Title: Lucky Pencil
General Information about Item:
- Ritual
- English
- United States
Informant Data:
- Karel Raska was born in Morristown, New Jersey, on June 10 1998. His father is a cardiologist and his mother is an internist. Karel has a twin sister who also attends Dartmouth College. He was brought up in a trilingual home and splits his time between the United States and the Czech Republic. Karel is an Economics Earth Science modified major at Dartmouth.
Contextual Data:
- Social Context
- The data was collected over the phone while Karel was visiting his parents at home. He was alone when describing how he prepares for exams and why he does certain rituals before every test. He spoke to his sister who also does a similar ritual for exams and wanted to replicate this ritual to see how well we would do on exams. The folklore is performed before an exam or presentation which is usually in a high pressure context where Karel is expected to outperform his peers.
- Cultural Context
- The cultural context of this folklore is typical of a competitive college setting where every grade matters towards a GPA goal and there is a lot of pressure to perform not only at your best but better than your peers. Therefore, this is a high stress environment where competition between peers is obvious and very common.
- Item:
- “I use my same lucky pencil for every exam. It is a blue mechanical pencil that I bought when I came to Dartmouth. The first test I used it on, I did pretty well. I got above median, which was very good for me considering that I did not study for it nearly as much as I should have. I then spoke with my sister, who also goes to Dartmouth, and she told me how she uses the same pencil for every exam. I thought that was a neat idea, and it could help me relieve some stress during an exam knowing that I am using a pencil that I performed well with before. I then continued to use this pencil since, and I have performed well on all the of the exams that I have taken with it.”
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Collector’s Comments:
- Even though this ritual may sound slightly unrealistic, Karel was very convinced of it’s effectiveness in helping him do well on exams at Dartmouth
Collector’s Name: Magdalena Raska
Tags/Keywords: Charm. Diffusion. Superstition.