Lessons from Cristina Yang

She's got her priorities straight

Television will never be the same. Cristina Yang, the sassy and smart surgeon from Grey’s Anatomy has left after 10 seasons.

I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy for as long as I can remember. I remember being upset that I had to go to my fourth grade open house, because I was missing the crucial episode where one of the characters was moving from Seattle to Los Angles. It’s been something I’ve watched with my mom for almost a decade.

I’ve learned life lessons from the show: whenever there was a teen pregnancy, my mom would also comment to me about the importance of protection and being smart. She even went thorough a phase when she wanted me to be a medical researcher because of the show. I, unfortunately for her, had other ideas.

What I’ve gained most from Grey’s and Cristina is that it’s ok to be the best. She is a woman who isn’t afraid to prove that she works harder and practices more than any other surgeon her age, male or female. She demands excellence from everyone around her, instead of kowtowing to everyone else. 

Who needs a white dress?

I touched on the topic of marriage earlier in this blog, but Cristina puts it all to shame. She was married, once, but it happened on her terms and she didn’t both wearing a white dress, saying it was racist and sexist. When her husband wanted kids, she refused to agree because she didn’t want to have to sacrifice her award winning medical career. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to go out and get it. That type of role model was important for me as I’ve gone through high school and countlessly chosen academics or extracurricular activities over trying to be a social butterfly that I’m not.

Most importantly, Cristina taught me how to be a friend. That sometimes it’s ok to bond with someone based not on what you both like, but on the ‘dark and twisty’-ness that you both have been through. Friendships aren’t just gossiping and sharing hair/makeup trips at a nail parlor/hair salon. Cristina’s friendship with Meredith involved the two of them putting each other first, over their significant others, even when it involved kicking the significant other out of bed. There was no ‘hierarchy’ of boyfriend/girlfriend over friends that can sometimes evolve with modern relationship.

I appreciate that Shonda Rhimes, the creator/writer of Greys’s didn’t choose to end Cristina’s life when Sandra Oh, the actress who played Cristina, decided she was through, as Rhimes has done with so many other characters. I can continue to believe that Cristina is off doing wonderful things in Switzerland, still free of the ties that she refused to let bind her, living her feminist icon cardio god life.

Cia♀,

Charlie 

Challenge #15: Activism

Female activists fighting for suffrage in the early 1900s

Recently, I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about high school as I approach my ‘last’ everything. Two days ago, I had my last Monday of high school. Today is my last peer group, where I lead/help a group of 9 freshmen with another senior. Tomorrow will be my last debate banquet, where I’ll be giving a speech because of my role as President of the Policy debate team. I’m going to share the message I’m giving in my speech, because it reflects both what I want my legacy to be at South, my high school, and what I want the debate team to engage in going forward.

My favorite parts of South have been being an activist. I’ve been involved with a group, Stand for Peace, which helps raise money and awareness for refugee and human rights issues. My favorite day of the year is always the last Friday of Stand for Peace week in mid-April. I spent the day presenting to social studies classes about different issues – this year it was human trafficking in Southeast Asia, last year it was issues in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc. The reactions are always fascinating: some people are shocked, some people are touched and make the effort to make a large donation or ask us presenters questions after we present.

Then there are the negative reactions, that make me want to keep fighting – girls and boys

Stand for Peace board during
Stand for Peace week 2014

who, on International Women’s Day, when we have petitions to sign ardently declare that “I’m not a feminist, feminists are the worst”. Their uninformed opinions make me want to sit them down and explain what exactly being a feminist means, or the pain that people in Africa go, or whatever they don’t understand and automatically are thinking it doesn’t matter.

I think activism is underrated. People don’t think that they can achieve anything, when, in fact they can. Senior Academy Action Projects, an end of the year service project have proven that 25 people can make a real stab at solving real life project like malaria, invasive species and disability awareness. I think it’s important for people to find what they believe in and advocate for it. Especially within the debate community: we’re trained to be persuasive and be educated on a range of projects, which can translate into meaningful change if applied in the right way instead of now, where it tends to just be ‘oh, because of my debate skills I can write this 10 page research paper the night before’.

I’m so excited next year to be in Washington DC, where protests happen every day. I’ll have so many resources to continue fighting for what I believe in – female equality and universal human rights. But I also want people to replace me and my classmates and continue the strong traditions of making a difference that Stand for Peace and Academy have established. 

Cia♀,

Charlie 

Challenge #14: Prom

I didn’t get asked to prom.

All around me, teenage girls are gasping: it’s the ultimate horror and sign of social failure. Prom is the supposed ‘end goal’ of high school. Here on the North Shore of Chicago it’s not only a dance, it’s a weekend – the dance only the beginning. After comes sleepovers, treks to family or rented lake houses where kids can hang out with their friends and get away with things they usually can’t back home. Dresses can be bought for upwards of $400, and there’s even a Facebook group to post your dress, because god forbid two girls wear the same one.

Before this 4-day extravaganza comes the ‘prom-posals’ and the ‘priets’ (prom-diets, basically the most teenage-girly word to ever be invented). These proposals have become unnecessarily complex, leading to unwanted pressure for the asker and often disappointment from the askee if the date doesn’t come through. An example: my best friend was asked through a full-length fireworks display that ended up on Good Morning America. 

Is it all really worth it?

I won’t deny that I’ve spent a solid amount of time frustrated at my situation – but it stems more at what prom has become than not being asked. I should be able to go to prom, single, with my friends, but my school has done everything possible to discourage that and it isn’t fair. In order to go, you have to sign up with a group of 10, meaning you have to be in a couple or you don’t get a table.

We’ve built up this event to an unattainable standard that it shouldn’t be. I remember as a young girl, reading the Princess Diaries books how the title character, Mia, would dream about her prom and losing her virginity to her boyfriend on prom night – a common teenage theme. As I think about it now, at 18, that sounds ridiculous,  but I fear for all these girls who have been so elaborately asked who might now feel the pressure to do something they might not be comfortable with.

Prom also has the ability to tear friendships apart. ‘Prama’, or prom-drama has been running rampant for the last six weeks at my school. I hear horror stories of groups shutting their friends out because ‘there isn’t enough room at the lake house’ or they don’t like one of the dates. I thought being asked would be stressful – apparently, that’s just the beginning.

This Friday, I won’t be leaving school early for my spray tan/hair appointment/nail appointment/makeup appointment only to spend a half hour crying that it isn’t ‘perfect’ enough. I won’t take an hour’s worth of pictures and then climb into a limo for ‘the best night of my life’. I don’t have the money and I don’t have the patience. I’ll spend my weekend writing my end-of-semester papers and thinking of what I’ll be able to buy to wear throughout my 4 years of college with the money I saved on a dress that will only be worn one night. 

Cia♀, 

Charlie