Rite Of Passage

A lifetime is divided by many years, years into days, days into hours, and hours into minutes. But out of these minutes, some stand out the most making our most memorable of our memories. Whether you felt joy, anger, or sadness, it is the way that we felt at that second what makes us remember that moment and what made us change from who we were. It is an experience where you know you can’t go back. In the following passage, I will talk about my rite of passage.

In Conrad Philip Kottak’s “Rite of Passage” he mentions the three stages of a rite of passage. Anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep defines these stages as Separation, Margin, and Aggregation. Victor Turner, another anthropologist, focused on Margin, which he referred to as liminality. Not only can a rite of passage be an individual experience, but it can also be a communal experience which Turner called “communitas.” Many of us experience this “communitas” in different ways such as my Hispanic culture that experiences quinceneras. Quinceneras are a rite of passage for young girls’ transition from adolescence to womanhood. I for one never experienced this rite of passage.

College. One word that has people’s minds run like crazy. Panic is one emotion that starts to settle in for high school seniors when second semester rolls by when they realize they are suppose to figure out their future soon. Not only is it a stressful time for the seniors, but also for the parents. Alina Tugend, an experienced journalist, wrote an essay called, “Vocation or Exploration? Pondering the Purpose of College.” Tugend’s goal of this article is to inform the audience of college students and their parents that college is continuously changing its aspect which leads us to different options when approaching college. This is why making the right choices after graduating high school is challenging. She pinpoints great examples throughout the essay and uses a good amount of ethos, logos, but did not have a

College is an opportunity to truly discover who you are. Often enough, you hear people saying “You should really major in this field, I think you would really enjoy this career.” or, “Do you think you really want to study that? Have you thought about what you will be doing ten years from now?” filling your mind with self doubt, uncertainty, and the anxiousness of not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. Mark Edmundson wrote an article titled, Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?, published in Oxford American addressing college students and their families how the most important thing college students should focus on is personal growth. When students take their courses seriously their engagement can help finding out who they really are and which future career will lead not necessarily to great financial success, but to a career and life that is very satisfying. Edmundson wants to inspire his audience and have them take what he is saying seriously. Edmundson uses satirical informal language and hypothetical situations to effectively persuade college students to focus on their personal growth in order to create a life and career that is deeply fulfilling.

The transition from high school to college is a dynamic time in one’s life that parallels the change from childhood to adulthood. Both of these changes are dramatic and, as a result, feelings are difficult to put down into words. A messy combination of emotions fills the heart, surfacing in strange ways. Confident high school seniors go right back to the bottom of the chain when entering college as freshmen. These students start all over, just like entering grade school or high school for the first time. The move up from high school to college signals the switch from dependence to self-sufficiency. From a personal point of view, going through the experience of graduating high school and transferring to a residential college campus at STLCOP, made me realize I was no longer a kid and capable of making my own decisions.

Is College Worth It? Is college really worth it? This is a question many students start to ask as the college cost increases and jobs are harder to get. Although getting accepted into a good college is a great start, the student needs to be motivated, talented, as well as creative. If a student has those qualities, that student will be successful in the future (Rouse, Cecilia E; debater 4).

A recent rite of passage I went through was graduating from nursing school and becoming a RN. To complete this rite of passage I had to complete all the pre-requisites for nursing school which took me 4 years. Then I did the nursing program which was 2 years. To celebrate finishing the nursing program I attended a pinning ceremony which is a ritual where the nursing graduates get a pin that represents the completion of the education required to sit for the nursing boards. This pinning ceremony was more important than walking at graduation. The majority of my classes did not attend the graduation ceremony but all attended the pinning. Once I took the nursing license test I got a card that says registered nurse. I was finally able to call myself

Certainly every moments or steps are critical in life of each individual. Futhermore, the rite of passage that teenagers have been through is the one may not missing. Firstly, it demonstrates the tradition and indenity of nations all around the world. Secondly, the rite of passage is a transformation of the teenagers to adults and they become mature and responsible for what they did. I am going to use the North America rite of passage to certify my viewpoints. In North America, in order to acompany with the implementation of family planning, each household must pay a birth free ($2500). Gorvernment will subsidy the school fee in orger to raise their children until they celebrate his/her 18th birthday, moreover, they will refund the birth fee

Beginning with the fatalistic discourse utilized by my family, peers, and educators, I internalized such thoughts, and implicitly understood that, quite naturally, I would make the predestined transition to college from high school. Finding

A rite of passage is something that happens when person goes from one stage of life to another. When a person goes through a rite of passage their social stats changes. The majority of the time it is used to describe a child going from a child to an adult, but it can also be for many other reasons. In Africa marriage is a very important rite of passage. There is an African Proverb that says “A man without a wife is like a vase without flowers”. In Africa they celebrate the first rain, the first harvest, and the birth of a child along with marriage. In this culture marriage symbolizes a new life. Marriage is the most celebrated rite of passage ever since the African culture has been around. Africans believe that it is not the human right

Although rite of passage are different from culture to culture, they all symbolized same things, kids emerging into adulthood. According to global citizen “in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the middle of the south pacific, young boys come of age by jumping of a 98-foot-tall tower with a bungee-like vine tied to their ankles, just barely preventing them from hitting the ground. The catch? Unlike a bungee cord, the vine lacks elasticity, and a slight miscalculation in vine length could lead to broken bones or even death.” Another example is from my home country of Ethiopia, in the west part of Ethiopia they have a tradition called Hamar Cow Jumping which is basically before a man gets married he has to jump over a castrated male cow four times

There comes a time when teen boys and girls come to a point where life is changing into something really different perhaps even scary. This scary transition could be referred to as the “rite of passage” which is what I am dealing with as the end of my senior year. Following this revelation, the world has many different cultures that include a rite of passage both boys and girls must complete in order to become an adult and face the next stage of life.

Imagine bungee jumping but with only jungle vines attached to your ankles, terrifying right? Well for the Bunlap tribe, this is their rite of passage called land diving. Young boys participate in this rite to prove their masculinity to their tribe. On the day of the jump, the mother holds the young boy’s favourite toy and after the successful jump by the boy (head first with vines attached to ankles), the mother throws away the toy and the boy is considered a man afterwards. This rite of passage is celebrated during a festival on Pentecost Island. Only men in this tribe participate in land diving and women provide support through dancing. Long ago, land diving was to bless the soil for a good yam harvest by skimming their head on the soil

Rites of passage can be considered very important in some cultures and not so important in others. Rites of passage are considered “ceremonies such as christenings, puberty rituals, marriages, and funerals, which we hold whenever a member of society undergoes an important change in status within the lifecycle of the group” (Crapo, 2013, sect. 6.4). The rite of passage that I will discuss is marriage. Marriage is a sacred union between two adults, to stay together until “death do them part” and to be faithful to one another. To me, this rite of passage serves the function within a society to create a family and to grow the population and to pass on the family name.

When describing a rite of passage, Van Gennep created three categories that each rite of passage possesses. The three categories Van Genneps indicates are Severance, Threshold, and Incorporation (Foster). Severance refers to leaving one’s previous social status and moving on to the next. In regards to a rite of passage such as a high school graduation, severance would refer to the participant leaving behind their life as a student in order to enter into the life of adulthood. By leaving behind the life of a student, the participant is also leaving behind the lifestyle of the student as well as any securities that come with it. They trade their student life in for the life of a young adult, which comes accompanied with more freedom but also