Spiritual Awakening

The assignment was a relatively simple one. I asked students to watch a movie or television show, select a specific group of people depicted on that show or in the movie, and then explain what a viewer's impression of that group would be based upon how it was depicted. I did suggest that it might be more interesting to choose a group of which the student was not a member.

The students (all of them in my developmental writing classes) made some intriguing choices: serial killers (Dexter), Alaskans (The Proposal), gypsies or "pikeys" (Snatch), pirates (One Piece), married men (Old School), bosses (The Office), snipers (Enemy at the Gates), even Jedis (Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones). A few faltered in the explanation of how the group was depicted, but it was only a rough draft, so I expect the final drafts will likely be stronger and have more examples and other details.

One, however, stood out not only for the group chosen for discussion but also for a couple of astonishing statements. The students is a tall, athletic Latino. I have reason to suspect that he might be religious given the brochures for the Latter Day Saints that I've seen in his notebook. I would never have suspected that he would choose Pineapple Express as the movie and potheads as the group. The overall essay was strong for a rough draft, but when I read the following statements in the introduction, I have to admit that I was pretty shocked: "People are very judgmental nowadays and they will try to determine the type of person you are by any little thing that they see. For instance people that smoke Marijuana are looked at upon in a very bad way just because they smoke a natural herb that God created for us." In the conclusion, he returned to the same idea: "Potheads are not bad people, they smoke a natural herb that was placed here by God. Humans don't add any chemicals or change the material to make what they want. It is a natural plant and you can pick it and smoke it instantly, other drugs need to be played around with to get the final result, but that's why marijuana is not bad." Yes, I preserved his grammatical errors in the quote, not to mention his apparent lack of knowledge of how people...um..."use" marijuana.

I know I probably shouldn't be shocked that there's a Christian rationalization for pot smoking. People can probably justify almost anything under the umbrella of religious faith. It just seemed so out of character for this young man. He states  in his essay that he doesn't smoke pot (although he has friends who do) and I suspect that to be the case, but I would have never considered him to be a supporter of marijuana use. He even defended potheads as being more goal-oriented that people typically give them credit for being.

I feel like I learn something astonishing with almost every set of papers I read these days.