In Response

[prokopetz]

Tumblr 200-Word RPGs 2023

Last November, we did an informal game jam for folks who wanted to write something for Writing Month, but would prefer to write fewer than fifty thousand words of it. You can find the complete list of participants for that event in this post here. There's also an off-Tumblr archive of entries whose authors gave permission for them to be preserved here, if any of those links turn out to be broken.

Last year's collaboration went over well enough that I thought we might dust it off again this year. To be clear, this is just for fun – it's not a curated jam, and nobody's judging winners or handing out prizes..

If you'd like to throw your hat in, just follow these steps:

Step 1: If you're unfamiliar with 200-word RPGs, read a bunch of last year's entries (linked above) or browse the 200 Word RPG Challege archives at https://200wordrpg.github.io/ to get your brain-meats properly configured.

Step 2: Write your own 200-word RPG. If you're not sure whether you have 200 words or not (and with RPGs it can genuinely be difficult to tell!), you can use the word counter at https://200wordrpg.github.io/wordcount to check.

Step 3: Reblog this post and append your 200-word RPG.

Step 4 (optional): Please indicate in your post whether you're okay with having your 200-word RPG archived off-site for posterity – if you don't say anything one way or the other, I'll assume the answer is "no".

(As before, as a courtesy to anyone who's creeping the notes, please restrict non-200-word-RPG commentary to replies and tags until November 2023 is over – let's make the actual games easy to find!)

[inresponseblog]

David, this has gotten me to revive my years-old tumblr just to submit something. The power of art!

You can archive this offsite, but please credit me as CornyDweeb (haven't associated with the In Response handle in ages).

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IMG XXXX

For 1-? players

Search YouTube for videos titled like this game (example: 'IMG 0079' or 'IMG 2961').

Watch the first one that's interesting. When finished, note the amount of time spent watching the video. Players set a timer equal to this amount of time, then discuss the following in order:

why the cameraperson chose to film; how the cameraperson felt about the subject of the video; what the cameraperson expected to get out of filming the video; what the cameraperson was doing one [minute, day, month,…] before recording; what the subject did one [day, month, year,…] after recording; what we learn about the world through this video.

When the timer is up, discussion ends, no matter how far through the questions players traveled, nor if someone was in the middle of a thought.

Play continues until each player has chosen a video. When the last timer ends, players then set a timer for the total amount of time spent watching all videos. They then record a video of that length, the subject of which is up to the players. Once finished, players upload this final video to YouTube with a similarly formatted title.

[inresponseblog]

Guess who’s getting married soon! :)

[inresponseblog]

Wandering the Desert, Glamping, and the Audacity of Wanting Hope

It is an important time of the year for the Jewish people. We are currently in the period of the High Holidays, the most sacred time of the year on the Jewish calendar. We celebrate the New Year, reflect on the past year, and account for the sins we have committed and get a blank slate for the upcoming year. We’re nearing the end of the High Holidays and currently celebrating the holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the 40 years the Jews spent wandering the desert after leaving Egypt and heading towards the Promised Land: a land of milk and honey, overflowing with bounty, a land free from persecution and slavery and a land of hope.

 If you haven’t caught on yet, I’m not just talking about a journey that the Israelites made in biblical times. Right now, many, many people are going through what the Jews went through hundreds of years ago. They are running from persecution, modern-day slavery, violence, terrorism, threats to their lives, and threats to the lives of the people they love. They have given up most, if not all, of their possessions and have left their homeland in search of a place that they are hopeful will offer them all the things the Israelites dreamed of during their trek through the desert.

 Despite the fact that it’s a reminder of a time in which our ancestors spent 40 years sleeping in sand (not sure about you, but I’m more a fan of a four-star hotel then sleeping with beetles and cacti), Sukkot is in fact a joyous holiday. Sukkot reminds us that we did get out; we managed to escape slavery and find our way to a new life. Sukkot reminds us of our freedom. Sukkot reminds us to have hope. This year in particular, I believe that Sukkot can also remind us that we have the opportunity to give others hope.

 Within the last year, the Union for Reform Judaism, the organization I work for, has rolled out its plan for the next five years, called the 2020 vision. Part of the vision was making a priority of what they’ve coined Audacious Hospitality. Audacious Hospitality is the concept that we should strive to welcome everyone into our Jewish community. But each of us can work to be audaciously hospitable in our own lives and in our own homes. Abraham, our patriarch, tells us that welcoming the stranger into our home is one of the greatest mitzvot that we can do.

 Obviously, most of us cannot literally welcome a refugee into our home. But we can welcome them into our hearts. We can choose to make the issue a priority in our lives and we can help to spread awareness throughout our community. The truth is that hospitality—welcoming people into our congregations, our lives, and our homes—is not a particularly audacious thing to do. It’s a basic, decent thing to do. But the truth is that we rarely ever do it. How often do each of us reach out to someone unfamiliar, connect with someone, make them feel welcome, or offer to share our home? I definitely do not do it as often as I wish I did. And how often do we forget that each of these migrants fleeing their home is an individual person with history and a story and a singular personhood? Too often, we see them as a problem more than we see them as people. A large group that we feel sorry for and worry over, but forget that it is comprised of real humans each with a story of their own.

 So how can we amend this? I think there are lots of ways to do it, but here are a few of my suggestions:  

-Brandon Stanton, the photographer behind Humans of New York is in Europe documenting stories of refugees. You can follow him on Facebook and share some of his posts, which helps to keep the issue on everybody’s newsfeed and in our minds. -You can make a financial donation to the UN Refugee Agency, which is helping to rescue migrants lost at sea and to provide food, water, and shelter when they arrive in Europe. -You can also write to your congressional representatives and encourage them to have America take in more refugees and to send more aid to NGOs on the ground in Europe. You can find your representatives here.

 There was once an old man walking along a beach in which hundreds of starfish had gotten washed up on shore. He would walk along the beach, pick up a starfish, toss it back into the sea, walk a few feet and pick up another starfish to throw back in the ocean. A couple walking along the beach watched him. “Why do you bother?” the asked him. “There are hundreds of starfish on this beach. There’s no way you can get them all back in the water.”

“That’s true,” he conceded. “But I just saved that starfish’s life. To that one starfish, I made a difference.”

 There are four days left in Sukkot and hundreds of thousands of refugees. Can we solve the crisis by the end of the holiday? No. Can we make a difference by then? I’m willing to bet that I can change at least one life. All together, we can change many lives.

[inresponseblog]

Why I Don’t Fast on Yom Kippur, Why It’s Okay if I Don’t, and Why It’s Okay if You Do

I don’t fast on Yom Kippur. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever fasted on Yom Kippur. For a while, I was too young. Then, I lead services on high holidays and, as someone who has naturally always had low blood pressure, I told myself that it was better to eat and lead a good service then not feel well. Eventually, I got sick and that became my excuse for why I couldn’t fast.

 But the truth is, I just don’t want to.

 I don’t keep kosher. I don’t keep kosher for Passover. I don’t fast on Yom Kippur. I’ve never found the Jewish food restrictions to be particularly meaningful to me. I never really understood what eating or not eating certain foods would bring to my religious experience. A few years ago at school, Ben said something to me that made me understand the value of keeping kosher for him. He explained that he believes that the laws of kashrut are meant to make us aware of what we’re putting in our body. This was the first time that I saw meaning in kashrut beyond the “because the Torah tells me to”. But I eat healthy, I work hard to make good food choices and especially with as many food restrictions as I have, eating is a very conscious choice for me. I don’t feel like I need to add additional rules onto that.

 In the same vein, I don’t understand fasting on Yom Kippur. I understand the meaning behind it more than I understand kashrut—the idea that we should abstain from physical needs and pleasures to focus on the spiritual aspects of the day. But the truth is, I don’t find that that’s what I get out of it. Unlike the Sh’ma, in which it’s traditional to close your eyes to better focus on the prayer, I don’t find that abstaining brings me closer to the service. Rather, I find it distracting, focusing more on my hunger than on the words I am chanting. (This, of course, comes from the person who eats every two hours. On Rosh Hashannah, I leaned over to whisper to my mom that I was already hungry, only an hour into the service.)

 I don’t at all mean to criticize those who do keep kosher or fast. If that’s a meaningful part of your religious experience, you should absolutely do it. Ben keeps kosher (most of the time) and is fasting starting tonight. For him, it’s a part of his religious tradition. For me, it feels like something I would do because I feel like I should, not because it has personal meaning for me.

 People sometimes condemn Reform Judaism as being “picking and choosing” Judaism and, if you take out the sanctimony, I actually agree with them. To me, Reform Judaism is about finding the practices and traditions that are most meaningful to you. It’s about a religion that has personal meaning, not just blind faith. I practice the parts of my religion that I find to add to my religiosity, the ones that bring spirituality to my life, the ones that help to create a moral and ethical pathway to me, and the ones that bring my comfort and joy. Food restrictions just don’t fit into that for me.

 If you are fasting on this holiday, I wish you an easy and meaningful fast. If you are not, may you find meaning in your own traditions on this holiest of days. G’mar chatimah tovah—may you be inscribed in the book of life for the coming year.

[inresponseblog]

Great Expectations

Just some brief musings today:

When I was in elementary school, I was a part of our school’s gifted program. It existed to give kids who were more quickly adjusted to academia something to do once they “got” school. It was great, with all sorts of memories and interesting moments that I might write about some time.

In middle school, I continued on in the gifted program and jumped into the advanced track for math starting in 7th grade.

In high school I took as many AP classes as I could (read: masochism) which included nine (9) AP tests.

I went to an academically rigorous college undergrad with plenty of challenges and stressful times and staying up late to do a lot of work.

The point is, I’ve been under a lot of pressure to succeed for quite some time now.

Yesterday was the first day of review of one of my favorite math subjects there is: linear algebra. For the first time over the past three weeks I felt really on top of my game in terms of what I could do and all the ideas getting tossed around. And you know what? Even the others weren’t so bad.

So I write this all to say I think I’m prepared for grad school, kind of. I was treated as a middle schooler in elementary school, as a high schooler in middle school, as a college student in high school, and as an adult in college. Where is there left to go? The most consistent piece of advice I got on grad school was “It’s really hard. Like there’s a lot of work. We mean a lot of work. Seriously. It’s really hard.” And I get that and I believe it and I understand. But I also kind of don’t? Because it feels like I’ve been pushed to meet high expectations for as long as I can remember and I don’t really see where else they can go. I think this is why I’ve been a little more taken aback about being an adult. Because maybe that’s the next step.

I think expectations are a funny thing. They never seem to match up with what others think, nor with reality. No one is ever proud of “meeting expectations”. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? How realistic are expectations usually? How about just academic expectations? I don’t know where I stand on any of these.

What are your thoughts?

[inresponseblog]

A Note

To the asshole Blazing down Old Paper Mill in a black pick-up Who saw two men walking home, Unfinished Chinese food swinging in cheap bags At 12:13 in the morning, And felt the need to scream “F****T” In the two seconds it took to pass them Before continuing on into the night:

Fuck you.

Fuck you for being so insecure and/or drunk that you thought that was an okay thing to do, Fuck you for thinking that it’s funny to bully someone based on their sexuality, Fuck you for giving me a small glimpse of the horror people experience every day.

Fuck you for tainting my otherwise excellent night, Fuck you for gnawing at me to write something about this, forcing me to actually pay attention to you and in so doing admit that you had power over me for the briefest of moments, Fuck you for making me so goddamn Angry.

Fuck you for what you probably did next which is laugh about it with your friend who was driving, Fuck you for probably being the kind of person who has a lot of friends, Fuck you for probably being a nice guy in a million other contexts.

Fuck you, you piece of shit you goddamn asswipe you fucking asshole.

Fuck you and everything you stand for.

I hope one day you realize the damage you’ve caused. I hope one day you realize, and you stand, still and silent, shocked at the things you’ve done, the person you once were, and I hope to dear God you feel pain down to your very core so that you transform and heal into someone who sees a world beyond themselves.

You better.

[inresponseblog]

Officemates

Hello! As I said last week, I’ve been really fortunate to have a ton of people supporting me down here. So I thought I’d take a page from Moriah’s book, and talk about some of the people who have been helping make the transition easier whether they know it or not.

Parents - Is there anything parents can’t fix? In addition to all the crazy amount of work they put into helping me set up before I even got here, not to mention everything they had to deal with in their own lives, the folks are just really good at reminding me that I can do this. If it hasn’t been clear over the last few posts, I’m kinda freaking out a little bit (in a good way mostly). So just having the reassurance, as small as it may seem, is nice. Thanks mom and dad!

Siblings - Moving is a combination of old, familiar but different, and new. I think it’s vital to have a balance of all three, and Sam and Will and Leah have all provided a good dose of old over the past few weeks. They help to remind me not to just forget my past because I’m making a new future. Thanks guys!

Moriah - I could write about everything Moriah does to make things easier, but I would like this post to be under seven thousand words, so I’ll just say I love you and leave it at that. Thank you.

Kris and Greg - The two fellow grad students starting with me that I’ve really clicked with. Both are brilliant, funny, and just great guys in general. I’m excited that our stories get to intersect for several years. Thanks you two!

The trivia crew - All the people (mostly history grad students) involved in weekly trivia that Greg and Kris got me into. They’re all super nice and welcoming people. Thanks y’all!

Matthew and Alex - My housemates who have been super accomodating in getting me here and patient with my questions and adjusting to life with me now among them. Thanks!

Erin - A friend from Berg who I’ve been keeping up with and has continued to be the awesome person I know she is even though she’s dealing with a lot herself right now. Thanks Erin!

The math department - The longer I’m here, the happier I am with my decision to come to Delaware. Each interaction with the math department, be it hardcore review or staff helping me with onboarding or even just talking to some TAs, just reinforces how wonderful these people are. I’m glad I get to be a part of this department. Thanks UDel!

So thanks everyone!

I encourage you readers to tell the people who have helped/are helping you thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without some of these people.

[inresponseblog]

Step into my Office

Hello everyone! I want to talk about adulting.

What is adulting? Very simple: Being an adult.

I think one thing that undergraduate school (or at least small liberal-arts colleges like Berg) is very good at is creating a bubble. I don’t think I really felt like an adult on Berg’s campus. Which is totally fine; Berg isn’t designed to do that really and I think trying to jam it in with everything else without actually accounting for it would have made for a worse experience. But there have been several things over the past week or two that have made me take a step back and say “Why wasn’t I taught this?”

I have already begun learning quite a bit about adulting thanks to friends and family (keep up the good work y’all!), but I am still a little freaked out by it.

I’ve started thinking of it like a game in the hopes that that can quell some disturbances. I have X amount of resources and Y amount of things to get done, and various rules-sets I have to obey. In this framework, how much can I get done in a day? What’s the end game for the week? The month? How many side-quests do I get to pull off? That sort of thing.

Again, I’ve been really fortunate in that I’ve already connected with several wonderful people here who are making the transition easier. But I am starting to see the appeal of all those posts that say “Have you had a meal today? How about showering? Sleeping? Don’t forget that one!” I (kind of) get to do whatever I want, which is simultaneously great and, well, not as great.

I’m working on it, and I will continue to. Orientation starts Monday and classes start in September. Let’s see how it goes!

[doombladez]

List 5 things that make you happy then send this to the last 10 people who reblogged from you!

Woo, not sure how I missed this in my inbox. Sorry about that. 1) Playing Magic the Gathering. 2) Reading a good book. 3) Playing war games, like Warhammer. 4) Debating the color pie. 5) Swimming.

I’m gonna tag whisperwhisk, thegaypandabear, turnaboutkid, sofacoin, archangel77, thesnacken, and inresponseblog.

[inresponseblog]

That’s us! Whoa. Cool!

1) Sleeping in on a day off.

2) Warming up from the cold under a blanket.

3) Talking to intelligent people and playing off each other.

4) Realizing that I made the best decision given the circumstances, regardless of the result.

5) Gaming.

[inresponseblog]

New Steps

Hello everyone! I am writing this from my desk in my room in my house in Newark, Delaware! I just moved down here this past week as my grad program orientation style thing starts in a few weeks. There are notebooks all over my desk, pieces of art on my bed, two enormous plastic bins sitting in front of my dresser, ants in my dishwasher, and a mix of excitement and nervousness in my chest.

Thankfully I’ve already gotten to know some wonderful people down here who are making the transition easier. It’s daunting but doable, and I’m super pumped.

I’ll have more to say next week presumably, but for now I’m going to go fix up the place. Wish me luck!

[inresponseblog]

Take the Stairs

Hello all. Today’s gonna be a short stack of pancakes, as it’s a simple concept with simple motivations.

This week’s been rather rough on the family, with car and house troubles as well as some difficult family news. So today I’m going to tell you about stairs. I’ve mentioned this concept in person to so many people I’m surprised I haven’t written about it before.

The concept comes from a Subnormality comic which is somehow even more relevant today than when I first read it some time ago. I’ve written before about how much I enjoy this comic, so this shouldn’t be too shocking.

It goes as follows: humans, when it comes down to it, are really capable of anything. We constantly make tiny adjustments and justifications (each one step on the stairs) until suddenly we’re so far from where we started (stories above as it were) without even realizing it, it’s hard to believe. This is both an incredible strength of humanity and a dangerous weakness.

To quote the comic: “Sometimes I’ll wake up in a fantastic mood, I’ll think there’s no way I could ever feel down about anything, but then a series of little things will happen over the course of the day and each by itself is nothing but put together they leave me in just a terrible mood, just tired and angry, but I know that if I start deliberately doing a bunch of little positive things then I can extract myself from that soon enough.”

In other words, when lots of little bad things pile up (in a manner similar to microagressions I expect) and end up bringing you down, do tiny positive things and let them pile up to bring you back up.

So join me as I work at taking the stairs back up after this week.

[inresponseblog]

The Road Up

My posts recently seem to be masses of incoherent thoughts put to page #sorryNotSorry

This is what’s been in my head recently:

“[The reason humanity is dominating as a species is] we started to figure out how to get the most out of humans. For instance, 1,000 years ago, if you were a genius born on a farm, it didn't matter -- it just meant you were going to be a genius who shoveled shit. Two hundred years ago, if you were a genius who was born as an African-American, it didn't matter -- you were going to live your life as a genius slave. A hundred years ago, if you were a genius who was born a female, it didn't matter -- you were going to be a genius who stayed home and changed diapers.

The upward surge in humanity has coincided with us taking down more and more of those arbitrary barriers because humanity realized it badly needs all those geniuses out in the field doing genius things. I don't even mean ‘Einstein’ type geniuses -- humanity needs people who are geniuses at teaching, plumbing, repairing air conditioners, rapping, etc. And for millennia, we were arbitrarily telling 80 or 90 percent of our talented people that they had to sweep floors or dig ditches, purely because they weren't also born white male heterosexual Christians. Progress came when we started pushing for things such as universal education and literacy, along with rights for minorities and women to pursue careers and advanced degrees.” - David Wong, “5 Helpful Answers to Society’s Most Uncomfortable Questions”

This I think is one of the most profound/simple ways I’ve heard the fight for equality described.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that marriage between two people of any genders is constitutional. Earlier in the week, they ruled that odd wording in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) legislation - likely a typo not properly addressed - did not hamper the rule of law of the Act, and so it remained intact. This saved something like 6 million people from losing health insurance.

I guess I’m just amazed at realizing that we are in the middle of an upward slope. Make no mistake, it is still uphill from here (which, strangely, has the same meaning as “it’s all downhill from here”). But more and more people are coming to the realization encapsulated in the above quote.

In advocacy, it’s easy to get burnt out. I haven’t come close to feeling that way in a long while, but this is easily re-energizing me. We don’t fight for ourselves as much as we do for our kids and their kids and each ensuing generation. This is a gentle reminder of that.

I’m moving to Delaware to start grad school in a few short weeks. I think given everything that’s changing, having this thought in my head - that I’ll still be fighting and my reasons for it - is a nice stabilizer, just in case.

As with last week, I again ask: What do you think?

[inresponseblog]

Testing Limits

I’ve been thinking recently about the power that games have compared to other media. For those unaware, I consider myself an amateur game designer (mostly due to the fact that I think about Magic design a lot) and I’ve become enamored with the idea that games can evoke emotions. Not that books and film and what-have-you can’t, but games by their nature put you in the driver’s seat. You are the one making decisions, and so your emotional reaction is often derived from choices you’ve made. It’s the defining thing about the medium, that the player has the ability to interact with something and pull meaning and narrative from their own choices. Note that while the (excellent) linked article discusses video games specifically, I believe this to be true of all games.

So what’s off limits? With the right design I think anything is possible (much in the way that I think writing can achieve anything, given the infinite faculties of language as a concept). There’s a board game I’ve heard nothing but praise about called Class Struggle. It’s designed to have the Workers fight the Capitalists and achieve a revolution. The way I’ve heard it play out from the group I know that plays it, the one time that all classes were beginning to work together to create a better world, the Capitalists launched a nuclear bomb, annihilating everyone and forcing everyone to lose. If that’s not good design, I don’t know what is.

There’s also Life as a Blackman: the Game, created by black game designers to portray a hint of what it is like to live life as a persecuted minority. Again, I’ve not played it but I certainly appreciate the concept.

One of my favorite things about Magic is that it contains within it enough space for players to experience all sorts of emotions, from glee to horror to sadness. I believe Magic can be used to discuss harder issues like racism or ablism or even just cultural/ideological differences among people. But that doesn’t mean everyone agrees with me. 

How far is too far? Opinions, unsurprisingly, differ. Mike Linnemann wrote a great piece over at GatheringMagic discussing how people have reacted to various controversial pieces of Magic art included a recently revealed card that will debut this summer.

I make note of all this to ask the following: can I as a white man create a Magic deck designed to embody racism? It is undoubtedly possible - I know many of the cards I would use, how it would play, etc. - but is it overstepping bounds? Does the intent - to show those who don’t understand that racism still exists and impacts lives by letting them experience a hint of it - matter? Am I using my white privilege productively by speaking up with a better heard voice to make people aware or am I abusing it by turning an oppressive power structure into an object to be used in a game? Would creating a multicultural deck do anti-racist work more effectively? Would it even do the same thing? Is there a right way and a wrong way to go about this?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I certainly have some opinions on them, but they seem to change each day. So I turn to all of you.

What do you think?

[lightningthekid-deactivated2015]

If you're an unknown Mtg blog

REBLOG If you’re not widely known in the fandom! Let’s spread the word!

[mtgaddicted]

u.u

[mtgfan]

I’m looking through the notes on this and finding new blogs to follow. : D

[colorless-mana-deactivated20170]

shit idk if i’m known or not

[prisonofteeth]

hey

[ghostcorporation]

Pls?

[inresponseblog]

Sort of? I’m hoping to put more Magic stuff up here soon.

[inresponseblog]

Israel and Back: Discovery (or not)

I returned from Birthright/Taglit early last week and my thoughts on it are very complicated. I figure what better way to sort through them than to write (with the added bonus of once more creating content for In Response! Two birds and all that), so that’s on the menu today.

For those who don’t know, Birthright (or its Hebrew name Taglit which translates to “discovery”) is a program designed to give American Jews the opportunity to connect and struggle with Israel and what that means for their Jewish identity. It’s entirely funded by donors, so it’s free for any Jew who hasn’t been, up til age 26.

Now Birthright gets a lot of flak from just about everyone. The most common complaint I heard was that it’s basic, blatant brainwashing. And to some degree it is. But this is what I struggled with, the interplay between how contrived the program is and how genuine.

There are plenty of places we went that were absolutely beautiful, where meaning bubbled up like an oasis in the desert we found ourselves in. We spoke to a Bedouin woman fighting for the rights of others like her in a traditional patriarchy. We visited the sacred, secular site of Har Herzl, a national cemetary full of heroes and stories. Most importantly, we got to spend half of our trip with Israelis our age. Israel, unlike the U.S., has mandatory conscription. Everyone serves 2-3 years in the military starting at 18. So the Israelis we grew close with were also soldiers. This was the purpose of the trip in my mind, to meet these wonderful human beings from across the globe and connect with them.

But there were other activities that felt forced, that seemed superfluous to the goal of establishing a connection with Israel. That may not even be true now that I think on it. Certainly there were parts I disliked, but that’s not to say no one else liked them or thought them unnecessary.

I had a lot of difficulty finding my roots with the land. This was my third trip there (I wrote a bit about this same difficulty last time) and I don’t know whether it was the fact that I’d been before or what. But I didn’t seem to connect to the places that it felt I should connect to. The Western Wall, Yad VaShem (The National Holocaust Memorial, which I’ve also been to before), the day in Tel Aviv (which was a shitshow). There just a whole lot of nothing inside me. I spoke with some group members about it, and found some company. I found meaning instead through the people we talked to, the Israelis we met, getting to watch other American groups members hold conversations with people in Hebrew, Russian, and Farsi.

No matter how much the trip could be conceived as taking a bunch of differently shaped pegs and trying to shove them all in through Star-of-David-shaped holes, I did find meaning and a better connection to people who matter to me, both staff and participants. If that’s what I get out of it, I suppose the trip worked in a sense. It definitely feels positive. Then why am I still mulling it over?

All this and more swirling through my mind. We’ll see what comes of it. Thanks for listening.

Questions, comments, concerns? You can reblog and comment on any post, send us an ask, or email us at [email protected] and let us know! This blog made possible in order to entertain readers like you.

[inresponseblog]

Who am I?

So I graduated from Muhlenberg.

Perspective is a strange thing.

These whole past few weeks have been sort of surreal, saying goodbye to friends (hopefully temporarily) and a lot of life I’ve known for the past four years. During one of the many events this past week, each member of the senior class was given a letter, handwritten by that person on their very first night on campus amidst Hurricane Irene and rollicking blackouts. Some cried after showing their letters to friends, some laughed heartily, some just stared at the letter before quietly placing it back in the Muhlenberg envelope it came in.

Mine reads as follows:

Who do I want to be at Graduation? (8/26/2011)

Ben Nassau, a young adult capable of whatever he sets his mind to.

Happy.

(signed) Ben Nassau

Who am I? (8/26/2011)

I am Ben Nassau, a smart kid wondering if I can really pull this off. Am I a kid? An adult? I suppose I’ll figure that out as the years go by.

(signed) Ben Nassau

The question then: is this who I am?

Yes, more or less.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are exactly the thoughts that fill my mind now as I prepare for the next leg of my journey: a math PhD at the University of Delaware starting this fall. But I am confident and wiser, eager and scared shitless at the future before me.

In my first post ever on this site, I said that I would look back on college and wonder at how I ever thought that was me. I haven’t quite hit that point, but I can start to see where it’ll appear.

So now, who do I want to be when I graduate again in five(!) years?

Ben Nassau, a family man capable of anything thanks to the love and support of my friends and family.

Happy.

Now: Who do you want to be?

[inresponseblog]

Just so y'all know, Moriah and I have been working on a play about body image issues that goes up at Berg at the end of March, so that's where our writing focus has been. It's awesome and y'all should come see it.

~Ben