Michael Hoover

Under a dual-meaning title, “Miss America,” one senior girl wrote of how vividly she remembers once having loved America. She recalled the happy efforts she went to in her youth to proudly display her patriotism, drawing a large Old Glory with red, white and blue chalk on her driveway to celebrate the Fourth of July, for example. Now, as a result of the war in Iraq and related issues, she desperately wants to leave America for another country where she feels the world is more tolerant.

One boy wrote about his extreme pride in America and all the steps his country is taking to fight terrorism. “I didn’t understand the justification for the war, but I support it. I know the president knows something that we don’t and I trust he’s making the right decisions,” he explained.

These comments were written by George Mason High School seniors in their end-of-course papers titled “The View from Here” for their English class. This assignment asks the soon-to-be graduates to discuss their views of their futures from the perspective of their impending graduation.

Each year their comments seem to form a mini-sociological study of what is uppermost on their minds and what their aspirations are. Because so many of them tend to consider their future dreams by first referencing their pasts or presents, much of their papers focus on previous or current important events in their lives and how these have shaped their hopes for their futures. Hence, the two opening paragraphs above.

A great many students referenced the war in Iraq as having had a profound effect on their lives this year. While they or their families may not have been involved in it personally, the media’s constant bombardment of images was impossible to escape. (In truth, quite a few said that they had stopped watching the news completely because of its depressing nature. “Why would I want to tune in to nothing but ugliness?” asked one senior.) Many in the media have talked about the extreme divisions in America today and you only need to read these students’ papers to see how differently they view their country, at least as far as the Middle East goes.

In addition, most of them believe terrorism will be with them their entire lives. In a very informal poll (“raise your hands if . . .”) almost all the students in the several classes I queried felt that terrorism was not going to go away for many decades. I worry about the subconscious toll that takes on these young psyches. “Can we keep living completely normal lives when there are crazies out there trying to blow up our planes, buildings, and people and bring down the United States? I no longer can,” wrote one senior boy.

On a more positive note, many of these seniors, reflecting a national trend toward generosity, want a major part of their lives to be devoted to helping others. This mirrors a trend revealed in earlier seniors’ papers going back several years. Their school, their parents, their civic organizations, and their places of worship must be doing a good job instilling this sense of commitment to others. (On the lighter side, nearly 80 percent of them plan someday to be filthy rich as well.)

As I’ve seen in previous years, these students have very strong ties to family and give enormous credit to their parents and family members for the positive influences on their lives. All 18-year olds tend to disparage the place they grew up in and that is a constant theme throughout high school. However, I’ve noticed over the years that, come time to leave, many young adults say something like, “I now realize that Falls Church isn’t so bad” and quite a few say they’d like to return here to raise their families. (The number one knock on Falls Church is that “there is nothing to do here.” As if there’s less to do here than in Bloomington, Illinois? Do students who go to school in Manhattan make this same, universal complaint?)

One surprisingly strong theme in their papers this year was focused on the pain they felt at having lost old friends. If you saw the movie “Mean Girls” then you know how fickle teenagers can be and how much pain their shifting allegiances can cause. It was very noticeable how many seniors (both boys and girls) referenced the still tender emotions regarding individuals who they once counted as friends and no longer do. In all the years I’ve had the students write this paper (two decades, at least) I’ve never noticed this feeling as broadly as this year. There must have been some continental shifts of attachments occurring earlier in their high school careers.

Most of the seniors plan on having families and raising children, though a surprising number were vehement about how much they “hate kids!” What was interesting was how specific they were about their future-family fantasies. Several revealed the precise number of children they wanted, their preferred genders, and even provided names for each of their hoped-for offspring. No “Britney’s” I was glad to see. They also named their preferred pets—by breed—and provided specific names for each of them. If you’re a sociologist, this says something interesting, but I haven’t a clue what it is.