Arrival: A Message to Everyone

http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2016/11/11/11-reasons-why-arrival-is-the-best-film-of-the-year

Spoilers ahead!

Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve, rates at a solid 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and garnered favorable reviews from your common movie goer to movie critics (such as Brian Tallerico) alike.

Arrival revolves around Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a talented linguist who struggles with the loss of her daughter. The premise is unassuming, cliched even. We find out that an advanced alien species lands on earth, international chaos breaks out, and the US army summons Louise to decipher the alien language. In her journey, Louise struggles with two things–the death of her daughter and the invasion, the two tensions sharpening one another.

What Arrival does drastically different, though, is in the second half. There is a surprising lack of violence, and instead, a call for communication. The aliens never wanted to harm us–we assumed that they will. Dr. Banks is given a language which she’s meant to share with the world in order to stop global destruction.

Arrival’s emphasis on language, the difficulties of communication, the gap between people so wide it seems alien, is heartfelt and down to earth. Despite problematic portrayals of Russia and China as hawkish, it served to at least emphasize the fences between civilizations and people groups. Instead of a superhero who fights the aliens with an above-the-law attitude, we see a world brought to peace through diplomacy. And all this is realized by one woman realistically stressed out by the ordeal yet manages to, quite simply, do her job.

At the end of the movie, we are left with the question “What exactly arrived?” The love for a family? The acceptance of loss? Humanity’s cooperation? Or perhaps it is all of the above.

At one point in the movie, Louise finds herself dreaming in the alien’s language. This harkens back to an earlier conversation she has with their team’s main scientist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). They talked about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the theory that the language we know influences or determines our cognition (check out quick an intro here).

By Arrival’s end, language has shaped not only humanity’s cognition, but the entire world’s future. With this hopeful ending, I exited the theater hoping that our Internet age can too learn to speak to each other. How wonderful would it be if our language can bypass barriers and penetrate our consciousness so deeply that we began dreaming in each other’s words?

Homeschooler in the Real World

Emma Folts, a sophomore at Wheaton College, shares her experience about her transition into college and how homeschool has both helped and hindered her.
How has your homeschool experience benefitted you, especially in your transition into college?
I think the one thing that homeschooling did that was really helpful as I entered college was that it taught me time management. As a homeschooler I had the same freedom as a college student has to put things off during the day and go see a friend instead. Since I had that experience, I knew the cost of that.
Also, personal responsibility and accountability with assignments. I feel like a lot of the other students had more expectations for gentler grading and that the professor would give them retakes or extensions, but that wasn’t something that ever happened to me in school. That learning curve wasn’t added because I never had it the other way. I think another thing was that because I was homeschooled, I was familiar with the format of teaching and then studying on my own.
Did you see any issues with your transition socially?
I think that homeschooling had two ramifications for me socially. One was helpful, one was hurtful.
It was really helpful because as a homeschooler, I had spent a lot of time realizing and developing who I was as a person and learning to recognize people who were being themselves, and those were the people I sought out as friends. Friendship as a homeschooler takes a lot more investment. I knew I was choosier with my friends which made me a lot less anxious and a lot more content.
The only real negative impact of the social bit was that I was really used to getting to choose the time I got to spend with people. As a homeschooler I spent a lot of time with people, but that time was controlled by me. As a college student, I found that you can’t really control the time you spend with people and alone time is not really available. Learning to deal with that was a lot harder than anticipated.
Any last comments on homeschool and how it has affected your college experience?
I think homeschooling is really helpful, however it does take a slightly increased amount of advocacy with your peers when you’re entering into college. I think a lot of people come in with certain assumptions about homeschool, especially students. You’re going to get a lot of, ‘oh my gosh, you don’t seem like a homeschooled person!’ [You can’t] take that too personally and explain your experience so that friends can understand it’s an important piece of you, though it might not look like the homeschooling that they’ve seen.
My encouragement to anyone who is a homeschooler transitioning into college is to realize the benefit that you have having been homeschooled, and to realize that the bit of advocacy and explaining that you need to do with your peers is totally normal and that it’s not a big deal. Once they understand your experience, it’s not something I’ve experienced being looked down on for.