by Addison Bennett

People will say you officially become an adult when you turn 18 and when you can finally leave the coop and be on your own. Some think that if you're younger, you must act childish and have no form of stress in the world.

I beg to differ.

There is no line between whether a child acts as a child or an adult acts like an adult.

There are many adults who act, in simple terms, childish. These actions might seem annoying to some, but for the adults acting like this, it’s a way for them to feel a sense of relief.

Emotional Regression is a way of coping where adults facing stress or just simply feeling overwhelmed may regress to childhood behaviors as a mechanism. “Peter Pan Syndrome" is created when overprotective parenting can create individuals who lack independence and responsibility. 

Even attention seeking behaviors, similar to those seen in children can manifest in adults through the use of tantrums or irrational behavior to command attention.

These actions have to do with the brain. The way it acts, the way it communicates with its body. The way you, as a person, interpret things, becoming an adult has nothing to do with age. It’s all in your brain and the way you want to think about things.

A child might act adult-like when forced to take on adult responsibilities or provide emotional care for their parents.

This is by no means healthy for any child.

Other reasons why a child might act adult-like are due to forms of trauma-related cases where children are placed in chaotic or stressful environments. These situations create a need to “scan for danger” and become caregivers to other peers and treating adult behavior as a survival strategy. 

All in all, mental stability has little to do with age. It all has to do with the way you think and how you were raised. You are your own person, no matter what people might tell you.

You grow your own way. 

by Addison Bennett

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian philosopher, novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia, and died on February 9, 1881, at the age of 59 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

His works are known for their strange interpretation involving life and the way different people go by the rules of it. Creating realistic yet somewhat fictional analyses of ideas during that time.

At a young age, Dostoevsky's mother died; later that year, he left school and entered the Nikoleyev Military Engineering Institute. After gaduuating form the institution, he worked as an engineer and briefly found enjoyment in a lavish lifestyle. 

Translating books to earn extra money as a part-time job next to his engineering job. 

Later in the mid-1840s, he wrote his first novel, “Poor Folk”. A book talking about the themes of deep poverty, social humiliation, and the exploration of friendship.

This novel was able to grant him a pass into Saint Petersburg’s literary circles. However, he was later arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group in the circles by the name of Petrashevesky Circle, a group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. 

He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He later spent four years in a Siberian hard labour camp, which inspired him to write “The House of the Dead.” Aside from the labour camps, he also served six years of compulsory military service in exile.

After being freed from his sentences, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later “A Writer’s Diary”, a collection of his writings. He soon began to travel around Western Europe, on the way developing a gambling addiction, leading to severe loss of money. At one point in his life, he needed to beg for money on the street. 

Even though Dostoevsky faced many hardships throughout his life, he still became one of the world's most widely known and read Russian writers. His works consist of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, and numerous other fantastic works. 

His writing has moved beyond his native language, influencing many writers in the future. Russian writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, the French philosopher Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. His writing has been translated into over 270 languages and served as inspiration for many films like Taxi Driver, Notes from Underground and Match Point.

Dostoevsky has been a great inspiration to many, both in writing, film and art as a whole. Many people still relate to and reference his work.

by Addison Bennett

“In the midst of Winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” - Albert Camus, from “Return to Tipasa”

Whether you have heard about him or not, Albert Camus drove forward the development of literature as we know it.

Albert Camus, born November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, French-Algerian (now known as Drean, Algeria) was a renowned French writer known for the novels, The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus,  along with his journals and essays. 

Albert Camus came from humble beginnings. He grew up in a place of poverty after his father died in World War I in 1914. He lived with his mother, Lucien Auguste Camus, and Catherine Helene Sintes, a cleaner of the household who helped raise Camus with his mother after his father passed. 

Throughout his school years his teachers, mainly his primary school teacher, Louis Germain, noticed his amazing writing ability. Being able to create immense stories that the reader could relate to in ways never thought could possible, Camus shined early on. 

His teachers formed a dedication to his ability, helping him throughout school so much so he was able to attend the University of Algerian, where he studied philosophy. Though his education path was constantly being interrupted when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 17.

His disease, though, did not stop him from wanting to learn. A mentor by the name of Jean Grenier helped Camus develop his intellectual ideas about philosophy and literature. He also found inspiration from writers such as Franz Kafka, which he wrote about at the end of The Myth of Sisyphus, along with well-known philosophers like Nietzsche and Plotinus. 

In 1936, Camus finished his graduate diploma, writing a thesis on the relationships between Greek and Christian thoughts through the use of the philosophy of Plotinus and Saint Augustine. After he graduated, he pursued journalism, theatre arts and politics in Algeria before he moved to France. There, he worked for the newspapers like Alger-Rebublican, and he soon joined the French Resistance during World War II by working as editor of Combat during German occupation.

In the late 1930s, Camus founded Theatre du Travail, in Algiers to produce and act in plays, pursuing his love for the hobby and for his love of drama. Along with marrying his first wife, Simon Hie in 1934, but latter divorcing in 1936.  He would then marry again to artist and mathematician Francine Faure. Their marriage was complex, often because of rumors of affairs, most notable with actress Maria Casares. Though Fraure is recognized as he long-term spouse and mother of his twin children.

He would later write his debut book, The Stranger as well as his most popular essay The Myth of Sisyphus.

On January 4, 1960, while driving back to his family with his friend Michal Gallimard, a tire blew out leading them to a high-speed crash. They crashed in a tree in Villeblevin, France where Camus died instantly. Later that day Camus contemplated riding the train rather than taking a car. At the crash sight his unused train ticket was found in his pocket.

There is a sense of absurd irony found in his death. Camus often discussed the absurdity of life, and in a haunting twist, Camus stated that the most tragic way to die was to be in a car crash.

Camus books hold an incredible meaning. They gather the deep concepts surrounding life. Albert Camus wrote about the absurd, conflicted and the true feeling of indifference. He wrote books of compelling fiction and influenced modern existential thought, morality and literature. 

His life was cut short, but he made the most of it through his art.