The Rules

I received this short piece from an anonymous writer a few days ago, and I thought I'd publish it with a few of my own thoughts. Laura and I want the Goblet to be a place where people can share what they know, and how they feel. We wanted this to be a slice of real Lehigh life. The following piece made me think about how difficult it really is to find your place in a sea of people. It's interesting what expectations get confirmed or dismissed when you come to college. The things you think will happen don't and the things you never thought would happen, do. Coming to college is usually the first powerful experience that changes what we think about life. The first time we have to live on own own and figure out what we want to do with our lives, who we want to spend all our time will. In my case, I almost transferred because I could not sift through what I wanted from a school. I am glad I didn't, because my second year provided me much more time to understand that if I wasn't doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, I wouldn't be happy. If I was spending time with people that made me pull my hair out, what was the point? A friend told me a saying that her mother used to tell her, "nothing's worth raising your blood pressure over." And in my personal life I've found myself much happier when I don't follow "the rules". Now, I'm not tell you all to break the law, but we don't always have to do what everyone else is doing, especially if you're not into it. So be free and be who you are! 

-Meghan Barwick '15

I came to college hopeful.

High school had been less than stellar. I never managed to figure out how to be one of those popular kids you see on TV, or which lunch table to sit at. I missed the boat as far as getting invited to parties or drinking. At times it seemed I never even learned how to hold a conversation without being awkward or an asshole. It seemed like everyone but me was following a set of rules, some subtle playbook I hadn't gotten a glance at. But every time I sat alone for a meal or spent another night home and alone, I always had college to look forward to. The promised land! Paradise! College would be where I could be myself, where the scales would be reset and I could find my people. The people I knew had to exist whose behavior I could understand. So I endured. I took the hardest classes I could, studied hard, took my SATs and did my tours. One thing led to another, and I landed at Lehigh. The first day of Freshman year I was so excited. First day of the rest of my life.  I stayed hopeful for a month or so. Then the rules began to appear again. We party every night here. We poison ourselves with everything we can drink smoke or snort. And everyone else seemed to know how to do this, effortlessly. I rechecked my schedule to see if I had missed some sort of class or seminar, and if so when the make up date would be. No such luck. I tried to fake it for a while, I went to the parties, drank whatever beverage happened to be on hand, played one game of ruit after another.  And in the middle of every crowded party I still felt alone.I couldn't understand how to spend entire night throwing balls at cups and have fun, or what the appropriate protocol for hooking up with someone you met within the last hour was. Or what hooking up even meant… Sex? Making out? Going fishing together? No one ever explained, despite the phrase's constant use. When did it become ok to wear pink shorts but not cargo shorts? What is the appropriate type of hat to wear, and how flat should the brim be? When did forcing yourself to vomit every Friday, Saturday and the occasional Thursday become fun? I think its my own fault. I made a mistake somewhere along the line maybe, or I’m just not flexible enough, too stubborn to change my ways. I think I just don’t want to play by these rules. I let myself be ostracized rather than change. I am not a wise man. I wish I had. I wish I could have, I just didn’t know how.Eventually I gave up. Surely there are people here whom I can understand, maybe just one person just as confounded by all of this as I am. I’ve heard legends of such folk, but wherever they are, they’ve hidden well. For now I have plenty of work to do alone, classes to take alone, and meals to eat alone. Welcome to paradise.

-Anonymous 

Holiday Troubles

Lehigh is a nondenominational school, as anyone who attends could tell you.  To someone unfamiliar with Lehigh, though, being unaffiliated with any religion might mean that Lehigh avoids any involvement with religion.  This, however, is very far from the truth.  Lehigh permits clubs for various denominations, allows any type of worship in Packer Memorial Church and takes the stance of allowing any religious belief rather than restricting the student body from all beliefs.  The positives of this view point are numerous.  From a rights perspective, every person has the ability to practice whatever set of beliefs they see fit.  From an academic perspective, there is no requirement to take classes pertaining to a certain religion.  Coming from a Catholic elementary school and high school where theology was easily the most boring of my classes each year, I especially appreciated this aspect.

Despite the positive aspects of Lehigh’s acceptance of all beliefs, there is one major drawback.  By accommodating all religions, Lehigh puts itself in a tough position to be accommodating for particular religions on especially important holidays.  Take Judaism, for example.  Judaism’s most serious holy day, Yom Kippur, fell on Wednesday, September 26th last semester.  The very next day was the first day of four o’clock exams.  While this timing was unusual and unfortunate, the fact remains that someone Jewish would have a very difficult time observing this “Day of Atonement.”  Yom Kippur involves fasting as well as taking the day off from work or school.  Although most professors are very understanding, Lehigh cannot accommodate Jewish students on this holy day by giving them the day off.  If Lehigh did, there would no doubt be uproar anytime a different religion needed a day off for a holiday.  This fact left Jewish students in the position last semester where, on a day meant for reflection and penance, they had to worry about missing class and about an exam the next day.

As for myself, I only recently began thinking about this issue when I encountered a religious conflict of my own.  Holy Week is the most important week in the Christian calendar.  In particular, Good Friday and Easter Sunday of Holy Week are very important.  In my experience at Lehigh, it is an inconvenience that we are not given off for either Good Friday nor the Monday following Easter.  For people with classes on Friday and early on Monday, like myself, going home to celebrate the most holy and joyous day in Christianity with family becomes a terse and stressful experience.  Easter Sunday becomes a rushed event, worrying about getting back to school for classes the next day.  To make matters especially bad this semester, Good Friday fell on March 29^th, with Easter Sunday landing on March 31^st. This year has had such magnificent timing that, like Yom Kippur, both holy days fell during four o’clock exam time. I was faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to go home to be with my family. I would barely be home two days, spending all of Saturday home but only getting to enjoy some of Friday and Sunday with my family. Then there was the fact that I had an exam on Monday that would be difficult to study for while celebrating with relatives. Ultimately, I decided to go home because I value spending time with my family during the holidays. Whether or not I will regret the decision remains to be seen (at the time of my writing this I have yet to take my Monday exam), but it is upsetting to me that it is so difficult to go home for such an important time without feeling guilty that my time could be better spent preparing for exams the next week.  Part of me understands why Lehigh can’t do anything, but another part of me wishes Lehigh would make it easier for any religion to observe their most important holidays.

There is no clear solution to these issues that arise as a result of organized religion.  Lehigh offers so many great opportunities for everyone to practice their belief system of choice, and I do not mean to sound ungrateful for those opportunities in writing this article.  I am very happy with my decision to be at Lehigh and aim not to complain, but rather raise the question: by accommodating every religion, can Lehigh really accommodate any religion when it really matters?  I like to believe there is some way, but it’s times like these when I’m rushing back to Lehigh after a hurried Easter dinner that make me frustrated it hasn’t been found yet.

-Colin Orr '15

French Fries and a Whole Lot of Fight

It’s amazing how little it takes to make us happy when we’re young children. A new toy, a game of peek-a-boo or a kiss from Mom - it didn’t take much.

For Rebecca Youssef, now a sophomore at Lehigh University, all it took was Barney and Burger King french fries.

Her love for the fries went so deep that she cherished not only the taste, but also the smell. So much so, that when she was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, a rare form of leukemia in children, at the age of 3, her grandfather would bring her them every day, even though she was too sick to eat them. She would sit in her hospital crib with the warm, salty, golden fries in her hands, so close to her face, and just smell them for hours...and that made her happy.

Even though now, 16 years later, Rebecca enjoys actually eating the fries, that memory remains. Having cancer is something she has obviously never forgotten. She isn’t frequently reminded of that time in her life, only when she absolutely can’t avoid it. Only when things like the smell of Burger King french fries are present.

One of those moments occurred when she was accepted into Lehigh University. You would think that the two have nothing in common, no relating factor. But the reminder came randomly, when filling out rooming information, and the questionnaire asked if she had any special needs or handicaps.

Even though cancer was never something Rebecca allowed to hold her back, it left her with an ailment she must address from time to time. Rebecca is 50 percent deaf in one ear and 60 percent deaf in the other, and therefore needed strobe lights in her room. “I can’t hear high pitched sounds,” she said. “In high school during fire drills I couldn’t initially hear the fire alarms when the doors were shut, I just got up because everyone else was.”

Another reason that college and her experience with cancer are so interrelated is because she went in wanting to be an oncologist, the kinds of people that she dealt with during her nine months in the hospital.

During those nine months, Rebecca was put on an aggressive form of chemotherapy, which caused her to lose her hair and half her body weight. “I think being sick actually made her a stronger person, even though she may not remember all of the things she went through,” said Julia Youssef, Rebecca’s mother.

Julia sat by Rebecca’s side for the entire time she was sick, and watched her daughter fight tooth and nail every time she had to take medicine, watched the doctors hold her down as they forced vile tasting medicine down her throat and watched her refuse to eat anything for nine weeks in protest of what was happening to her.

“The doctor always used to say that as difficult as it was [to give her her medicine], she was glad because it meant that she was a fighter,” she said. “It was her way of fighting.”

Julia recalled perfectly the first time Rebecca ate again after those long grueling nine weeks. “Finally one day around 3 a.m. she said to me that she wanted chicken,” she said. So despite the fact that the hospital Rebecca was at was in a bad and dangerous area and that all the nurses advised her against it, Julia ventured out into a strange town in search of chicken for her daughter.

She found an open diner where the man would only sell her half of an entire chicken, but she didn’t care. She bought the chicken without a second thought and brought it back to Rebecca. “She ate a little bite and that was it,” she said. “That was the first thing she ate in nine weeks.”

This unconditional love that caused Rebecca’s mother to go out in search of chicken in the middle of the night, and her grandfather to bring her Burger King fries every day, is something that Rebecca remembers vividly and credits for her health today.

[Rebecca & her mother, Julia]

“My mom was so positive and everyone was always around me, and they made the room bright,” Rebecca said. “No one ever, at least not in my presense, acknowledged the fact that I was sick to bring me down. It was a good atmosphere. I think that’s half the battle.”

At the time, Rebecca didn’t know the seriousness of the situation and the important role that her family held. The oncologist dealing with Rebecca’s case told her mother that she only had a 15 percent chance of living. But Julia never gave up hope; she never stopped believing that her daughter would be in that 15 percent. “I told my family that if they were going to cry or be all mopey [when they saw Rebecca] that they shouldn’t come at all,” said Julia.

Even Rebecca’s older sister Katrina, who was 7 at the time, did her part in providing Rebecca with a positive atmosphere. Rebecca’s parents put Katrina in a summer camp while they cared for Rebecca, but all Katrina wanted to do was be with her sister.

[Rebecca & Katrina doing the survivor's lap at Relay for Life 2009]

“She would come home crying and asking, ‘Is it true my sister’s going to die,” said Julia. “She didn’t want to go to camp, she just wanted to be in the hospital with me and Rebecca.”

But the only way they would allow Katrina to see Rebecca was if she came to the hospital every day and had no contact with other children all summer long in order to prevent the spreading of germs to Rebecca. Katrina chose to go to the hospital every day.

“Every day she would come and she would bring her toys and Barbie’s, and would spend basically all day there…and Katrina was happy,” said Julia.

After nine months of being in the hospital, surrounded by her family, Rebecca went into remission for the rest of her life, contrary to what doctors expected. Her life from then was normal, with random moments along the way that connected her back to cancer.

In fact, nobody even knew that Rebecca was deaf until she was in first grade, even though medicine from the chemo she had when she was 3 had caused the damage. Teachers just thought she was slow, and placed her in basic skills class and speech therapy. She had speaking problems, messing up words like breakfast and bathing suit, in which she would say “becfast” and “baby suit.” But once she scored an almost perfect score on a state test, it was realized that she was deaf.

She wasn’t known as the deaf girl or the girl with cancer. In fact most of her classmates didn’t even know until her senior year of high school, when she made a speech at a Relay for Life assembly telling her story.

Some always knew, though, mostly those who knew Rebecca from a young age and went to elementary school with her. During that time in her life she wore hearing aids, which she always hated. In fact she would pull them out of her ears every day in order to get out of class.

“I didn’t like them,” she said. “It was like artificial hearing. It was like hearing things through a microphone all of the time…it drove me insane.”

Rebecca went the rest of her school career without hearing aids, relying on reading lips. Julia recalled the incident she believed made Rebecca ultimately give up on the hearing aids. Someone in school asked her if they were radios, and she went home saying she would never wear them again.

The hearing aids only gave way to the fact that she couldn’t hear and that she had had cancer, and that’s not what Rebecca wanted. In middle school, Rebecca’s science teacher informed her mother that she was failing his class. Julia was confused as to why this was happening because she constantly helped Rebecca study, and she always knew her material. Finally, she was informed that the tests were orally given. “When he told me they were oral I was like ‘no wonder!’ She couldn’t hear, and she probably didn’t want to ask him to repeat the question…she’d rather die than tell someone that she can’t hear,” Julia said.

When Rebecca was allowed to retake the tests she did much better. 

“I don't think anyone really treated Becca differently with hearing aids, if anything they were just curious about what they were because it was something other people didn’t have,” said Jocelyn Nelson, a classmate of Rebecca’s from elementary school. “I don't really even remember her having them except for when she lost them on the blacktop and one of the aides asked us all to help find them.”

“I loved Rebecca,” said Will Lovejoy, another childhood classmate. “I always thought she was so funny, and I don’t think anybody thought she was different because that’s just how she was, you know? We all loved her.”

In fact, both Nelson and Lovejoy did have specific memories about Rebecca, none of which had anything to do with her hearing aids.

Nelson reflected back on the first time she saw Rebecca, which was in elementary school after Rebecca had broken her leg from jumping down all the stairs in her house. “I just remember her being amazingly good at sports, and the boys always wanted her on their team for gym,” she said. “She was always really funny and wore monkey shirts all the time.”

Lovejoy shared an anecdote of an encounter with Rebecca when he accidentally kicked her brand new soccer ball onto the roof of a nearby building. “She didn’t even say a word, she just ran over and started kicking me,” he said. “Like she kicked me 12 times, and then I bought her a soccer ball for her birthday party.”

“You would feel like people would be more questioning in elementary school because that’s not common, but I honestly don’t remember anyone making it obvious that I was different,” Rebecca said.

     
In her high school yearbook, Rebecca was chosen as one of 320 students to be written about on the front page of the “student portraits section.” But the write-up wasn’t about her hearing or cancer…it was about her procrastination. The blurb read: “Or Rebecca Youssef’s procrastination. It earned her many sleepless nights, but the rest of us felt at ease knowing that we would always finish the assignment before her.”

It was during this time in high school that Rebecca decided she wanted to be a doctor. “I remember growing up being like, ‘I never want to be a doctor, that’s the worst, most depressing career,” Rebecca said. But once she got to high school and she learned more about the people who helped her all those years ago, her opinion changed. She realized that she would truly enjoy helping people. So that was her dream for all of high school, to be a pediatric oncologist.

But sometimes as we all know, things don’t go as planned. The dream didn’t work out, and Rebecca has since changed her dream to a business major.  “I guess I didn’t realize how much of a commitment it was, and how difficult it would be to just go to med school,” she said. “ I think coming into college I wasn’t mentally, emotionally or physically prepared to put this much work into it. I didn’t like anything I was learning, and I realized that I didn’t want to put myself through that.”

Rebecca struggled in her science classes necessary for a premed route. Her struggles have resulted in bad grades and therefore a falling behind in GPA and credits.

Rebecca doesn’t feel she’s failing some sort of obligation to be a doctor because she had cancer, it’s more that she feels as if she didn’t try her best, and now her struggles have held her back. “It has created a problem for me in a lot of areas in my life because I didn’t do well,” she said. “I don’t like the idea of not having the option of doing what I want, of exploring things.”

It was in these moments that Rebecca’s days of having cancer rose back in her life, experiences and memories linked to her plan to be a doctor. The smell of the Burger King fries was ever present during this time in her life.

“I always said that I wanted to help people,” she said. “But now I’m realizing that there are other ways to help people, and maybe I’m not best suited to be a doctor.”

[Rebecca & Laura present day]

-Laura Casale '15

Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, C Minor

Okay. I’m just going to put it this out there, and if you don’t like it… you can send it right back. I LOVE CLASSICAL MUSIC. It’s my favorite genre of music and something I could never get sick of. All modern music that you kids listen to stemmed from the genius minds of men like Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, et cetera. My little bit on classical music every month will be an expression of nerd and excitement from me to you. I urge you to listen to each piece; they’re all valuable to the development of music.

I’ll start my first piece with an epic composition that is known to all, yet not many seem to know what it’s called or who it’s by. The first movement of this symphony begins with the well-known DUN DUN DUN DUUNNNNNNNNNNN. You all know it, of course you do. It’s Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, in C minor!! My favourite version is done by the Berlin Philharmonic (one of the best groups in the world) under the direction of Herbert Karajan. The entire symphony is a complex, beautiful arrangement of notes into one of the most epic and exciting pieces ever written. E.T.A. Hoffman says about the piece (after attending the premiere of the symphony in December of 1808) “How this wonderful composition, in a climax that climbs on and on, leads the listener imperiously forward into the spirit world of the infinite!...No doubt the whole rushes like an ingenious rhapsody past many a man, but the soul of each thoughtful listener is assuredly stirred, deeply and intimately, by a feeling that is none other than that unutterable portentous longing, and until the final chord-indeed, even in the moments that follow it-he will be powerless to step out of that wondrous spirit realm where grief and joy embrace him in the form of sound…”

I think that is a very powerful and accurate description of how that piece affects people, and certainly describes the reaction that I personally have to it. This symphony is so much more than its famous beginning. The complexities of the melody and the journey that you embark upon while listening to Beethoven’s 5th are a beautiful and spiritual one. To me, classical music is something that is so pure that it can allow you to reflect upon it and truly gain something beneficial from it. This might sound like spiritual mumbo jumbo, but I know this music fosters deep thought and appreciation of the beautiful.

Photography Collection: Hilary Hla

-Photographs by Hilary Hla '13

Who Takes Care of Me?

I was walking with my boyfriend yesterday when he commented on, “the cute folds around my eye.”

“Yeah, those are premature crows feet,” I explained, “I’m getting wrinkly and old.” Then I proceeded to make crow noises on the front lawn for thirty seconds.

In some ways, I feel like I’m becoming a wrinkly old grown-up. I take vitamins every morning, (occasionally) read the newspaper, and can say things like, “The markets closed on a real high today,” and marginally understand what I’m talking about. In other ways, I feel just as young and clueless as the girl who came on campus three years ago—who wore her Hawk’s Nest shirt to the first football game with no understanding of Moco attire.

There are some lessons endemic to Lehigh culture: don’t change seats in class after the first week of the semester, you can’t take phone calls in the library, or you can always pretend someone doesn’t exist if you look down at your phone as they walk by. Then there are lessons beyond the realm of South Bethlehem: filing a W-4 tax form, remembering your social security number, or separating your darks and lights. One of the biggest lessons I learned right off the bat at Lehigh was; who takes care of me?

Freshman year, I could hear the coughing through the wall. It was winter, and the peak of flu season. Not a day went by where you didn’t hear the echoing of a puffy faced freshman in the bathroom blowing the shit out of their nose. We were getting hit left and right with disease, and none of us knew what to do. I’d see crusty-eyed first years stumble into Lower, and think to myself Why aren’t these people in the health center? Or quarantine? We were like the island of misfit toys, waiting for someone to swoop in and take care of us.

I overheard a girl whining to her roommate in the common room—“My fever is up around 100, and I literally can’t get a decent night’s sleep. My throat is so swollen I look like a frog.” Her roommate flashed a look of sympathy across her face, and went back to browsing the CollegeACB page, largely ignoring the plight of her (not-so) beloved roommate.

At the time, I thought to myself, what an epic bitch! of the girl. Now, not so much. That’s one of the first things you learn at college, who takes care of me? Being sick is one of those terrible experiences in college when you finally realize you really are on your own. No one is getting you soup, and no one is telling you not to go to school that day. You are your own gatekeeper, and I admit, that’s pretty scary. The same girl with the fever stood in the hallway the next morning, reasoning with whoever walked by on why she wasn’t going to class. I get it. You feel like someone else has to approve, but no one really cares if you are going to class or not—they’re more worried about an upcoming 4 o’clock or trying to remember what they did last night. It’s bizarre when you finally realize it’s all up to you, and that no one else cares when you skip your 8:10 Statistics class. In college, your health is very much up to you.

Full Disclosure: I’m a pretty serious asthmatic, and a habitually sick person. I’m like one of those ladies in a Victorian novel that spends about an hour in the rain, and then dies of pneumonia the very next day. I have pretty much been sick my entire duration at Lehigh, but I’ll never forget the first time I realized I actually have to take care of myself. The spring of freshman year I was in rough shape. I joined a sorority, which was awesome, but my self-imposed social schedule was leaving no time for health. I was young, with a youthful liver. I was on top of the world (or at least on top of a table stomping in a frat house), until my health took a turn for the worse.

I went home spring break with an inability to breathe properly. A quick visit to my doctor revealed my lung capacity was at around 50%, as if I had lost a lung somewhere in a pile of frackets. It took a bad case of pneumonia compounded with my asthma, and I seriously lost my breath. I took all the antibiotics my doctor asked me, and then promptly stopped when I was back and Lehigh and around the gin bucket.

Surprise, I got sick again. But this time, my mom wasn’t there to take me to the doctor. I bemoaned and sat in my bed, willing people to come take care of me. I needed tea, soup, and more importantly, someone to tell me that I needed to see a doctor. I honestly don’t understand how my roommate slept through the nights, when my coughing was reminiscent of a foghorn. When I couldn’t make my daily pilgrimage from UC to M&M, I realized I had a problem. I hauled ass to the Health Center, where my condition was so poor, the nurse practitioner looked at me like I was nuts for letting it go this far. “What were you thinking?” she asked with concern. I mumbled something about being really busy, but in reality I understood it was entirely my fault I was in such poor shape.

But, just as the girl who lived down the hall from me, I was paralyzed when it came to illness. All I had to do before college was cough a few times and my mom pulled out the thermometer and told me to take it easy. When I hacked up a lung during class discussion, no one was asking me if I wanted a cough drop. When I limped my way up from lunch to pass out in my bed, no one was there to coddle me.

Who takes care of me? (Hint: Look in the mirror).

I became very acquainted with antibiotics, and surprise, felt well. It sounds like an easy lesson after you learn it, but at the time I was truly at a loss. It’s startling when you finally realize that there is no one in your approximate vicinity that wants to wipe your nose or dote on you. Getting sick in college is like a gateway drug for independence.

Since taking myself to the doctor for the first time, I’ve made many other firsts. I booked an airline ticket, and figured out a bus schedule. I wrote my first check, and hid my first speeding ticket from my parents. I came home, and for the first time felt isolated by the salmon pink bedroom walls I had chosen in 8th grade. While the moments of independence define us, they also separate us from what we once were and bring us one step closer to who we will become.

I was on the phone with my mom last week when I suppressed a whopper of a cough. “That sounds bad,” she said, “have you gone to the health center?”

Instead of validation, I felt annoyance. “I can take care of it myself.”

I take care of me.

-Emma Diehl '13

Check out her blog HERE

Now and Then, Here and There.