Hypertension

In this essay I am going to compare my play with two comparatives. The play I performed was a scripted piece called “Blue Remembered Hills” by Dennis Potter, written in . The other two texts are, “My Mother said I never should”, by Charlotte Keatley, written in , and “Blood Brothers” by Willy Russell, written in .

My performance was set in 1943, in the West Country, “in the long summer holiday”. Naturalistic theatre was used, however, although it was about the events of seven children, adults play them all. War, bullying, abuse, aggression and murder are explored within the play. It was aimed at adults, as the issues it broached were in addressed in great depth, and because it was shown through the naivety of children, children would not understand. The play has historical and political context, and the political affairs of the time dictate the dialogue. The period in which it was set is reflected by the constant references to the War and “the Japs”. The circumstances of the children, as well as historical background can be seen throughout. For example, when ‘Donald’ says: “I be tired out and all, working on those saw mills. I cut me thumb off an all”.

“My Mother said I never should” is about four ‘ordinary’ mothers/daughters and is about the social changes of the twentieth century, pned over four different era’s. It is set in a variety of places according to what best represents the era. It is also naturalistic, relating to my performance. It also incorporates the idea of children dealing with adult issues but not understanding, for instance:

Rosie Mum’s got the curse. (Pause) Maybe we did it!

Doris (Pause) What curse?

Rosie The curse.

Doris Oh. Yes… How d’you know she’s got it?

Rosie You can tell.

Doris How?

Rosie Just can. Mum’s been cross with me all morning.

It’s also aimed at adults; adults play children in the production because they also need to play adults in the production as well as children. In this way it was similar to “Blue Remembered Hills”.

“Blood Brothers” was aimed at a broad audience, adults and children of all classes. It is also naturalistic, but also uses forms such as, narration and song. This detracts from reality but makes it more interesting. And adults play the children featured in the play yet again, linking the three pieces of theatre. It is set in the 50’s and 60’s, in the city for the first act and the country for the second, so it is of a similar era to the other two pieces.

In “Blue Remembered Hills”, there is no indication what class the children are from, but they are expected to be working class, and perhaps Angela may be slightly wealthier than the others. Similar to this is “My Mother said I never should” as they are middle/working class too. However, in “Blood Brothers” the two main characters Mickey and Edward are from two contrasting classes: upper class, and lower class. There is direct conflict between them, though they are naive due to their age yet again, for example, Edward is referred to as “a friggin’ poshy”. It addresses issues such as prejudice, class, money, status, superstition and violence.

All three pieces are similar, using adults to play children especially, this is an interesting approach, and allows the playwright to broach more serious issues and adapt them for families or adults. This may detract from reality but naturalistic movements were used, mimicking children helped present the serious issues further.

A jumble of limbs and skin, not that I knew it, I was just another fragment of the landscape, a surface of khaki and blood, surrounded the shore, clouded a dusky pink where a ship sat deserted and alone. Sand gatherings were sleek as they followed the wind and flustering specs as sharp as glass, were deciding where to settle, inspecting every body, join it for a while, but would soon be gone.

Now my clothes are crusted with blood, a gunshot so neat can rip through your body; like a mole it burrow’s within the depths of flesh, blood and bone, stopping at nothing to pass to the other side. A gunshot so destructive, can take no longer than a fraction of a millisecond, to puncture your heart, to suck the air from your lungs and leave the blood to empty your veins hour after hour. Hour after hour…its time to bleed. I could no longer feel the bitter sting of the burning sand on my open wounds, nor the suffocating inner walls of the tunnels, carved by a bullet, still seeping. All I could feel was a general ache, the fact that I’m still alive, seems inadequate.

I feel like a tap that has been left on, drip, drip, waiting for my life, to be effortlessly, cut off. I could well be melting and the taste of the fluids dripping from my face is recognisable, I am drowning in my own blood, sweat and tears.

Hesitating to open my eyes, I think of a rusty gate as the weight is so difficult to lift, secured with glue-like mucus, sharp and jagged in some places, my eyelids seem to be made of metal, brittle and disabled by age and rust. How long had I been here?

Had I grown old in this battle?

I feel altogether robotic, like a machine that had been broken, no longer a human but just another tool for those who are better than I am, either them or the person left in me gave me the strength to open my eyes, as that gateway is like lifting numerous tonnes of weight. But to my dismay all I saw were gashes of light that came to me like a stampede, the sand was on me and everywhere, each grain an annoying little bee, my eyes become a hive of little sand and blinding white, just being in existence.

I sharply shut them again, I’m back in my own little world, but is that place really where I’m needed? Again, the shutter doors must open, the jagged edge is now broken, it seems a great weight off my mind when the entrance is clear, the gate is now satisfactory and lifts quite swiftly, I am free, freed into what? I’m stumped between a prison and a mass A and E. Everything around me is death, leads to death or inspires it.

Ghoulish faces looked at me from all around, but with no expression. Their features lie beneath the murky layer of dust and dirt. One who was settled very close to me, has deep red stains all around his mouth and nose, it is visible to see the dried out tracks where blood had quickly escaped through his lips and nostrils, and even faint fingerprints where he must have rapidly checked the bleeding. He had been shot only once, in his neck, one move for one life and that touching of his face was likely to be the last move he ever made. His right hand lay on the sand, next to his neck, his fingertips too, tinted with his own blood.

I suddenly realise that something was holding me up, I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t known this before, as it was far too close to my skin considering my vest, shirt and thick jacket, soon my awareness makes it somewhat painful. The sharp jagged material had formed a spear, and it took a moment to think about getting myself out of this awkward position.

The gunshots in my leg and side were holding me back, but I had to use anything else I had in the world to push me away from this pain.

…I can see my wife, that blinding white is now lighting up her big brown eyes, those same eyes that believed so much in me all that time ago, stand right before me as if they never left…

If this was all I had, it had to be enough to get me through this day; I must survive, if only for that.

Stand up.

I hesitantly move my boot soles onto to the flattest sand I can find, even now my leg is vibrating with pain, but I must go on.

Stand up! Come on man! You are weak! You’re no use to any of us down there! I won’t ask you again boy!

My knees unbend themselves and some miracle had led me to my feet, from where I immediately fall into the almost alight sand bed, it agitatedly buzzed around me, stinging and biting on any flesh available. But it was the distinct scream that will always haunt my mind, I didn’t before this imagine I would ever fear my own voice, as it shattered the silence I lay hoping and praying it would not wake anybody up, I preferred to be alone. Or close to it, as my gaze now met that of another pair of eyes drained of all emotion.

I looked at him, I wanted him to look unhappy, I wanted to feel sympathy, but it looked at me with pride, it had died in honour, it had done his duty, so nothing mattered.

I reached out and gently pulled his eyelids over those misty eyes, and already began to miss him. I looked over him towards the admirable surroundings, where I always wanted to come, huge cliffs towered above me, crowned with beautiful plants, the vague outlines of which I saw swaying, almost dancing beneath the beautiful sunlight. The heat had done nothing but added to my pain, but the sky now glowed, its rich blue tones comforted me, I had done well, this I knew as I released my thoughts into the cloudless sky, where I stayed, ’til the end.

It was just another typical evening at Silver Town. Rowan, Shannon, Reeve, and I were five friends from Madison high and we were driving past Rose Hall (the famous haunted house) on that Halloween evening. The house lay in ruins. Not a single soul had lived in it for over fifty years. There, it stood, alone in the hills, rising from the green cane fields. There were no other houses near by. It stood there day and night, all alone. Every one said the devil lived there and that anyone who slept in the house will die violently and mysteriously or survive, hopelessly insane.

Nevertheless people did go into the house from time to time. We all went in as well but that was in broad daylight, of course. We visited the grand rooms and we went down the back staircases to the cellar, where Annie Palmer used to practice black magic and where the dark brown stain that was said to be the blood of her last murdered husband. Rose Hall was not a nice place at all. Even in bright sunshine the windows were broken and black with dust and grime.

Every Halloween night the five of us, oh sorry I forgot to mention Mace, he has a record for violent disorder, well to me he has…. it as 2 years ago on an Autumn evening me and Mace went down to the new arcade arena, and for nothing Mace beat up a young boy in the toilets, I had to hold him back. Mace has always been a bit odd and he always picks on people for no reason. He may be a mad person, but he sure is my friend. Anyhow back to the story… the 5 of us went down to our high school where other friends would come, and we used to have a Halloween party, sometimes everyone used to dress up as vampires and other weird things. But really, we use to get together with everyone and play games, sit around telling horror stories and mostly for fun.

On that night we turned up to the party quite late and found every one busy playing games and talking. We walked in and found a round table near the corner and went to sit down. Just when we were all starting to get bored Shannon came up with the idea about playing truth or dare. We started to play and that’s when all the trouble started to come. We all wrote out our separate dares on pieces of white paper, folded them and placed them in a vase. We picked out our dares. First Rowan, then me, Mace after, followed by Reeve and then Shannon. One by one every one started to leave as it as getting quite late and it was only the five of us left and with one or two people that were on the other side of the hall. It all started when it was Shannon’s dare, I could tell it was something bad by the look on Mace’s face.

Shannon’s dare was to go to Rose Hall, knock on the door and say trick or treat. At first we all thought that it was a very good idea and that we should all go trick or treating. It was really dark with hardly any one on the streets. All the little children had gone home and nearly all the lights were switched off. We drove up slowly and we could see the dark deserted house all there lone and it felt as though it was waiting for us. For some strange reason the journey up the hill seemed to take years and what more it was starting to rain, and not only that Mace was driving. It started to thunder and lightning struck, and then it looked at us, smelled us, it was as though the lightening and the fear from it was its light.

The house never looked more evil, every film, nightmare, anything scary that makes me want to run under my parents covers when their not there flashed before my very eyes, It gave me the shivers and I felt that something inside was telling me; This is not right; turn back, evil dwells here”. These words were running through my head over and over again. At that moment I remember Reeve calling me. I told them to turn back the car in a very quiet voice. They all looked at me as though I was stupid or something. Then Reeve asked me what was wrong for the second time, but this time I didn’t bother as I was starting to get really scared. Nobody was listening to me. I thought they were all thinking I had gone mad. Just then I heard a whisper saying `I can’t turn the car’. Straight away I looked at Mace’s face. I heard him say it again to the four of us.

This time he said it in fear. We all went silent staring ahead. The only sound to be heard was the rain. It was getting louder and louder as we drew closer and closer to the grim Rose Hall. In a flash we were there. It was dark. The rain had stopped now and I could feel a cold breeze rushing past my face; it did not feel like the normal winter breeze, it was a shivering breeze, an evil, deathly breeze. Shannon walked towards the door slowly. We followed behind her and it felt as though each step that we took towards the door was the last. `Knock, knock’ We felt the sound vibrate in the silence surrounding us.

At this instant I grabbed Mace’s arm with the thought that something was going to open the door. We waited and waited till we all felt relieved that nothing was there to let us in. We all turned back with the intention of leaving, but just then we heard the door start to creak open slowly. Before we even had the chance to look back Shannon, had gone and we heard it. We heard the faint scream for help. My legs started to shake, I was weak, I felt as though I was at a funeral, my heart was soft, and I could feel it beat, it was fast.

The tears were there. Rowan screamed and then she urst into tears and fell down on her knees. We could feel the silent night looking down at the four of us, helpless, knowing that there was no turning back now, but only to face the fear ahead of us. It felt like as though we were in the part of a film, a funeral, everyone crying, sad music at the background, everywhere you look there was sorrow. The door was left there wide open for us, and we knew that there was no way out. We made the final decision that we had to go into Rose Hall and find Shannon. We went in pairs: me and Mace, Rowan and Reeve. We all had the fear hidden inside us, but outwardly we showed raveness as we stepped into the forbidden house.

As we walked in, we found our selves in the middle of the hallway with only two straight narrow paths ahead of us that were never there before. Looking at these paths we knew that one of these path would lead us home where as one would lead us to another world, the world we did not want to enter, the world contradicted by hope, but we did not know which was which. Mace and I decided that we would go right, but Reeve and Rowan wanted to go the same way as well. We sensed that we only had a short period of time and we had no time to argue, so I ecided that Mace and I should go left and let the other two go right. As we approached our paths we all turned around at the same time, and looked at each other, thinking that it’s the last time. I ran towards Reeve and my closest friend, Rowan, and gave them both a big hug, which felt to me as if it was bringing back all the memories of the five of us together with smiles on our faces.

I felt Mace’s warm hand around my shoulder drawing me away from Reeve and Rowan. I remember Mace telling me that there was nothing we could do, except to face what was coming, we did not have a choice because, the door ad closed behind us. I managed to pull my-self away from both of them. We said good-bye to each other for the final time, and we started to walk. Our footsteps sounded very loud on the wooden floor. Everything smelt damp and moldy and there was silence as if many ears were listening to our footsteps. I felt as though I had been walking for many days without stopping, not realizing how much pain I was in, but instead realizing the fear. Mace and I started to walk faster, after a couple of minutes or probably hours, I began to feel as though I was reaching destiny, only not knowing what it was.

Mace suddenly stopped. He grabbed my hand and pulled me back. We stood there for a couple of minutes and then we heard two screams. At first I did not want to believe what I had heard but I had to and I decided to go back for them. I didn’t know what was going through my head; I started to run as fast as I could until I tripped over something and for a minute I thought I was dead. I was sitting there when I felt something dripping on me. It was really dark which meant I couldn’t see what it was, but I decided to smell it.

It smelt weird. It smelt like blood. Just then I let out the oudest scream that I had ever screamed in my whole entire life. I heard Mace’s footsteps coming towards me as yet I did not look up. He came and sat next to me. I remember Mace whispering in my ear and asking me what was wrong. I told him I felt something dripping on me and it smelt like blood. Mace smokes, so he always carries a box of matches’ in-case his lighter never worked. We were both sitting there and it felt as though we had given up hope. Mace took a cigarette out of his pocket and a box of matches to light the cigarette. When the fire flicked on the match something took it out.

I started to get really scared; I knew something or someone else was in there apart from the both of us. I sat there silently, trying my hardest not to make a move, I even held my breath, and although it was dark, I closed my eyes. Those couple of seconds felt like a couple of hours. He flicked his match again and this time the flame did not go out. He looked around to see if anything was there, but he couldn’t find anything. Just then he felt something drip on him. He looked up slowly. I remember him being quiet for a long time until I looked up. It was a horrible site, a photographical site and memory, and I hate hinking about it. I was too shocked to cry or even say anything. I could feel my heart beat getting faster and my body getting cold and hot and cold and hot. It was Shannon.

She was covered in blood, her eyes red and wide open, her mouth also open with her tongue sticking out, accompanied with her ever slow blood flowing to the end of her tongue where it built up only to drip, there was blood all over her body, and there was only distinguishable as a pole trusted in her belly, flowing with blood, holding her, supporting her to the ceiling. She was a mess. All hope that I ever had was lost, it felt like a child getting its ost awaited toy and only after getting it, it was taken away, I felt what the people walking aimlessly in the desert with a dry throat felt, after running with joy at the first site of water only to discover it was a mirage. We couldn’t do anything apart from walking ahead. Every step felt like the last one.

We walked and walked in total darkness, with the presence of our recent memories until our legs couldn’t carry us any longer so we both had to sit down. I put my head down and I remember thinking about what my family was doing and what time it was. Just then Mace told me to look up, he told me that e reached it; he told me that we have reached our destiny. Without saying a thing I stood up in amazement, speechless. “Mace, Shannon, Rowan, and Reeve we’re home”……… “Darling, wake up”. I opened my eyes so many people, my own people. `I’m home, I’m home… Where are the rest where are they? ‘ `I’m sorry darling. They… , they died in the car accident. Thank god that you survived’. From that day to this I don’t know how we ended up in the car accident, and I don’t know why I came back but Mace didn’t. Every time I drive past Rose Hall I hear the screams of Reeve and Rowan and still see the body of Shannon.

Twenty-five years have passed and things have changed in the outside world, but I have not changed. For me my past is still living and haunting me. I have still not yet uncovered the mysteries of that night in Rose Hall. It’s a normal evening at Silver Town. Halloween night has come back to me again. And as I’m driving towards Rose Hall I hear again the same voice, the voice that I once heard twenty-five years ago but this time it is saying `Come… come… come’. I still don’t know if Mace lied when he said he couldn’t turn the car around, but I do believe that he is still alive and I am going back for him……..

Sweating, He awoke from this nightmare. Breathing in frantic, panicked breaths.

He often woke up like this. Always the same nightmare. No matter how he tried he could never get back to sleep. Those eyes he saw, they haunted him, no matter how he hated to admit it, they completely controlled his life.

Ever since that night three years ago when his life was ripped to pieces… just like his parents.

He’d grown up in a small town called Raggs on the east coast of Germany with his Mother, Father and twin sister. To their neighbours and friends, they were a normal family, but He knew different, he knew of his father brutality and abuse towards his sister and mother. His sister would come into his room late at night, covered in bruises and shaking. She hated their father; she’d always talk about how she wished he was dead, that one day she was the one who’d kill him. That she’d kill our mother too for not protecting them, for letting him beat her. He always agreed. He thought they were just words that helped her release the pain inside herself. Until he saw it.

He was walking home from football practice late at night, it was cold and there was a heavy fog. His friends had all gone home before him and he was alone. He walked as fast as he could; these streets were dangerous after 8pm. It was cloudy and the moon was hardly visible. There was something wrong about that night. It was too quiet.

As he approached his front door, he could smell an awful scent, it reeked of blood. He rushed inside, the smell was overwhelming, he felt faint. All the lights were off, but he could tell someone was home, the house always smelt of fresh flowers, his mother loved flowers. It was too odd. He heard a shuffling noise in the back room, almost as though someone was dragging something. He tiptoed along the hallway, trying to be as quiet as he could, feeling along the cold walls to keep himself from tripping up.

He felt something wet on his fingers; in the dim light it looked black on his fingertips. It was blood. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see it. Blood everywhere, all over the carpet and the walls, drag marks going into every room. His heart was thumping inside his chest, his throat was dry. What had happened? Had his father gone mad? Was there a murderer in the house? What had happened to his sister? His mother?

He crept into the back room, holding his breath, what would he do if they noticed him? He didn’t know how to fight. He scanned the room with his strained eyes; the curtains were pulled; only a little moonlight lit the room. There was someone sitting there, on the sofa. Staring at him, so it seemed, though he couldn’t see the persons face. The mysterious stranger stood up and started walking towards him, he could feel himself hyperventilating. From the silhouette, the stranger seemed quite short, about his height with a feminine figure and short hair.

“I told you I’d do it, Ien.” The stranger whispered, getting closer.

That voice. It was familiar, soft and girly, but it sounded wrong. It was too harsh sounding. Too menacing.

The light filtered in through the gap in the curtains. His eyes were drawn to the figures on the floor around his feet. A stifled scream escaped his lips as he realised who they were. It was his mother and father; they were white as snow, apart from the blood painted on their skin.

He looked back up at the stranger, tears spilling from his eyes. His green eyes met deep blue ones staring back at him.

He knew those eyes.

He knew that same green cross-shaped scar that he himself wore under his left eye.

It was his sister.

They weren’t their real parents, but they’d adopted them when they were 6 and treated them with nothing but love and affection, until the beating started. But it was a family, and that was more than enough for Ien.

He couldn’t remember much of his real parents, his mother died in childbirth and his father was violent. But he couldn’t remember how he got this scar, and why Lena had it too. It was a strange scar, his was a cross, like you get at a gravestone, it was tinted blue and stained under his left eye. Lena had the same, but hers was upside down, and green.

It would be logical if they were born with them, but they weren’t. He couldn’t even remember where his dad went. Neither could Lena. They both blacked out one night, and woke up in a hospital; apparently they were comatose for 2 years.

The frustration of not knowing things was too much to bear, Ien liked having answers, Lena always told him that sometimes the answers were best left to the imagination.

That the answers weren’t always the answers you wanted.

“Lena?” He whispered. His heart was racing, what was happening? Why was she looking at him with such dreadful eyes?

His father’s eyes.

“Lena, what did you do?”

“Sometimes the answers aren’t always what you want to hear.” She giggled. She started walking towards him, the weak, rotted floorboards beneath her creaking as she moved. He saw a flash of light from her hand, she was holding something. A knife.

He heard the drip-drop of blood as it ran off the blade, filling the cracks in the floorboards, slowly getting closer.

“And my name is not Lena. Lena wouldn’t hurt a fly. She’s so weak. But I’m stronger than Lena. I’ve seen the things she’s gone through, I feel her pain. She’s crying inside me. But this time I’ll take over, she can’t hold me back anymore.”

Ien drew a long, shaky breath. He could feel the tears filling his eyes. Who was this monster? Dirtying Lena’s hands with the blood of the people she loved the most? He couldn’t let Lena be destroyed by this thing that is controlling her mind, but she’s getting closer. He was so confused. What did she mean by ‘She won’t hold me back anymore’? Were there two Lena’s?

Before Ien had time to figure everything out, she had the blade at his throat. The cold metal cutting into his skin and making his hair stand on end. She brought her mouth close to his ear, her cold breath chilling him to the bone, she whispered

“And now it’s your turn.”

This happened to me last weekend . I am bored at that day . I was sitting outside my house alone because all of my friends were out of town . I was getting bored so I decided to ride my bike out to nearby garden . When I got there , I saw nobody over there and I started feel curious at this moment . I sit on a meadow . 1 try to make myself more relax and take a nap . Suddenly , I heard roar of thunder and the sky started become bad weather ahead . Dark , smoky clouds threatened rain , It’s rain cats and dogs . I try to run back to my house . When I stood alone outside my house .

I saw a stranger woman in front of me . The woman face had heavily done up . The woman body like overweight . The woman hastily asked question to me . ” Dampen do you have a umbrella ” When he called my name , my brain was stun a few second . Eve been beating my brains out trying to think who Is she . My brain keep dodge out a lot of question mark . “Who are you ? Am I knew you ? Why you knew my name and I never seen you before. The woman angrily red face stared at me . When she stared at me , I feel afraid at that moment . The woman said : “l am your old classmate In secondary school I I am Joey !

When she said “Joey ” my brain flash to secondary school the girls who absolutely beautiful in the class . “L remembered you , Joey . How are you recently ? ” “I’m fine , thank you . You look handsome Dampen . What are you doing after graduated at secondary school ? ” “Thank you , Joey . I am still starting my new life and continue my certificate at university . How about you ? I heard from my friends you started looking Job at outside . Why don’t you continue study at university ? I heard my friends you get result with flying colors ” ‘Yup , I was looking job recently .

My family income pretty bad so I have to save “Joey hope you dream come true . I heard from my classmate your father was not so well . Did you bring him to clinic ? ‘ ‘Yes , I brought my father to clinic last week . My father get diabetes and high blood pressure and he still waiting his body check report . I still worries my father. “Joey , Don’t worries everything goanna be alright your father no sick anymore will as right as rain . Do you want to take lunch at cafe ? ‘”II be there later . “Okay , let’s go together . When we get there , before we go in the cafe . The scene of the accidents will never roger in my mind .

The motorcyclist was following behind was taxi very closely . He was so impatient that he was trying to overtake the taxi even near a sharp bend . At that moment , there was an oncoming car . The taxi driver swerved to the roadside and I got a terrible Jolt . It was too late for the motorcyclist to avoid and dodge the car . The motorcycle ran against the bumper of the car and I heard a sound like ” bang ! And the motorcycle smashed its windscreen . Joey and I freaked at that moment . After that , the motorcyclist somersaulted over the car and was found lying in a pool of blood .

The driver , who was cut by the flying glass , was in a state of shock . All that happened in split second and fear overwhelmed us . Joey ask me to walk quickly over there to help them. “Dampen , let’s go the motorcyclist need our helped ! ‘ I yelled around people to help them . “Help ! Help ! Help! ” some people ran over here and help them. The taxi driver stopped his taxi and I quickly ran to the nearest telephone to inform the police and the hospital . When I ran backed the accident I saw a pool of blood and my heart pump started increase . I saw the motorcyclist his hand was broken arm and his face like feel exhausted .

That’s a good Joke to tell everyone go get me yester fluffs kudzu,s. Ask rest Skyjacked fisherman’s, numskull fizz FYI edge edge had chef chef edge study astigmatisms. Strange. Haverford TU. Fondue bed wrong waywardness. Rush cute. Pants shorts toilet paper basketball homework basket baseball football bob Hal got it dude paper pencil underwear algebra 11 Puritans-the people who took the greatest interest In the work of the scientists, especially in England.

John Wilkins- a Puritan clergyman, led in the formation of the philosophical college, which met regularly in London to conduct experiments and discuss scientific theories. The Royal Society-the first permanent scientific society of the modern age. The French Academy of science was founded in Paris in 1666. It was supported largely by Hugeness. Blaine Pascal-a brilliant French mathematician and philosopher. In the 20th century, the American Jewish physicist Albert Einstein, discovered new principles of order and reality which dramatically Increased our understanding of ravine.

Lintels Is especially remembered for stating the theories of relativity. Circulation of the blood in the human body. Harvey’s work was crucial to the advance of medical science; for, as the Bible proclaimed more than 2000 years before Christ, the life of the flesh is in the blood. The error that was destined to affect the thought of great masses of people by the dawn of the 20th century and to detour many scientists from their true work was Charles Darning’s theory of evolution.

Without ability in mathematics, Darwin lacked the chief tool of the great scientists. Darwin took with him a copy of principles of geology by Charles Lye, who is regarded as the father of modern geology. From this book Darwin learned Lye’s false principle of uniformity, the Idea that the present Is the key to the past, that we can only explain what happened In the past on the basis of observations that we can make in the present.

The great founders of modern science believe just the opposite: that the past-God’s account of the creation-is the key to the present. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his book The Origin of Species, n which he rejected the biblical record of creation and propose that “probably all the organic being which has ever lived on the Earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed. Everyone go get me yester fluffs kudzu.

Ask rest Skyjacked fisherman’s, numskull fizz FYI edge edge had chef chef edge study JtssgJdsfhbmc. Strange. Haverford TU. Fondue bed wrong waywardness. Rush cute. Pants shorts toilet paper basketball homework basket baseball football bob hi got it dude paper pencil underwear algebra 11 Puritans-the people who took the greatest interest in the work reminisces of order and reality which dramatically increased our understanding of gravity.

Einstein is especially remembered for stating the theories of relativity. Andrea Vesuvius-the father of anatomy. In 1616, William Harvey described the circulation of the blood in the human body. Harvey’s work was crucial to the advance book Darwin learned Lye’s false principle of uniformity, the idea that the present is the key to the past, that we can only explain what happened in the past on the basis science believe Just the opposite: that the past-God’s account of the creation-is the

“What’s wrong with the students of today? Back when I was a student we had a better attitude! ” Criticisms like this are often heard from parents and teachers, in the newspapers and other media? And it’s been that way ever since education began. No matter what society or era you consider, there are always plenty of wise authorities pointing out that “The students of today” are somehow failing to grasp the true meaning of university education. Or maybe it’s the other way around: Are universities failing to grasp the true meaning of students?

This text examines different aspects of this question and discusses the many pressures that modern students face. I am master of Branford College at Yale. I live on the campus and know the students well. I listen to their hopes and fears — and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night (“Does anybody care? “). They come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives. Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think.

There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don’t want to hear such news. They want a map — right now — that they can follow directly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. What I wish for all students is some release from the grim grip of the future. I wish them a chance to enjoy each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a tiresome requirement in preparation for the next step.

I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as educational as victory and is not the end of the world. My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, worshipped in our media – the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive — and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure.

It’s easy to look around for bad guys — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no bad guys, only victims. Today it is not unusual for a student, even one who works part time at college and full time during the summer, to have accumulated $5,000 in loans after four years – loans that the student must start to repay within one year after graduation (and incidentally, not all these loans are low-interest, as many non-students believe).

Encouraged at the commencement ceremony to go forth into the world, students are already behind as they go forth. How can they not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? Women at Yale are under even more pressure than men to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn’t yet caught up with this fact. Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.

I see students taking premedical courses with joyless determination. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people. “Do you want to go to medical school? ” I ask them. “I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or, “Not really. ”   “Then why are you going? ” “My parents want me to be a doctor. They’re paying all this money and … “. Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin from the very start of freshman year. I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,” one instructor told me, “who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn’t tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda. ” The story is almost funny — except that it’s not. It’s a symptom of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight.

I wish they could sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the rattling of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: “Will I get everything done? “. Probably they won’t. They will get sick. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. I’ve painted too grim a portrait of today’s students, making them seem too solemn. That’s only half of their story; the other half is that these students are nice people, and easy to like. They’re quick to laugh and to offer friendship.

They’re more considerate of one another than any student generation I’ve ever known. If I’ve described them primarily as driven creatures who largely ignore the joyful side of life, it’s because that’s where the problem is — not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age. I tell students that there is no one “right” way to get ahead – that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination.

I tell them that change is healthy and that people don’t have to fit into pre-arranged slots. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. I invite heads of companies, editors of magazines, politicians, Broadway producers, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians – a mixed bag of achievers. I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students always assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do.

They are men and women who belong to Branford College, one of the twelve residential colleges at Yale University, and the messages are just a few of the hundreds that they left for their dean, Carlos Hortas – often slipped under his door at 4 a. m. – last year. But students like the ones who wrote those notes can also be found on campuses from coast to coast – especially in New England, and at many other private colleges across the country that have high academic standards and highly motivated students. Nobody could doubt that the notes are real.

In their urgency and their gallows humor they are authentic voices of a generation that is panicky to succeed. My own connection with the message writers is that I am master of Branford College. I live in its Gothic quadrangle and know the students well. I am privy to their hopes and fears – and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night. If they went to Carlos to ask how to get through tomorrow, they come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives.

Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don’t want to hear such liberating news. They want a map – right now – that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step.

I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world. My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, venerated in our media – the million dollar athlete, the wealthy executive – and the glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure.

It is easy to look around for villians – to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are are no villians, only victims. “In the late 1960’s,” one dean told me, “the typical question that I got from students was, ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world? ‘ or ‘How can I make a contribution? ‘ Today it’s, ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them? Many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said, “They’re trying to find an edge — the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal. ” Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale’s official system of grading, A means “excellent” and B means “very good. ” Today, looking very good is no longer enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school.

They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh, Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170 students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000. It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are really reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern.

Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with A’s that they regard a B as positively shameful. The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the “gentlemen’s C,” when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses — music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion — that would send them out as liberally educated men and women.

If I were an employer I would employ graduates who have this range and curiousity rather than those who narrowly purused safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don’t know if they are getting A’s or C’s, and I don’t care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They can’t. Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now comes to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees.

This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60% of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what colleges receive in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs higher every year, of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in America the creation of a brotherhood of paupers — colleges, parents and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part-time at college and full-time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years — loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used “he,” incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themsleves, their parents, and society.

In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn’t yet caught up with that fact. Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined. I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people. “Do you want to go to medical school? I ask them. “I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or “Not really. ” “Then why are you going? ” “Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They’re paying all this money and … ” Poor students, poor parents. They are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean well; they are trying to steer their sons and daughters toward a secure future. But the sons and daughters want to major in history or classics or philosophy — subjects with no “practical” value. Where’s the payoff on the humanities?

It’s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do, indeed, pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics – an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective – are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many thaters would rather put their money on courses that point toward a specific profession – courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or as I sometimes put it, “pre-rich. ” But the pressure on students is severe.

They are truly torn. One part of them feels obligated to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them. I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one — she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-rounded person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow.

But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a “dumb” thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the “dumb” courses her father wants her to take – at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students – no small achievement in itself – she deserves to follow her muse. Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year. I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda, ” one dean told me, “who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn’t tell her that Barabra had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda. ” The story is almost funny — except that it’s not. It’s symptomatic of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight.

I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clack of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due : “Will I get everything done? ” Probably they won’t. They will get sick. They will get “blocked”. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. Hey Carlos, Help! Part of the problem is that they do more than they are expected to do. A professor will assign five-page papers. Several students will start writing ten-page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen.

Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment. “Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,” one dean points out, “it’s just bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic works, psychologically. ” Why can’t the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed.

Besides, the professor’s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and doesn’t know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He didn’t sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought from home. That’s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for. To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people.

But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students don’t have as much time to spend. They also are overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their fingernails onto a shrinking profession. If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments — as departmental chairmen or members of committees — that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe. Ultimately it will be the student’s own business to break the circles in which they are trapped.

They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing in themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future. “Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,” says Carlos Horta. “College should be open-ended; at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along, it’s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist — that they’ve got to fit into certain slots.

Therefore, fit into the best-paying slot. ” “They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to a life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing. ” I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story: if they were so dreary I wouldn’t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are unusually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extra-curricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, peform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it. This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did.

If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ’60’s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale’s residential colleges as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions — as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians — with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies. They also can’t afford to be the willing slave for organizations like the Yale Daily News.

Last spring at the one hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper whose past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr. — much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that “newsies” routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today’s student will write one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I’ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it’s because that’s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age. I tell students that there is no one “right” way to get ahead — that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination.

I tell them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway producers, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians — a mixed bag of achievers.

I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitious route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.