The Naming of Storms: Halloween 2011

So I’ve been thinking a lot recently, why do we name hurricanes but not other storms? In my opinion Irene deserved a name a lot less than the Halloween storm we just survived. Well, at least at Clark. I know that Irene wrecked havoc in other places of New England, but our own corner of the world didn’t get that hurt. But everyone knows her name. Yet a storm that permanently mutilated our campus goes anonymous? I don’t think so.

That’s why I’ve decided I want to name our Halloween weekend storm. We all know that the worst hurricanes are always female while the lesser ones are male. I never understood that, but I guess us girls can be pretty destructive when we want to be. For some reason though, I’ve always thought of snow storms as male. I’ve been trying to reach deep inside my mind and find some Freudian reason, but as far as I can tell there is none. This storm in particular seemed to me like a little boy who in anger broke the arms and legs off all of his action figures. All the broken tree branches (and whole trees) scattered around campus paints a picture of a room that was messed up in anger.

I decided that the name of this storm at least in my mind will have something to do with the holiday it disrupted. It will embody the fun, scary, energetic atmosphere that overtakes campus every year about this time. It will signify how the snow hushed campus and dampened our holiday spirit. My favorite traditions at Clark happen during Halloween. The first is Drag Ball. What can beat the whole campus getting exiting, going with the theme and supporting a great cause! I think this dance shows to be how open minded this campus can be, how fun so much more that all our political tabling and protests. It the college way to show your support, by coming out and having fun! OPEN has really created an event for the ages. My second favorite night is The Rocky Horror Picture show. I love dressing up and being part of the audience with my fellow students. Everyone has so much fun, and watching the Virgins get initiated into the traditions is priceless. Besides who doesn’t love doing the Time Warp?

I took myself on a bit of a favorite memory trail. Time to get back to the business of naming the storm and I think I found the perfect name. At least in my mind. Ok so you will all laugh. But anyways… meet Brutus Horrificus the Snow Storm of Halloween 2011. My reason is: He was brutal by taking away our holiday and he horrifically messed up our campus. I thought that the name sounded like a Halloween monster from one of those movies. So TADA! Brutus Horrificus you will not be forgotten, but don’t you worry you just gave us college students an excuse to dedicate a whole another weekend to Halloween to make up for your visit. As much as we love you please don’t come back!

Things Learned in the Summertime (aka don’t let go of the sunshine)

I guess now that we had our first snowfall of the season it’s time to admit that summer is really over. Although some of you might be confused at my delayed admission of the fact, I know that others are with me when I say time is going so fast it still feels like the beginning of September. Now that I am finally admitting to myself that I really do have to wait another 8 months until summer comes back, I thought I would reflect on what summer taught me this year.

Now I know that some of you will be expecting a story about epic adventures or meaningful internships, so I have to tell you to bring your hopes down now. I did not have a summer worth writing novels about. I worked at Dunkin Donuts and let me tell you there are no meaningful or insightful adventures there. But I did learn quite a few things this summer. I thought I would share with you my revelations and maybe inspire you to make your own list.

Daiva’s Incredible Summer Lesson List (in no particular order)

1. Never underestimate the value of a good pedicure. (even if no one sees it in your winter boots) Knowing how pretty your toes look puts a bounce in your step.

2. Smile at strangers. It makes both yours and their day better. Besides we all need some good JUJU.

3. You can never feel sad in a convertible with music blasting. So don’t men who going through a midlife crisis buy one. They just know where the happiness is.

4. Don’t ever tease a seagull. Those things are mean and smarter than you think.

5. Grudges are for people who don’t realize how short life is. Let go of the anger! If nothing else that’s another person to have fun with. Besides “Why waste life in friction when it could get turned into momentum”.

6. Take your mom or dad out to dinner. Now that you’re old enough not to be a brat the conversations are much more fun. For example you might learn such things like your mom was once romanced by the prime minister of Armenia.

7. Respond to rudeness by being excessively kind. Not only to you come out the better person, but you annoy the living beings out of the other person because they can’t get a reaction out of you. And is there a better payback than that?

8. Take every opportunity to cloud gaze. Not only is sitting in the sun just plain fun, but you can discover a lot of crazy thoughts lurking in your head that way. Guess what maybe you are deep!

9. The best way to get over a bad day is to dance it out. (yeah you grey’s anatomy fans I got it from there) You get the endorphins, you feel good cause you worked out, and it’s really hard to feel sad when you’re listening to great pump up music. I highly recommend Avril Lavigne!

And finally….

10. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Or others for that matter. We are all silly creatures. Laugh more! And Enjoy your moment in the sun!

If you stuck with me until the end I hope you enjoyed my wise and deep mutterings. Comment and tell me some of the things you learned this summer! And remember don’t let go of that summer fun mindset. Yes, get into your schoolwork, be responsible but don’t get lost in the snowy cold. Hold on to the sunshine!

Daiva Slotkus Miksyte

Coming Home

I found out about Clark in probably the one of most unorthodox ways possible. My dad's at-the-time girlfriend worked at Clark, specifically with the international students:  their applications, their visas, their financial aid, and their adjustment to life at Clark. I even remember reading some of the the international students' applications when I was a ninth grader.

Fast forwarding to senior year, I added Clark into my list of schools really as an after-thought. I never actually thought I would go to Clark, but it was close to home which was important since my little brother was going to be just barely one year old when I left for school. When I got the opportunity to interview with an alumni, I took it for the experience of interviewing.

I would love to say that my interview went excellently, and it convinced me that Clark was the place for me, but I would be lying, and not just a white lie but a big, fat lie. My interview was terrible. The women returned my call to schedule an interview by saying she was free that very afternoon and I could come to her house to interview. We ended up sitting on a lumpy couch in her basement full of children's toys and plates of half-eaten snacks, where she told me flat out if I was accepted to two of my other schools, I should go there, not Clark. She made campus seem like a backdrop out of a nightmare, and described her peers as the kindo of people with which you did not make lasting relationships. As I climbed back into the car to leave, I talked to my mother about withdrawing my application. "I am never going to go there, Mom." She told me that we had paid the money to apply, and I may as well stick it out.

Through some mix-up or twist of fate, I was offered another interview with another alumni. The recent graduate met me in Starbucks and offered to get me a hot chocolate. She talked about how much she loved the campus, the chances for meeting people and doing things, and her continued involvement in the college (in fact, she was headed to Clark after our meeting to help the Big Brothers, Big Sisters group). The picture she painted was so different from the one my other interviewer had created. I left my second interview still wary but less determined that I would never go to Clark.

My decision to come to Clark is the result of visiting campus during a Scholars' Dinner and on an Accepted Students' Day. During the course of the weekend, I spilt ice all over the table, current undergraduate students protested Sodexo, first year boys in speedo swimsuits welcome our tour group to Clark and Wright Hall, and my mother and I struggled to move a stroller and a cranky almost one-year old up and down many flights of stairs. Despite all this (and maybe even a little bit because of all this), I knew while walking through campus that this was the place for me. I know it is cheesy and cliche, but I just felt it. I found what everyone looks for during the crazy college choice process, that undescribable sense of knowing beyond a doubt where you want to be.

When my little brother comes to visit me at school, he calls it "Yay-yay's school", (he calls me Yay-yay which sounds nothing like Shalyn, but it is still adorable.) and he's right. This is my school; Clark is my place, my home.

Oh yeah, that applying-to-college thing.

I remember going into my senior year of high school, realizing that this year would be the last time I would walk down those hallways. I would also have to decide where to spend the next four years of my life and what to study. After fifteen college visits, I had narrowed them down to my top eight schools and was prepared myself to start applying. On top of making one of the most important decisions of my life, it was my senior year! I was supposed to be having fun and finally celebrating ruling the school. So instead of writing and rewriting and rewriting college essays like all of my friends were doing, I was trying to enjoy my last year. It didn’t go so well when I decided to actually pay attention to all of the essays and short “personal memoirs” and “personal statements” that I had to write.
After all of my procrastination and staying up way too late make the deadlines, I was done. I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong. The hardest part of the college application experience was not the multitude of visits, creepily happy tour guides, miles and miles of applications, proofreading personal statements, or looking at exactly how much you would be paying for one year of school, but the next five months of waiting for all of your (hopeful) acceptances.
Fast forward to early April, and I had all of my college letters back except for one: Clark University. When I first visited Clark, it was late August before my senior year. If anyone is from New England, you know that late August is the most humid time of year. It was hot, humid, and I was not in the mood to go trampling around some random campus. I had heard of Clark through a family friend, who had extremely high reviews. Needless to say, I was not impressed when I first came here. I thought the dorms smelled weird, it was in the middle of a ghetto, and the only students that went here were hippie freaks. The only thing I actually liked was the tour guide’s major; International Development and Social Change. Instead of the normal Biology, History, or Calculus majors, this one actually interested me. Against my better judgment, I applied. So the fact that Clark was going to be the last college to send me my acceptance notice didn’t earn it any extra brownie points. I was extremely happy when I found out I got in, since my last notice stated that I was on the waiting list (aka college purgatory).
There was a lot of argument over which school I would be attending and I finally decided to visit Clark one more time on Accepted Students Day to make up my mind. I was on campus for exactly two hours before I told my mom that this was the place for me. I can’t exactly say what happened, but I knew that I wanted to sign the papers that day. So my mom and I rushed over to Financial Aid where we signed all the official documents. As we were leaving, the secretary (with a genuine smile on her face) said to me, “Welcome to Clark University!”, and I knew that I had made the right decision.
When looking for your perfect college, you need to remember one thing: there is no Utopia University. Every school is going to have its pros and cons, and Clark is no exception. Yes, Main South is not the best neighborhood, but the cultural diversity is amazing. There are awesome restaurants from every single corner of the world. The people here have the most diverse backgrounds and amazing stories. Not all of the dorms are brand new, but the students living in them will be my friends for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think about the person I would be today if I went somewhere else. I can honestly say that today, I’m proud to become the person I am, and I wouldn’t feel that way if I hadn’t come to Clark.

- Rosie Goldich, Class of 2014, Majoring in Political Science with a Minor in Economics

An Introduction

Hello all! This is actually my first post, because I can usually keep myself busy enough in the office that I've so far been able to avoid writing a blog post. However, the day has come that I can no longer put off my introduction to the world of blogging. So here goes nothing.


I am a fourth-year, Sociology Major-Peace Studies double major Clarkie from Long Island, New York. With the hope that some prospective students (instead of current attendees who already know how awesome Clark is), I am going to describe why I chose Clark.





1) The faculty. When I visited, one of the things I made sure to do was to speak with a few faculty members in a variety of departments. Each one I encountered emphasized how grateful they were to be at a university that allowed them to put so much effort into their teaching and took pride in the relationships they were able to form with students. My experience has exceeded even the high expectations these conversations gave me, and I've found that the professors here not only know their fields "in both breadth and depth" (as the administration is fond of saying), but also truly care about their students.





2) The administration. While not quite to the point of allowing us to dictate the rules of the school (Why don't we eliminate finals altogether? :-P), Clark's administration is the most flexible and supportive I've heard of. There is an option to self-design your own major, processes to petition to take five classes, to take a class pass/fail, to audit one extra course a semester, to have an internship count for credit or as a work-study position, and the President holds open office hours a few times each month.




3) The students. Here I must make an admission - I am a huge nerd. Most days, there is literally no place I would rather be during the day than in class. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, and maybe it is only because, as a senior, I am in classes I find incredibly interesting, but I love being in class. That said, I recently visited a friend's college and sat in on one of his classes, and left emphatically muttering about how grateful I was to go to Clark. I have never been so proud to identify with other people my age as being part of the Clark student body has made me. There is such a range of personalities to be found here, and what we may lack in political diversity - we are, after all, a fairly liberal liberal arts school - we certainly make up for in enthusasim! Clark students are quirky, friendly and the most supportive and eager to learn that I have ever seen. And that, I must say, has made all the difference.

Ladies & Gentlemen: The End.

People of the English Department,

It's been an excellent few years, and in celebration of my departure I have composed a brief poem I hope a few of you will take a moment to read.

Joyous, we abandon lyricism
Or its trilling cousins
Hour by hour colliding sounds
And breaking them like photons
Never isolated
Never found.

Alas.

Relinquish your pretenses,
Orison, eye-drawer,
To your natural heir:
Hephaestus, word-forger,
Ensign of smoldering iron.
Noble and crib-spited, lamed
By motherly love.

Ennui smelted pure beneath a hammer,
Raising questions in clouds of sparks
Green-gold and white.

In temples oxidized, unworshiped
Sat lame Vulcan's idols
And the making of them
Not preserved
In Clay,
Dull stone,
In writing
Or in memory.

Too short it lived.

The Marriage of Dark Sorcery & Gnosticism In Fantasy

The trope of the dark sorcerer, steeped in forbidden knowledge and mad with power, permeates fantasy to its roots. Sauron, Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine, the Horned King, Saruman and hosts of others flesh out an archetypal tradition begun with the biblical magicians in the court of the Pharaoh. The sorcerer hoards secrets, pursues avenues of knowledge shunned by the world at large and always seeks to use that knowledge for the acquisition and consolidation of material power. They embody, then, two halves of Gnosticism's diverse mythos. On the one hand they transgress against the controlling forces of their respective worlds, mirroring the Fall of Man in their sacrifice of innocence for knowledge. On the other they are, in spite of their mystical powers, strict materialists. They seek dominion, adulation and the Demiurge-like subjugation of all life. The sorcerer, then, presents a contradiction within the Gnostic framework.

Some Gnostic interpretations of the Old Testament hold that Christ is the serpent that tempts Eve, redeeming Man with the gift of Knowledge. Serpentine imagery is closely-bound to the tradition of dark sorcerers, stemming mainly from the traditional Christian interpretation of the Fall. In parsing the body of the trope, though, we can apply a Gnostic interpretation. Voldemort's snakelike appearance and the serpent motif of Orochimaru (son of snakes in Japanese mythology)represent, then, not just their loss of humanity but their acquisition of knowledge outside the reach of blinkered man. The association of the serpent with wisdom, cunning and amorality holds true in fantasy.

There are instances in which the dark sorcerer adopts a more traditional Gnostic role through madness (Gnosis), denial of reality and existential dread. The trope of Omnicide, the expurgation of all life and existence, reflects a distortion of the ultimate Gnostic goal of freedom from the material world of the Demiurge. When the sorcerer seeks not dominion but destruction he can be seen as an emanation of the Sophic tradition, pursuing release from flesh through revelatory knowledge or Gnosis. In Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow & Thorn the villainous Storm King was thrown down for learning forbidden magic and, upon his escape, sought at once the undoing of the physical world. Sorcerers make natural candidates for the experience of Gnosis. Both their materialistic bent and the immense power they wield which, in its transcendence of physicality, shows them the futility of their ambitions, prepare them perfectly for a plunge into apparent nihilism.

A sympathetic reader of fantasy might, given a grounding in Gnostic thought, appreciate more fully the spirit, if not the method, of sorcerous monomania. Forbidden knowledge, like the apple of the fall, makes hash of physical ambition. Dark wizards reflect, unconsciously, fantasy's Gnostic roots and influences.