Category: general news

Stuff having to do with the news in general.

The New America

instalocker
Photo Credit: http://blog.collinsflags.com

It’s 2015 and all the good values in Americans are dead. This generation is disrespectful, uninformed, more interested in what’s trending, and drinking overpriced coffee, than finding success in life. There was a time where Americans took pride in their work, when they respected the President, and families talked about their day at meals.

What happened to the hard-working American? The ones that took pride in their work and came home each day satisfied and tired? Nowadays everyone complains about their work; they think being a barista is a career, and that their life’s so hard.

60% of United States citizens don’t graduate college. If anyone from that 60% says life is hard, they are full of crap. They do less than the 40%, and they complain just as much. How hard can their job be?

If anyone comes home from work not tired, they did it wrong. This is America, what was once the best nation in the world. What happened to this generation? How did one generation completely ruin all American values? I am ashamed to be a part of the worst generation in American history. What happened to the good old American ideal that we could always do better?

The lazy baristas and interns aren’t just bad employees; they are just plain disrespectful. Everywhere I go, I will see at least one kid being extremely disrespectful. There’s a difference between teenage trouble making and pure disrespect.

The disrespect is  rudeness, like knocking stuff down and not picking it up because it’s not their job. It’s okay to not agree, but to disrespect publicly is wrong. Everyone from my generation, including me, does this. I’m not proud when I do it, but it’s just something everyone does now.

This is the generation of social media where we can say anything without repercussions. Free speech is great, but what no one understands anymore is just because it can be said, it doesn’t mean it should be. I would classify myself as a Republican, but I don’t trash talk Obama.

In fact, I think Obama has done a damn good job. Obama is a great example to show what’s wrong with the nation. When I say that, I don’t mean the government; I mean the people in it. What is wrong with people who think it’s okay to question whether Obama was born in the states?

What happened that made it okay for the media to falsely state Obama’s plans? The biggest incident was post Sandy Hook, when the news was telling everyone Obama is taking their guns away. But in reality, he has done more for gun nuts than against.

I’m not saying it’s the parents of this generation to blame. It’s the biased news that is viewed by everyone, manipulating the public. It is the uninformed social media users spreading non-factual crap that makes the government look like a joke. What makes this country so bad? It’s the people who say the country is bad, but don’t realize that they are the ones who need to change it. They are the ones who make America bad.

I hope that someday people once again look up to the President with the highest level of respect, even those that don’t agree. The people make the country, not the government. It’s the whole damn reason the government was designed the way it was.

Live by Curiosity, Not Fear

paris22Leave a comment
Photo Credit: mymarketingdiary.wordpress.com

Friday October 23rd my parents and I made the relatively strenuous drive at 8:30 at night to Redlands University to see my brother at his college Homecoming.

To be honest, I couldn’t care less about football. In fact, I chatted the whole time and not about the plays being made on the field.

But, on Saturday, the day of the largely anticipated game (admittedly, not by me), I went to see something truly unforgettable.

A few hours before the game, Redlands hosted a guest speaker and that speaker was Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.

I read the book a few years ago and loved it, so I was looking forward to her speech. The main idea of Gilbert’s speech was her desire to live a creative life, her journey to attaining that life, and to encourage others into also living this life.

First of all, she was very clear: to live a creative life, you must follow curiosity rather than fear, and the two are closely intertwined.

This deeply resonated with me, as I am the type of person who thinks of every bad side to a situation and lets those (usually improbable) reasons sway me from not doing something.

Gilbert was inspiring, intuitive, and an amazing speaker. The speech was definitely worth having to watch a football game afterward, though I did leave at halftime.

SAT TESTING ROUND TWO

mushuoo
Photo Credit: http://www.educationnews.org

Today I came home to hear some of the best news I have all week.

President Obama hates standardized testing almost as much as I do.

The Obama administration has come up with a new plan for standardized testing; capping standardized testing to 2% of classroom time.

Someone finally understands the pressure.

I have spent the past week agonizing over my latest SAT scores.

After receiving a score that I believe it so sub-par to the standards set, I sat in my room for hours and considered my options: maybe I won’t get accepted to any colleges, maybe I should just give up now, maybe I should spend an extra three hours a day studying for this test.

For this is a test that does not demonstrate the magnitude of what I have learned throughout the course of high school, but a test that displays how well I can adapt to it’s irrelevant questions.

Questions that are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, questions that do not reflect how intelligent I am, or how successful I will be in my college career.

Rather, this test gives college admission teams the ability to put my knowledge into a category of advanced or average.

The pressure I have felt throughout the past four years of my life to meet the “above average” score of this test is obscene.

I have spend countless nights laying awake in my bed wondering if the work I have completed in the last four years will be dismissed because of an average test score that I have earned through sitting at a desk for four hours.

The standardized system is flawed.

There is no standard anything for a million adolescent brains that function at different paces and in different ways.

Dirty Feet Blues

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I want to live a life with permanently dirty feet.

The assertion that one is obligated to be confined in shoes, at a job, where you sit in the same spot, and do the same thing everyday.

When I was younger I would play for hours on end without shoes on my feet.

I’d like to think of my dirty feet as an accomplishment. You’ve connected with the earth for so long that is has had time to change you.

The wicked cycle of an endless suburbia is keeping our feet much too clean. The same thing every single day.

Switch it up, take those damn shoes off — forget about your work emails for half an hour and take a minute to be alone.

Uninterrupted, just you and the earth. Breath it in. Feel the dewy grass tickle to spaces between your toes. Feel the rough asphalt grind away at your skin.

I would like to live a life with permanent dirty feet. In this technological age, people are seeming to forget that they’re washable.

You can get as dirty as you want because you can be cleaned. You can wash away the silt from your socks but you can’t replace the feeling of truly connecting with the earth.

Stop checking Twitter and take a look around. See the life that you’re missing out on being glued to the screen of your phone and go get dirty.

You’re too busy Instagraming at the tops of mountains for the likes rather than the memories and sense of accomplishment.

 

Whether you hold this true to yourself or not — this time we’re living in feels so artificial.

So, disconnect from the screen and go connect with what’s green.

Super Scary (and Sexist) Halloween Costumes

mariethearistocat

When I was little, I’d play dress up. I’d put on my mother’s beige heels or my sister’s prom dress and strut around my room like it was a runway.

I’d wear a pink tutu and make a crown out of yellow construction paper and draw little jewels with magenta and green crayons.

I could spend hours and hours just frolicking around my room; trying on this shirt or pretending to be that Disney princess.

Even though my dress up days have passed, there is still one occasion where I can relive one of my favorite elementary school pastimes.

Halloween – It’s the day where the ghosts, ghouls, and zombies come out to play. Where you can be whoever you want to be, without judgement. It’s a time to live in a fantasy for a day.

When I was little I’d jump for joy knowing I could wear my princess or witch costume to school, and the incoming candy overstock I’d have after trick-or-treating.

Now that I’m older, I’m just excited for the excuse to dress up for a day. I’ve noticed that it’s becoming harder and harder to find a costume I like, and for one big reason: women’s Halloween costumes are hypersexualized.

Now, this may not come as a surprise to some of you. You’ve been through the struggle of picking out a costume. Whether it be you couldn’t choose just what you wanted to be or you couldn’t find the perfect costume for who you wanted to be.

For women, finding an appropriate costume takes another ounce of effort. I’ve found that once you grow out of child sizes and into teenage or adult sizes, that the dresses don’t really grow much longer.

If you go onto any major costume store, such as Party City, you can see just how true this is. There are very few costumes for women that don’t contain one of the following: little tutus, corsets, skin-tight body suits, or above mid-thigh skirts.

Now, some women like wearing these costumes, and I see nothing wrong with that. But, the problem is for the women who don’t want to show much skin on Halloween.

Bustle, an online news blog, did an article about the difference between men’s and women’s costumes, which you can see here: http://www.bustle.com/articles/7907-15-mens-and-womens-halloween-costumes-reveal-some-scary-sexism .

They bring an air of comedy to just how sexualized women’s costumes can be. For example, a man’s costume for an owl is a full-body suit while a woman’s costume is a short dress with little feathers all over it.

And that’s not even the worst of them.

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The problem with this inherent sexism is that it gives women boundaries for this fun holiday. If a woman isn’t particularly confident in her body, or doesn’t want to show it off, then her costumes are very, very limited.

Even teenage girl’s costumes are becoming more and more skimpy. In fact, most costumes that would fit me I can’t even wear to school, because they don’t follow school dress code.

Some would say that it would be easier just to make a costume at home, but why should I, and many other women, have to?

Instead of telling me what I should do to help my costume-less state, tell manufacturers to create more women’s costumes that are less provocative.

Boys with Attitude

paris22Leave a comment
Photo Credit: http://www.ptable.com/Images/periodic%20table.png

Mr. Killeen assigned a project to his chemistry students to research an element of their choice, but there was also extra credit involved.

This extra credit was to create a periodic table song and play it for the class. One song definitely got my attention. That memorable song was from Liam, Kase, and Jacob’s LIVE performance.

Unlike the other songs – it was not edited, auto-tuned, and more on a laptop, but nevertheless, a performance.

When asked their group name before they went “on stage” their reply was: “White Boys with Attitude.”

The boys did a spoof of “Straight Outta Compton”, but instead of a rap, the boys were just shouting different elements on the periodic table. 

Kase, one of the group members, also dressed for the part in a hat, 3-D movie theater sunglasses, and a microphone.

“Straight Outta Carbon” was hit with the students, and a chemistry class one would be hard pressed to forget.

Hurting is not Flirting

happyrose15
Photo Credit: thedailylove.com

As a young girl when a boy would pick on me on the playground I was told it was just because he liked me.

As a young girl when a boy would hit me on the playground I was told it was just because he liked me.

Photo Credit: facebook.com

Where do we draw the line? If a punch leaves a bruise and a girl goes crying to a nurse, does the excuse that “he must really like you,” make the bruise diminish? Like the size of a bruise or the deepness of a cut shows fondness to a young girl.

The sad truth is that we have taught boys the idea of violence and taunting is a way to show a girl that you like her.

Society has a serious problem in the way that we define masculinity. Young boys are shown that they should hide their emotions and the only manly way to display those suppressed feelings is through violence. Because for some reason acting “feminine” is a worst case scenario.

 

SAT SCORES OH NO

mushuoo
Photo Credit:http://hyperionlearning.me/

After years of mentally preparing myself to endure the most mentally draining four-hours of my high school career, I have just completed taking a second SAT test.

I have so many thoughts about this tedious task that every high school student in the United States is required to do.

I think it is ridiculous that a standardized test score can determine a student’s future. A good student with a high GPA and a lot of extra curricular activities can get an average score solely because they might not be the best test taker, but that one test score has a large weight on which colleges accept them.

I do not fully understand why standardized tests have become a way of determining students academic careers for such a long time, or why they have become of such a high priority. Although most colleges look at students holistically, California State schools consider students purely on GPA and standardized test scores.

However, I understand the reasoning behind standardized testing; giving students a chance to show the general academic knowledge they have accumulated in high school.

But why does a test have to be the only thing that proves a student has gained knowledge? Why is it that the pressure to get a high-test score can consume a student’s conscience for months so that they focus all of their time studying for one generalized, tricky test?

I know, because it consumed me.

Libbey Park Volunteer

thebeigegirl
Photo Credit: http://www.conejovalleyguide.com/dosomethingblog/libbey-bowl-and-libbey-park-in-ojai.html

I went to the Libbey Park construction site in Ojai, CA, as a volunteer today.

From Ojai Valley School there were only five female volunteers, including myself.

Wearing dark green OVS T-shirts, the volunteers checked in and drank Gatorade, having no idea what to do.

Ally Su, one of the five girls, expected the volunteer work to be taking care of little kids.

However, what was waiting for her were a huge pile of mulch, shovels, and wheelbarrows.

Photo Credit: http://www.centralwisconsinhabitat.org/Thrivent%20Builds.htm

At first, we had fun.

Mr. Alvarez, our peacekeeper, came to us after parking the school van and took pictures of us shoveling, and we would make stupid poses and faces.

However, as the photographer left and we continued the work, it became more and more painful.

“I think we are going to get blisters on our hands,” Said Ally. Thirty minutes from then, I could see an already-popped blister on my palm.

After repeating filling and emptying the wheelbarrows for about an hour, we became all exhausted. Our faces had layers of dirt on them, and our hands had turned red.

We found ourselves the only ones working without gloves. We’ve been complaining about it the whole time, and I found out that we were actually the only ones who did not know that we could get them from the tool check-in center behind us.

We had pizza with lemonade for lunch, wanting to go back home. However, there came a truck with another pile of mulch. Sighing, we got back to work.

The teenage girls had become shoveling experts at some point. We shoveled so fast that we had to wait for other workers to make more space to pour the mulch.

“Stephanie [Shin] found her future job,” Said Ally Su.

After half an hour of eating and two hours of shoveling, we headed back home.

First, we drove to Ally’s house only to find it locked.

Then, we went to Starbucks and met another school van with Mrs. Cooper in it.

After we got our drinks, Mr. Alvarez dropped Ally off at her house, “shh-ing” when she tried to tell him the directions.

As soon as I got back on campus, I took a shower and found two things: dirty water coming off of my body and another blister on my thumb.

Gender Bias

paris22Leave a comment

There is a strong double standard in today’s culture.

For a woman, it is considered “improper” to show as little as show her bra strap. Yet, I see multiple men and boys sagging their pants, walking around shirtless, and more.

Most people today, including myself, don’t give it much thought when this happens. It’s normal for a guy to be able to show most of his body, while a woman is reprimanded or judged for showing a strap on their shoulder. 

CBS wrote a very interesting article about the dress codes in work places, and the “dress codes” seem to transition into people’s personal lives too.

There also seems to be an uproar when a woman asserts herself in her career and lays down the law, and she may be called some less than polite words.

I’m not calling anyone out here, or placing blame. But, the expectation for how men present themselves is, in some cases, much lower than the expectation for women.

Gender Inequality

Of course, this double standard goes both ways. Men aren’t expected to be emotional or sensitive, and in some cultures, are judged for it.

Men are also though of as “weak” if he is a stay at home dad, does the laundry, or cooks dinner because it is thought to be a woman’s role.

Why should the public be able to judge two different genders completely differently, on the same subject, and have it be thought of as OK?