For my capstone, I created a website for the Hyrtl Skull Exhibit at the Mutter Museum. There are one-hundred-thirty-nine skulls in the collection, and Hyrtl took very detailed notes on all of them, beyond occupation or age or cause of death. He looked at where the skulls were from and the shape of them. This collection was amassed to disprove the theory of phrenology, which is the idea that you can determine a person’s intelligence based on the size and shape of their cranium. This idea was used to support slavery and white supremacy. I first did research on Dr. Hyrtl and then I started to catalogue the data that I was given. This is what took my the longest, as there are one-hundred-thirty-nine skulls and the data was not organized in a way that you could draw conclusions from it. I created a 20 page table with nine columns that summarized all of the data. From there I found statistics like average age, sex ratio, and causes of death. Once that was done, I took all of my data and put it into my website. I also shared this chart with the Mutter, so they have a better idea of what their collection looks like.

Pizzelles Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cups of flour

• 2 teaspoons of baking powder

• ½ teaspoon of salt

• 3 eggs

• ¾ cup of sugar

• ¼ pound of melted butter

• Vanilla to taste (start a 1 teaspoon)

• Anise to taste (not used in the batch I made)

Steps:

1. Whisk dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

2. In a larger bowl, beat eggs and sugar until blended and slightly fluffy. Slowly add in cooled, melted butter, vanilla, and anise and mix until fully incorporated.

3. Slowly add in dry ingredients until the batter is smooth and thick

4. Drop batter onto the pizzelle iron, using a cookie scoop, and cook till cookies are golden brown.

A Note for the Beginner:

DO NOT LET THEM BURN! (It smells worse than burned popcorn.)

Analysis:

The food in this recipe is processed, but not to an extreme. Both the flour and the sugar are bleached, and the extracts have chemicals in them, as does the butter. However, this recipe was designed to be made by peasants in Italy. Nothing in the recipe has to be processed, it is more a matter of what is available to the consumer when you buy the ingredients. While most of the ingredients are processed, it is not nearly as bad as buying pre-made pizzelles, which have exponentially more sugar and chemicals in them than if you make it yourself.

As a desert, this is obviously not the healthiest of meals, but humans have evolved to digest everything used in the recipe. There are chemicals added to make them easier to sell and to store, but not necessarily to make it easier to digest. Pizzelles are not meant to be eaten all year round. Mostly they are served around Christmas, and eaten with espresso after dinner. Too much intake could lead to diabetes, but that would take a lot  of pizzelles.

As far as environmental ramifications go, almost everything used was produced in North America. The thing that came the furthest was the vanilla, which was originally grown in Mexico. Almost everything else was produced in the Midwest or East Coast. There is not a lot of travel involved in producing pizzelles because they are so simple. Again, this is originally a peasant desert. You had to be able to come up with the majority of your own ingredients and get the rest for cheap when this recipe was written. That meant nothing that I had travelled too far, if at all.

For my five minutes of science, I decided to focus on circus “freaks”. Most commonly known for their sideshow attraction in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we don’t think about them much anymore, but they are still a very large part of our entertainment industry. From people like Andre the Giant to Peter Dinklage, it is clear we still find something interesting about people who look different than us. And as American Horror Story: Freak Show shows, we still view these “freaks” as just that. They are separate and apart from us, something we enjoy marvelling at, but not welcoming into our own society. That is all fine and good until you consider that millions of people are considered “freaks”, for whatever reason. They cannot get jobs or a steady income because of their appearance, and when they do find something, it is often a capitalization of their birth defect, making them into something less than human.

These “freakish” types of birth defects can be caused by any myriad of things, from chromosomal abnormalities to genetic mutations to tumors to exposure to things like viruses, alcohol, or drugs in the womb. For example, gigantism is commonly caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland that causes it to secrete to much growth hormone, somatotropin, making them grow much taller and much faster than the average human. Something similar happens with dwarfism. While there are multiple types of dwarfism, the most common is achondroplasia, which is caused by a genetic mutation that makes the pituitary gland create less cartilage and slow the use of the growth plates much faster than they should. And those are just two of the most common.

While most “freakish” birth defects are survivable and have minimal side effects, depending upon how bad the birth defect is, some of them can be crippling. Some conjoined twins can never separate from each other, making life very dangerous for them. People with microcephaly can suffer side effects from something as mild as a shortened stature to something as severe as seizures. Not to mention that people with visible birth defects, like people with hirsutism, extreme, male patterned hair growth on women, or cornu cutaneum growths, human horns, are incredibly unlikely to get a job or the emotional support they need as humans without expense treatments and surgeries.

As someone who has studied many of these birth defects and more, at the Mutter Museum and beyond, I have found it increasingly more disturbing the way society treats these people. We allow ourselves to make a profit off of them and marvel at them in fascinated horror, but we refuse to let them work in the same offices as us or try to accommodate any side effects from their “freakishness”. While we may not stick them in side shows anymore doesn’t mean we treat them anymore humanly. We force ourselves to ignore the issues they are facing for reasons they can’t help in favor of our own comfort. This treatment needs to end and end quickly. We have been treating “freaks” like this for over a century; isn’t it time we learn?

Works Cited:

M. (n.d.). Hirsutism. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hirsutism/basics/causes/CON-20028919

McGurgan, H. (n.d.). Gigantism. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.healthline.com/health/gigantism

Memento Mutter. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://memento.muttermuseum.org/

M. (n.d.). Microcephaly. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/microcephaly/basics/causes/con-20034823

At some point, we've all been labelled something by society. Society tells us that we are one thing, and that is it. We are allowed no dimensionality. In this paper, I wanted to explore why that is. I wanted to create an in-depth look at how society treats people, and how they identify themselves. I also look at how we identify ourselves and how society identifies us effects where we feel we belong.

We’ve all been there. We’re talking with someone about something, and they say something controversial, something that goes against a tightly held belief. In that situation, we have to make an instant decision: do we speak up and risk starting a fight, or do we stay silent, and feel guilty but free of a confrontation? It’s a verbal fight-or-flight reaction. Either choice feels like a bad one. On the one hand, we want to stand up for our beliefs, but that could result in a loud, possibly explosive argument with the other person, whom we might really like. But, if we don’t stand up for those beliefs, we begin to question how dearly we hold them, even if we have believed in them since we were children. In some cases, mainly when we don’t like the person we are talking with, the choice is easy: we fight. We argue and defend our beliefs and allow passion to take us over. But what happens when it’s your childhood friend? Or a family member? We often choose to stay silent.

That silence is not a compromise of your beliefs. Humans, as a species, are designed for adaptation. We adapt to whatever situation we are in. This knack for adaptation applies also to our identity and how we display it. Though everyone will always display a few core values, our identity, as a whole, is a fluid thing. We allow different environments to pull different feelings and connections out of us. We pick and choose certain aspects of ourselves for certain situations. But that does not make the parts we did not choose any less a part of our identity. Human identity is built on a series of contradictions. Just because you are religious doesn’t mean you can’t believe and fight for gay rights. Just because you are a feminist doesn’t mean you can’t wear makeup and dresses. The thing is, society is often the thing that causes the different parts of our identity to clash. According to Dimitrov and Kopra:

Society prefers to operate with fixed identities - they help to divide people into groups, to 'push' the groups into separate "boxes" and computer files (hierarchical or nested into one another), to label these boxes and files with names, numbers and codes, and then to do with them all sorts of manipulations.

These fixed identities, which are often based in stereotypes, make it harder to find belonging in multiple places. Society wants everyone in boxes, because that makes us easy to categorize and deal with.

This categorization also leads to things like the hierarchies of race and the patriarchy that we deal with everyday. “Part of understanding our identity, therefore, means understanding how we fit in (or don’t) with other groups of people. It also means being aware of the fact that some groups have more social, political and economic power than others.” (The Critical Media Project) Because we have been sorted into boxes, each box must have a certain value, and that value comes in the currency of privilege. And American society has chosen to give the rich, straight, white man the most value, and, therefore, the most privilege. And with this privilege, they decided in what boxes other people belong in. Because I am a woman, I have less value than a man, but because I am white, I have more value than woman of color. And that is absolutely ridiculous. I am worth no more or no less than anyone else, and everyone else is worth no more or no less than me. But, because gender and race have come to correlate with value within our society, that is how we are perceived in our boxes.

Because society is constantly pushing us into boxes, we constantly feel conflicted about our identity and where we belong. According to Giddens:

Even those who would say that they have never given any thought to questions or anxieties about their own identity will inevitably have been compelled to make significant choices throughout their lives, from everyday questions about clothing, appearance and leisure to high-impact decisions about relationships, beliefs and occupations.

Society is constantly asking us to choose between various aspects of our identity. Are you girly or feminist? Do you believe in religion or evolution? But those choices are often impossible to make. Human identity and belong are robust, complex, and multifaceted. It can change, shift, and disguise itself, but it is alway full to the brim and bursting with societal contradictions. In the end, identity cannot be defined by anyone, and especially someone who is not you. Where you belong and how you define yourself are solely decisions that you can make. We were not meant to be put in boxes. And we really can’t let those boxes define us.

Works Cited

Dimitrov, Vladimir, and Kalevi Kopra. Dynamics of Human Identity. Dynamics of Human Identity. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <http://www.zulenet.com/vladimirdimitrov/pages/identity.html>.

Giddens, Anthony. "Www.theory.org.uk Resources: Anthony Giddens." Www.theory.org.uk Resources: Anthony Giddens. David Gauntlett, 2002. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens4.htm>.

Point of View, or POV, is a critical part of stories. It determines how the reader feels about various characters, and what they know. Often, when the author wants the reader to connect with the main character better, the book will be written in the first person POV of the main character. James Dashner’s The Maze Runner does not follow this convention. It is written in the 3rd person limited, following the main character, Thomas. Despite the the fact that Thomas is not telling the reader the story directly, there is almost no detachment from the story. Instead, the reader feels as if they are experiencing and learning everything with Thomas. The use of Thomas’s 3rd person limited POV in this story allows the reader to feel like they are a part of the story, and therefore, more invested.

In the first two chapters of the book, the only thing Thomas knows about himself is his name. In the third chapter, Thomas asks Chuck, one of the other characters, how old he thinks he is. Chuck answers the question somewhat blandly, not knowing how shocking the answer would be to Thomas. “Thomas was so stunned he’d barely heard the last part. Sixteen? He was only sixteen? He felt so much older.” Thomas thinks with the intelligence and maturity of an adult, yet all the boys in the Glade are just that, boys. Logic tells the reader that Thomas has to be around the same as the rest of them, but since the story is told through what Thomas sees and thinks, it feels like he is older than he really is. His age is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things Thomas and the reader have to learn about the Glade and the Maze. A review of The Maze Runner in The Guardian perfectly summarizes this. At one point, the review states, “Thomas knew NOTHING and nobody would tell him what he wanted to know so I kinda ended up getting as frustrated as Thomas.” In the first several chapters of the story, Thomas is still learning and adjusting to the new language and surroundings. He is curious, as is the reader. However, the Gladers are a very secretive group. He has to learn like the rest of them did. That sentiment is a large part of the reason why the reader feels like they are a part of the story. They are learning as Thomas learns, and are feeling the same irritation and annoyance as him.

Later in the novel, Thomas is stuck in the Maze, at night, with an unconscious Alby, the Glade’s leader, and a panicked Minho, the Keeper of the Runners. Minho told him it was pretty much fend for yourself and ran off, leaving Thomas alone with Alby. Minho did not try to help Thomas at all, leaving him with no experience or advice. “A sudden dislike for the guy swelled up inside him. Minho was the veteran in this place, a Runner. Thomas was a Newbie, just a few days in the Glade, a few minutes in the Maze. Yet of the two of them, Minho had broken down and panicked, only to run off at the first sign of trouble.” Through out the novel, the Gladers put immense amounts of emphasis on the danger of the Maze. No one but the Runners are supposed to go out there. And no one is ever supposed to go out there at night. The worst punishment they have in the Glade is banishing someone into the Maze for a night. They never come back. Thomas, who was aware of the danger of the Maze, went out to help Alby and Minho anyway. The fact that Minho leaves him at the first sign of danger leaves both Thomas and the reader feeling betrayed. Thomas had grown to trust and like Minho, and because of the way Dashner writes Thomas’s experience, so did the reader. This is a bit surprising, because with most 3rd person POVS, even 3rd person limited, are normally detached and slightly distant from the characters. However, the perspective gained using the 3rd person is very useful throughout the novel. Dashner’s ability to combine emotion and thoughts with perspective guides the reader, allowing them to understand the story like Thomas, and making them feel like Newbies as well.

After the events that transpired in the Maze, the Keepers try to figure out what they should do with Thomas. He did break the biggest rule they had, but he also saved two of the most important people in the Glade. Everyone was arguing about what should happen to him. Minho suggested that Thomas take his place as Keeper of the Runners. This did not go over well with everyone. “When everyone started talking at once, Thomas put his head in his hands to wait it out, awed and terrified at the same time. Why had Minho said that? Has to be a joke, he thought.” This is one of the best examples of the emotional description of Thomas. Dashner uses the perspective that any 3rd person POV gives the reader, and combines it masterfully with the emotion Thomas is experiencing. This allows the reader to feel as if they are in the room with Thomas, watching everything happen. The lack of in depth description of emotion allows the reader to put themselves in Thomas’s shoes, and feel the emotions they would feel in his place. Because of the way Dashner wrote this scene, each reader interprets it in their own way. They can each come up with different scenarios for what they believe is going to happen. Dashner provides a base, a jumping board of sorts, allowing the reader to experience the story with Thomas.

Dashner’s use of POV in this novel immerses the reader in the experience of being new to the Glade and the Maze. The reader does not know much of anything at first, which allows them to sympathize with Thomas, and understand him and the whole experience better. If it was told from any other character's POV, the reader would have felt like Thomas was annoying and strange, since they would not be able understand the inner workings of his mind. Following Thomas also allowed the reader to fully understand the process all of the boys went through.The 3rd person limited POV gives a necessary perspective to the story, but does not separate the reader from the story or Thomas. The reader learns every bit of information as Thomas does, often at a slow and antagonizing pace. This immerses them in the experience of the Glade and the Maze, and allows them to become part of the story.

Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. First ed. New York: Delacorte, 2009. Print. The Maze Runner Ser.

"The Maze Runner by James Dashner - Review." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 08 Jan. 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fchildrens-books-site%2F2014%2Fsep%2F15%2Freview-the-maze-runner-james-dashner>.

(Elizabeth is sitting on her bed. She is dressed nicely, with makeup and jewelry on. As she talks, she takes off her shoes, jewelry, and makeup (in that order), then takes her hair out of the side-braid it had been in, then shaking her hair out by the end. Side note- she pushes her hair behind her ear when she is upset or disappointed or shy)

That was incredible! He liked me. He kept calling me pretty and gorgeous and telling me that my laugh was amazing. And he was so cute (I’m talking tall, dark, and handsome, here) and nice and funny and sweet. And he listened when I was talking, always paying attention to me! And when he kissed me (puts her hands over her heart, leans back and squeals, kicking her feet a little). I can’t believe Nat was able to set that up for me. I have to thank her so much tomorrow. (Phone Buzzes. She picks it up, and reads the text aloud.) “How did it go? He told me he loved it! You totally scored- Nat.” (stares at the phone for a second, before laughing brightly and smiling. Then she begins to type) “It was awesome. He couldn’t stop looking at me! Even when I got up, I could feel his eyes on me…” (looks up from the phone) All night. All night, he was STARING at me, not looking. And he probably wasn’t really listening. (pushes hair behind her ear and looks down) And he was surprised when I started talking about politics.

I’m not asking for prince or celebrity. I’m not even asking for love. I’m asking for a guy who is willing to take for what I am. Because that, that’s what love grows from.  It would also be nice if he didn’t focus on the physical? That boy probably didn’t hear a word I said, he was so focused on my body. I’m sure he meant everything he said, it’s just...  (Looks back at phone) “Totally scored.” Not really. ‘Totally scoring’ would be getting a guy who is interested in what I’m saying and who I am, not just the physical features I have.

(shakes her hair out of braid and sighs) I can’t believe that I used to believe in love at first sight. At first sight, we focus on how a person looks. And we always try to make ourselves look nice. First sight is never this (gestures to herself, completely bare of makeup and jewelry). This is what I want people to love. I don’t want someone to love my body, but not my mind. Love my lips, but not the words they speak. Love is knowing everything about that person, all the little things that they like, and what drives them crazy. Love is knowing exactly what buttons to push. Love isn’t shoving your tongue down their throat. Love isn’t having arguments over stupid, petty thing. I don’t want love right now, and I know I probably won’t find it now, anyway. I guess I just want people to stop use a word they don’t know the power of. Love is beyond the physical, and it takes time. (picks up her phone, and begins to type a message) “It was okay. Don’t think I’ll be meeting up with him again.”

“Hi. My name is Michaela. I’m thirteen years old, and I’m from Philly,” I said to the group of girls around me. It was a standard summer camp icebreaker. We came from all over the country to spend a week here in Newport, singing. Since we were spending the week together, we were all introducing ourselves, telling each other our names and homes.

“Have you always lived in Philly?” one of the girls asked.

“Yeah. Born ‘n raised,” I responded with a shrug.

“Huh. You don’t sound like you’re from Philly,” she said in an off-hand manner.

I just gave her a tight smile and shrugged, not letting her see how annoyed I was.

“You don’t sound like you’re from Philly.” I can’t tell you the number of times people have told me that. And whenever I ask them where I think I am from, their response is almost always: “I don’t know, just not Philly.” Has anyone told you that don’t sound like you’re from the place you call home? It hurts. The worst part is when they want you to prove it. The number of times I’ve taken the ‘water test’, as I’ve dubbed it, is horrible. Someone will ask me to say the word ‘water’. They expect me to say something along the lines of “wooda”, since they think that’s what everyone from Philly says. They’re almost disappointed when I say “wadar”. Often I’ll just smile, and explain that the “Philly” accent that they are expecting is a South Philly accent. And, yes, there are people who say “wooda”, but the majority of the people I know don’t say it like that.

A lot of people would say that I should be happy that I don’t sound like I’m from Philly. That way, it’ll be easier for me to get a job down the road. The thing is, I do sound like I’m from Philly. I slur my words and elongate the ‘s’, sometimes even adding an ‘h’, like almost everyone else from Philly. People just associate a “Philly” accent with the voice of Sylvester Stallone. And I’m not the only one who has to deal with this issue. This is a problem people all over the world face. We assume all people from a certain area speak like the people in movies. We think everybody from Boston says “Pak the ca,” (Park the car) or the that everybody down south speaks slowly and almost slurs a little. And nobody is immune to it.

A great example of this would be the time I met one of my closest friends, who lives right outside of Boston. Alyssa acts like your typical Bostonian (she loves the Red Sox, can’t wake up without a cup of coffee from Dunkin’, and can be a bit abrasive at times), but she doesn’t sound like one. Or, at least, she doesn’t have the accent most people associate with people from Boston. The first time we met, we both immediately started judging each other’s accents. She had said I didn’t sound like I was from Philly, and I snarkily replied, “Yeah, well, you don’t exactly have a Boston accent, either.” And before you judge, I am completely aware of the hypocrite I was being in that moment. But that’s just something humans do. We judge people on what they sound like, and try to figure out their story from the moment they open their mouths. Another great example of this lies in The Hunger Games series. In every book, Katniss talks about how strangely people from the Capitol speak. She even goes so far as to mock them, even after she has met several people from there, and knows they aren’t all that bad. Their accent is vastly different from hers, so her instinct is to distance herself from it and make fun of it. We do the same. I still have the impression that all people from Boston say “Pak the ca”, even though I know people from that area who don’t.

And, like I said before, those thoughts hurt. The place you call home is a key part of your identity. It’s one of the first things you tell people when you meet them. So, when people tell you that you don’t sound like you are from the place you call home, it’s almost like they are ripping away a piece of your identity. However, what’s worse, is when people tell you that you’re accent is undesirable. When people make fun of your accent, they make fun of the place you call home. They aren’t taking away a piece of your identity, they are telling you that an important piece of you is undesirable, that you should hide it. At least when people take away a piece of your identity, other’s can replace it. But some wounds aren’t so easily fixed, especially when they are supported by popular culture.

Gloria Anzaldua addresses this issue in her essay How To Tame a Wild Tongue. She says, “Because we internalize how our own language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other.” She was talking about actual languages, but this quote can be related to accents as well. An example of this would be what Alyssa and I did. She told me I didn’t sound like I was from Philly, so, I retaliated. Neither of us has the “standard” accent of our homes. So, we used those differences against each other, which starts a chain reaction. Once we feel inferior, we want to make others feel inferior, at least on a subconscious level. We deem any and all accents that differ from our own inferior, creating the urge to reach “the voice from nowhere”. Sometimes, we even denounce people with our own accent, because we think that it is shameful. Yet, if we do eventually get to “the voice from nowhere” , aren’t we just putting ourselves back at square one? If we have “the voice from nowhere”, people will still tell us that we don’t sound like we are from our homes.

This is my slide. Many design aspects influenced what my slide looked like. One example of this was I decided to follow the rule of thirds. In the rule of thirds, you utilize empty space. I let my image take up the majority of the slide. Then, I balance my text with the picture. This is a little difficult, since the text cannot overpower the image, but your text needs to be big and clear, so it is easy to understand. Another important aspect of making my slide easy to understand was contrast and simplicity. If there is too much going on on a slide, we would not be able to understand anything. That is why I went with a simple color scheme (black, white, and teal). Contrast is also important, since, without contrast, we would not be able see anything. That is why I chose to use white and teal against my black background. That is how I made my slide. Thank you for your time.