Sleep Deprivation

                Falling asleep in lectures, hitting the snooze button multiple times in the mornings, the tell-all dark circles around your eyes…sound familiar? According to a Maas, Power Sleep Quiz, these are all symptoms of sleep deprivation. In AP Psych, we learned ALL about sleep and how much everyone should have. I personally think it's funny that people don't expect teenagers to be sleep deprived. I mean, think about it, everything we do is just meant to keep us awake.

                If we want to improve ourselves for college and juice up our college resumes, we take more AP classes and work hard to get good grades, especially if you are in your junior or beginning of senior year of high school. Teachers assign a whole lot of homework in AP classes and if you are taking more than one…good luck living life. Don't get me wrong, it does depend on the classes and if you choose to brush it off but it all eventually accumulates, creating a very long night of studying.

                Social network sites, television, and even music are all distracting to us. I will definitely admit that I spend way too much time on the computer when I have homework. I think the problem is that they are just so addicting to be on and so much more fun than doing the assigned homework. Even hormones in teenage bodies keep us awake longer.

                College kids are even worse. My sister is currently in college and I think she gets around four hours of sleep or less on a normal day. It's simply unhealthy, and then people wonder why college kids resort to drugs, a lot of them having an intended purpose to keep the student awake longer. Who knew that  trying to promote schoolwork also promoted drug use?

                I think that the simple fix to all of this is to tell teachers to limit the amount of homework they give out. If they don't assign as much, then students will get more sleep and actually pay attention in class. I'm sure the teachers would appreciate also the lack of dozing heads lying on desks.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Novel, review until page 278

            The last books I read, The Help and Water For Elephants were stories that dealt with America in the past. This is a definite change because it is not centered in America at all. It takes place in Sweden, probably because it was written by a Swedish author. This makes the book a lot more challenging because a lot of the language and names of places are Swedish or Swedish based. Since I am not familiar with the country, I found myself having to look up the locations of places mentioned in the book. I really enjoyed the authors descriptions of Sweden and the adventures he chooses to take his characters on. I think he adds a lot of depth to his characters.

            I can't say that I have read it completely, because I am only about half-way through. From what I can see though, the books starts painfully slow and gets a lot better as you keep reading. The characters in the novel really come alive and I have gotten more and more familiar with them.

            I enjoy that this book is kind of like a mystery, or investigation, or at least along those lines. I haven't really ever read a book like this before and it really sparks my interest. It took me a while to really get "hooked" but I can tell you that I have been reading this book a lot lately, aside from the past week due to finals. I chose this book because I had heard a lot of good reviews about and I will be sure to tell you if I recommend it to others, although at the rate its going now, I don't think that I will give it a bad review.

            I will be sure to update my review of this book after I finish reading it and I will be sure to repost it.

What Is Learned During Swim Lessons

In my last blog post, I talked about what a WSA and WSI was and what my experience was while learning to be one. In this post, I will talk about what an instructor actually does when they teach the lessons and what they have to deal with.

As I said previously, I had no idea what to do when I started teaching lessons. We were given lessons plans and progress checks but I found myself asking the other instructors A LOT about what I had to do, and how to teach certain skills. It took a lot of trial and error, and I send my apologies to very first class because that was mostly my error part.

Some of the skills we are supposed to teach in level one include how to enter the water, blowing bubbles in the water, teaching them supported back and front floats, and the arm and leg actions of swimming. Level one is basically to get the kids a lot more comfortable with the water and prepare them for the entry-level skills in level two.

The skills in level two basically add on to level one and this is where parents will see their kids start to actually swim and float on their own. Children in level three need to learn how to do their front and back floats on their own, as well as front and back glides. They also need to learn how to swim. Their method in swimming turns out more like a very basic stroke but it keeps them floating for the next level.

                Level three is basically stroke refinement. In this level, the instructors review the swimmers skills from level two and add on to them. Swimmers will be taught rotary breathing, back crawl, and basic dives. In the class I taught, we learned sitting dives, kneeling dives, and standing dives in the deep end. We would usually do this at the end of class for something fun to do. The last levels are more stroke refinement and just improving on the swimmers skills. There are also courses in level five where you can learn dives, and lifeguard skills. (366)

WSA Experience

            In some of my older blogs, I talked about what it took to be a lifeguard and the people at the pool. Another thing that people may not know about lifeguards is that we actually teach swim lessons as well.

            Some people choose to become WSIs which stands for water safety instructor. WSIs are trained specifically for teaching swim lessons. I am not a WSI but I am a WSA or a water safety assistant. WSAs and WSIs are trained in basically the same thing, and do the same things, but WSIs are able to pass kids in swim lessons and get paid more. WSIs are able to get paid up to fifteen dollars an hour if they teach a private lesson but they got paid around 9.50 for group lessons at my pool.

           

            My WSA training pretty much consisted of us learning what to do with each age group and what each level or age group is like to teach. After the training, we were required to watch someone teach a lesson and then help co-teach a lesson with our own lesson plan.

           

            My pool was kind of short of guards to teach lessons so I really only watched one lesson being taught and was then assigned to teach my own lesson. My first day was a disaster. I taught level ones who were all around three and four years old. One of my kids was extremely rowdy and I wasn’t really sure how to control him. He ended up crossing the pool a lot of times. After my first few times of teaching lessons, I learned how to control the kids a lot better and control my schedule a lot better. At the end of the season I had improved a great deal and was actually very good at it.

           

            Throughout my lifeguarding season, I taught around six lessons in four sessions of the swim lessons. I taught five level one classes and one level three class. As I said before, the level ones were almost all three to five years old and my level threes were around seven years old. My experiences teaching swim lessons improved a lot of my skills involving children and it was overall a pretty good experience but sometimes got to be a little stressful and exhausting. (386)

Review of Water for Elephants, a novel, by Sara Gruen

            After previously reading The Help which was centered in the early 1960's, Water for Elephants took me back even further in time to the early 1930's. This is a great story that retells  the life of a man in a train-pulled circus. It is filled with drama, love, hate, abuse, and problems faced during the depression. By choosing to write in this time frame and about this type of circus, the author was able to add a lot more interest I think than if she had written about a circus in present times.

            Gruen uses more popular diction than not, making the book easier to read. Each of the characters in the book uses their own dialogue. The performers have their own language as well as the working men. Some of the content is probably for an older audience, I guess if it was a movie it would probably get a pg-13 rating.

            The book basically has two main sections, a story of an old man named Jacob Jankowski as well as a section of the same man when he was younger and in the circus. When I started reading the book, I was a little confused on what the story of the old man, and then the man in the circus related to. It was not until the first few chapters that I figured out what was going on. I was pleased to find that the two stories connected at the end.

            I think I fell in love with the book not only because of the storyline but also because of the depth. Because the author wrote two parts to the story, the old man and his younger self, I think it really added depth and created empathy for the old man. Even though I thought the old man was pointless at the beginning, I figured out what his purpose was which really tied the book together for me.

            Like the The Help, this book was also exceptional. I was blown away by how emotionally attached I got to the characters and their experiences. I would absolutely recommend this book to everyone (again, probably over thirteen) because it is phenomenal and so cleverly written.

Review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett

             I usually read books that center around the twenty-first century so reading The Help was a refreshing change. In this book Stockett illuminates the harshness of living in Mississippi during the 1980s. She does so by telling the stories of three different characters; two colored maids and a persevering white woman writer. By choosing characters from this time-frame and education she was able to write the book in a way that is relatable to most readers. Although the slang is dated to that time, Stockett keeps the dialogue simple and easy to understand which makes the story more genuine and personal in my opinion.

            Overall the book is not extremely challenging. Of course, it is in no way an easy book to read and I wouldn't recommend it to younger than high school readers, but the author was able to write it in more of a popular diction. Even thought the wording was not entirely challenging, I did find myself rereading parts of the book to get a better understanding.

            In the beginning of the book, I found it a bit challenging to keep track of each of the characters because they switch off every few chapters. It also made it kind of difficult to really connect with who they were. As the book progressed however, the characters became more clear and pronounced and I got used to the style of writing. I found it interesting how each character, seemingly unrelated to each other at the beginning, began to get tied in with each other's stories.

            It didn’t take long before I could admit that I was in love with this book.  The story was interesting and it was an entirely new setting compared to my usual book choices. The more I read, the more hooked I got to the characters, the plot, and the lifestyle of the people in the "Old South." After finishing the book, I agree with the authors choice to switch the characters. By showing the different views and thoughts of completely different people really added depth and made the book more addictive. I would absolutely recommend this to everyone, it is fantastic.

Christmas Before Thanksgiving...What?

                The day after Halloween I went to Wal-Mart to buy up all of the clearance Halloween candy, makeup, costumes, glitter, basically anything that was a good buy. I was surprised to find when I got there that out of the five aisles that were full of Halloween stuff before, was now down to around two and a half. I went through the aisles and picked up some of everything. I was even more surprised to find that in the Halloween aisles that were empty, had been converted to Christmas aisles and instead of Halloween candy, they were already being filled with Christmas Tree shaped Reeses and more.

                What happened to Thanksgiving? You know, that holiday at the end of November. I am thinking they should be selling goods for that instead of the holiday more than a month AFTER Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving itself was designated to be the fourth Thursday in November because the government though it would be a good day to set in regards to Christmas. That way stores wouldn't start selling Christmas merchandise BEFORE Thanksgiving because they thought it would be rude.

         

          President Roosevelt was the one that set Thanksgiving's date. Before then it fell on November 30th and stores didn't like it because it only left 24 days for shoppers. Roosevelt was also the president during the Great Depression so the stores wanted to get the most "bang for their buck" and give the shoppers the most days they could. Hasn't anyone ever thought of how Black Friday is the day AFTER Thanksgiving and its one of the most shopped on days of the year because everyone then starts to get ready for Christmas (unless you are one of those super organized people that start Christmas shopping in February.)

         

          If Wal-Mart knew all of that, why would they already be getting ready for Christmas? I guess the part I was confused most about at Wal-Mart was that they didn't even have any Thanksgiving merchandise. It was only Christmas stuff. I mean I might have missed it even though I went up and down almost every aisle in that section.

Water

                Water is an amazing thing. It is needed by basically every single organism, there is more water on Earth than land and if you are looking for extra terrestrial life on other planets the first thing you should look for is, yep you guessed it, water!

                http://www.allaboutwater.org/water-facts.html lists some interesting facts about water. One of them is that 70% of an adult's body is made of water and 80% of a newborn is water ( we're like un-popped water balloons!) By the time a person is thirsty they would have already lost over 1% in water weight (good news for wrestlers eh?) Another fact from the site is that an average person in the US uses around 80-100 gallons of water per day and most of that comes from flushing the toilet. So if you want to save some of your water stop using the restroom so much!

                With all of this water around its kind of surprising to know that one in eight people lack access to safe water (http://water.org/learn-about-the-water-crisis/facts/). Sounds pretty bad when you figure that a five-minute shower would amount to the total water other people have in a day.

                I think we could solve this crisis pretty easily if we could only figure out a way to make the water. So far chemists haven't succeeded in that feat though. Apparently it is a lot harder than just making a chemical solution, or gathering up a bunch of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms and sticking them in the same container.

                Living in the United States is a lot different than living in a third-world country that has trouble finding clean water. I guess for sanitation purposes people could make filters and boil the water but they still have to find water and make a filter with supplies that they probably don't have. If I can, I would like to go on a mission trip somewhere to help people get clean water. It might help me understand how they live and what they would have to do to get clean and sanitary water. 

Too Many Colleges, Too Little Time

                I'm a junior this year which means I am expected to start taking my college exams and applying for colleges. I guess if you really wanted to, you could save the application process for the beginning of senior year but that’s kind of pushing it. It is so amazing how fast time flies and how quickly the time of apply for college has come up. As soon as you get to this point, you start asking "What college do I want to go to?" The big and well-known ones like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., are obvious choices I guess but if you don't have the grades or brains or want to go to any of these you have to find one college out of the thousands out there.

                When you take the test preps for the actual tests (like the PSAT and the PLAN tests) you fill out your information (your address, e-mail, phone number, etc). You are then given the choice to receive information from colleges. I decided to choose this because I thought it would be a good way to learn about the colleges. I assume it would be, but the colleges send you SOOOO much information that there is just too much to sort through.

                For all of the big environmental people out there, telling colleges to send emails instead of mail would save like a million trees. I guess mail is sort of a better method because I open all of my mail, and basically none of my emails but in the past two years I must have gotten at least ten college flyers per WEEK. That is just ridiculous. I get about twenty five emails per week, of which I really don't open but still! My advice to those colleges would be to find a good slogan, plaster all over, and make yourself known in a different way than other colleges because it just is not working.

                College fairs are another way to learn about colleges but from my one experience, there are soo many. It is also kind of awkward if you go up to the table and can't answer what you're looking for in a college or what major you're going into.  I felt like they also didn't know what to say, of course when I asked they gave me their generic speech and I took a flyer and left but honestly I don't think I benefited from more than ten percent of the things there. (419)

Winter, Winter, Go Away, Please Come On a Later Date

When I woke up this morning, I was unenthusiastically brought to my window. The weather channel had said that it was supposed to snow but I refused to believe it and unfortunately, the morning blizzard only confirmed their prediction. When I got ready I kept on thinking, “the roads won’t be bad”, “there won’t be any snow sticking to the ground”, “there is no way today will resemble winter. “ When I got into my car I was again proven wrong.

                The snow and slush combination gave the roads an unfamiliar slipperiness and I found myself driving slower than my usual speed. The snow seemed to have trouble deciding its consistency because every snowflake that hit my windshield splashed like a rather large but flat raindrop. When the snow landed on the road, it might have been able to keep its shape but, like my windshield, the road turned out to be warmer than the snow. The longer I drove, the more snow/slush built up on the roads making them more and more dangerous.

                Finally I reached my destination. The snow had decided to not stop in order to let me reach the building without getting drenched causing a shivering body. Call it spring fever, or reluctance of the winter, but I decided to grab my umbrella to try and protect my coatless body. I got the spring contraption out of my car and opened the umbrella. Instead of a nice free fall of snowflakes, the weather decided to produce raging winds, which caused the snow to turn vicious. Instead of the normal upward position of umbrellas, mine was positioned in front of me to protect me from the irregular winds. I then charged into the building from the parking lot and managed to keep semi-warm and semi-dry.

                When I got into the building I was pleased to find that I managed to stay the driest of everyone.   I guess my wrong-seasoned thinking turned out to be a good thing after all.

Pandora

          Pandora.com, otherwise known as the online radio designed specifically for you, is in my opinion the best invention ever. Pandora is a website that you can go on and pick a station you want to listen to. The stations are made by a song, artist, or composer that you like. Pandora takes the artist, song, or composer you said you liked and compiles a list of songs similar to your choosing. It then plays the songs that it thinks you will like and asks for your feedback. If you say you like the song (a thumbs up) then it will find more songs like it has, and if you say you don't like it (a thumbs down) it determines what about that song you didn't like and comes up with different songs for you to listen to. You are also able to indicate whether you are tired of the track. If you are, it doesn't play it for a while but still keeps it in the possibility of being played again.

           

            If you create an account on Pandora, it saves your stations for you which allows to keep multiple stations. Pandora also answers questions you have about why the track was selected and if you don't agree with their reasoning you can move the song to a different station.

           

            If all this wasn't enough, it has even more! For each song played, it provides you with lyrics, a brief biography of the artist, and lists similar artists you might enjoy listening to. It also works kind of like YouTube in that you can see what other people are listening to and you are able to join with friends and share stations. I am pleased to admit I am listening to Pandora Radio right now and currently have ten stations I can choose from. Pandora is available for access on a computer, iPod, phone, and in your car. The possibilities on Pandora are limitless which is why I think it is one of the best inventions ever.

Fame

            Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, need I go on? As you have probably figured out, all of the listed people are famous. Whether singers, actors, or famous for being famous, everyone knows them and either wants to date them, or be them (with the exception of Lindsay Lohan perhaps). I guess I can't speak for the entire population because I myself am not included in this statement, just the general trend.

           

            I personally, and I am sure others are included, do not understand everyone's fascination with these people. I mean sure, they are very talented, or entertaining, but why is everyone so enticed by them? After all they are only people. Having people watch me 24/7 would definitely get old very fast.

           

            Every aspiring actor or singer probably has a dream to make it big and be a household name. Why? Is it for the money, or the fame, or just being known? My guess is a little bit of each. When someone actually becomes famous though, I think it is probably a lot different when they become famous though, I am sure there are a lot of things famous people would be willing to go back to, or get back. Like privacy for instance.

            How awkward would it be to be famous? I mean think about it...you have no privacy. Everyone knows what is going on in your life and who you are, but you have no idea who they are or what is going on in their life. Not that you would necessarily care, but still. If you were to screw up, or make a mistake, it is automatically front page news and the whole world hears about it. And forget about secrets, I am sure that it would be extremely hard to keep any with random paparazzi people following you around looking for just that.

           

            I am not saying that famous people hate their life and wish they hadn’t become famous, because that is almost definitely wrong. I just do not understand people's infatuation with famous people. After all they used to be ordinary people, trying to make something of themselves. They just hit a lucky strike and had enough talent to get there.

Halloween

                Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, princesses, pirates, goblins, and ogres, welcome to Halloween. Halloween, otherwise known as All Hallows Eve, takes place on October 31, and involves costume, candy, parties, and trick-or-treating.

                According to http://www.halloween-history.org/, Halloween originated with the Celts who lived in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Northern France. The end of their year, November 1, signaled the end of the summer and the beginning of winter which would often result in many deaths. Because of the imminent deaths, they believed that the night before the New Year, the souls of the dead were able to come and mingle with the living. The people believed that the souls would possess living, cause mayhem, destroy crops, and look for a passage to the after-life. Some stories said that some of the Celts dressed up to try and scare the spirits away, others say that fairies would dress up as beggars and go from door to door, asking for food. Those who gave it to them would be rewarded, and those who didn’t would be punished. Eventually Christianity spread and the holiday was changed to All Souls Day and was meant to honor the dead. People would go door-to-door asking for food and in return would pray for the givers lost relatives. Children eventually adopted this practice.

                In the United States, Halloween was not originally popular because most of the people were protestant. When immigration increased, many of the Irish brought the holiday over with them. Catholics hoped to preserve their traditions and worked to get Halloween made into a national holiday and put on the calendar. Over time, it transformed into more of a family tradition than a religious one.

                Personally, I love Halloween. I think it is fun to find a costume and dress up and go out with your friends. I am sure it is also fun to stay at home and hand out candy to the cute little trick-or-treaters, but unfortunately I live out in the country so I don’t really have that option. I think the history of Halloween is interesting because I had never known it before. I would never have guessed that it was a religious holiday, or that the America did not start it. I will have to go to Ireland some day and see if they still celebrate Halloween, or All Hallows Eve.