The Clique series

Losing Individuality There is a Japanese proverb, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” meaning it is hard to be different without meeting resistance (Hashi, “Conformity in Japan”). Society has always wanted to make people “normal.” From the first moment I stepped into Athens Academy, I sought to both stand out and fit in, but these are contradictions and cannot really exist together. At first I thought I was succeeding at this game, but as time progressed, I realized that I was just…

to escape the misery of Jim Crow laws and the sharecropper’s life in the Southern States (Miller, 2008). The origin of Chicago’s serious street gangs dates back to a period of 1917 to the early 1920’s (Perkins, 1987, pp.19-32). Black youth formed cliques, which was a major ingredient for street gangs (Perkins, 1987, pp.20). Street gangs also began to play a role in the lives of athletes and athletics all together, “athletics played an important role in the development of early black street…

Even though the majority of the readers of these books are not Hollywood industry types, they can relate to the experiences Fey and Poehler share because they are universal; there’s the “good ol’ boys” clique in the workplace, women hating on each other, sabotaging promotions or spreading gossip about each other, and the guilt for choosing to work away from the family. It doesn’t matter if someone is a multi award winning actress or a waitress in a diner…

The Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, is widely considered to begin with the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 1937 and end with the Japanese surrender in September 1945. I would argue that to understand the motives as to why Japan invaded China, it is essential to grasp their previous history of conflicts and tensions, beginning with the Japanese claim of Taiwan from China’s Qing Dynasty after the First Sino-Japanese war in 1895, right through to the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. This…

of developing into a new person and creating memories that are everlasting. For some students, particularly freshmen who are transforming from being the top dogs in high school to the freshies on a college campus, college is a place where creating cliques and identities are important. On the other hand, for some students like myself, forming an identity is easy. It has been said that students enjoy leaving home, meeting new people, and experiencing life on their own without their parents. Some…

textbook, Sociology A Down-To-Earth Approach, the question “What is Deviance?” is asked. In my opinion, the answer would be the gang followed in this documentary video. Their name, MS-13, in Salvadorian Spanish, stands for Mara, meaning “group” or “clique” and Salvatrucha is commonly known to mean “street smart”. (Wikimedia Foundation) The majority of the acts that the MS-13 gang commits are deviant, because of the reaction to those acts. As the textbook states, “It is not the act itself, but…

In the ruins of a town somewhere in America, late in the twenty-first century, only a library remains standing. Built of crumbling red brick, it is small and unassuming. Inside, a thick layer of dust rests on its shelves, which bend underneath the physical and philosophic weight of the books. There are thousands of them crammed into the small space, each one as important as the next. On the outside, the books are as modest as their library home, but between their pages are the answers to all the…

culminated the influence of a generation in comedy, while marking an advent of cinematic ingenuity during the 1980’s. Selling jokes and working in the offices of National Lampoon Magazine, Hughes arrived on-screen in his early 30’s. Ushering in a series of teen hits such as, Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and Pretty in Pink (1986), Hughes established himself as a storyteller by attracting an array of audiences. In exploring the limitations of…

It is not often that words written or spoken long ago can still resonate today. However, like the ripples of a pebble thrown in a pond minutes ago, the world still feels the impact of Austrian architect, Adolf Loos. Loos was a man of intense opinions and a reflecting portfolio. The blunt forms of his buildings were in tune with the tones of his writings and opinions on architecture. He saw architecture as a movement and progression that was beyond any one man’s ability to change. Furthermore…

Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield, Harry Potter’s Severus Snape, and Neuromancer’s Henry Case all share something in common—they are antiheroes. Merriam-Webster’s definition of an antihero is, “a protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities” (Merriam-Webster). While that is the ‘dictionary definition,’ many authors have taken liberties in describing which “heroic qualities” are missing, and which traits are used instead (Merriam-Webster). Through a…