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