More to Life than School

                What is the point of learning all of the information we do in school? I understand that in order to get a good job, you need a good education, and in order to specialize in some area you need extensive knowledge of that subject but why? Why do we need jobs? Why should it matter what we learn? Why can’t the knowledge be spaced out and give everyone time to sort everything out? I think that the amount of things we learn should correlate with our age, and our life experiences should progress in correlation to our education experiences.

                I think that when everyone is little, they should all learn world languages, although if everyone in the world spoke one language, it would make everything a lot easier. Every child in the United States should learn English, Spanish, Latin, French, and Chinese or some other Asian language. If every child learned these languages while they were young, they could learn them faster, without an accent, and could progress farther into each language as they grow.       

       

                I guess that as they grow they could also learn the other subjects like math, history, science, etc. but as soon as they reach high school age or higher the curriculum should change drastically. High school and college are about figuring out who you are and what you are going to do for the rest of your life. If all you do is sit in a classroom and go farther in depth in the same subjects they have been studying for the past 9+ years. They should go on trips, and able to experience everything around the world and curriculum so that they can be happy with their future life decisions. If teenagers and young adults stay in one place their whole life, they can only become something within the place they are. It only makes sense to present them with an entirely new and different experience.

                I guess my main point is that there is so much more in life to learn then what you are able to learn in school and if we really want kids to develop into respectable and self-confident adults, we have to focus on what they are going to become and not so much on what facts they need to memorize. (387)

Tree Branch Study

On the onion.com, I found an article about a study done with tree branches. It wasn't done to study the molecular structure, or its effects on soil or some normal study like that. Before I explain the purpose, if there even is one, I think I’ll just tell what they did in the study. They hired four hundred people to participate. First, they walked through a disgusting spider web, and while trying to untangle from the mess, an assistant standing nearby smacks them with the tree branch. They then determine whether it hurts.

…Um ok? Is this study archaic to anyone else?

          What in the world would persuade someone to think of doing a study like this? I feel like the leading scientist got smacked in the face by a tree branch and wanted everyone else to feel his pain and thought a scientific study would make his revenge feel more legitimate. This would also keep him from getting sued. Maybe. 

            Apparently, this study turned up “ground breaking evidence!” It was more like “nose-breaking evidence.” They concluded that if someone gets smacked in the face by a tree branch it will hurt, but only initially. After a few minutes, the pain will go away and the only thing left over will be the red mark smack dab in the middle of your face. Hard hitting evidence right? Well these scientists seem to think so! They say “the implications of the study could be far-reaching, having a major impact on future research in the field of getting smacked with a variety of stupid goddamn things in various anatomical areas and its relationship to whether one is more-or-less fine after a minute or two.” Now, I really cannot tell if this is a serious study or if it is just archaic because it was posted on the onion. I think that it was probably an actual study for a stupid purpose. What I really can’t figure out though is who would actually volunteer to be smacked in the face… (341)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-finds-getting-smacked-right-in-the-mouth-wit,26837/

Difference between High School and College

                High school, otherwise known as the best four years of your life, prepares you for your independent journey to college, which could be considered even better than high school by some. For something that prepares you for the other, the two education experiences differ greatly in the amount of class time, independence, teacher interaction, and homework load.

                A difference in the two would be class times. In high school, you have six to seven classes a day and they always total around eight hours; seven to three or eight to four. College classes differ in both the amount of classes as well as the class times. A college student will typically have around four to five classes that only meet a few times a week depending on the class. Their class times can range anywhere from no hours of classes a day to eight hours of classes. 

                Another difference is the amount of homework given. High school student’s homework is a little more spaced out and they are assigned certain homework every night, whereas college students are given homework that could be due or not due in a week and they have to figure out when they want to do it. College students are also given a lot more and will end up staying up all night studying and getting it done.

                The biggest difference between high school and college is amount of self-reliance. In high school, students have both their parents and teachers telling them to do homework and go to school. The government also requires that students attend high school until they reach the legal age when they can drop out. When people go to college, it is all up to them whether or not they go to class or study for tests. 

                There is also a reduced amount of teacher interaction in college. I guess this depends on the size of college you choose to attend though. A smaller or private college will have a smaller class size and will probably allow for more teacher-student interaction than in a bigger college where there practically is none. Smaller colleges in this case more resemble high schools than bigger colleges.

                As you can see, high school and college do have similarities but differ greatly in many areas.(384)

All-State Disaster

                Today was the All-State Speech Contest at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Kennedy had a choral reading, musical theater, and two improv groups that made it to All-State. We met this morning at 5:30 ready to leave and arrive at Iowa State by 7:45 for opening ceremonies. The first group that was performing was the musical theater at 9:00 followed by choral reading at 9:40 and so on. Because it was 5:30AM, everyone on the bus had fallen asleep by the time we left the parking lot and didn’t wake up until daylight came around 7:00AM. We realized later that it probably wasn’t the best idea in the world. 

                When we woke up everyone was a little drowsy from their nap and we began to slowly take in our surroundings. We realized that we were heading west on Interstate 80 on our way to Des Moines. Obviously this wasn’t the most direct route the bus driver could take but it would still work. We figured out that if we turned north on interstate 35 we still might be able to make it but we would be late for opening ceremonies; so we got to the turn off for interstate 35 and the bus driver kept on driving west on interstate 80. By this time everyone on the bus had taken out their phones and was tracking the bus route on the GPS. So, in short, everyone but the bus driver knew where we were going. Everyone was telling the bus driver to turn around including our coach/teacher who was almost screaming at her but she still wouldn’t turn around because she was following the instructions her supervisor had given to her. Only the directions they had given to her were wrong. They gave her directions to Ames from Davenport, Omaha, and Kansas City. The only one they left out was where she was actually coming from! When we got a little bit past Van Meter we finally convinced her to turn the bus around. Sadly, we didn’t get fifteen minutes before the radiator broke and the bus had to pull over. By this time it was 8:20AM and we had at least made it to a gas station. Our other coach that was already in Ames was on the phone and was freaking out because we were fifty minutes away and the first performance was at 9:00. They decided that they might as well start sending vans to pick the kids up and got a shuttle from Iowa State to go and get them. Thankfully the contest coordinators were hospitable and changed the schedules around a bit. We ended up actually getting there around ten-ish and preforming around 10:20.

                Needless to say it was an extremely stressful morning for a good amount of people. So much had happened by 9:00 and may I say that it made it worse that everyone involved was up around four with probably five or so hours of sleep. (498)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Annotation

Sacks, Oliver W. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. London: Picador, 1986 (257 pages)

            The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a very interesting and different book then I have ever read before. It was written by a neurologist in 1986 and is about his experiences with patients and treatments for them. I have never read a nonfiction novel before, or at least a informational medical one, so it was an entirely new experience reading it. Each chapter is about a new patient or patients each with a different disease or mental disorder. Oliver Sacks wrote his observations of each one and followed it with a postscript that had all of his thoughts on the subject.

            It took me a while to read this book because Sacks uses a lot of very large medical jargon that I didn’t really understand and I found myself having to reread it again and again. The stories of all of his patients and their disorders were very interesting and unique. Some of them though were familiar and frankly a little dry. There are also stories with disorders that I still don’t understand how they work or what they do. This might have been due mostly to the fact that I didn’t understand his terminology while he was describing them.
           
            Even though Oliver Sacks wrote the disorders in the same way, I found myself liking some more than the others. My favorite chapters in the book were “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, “Witty, Ticcy, Ray,” and “Cupid’s Disease.” These were the most interesting stories I thought because they presented new cases and personalities to me.
           
            I found the book to be rather challenging to read because of my difficulty in understanding all of the jargon and learned diction. It also started to become a little difficult to keep track of all of his different patients and the diseases and symptoms. I would only recommend this book to someone who might be familiar with the medical jargon and still interested in all of the different mental disorders. (362)

The Never Ending Cycle of Hate

Being a high school student, I am presented with a variety of people and a variety of conversations every day. Walking through the halls, I hear snippets of hundreds of conversations within a five minute interval, seven times a day. Conversations range from “Can you believe that test in math, who does Mr. Smith think he is?” to “I went to Buckle yesterday and bought two pairs of jeans for three hundred dollars, they are so cute!” I also hear conversations like “Did you see what Jane Doe was wearing yesterday? Ew, that b**** has gotten so fat it is disgusting.” Now, I have no problem hearing my first two examples of conversations, but when I hear my last example I can’t help but try to hide the disbelief in my eyes while trying to sneak a peek at the person that said it. What is wrong with people these days? What would propel someone to say such a horrendous and hurtful thing?

It takes me back to my AP Psychology days when we were learning about development. Hate is not a characteristic that people were born with. You would never see a baby perform a task or action that would intentionally hurt someone else. They may cry and yell or bang on something when they are out of food or have a soiled diaper, but their hate does not extend beyond simple necessities. What happens to this baby that causes them to become a disrespectful, dishonest, and disliking human being?

Obviously it has to do with how the child is raised and what they experience. When the child is growing up, it observes its surroundings and the people’s actions around it. This is where and when they learn these horrible traits. The meanness and hatred begins to immerge around elementary school. This is not a proven fact, just my observations. Kids start to decide the social hierarchy of their class in elementary school. Friendships will be made and people will start to be ignored and avoided. This simple hatred then progresses and peaks at high school age. After high school and maybe college, this crude hate dies out and becomes more complex when people grow into adults. Some people grow out of it because they begin to understand certain situations. For instance, adults do not normally verbally abuse someone based on the clothing they wear or the makeup they out on as they do in high school but they might ridicule someone for their actions or words.

            My only question is why do people start this cycle? What provokes people to be so despicable to one another? It might be stress, lack of sleep, or maybe jealousy contributing but there is absolutely no good reason to be mean and hurtful to someone. All I can ask is that people stop this cycle, even go a day without saying or doing a single mean thing could make a difference. End this horrible cycle. Please. (500)

How the tone is acheived in "Steve Jobs: Vampire. Bill Gates: Zombie" by Heater Havrilesky

              In the New York Times Magazine article, “Steve Jobs: Vampire. Bill Gates: Zombie.,” Heather Harvilesky describes the differences between “vampires” and “zombies” in order to achieve her purpose of explaining people by categorizing them into two groups made popular by recent media. She achieves her purpose through the use of binary classification, compare and contrast, examples, as well as an objective and informative tone.

                An example of Havrilesky’s tone is paragraph four; “Vampires are smooth and charismatic. They drink blood as if it were the finest pinot noir. Zombie, on the other hand, are awkward and clumsy, yet un-self-conscious about the fact that their eyeballs are falling out.” This paragraph is an example of an objective tone because the author gives the writer information about her subject without giving her opinion on the matter or persuading the reader to think a certain way. Because she said “Vampires are smooth and charismatic” and “Zombies are awkward and clumsy,” she accomplishes her objective tone. She states outright the characteristics of a vampire and a zombie without using words to persuade the reader to think a certain way about either one.

In paragraph four she shows an informative tone; “Vampires are smooth and charismatic. They drink blood as if it were the finest pinot noir. Zombies, on the other hand, are awkward and clumsy, yet un-self-conscious about the fact their eyeballs are falling out.” She accomplishes an informative tone because she is describing her topic and informing the reader about it. She describes the vampires and zombies in an objective way so that the reader could identify either. This also shows an informative tone because it portrays the author’s purpose and informs the reader of the characteristics of both a vampire and a zombie.

                Havrilesky uses example in paragraph thirteen; “When Obama speaks, we hear the passions of a vampire, expounding upon the romantic ideals that formed his core identity. And ultimately, like any vampire, Obama trusts his own instincts and judgments over the consensus of his constituents. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a zombie through and through. For Romney, a practicing Mormon who often praises his father, identity is always determined by the group.” In this paragraph, the author uses examples to explain her binary comparison of vampires and zombies. She uses Obama to explain the characteristics of vampires, and uses an allusion to help understand what a vampire might act like. She also does the same thing with Mitt Romney, so that readers can further understand zombies.

                Heather Havrilesky accomplishes her purpose of explaining people by categorizing them into two groups made popular by recent media through the use of an objective and informative tone. While using her same tone, she creates a binary comparison between the two groups; vampires and zombies.  The article is presented in a funny and enjoyable manner while still staying true to its purpose. (495)