The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
4 — Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Everyone grows up. It’s the inevi-

table consequence of life ticking for-
ward one second at a time, but just 
because we grow up doesn’t mean we 
are grown-ups. We all come of age dis-
tinctly, surrounded by different people 
and existing in different circumstances, 
but we are united in the fact that grow-
ing up sucks. It’s a beautiful, disgusting, 
painful, euphoric process that asks us 
to strip ourselves bare, raw and vulner-
able before building us back into the 
person we are meant to become. Like 
every other difficult experience in life, 
the best way to explore coming of age 
is through art. This B-Side is a gallery 
walk through eight wonderful writers 
as they explore where coming of age 
intersected with their lives. 

— Mik Deitz, Senior Arts Editor
The enormity of 17 has no space for 

sickness by Managing Arts Editor Lil-
lian Pearce

Seventeen is the idolized coming-of-

age age. It’s not representative of a num-
ber necessarily but of a concept. The idea 
of 17 has been explored and exploited in 

Hollywood since 1965 — “You are six-
teen going on seventeen / baby it’s time 
to think / Better beware, be canny and 
careful / Baby, you’re on the brink.” Sev-
enteen is notable because it’s between 
two symbolic ages in American culture.

Read more here.
‘Big Mouth’ puts the ‘coming’ in 

‘coming of age’ by Daily Arts Contribu-
tor Maya Levy

Created by childhood best friends 

Nick Kroll (“Kroll Show”) and Andrew 
Goldberg (“Family Guy”), the series is 
a profane retelling of their own experi-
ences in middle school — acne scars and 
all. Now in its fifth season, the series 
has developed a complex cast of tweens 
accompanied by an array of personified, 
monstrous pubescent emotions. Where 
most coming-of-age stories show how 
things might get worse before they get 
better, in “Big Mouth,” things just keep 
getting worse, forcing us to endure the 
extreme (and often graphic) truths of 
puberty.

Read more here.
Hindsight is 2020: A look back on 

‘(500) Days of Summer’ by Senior Arts 
Editor Katrina Stebbins

The older I get, the less I like hind-

sight. I know that since we’re only the 

sum of all of our past selves, that self-
reflection is healthy and so on. Howev-
er, there are moments when I think back 
to some of the things I wore or liked or 
did or believed when I was younger and 
I vow to never reminisce again. When 
I think back, especially to high school, 
I’m forced to recognize that I was prob-
ably a pretty fucking unbearable teen-
ager.

Read more here.
Self-Love and ‘The Perks of Being 

by Daily TV Beat Editor 
Emmy Snyder

Hot take: I hate syllabus week. 
Better known as “sylly week,” the 

first week of college classes in a semes-
ter is often referenced affectionately as 
the final week in which a student could 
condone their laziness and theoretically 
couldn’t yet be behind. For some stu-
dents, it’s purgatory at worst, party time 
at best. For me, though, sylly week (and 
its single day high school equivalent) is 
misery. Every semester, I feel as if I am 
staring up a mountain, lacking both the 
desire and proper equipment to climb.

Read more here.
Lessons on loss: A defense of 

 by Daily Arts Writer 
Andrew Pluta

My TikTok feed has only ever dabbled 

in the literary subgenre of BookTok. 
I’ll get a book recommendation once a 
month, at most. But for whatever rea-

son, I get a disproportionate amount of 
content hating on J.D. Salinger’s “Catch-
er in the Rye.” Some creators criticize 
the work as a whole; others go to great 
lengths to tear apart its protagonist, 

Holden Caulfield. After seeing so many 
nearly identical angry takes, I caved. I 
bought a used copy of “Catcher” to re-
read it and get to the bottom of why so 

many grown adults were insistent on 
verbally berating a fictional 16-year-old.

Read more here.

The Coming-of-Age B-Side

My own Mr. Keating: Why I love ‘Dead Poets Society’

“I went to the woods because I 

wanted to live deliberately. I wanted 
to live deep and suck out all the mar-
row of life. To put to rout all that was 
not life; and not, when I had come to 
die, discover that I had not lived.”

I first watched “Dead Poets 

Society” my junior year of high 
school; its poster taunted me, sit-
ting unwatched in my watchlist. 
When one of my classmates learned 
I had never seen it before, she was 
outraged. “Why not?! Your mom is 
an English teacher, for crying out 
loud!” I watched it shortly after and 
loved it, just as she knew I would. 
I then recommended it to another 
friend who hadn’t seen it, who came 

up to me days later and told me it 
made him cry.

At the prestigious preparatory 

school Welton Academy, a group of 
young students is inspired by their 
new English teacher, John Keat-
ing (Robin Williams, “The Angri-
est Man in Brooklyn”). It is under 
Keating’s direction that the boys 
discover the beauty of poetry, resur-
recting the Dead Poets Society — a 
club which Keating founded when 
he himself was a student at Wel-
ton. Through their newfound love 
of words, the boys learn to think 
for themselves and pursue their 
own passions, much to the chagrin 
of their parents and school’s more 
conservative administration. Fea-
turing Peter Weir’s beautiful shots 
of New England autumn and a score 
by Maurice Jarre that I can only 

describe as nostalgic, this movie has 
become a comfort film for me, even 
though it breaks my heart with-
out fail. The film became a staple 
at movie nights; my close circle of 
friends never got tired of it despite 
the countless rewatches (though our 
varying interpretations of its mes-
sage have caused debate). We fell in 
love with the wholesome charac-
ters, laughing at their teenage antics 
and cheering when they stood up 
for themselves. But what left a last-
ing impact on me was Williams’ 
performance, mixing humor with 
kindness and encouragement as a 
classroom role model.

It only makes sense then that we 

would see our senior year English 
teacher as our very own Mr. Keat-
ing.

If Mr. McNally was the uncon-

ventional Keating, then the beige 
walls of my Catholic high school 
were the uninspiring grounds of 
Welton. I don’t mean to bash any-
one, because I enjoyed my time in 
that building; the ways that Mr. 
McNally structured his classes and 
treated us students simply felt dif-
ferent than all of my other teach-
ers at the time. His lectures were 
much more similar to a college-style 
seminar — he preferred fostering 
discussion to reading off a Power-
Point word-for-word while we sat 
in silence, copying notes. We may 
not have been ripping pages out of 
our textbooks like the students do in 
the movie, but discussing whether 
Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte 
were gay for each other in Evelyn 
Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” 
gave us a similar thrill. Like Keating, 

he encouraged us to do more than 
simply memorize information and 
regurgitate it into an essay. For our 
circles of hell projects while reading 
Dante’s “Inferno,” students came 
in with colorful posters, LEGO 
dioramas and even a Minecraft 
server. McNally was mischievous: 
He admitted to us that he would 
mess with Wikipedia pages so that 
he could tell when a student hadn’t 

done proper research. Instead of 
detentions he made us write lines 
as punishment, only to rip them up 
when we handed them in the next 
day. “You waste my time, I’ll waste 
yours,” he’d say. (I never had to write 
any, but walking into class and see-
ing a sentence on the board was 
amusing.)

Design by Sarah Chung

Design by Grace Aretakis

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

M. DEITZ

Digital Culture Beat Editor

 HANNAH CARAPELLOTTI

Daily Arts Writer

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Peter A. Collins
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/09/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

02/09/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2022

ACROSS

1 Kid lit elephant
6 Lend support to

10 Outdoor sitting 

area

15 Love
16 Dunkable snack
17 Leave no trace of
18 Feature that 

4-Down lacks

19 Prefix with type
20 Some pastries
21 Measure used by 

navigators

24 *1977 Rod 

Stewart hit

26 *Difficult spot
29 NYSE debut
30 Versed in 

creative writing

33 Turkish title
34 Semester
36 Usually dramatic 

symphony ending

37 “Miracle on 34th 

Street” hero 
Kringle

38 More than unkind

outfit


document

42 Horse-drawn cab
44 Cuts needing 

stitches

45 *Microwaveable 

turnovers

50 Not out
53 Minor, as a sin
54 Twin Falls-to-

Sioux Falls 
direction

58 Old Route 66 city
60 Gets some sun
61 Army leader 

sometimes seen 
in a bunker?

62 Crest box abbr.
63 Sat atop
66 Bother
67 Wheel edge
68 Petitioner
69 Food store letters
70 Tip of a wing tip

... and where 
the answers to 
starred clues 
might be found?

72 “__ Misérables”

DOWN

1 Humanities degs.
2 Fruit drink suffix
3 1975 Springsteen 

hit

4 No-frills typeface

again

6 Like mind-and-

body medicine

7 __ the Red
8 Horne of jazz

10 Diminutive
11 Postgrad tests

element class

13 Chicago hrs.
14 Bulls and bucks
22 “Yay, the 

weekend!”

23 Tiny bit of dust
24 Snag
25 Soap __
27 Nimble
28 Shocks, in a way
31 Brian of ambient 

music

32 Cold and rainy
35 Interacts well
37 One fond of 

smooching

39 Place to go in 

Gloucester

41 Bit of arm art
43 1981 cable debut
44 Pompadour need
46 Cared for a cat, 

say

47 How stock may 

be bought

48 Movie house
49 “The Big Chill” 

director

50 Maze word

51 Zoom meeting 

component

52 Lover

block

56 Lengthy assault
57 Where to find 

Katy and Austin

59 Part of a foot
61 Colony members
64 “Xanadu” rock gp.
65 Neighbor of N.Y. 

and Minn.

SUDOKU

6

2
9

4
1
8

2
8

5

7

1

2

6
9

9
4
1

2

6

9
7

5
8

WHISPER

“wordle is my 
daily”

“Good luck on 
MATH115 exam 
everyone”

WHISPER

By Susan Gelfand
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/02/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

02/02/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, February 2, 2022

ACROSS

1 Epsilon followers
6 Reference

10 Apple tablet
14 Reason for a food 

recall

15 River Severn 

tributary

16 Violin holder
17 Old will?
18 Actress 

Krakowski of 
“30 Rock”

19 Gaelic language
20 Fuss
21 Seat for a 

hooligan?

23 Violinist Isaac 

who performed 
the solos in the 
movie “Fiddler on 
the Roof”

25 Whirl
26 Fast watercraft
30 Kitchen gadget 

brand

31 Ready for a refill
33 Pulitzer-winning 

writer James

37 Dalmatian 

marking

39 Pals, slangily
41 MLBer Manny 

who was a 
Dodger coach for 
34 seasons

42 Bagel center
43 Cleaned, in a 

way

45 USPS unit
46 Many Wikipedia 

articles

49 More than you 

want to hear, 
probably

51 Put aside
54 Open-mouthed 

stares

55 Seat for a gala 

attendee?

58 Mop
61 Gillette razor
62 Indian royal
63 “Mostly Ghostly” 

series author

64 Poet Silverstein
65 Panache
66 Reddish-brown 

dye

67 Cooked
68 Smartphone 

receipt

69 Beaten by a 

nose, say

DOWN

1 Pizzazz

to you

3 Seat for an 

amphibian?

4 Gives in portions
5 Dog command
6 Louisiana cuisine
7 Author Turgenev
8 Honky-__
9 One side of an 

Einstein equation

10 It may be in a 

cone

11 Winter warmer
12 Strong suit
13 Caterpillar rival
21 Gussy up
22 Olive __
24 Squeeze (out)
26 “Milk” Oscar 

nominee Brolin

27 Trade show
28 Simmered dishes
29 Kind
32 Gnat or nag
34 Seat for Tiger?
35 Famous almost-

last words

36 British nobleman

heart

40 Stick a fork in
44 Dance genre
47 Columbia, for one
48 Like some agents 

and Santas

50 Took a break
51 Muscle 

contraction

52 Yoga variety
53 Miscalculated

54 Oversized and 

then some

56 Healthy
57 Warrior son of 

King Telamon, in 
myth

59 Donovan in 

Basketball Hall of 
Fame

60 Bracelet ball
63 Pop duo __ & 

Him

Crying in a car alone: 

Coming of age just like in 

the movies

“And I had a feeling that I belonged. 

I had a feeling I could be someone.”

As this quote from Tracy Chap-

man’s “Fast Car” evokes in its mag-
nificent and haunting chorus, there is 
something about flying along in a car 
that makes you feel like you can leave 
what you know behind and do any-
thing. While the narrator of this song 
does not drive the car herself, it is still 
the object that both literally carries 
her away from home and figuratively 
carries her into a new chapter of her 
life. One where she belongs. One 
where she can “be someone.” Like 
so many songs and stories describe, 
my coming of age coincided with the 
time I learned to drive.

It was my junior year of high 

school. I spent a great deal of time 
learning how to make a left turn 
across an intersection in less than a 
full minute and sitting in a classroom 
watching obligatory videos about 
how quickly you would die if you hit 
a tree going 55 miles an hour. When 
I got my license, I was apprehensive, 
having come to the conclusion that 
the only way to be safe was to live 
underground — far from any roads, 
for the rest of my life. While overcom-
ing the fear instilled in me from Driv-
er’s Ed, I was also facing another fear: 
My best friend had gone to Sweden 
as a foreign exchange student, leav-
ing me to realize how few truly close 
friends I had. Just as I was experienc-
ing driving alone for the first time, I 
was experiencing an increased loneli-
ness in the rest of my life.

I don’t think that you can “come 

of age” without spending time 
alone, a theory supported by popu-
lar media. Look at Olivia Rodrigo’s 
2021 song “drivers license,” in which 
she drives alone past places she once 
thought she would drive with her 
ex-boyfriend, taking away some of 
the power these places — and the 
breakup — hold over her. Or take 
Greta Gerwig’s 2017 film “Lady Bird,” 

where punky teenager Lady Bird 
(Saoirse Ronan, “Little Women”) 
finally leaves Sacramento for college 
in New York City. Only after leaving 
her best friend and family and expe-
riencing the freedom of being alone, 
hooking up with a sophisticated man 
she hardly knows and getting so 
drunk that she ends up in a hospital, 
does Lady Bird realize she needs to 
change. In the final scene, she calls 
and leaves a message for her parents. 
She addresses her mom, asking if she 
felt emotional the first time she drove 
through Sacramento, because despite 
having known the city for her whole 
life, it felt different when Lady Bird 
first drove through it herself. It is in 
this final scene where she first calls 
herself by her given name, Christine, 
rather than using the moniker she 
chose for herself. Being alone for the 
first time intersects with her accep-
tance of her identity as her mother’s 
daughter, despite their strained rela-
tionship.

Unfortunately for me, junior year 

of high school was not an ideal time 
for isolation. I had a crush on some-
one and was too afraid of rejection 
to act on it. I instead fell down a pit of 
insecurities when hiding my feelings 
didn’t make anyone fall in love with 
me. I convinced myself that I was 
not good enough in any way, be that 
my personality, of which I was cer-
tain I had none, or my body. I became 
closed-off from the friends who were 
still there because I felt they didn’t 
care about me. The truth was, they 
didn’t know anything was wrong 
because I never said anything about 
it. I had never been one to talk much 
about my feelings, and until that year, 
that had felt like a strength. Suddenly, 
this trait isolated me and convinced 
me I had no one to talk to if I wanted 
to. Reflection makes it seem impossi-
ble that I let these very junior-year-of-
high-school problems devastate me 
as much as they did. We’ve all been 
there. (Please tell me we’ve all been 
there.)

 ERIN EVANS
Daily Arts Writer

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

