• Abstract and Figures
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UNIVERSITY OF CONNEC TICUT STUDENT SUPPORT SERV ICES PORTAL S UMMER 2010 THANK YOU! To the English Teachers — Todd Barry, Rebecca Devers, Emily Dolan, Sarah McIntyre, Amanda Smith, and Ivy Stabell. Your professionalism and commitment to student success are an inspiration. To our English Tutors — Lori Carriere, Julie Cyzewski, Jeremy DeAngelo, Brandon Hawk, Christiana Salah, Amanda Smith, and Connor Trebra. The students depend on your insight, encouragement, and willingness to listen. To the SSS Residential Staff and Counselors — As always, we thank you for the kindness and support you provide throughout the summer. You are the pillars of this program. To Bidya Ranjeet, Director of Student Support Services, and Maria D. Martinez, Director of the Center for Academic Programs — The passion you invest in this bears fruit each year in the success of each SSS student. To all of the CAP office staff — Without your work behind-the-scenes, we’d surely all come undone. And a special thank you to the students whose well-wrought words you read in these pages, as well as to ALL of the SSS students who strove for excellence in their writing this summer. With the exception of font and spacing, all student essays appear exactly as they were submitted. My thanks to you all for your enthusiasm, for your exploratory thinking, and for your willingness to share your thoughts in print. Andrew Pfrenger, English Coordinator Table of Contents First Place: Jaleesa Davis 1 Second Place: Jaslynn Tyson 5 Third Place: Denisha Smith 11 Honorable Mention: Anupam Ojha 15 Dionel Altreche 19 Gemima Apollon 21 Smriti Bajgain 25 Mahesh Bhandari 27 Mohamed Zaid Bhura 31 Betzabeth Casas 34 Paul Celadita 40 Leon Chong 42 Tsamchoe Dolma 46 Shannon Ferguson 50 Shapreace Fullwood 53 Vincent Hua 57 Eric Irizarry 61 Faris Jadacic 64 Alveena Javed 68 Sierra KaiKai 71 Isabel Knowles 75 Katie Lam 77 Natavia McLean 80 Shankae McLean 85 Jerry Medina 89 Elias Mwine 91 Marilyn Pinto 95 Ravin Rampertab 100 Wendy Reyes 104 Shanique Russell 110 Nikitaben Shah 112 Deron Smith 116 Michael Soukkhoumalay 119 Anthony Suggs 123 Zaki Tapkirwala 127 Sabina Umanzor 130 Stephanie Williams 134 Jaleesa Davis ~First Place~ “That wasn’t love, baby girl you was dreamin’”: A Female Artist Questions the Meaning of Love More than a decade ago, writer and song artist Eve created and introduced the world to an original piece called ―Love is Blind.‖ By analysis of the title, some may believe the song is about the magical sensation of love; how you never see the feelings come, you just know when they arrive. But the song takes a different approach, a more expressive approach, not about the great sensation of love, but rather the lack thereof. The song incorporates images of the unfortunate circumstances of abusive relationships as depicted not by the victim, but rather a friend watching from the side. In ―Love is Blind,‖ Eve writes as a challenger to the abuser. She analyzes a relationship, determining what love is by showing what love isn‘t. Eve enters the realm of issues hidden behind the scenes in order to show the importance of knowing when enough is enough. She seeks to identify the components of an unhealthy relationship with abuse as the main target. Eve shows that love comes with sacrifice. Eve uses the words of her lyrics, along with her tone in the performed version, to emphasize the anger and dislike she feels for the abuser. The song tells the story of a woman stuck in an abusive relationship, and Eve defines herself as the victim‘s friend, watching as the abuse goes on. Her dislike of the male figure can be seen early in the song. From the beginning she says, ―I don‘t even know you and I hate you / See all I know is that my girlfriend used to date you‖ (lines 1-2). Eve means that without knowledge of who the man is, she still hates him solely based on her knowledge of his relationship with her friend. As the song goes on, Eve‘s anger grows stronger. In verse two she starts by saying, ―I don‘t even know you and I‘d kill you myself‖ (17). She goes from explaining her feelings as hatred in verse one, to saying that she hates him so much that she would kill him in verse two. By verse three, her anger has reached its peak. The verse begins, ―I don‘t even know you and I want you dead‖ (33). In the matter of three verses, she has gone from hatred to declaring that she wants this man dead. By increasing her anger as the song progresses, Eve is also representing the fact that as time passes, the violence she witnesses is becoming more drastic and 1 more dangerous. She chooses to write in an escalating manner to show that when involved in an abusive relationship, things only continue to get worse. By continuing to escalate, she is in fact leading the reader into the final events of the song, as well as allowing the audience to understand the drastic circumstances her friend experienced on a daily basis. To understand the song and its overall meaning, the audience also has to understand the extremities of the abuse within the proposed relationship. Eve switches roles and questions the man in order to provide a reason for her actions at the end of the song. She asks the man, ―How would you feel if she held you down and raped you? / Tried and tried but she never could escape you‖ (3- 4). By just these two lines, it is evident that the relationship was an unhealthy one where the man felt that he was in control. Eve uses these two lines to create an image of how severe the situation actually was. She allows the audience to see the way her friend was treated in a so-called ―love‖ relationship. Her friend was a victim of sexual abuse, raped by a man who claimed to love her. Eve directs this question towards the male to place him in her friend‘s shoes. She asks ―how would you feel‖ to allow him time to think about how the friend might have felt during these times. There exists an imbalance of power in the relationship, as well. Eve talks about trying to escape but never really getting out. The male figure kept her friend trapped, making her a friend of not only abuse, but imprisonment as well. An example of the power struggle would be when Eve says, ―[He] smacked you down cause he said you was too tall for him‖ (14). In the context, ―smacked you down‖ symbolizes the male figure doing everything in his power to make sure the female had no power, to make sure she stayed helplessly at the bottom. By keeping her down, she had no choice but to stay. Even then says, ―She told me should would leave you, I admit it she did / But came back made up a lie about you missing your kids‖ (26-27). This demonstrates how hard it is to get out of an abusive relationship. It gives the feeling of wanting to get out, but not having the strength to walk away and stay away, which is the case in most abusive relationships. Eve intends to show how hard it is to get out of an abusive relationship, especially when one has been stripped of all powers. Part of the purpose of ―Love is Blind‖ is to consider the meaning of love. Eve questions what love is by saying, ―What kinda love from a nigga would black your eye? / What kinda love from a nigga make you wish he would die?‖ (6-8). She questions love by giving examples of things that aren‘t a part of love. She says love doesn‘t come with black eyes, tears every night, and wishes of harm upon your partner. By considering what love is, Eve also brings up the point of substituting love for other ―things.‖ She says, ―Shit he bought you things and gave you diamond rings / But them things wasn‘t worth none of the pain that he brings‖ (9-10). She means that love cannot be 2 replaced with materialistic values. Eve uses the expensive gifts as a representation of the thought that money and diamonds can cover up the pain that comes before it; when in reality the gifts do nothing but bury the problems below the surface. Eve even says, ―That wasn‘t love, baby girl you was dreamin‘‖ (15). This line makes the suggestion that her friend was so caught up with the sensation of being in love that she was blinded to reality. The chorus of the song goes, ―Love is blind, and it will take over your mind / What you think is love, is truly not / You need to elevate and find.‖ The chorus speaks to the point of being blinded by what you wish was reality, and, as a result, missing actuality. Eve mentions that ―love is blind‖ to say that it is uncertain where love may exist. The song reaches its climax in verse three where two lives are lost. Sadly, Eve‘s friend loses her life as a result of the relationship abuse. Eve says, ―Don‘t know the facts but I saw the blood poor from her head / See I lay down beside her in the hospital bed / And about two hours later, doctors said she was dead‖ (34-36). Her friend‘s death represents what can happened when person allows themselves to stay a victim of abuse for too long.

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