In this last week I have undergone two rites of passage binding me closer to the world of formal academia.<\/p>\n
Monday, I accepted the invitation \u2013 originally received last May, but overlooked because I didn\u2019t really understand what the organization was, or what opportunities it would have afforded me \u2013 to join the Phi Theta Kappa<\/a> honor society.\u00a0 Membership in the society will open a number of doors for me (though not quite so many as it would have had I accepted the invitation immediately, and with it a great deal of scholarship money I didn\u2019t know existed), ranging from letters of recommendation, to possible transfer scholarships, and perhaps even to consideration for the larger honor society upon which it was patterned, Phi Beta Kappa<\/a>.\u00a0 If nothing else, it is a welcome recognition of my academic accomplishments so far, and confers upon me the right to fancy regalia at my graduation ceremony in May.<\/p>\n Saturday, I endured the trial of the ACT<\/a> in the hopes of securing admission to such lofty schools as the University of Chicago<\/a> or Reed College<\/a>, which require such rituals even of transfer juniors.\u00a0 This particular trial (and\/or its competitor, the SAT) is actually one of the things that I was elated to avoid when I first decided against college.\u00a0 Though I did not study as hard for this test as perhaps I should have, but I believe that I did well.\u00a0 If nothing else, I am certain that I did at least as well on the real thing as I did on the practice test, on which I received a score of 29.<\/p>\n The college testing experience is, I believe, nearly universal in the United States.\u00a0 I remember clearly being pressured and herded toward the PSATs and the SAT in high school.\u00a0 Although Wikipedia assures me that the ACT is more popular in the midwest, it\u2019s not the one I remember being \u201cencouraged\u201d to take.\u00a0 That element of shared experience, combined with the fiscal sacrifice, the rigid structure, and the intellectual ordeal, makes the ACT an excellent example, in my opinion, of a non-magical rite of passage.<\/p>\n The Phi Theta Kappa membership (particularly if I have the opportunity to be formally inducted) is a slightly different rite of passage.\u00a0 I was selected by a mysterious organization based on my academic performance, I made a sacrifice (again, money), and will be rewarded with certain signs that will set me apart from the larger student body and with access to information available only to initiates.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the Greek letters Phi Theta Kappa stand in this case, not for a motto, but for virtues – wisdom, aspiration and purity \u2013 and the group associates itself with Athena.\u00a0 Fortunately, She was already on my list of deities for whom I required idols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this last week I have undergone two rites of passage binding me closer to the world of formal academia. Monday, I accepted the invitation \u2013 originally received last May, but overlooked because I didn\u2019t really understand what the organization was, or what opportunities it would have afforded me \u2013 to join the Phi Theta … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[220,237],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","tag-rites-of-passage","tag-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-2f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}