Journal #3

One neat thing in Chapter 5 was when Norah did a Catholic confession in the monastery. She is not catholic but she confessed to the sins she was committing in the monastery. Our group has three Catholic’s so we have all done a confession before. It was interesting to relate this part of the book to our own lives.
We feel that this section is probably one of the most controversial of the whole book because she is going into a place that ordinary people are not allowed; it is a monastery that is supposed to be full of priests and brothers and such. The monastery is especially not a place for women. We can assume that many religious people would take offense to this section as it is a great sin to lie and deceive. Furthermore, she went into this monastery and barely touched on the religious aspects of the place. Instead, Vincent focused on the males interactions, their feelings, and there relationships; which is understandable being the focus of her book. Overall, it was an interesting section, but we feel she should have maybe touched on the religion aspects of it to respect the Catholic community.
We were shocked to find that there is a lot going on behind the scenes in a monastery. We assumed before reading this section that there was not a lot going on in there in terms of relationships when really there was a lot for Vincent to explore. So maybe it was worth it for her to infiltrate this monastery. She found out what men are like out of the elements of a sports bar or bowling alley and see what they are like without the presence of women. It was surprising that she concluded that the monks were just normal American man. She said the men were “suffering together in silence under a hurt they could barely acknowledge, let alone address.”
Before reading this chapter we had assumed men could be more emotional inside the monastery than they could in the real world. But by reading, we discovered as Vincent put it that the monastery was “a very hard place to be an emotional man, and in that sense it was not so unlike the outside world after all.” There was still judgment and protocol in the abbey, even though one would think that would be abolished in such a holy place.
When Ned enters the work force at the Red Bull companies he goes through many surprising and valuable experiences. After we came to this chapter on work we all assumed that it would be more of an office setting or something along those line, but not door-to-door sales man. In the end though, it did make sense for the author to choose this in order to maintain her disguise.
The very beginning of the chapter is her interview stage during which she learns what a suit can do to a person. It was surprising to see how much of a change she went through mentally after just changing her clothes. Besides putting on a suit and acting differently this section conveys a message to its readers. When attending an interview be sure to act confidently but not necessarily arrogant. Showing that you have confidence in yourself is a good way to let your interviewer know that you believe in your abilities and that they should too.
Before Norah even calls for an interview she has her own assumptions about what to expect in this type of job. She expects to get a job in sales that will be fast paced, and testosterone-saturated where her co-workers would emasculate each other by saying how much better their stuff is than theirs. After reading the section it is apparent that her assumptions are exactly right. The majority of the other sales reps are male and all former jocks who are in constant competition with each other to get the best sales.