August 10: Journal Entry #1

Hello, my name is Momin and this will be my second year in EMC. In my first year of EMC I investigated how western companies & states influence the African continent, and my findings led me to conclude that western companies & states ought to be blamed, among other entities, for much of the poverty & strife that plagues the African continent. My research was centered around geopolitics, and the implications of domestic policy upon the world as a whole, but what I intend to investigate this year in EMC holds little resemblance to my prior research. This year in EMC I intend to research the relation between human nature & political indoctrination by coming to a conclusion regarding what the nature of humanity is, and then using that conclusion as a scalpel to dissect the tactics used by "recruiters." 

This academic year I will be enrolling in several AP & honors level courses which are bound to keep me occupied for a great deal of my time. However, EMC will always be a priority to me; this course is far too dear to my heart for me to neglect it. I have managed to include a study hall into my schedule, and I intend to allocate this time to EMC alone. Thus I will be able to comfortably research my topic of study for several hours every week of this coming academic year. 

This coming academic year I have the honor of managing several clubs such as Student Government, Mock trial, and my personal favorite: Civil Conversations Club. As many of my peers & librarians would attest to I have a proclivity to speech, i've had this all my life, but it was only in highschool did I gain the ability to listen, and I credit this development to Civil Conversations Club. The club forced me to not simply hear what my peers said so I could follow with a punctual response, it forced me to listen to understand. The value of listening to understand is nearly indescribable, however, the Dalai Lama was able to articulate its benefits; "When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new." I intend to staple this quote upon every slideshow the Civil Conversations Club produces for it truly exemplifies the ethos of the club. 

I consume literature at a nearly unhealthy rate, my mother has made note of my summer evenings spent within the pages of classics rather than spent with my family, and a character that I've related to the most has been Meursault from The Stranger by Albert Camus. The Stranger was my introduction to the philosophy of Camus, Absurdism, and this philosophy has had a profound impact on my life by altering my understanding of reality. But this philosophy has also influenced the manner I interact with reality through the concept of the Absurd Hero. The Absurd Hero is, as Camus defined in The Myth of Sisyphus, an individual whose "refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion." Meursault is the embodiment of the Absurd Hero, thus he is what I aspire to be, and by extension who I relate to the most in all of literature.