So...my theatre 100 class is currently reading A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen.

Question: Why would I be taking a theatre 100 class?
Answer: Credits

Anyway, it did not impress me when I first began reading it. The wife appeared to be very spoiled and obsessed with spending money, while the husband seemed very demeaning towards the wife. If I cannot relate or feel any sort of emotion for any of the characters in a story, then I'm usually not going to like it. My thoughts were a little premature, but reading a play is certainly different from watching it performed on a stage. We only have to read from two play scripts, and I haven't been particularly impressed by either one. Granted, I'm really not a theatre buff. Back to A Doll's House, the story got a little better. The back of the book that contains the script mentioned how it is a feminist play, so I was wondering when the main message was going to be expressed.

*SPOILERS*

The wife realizes that she's never been happy with her husband. The husband has always treated her like some doll to take care of and have for fun. He never truly loved her, and she realizes this after a scheme of her's goes completely wrong. In the end, she decides to leave everything behind and sets out to explore the world and experience hardship. She's always lived a sheltered life, but now is the time for her to gain her own experience.

*END SPOILERS*

I can't help but relate to this somehow. I mean...I've lived a pretty sheltered life. My parents always took great care of me and dissuaded me from doing anything too risky. When in high school, there were a few times in which I was interested in obtaining a particular job...but my parents always talked me out of it. I didn't get my first job until I went to college, and I wouldn't really consider it to be very demanding. I should be grateful though. My parents took great care in raising me, and not everyone gets that opportunity. But...shouldn't young people make mistakes? Get in trouble? Experience the harsh reality of the world outside their homes? I feel as if I'm spoiled and directionless. I have no idea where my life is going to lead me, and I'm not sure if I have enough experience to merit much worth in society. I don't really have any skills. I can obviously type, but most people have that ability nowadays. Heh.

I don't know if I'd consider a "doll" in the house of my parents though. They're supportive enough to allow me to go to college, but I might have just gone to college on their behalf. They never ask me about it, and they didn't even know what I was majoring in until they asked me my junior year. They only asked because someone else asked them. Before college started, I lost a good amount of my weight by walking around the block with my mom. During one walk, I mentioned how I was thinking about joining the military. My mom's expression became solemn. She clearly displayed her distaste in that option, so I went to college. However, I didn't really know what I was going to do in college. For my first two years, I met with my academic advisor on several occasions to help figure out what I wanted to do with my life. He was a really nice guy, but all of those meetings may have been for naught. I took a religious studies class at random. It was a core curriculum class, but I was also interested in figuring out my own beliefs. I learned about myself in that class. It had such a powerful effect that I wanted to learn about more religions. Of course, I decided to tack on criminal justice to have an option with more job potential...but I eventually made religious studies as my major and criminal justice as my lowly minor. Was that a good decision? Probably not. I just trudged on and got good grades. It's not as if I haven't learned anything at all in college.

My high school was very small and located in the middle of nowhere. Not many people filled the school, and we really weren't the most ethnically diverse. College introduced me to so many people of various races, ethnicities, religions, gender identities, sexual orientations, etc. I've made quite a few friends and have even maintained friendships with some of my old high school friends. I've learned about philosophy, religion, psychology, the criminal justice system, health, computers, and more during my stay. But still...I haven't experienced hardship, and I'm probably not ready for the reality of the real world. Like the wife in A Doll's House, I feel as if I should abruptly leave the safety and home and go on an adventure. I know what I should have done all along. Captain Hindsight here shouldn't have went to college right out of high school. I was just too much of a coward to do what I really wanted...or be who I really wanted. I wanted to drop out of college after my first semester, yet I went on.

A degree should help me get a job somehow, right? But I need more skills. I need more experience. So...I was thinking about joining the military after college. It has been my backup plan all along, but now I truly want it to be my main plan. With a degree and military experience, maybe I could get a good job? I feel as if it could instill discipline and strength in me. I'm still young, and I'm not in the worst shape I've ever been in...but still. My parents will still clearly object...but it's kinda what I really wanted all along...or at least a step towards figuring things out. What should I do? Should I go for it? Is it a mistake? Should it remain a backup plan? College has broken many of my perceptions about the real world, but I feel as if I have much to learn. I'm older than most of my friends, but I feel as if I know a lot less than they do. As my graduation date comes closer, I'm constantly thinking about what I really want to do with my life. I don't want to upset my parents...I don't want to let them down...but maybe it's inevitable that I will.

*ahem* So, I've been taking a rather difficult philosophy class this semester. It is concerned with existentialism and phenomenonology, which I had no idea what they were prior to the course. You would think that things would be sinking in over time, but you would be wrong. I question my intelligence every step of the way. I've never encountered writing like this before. We've read two philosophers so far (Husserl and Heidegger), and their pieces of writing are very dense. These are English translations from German, so some could be lost in translation. I mean...does Heidegger really need to use the word "being" more than four times in one sentence? I'm being too harsh though. Some words...don't have English equivalents. Still, the language is very complicated for my simple mind. However, I actually understood today's reading. Surprising, huh? So far, we've mostly talking about Dasein. Dasein is the being of beings, basically. To go along with Descartes, we cannot doubt that we think. Descartes also doubted himself (apparently), but Heidegger and Husserl disregard that. Anyway, we talked about the "they" instead of the "I" today. I'm not going to get into hardcore details (I'll admit, I'm still not 100% on this chapter even though I said I understood it), but I'll say what really hit me. The "they" is outside of Dasein, but it also influences our being. Everyone ("they" are outside beings) around us shapes us and helps structure our world. In a way, we are kind of dependent on them. If we become too dependent, we become inauthentic to ourselves. If we are able to break away and achieve knowledge of things for ourselves...then we become authentic. I think I just butchered that. My professor gave an example. He mentioned how he would get jealous whenever he saw someone read more books than he was or random people would constantly suggest books for him to read. So, he would pick up those books and read them himself. Over time, he would have so many books that others suggested that he couldn't get to the books that he actually wanted to read. He was too influenced by others and not authentic to himself. Later, he mentioned how non-conformists were the most conforming people. I forget his reasoning, but it was an enjoyable lecture. Then, I began to think a little. Bad sign. I thought of how...impressionable I am...how gullible...how weak. I am a very inauthentic person. I try to act, say, do whatever others expect or want me to do. My professor mentioned another example about a class he had with some graduating seniors in it. The seniors said that they were going to get drunk after graduation, and the professor asked them why. They didn't have a good answer for him. They felt as if it was expected. I can say this about so many things in my life. I'm too dependent on others. I can't seem to decide anything by myself. If I try to, then it usually ends up bad. I am a completely inauthentic person.

Today was my first day back to my criminal justice class in about 3 weeks. It was a little jarring, because I tend to forget about this class since it’s only once a week. I got there early, as usual, and I was able to sit on a little discussion that my professor had with my peers before class began. Of course, I was reminded several times how I dropped out of another criminal justice class earlier in the semester! I should have never dropped that class. My old professor popped into the room, and we had an awkward/funny encounter. I feel really bad about dropping it! People got a good laugh in though.

Anyway, our topics for today were homicide and bullying. We briefly touched upon homicide, and a guest professor gave us a little lecture on death notification. I don’t know if I could ever notify someone of another’s death. It sounds like an awful job. While that is an interesting topic, it is not the reason in which I am blogging in excess right now. After homicide, we had an interesting conversation about bullying. My classmates brought up their experiences with being bullied, and one girl mentioned how she was bullied but then became the bully later on.

I haven’t really done any research over the history of bullying, so I can’t accurately compare bullying of the past to bullying of today. We did discuss that issue though, and I found it rather interesting. It’s pretty understandable to see how bullying has spread to social networking websites as they become more and more prevalent and popular. One of my classmates thinks that bullying has become more psychological in nature due to this emerging media. I never had to worry about being bullied online when I was growing up. I didn’t get a Myspace account until the end of my high school career, and I didn’t get Facebook until I started college! I can’t imagine what it is like to be a student now with that social portal. Yikes! I’m starting to make myself sound really old now.

I was bullied when I was younger though. Today’s class made me remember and reflect upon the incidences of bullying that I experienced while growing up. It happened mostly in middle school, but I guess there was a little bit of it in high school in which I don’t remember extremely well. I despised middle school though. It was during that time of growing up and going through puberty…I didn’t necessarily…develop exactly the same way as my peers. I don’t think I have the deepest of voices, but I’d like to think that I sound pretty masculine now. Back then, my voice did not change very fast. I still sounded pretty feminine in middle school. In math class, a fellow classmate told me that I sounded like a girl. (That classmate ended up saying that I “wasn’t so bad” later on in the year, but I was too naive and dumb to figure out what she meant by it.).

Several of my male peers would pick on me for my “girly” sounding voice. I was ridiculed…them saying I was gay…or imitating some sexual gesture around me. Someone wrote on my gym locker that I was gay, and I quickly wiped it off in frustration. One kid kept teasing me in class one day, and I ended up crying to myself. How pathetic, right? I hated myself through middle school and high school, but nothing as serious as suicide happened to me during all of that. Not that I didn’t think about it, but that’s another story. Nowadays, you hear about tons of suicides as a result of bullying. I haven’t heard much about suicide as a result of bullying in the past, but maybe I just haven’t done any research about it. I’m sure it’s probably happened. The media must be making more aware of it when it actually happens nowadays. I’m not saying that these kids that are committing suicide aren’t tough enough. I can’t imagine what they are going through. With the invention of social networking sites, it must be tougher…to experience things at home and at school. I always knew that home would be a safe refuge from school. I never encountered anything bad on Myspace, so I can’t say anything about cyber bullying. My bullying probably wasn’t even that bad, since it started to fade away as high school progressed. That topic just brought back these memories…and made me think about how bullying was then and how it is now.

It sounds very difficult to determine the method in which someone deals with bullying that they witness. We continue the conversation in our last class meeting next week. Why do people bully? I don’t understand…