The Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest asked Penn State Students to explore ethical values and intercultural issues, and their talent for expressing their views in writing.
Below, you will find the third place essay from Luiza Lodder, responding to the prompt:
“What you think, you become.” ~Mahatma Gandhi.
The Paterno Fellows Program hopes to provide an “education for leadership” and to help students develop ethical principles. What is your personal honor code?
The Language of Honor
By: Luiza Lodder
Throughout high school, my classmates and I were constantly bombarded with encouragement to pursue as many ‘’leadership opportunities’’ as we could before college application time came around. I was very good at ignoring this barrage of incentives, but the usual over-achievers never missed a chance to prove their worth, and they did so by pursuing the leadership opportunity par excellence: running for class president. In a class of forty people, there was never much variety in the candidate list, which meant that those who ran year after year were accorded a special place of adoration in the hearts of teachers and counselors, while those who voted were the at-risk students who needed to try harder.
I like to think I was spared this at-risk status only because I was perfectly content to carry out another function in the system. In a small, bilingual school in Brazil, being the resident future English major had its thankless perks. Candidates would approach me with their election speeches and ask me to edit them: ‘’Make it sound good!’’ they would say, or ‘’Put nice words in!’’. I did so graciously, crossing out awkward sentences, correcting minor mistakes, inserting words that everyone knew only smart people used (e.g. ‘’implement’’, ‘’catalyst’’, ‘’insofar as’’) and the most I ever demanded in return was a chocolate bar. Perhaps it was all for nothing—most of those people hardly knew what the words meant or why I used them, and they didn’t want to know. Perhaps I was helping others at my own expense, but I didn’t mind—it wasn’t a zero-sum game to me. Besides, I was benefitting in another manner. Correcting those essays taught me something I suspected I already knew for a while: the importance of language in establishing an identity.
One of my friends for example (who happened to be elected class president for a year) had a special talent for bombast. Words he had picked up from textbooks, teachers, and TED talks flowed out of his mouth whether he was talking to the headmaster or to the janitor. Many times they wouldn’t even make sense, or perhaps he conflated his English vocabulary with the sentence structure of the Portuguese language to ridiculous effect, but hardly anyone cared to notice. He wanted to be an important person, so he spoke like one, and he was perceived as thus without question. I marveled at this state of affairs because it won him the election. The difference between him and the other students was a vocabulary that was not his and that he didn’t properly know how to use, a language he learned in order to build a persona, and it worked for him.
I found it unsettling, and not because he was solidifying another identity for his political, ambitious self. I believe in leading double or triple lives to some extent. As a native Brazilian studying in the United States who went to school with international students, consolidating different personal identities according to who you’re with or where you are is the only way to adapt, and words have been my greatest allies. But to use them in an artificial manner to please and impress others, to gain approval, to try to be rather than to truly be—I could not come to terms with it. Being silent had a much greater appeal. I found that modesty, brevity, and deliberation increased the impact of whatever I had to say, and I started valuing the honor of authenticity over the promise of success, at least in the context of student elections.
Now I am in a class of thousands and I love the fact that being true to myself and striving for accomplishment are no longer mutually exclusive. It means the leadership section of my job resume need not look so empty anymore. Even still, I know why I helped my friend write his speech that day. Saying what we really think, expressing how we really feel and acting like who we really are can be intimidating and unrewarding. To do so often clashes with our ambitions and the way in which we want to be perceived by others. My friend had made his decision when he brought me his speech. When I helped him I was still making mine, and I still am. I cannot outwardly proclaim being authentic as my personal honor code because I still struggle with it, and perhaps I may not live up to it tomorrow. But it’s a worthy struggle, and one that unlike most, brings me peace at the end of the day.