I learned the importance of spreading information in the Scottish Highlands. I was 15, the summer after my freshman year in high school when and my parents shipped me off to language summer camp. I was going to be the only American enrolled in the camp, the others coming from the UK, Spain, France, and Germany. I arrived jet lagged, in a place filled with rugged accents. I was worried I would be nowhere near as cosmopolitan or cultured as my multi-lingual fellow campers. Yet when we all started to get to know one another, I was bombarded by my peers questions. Are red solo cups real? Do you have a locker? How do lockers work? Have you ever shot a gun? Why do you have to pay for your dentist? Never before had I have to be a representative of
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The three boys from Glasgow looked at each other with pinched faces.
“Um, none of them” one boy, Rory, answered. I was shocked. I knew the UK didn’t have guns as pervasive as the states, but I figured one party must have wanted them. This exchange, as well as many others I had in my two summers in Scotland taught me the importance of sharing information and narratives, but I didn’t know at that point how to make these exchanges happen at a larger level. When I went to college, a similar situation occurred. I am from rural, southern New Jersey. I did NOT want to be lumped in with the suburbanites of northern New Jersey. I grew up going to barnes and rodeos on Friday nights and listening to country music as I drove around corn fields in my Jeep. At the same time, my hometown was a place of incredible wealth. I had never had to explain the intricacies of the socio-economic no man’s land where I grew up before, everyone I really knew was from the same odd land of mansions and superstition. Trying to describe my hometown in an accurate and understandable way sparked an obsession of trying to explain places, moods, feelings, and people with words in a way that captures them fairly and
The three boys from Glasgow looked at each other with pinched faces.
“Um, none of them” one boy, Rory, answered. I was shocked. I knew the UK didn’t have guns as pervasive as the states, but I figured one party must have wanted them. This exchange, as well as many others I had in my two summers in Scotland taught me the importance of sharing information and narratives, but I didn’t know at that point how to make these exchanges happen at a larger level. When I went to college, a similar situation occurred. I am from rural, southern New Jersey. I did NOT want to be lumped in with the suburbanites of northern New Jersey. I grew up going to barnes and rodeos on Friday nights and listening to country music as I drove around corn fields in my Jeep. At the same time, my hometown was a place of incredible wealth. I had never had to explain the intricacies of the socio-economic no man’s land where I grew up before, everyone I really knew was from the same odd land of mansions and superstition. Trying to describe my hometown in an accurate and understandable way sparked an obsession of trying to explain places, moods, feelings, and people with words in a way that captures them fairly and