The Way I See Things
Dearest reader: You and I see things the same way. Except we don’t. This is the paradox of vision. Here we are, 5,000 humans, breathing the same recycled air, living the same trodden spaces and seeing the same well-eyed things. Except we aren’t. Not at all. The way you see things is all at once so similar to and yet so different from the way I see things.
In this issue, we’ve tried to tackle the variances of vision. It’s only a shallow dive into the many different lives here, but try out another pair of eyes. See for a mile from the vantage point of a foreign set of shoes. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll find something of value here. Perhaps there’s something of worth in understanding the way that others (and ourselves) see things. -Lauren Lu, editor in chief
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chsacumen.com | facebook.com/chsacumen | instagram.com/chsacumen | twitter.com/chsacumen Q: SO WHAT IS ACUMEN, ANYWAY? A: We believe every story should be heard; and not just told, but read. So we run four print cycles with even more online, to put into your hands the stories that matter to you.
< COVER AND PG 2-3 PHOTOS AND DESIGNS BY LAUREN LU
Q: WHOSE EYE IS THAT ON THE FRONT COVER? Q: I WANT YOU TO TELL MY STORY. Q: WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? A: Send any and all questions (no matter how random!) to hi@chsacumen.com, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
EDITOR IN CHIEF: LAUREN LU laurenlu@chsacumen.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: STEPHANIE ZHANG stephaniezhang@chsacumen.com THE WAY I SEE THINGS | 03
REPORTERS: Lucus Cheng, lucuscheng@chsacumen.com Nida Khan, nidakhan@chsacumen.com Ellen Peng, ellenpeng@chsacumen.com Sriya Ravi, sriyaravi@chsacumen.com Naomi Reibold, naomireibold@chsacumen.com Grant Smith, grantsmith@chsacumen.com Kyle Walker, kylewalker@chsacumen.com Annika Wolff, annikawolff@chsacumen.com GRAPHICS ARTISTS: Scott Liu, scottliu@chsacumen.com Aaron Shi, aaronshi@chsacumen.com
PHOTOGRAPHERS: Kyle Crawford, kylecrawford@chsacumen.com Danny Goldberg, dannygoldberg@chsacumen.com Dara Levy, daralevy@chsacumen.com Sarah Liu, sarahliu@chsacumen.com Nivedha Meyyappan, nivedhameyyapan@chsacumen.com CONTRIBUTORS: Miriam Hu, miriamhu@chsacumen.com Dennis Yang, dennisyang@chsacumen.com Michael Zhao, michaelzhao@chsacumen.com NON-STAFF CONTRIBUTOR: Aster Samuel, asamuel@hilite.org
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hen we first come in the morning, (the cafeteria) is completely clean. The custodians come in (during) the evening (and) mop all the floors. That’s part of our cleaning process every day. That’s my favorite part of the day, when everybody leaves, just because it’s completely spotless.
How do you see this school? I see more kids eating in the main cafeteria this year. We have a new line (Healthy Track) this year that I think a lot of the kids are interested in. I think it’s great. We are offering more vegetarian choices and some more salads and wraps and things
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like that. Smoothies are a big thing. (Students) really like those. I really do wish more people would come back (to the kitchen) and take a look because it’s the full operation. There’s a lot going on back here. It’s a lot like a restaurant. It really is a process. We would love to show them. We are trying to come up with more options that the kids are going to like. Ice cream in particular (has) changed a little bit. (We’re) trying to make that more healthy, with low fat. I know kids see that and think, ‘No way, not doing that,’ but I think we are trying to get some choices that the kids are going to like. It’s getting over that first initial stigma of ‘No, (I) don’t want to try it.’ I know there are a lot of kids who end up bringing their lunches, but our menu this year is huge, and we have added a lot of choices, especially here in main (cafeteria). We are trying some new things that hopefully the kids will like and we hope that
WORDS | HUEPENBECKER-HULL VIA NIDA KHAN PHOTOS | LAUREN LU they’ll come in and give it a try, and that they’ll come back. If there is ever any feedback that the kids want to give us, we are definitely open to it.
DESIGN BY LAUREN LU
NBECKER-HULL
ASSISTANT MANAGER AT MAIN CAFETERIA
How is your perspective unique? We see kids in a more relaxed environment, and we hope that lunch is going to be the best part of their day, a time for them to relax and let down. Hopefully we see them when they are not under stress and not completely focused, when they can just kind of be themselves and hang out with their friends. That’s kind of fun for us.
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Anything you’d like the readers to know? It (would be) kind of neat for kids to know that we call everybody here “our kids,” and we have their best interests in mind. And really, our own kids are here, so we are feeding our own kids too.
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WORDS | GRANT SMITH PHOTOS | NIVEDHA MEYYAPPAN
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hen he was 11 years old, senior Matthew “Matt” Hodges was listening to jazz music at his home. The song was a 1976 recording of Miles Davis’s “Donna Lee” performed by jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius. “(At that point,) all of a sudden, my head was just filled with greens and browns and yellows, swirling around,” Hodges said. “It’s not like I actually see (the associate color),
it’s more of a perception. I 100 percent see the real color,” he said. Hodges associates colors with numbers and letters in much the same way as senior Joey Miller, who said he sees the music notes A as red, B as blue and F as a shade of yellow-brown. When Miller sees numbers and letters, he said he automatically associates them with a specific color in his head, regardless of what color the characters actually are. “The colors exist behind my eyes. They aren’t exactly in my head but they aren’t in front of me either,” Hodges said.
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Synesthesia
is a neurological phenomenon. Stimulation of one sense leads to an automatic, involuntary experience in another:
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Chromesthesia: The association of sounds with colors. Everyday noises or musical notes can trigger specific colors called “photisms.”
What do the two have in common? Both Hodges and Miller have a sensory phenomenon known as synesthesia. Synesthesia is defined as a neurological condition that causes a blending of the senses. Synesthesia occurs when certain stimuli, such as words, sounds or smells, cause a variety of sensory experiences not usually associated with that stimulus. “Synesthesia is an extraordinary way of experiencing the world,” said Dr. Andy Mealor, research fellow at the University of Sussex, via email. “It involves a ‘cross talk’ of the senses, so that experiencing, or thinking, about one thing automatically triggers an experience of another.” According to an April article of The Guardian, approximately 4.4 percent of adults are affected by variety of types of synesthesia, some of which are touch-color synesthesia, in which a tactile sensation against the skin can trigger the perception of color, and lexical gustatory synesthesia, where the effected person would experience specific tastes in reaction to specific words.
Number Form Synesthesia: A number form is a mental map of numbers that automatically and involuntarily appears whenever this type of synesthete thinks of numbers.
“All kinds of combinations are possible,” said Mealor. “There are over sixty documented types.” Dr. Mealor also pointed out that the definition of what is considered synesthesia can vary from study to study. “Some researchers also consider certain types of purely conceptual associations as synesthesia, such as personification where numbers may be ascribed personalities,” he said. According to The Guardian article, this type can be classified as sequence-personality synesthesia and can involve the personification of everyday objects or sequences such as letters or numbers. Hodges said numbers in his mind are assigned personalities and that this association helps him with math. According to research at the University of Sussex, one of the most common types of synesthesia that involves one of the traditional five senses is associating days and months with color. Perceiving calendars in a spatial form, such as lines or circles, occurs in an even larger segment
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Female synesthetes outnumber male synesthetes 6:1.
Around 3.7% of the general public has synesthesia
40% of synesthetes have parents with the condition
of the population, around 20 percent, according to the University of Sussex research, than those considered synesthetes. Mealor said he has seen this kind of synesthesia, known as sequence-space synesthesia, and that it occurs often in people with other forms of synesthesia. Hodges said that he experiences both of these kinds of synesthesia, along with his grapheme-color synesthesia, his association of numbers and letters with color, and his music-color synesthesia, his association of different musical timbres or notes with color. “My calendar is 12 different colored circles going from August to July. When I think a specific month, say March, I get a green-yellow circle, between a purple circle and a light blue circle and that is all I got for March,” he said. Miller also said that he experiences colors with days, not on the day itself, but rather the idea of the day. “My colored days pertain to thinking of the
Spacial sequence synesthesia (SSS): Those with SSS see numerical sequences as points in space. They also see months and dates in the space around them.
GRAPHICS ASTER SAMUEL
Grapheme-color synesthesia: The most common form of synesthesia, in which individual letters and numbers are perceived as “shaded” or “tinged” with a color.
concept of that, or when I’m visualizing my week, like thinking about what is going on that week,” he said. As The Guardian article points out, certain types of synesthesia, particularly in this case, sequence-space synesthesia, can hinder certain mental capacities, such as mental arithmetic for example. Hodges said he has experienced this in different ways. “Because of (my calendar), I never know what day of the month it is,” he said. “Also, I’m really bad with time, although I don’t know if that is related to synesthesia or not.” Synesthetes are often thought of as being creatively inclined. Many musical figures including singers Pharrell Williams and Mary J. Blige, as well as the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, are synesthetes. However, this link is somewhat questionable, according to the University of Sussex research. It is more likely that grapheme-color synesthesia gives individuals motivation to create art, rather than special talents, according to the university’s research. “What if synesthesia makes you more likely to
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Associators experience involuntary perception in their mind’s eye. For example, color-grapheme synesthetes percieve numbers in colors without seeing them.
The stimulation of a sense like sound will stimulate a second sense, like taste.
Projectors project experiences outside their body. For example, some synesthetes see numbers in
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seek out art because you’re having all these experiences and don’t know how to express them?” said Veronica Gross, a former graduate student and synesthesia researcher at Boston University, via email. “Being good at something and doing something are different.” Miller, who is a musician, said that his synesthesia affects his creativity in a positive way. “By forming the random relationships that it forms, I would say it makes things a little more interesting to write about,” he said. Another question raised about synesthesia, one that has more backing research, is the idea of whether or not people with synesthesia have better memory skills than people without synesthesia. “It does seem that synesthetes have better memories for certain materials than non-synesthetes,” Mealor said. Hodges, who is also a musician, said that his synesthesia helps him in some capacity with memorizing music. “It doesn’t help me play (a long solo) the first time I play it, but once I play it again, I memorize the flow of colors that accompany the sound,” he said. Mealor also said that there are several questions as to why this seems to occur.
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Senior Joey Miller associates numbers, letters, and days or months. Often, synesthetes don’t realize that they have synesthesia.
“The current challenge for researchers is to find out why. Grapheme-color synesthetes have better verbal memory than control participants, presumably due to the additional color experience,” Mealor said. “Perhaps synesthetes use particular strategies to organize memory. One question which arises is if synesthetes naturally tend to use effective memory strategies, could we train others to ‘think like a synesthete’ and show a subsequent memory benefit?” The same question is being raised, and has been tested with some success, by other researchers, according to The Guardian article. Along with improving memory skills, many have suggested that synesthesia training could also be used to combat decline in cognitive functions or even aid people recovering from brain injuries. Mealor agrees the synesthetic tendencies are at least partly shaped be experience and can be acquired. “Nobody is born with the concept of a red ‘A,’ so it must be learned to some extent,” he said. “In terms of my own research, (synesthesia) demonstrates whether we can apply what we’ve learned to those who have problems with memory and help them improve.” Mealor also added that current synesthesia research is highlighting the differences between the brains of synesthetes
DESIGN BY LAUREN LU
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Senior Matt Hodges sees notes as colors. He said he sees A as red, B as blue, and F as a shade of golden brown. Synesthesia has helped him occasionally with memorizing music.
and non-synesthetes. “Synesthetes tend to have more white matter between different regions in their brains, so this is a structural change which can help explain why these cross-modality sensations occur,” he said. Mealor also said that functional differences exist as well. For example, grapheme-color synesthetes have shown activation in color regions of the brain when looking at words. Synesthesia is a phenomenon that in past has struggled with awareness, most notably in the academic community. “Until fairly recently, synesthesia was dismissed as a topic, but has seen a resurgence in the last 10 to 15 years,” Mealor said. When Hodges first experienced colors while hearing sound, he had never heard of synesthesia before. “My numbers and letters always had color, but I thought that was just normal, that everyone did that,” he said. According to Hodges, he told a friend about the greens, browns and yellows he experience, and his friend asked him if he had ever heard of synesthesia before. “So I did what all scientists do, which is go home and Google it,” he said. “I looked it up and found that it was associated with my whole letters and numbers thing, too.” Mealor said that there is a strong possibility that many
synesthetes learn about their own synesthetes in a similar way as Hodges. “It’s certainly the case that many people don’t realize they have it until later in life, perhaps after coming across someone else’s report of theirs,” Mealor said. “Others may never realize they have it as it is just part of their world.” Mealor’s description matches Miller’s early awareness of synesthesia. “I can’t pinpoint a specific time that I realized I had synesthesia,” he said. “It’s just always been a part of my life.” Miller also said that he has some uncertainty regarding his own unique synesthesia. “I need to do a little more research on the subject because there are some things that I experience where I’m not sure if it’s synesthesia or not,” he said. “I don’t associate sound with color, but a song can associate with a feeling, and that feeling gets a color. It’s very weird.” Above all, Mealor said he believes studying synesthesia is extremely important for researchers. He said, “It gives us a better understanding of human experience, or how conscious experience of the world can vary so wildly between different people.”
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I SEE WHAT YOU’RE SAYING Photographer Dara Levy on life with four senses in a world of five.
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eople are alike in some aspects. We see things, smell things and taste things. We feel what we touch. Most of us hear things. I don’t. I was born deaf. On my dad’s side, deafness is hereditary. But my mom – she was born hearing into a hearing family. She became sick and as a result is deaf. My brother and I are the third generation of deaf children born into the family. In Framingham, MA, the city where I was born, I attended the Learning Center for Deaf. Before I entered fourth grade, my parents decided to move to Indiana to find a better education for me and my brother. So, we came here, and I enrolled in and attended the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD), from 2006 to 2009. After going to ISD for about three years, I was feeling frustrated and not challenged academically. I asked my parents if I could consider transferring to a mainstream school. I planned to enroll in the school near my house, Clay Middle School. I wanted to split my school day, attending Clay Middle School for a half day, and then travelling to ISD. I decided to stay at Clay Middle mostly for the educational challenge it provided,
but transportation problems also factored in. Falling in love with the atmosphere, I wanted to try to attend for a full year. I did not return to ISD. I did not want to. Being deaf is not that much different from being hard of hearing or hearing. “Deaf people can do anything hearing people can do, except hear,” Irving King Jordan, former president of Gallaudet University, the only liberal arts college for the Deaf in the world, once said. I try to apply his philosophy to my education. For example, in a normal classroom setting, the majority of the students have to look at the teacher, their notes on their desks and the board. I do the same, but I have an extra place to look: the interpreter. Another example is with respect to my culture. I am a part of the Deaf society, one of many diverse lifestyles at this school. Overall, I am an ordinary high school student, like all other students. We have similar roles in school, which go along the lines of waking up early in the morning, going to school, studying for tests, doing homework and more. Even if I do not have an interpreter with me, I can still interact with you through gestures, writing, or sometimes, lip reading.
I do not feel any different from the rest of the kids at CHS. I grew up deaf just like other kids grew up hearing. We are very similar; we merely use different means to communicate. We simply speak different languages. Like everyone else, I have hopes and ambitions for the future. Since I was little, I always wanted to go to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), which is in Rochester, New York. My mom attended college there. At RIT, there is an entire branch of the college specifically dedicated to Deaf students called the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The college is mainstream; Deaf and hearing students go to school together. I still have not decided what to major in, but I think it would be cool to major in science, culinary arts or education. My decision to transfer to a mainstream school provided me with the opportunity to discover that I am not really that different from students who can hear. I simply use a different language. Dara Levy is a staff photographer for the Acumen. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of the Acumen or the Acumen staff. You may reach Dara at daralevy@chsacumen.com
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Senior Dara Levy is a photographer for Acumen. This is her staff photo, also displayed online at chsacumen.com/about.
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One moment will always remain. Though circumstance handed him this eye, chemistry teacher Tim Mylin has learned to look forward.
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WORDS | ANNIKA WOLFF PHOTOS | LAUREN LU
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uring SRT, Room B212 is quiet. Only the shuffling of papers and the occasional cough can be heard in chemistry teacher Timothy “Tim” Mylin’s classroom. He sits at his desk, patiently waiting for any confused student who may approach him with a particularly challenging chemistry problem. Very few of these students will look closely enough at his left eye to realize that for the last 34 years it has not actually been an eye. Mylin lost his left eye during his sophomore year in college. “I had been home for winter break and was out rabbit hunting with some buddies. We jumped a rabbit,” Mylin said. “I didn’t shoot because initially, it went towards my friends, (but) then it went out towards the middle. I heard them shoot, and then one pellet ricocheted and somehow got me in the eye. ” The pellet lodged in the fatty tissue of his brain, where it remains to this day, surrounded by calcium. Doctors were reluctant to remove it because of the pellet’s close proximity to his brain.
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CORNEA
Light reflects off an object and passes through here
IRIS
Controls amount of light passing through pupil
LENS
VITREOUS HUMOR RETINA
Focuses light Holds shape on retina of eye
Tissue that senses light and converts it to electric signals
GRAPHICS BY LAUREN LU
Originally, he retained some peripheral vision. Upon closer examination, however, doctors told him the vision would fade over time and may cause a sympathetic reaction in his right eye, which would result in losing vision in both eyes. Mylin said, “So when we finally decided that I was going to end up losing my eye I prayed about it a lot, and at that point, I was just thankful it wasn’t going to be two eyes and I could still see. I try to look at the positive, and I’m just thankful to God that I can still see out of one eye.” Mylin does have an eye patch, but in school his fake eye suffices. The fake eye he obtained is a thick, plastic contact lens painted by an artist to match the colors of his right eye. “The eye is held into place by six different muscles that go around it, as well as it’s connected to the brain with the optic nerve in the back of the eye,” Dr. Jonathan Burns, who holds a doctorate in the field of optometry, said. “It depends on how much of the eye that they have to remove. If they have to remove it all, then they cut every muscle and the optic nerve.
Then they take (the eye) out and replace it with an artificial one.” Mylin said the surgery was difficult. “The doctor had not ordered proper pain medication for after the procedure,” Mylin said. “I felt like somebody had put a knife through my head.” The recovery time lasted about three weeks, and Mylin said while he no longer thinks about his missing eye, he does have to remove and clean his plastic eye every day with antibacterial soap and saline solution. Despite his eye doctors’ suggestions, he does not sleep with it in at night. “I used to wear contacts too so (putting in a prosthetic eye is) real easy. It’s easier to handle than a contact,” Mylin said. “A contact is so thin and my eye, it’s really easy to just pop in. But contacts, sometimes you have to get it in right.”
SOURCE: AOA.ORG
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THE WAY I SEE THINGS | 19
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Chemistry teacher Timothy “Tim” Mylin’s left eye is actually a convincing plastic model. From the mixed shades of blue in the iris to the individual blood vessels, an artist meticulously painted each detail by hand to reproduce the appearance of Mylin’s remaining right eye.
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At about the same time Mylin began wearing his ocular prosthetics, he also took to wearing glasses. Initially, they were for protective purposes, but now they are necessary for his remaining eye. Burns described the eye as a system designed to bend light into the back of the eye to hit the retina. The eye has difficulty seeing when the it bends the light in such a way it no longer hits the retina. “When you put glasses or contacts in front of the eye those bend the light in the opposite direction the correct amount,” said Burns. “So that when you add the light bending by the glasses to how much the lights bending in there (the eye), it makes it so that the light does get sent to the back of the eye and the retina.” After his recovery, he returned to Butler University as a biological chemistry major.
“The first make-up lab I had to do was in comparative vertebrate anatomy, and I had to dissect a sheep eye as my first project back,” Mylin said. “That was kind of weird.” Later during his college years, he remembered one particular speech class in which he was doing a presentation on prosthetic eyes and took his own prosthetic out during class. However, he said he has never taken it out during his teaching. His eye has been a source for some humorous moments during his teaching career. “I had a kid who raised his hand once right in the middle of class and said, ‘Mr. Mylin, do you really have a fake eye?’ I didn’t really bother me or embarrass me, but I would have thought that from his standpoint it would have been embarrassing to ask that, particularly if I didn’t have one.” Burns said the eye sees by reflecting light to the back of the eye into
DESIGN BY LAUREN LU
THE PROSTHETIC PROCESS One method to creating a prosthetic eye
An acrylic conformer fits inside the socket and opens the patient’s eyelids so both eyes look similar in appearance. An impression of the eye socket allows for a more accurate fit, matching the volume and eyelid contours of the eye to allow for maximum movement. The mold is then cast. An artist paints by hand on the acrylic disc with dry pigments to reproduce the eye as best as possible. A clear plastic dome is added over the painting.
The patient wears a white blank, shaped like the conformer, and the iris positioning is marked. The iris is then carefully attached at the indicated place with acrylic. The veining of the sclera (white of eye) is detailed by a frayed red silk thread to match the veins in the other eye. A final layer of dry pigments and acrylic capping is applied to seal everything in. The eye is then ground down to the right shape and polished with pumice. The whole process can be as quick as two days.
SOURCE: ERICKSONLABS.COM
THE WAY I SEE THINGS | 21 the retina. When light is reflected in front of the retina but not directly into it, vision becomes blurry. Glasses solve the problem by bending light in such a way that the light will hit the retina, according to Burns. Mylin said, “Sometimes, I miss having that really good vision and depth perception.” Although Mylin can see clearly with glasses, he said he has difficulty with depth perception and cannot see to his left. “I was nervous about track and field,” Mylin said. “I was worried. ‘Am I still going to differentiate between the hurdles?’ ‘Am I going to be able to shoot a basketball?’ All that stuff came back just from muscle memory. The biggest issue I have playing basketball is I’ve just got to turn my head more.” Burns said eyes use the distance of the object they are
looking at combined with the difference the eyes are turning to determine depth perception. The loss of an eye loses the second image to calculate the distance of an object. Mylin said, “When I walk up to a curve, even though I know there is a curve there, I have a hard time differentiating between the curb and the lower level.” Despite challenges posed by Mylin’s eye, which he has never described as a handicap, he said he is still able to do everything he could before the accident, including hunting. “I never did go rabbit hunting again, but I did shoot a shotgun again,” he said. “I went pheasant (bird) hunting once or twice, and then after that I pretty much put away my shotgun and started pursuing archery. You adapt, move on, and it becomes kind of a natural thing.”
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Sometimes definitions and meanings are different. To Jim Peterson, director of theater and film at this school, movies are more than just recordings of moving images; rather, they “provide an outlet for artistic expression and for communicating a story.” “We’re a society of storytellers,” he said. “The human race is based on storytelling, so movies are a medium through which we can do that.” Senior Anna Lasbury has been acting and doing television work since she was around 7. She later took an interest in movies and began auditioning for films. Lasbury said, “When I started auditioning for films, I became interested in them because it’s different (from) doing TV work. You get to develop a stronger character and there is more to work with. The acting is much more in-depth.” To Lasbury, movies are a good way to express one’s different interests and opinions on certain subjects. She said movies are an easy way for people to personally connect to a situation. “I did a film on human trafficking once, which is obviously a very touchy subject. It’s hard to approach, especially when talking to people our age, because people will be immature,” she said. “They don’t know how to handle the situation. But through acting in a film and being able to portray one character rather than talk about something as a whole, people can really connect and realize the damage something can do at a personal level.” In 2010, the Norman Lear Center conducted a survey on the effects of the educational film “Food, Inc.” on
television shows about it. It eventually dies out, and a new idea will become the topic of interest. Peterson said, “The (Ice) Bucket Challenge is a great example of what happens with media. First, it catches on over social media. Then we’ll see more and more of it in mainstream media, because it is so popular in social media. It takes longer for mainstream to catch up, so TV shows are probably the first ones to get it, then movies will get it, and by the time that happens, it’s old and boring.” Ben Figueroa, IB Film student and senior, has been interested in and impacted by movies and theater since he was in middle school. He made films with friends when he was younger, has taken theater since ninth grade and began taking IB film last year. He said movies are a medium that are easy to follow along with, which makes them a good educational tool. “I am massively influenced by media. Most of the information I have on topics like politics, policy and things like that, I get almost entirely from the news or from biased movies,” Figueroa said. “Very seldom do I base my opinions on what people around me have said. It’s almost (based) exclusively on the media I’m seeing because they are the people who are experts and they’re sharing what they know with the rest of us.” Lasbury said the hardest part of acting is making sure she portrays emotions accurately, so that the views of the movie are conveyed to the audience. “Sometimes you memorize things one way, and you think that a character will be feeling a certain way, so you memorize it and practice it over and over with feelings and emotions,” Lasbury said. “Then you actually take it to the set, and your director
perspective. Getting specific with tiny details and taking careful notice of little things can make it much easier to show the audience a viewpoint. Peterson said, “Most people think in order for a movie to be a success, it has to be a multibillion dollar blockbuster with special effects and men in capes. That’s not true at all. Obviously we don’t have the budget to do something like that, so we just focus more on the storytelling.” For Lasbury, the key to playing a character is to delve completely into that role and to go deeper than pretending to have a certain emotion. “If a character is supposed to feel happy, then a lot of people will pretend to be happy,” Lasbury said. “But for me, it’s important to remember the specific situation that the character is going through or the specific problem the character is facing and to embody their actual feelings at that time.” Lasbury said she never realized how much movies could impact someone until a woman approached her after a screening of a movie she was in called “Sound of the Spirit.” “A woman came up to me, and she told me that because of this film she was able to have the courage to talk to her parents about how she did not feel the same way religiously as they did,” she said. “Because of this film’s message and what she saw the character do, she was able to actually address the problem with her parents. I never thought I could do that.” The main skill of movie making, according to Peterson, is conveying a vision. Learning to communicate a story can be a learning experience,
will say, ‘Well, I was actually thinking that she would feel this way because this and this happened in her past.’ So then right on the spot, you have to feel the real emotion rather than what you have practiced for so long. That’s what makes acting so hard: making it real emotion.” For Figueroa, music and lighting are key factors in getting across a certain view. When using a basic setup, consisting of standard lighting and no background music or visual manipulation, Figueroa said it can be more difficult to portray that
because the audience may sometimes understand a situation in a completely different manner than what an actor or director thinks. “Movies provide an outlet for artistic expression, for communicating a story,” he said. “We’re all storytellers. Storytelling is our big thing. We’re a society of storytellers. The human race is based on storytelling, (and) movies are a medium through which we can do that.”
10.02 20,000 people. They found that those who watched the movie encouraged others to learn more about food safety, shop at local farmers markets, eat healthy food and consistently buy organic or sustainable food. Media has always had a giveand-take relationship, according to Peterson. Movies can influence and be influenced by opinion. A trend will pick up when a certain topic becomes very important to society, and directors will produce movies and
WORDS | SRIYA RAVI PHOTO | LAUREN LU
DESIGN BY LAUREN LU
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THE WAY I SEE THINGS | 23
PAIN
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From behind the brush, beneat
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n their respective classes, Mehar-Un-Nisa “Mehar” Athar, IB Visual Arts student and junior, and Rachael Seidensticker, Painting 1-2 student and junior, take up their tools and work on their art projects, trying to translate whatever they harbor in their minds onto paper. Athar said, “Recently I’ve been doing a lot of portraiture, and as my ability to paint people
NTING
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th the canvas, we see the world.
ELLEN PENG LE CRAWFORD THE WAY I SEE THINGS | 25 improves, how I understand their expressions and emotions is improving.” For Athar and Seidensticker, as with many other art students, art has shaped how they view their surroundings. Seidensticker said via email, “Art has given me a very detail-oriented and critical view (of) everything. Being so detail-oriented in my work, I now notice more nuances than I had been able to see previous to getting seriously into art.” Athar said, “The most profound impact that art has had on me has been the way I see people’s faces and (my) increased attention to detail.”
According to Jen Bubp, head of the CHS art department and Art Club sponsor, art has changed her view of the world as well. Bubp said, “For me, it’s definitely made me more appreciative (and) more diverse. (I am able) to go into a different culture and understand what I see, as opposed to being intimidated or (unsure) of how to relate. It certainly breaks down those barriers.” More Than a Pretty Picture According to Athar and Seidensticker, art has an aesthetic quality to it, and through their artistic studies, the two of them said they have come to appreciate the beauty of the world. Seidensticker said, “Art has given me the ability to step back from everything and just see the world for its aesthetic and beauty. Although things can get to be pretty tough, this passion of mine enables me to forget the hardship and really appreciate the beauty of world.” On a different note, Athar said, “When you understand art, you understand the aesthetic nature of the world around you: the composition of plants and people and divine beauty. Beyond the physical, art gives you an appreciation for the completeness of ideas and how well strung together they are in pieces of art.” Athar’s movement to a more spiritual, rather than physical, opinion of the world demonstrates the change her perspective has undergone through art. Rather than focusing on the material parts of artworks that inspire her, Athar said she draws inspiration from their themes. Bubp agrees with Athar and said, “When you
Seidensticker said, “I believe that everything should be weighed with a considerable amount of thought. Art has given me a channel through which I can funnel my thoughts and emotions.” Both Athar and Seidensticker say drawing has allowed them to appreciate art’s aesthetics; however, they also say art contains more than physical beauty. To them, art is also a thought process that requires artists to express their emotions and feelings through simple strokes on a canvas. Art is an Outlet By becoming involved in art, Athar and Seidensticker have also changed the way they cope with their hardships. According to Seidensticker, “Art has most definitely helped me through some troubling times. It is an outlet of emotion and expression; it really heals.” A study published by the Public Library of Science in July of this year supports Seidensticker’s claim that art is a healing activity. According to the researchers, by participating in visual arts production, the subjects showed great improvement in “psychological resilience from preintervention ... to post-intervention.” By including art in one’s life, one can have a more positive outlook on life. Seidensticker said, “As an emotional person, (art) has given me a healthy way to deal with whatever cards I have (been) dealt, no matter the situation.”
10.02 take Art History, you see how art has been made by different hands throughout the centuries (and by) different ways of looking at life, looking at death (and) looking at women’s perspectives (and) men’s perspectives.” For Bubp, the ideas behind art pieces aid students’ developments. She said, “I think it just broadens the scope for students to see how the mind thinks around the world.”
On the other hand, Athar said she sees art as a creative rather than an emotional outlet. “Art has really helped me sort out my ideas,” Athar said. “And in times when I feel like speech limits my ability to externalize my thoughts, my paintings feel like an extension of myself.”
Creative Genius To Bubp, art is a “creative outlet” for students. She said, “I think all of us have that creative need, and for some it’s in the form of cooking and for others it’s in the form of music. But for the kids who choose art, it’s their way (of expressing) their feelings and their ways of looking at the world.” With art, Athar has been able to exercise her creative side and develop her artistic vision. She said, “When you create art, you use a part of your brain that is usually at constant rest. In school, everything I learn is a visual in my mind, so abstract concepts are easier to grasp.” By constantly visualizing her thoughts and the world around her, Athar said she is able to come up with her own ideas that she is “able to piece together.” In doing so, Athar also said she has freedom over what she creates. She said, “(I use) charcoal if I feel like screwing up a lot, and fine tip pens for everyday sketching.” Conversely, Seidensticker said she finds her inspiration by watching other talented artists and combining their ideas with her own. She said, “I tend to jump from medium to medium. I dabble in most everything.” Both Athar and Seidensticker, however, said they use their eyes and views to create art. “The way people see the world affects the way they affect the world,” Athar said. “When everything (one sees) is beautiful and intricate, (one feels) the need to add something beautiful.”
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n the fourth grade, math teacher Brian Pata made a discovery that changed the way he thought he saw the world – WORDS | NAOMI REIBOLD
The Science Behind It Pata’s inability to distinguish colors is not a rare defect of the human eye. In fact, it’s quite common in males: Every one in 12 is color blind. Yet only every one in 200 women are as well. This occurs because color blindness is typically a hereditary trait. The gene for color blindness is recessive and only found on the X chromosome. It is much easier for males to receive this gene because they only have one
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example, red light has a long wavelength, green a medium wavelength and purple a short one. The eye detects different colors through light-sensitive cells called cones. Cones are located in the retina–the part of the eye which processes images. There are three types of cone cells, and each perceives a different type of light: red, green or blue. In most people, all three work together to help perceive the whole spectrum of color. But, for those who are color blind, certain cones are faulty and cause the eye to interpret the spectrum of color differently. A common misconception about people with color blindness is that they cannot see any colors. In actuality, they just see a lesser range. Take, for example, how Pata sees a sunset. To him, the wide range of colors that form in layers as the sun slowly fades away is just a “yellow kind of drab” that becomes duller the more the sun sets. Color psychologist Kate Smith explained the phenomenon this way: “Let’s say there were 10 different types of green and they went from a very clear, bright green to a very dull, almost greyish green. We would see all 10. Somebody who’s color blind would probably only see maybe four or five differences,” Smith said. According to Smith, of the two main types of color vision deficiency, the most common is red-green color blindness, in which the eye has trouble discerning different shades of red and green. “It’s not so blatant that green looks
just red,” Pata said. “I wondered what else there (was). What else did I see differently than everybody on a daily basis? But I don’t know because I don’t walk around with somebody and say, ‘What do you see? What do you see?’ a thousand times a day. So I just go with it until it comes up in conversation, and then I figure it out.”
red,” Smith said. “It’s that people cannot tell the difference between those in-between colors, like olive green and brown. If it’s a true green they can probably think it’s green or if it’s a bright red, they see some version as red. It’s just not as bright as you would see.” For Pata, it can be a mix of red and green. Grass appears red in his eyes–not necessarily a “fire-hydrant” red but rather, as green with a dull red over it, like a filter on a picture. Pata said it was the most shocking discovery of his color blindness. “I didn’t (know) everybody saw the grass as green. I thought it was
colors of, or matching them to the American flag. There are little limitations such as using only black and blue markers for class, never cooking meat and realizing he can never be a pilot. He said, “It really (isn’t) something that I see as debilitating. It just is what it is. I know it’s different, but so (what if) I can’t read a map? I don’t care. That’s not changing. It would be nice, but it’s still going to rain or have a tornado, (and) just because I can’t see where it is doesn’t change what’s going on.”
EE DIFFERENTLY?”
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just by looking at a map. However, it wasn’t what the map showed him that transformed what he thought to be true. It was what it didn’t show him. “We were going over a map in social studies where the rainforest is one color, and the desert is another, and it looked to me like the rainforest was the color that the desert was supposed to be. So then I realized you can’t have a rainforest and a desert that are the same color,” Pata said. It was then that Pata realized he was color blind. Pata never went to a doctor or took a test to discover what form of color blindness he had and its severity. All he knows is what he sees, and he doesn’t really mind the view. “It didn’t change anything because that’s all that I knew,” he said. “It’s not that I saw normal colors when I was born, and then it changed. From day one that’s all that I knew, so it was normal to me.”
X chromosome; therefore, if that chromosome does carry the gene for color blindness, they automatically have it. Women, on the other hand, have two X chromosomes, so they can only be color blind if both contain the recessive gene for it. In order to understand how color blindness works, it is important to understand what color is and how the eye perceives it. Color is the way the eye interprets the reflection of light off of certain objects. We distinguish color by the wavelength of the light. For
The Color Blind World For the most part, Pata said being colorblind isn’t a big problem. He can still go about his day in a relatively normal fashion, but he does occasionally face an obstacle. His biggest happens to be maps. “To this day, if there is bad weather outside, and the news channels are going through colors of where there’s really bad weather versus mild rain, I can’t tell the difference. Many of those colors just mix together,” Pata said. Traffic lights are another difficulty, but it’s one Pata quickly overcame. “I don’t really see the difference between red and yellow. It’s the same in a traffic light and then the green is very similar to the street lights that light up the street. So I just follow the car in front of me or just go off whatever lit up, top, middle, bottom,” he said. Pata has found ways to adapt to his color deficiency, like only buying clothes that he knows the
DESIGN BY LAUREN LU GRAPHIC BY AARON SHI
CONES ND COLOR Cells called cones in our eyes code for color. An ordinary person has three = x100 COLORS types of cone cells, each responsible for different wavelengths of light.
1 CONE
DICHROMAT 10,000 COLORS
ANOMALOUS TRICHROMAT
EYE
Dichromats are divided into protanopes and deuteranopes, but dichromatic humans most often confuse black with shades of red and blue with shades of reds, purples and dark pinks.
Caused by one mutant cone, this is known as being red-green color blind. Protanomaly = red-weak; Deuteranomaly = green-weak
TRICHROMAT 1,000,000 COLORS
A fancy way of saying “normal people,” or “New World Monkeys.”
SOURCE: COLOR-BLINDNESS.COM
THE WAY I SEE THINGS | 29
TETRACHROMAT 100,000,000 COLORS
*USED WITH PERMISSION
Scientists know little, but there have been documented tetrachromats, who have four cones. One tetrachromat is Concetta Antico, whose work is shown to the left.
The view from the front of the classroom, by William “Will” Ellery, social studies teacher and IB coordinator.
I also see what kids might be, what they could be, and that is both exciting and frustrating. When I was a student at Indiana University, I took the coaching course that legendary basketball coach Bob Knight taught. The course mostly dealt with the philosophy of motivating people. One of the pearls of wisdom that he imparted to us was to not reach the end of our college days and wonder what might have been, or to wish–like kids playing Whiffle ball in the backyard and arguing about fair or foul and ultimately settling on a “do-over” (although a more modern metaphor might be resetting your video game, this old teacher offers cynically)–that they could have the days back. It’s where I learned to embrace the idea of not letting your academics get in the way of your education. Sadly, for many students, academic performance alone is the endgame. I see potential from the front of the room, and it’s not based on test scores. Often I’m blown away by what students are capable of achieving. One of the great rewards of this profession is seeing what kids become when they marshal their talents. As I approach nearly a quarter of a century of teaching (and yes, I am acutely aware that makes me ancient), perhaps the skill that has been sharpened most has been the ability to see what makes kids tick. Honestly, it is probably the most important thing a teacher needs to learn to do. It enables one to connect with students on a personal level, to find out what matters most to them and to meet their needs individually. There is no great mystery to this job. We don’t hold the keys to all things yet to be discovered. Students can learn history with or without me. My job, as I see it, is to try to make learning matter to them on
WILL When I was approached to write my perspective on how I see things, I felt very much like a student who persistently asks questions in trying to pin down the details of an openended assignment. I began by considering the many hats I wear, but I realized that doesn’t meet the needs of the audience. It would likely wander, and it would definitely be dull. What the assignment calls for is how I see things from the front of the room. My lens is different from yours. So you will get my teacher perspective. Caution: it might still be dull. For all of my 21 years of teaching, I have very much looked forward to the first day of school. Don’t get me wrong; I know I will miss the swimming pool, especially on 90-degree Indiana August days, but every
In my head, I keep going back to an experience with a student from many years ago. It was a situation that every teacher can understand. I looked out over the audience of students, and I saw one student smiling, almost smirking at me. You see, I knew that he was smarter than me. He knew that he was smarter than me. I knew that he knew that he was smarter than me. Worst of all, he knew that I knew that he was smarter than me. But what I saw that mattered most was beneath the genius; I glimpsed an awkward, unsure teenager. I gave him the tools to succeed in history, but we worked on his sense of self in what proved to be a far more important task. From the front of the class, I learned to see the students, not simply look over a sea of faces, and, in the words of Robert Frost, that has made all the difference. But I still miss the swimming pool.
ELLERY
10.02 first day brings with it new faces and new opportunities. I see my students as the kids that they are: still young, energetic and certain that they are right, that adults don’t really understand them and hoping that I can help them on their way up the ladder. I see confidence, shyness, wariness and concern. As the days go on, I see humor, false bravado and a beautiful innocence. And I see kids who also would rather be at the swimming pool.
a personal level. I can see hurdles in front of them, as I have the benefit of a history with thousands of students illuminating the path. I simply need to provide some light, and that means knowing which path the kids desire to travel–not in terms of a destination, but in terms of a journey. The journey, after all, is what matters. Through this wandering introspection, I have tried to touch on what I see from the front of the room.
William “Will” Ellery, social studies teacher and IB coordinator, wrote this column. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Acumen or the Acumen staff. You may reach Mr. Ellery at wellery@ccs.k12.in.us.
DESIGN AND PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN LU
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FOR A GUEST PERSPECTIVE FROM ENGLISH TEACHER AMANDA RICHMOND, VISIT CHSACUMEN.COM
OCT. 2, 2014
IN THIS ISSUE: -A removable eye -A world in different colors -A view from behind the counter -A different perspective How do you see things? Visit us at chsacumen.com