Tag Archives: rite of passage

RUSSEFEIRING

Nationality: Norwegian
Age: 50
Occupation: Stay-at-home-mom
Residence: Vail, CO
Performance Date: April 24, 2021
Primary Language: Norwegian
Language: English

MAIN PIECE: 

Informant: So Russefeiring is a celebration of graduates from high school… I guess high school, sort of… The age is kind of in between high school and college I think, ‘cause most of them are 18 or 19. Um, but, you know, they’re ending a three-year academic education. And so they celebrate in the week before Independence Day, where they, um…  They wear these special suits or coats through that whole time that they decorate and draw on and have their friends sign them and all kinds of crafty stuff. And then they have graduation hats that have this long string coming down. And during this week they have all these obstacle things that they have to do, and everything that they do gives them a little, kind of… Treat, or an award that they tie onto their hats. So let’s say you kiss the president of a school, then you get a knot in the string on your hat… And then if you drink a whole bottle of champagne in one, big gulp, um… Then you get a champagne uh–what’s it called…? The cork. And you tie that onto the string or into the hat… Like silly things, you know?

Interviewer: Can you talk a little bit about the different colors of the uniforms? 

Informant: Yeah so if you went to the schools where you, um, studied economy and finance… Then you were called blåruss… Like “blue russ,” and your hat’s blue. If you were into the STEM subjects, then your hat is red. And traditionally, if you… Went to a school that wasn’t strictly academic, like a trade school, then your hat would be black… I think you can study language, like Norwegian, at both schools, so it just depends on what school you went to.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the bus culture? 

Informant: So their last year, the year that they graduate, the students start early planning for their graduation and for this one week. So a lot of kids will get together and they will purchase a bus and then they will decorate the bus… It’s kind of a van more than a bus though. I would call it a van… And they will decorate it on the outside. They will usually ask a younger student who is not graduating if they will be willing to drive them around for that week.

Interviewer: And can you talk a bit about the drinking culture during that final week?

Informant: During that week the school knows this is happening. I mean, you still have to go to class, but people don’t take it that seriously. Because once Indepence Day has happened, everyone is studying. ‘Cause all the exams are after Independence Day. So before that it’s not really taken seriously. People are probably drunk in class. You don’t really go home that week… You sleep on the bus. You sleep wherever. You go home to shower every once in a while. Maybe. 

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Informant: Our bus was both boys and girls… And I would imagine there were around ten of us, I think… You know, cause it costs money. We had to buy the bus and it costs money to fix it up a little bit… We didn’t have group names or get pins. I think a lot of people do now, but we didn’t.

Interviewer: Did you ever hear about your parents’ Russefeiring?

Informant: No, ‘cause none of them went to school like I did, you know? My mom didn’t go to that kind of school. And my dad, back then, he went to a sort of trade school, and he was much older when he did that. So they didn’t celebrate that way. Cause none of my parents were academic.

REFLECTION: 

Russefeiring is a celebration, commemorating the end of the students’ studies. It is also a rite of passage into adulthood. During this one week, debauchery and mischief are encouraged. The students become trickster figures, of a sort, as they act impulsively, break rules, and emphasize humor and fun above all. The students are in a liminal place, on the threshold between adolescence and adulthood, as they are not quite students any longer, but also have not yet graduated. They are unstable figures, as demonstrated by the mischief they enact. Russefeiring also seems to be a sort of catharsis before final exams. One might even consider it a catharsis preceding adulthood. Once they have graduated, they must find jobs or dive more seriously into their studies at professional schools (ex. medical school). Russefeiring is one last teenage-hurrah; it is a week of instability before the students have to become stable adults.

ANNOTATION:

Further reading:

Sande, Allan. “The Norwegian ‘russefeiring’. The Use of Alcohol as a Ritual in the ‘rite of Passage’ to Adulthood.” Nordisk Alkohol- & Narkotikatidskrift : NAT, vol. 17, no. 5-6, SAGE Publications, 2000, pp. 340–54, doi:10.1177/1455072500017005-603.

Med Student’s First Coat

Nationality: Iranian-American
Age: 62
Occupation: Pediatric Anesthesiologist
Residence: Palo Alto, CA
Performance Date: April 21st, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Main Description:

RA: “One of the most exciting, I remember, things in medical school, other than graduation, is getting the white coat and stethoscope before beginning clinical rotations, the first time we’re allowed, as med students, to start practicing basic techniques on living people. These weren’t the long coats that go down to your feet, but shorter ones that only went down to your waist. They were embroidered, of course. They came with the schools embroidered, but we would also get our names if we could afford it. I don’t remember if I got mine embroidered or not, but I probably did. We would wear them everywhere, so everyone knew you were a med student. We wore them on our clinical rotations, obviously, but we also would sometimes wear them out to bars and pubs so everyone would know we’re real med students. They got dirt super quickly of course, because their white, and I remember washing mine all the time so I could wear it. Eventually when we got our scrubs, once we’ve made more progress with our rotation, we didn’t wear the white coats as much. White is a really bad color for doctors, really, because it shows stains, especially blood, really well. It’s funny, we get another white coat (the foot length one) when we graduate, also embroidered, but we rarely wear it because it’s white. That coat’s much less exciting to get. We also got tools with our first coat. We would get the basic tools used at checkups, like the reflex hammer, the thing you use to look in people’s eyes and ears and throat (can’t remember what it’s called), tongue thermometers, and really whatever else we could afford. We didn’t need them, because tools are usually provided to you during the rotation, but they were fun to practice with on ourselves and each other. They were also fun to show off to our friends and family. I definitely don’t have my tools any more, they all broke or I lost them or gave them away. I still have my first coat, though of course I don’t wear it anymore because it’s kind of ratty looking, but I used in a Halloween costume as a mad scientist once.

Informant’s opinion:

AB: “Why were the initial white coats and tools so exciting? Why did you wear them so often?

RA: “We wore them everywhere because they were the first things we had that really showed we were med students. I don’t know why they were white, but there was something so exciting about having something to show to my parents that I’m really becoming a doctor.”

Personal interpretation:

The white coat seems to mark an important rite of passage for medical students. Being able to work with live patients, usually about two years in, is wear students first begin to practice being doctors. For the first time, the students’ actions will have consequences on living people instead of anatomical dummies, so the coat allows students to celebrate the greater degree of responsibility they’ve taken as growing physicians. Tellingly, the coats are primarily for social performance, and not intended for use during actual work with patients due to their color.

Senior ditch day

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Palo Alto, CA
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: English

Main description:

AB: “Can you tell me about any traditions from your high school that stick out or seem special?”

DB: “Um, the only thing I can think of is senior ditch day. I don’t know if you wanna hear about that though, it’s kinda dumb.

AB: “Ditch day sounds great! Tell me about it.”

DB: “I mean. It’s what it sounds like. All the seniors ditch school, usually in one of the last weeks in second semester. It used to be that student council would decide when during secret meetings, but now we just have votes in secret Facebook groups. That’s what my year did anyway. Anyway. The teachers and school know about it of course, and it’s really funny seeing who’s cool with it and who’s not. Sometimes, teachers will be like, ‘Oh, I’m showing a movie that day, so I may forget to skip attendance, so hypothetically, I wouldn’t notice if say, half the class was gone, for some reason. Wink wink nudge nudge.’ But other teachers aren’t cool with it at all. They’ll like rant for several hours about how were seniors and should be responsible enough to go to school. Anyway, on ditch day, we all go to Tuna beach. You can only get there by taking this, like, super steep hike down, and we usually spend the night there, which means you’re hiking down on loose dirt on a steep hill with who knows how many pounds of food and stuff strapped to your back. That part isn’t fun, but the beach is super secluded and there’s places to make bonfires, which is why we go there. Anyway, you know what it’s like, lots of drinking, lots of drugs, a few hook-ups that usually cause drama. Oh I just remembered, there was this one girl my year who tried acid I think, but she was allergic to it and started having a reaction so the paramedics had to come get her, but they can’t carry her up the hike in a gurney so they have to take this, like, really long and windy private road down to the beach, and we were super scared because it took them a really long-ass time. Anyway. She survived. But it was super scary. Oh, I can’t believe I forgot… there was also another kid who couldn’t spend the night on the beach, so he drank as much as he could before hand and got alcohol poisoning and was really sick. That was happening at the same time as the acid-allergy girl, so. It was a really chaotic night. I guess they’re always like that.”

Informant interpretation:

AB: “Why is senior ditch day special to you?”

DB: “I mean, it’s the only time I ever did something rebellious in high school. Like actually rebellious, not just staying in my room all day watching TV rebellious.  I was also really proud of me and my friends for… for, ya know, not being a disaster. I mean, I threw up, but it was also my first night drinking, and it felt good to feel like I was becoming a college student.”

Personal interpretation:

Senior ditch day seems to be an important rite of passage for seniors at this high school, who may not have experimented with many substances before. While ideally this can be a safe place to experiment with alcohol and other substances likely to be encountered in college, it can also be quite dangerous because few people present have experience with substance-use and over-use.

Facebook Senior Names

Background: 

My informant, AK, is a 19 year old student at the University of Michigan. She was born and raised in Southern California and is studying engineering. While in high school, AK was an active member and team captain of her school’s swim team. She attended the school from kindergarten until she graduated and knew the place inside and out. (I’ll be referring to myself as SW in the actual performance).

Performance: 

AK: For as long as I can remember, it’s been tradition at our high school to make a fake name on facebook for senior year. Everyone would make a pun based off their name, referencing a movie or celebrity. When it first started, it was to protect people’s identities, so that of prospective colleges looked up students on facebook, they wouldn’t find their page. By the time we were seniors, there wasn’t really a need to do this because it was general knowledge that colleges didn’t really care, but our grade kept on with the tradition anyways.

Thoughts:

It’s interesting to understand where some aspect of folklore comes from, and to see how its meaning has changed over time. What started as a superstition morphed into a tradition that stood to be a rite of passage. Kids as early as freshman year would begin to think about their senior name, anxious to be done with high school and on their way to college. Senior names were a way of expressing yourself, while also engaging in a unifying experience across the grade.

East Fitzsimmon’s Road

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Madison, WI
Performance Date: April 27, 2020
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE

East Fitzsimmon’s Road

“When you want to be scared, you go down East Fitzsimmon’s Road.  It’s become sort of a right of passage for teens in Milwaukee to do.  It proves you’re no longer a baby to a lot of them.”

To walk down East Fitzsimmon’s road is a rite of passage many Milwaukee youths complete when they no longer want to be seen as a child.

BACKGROUND

DA, is from Madison, Wisconsin and has lived in the state all her life.  She knows this right of passage from doing it herself when she was a teen and said that it was definitely frightening and that there is a common belief that ghosts exist on this road.

CONTEXT

DA is a cousin I have that goes to college right now.  We sat down and I invited her for a zoom call.  She seemed a bit stressed about her finals, but she was very elated to talk and take a break from studying for her chemistry exam.

THOUGHTS

Ghosts are very popular in Southern culture, but you don’t hear as much about them in a big Midwestern city like Milwaukee.  It’s been proven, upon further research, that there are no ghosts that roam East Fitzsmmon’s road, yet for the thrills,  the belief they exist is still there.  The rite of passage aspect of this piece of folklore probably perpetuates the belief in ghosts as it gives it a reason why it is so “spooky”.

For a greater understanding of this folklore check out this article…

Hrodey, Matt. “Milwaukee Myth-O-Meter: 5 Local Myths, Busted.” Milwaukee Magazine, 30 July 2018, www.milwaukeemag.com/milwaukee-myth-o-meter-local-myths-busted/.