Author: Corrina Lee

Corrina is a senior majoring in Economics. In her spare time, she enjoys watching movies and television and telling herself that she has time to spare. Someday, she hopes to own a cat.

Letting it Go

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We are regulated beings. We fold, crimp, and scrunch our lives until they match our specification. This is especially true in college as students plan out every step of their next decade. Excel sheets are laid out. Schedule builders are used obsessively. And in our minds, the process never stops. Rewinding to search for missed opportunities. Fast-forwarding to a future that may never happen. And when I do misstep, it feels like something has been shattered inside of me. Then, there is a new plan, an altered goal. There is certainly no room for uncertainty and no time for doubt. I am always looking for a new box to fit myself into. I am always searching for a structure.

We came to college for independence. I think a pamphlet told me that once. We came to get away from overbearing parents and their never-ending concerns about our futures. Most of all, we were promised control. A chance at the driver’s seat. In high school, I thought I would be a good driver. But when you are steering, all the roads begin to look blurry. You start to worry about the dark ditches and sudden swerves. And your grip on the wheel becomes tighter and tighter until it feels as if your heart is racing as fast as the car. No, you’re not in control. You are not free. It feels easier to keep pretending, to spin the wheel even when it feels as if we are having no effect.

It gets frustrating, sometimes. Sometimes, I let go of all the schedules and rules. I stop squinting at every aspect of my life and close my eyes instead. I remember the first time I skipped class. To be honest, it did not take long, probably a month into my first semester. I watched as my alarm clock ticked closer and closer to 8:30 and imagined the impossibly long walk to Angell Hall. The day stretched before me with all its blocks of occupied time. Perhaps, just this once, I could pass the block on my own terms. True freedom. Classes are, after all, a professors’ domain. We sit in seats and are pelted with information with only the occasional chance to insert a question. Most of the time, it feels as if we only exist to press an iClicker. We dutifully enter on time, exit on time, renter the next week. We do what we must, so that eventually, eventually we can do what we want to. But that day, I pursued my wants first.

It was a squirming, sly pleasure to defy all the rules that I set for myself. It was a pleasure that I wanted to indulge like a child suddenly exposed to chocolate. If my control meant nothing, if I was to be ignored in lecture, then why shouldn’t I lie in bed for the indeterminate future? But I was ultimately still a regulated being and this time, it was my stomach growling that I move. I was once again reminded of all the invisible forces that act upon my life. All the forces that snatch my power away, make me feel small. Sometimes, I do battle against these forces with Excel sheets. Sometimes, I refuse the fight altogether.

Wish Fulfillment

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“What would you wish for?” It is a question that I have asked of others and of myself countless times. Sometimes, it is all finished within a laugh. We blurt out fantastical inventions with barely a thought spent. Sometimes, we treat the question as if a fast-talking genie was awaiting our orders. It is a game that is endlessly fascinating because the answers tend to change every time we ask the question. It is also an endlessly useless game because the things that we wish for are seemingly unattainable. After all, if we believed that we could achieve this wish through hard work, we would have chosen something different. The game doesn’t just reveal what we desire; it reveals what we believe is impossible. So, we wish for piles of cash to rain down upon us or for carefree voyages around the world.

Aladdin, for the most well-known example, wishes to become a prince so he may gain Princess Jasmin’s hand. But even as a child, I knew that Aladdin simply had to present himself as he was to gain the acceptance he desired so desperately. Aladdin knows what he wants. He simply doesn’t know how to gain it. Perhaps he should have wished instead to have infinite knowledge. Yet, the movie posits this, too, as the wrong approach. Infinite cosmic power, after all, comes with an itty-bitty living space. The movie ends with Aladdin relinquishing this power to face the future on his own. I think this speaks to our desire to be challenged even as we want things to be easy. We want to triumph, but only after we feel like we deserve it.

It seems so often, though, that no one gets what they deserve. I look at the world around me and see injustices everywhere. I look at the world around me and want to wish it away. But when I close my eyes to imagine this as a better place, I realize that I would be a cruel and unjust god. For my wishes are arbitrary, subjective, and worst of all, vague. I recognize, like Aladdin, that I am not omniscient, and thus, my wishes will likely cause many unintended consequences. But perhaps, this is the inherent value of wishes. I can pretend at omnipotence, if only for a moment. A wish is not simply an expression of desire. A wish is something deeper, a dream of infinite possibilities that we can use flippantly.

Yet for all my endless speculations and formulations, I have not answered the most important question of all. “What would YOU wish for, Corrina?”. I could wish for world peace. But peace can be achieved easily under a dictatorship. I could wish for personal happiness. But one happiness can come at the cost of many others. Perhaps I will wish for something simpler: a beautiful, turbulent life and some good people to enjoy it with.

We Are What We Cook

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I was always fascinated by the flickering flame that lit up the stove top. The blue lights gave off a seductive heat that I was warned against. The results were magical too. My grandma conjured up steaming concoctions of Chinese broccoli and sausage, sweet pork ribs, and sticky pork knuckles, glistening with a fine sheen of oil and love. But all my efforts, even under her tutelage, were met with disappointment. “Too much shrimp paste”, my grandma says, after the briefest taste of my limp green beans. “Not enough soy sauce”, she says of my steamed eggs. She teaches me how to wield the cleaver, but its overly large handle keeps slipping from my hand. She shows me how to shake and shiver the wok, but my garlic keeps burning anyway. I end our endeavors at the age of twelve in a petulant fit, disappointed.

It was years later, before I approached the kitchen again. This time, I was hesitant, much readier to leap away from the flame than to embrace it. I changed tactics. Instead of homegrown techniques, I turned to the endlessly tacky. Instead of the intimacy of family, I chose the distance of a stranger. Thus, began my journey into the depths of food television, starting with the most generic channel of all, the Food Network. As I watch Bobby Flay chop onions for his Chicken-Posole Soup or Giada De Laurentiis grate parmesan with a pearly smile, I wonder why I and thousands of others have fallen for their effortful charm. I am not sure that I am really looking to be an excellent chef. For I don’t need to know how to perfectly poach a chicken breast nor do I care how to pulverize a mixture of pine nuts, parsley, and peppercorns into a pesto. It even feels traitorous in some ways, to pursue this life of domesticity, instead of the modern, working woman that I was taught to be. Why do cooking shows, then, continue to entrance me?

But cooking shows were not born in the modern era. The first cooking show was an invention of the late 1940s by a balding British man named Philip Harben. According to current standards, he is not telegenic, but there is a jolly workman look to his crumpled tie and rolled up shirt sleeves. Harben taught people how to cook, not for entertainment, but out of necessity. With Britain still on rations, his cooking show showed how to cook with a nearly bare cupboard. Not so today, when television shows promote only fresh, organic, picked-minutes-ago produce. Perhaps Harben’s show does not seem to be the direct answer to my question. But one can easily see the key characteristics of the modern cooking show already germinating underneath the surface. By 1947, a year after his show first started, the BBC began referring to him as a ‘television chef’. It is more than a simple name change. It is the birth of an entirely new profession, a new genre of television. It turns what was once relegated to an individual kitchen to something broadcasted into a million homes at once.

It is a community that I thrive in. I eagerly look up recipes on the official Food Network website. I buy cookbooks and collect all the recommended gadgets. I have become a dedicated fan, not of cooking itself, but of cooking as an imagined lifestyle. It turns out I didn’t need cooking as a reality; only as a fantasy.

A Moment in Time

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They are getting married on the Diag. The bride’s dress is white. The groom is in black. Together, they smile in the glow of sunlight and camera flashes. It is not even an irregular occurrence on campus, with couples kissing on the steps of Angell Hall or posing in front of the League. Their present happiness is as palpable as their anticipation. They dream of future joys: the anniversaries, the dinners out, the moments every morning when they wake up in the other’s arms. They can see much further than my ordinary eyes. Yet, for all their extraordinary powers, they are mired on the same campus as me. I conjure up a multitude of reasons for staging one of life’s most important moments on the cracked bricks of the University of Michigan. Perhaps they were sweethearts, sneaking in kisses between lectures or after study sessions. Perhaps they met one night, dancing on the same sticky floor at Rick’s. Perhaps they think Hatcher looks particularly nice in the Friday sunshine. For whatever logic, they felt compelled to return.

It makes me wonder what memories I will take from these four years. It certainly seems that the sleepless nights, the missed club meetings, and the endured classes will be the first to fade. These are commonplace events that flash by even now. They seem unimportant to the greater journey of my life. They are simply one of the thousands of steps that will be lost to time. But maybe it is the mundanity of all these little moments that make other times shine all the brighter. And at least on this Friday, this proves true. For this Friday is the beginning of fall break and breaks always feel more special after the month and a half of schoolwork. Every time I have walked to and from class, every time I have stared at an unfinished piece of schoolwork, I make myself small promises. Promises of an extra hour of sleep or time to finish one more movie. I focus on the things that can be accomplished within the two free days. It is oddly freeing. I don’t need to think any further than the next midterm. I don’t need to consider anything more than getting through another week, another semester even.

The couple on the Diag have long-term plans and they have long-term worries. Maybe they returned to find a time when things were just a little bit simpler. But it is something hard to recognize in the moment. It is something that can only be seen once it has been lost. I am looking for something to hold onto on this beautiful fall day. But it is so hard to hold onto so many fleeting days. It is so hard to treat every moment as something to be prized. We must all pick out moments and places that are special to us. For the couple, it is a shared portrait in front of a hallowed building. For me, it is many moments and none.

Exultation

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I am walking with my head dipped down. My steps pound the pavement with a steadiness that can only come from familiarity. There is no more frantic rushing or hesitant pacing. There is only one schedule, one week at a time until another semester is over. At least, this day is over. Lecture following lecture, staring at a PowerPoint slide, staring into oblivion. There is an easy complacency between exams, when only minimal attention is required. I take notes without reviewing them. I ignore the extra readings. I will return to them, eventually, in the frenzied night before the test. But for now, I am calmly ignorant, willing to leave the inevitable chaos for the future. It has been a typical Thursday in a typical life.

I return to my room in the same quietness. It is a feeling that isn’t negative or positive, isn’t happy or sad. It is just the feeling of existing, floating in the middle. I am not exactly aimless, but I don’t know where I am going. It is a simple feeling, because it doesn’t excite any outcry of grief or burst of excitement. One can simply feel it, no further reflection needed. But these feelings, ultimately, are a trap of our own doing. We may wake up, engage in conversation, walk from class to class, but we aren’t truly there. We may be in attendance for all these things and never be truly present. Then, something shakes, and the careful holding pattern is broken.

On Thursdays, I run. Like the classes, it holds my day in order. I struggle out the door with my half-tied shoes and suddenly, the sun is beating insistently on my face, urging me to look up and around. All seems to be well, only a few stragglers adorn the sidewalk. They absorb the sunlight without acknowledgement. I easily dodge them as I push my legs into motion. I need to focus on my breathing, I need to get it under control. But it is abruptly impossible because there is something in the air, too, that is strangely compelling. In the middle of the track, I stop and look, breathe and feel. The perfect blue of the sky takes up my view, until it becomes all I can see. It makes me feel miniscule. The world surrounds me, in a magnitude I can’t imagine. I reach out my arms and my combined wingspan is so insignificant that it makes me laugh. The careful schedule is rendered immediately ridiculous. In the context of the world, I am running on the smallest little hamster wheel. Perhaps this should have summoned some sort of existential despair. Instead, only exultation in an order much greater than myself. Somehow, the world had arranged itself into a storybook. A perfect fall day in every aspect lay before me, from the still-vivid grass to the crackling, drying leaves. Yet, I had failed to see it all until this moment. Perhaps it is not the world that suddenly becomes extraordinary. Perhaps it is our vision, usually so dim, that becomes luminous.

Heaven is a Place on Television

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The deadline was in three hours and still I deliberated. It seemed even an easy decision. My philosophy class was lengthy, laborious, and late in the afternoon. The required readings took copious amounts of attention and a truly remarkable amount of underlining to reach even a basic level of understanding. Yet, still I hesitated. With my cursor hovering over the Add/Drop button, I decided to stay undecided, for a little bit longer. There was only one show that I could turn to in my desperate need for procrastination: The Good Place.

Simultaneously, it is one of the funniest shows on television and as it turns out, the only way I can learn philosophy. In the world of network television, there usually exists only three locations: a hospital, a police precinct, or Dick Wolf’s Chicago. There, the brave cop, the troubled doctor and the morally compromised lawyer ply their trade, complete with overdramatic pauses and pulsing music. Far above those earthly, familiar concerns lies The Good Place, literally. Meet Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell). She is dead. Yet, all is not lost, for she has done enough during her life to earn herself an infinitely pleasurable afterlife. She can settle in, relax, and enjoy all the frozen yogurt she can get her hands on. Except for one nagging worry: She doesn’t belong there.

In a classic sitcom twist, Eleanor’s file has been confused with another. She wasn’t the one who went on that heroic human rights mission to the Ukraine. She was the one who defrauded the sick and the elderly, sleazily selling chalk as medicine. Eleanor’s only hope to stay in eternal bliss is to finally become a better person. This is where the true heart and more importantly, its mind emerges. Beneath her cutting insults and her unapologetic selfishness is a decent person. A person that can argue that she always belonged in the Good Place. A person that the audience can root for. Subversively, the show wins our love. Instead of presenting flawless, unbelievable characters as the protagonists, it shoves us into a world full of goody-two shoes. The true hero is the regular person, the one who, beset by unfortunate circumstances doesn’t choose the right path. We may not all be dirtbags from Arizona, but we all are Eleanor. The world seems bent on presenting us with ethical challenges. All we can do, all we ever do, is choose to do more right than wrong. Which makes the bureaucratic system in The Good Place seem even more unfair and arbitrary. What hope does Eleanor have, what hope do we have, when we can lose our chance at the afterlife simply by reading a trashy magazine?

So, we cheer for Eleanor and her group of friends as they strive to become better, because despite the outlandish situation, they are just like us. Ultimately, I decided to drop my philosophy class. Who needs an expensive college class when one can watch television?

The Good Place Season 1 & 2 are on Netflix. Season 3 airs on NBC, 8 pm.