I visited my high school on Friday — a trip that’s always followed by a frantic search for old photos, essays, projects, and whatever else I can find as I subject my friends to cheesy anecdotes and a list of complaints about changes I do not approve of (a maroon carpet, really?). What I found last night were these photograms, made during my senior year with whatever jewelry I was wearing that day in the fall of 2007 and the help of a pen flashlight from my Harriet the Spy phase. If you’re wondering why I was still carrying around my spy gear at age 17, take this as a hint that you should never have private conversations within earshot of me…

So, in the midst of a rant about the class registration process, I mentioned to my former photo teacher that I’m taking Digital Storytelling next semester, a class he was already familiar with, as the new film course at Prep is apparently an offshoot of some of the Literature & Technology courses at the Writers House. They created this course with the help of the former chair of our English department at Rutgers, whose daughter I had just met, randomly, in the art studio… and I’m now absolutely certain of my theory that when you graduate from Rutgers Prep, the “six degrees of separation” phenomenon is cut to just half that. I’m hoping that next time I visit, I can meet a student who is somehow related to Mariah Carey. In the meantime, I’ll begin composing my list of reasons why I’d make a better spouse than Nick Cannon.

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Tonight, Demarest co-sponsored its second LGBT Shabbat dinner with Hillel, and this time Kesher (the Reform group within Hillel) and Kol Halayla (the Jewish a cappella group on campus) also got involved. Last year we were ecstatic that about 30 or 40 people showed up, and this year, our attendance doubled. I don’t know if it was because of advertising, because we did a better job of reaching out to various communities on campus, or because the timing was just right (a week after our unified protest against the Westboro Baptist Church), but either way, it was a huge success.

Rachel, on the left, is a high school friend who is active in Hillel and played a big part in organizing the event. Next to her is Kenny, yet another friend from high school, who ran the service. We soon realized that altogether, there were 5 Rutgers Prep alumni in the room at once, spanning across 4 different years (Adam left before the picture was taken). Considering our high school is only a few miles down the road from our campus, this probably doesn’t seem so exceptional, but when you consider the fact that my graduating class consisted of about 80 students, it’s rather impressive.

As Kenny ran the service, he talked about the relationship between his Jewish identity and his gay identity, so there were lots of different ideas thrown out about how to interpret Leviticus, how to approach various laws from the perspective of the Reform movement, and how to rectify one’s sexuality and religion. On one level I understood the idea of wanting to break away from religion because of its intolerance of homosexuality while feeling a longing for the culture and beliefs that we all grew up with, but to some extent I’ve always struggled with the very idea of returning to my “Jewish roots” — mainly because I don’t have any. I was raised Catholic until a couple of years past my first communion, only turning to Judaism out of curiosity and as some bizarre act of rebellion in middle school. (Rebellion is clearly something I failed miserably at — while other girls were piercing their bellybuttons in the bathroom and making out with boys at the municipal grounds, I was enrolling in Hebrew school and becoming a vegetarian. In some of my more daring moves, I stole chocolate and engaged in political debate with my parents.)

So, once my mother converted to Judaism and became more interested in the study of it, that turned me away entirely. It still does, even as I become more interested in Jewish culture, largely because she uses religion to stand in place of her family… by no coincidence did her interest in Judaism coincide with her father’s death — and even more directly, her actual conversion coincided with her ultimate decision that “those people” (meaning her mother and sisters) were not a part of her family. I think that’s why it always upsets me to see her lighting the Shabbat candles alone and saying the prayers by herself, because these are such family-oriented practices that seem completely out of place at our kitchen table. That’s where I’m left unsure of what it means to have Jewish roots, because I’ve always been more interested in the culture and community than anything else, and that’s where conversion becomes an extremely controversial topic within the (ethnically) Jewish community, as it’s not really possible to “convert” to a culture…

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Beyond what the viewer sees in the aesthetics of a photo, I think its concept plays an important role in how the creator defines it (not that all art has to be conceptual, I just think artistic intention is often very much about concept). The photo above might seem like a typical, cliche mirror shot, but it in fact has a deeper personal meaning for me. It’s actually a recreation of the first self-portrait I ever took — the one that fostered my love for photography back in my sophomore year of high school, exactly four years ago. Like every other student in my class, I used a mirror for the self-portrait assignment, but I did get props for attempting to make it a bit more unique by capturing my ‘multiple selves’ using my mom’s vanity. I wanted to create a triple mirror shot and include some of my mom’s framed photos of me as a younger girl so the image contained more than a single, boring shot of my face covered with a lens. The praise I received for that photo — again, my first ever self-portrait and one of my first ever darkroom prints — is probably the reason I’ve stuck with the genre of self-portraiture ever since.

Reminded of this photo after a recent trip back to my high school (which usually results in my former photography teacher allowing me to sit in on his classes throughout the entire day), I decided to go home and recreate it, altering it slightly but sticking with the main idea. For that reason it holds a lot of nostalgia for me and has more concept to it than one might originally see in it. Personally, I don’t see a simple mirror shot in that first image above. I see four years of self-exploration through photography and my constantly fluctuating feelings throughout that journey. I see fond memories of high school and the depression that came with leaving it behind, the emotional and intellectual discoveries that followed, a changing body image, the attachment issues I’m still coming to terms with, and a whole lot of that unfortunately necessary growing up nonsense. I don’t know what sort of a difference that will make for any viewer of this photo, but for me, its meaning makes it more interesting and more worthy of the label ‘art.’

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My recreation came out a bit differently:

Some things were changed intentionally: I didn’t zoom in as closely, I wore different clothes, and so on. I wanted the photo to look similar while also reflecting on how my life has changed since I shot that first image. Still, the differences that stick out the most to me are not the ones I added intentionally, but the subtle changes — the new thermostat in the background, the missing jewelry box in the center, the different porcelain figurines. Things I didn’t really notice until reviewing the photos together afterwards.

When I visited my high school, I picked up on the same sort of thing. Schedules had changed and there were a lot of new faces, but I expected all of that. What I never expect are things like new carpeting, different lighting, changed rooms and other things that were once a part of my daily life. Things I would probably pass by mindlessly if I were still a student there, shrugging them off as insignificant compared to completing the previous nights homework, attending a meeting or studying for an afternoon test during lunchtime. To me, what’s so interesting is how all those little changes seem to ultimately reflect that which remains constant. Time can change your experience of a place so drastically, but the comfort and the familiarity never seem to leave you — and for that, I will always return home from these visits with a sense of satisfaction.

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When I first saw this quote freshman year, haning in my English teacher’s classroom, I just thought to myself: “Jeans aren’t even in fucking dress code.” Now that school is over, there’s a lot more I have to say about it. First of all, I now have the freedom to wear jeans any day of the week. And second, a lot more has changed than my wardrobe.

It’s funny how you can enter a place wondering how you could possibly survive the next four years there, and by the time it’s come to an end, wonder how it passed you by so quickly.

Graduation is in a week. I’m excited to be done with the work, obviously, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t miss high school. There are a lot of students and teachers I can’t imagine not seeing on a daily basis anymore. There are a lot of other people who have grown on me by now. There are a lot of people I never even got to know, but I really did love you all. I honestly don’t think there is one single person I won’t miss on some level.

I could list those of you who are especially important to me. I could list inside jokes and other memories. I could list favourite classes, teachers, and events. I could list the people I will miss the most, and I could list silly school rules I’m happy to be able to break now that I’m “free.” But the most important thing I can think of mentioning is how all of this–every single person I’ve encountered in the past four years, every single struggle I’ve faced, and every single achievement I’ve celebrated–has affected my life in some way. I’ve grown a lot and I’ve learned a lot, both inside and outside of the classroom, from students and teachers alike, and I will never forget what you’ve all taught me.

Basically, I’ve changed. And that seems like a really obvious statement, because we’ve all changed, and we are all constantly, continuously changing. But it’s extremely important that we all change–for the better. And it is just as important, as we move on, pursue new goals, meet new people, and try new things, to remember what helped us grow into the people we are today. You’ve all made a difference in my life, and though I know I won’t stay in contact with you all, and I know there are some of you I may not see again, we’ll always have one thing in common that keeps us connected.

Good luck, class of ’07.

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For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll briefly explain the project. We basically turned a room into a work of art that viewers experience as they watch a video that shows acts of hate throughout history. The walls are covered with graffiti containing hateful and discriminatory words, but after the hate video plays, the room transforms from dark to light and the walls become covered with sheets painted instead with words of peace. The video then transitions from acts of hate to acts of love. It’s hard to explain and it’s something you really had to experience, but basically, our goal is to spread a message of hope to our community, showing that love can overcome hate. After seeing the reactions from our audience, I think we’ve accomplished that.

Of course, there were times when a lot of us thought this project wouldn’t happen. Many of us didn’t believe we could pull it off. It got to the point where our class considered electing a delegate to speak with our teacher and gently explain that we simply didn’t have the capacity to complete what we started. But despite the doubts, the disagreements, and some mishaps along the way, it all came together in the end. Every individual person brought their own unique ideas and creativity to the classroom, culminating in a project that we are all extremely proud of and extremely blessed to have been a part of.

After the presentation, one girl came up to me in tears to express her appreciation for all of our efforts. And if she’s the only person at all affected by our work, the project was worth it. Seeing it affect just one person that deeply means it was a complete success, and that we accomplished what we set out to do. At that moment, the meaning of our presentation overshadowed every problematic detail and stressful debate we had along the way.

It’s interesting how after everything we put into that project, our own message didn’t fully hit home for me until I saw how it affected other people. Our presentation showed individual acts of courage in contrast with hate, war and genocide throughout history to prove that one person can make a difference, and ultimately, it was this one student who made the difference in my feelings about this project. If every single student in our school agreed to sign our pledge and stand up to an act of injustice after seeing our presentation, I don’t think it would mean nearly as much as this one student’s reaction.

We all crafted this idea from the start because we wanted and expected it to make an impact, but I don’t think any of us expected such gratification from the project or the response from our community. We certainly didn’t expect it to change our own feelings about our message and about ourselves so much, but the experience has definitely changed us all. When we spoke about peace and individual power and righteousness before, those were all just words. It was all theoretical. But now, we’ve proven it not just to our school, but to ourselves. We’ve never had such faith in our own words and ideas, and we’ve never felt closer to one another. All in all, I think Emily said it the best: “Yes — we complained, argued and struggled — however, I wouldn’t change a thing about our process or presentation. What we’ve done will be remembered for years to come, and I couldn’t be happier.”

For those of you who haven’t come yet, I hope you come next week to our evening presentation. I think you’ll find that the result completely speaks for itself.

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