The Circle & Penn State: Prompt 1

The chilling aspect of distopian literature resides not only in the themes of totalitarianism, transparency, and oppression, but the relatability and paralells we see in the work which we observe or feel in our own society. The timing in which I delved into the novel "The Circle" by Dave Eggers could not have been more impecable, as it set the stage for me to make many connections between the work itself and my own personal expirences. Despite the oddness of relating the start of my journy as a first year student at Penn State Univeristy with the distopian and ficticious employment at a lavish company set to rid the world of personal identity and privacy, the similarties were apparent from the beginging of the novel. Depsite many similarities, undoubtledly the differences were prominet and  apparent as well. The novel became an incredibly personal expirence for me as I traced Mae Holland's first weeks as an employee of "the most influntial company in the world", and the sequence of emotions she portrayed as she took in her new surroundings and drew conclusions about herself and her new life.

Much like Mae Holland, my first days on Penn State's campus were filled with awe-struck wonder and absolute surreal starry-eyed walks down many unfamilier streets. Mae's first impression on her first day paralelled mine: "The campus was vast and rambling, wild with Pacific color, and yet the smallest detail had been carefully considered, shaped by the most eloquent hands (1)." Everything was so new and vast, and I was overwhelmed with the thought that I would never,in a million years,be able to navagate this community without being glued to my map app on my phone. Much like Mae had a more veterned tourguide in Annie, I had my brother who lives on campus to take me around and show me the ins and outs of such a broud assembly of buildings and insitituions. As Mae's phase of wonderment continues with a lavish and utterly normal occurance of a grand party on campus her first night, I quickly learned the same rites take place in my new home as well. Just as her new boss, Dan, stresses and ingrains in her the absolute and vital importance of building a strong sense of community on the campus, I recived the same ingrainment from the seconded I stepped foot on Penn State's campus. From "we are" chants walking down the street, every passerbyer wearing something relating to school pride, and my inition into the community at convocation by the president, community and a sense of family has been pushed onto me as well.

 I resonate with her wonder and lust for the shineyness of her new surroundings and all the glamour that comes with it, but I also relate to the feelings which follow the fleeting amazement. She slowly begins to feel for herself the impossing work that she is involved in and the stresses and hardships that come with such. While I am not subject to total transparency as she is, I am still put under a looking glass of swiping my ID card, working rigourously to meet standards and ideals set in and out of the classroom, and attempting to keep in touch with who I am while expanding my horizons and my inner self.