“Human nature can be broken down into love, hate, ambition, and disappointment,” Samuel G. Freedman pointed out to a class of students that he visited at Baruch College. It can be assumed that someone with extensive experience and vast knowledge of human life and our behavior can make such an argument, and in Freedman’s case, such an assumption would be correct. He is a columnist for Saturday’s New York Times, for which he is constantly interviewing people. He is also a professor at the prestigious Columbia University. However, it is probably his latest book, Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life, that gives Freedman the most credentials as a respectable writer.
As Freedman spoke of his late mother, the subject of his most recent book, it was clear that he took her close to heart. He said that although he has always despised the genre of memoire writing, this book was like an “act of penance” for him. He wanted to make up the debt of not being a great or caring son to his mother for the short nineteen years that he spent with her. In order to complete this rather personally fulfilling project, Freedman conducted four years of research. He interviewed his mother’s relatives, friends, neighbors, etc. “No rules apply for history or memoires,” he said, however, “One must not sanitize the topic.” After reading Who She Was, I realized that such advice must be heeded.
In addition to giving very helpful advice on writing a memoire/ biography, such as how to interview people you do not know, using photographs as tools, and retrieving old documents, Freedman gave some guidance for living a fulfilling life, something he claims he did not know when he was a young adult. He respects his mother because she had to put bread on the table when she was younger, something he was not responsible for. In other words, do not take things for granted. What he learned while writing Who She Was was that you should be careful about denying your kids what their hearts desire. Most importantly, the reason why he felt the need to write this book is to not spend your life hating a parent. It is not worth the stress and the very likely guilt that you will feel later on in life.
Clearly, Samuel G. Freedman is more than just a brilliant journalist, professor, and author. He is a man who has reached a point in his life in which he can reflect on his past mistakes, learn from them, and share them with others. “Not only famous lives are extraordinary or worth writing about. Any life can be dramatic,” he said. He can be a considered a philanthropist, one who through his writing and teaching wants to expose the good and bad of human kind, one person at a time.

The title of my collage is “Eurotrip”. The reason I named it this was because the subject of the college is the trip I made with my family to Europe this past summer. We visited Paris, three cities in Belgium, and Amsterdam. I included little pieces of memories and things/ places I enjoyed most, mainly from Paris and Belgium. Instead of putting the combination of photos and objects on plain paper, I decided to make the background a map of central Paris. It is colorful and catches the eye, and gives the background much more meaning than a simple, colored paper.
Several of the objects that I attached to this “map” were placed specifically at their actual locations on the map. For example, the photo taken at the base of the Eiffel Tower was placed at its actual location. This particular picture I placed on a paper spring to make it pop into your face as an effect. I managed to keep a business card from a very famous restaurant in Paris that I really enjoyed and placed it in the area that it was actually located. Also, concealed underneath it is a picture I took in the actual restaurant. With this object, I also introduced a sort of abstract and weird subtheme of “heads” or “body parts” by putting a picture of my head as a latch for the card.
I also put a Belgian version of the metro card at the corner of my creation to signify entry into the world of Europe. There is a sightseeing bus traveling along the river because this was our main source of transportation there. Also included are the Notre Dame, Musee de L’armee, and Stade France at their respective locations. I put two Parisian metro tickets at the top of the collage so that they pinpoint the major train station that we used to get to Belgium. As sort of a gateway from Paris to Brussels, I used a piece of lace that was used to hold together three boxes of fine Belgian chocolate. The reason I used it was because I added a section to my collage fully dedicated to the extraordinary and delicious food I ate in Europe. As you follow the lace, you uncover the modified Brussels restaurant guide.
In this extension of my collage, I cropped several photos that I took in Paris and Belgium of the foods I consumed. I initially did not realize that they would be bent by the nature of this map, but the problem was resolved rather easily. I cut each picture in half and sort of abstractly pasted it on in that manner. Also, I extended my subtheme of body parts by placing my own “floating heads”. Last but not least, as a touch up I outlined everything on the collage in red and blue to stand for the colors on the French flag.