What is passion? Is it excelling in a given area or is it an emotional involvement in an area? Now here's a big question, does New Trier promote passion, create passion, or just kill it? Now, all sides of this can be true or not, it just depends on your perspective.
Now, New Trier can lead someone to passion because there are so many different clubs and classes to try. If you find something that you really like then that can lead to a lifelong passion. Conversely, New Trier might push too hard, and too competitively and that might kill whatever liking you had for something, whether it was academic or extracurricular.
But I think New Trier does create and promote ambition. Now do you think that ambition is in itself a passion or is it just ambition? NT pushes its students to be the best, but is that good? That could take all of the passion and enjoyment out of everything and just leave someone with no goal but to be the best of the best for all of the wrong reasons. I wonder, does the rigorous academic curriculum leave time for someone to find anything that they really love to do? How does this affect us as students and as people?
It is important to examine what is going on at schools around the globe. Passion is important. The Puritans have passion for their religion, they are very devout and that is admirable, but do they take it too far? As seen in The Crucible the people of Salem say that there is witchcraft around and that it might have been there all along, they just didn't see it. Just as, perhaps, how we (people in general) don't always see what is actually happening, but on the other hand, sometimes things are seen that really aren't there.
Olivia, I don't think either of your definitions accurately describe passion. I believe passion is actually a combination of the two definitions. In my mind, passion is an desire to excel in something that is enjoyable to a person.
ReplyDeleteI think New Trier really does facilitate passion in a way, but I see passion being suppressed at the same time too. For example, the bulletin has at least five or ten clubs publicizing themselves in one day. There are so many opportunities for a student to pursue whatever they please. I know that I have found that a few of my passions by participating in these clubs (on the other hand, I've also found out that I absolutely hate doing some things, ie math).
As I said before, I do also notice that New Trier, maybe inadvertently extinguishes passion through its strive for excellence. I think we can all safely say we've felt the competitivity here. Personally, I feel the need to be the best in everything that i participate in. In the end, what has happened is that I am much more sleep deprived, and in the middle of everything instead of the top. I think what went wrong in my case though is that I didn't chose one or two things that I really loved, but rather I decided to attempt to focus on everything. So I guess what I'm saying is that the competitivity between students is what really destroys passion, not the administration. Here's the real question though, where's this competitivity from?
Other than that, great post, Olivia!
Well, the competition might result from the diversity of students at NT. Because there are so many talented people, it maybe that their competitiveness rubs off on other students. Personally, I know I compare myself to the best students and such. And that makes me want to improve as well. But I think that from having much of the student population do very well over the years, it has created the general expectation that all students will be exemplary. So passion could be killed by the administration and the students themselves.
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