A name is a word that you hear countless times a day, a word that identifies you. Can this word impact our lives as much as the word “murdered” impacted that sentence?

I came across an article in The Week arguing that it can. The article said that your name could make you feel inferior and like you need to live up to it. It also declared that your name could cause you to act out in school and even cause people to decide whether they want to trust you or run from you.

Personally, I find this to be a bit of a stretch. I could understand the feeling of wanting to live up to a name because you are named after a grandparent or someone you value. However, I highly doubt that most people want to do great things because of their name itself. Also, I don’t think a child can blame acting out in school on their name. If a child was called into the principal’s office for acting out and they said, “Sorry, my name made me do it!” they most definitely would not be let off the hook. Finally, if I introduced myself and someone ran away screaming my first thought wouldn’t be, “That makes sense, I do have a scary name.” So after much thought, I don’t believe that a name can change your life as much as a word can change a sentence. After all, does every Jack you’ve ever met act the same?  

More Than A Game

            This weekend I went to the Northwestern vs. Syracuse football game, but there was a lot more than football that went on. Towards the beginning of the game they let excited boy scouts run across the field with pride. After, a veteran who had recently earned a purple heart received a standing ovation from the crowd. Later in the game members of the Chicago Blackhawks took the field as well as different fans to play games for prizes. Even if your team was losing, there was still something to be excited about during this game. 

            When I got home from the game, I stumbled across an article in The New York times on a debate on whether or not college football should be banned. Malcolm Gladwell argued that college football should not be allowed. He said colleges “should not be in the business of encouraging young men to hit themselves over the head.” Although I agree that safety for the players should always be a top priority, I don’t think that’s what college football encourages.

            College football is no longer just about the game.  As I saw on Saturday, it was also about honoring those that fight for our country, showing high school students what they too could be a part of someday, and most of all, a sense of community. Seeing an entire town dressed in all purple shows that you are in some way connected to those around you. Even if you have never seen or spoken to the people you pass, you know you are rooting for the same outcome. The few people in orange representing Syracuse would yell out to each other saying things like “Go Orange!” to tell each other that they’re not alone in rooting against the home team. No one is focused on the score or the players when the whole crowd is on their feet cheering for local bands, veterans, and Chicago teams. Since college football is encouraging this sense of community, would abolishing college football also abolish the sense of community?