The instinctual reaction most people have when they hear I attend Thacher is to start making assumptions. I've been bombarded with countless stereotypes, some positive ("You must be crazy smart!"), some negative ("Boarding schools are just where people send rich, spoiled kids to be indulged.") and others simply wishful thinking ("CAN YOU DO MAGIC???? WHAT HOUSE ARE YOU IN, IS IT GRYFFINDOR???") For the most part, I'm nothing more than amused at these generalizations, happy to answer questions and clarify, but there has always been one assumption that irritates me beyond the others, jumps out to torment me when I least expect it, ensuring I never find inner peace.

    "Oh, so you ride horses?"

    To put it as civilly as possible, "NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DO NOT RIDE HORSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

    Allow me to clarify: yes, Thacher does have a riding program, and yes, all freshmen are required to participate for the course of a year. After being caught rallying up a group of disgruntled newcomers I was warned to stop instigating campaigns of negativity against the horse program, so I'll spare you the gory details - why my hatred of riding was completely justified and no I was not being irrational and yes I DID put my saddle away correctly, how dare they give me work crew! - but I think one thing the horse faculty and I can agree on was that the experience did not bring out my best qualities. There are a lot of factors that I could attribute this to, some of the more significant being the slightly authoritarian attitude that permeated the barns, the fact that I accumulated approximately six billion work crews over the course of the year, and (I mention this grudgingly) my own immaturity and unwillingness to take responsibility for a two-thousand pound beast - but I think the most long withstanding issue in my life is a perpetual inability to feel affection towards animals. Exempting perhaps horses, I don't claim to necessarily hate them - it's more a comfortable indifference, and after a long and tumultuous history of pet ownership I have concluded that unless being served on a platter with a hint of exotic seasoning, the animal kingdom is best advised to stay far away from me.

    Beyond other animals, horses are often perceived as being beautiful or majestic, although I regret to profess that these claims have always puzzled me. Coming to Thacher did nothing to quell my confusion, and about two weeks in I came up with a much more appropriate way of characterizing horses: mobile old people. My horse's name was Uno and I viewed him as something of a crabby and senile old man on steroids: both content to whine incoherently to himself as he rolled around in his own feces, but also cheerfully willing to exhibit his superhuman, seemingly drug-induced strength, be it through kicking me as I tried in earnest to pick his hooves or brush his tail, or simply throwing me off his back, as if performing some kind of morbid aerobics routine. It was simply unnatural, and I found myself feeling betrayed. I wanted to hit something; Cormac McCarthy and Anna Sewell both came to mind as fitting targets.

    "All the PRETTY horses?" I would inquire as I rammed Cormac's head against Uno's stall door. "Black BEAUTY, you say? My, my, isn't that an interesting title for a book!"

    I suppose I must have unknowingly allowed these personal aggressions to seep into my everyday behavior, because something about me never quite meshed with the fabric of the horse program. I always managed to pick the wrong fights and make the most ridiculous mistakes, and by the end of the first trimester I had just barely evaded failing the program altogether.

    Considering all this, I was a pretty abysmal rider, often subject to random lapses of control, but the most terrified I've ever been on a horse came at a standstill. I had been moping around in the sand arena waiting for it to be 5:00 p.m. so I could unsaddle, when Mr. Swan approached me to reprimand my unrelenting sense of irritated apathy.

    "Do you treat human beings like this?" he demanded as I opened my mouth to argue. "Because if you do, I feel sorry for a lot more than just your horse."

    I have always persisted that I learned nothing in the horse program, but I admit now that my claims are not entirely true. His insinuation startled me; I thought back on all the problems I'd ever had in my life, and it was on that day I realized the possibility of them being my own fault. 

    As I read Mary Maffei's Aug. 20th letter, I found myself grow increasingly agitated. A popular argument used to support deportation is that illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers. In Ms. Maffei's letter, she claims her readers won't completely understand until "one of [their] family members is thrown out of a job because [immigrants] will work for less money." - and while I sympathize with how hard it must be to lose a job, I don't see why it's the illegal immigrants who being burdened with the full responsibility of this problem.  Immigrants often replace American citizens in the workplace because they're willing to work harder for less money. If I agreed to wash dishes or pick strawberries for twelve hours a day at below minimum wage, I could probably replace you at your job too! It's called capitalism, folks, and the only thing unfair about it is how badly illegal immigrants are exploited by their employers.

    As unions emerged in the early 20th century, American workers saw a fortunate shift in power from the corporations to the proletariat. Ideas like child labor laws, minimum wage, and weekends came into place, and a balance of power was created in the work environment. I do not doubt Ms. Maffei's family members were making reasonable financial demands from their employers, but if a hungry immigrant family, perhaps even unable to speak English, ignorantly offers to work extensive hours at hardly any pay, it should be the employer's responsibility to recognize hiring them as both illegal and inhumane. Instead of blaming poor families who often put their lives at stake trying to create better lives for themselves and their children here in America, the "land of opportunity", blame the corporations who allow themselves to be swindled by temptation, simultaneously leaving hard-working citizens without jobs and their "alien" replacements without the means to support themselves or become legal citizens.

    Caging human beings up like animals and shipping them off to their home countries is not going to solve any problems. If business owners were simply willing to do the honorable thing and refuse employment to people willing to work below minimum wage, there would be no reason to hire illegal aliens instead of American citizens - but until that day, the employment issue will remain. It's up to us to demand fair and humane treatment of all workers, illegal or not.

    I recently went on a backpacking trip in the Golden Trout Wilderness, just south of Fresno. EDTS (Extra Day Trips) are a long withstanding and slightly painful Thacher tradition intended to build character, although many times throughout the trip - while powering up a switchback at top speed for no apparent reason, while morosely dropping an iodine tablet into decidedly questionable water, while being attacked by swarms of bees - I wondered rather desperately what kind of character I could possibly building. A very bitter one, perhaps?

    A few words from one of my fellow campers and classmates registered with me strongly throughout the trip, and even now still, as I enter the start of the school year.

    "You know what's funny?" she pondered the first morning as I blearily rubbed my eyes and examined the freezing campsite. "Some people are in school right now!"

    Ah yes, give me the wide, open plains over cold-hearted academia any day of the week!