Tag Archives: high school

School Quotes – United States of America

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Vancouver, WA
Performance Date: March 20, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, German

IB: The few, the proud, the sleep-deprived.

I think, therefore IB.

Heidi is currently a student in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, an internationally recognized curriculum that encompasses many areas of study, in addition to encouraging students to become involved in extracurricular activities and complete a capstone project. Heidi and her friends often make jokes and comments about IB, and the two above statements are examples of these. Exclusive phrases like these help to distinguish IB from non-IB students; IB students feel like non-IB students can’t really relate to what they’re going through with the Program. At Heidi’s high school, the curriculum is vastly different between the IB and standard high school requirements. As the program was created in 1968, neither of the comments existed prior to this time (terminus post quem 1968)

The first statement is a play on the United States Marines slogan: “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” In relation to IB, the “Marines” is substituted with the “sleep-deprived.” IB students typically do not get a bountiful 10 hours of sleep per night—when I went through the program, I usually got 3-4 hours of sleep every weeknight. Certainly there were IB students who managed to get far more sleep than me, but some of us were able to dub ourselves “The 3AM Crew.” For the word “proud,” IB students are definitely proud of themselves and their achievements, nearly reaching the level of hubris. One of the downfalls of some IB students is their conceited nature, thinking that because they are IB students, they should have special treatment. As an IB alumni, I do agree with them: the IB students do deserve special treatment because of the huge quantity of work and time they must put in to their studies and extracurricular activities. As for “few,” the IB students were definitely a minority. In my graduating class of about 360 students, just short of 30 people were taking a full IB course load. The phrase asserting that IB students are “the few, the proud, the sleep-deprived,” is actually a very apt description of that particular group.

The second statement is a play on the famous quote “I think, therefore I am,” by René Descartes. One of the required courses for the IB program is Theory of Knowledge, in which students learn about various philosophers and different modes of thinking. It is a discussion-based class where students talk about current issues and abstract concepts. Often, the teacher tries to bring in relevant quotes from different figures in philosophy, in order for the students to learn about what other people thought about the process of thinking. My guess is that the phrase “I think, therefore IB” arose as a result of a teacher bringing in this quote from Descartes. For people merely hearing the phrase, it sounds as though the person is saying “I think, therefore I be,” clearly a grammatical error. However, when written as “IB,” it becomes a clever comment used to distinguish IB students from the “non-thinking,” non-IB students. It appears that this phrase is a good example of the hubris sometimes exhibited by IB students, even appearing on t-shirts.

Generally, these two phrases are not used when in the presence of people unfamiliar with the IB program. Sometimes they will be used in conversation with students who participate in the Advanced Placement curriculum. Between Heidi’s high school and its rival high school, there is an ongoing dispute about whether AP is better than IB or vice versa. Often, these sorts of phrases will be used in the arguments, as clever justifications for why IB might be better than AP.

Prank – United States of America

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Vancouver, WA
Primary Language: English

For this prank to work, you need one very gullible person. It also helps if you have several people around who are quick on the uptake. Everyone should be seated at a table—preferably at a social gathering where there are objects such as salt, pepper, and butter on the table. The person performing the prank turns to the gullible person and says, “Did you know that butter lets off heat?” At first, the gullible person is pretty doubtful of this phenomenon, but the other people around the table will feed off of what the prankster is saying, ad libbing comments like, “Oh yeah, I’ve felt it before! It’s really weird. You know, I think margarine actually works better for this than butter…etc.” Eventually, the gullible person concedes and places their hand over the top of some butter, attempting to feel heat radiating from it. The prankster tells the gullible person that their hand needs to be just a little bit closer to the butter. When the prankster has hold of their hand, pretending to move it gradually downwards in order to feel the imaginary heat coming from the butter, the prankster smashes the victim’s hand into the butter, and everyone at the table laughs at how gullible the person was, and how ridiculous the claim had been: butter does not emit heat.

Sam picked up on this sometime during high school. I actually got the chance to see him perform this at a church gathering—I could kind of see it coming, and it was really funny when the girl had her hand covered in butter. I was also able to witness his brother perform this prank on three different people while on a school trip in France.

I recall hearing another version of this prank, although it is very similar. Rather than telling a person that butter alone emits heat, the prankster tells the gullible person that putting salt on butter results in an exothermic reaction, releasing heat that you can feel with your hand. I think this version would work especially well if the prankster is someone who is known as being good at science (specifically, chemistry). This way, the victim and the onlookers have reason to believe his claim. However, Sam was able to make this prank work without the inclusion of any “extra ingredients.”

A major factor of this prank is peer pressure. Especially if the prankster is able to get the onlookers to join in and make the claim that butter emits heat more plausible, the victim will feel more compelled to try it so that he or she isn’t viewed as “weak” or even distrustful by the rest of the group. Trust is important in this prank. The victim must trust the prankster enough to believe that he or she will not be made a fool by believing that butter emits heat; what the victim doesn’t know is that she or he will certainly not be made a fool by believing or disbelieving that butter emits heat—the victim becomes a fool when she physically trusts the prankster to adjust his or her hand positioning above the butter dish. Essentially, two kinds of trust are evident in this prank: mental and physical. The framework of the prank involves building up both of these trusts, then breaking them. Mentally, the prankster gets the victim to believe that butter does let off heat. Physically, the victim must trust the prankster when he or she guides their hand so that it is in the “optimum” position for feeling the heat from the butter. By the end of the prank, the victim knows that butter does not emit heat, and the victim’s physical trust is (at least temporarily) broken with the prankster.

Prank – United States of America

Nationality: Jewish
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 30, 2008
Primary Language: English

For this prank to work, you need a bunch of people in a room, but one of them needs to be a sleeping, unsuspecting victim. All at once, everyone screams, someone shines a light in the now-awake person’s face, and then someone else hits them really hard on the face with a pillow.

My friend Michael first learned this prank from some friends at his high school about two years ago. He’s never been a victim of this prank, but his friends who told him about this prank have pulled this prank on someone else. The setting was a bunch of guys staying over at someone’s house, and the first person asleep was subjected to the prank. The main purpose of the prank is to startle the individual.

Based on what Michael told me, this would probably be a pretty funny prank to witness: someone is sleeping peacefully, when all of a sudden he or she is jolted awake by a very loud noise, then is overcome with confusion as a bright light shines in his or her face and he or she is hit with a pillow. The victim’s facial expressions (and startled yelps) are most likely quite humorous. It is also probably embarrassing for the victim. If this prank is a standard procedure for someone who goes to sleep first when there are a lot of people around, then high value is doubtless placed on being able to stay awake. To fall asleep would be to bear the punishment via this prank of having been the first to succumb to slumber. Staying awake would contribute to a sense of pride, especially since this is performed by a group of people: who is able to stay awake the longest? Who is tough enough to avoid giving in to sleep?

Although this prank is relatively mild, there are some violent elements in it: loud noise, bright light, getting hit in the face…not a peaceful way to wake up. I had never heard of this prank before Michael told me about it. Perhaps its violence is linked to a masculine pattern of participation? Stereotypically, males are associated with more aggressive behavior; perhaps males are more familiar with this kind of prank than are females. However, this is not to say that the violence of this prank makes it unique to males—rather than the fact I’m female, it could be that I’ve never heard of it before due to regional differences (Michael grew up on California, I grew up in Washington), or just the fact that my circle of friends never happened to encounter this particular prank before. I do think it would be interesting to see if this prank is more commonly observed among males, and if the prank’s aggressiveness contributes to this.

Drinking Game

Nationality: Peruvian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: March 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Drinking Game (Fuck the Dealer)

You need a full deck of cards and at least two players to play. Whoever has the deck can see the card that is coming and someone that doesn’t have the deck must guess what the card is. If he is wrong on the first try, the dealer will either tell the person that their guess was too low or too high. Then the guesser gets another chance and if he gets that wrong he must drink the difference of his guess (so if he guess 7 and it was five, he has to take two sips of his drink). If he guesses right then the dealer must drink (if its a seven its seven sips). Also after every card you discard the card and put in on the table so everyone can see what cards are left. For example, if all four tens are gone you will know and never guess that number. The dealer must survive three wrong guesses in a row before he can hand over the cards to the next person. The later in the deck the more fucked the dealer gets because it is easier to guess the cards.

Analysis:

Charlie learned of this drinking game senior year of high school. He was at a party in his hometown and played it with a friend.  Since then, it has become one of his “top five” drinking games.  Once he came to college, however, he did not play it as much.  He said this is because friends here are not as “hard core” of drinkers as his friends back home.  There is no way to avoid drinking heavily in this game, so it is not suited for lightweights.  The game isn’t meant to be as fun as beer pong and other competition games, because its sole purpose is to get the players very drunk, very fast. He recommends playing this game, especially if one is fond of drinking alcohol. It is good to play before the party gets “bumpin”, according to Charlie.  The game is mostly played with close friends, unlike King’s Cup where the more the merrier.

This game seems to be pretty contemporary.  I have not heard of this game and it certainly isn’t as popular has Beirut (Beer Pong), Flip Cup, or even King’s Cup.  The goal of most drinking games, especially in American culture, is to get as drunk as possible. This game seems to fulfill that objective pretty well.

Fuck the Dealer represents the essence of college partying.  Many stereotypes portray college and universities with a tendency to binge drink.  In most cases this is a fairly accurate statement but there are many schools with strict policies on alcohol.  Drinking among American students, however, is fairly common.  It is a way for students to relieve the stresses of school and socialize with peers.  Alcohol has become almost essential to any party environment and is even frowned upon when out.  This is probably due to its effects on the nervous system, making people lose their inhibitions and be more open. In addition, some people do not feel comfortable interacting sober on an individual basis, so these group games provide a context of interaction in which the timid are able to come out of their shell.

A deck of cards is common in drinking games.  Some of these games include King’s Cup, Spoons, Category, Drug Dealer, Drunk Driver, Indian Poker, High Low Red or Black, Jacks, and Pyramids to name a few[1].  It is not known why cards play just a vital role but it could just be the ease of accessibility and inexpensiveness.

These types of drinking games are typically played at the beginning of one’s night, as sort of an icebreaker or just to pre-game before a party.  It is generally not played all night but rather for a couple hours at maximum. There are, of course, exceptions to this; for instance, Beer Pong competitions have been the center of many parties with extensive brackets and the illustrious title of champion on the line.

[1] http://www.beerfun.com/cardgames.html

Contemporary Legend

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Performance Date: March 9, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

“Um, my high school is a boarding school… uh it’s like in the suburb area. Um, it used to be a Japanese concentration camp during the World War II. I think it became a high school in…1903 and then during World War II, it’s, like, occupied by the Japanese. And um, there’s this one story about a guillotine and um, well I’ve never seen it myself but uh supposedly in a locked part of the school property and students are not allowed to go there. I don’t know where it is exactly though. It’s like….I think it’s by the classroom block….but I’m not sure. And supposedly if you see it, you’re gonna get bad luck ‘cause you’re not supposed to and there was this one guy in my class that um got left back in the seventh grade for three years and people were saying that he saw it. He was trying to investigate it and it was really bad luck and that’s why he got left back for three years. But I’ve never heard him confess that he saw it. ‘Cause seventh grade was actually the first year we, um, started school in that school and um so everyone was like talking about that so my friends and I decided to ask one of the teachers. Um…so we asked him and he said he doesn’t believe it and that people are just making it up to gossip about something. And um at the time we felt like um…he was just trying to comfort us ‘cause we appeared to be really, really disturbed by it. I guess it was a big thing for us because not many schools have that history of being occupied by the Japanese in World War II and I guess it was something that was really interesting to them….like, to the seventh graders. Like, right now I wouldn’t really believe it but if there is a guillotine at my school, I wouldn’t be surprised ‘cause of the history. It was a Japanese concentration camp. That’s like true…everyone knows that. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they found something. But if you ask me, I’d tell you that I don’t think it’ll be there…it might be at a museum, but not at my school.”

I agree with Stephanie that because of her school’s interesting historical background, students would naturally be curious about any possible remaining traces of the school’s past. The guillotine is a common conversation topic especially among new students because it serves as a form of bonding experience and helps establish their identity as a member of the school. Knowledge of the school’s past and this guillotine legend excludes nonmembers and identifies those who actually go to the school. I agree with Stephanie that it is definitely conceivable that, given the school’s history as a former Japanese concentration camp, there might be a guillotine remaining on the school’s property. But at the same time, it doesn’t make sense that the guillotine (if it does exist) isn’t donated to a museum instead. It doesn’t do the school any good to keep it locked and hidden.