Student Corner

Student Publications

Student work is posted here – if you have a submission, please send it to Mrs. Flohr at jflohr@seattlelutheran.org. As David Cohen ’13 says, “It’s a hip and happenin’ place to be!”

Dominic Snyder’s Agape Reflection

June 6, 2013

Hello everyone. Most of you know me as Dominic Snyder. Probably because that’s my name. And that was my opening joke. Anyone that knows me knows that’s how I like my jokes: subtle and not particularly funny in any way.

I spent a lot of time in preparation for this and I couldn’t decide exactly what direction I wanted to go in. I sat and I thought and I laid in bed and I thought and I stood and I thought and then I paced around a room and I thought until I realized – I didn’t even know what Agape meant. So I decided a smart thing to do would be to use my brain, the internet, to look up what “Agape” actually means and I found out that it was a greek word that when translated meant love. More specifically God’s love. And I thought wow that’s very nice that’s very pleasant. People would absolutely adore a speech about that. But I didn’t wanna talk about that. Trying to get people to like my speech is a bit too mainstream for my tastes. No, no, no. You see talking about that would be too easy. Everyone would be expecting it. And everyone else would be talking about it. I’d feel like Cinderella when she showed up to the ball and found out someone else had a carriage made out of a squash and was wearing double-paned glass slippers.

So I decided against it. When it came to Disney movies I wanted my speech to be more like Sleeping Beauty. Badly attended and initially a critical failure only to be truly understood and appreciated by its audience many years later as they are listening to another speech and realizing they are quickly but gently being lulled into a far deeper sleep than Princess Aurora had ever known.

Seattle Lutheran is a very small school and while some lament this fact I embrace it and it is this fact that allows for my favorite part of Seattle Lutheran to exist. The close personal relationships that I have developed with so many people here over four quick years. With students like “Sean” Sun Hong Choi who God sent from South Korea to be not only an example of hope and enthusiasm to Seattle Lutheran but an ambassador of singing and dancing to the entire country. Students like Ting Ting Lee who inspires me every time I see any of her artwork and I mean jaw to the floor astounded. Or Chris Scragg. Everyone knows a lot more about the weather whether they wanted to or not because of Chris. Or Wes Sonheim. The first conversation I had with him he decided he wasn’t talking out loud for a while and instead opted to create a simple code in his journal which I had to decipher in order to communicate and from then on I knew we’d be friends forever, forever even though you are leaving Seattle.              And it is not only the relationships with my amazing senior class that I value so highly but also the relationships with the people who have brought my class to where we are today. Seattle Lutheran is so special because of the amazing teachers and staff and without them my class would be more lost than I was trying to follow the plot of the last Transformers movie. They are some of the greatest role-models I’ve ever had in my life. Walking into the office would be a far less pleasant and far less productive trip if it wasn’t for Ms. Lulow. Mr. Norton’s calm, personable demeanor played a charming vessel for science and art teachings to flow forth and envelop your imagination. Mr. Graddy’s love of soccer and history inspired me every single day he was here and he taught me just how dashing the combination of a good mustache and kilt can look. Mr. Caudle’s integrity was an example for my life and the fact anyone could go in his office and he would be ready to talk about any problem you had was invaluable to me and many others. Mrs. Hook ruled her class with an iron fist but it was an iron fist ornamented with kindness and decorated with love. Ms. Knaff has entertained all of my inane, nonsensical questions in our after-school conversations and that surely took a superhuman amount of will-power. And Mrs. Zandi has showed me my passions and allowed me to act upon them more than anyone in my life. I will remember all of these teachers and so many more as people that shaped who I will become and shaped who my classmates will become in an incredibly positive, God-breathed way.

This may be the last time some of my classmates and teachers hear me ramble on and compare speeches to Disney movies and that makes me sad. I plan to visit people and the school way more often than I should so it’s likely I’ll see many of these people again but even still it won’t be the same as these last four years. Every one of you have been so important in my life and I know my class feels the same exact way. So thank you for what you’ve given me. I love every one of you.

Movie Review – Dominic Snyder ’13

Words That May or May Not Persuade You to View or Not View Olympus Has Fallen

Relatively simple action movies are at their best when you laugh at the charismatic hero’s jokes and wince at the visceral action scenes as if you could feel every moment. Olympus Has Fallen makes you laugh at the action and wince at the jokes.

Relatively-simple-action-movies (TM) can be good! They don’t have to have plot-holes spanning the Valles Marineris, or performances as entertaining as an empty Wonder bread bag. I wish I had an empty Wonder Bread bag in the theater, because where there’s an empty Wonder Bread bag there’s someone who really likes Wonder Bread and talking to that boring person would have been more stimulating then sitting through this movie. Its not very good is what I’m getting at here.

It hurts me in the cranial cavity to try and explain the story but here it goes. A North Korean man named Kang whose father was killed by the North Korean government and mother was killed by an American (how did he know this?) land-mine while escaping across the DMZ to South Korea decides to kill the President of the United States because he’s a terrorist and terrorists hate freedom and he wants a united Korea and how does this help exactly and shutup. Presumably he has further plans in Korea because he makes demands regarding American troops there but they don’t make sense so we shouldn’t bother.

The story and dialogue is absolutely riddled with laughable cliches. So much of the movie’s basic concept is clumsily borrowed from Die Hard like North Korea clumsily “borrows” South Korean filmmakers.

Truth be told they could have done a lot worse for their protagonist than Gerard Butler. None of what he says is particularly memorable, as the script sucks, but you don’t actively dislike his character. You don’t cheer with him like you do in 300, however, and I ended up actually preferring the neutered version of John McClane in the latest Die Hard. Hand to hand combat in the film is not bad if a bit uninspired. Aaron Eckhart tries his hardest to present the movie as not quite as stupid as it really is which is admirable. If it wasn’t for the movie poster I might’ve forgotten that Morgan Freeman was even in this movie because he doesn’t freaking do anything. My favorite part of the whole movie was when Morgan Freeman gave his fifteen second coffee order. This paragraph was supposed to be about positive things and look what happened.

On a side note, if you are forced at gunpoint to go and see this movie because you are close friends with the world’s most uncreative kidnapper then make sure you bring your Korean friend so he can translate all the bizarrely pronounced Korean swear words after the movie (thanks Sean). Unless you can get the kidnapper to also be your Korean friend. How convenient would that be!

At least the special effects and score look and sound great in the dramatic scenes of the film. Oh, what’s that? This isn’t a YouTube fan-film spiritual successor to Air Force One? It’s a full release Hollywood action movie? Oh, well in that case it looks and sounds like crap.

Olympus Has Fallen is one big, silly, implausible, heavy-handed mess. You might be able to milk enjoyment here and there from Butler penetrating some skulls with a knife or from pondering why Morgan Freeman uses so much Sweet’N Low in his coffee order (he might be diabetic but then why not Splenda?) but you also run the risk of finding yourself drooling in your lap as you doze off into a faux patriotism induced coma, so there’s that to worry about.

3 Hydra network passwords out of 10. Don’t worry you can guess the rest of them.

Dominic Snyder ’13