2 updates in one day...who knew?!

After lunch earlier I went to the Hughes front desk to say hey to Sam. She, being a good friend, talked to me for a while before banishing me to go finish my paper (still uncompleted). But before I was extradited she marked my hand, with a permanent green marker, with the word, "WORK". Dutifully I finished Wiesel's Night but as I gazed at my hand I saw how something so simple as a mark on your hand can bind you to a place, a duty or a memory. I saw the ties between my mark and the numbers of identification placed on the left hands of concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust. My mark reminds me of my duties as a student, to complete my assignments. On a deeper level it reminds me that my pride and my future as it rests on this paper (at least for now..next week my IR paper will be the determining factor of my future and so on down the line for the next 7 years). The mark on the prisoners of the Holocaust reminds them that they are less then people, more along the lines of mud on the boots of the Nazis. My mark is not permanent, will wash away with my nightly shower in a few hours and will never be thought of again. Theirs is ingrained permanently into their skin and their souls. Every time they see their number (which became their name in many cases) they remember what their life was like while in the concentration camp. They'll remember the fear of selections, the impending death, starvation and complete loss of hope. Their mark will never wash away, and perhaps they are swept with pain and memories torment and despair every time they see their identification number. I'll never know. My mark isn't like theirs. Mine, while a symbol of an impending paper, is also a symbol of a hope for a fantastic life ahead of me.