Writings

I believe the ideas of loneliness and connection, as presented from The Lonely American by Olds and Schwartz, are relevant to myself and other students alike due to college being a ‘new chapter’ in someone’s life. After I got accepted to Western New England University, I was so excited to begin a new life. I am about seven or eight hours away from my home back in Maryland, and I wanted to be independent for as long as I can remember. With this acceptance letter, I felt like I finally got that. It has been almost a month since I left home, and all I can say is, it has been so much harder than I thought it would ever be. All my life I have been surrounded with the same faces, the same school, the same town, everything was so familiar, and within a blink of an eye, I am surrounded with a new town, new school, new living situation, new faces and I know no one.

In the Lonely American, Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz state that we struggle between being connected and being free, that we constantly reach for both and can’t obtain them. “Initially, the sheer hardship of building a life in a new land enforced a balance between individualism and interdependence, but as life got easier, the balance did not hold” (Olds and Schwartz 9). Within the first week, my anxiety was at an all time high, and I just couldn’t adjust to this place as much as I wanted to. I was utterly lonely. I obviously have a roommate, but I knew I could not rely on just her to spend every meal with me, while also sharing a room. Back at home, I spent my entire life in the same house, with the same people, and the same friends. I never had to worry who I would eat with, who I would sit next to, or even who I would just talk with. Growing up, obviously people came and people went, but I never had to worry about starting a new life until college came around. My best friend is back in Maryland and we have been friends for ten years. Here, I worry if I’ll ever make a bond like that with someone.

The authors state that, “It is curious that people put so much energy into isolating themselves and are then completely unprepared for how it makes them feel” (Olds and Schwartz 11). I struggled meeting people, including the girls in my hall. I felt like I didn’t, and still don’t, fit in anywhere. I am struggling to replace the friends I left back at home, which I know is impossible since I’ve known people here for only three weeks. I stay connected with the ones I care about most through video chats, snapchatting and every possible social media outlet I have, but it reminds me that everyone is far away and I can’t see them until Thanksgiving. Everyone is so afraid to admit they are lonely, little does everyone know we are all in a similar boat one way or another. My town is small, everyone knows one another, similar to here, except back at home I am able to text someone and hang out at any time. I am able to facetime my friends even after I had just seen them that day in class. Here, it’s nothing like that at all. Everyone has their own sense of their reality; everyone is in their own world working for different things and too busy to keep up with people. I miss being connected to the people I meet, it feels like I say “Hi” and then I never say another word to them.

In this essay, despite how lonely and almost miserable I am at times, this is not always true, because I am enjoying several things. Through being on the swim team, I have been able to meet some really great people and make some good friends. I am also lucky enough to be a part of the freshman council, and I am excited to be a part of such an amazing group of people who attend this university, and share the same interests as I do. My professors are beyond wonderful, and I enjoy my classes so much. College is about new experiences that should make you feel uncomfortable and alone and out of touch. The struggle of being connected or free, staying in contact or becoming an individual, I believe that once you experience these types of emotions and finally come to terms with how you are feeling, you are able to realize how to not feel alone and how to be connected, that you are not the only person walking around the campus who is feeling like you do.

Guns kill people. People kill people. Regardless, we have an issue. From 2013 to 2015, there was an average of one school shooting per week in comparison to one per year from 1966 to 2008. Growing up in Howard County, my community was tight-knit. While my school, Oakland Mills, never experienced a shooting, we do have students who have fallen victim to gun violence: Kaiyon Stanfield, Larry Aaron, and Brian Davis.

Kaiyon played on the OM basketball team that won the state championship in 2015. On December 18th, 2016, the 20-year-old alum was found shot in his car with his cousin near Baltimore, shortly after Kaiyon died at a hospital nearby. The community was broken but honored his memory by retiring his jersey number. An article states that the Baltimore homicide rate is ten times higher than the US rate. Baltimore has an average of 275 to 300 shooting deaths each year. Often residents don’t believe that the police are dedicated to helping to keep the community safe and therefore seek out their own firearms for self-defense.

Larry, who I had known since elementary school, went on to play football in college. Two years later, our community was left mourning his loss. On Halloween of 2017, shortly after arriving at a party, an argument had broken out. A gun was drawn, and shots were fired. In the midst of it all, Larry went to protect his girlfriend and was shot in the spine. He survived, but his legs were paralyzed. We all made sure to stay updated, and that February our school’s basketball team dedicated a game to him for his 19th birthday, wishing him a quick recovery. On February 22nd, 2018, we found out that Larry’s recovery had come to an end after suffering a fatal heart attack. A Science Magazine study found that easier to carry concealed gun laws increases the number of gun homicides by 9% when compared state by state.

Brian was a freshman while I was a senior. I spent the year getting to know him, and through social media, I was able to keep in touch after graduation. On November 2nd of this year, I found out that this now 17-year-old had committed suicide by gunshot. According to statistics in Splinter News, there were over 36,000 people affected by gun violence in 2018 alone. This brings into question why stricter gun laws do not always work. An NPR fact check takes a look at the Chicago gun laws. Chicago has a very high crime rate, but Illinois borders Wisconsin and Indiana who have weaker gun laws, and it’s not impossible to transfer guns across state lines. Philip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke states, “Back in the days when D.C. banned handguns, and yet had high gun-violence rates. Those bans are only at best partially effective because the borders are permeable.” D.C. borders Virginia, which receives a D rating from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Looking at Maryland permit requirements, a person must be at least 21 years old to obtain a handgun, not have been convicted of a felony or crime, not have been committed within the past 10 years to any juvenile detention center, not be an addict or alcoholic nor have ever been convicted of an offense that includes possession or distribution of a controlled substance, not have exhibited violence or instability, and must show good cause and complete a firearms training course. These requirements are pretty rigorous from that perspective, however, the requirements for purchasing a long gun are much more lenient. These only include that a person must be 18 years old, have a state ID, and receive a background check by a federally licensed dealer.

Studies show that restricting domestic abusers and having longer sentences for gun crimes helps. States with stricter gun control laws who spend more money on education and mental health care have fewer school shootings. Taking a look back on gun massacres and deaths, they decreased by 37% to 43% after the 1994 ban on assault weapons went into effect. After it expired in 2004, it escalated by 183% to 239%. Though there’s controversy over how well this works (most gun deaths in the US are suicides and most murders (73%) involve a handgun), most of the deadliest mass shootings in recent US history have one thing in common: military-style weapons with high capacity magazines. Comparing the US to four other wealthy nations, we have the least strict gun laws and the highest frequency of mass shootings. As the wealthiest country that prides itself on providing security to its citizens, why can’t, or rather, why won’t we resolve this issue?