Category: school

A Pleasant Surprise

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Friendships are a funny thing. They are something that needs work and energy spent on them but can also be something that just spring up and develop all on their own.

I am a senior in high school, getting ready to leave my hometown and small high school to venture out into the world and find my path.

At my school it is rare to not really know every person in your grade, considering the small size. However, there was one person that I for some reason, until this year didn’t really ever speak to.

The funny thing is, is that I’d known this person for the past 3 years of my life. But it wasn’t until this very last year we have together that we finally became close.

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I had an unexpected friendship spring up all on its own. A friendship that I never expected. A friendship that will last me a life time.

My Summer in Paraguay

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This past summer I went to Paraguay for seven weeks as part of a program called Amigos de las Americas. After a one week training period in Houston, TX, I flew for 16 hours to the country’s capital, Asunción.

From there I met with all 50 of the volunteers, who were from all over the U.S. We then went through a more in-depth training, got our partners, and left for our communities.

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My partner Elizabeth and I were in a community called Costa San Blas, in the Department (kind of like a state) of Paraguarí. It was a beautiful, rural community, with roughly 800 people. We lived with our host family, which consisted of a mom, dad, two sisters and two brothers. Normally, only the mom and the sisters were around.

The community is living in poverty, but we were lucky enough to have running water and other appliances. We had a shower (though no hot water) and even had a washing machine! Surprisingly, we also had a T.V. and huge speakers, almost as tall as me.

A big part of their culture is music and dancing, so they would constantly be blaring their favorite songs and dancing as much as possible. It was so cool to experience.

As Amigos volunteers, Elizabeth and I were required to implement a project in the community, work with our partner agency, SENASA, to provide latrines to those in need, and hold camps for the younger kids at the school.

It was a busy summer!

The seniors at the school were building a playground for the younger grades to play on, and we adopted their project as ours. The kids still did all aspects that they planned – our job was to fundraise and buy paint to add some color to the playground.

We fundraised by holding a soccer tournament in the field behind our house. With the help of the senior girls, we made empanadas which we sold, along with other food and drinks at the games.

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Teams were charged, and the losers bought beer for the winners. With the money we made, we went out and bought paint!

For the latrines, we went around the community and met families in need, who we then taught how to construct the facility. Elizabeth and I helped distribute the materials, and the latrines were built!

Out of all our duties, the camps were my favorite. Held at the school while it was in session and behind our house over break, we worked with children from grades K-6 for two hours each day. We would play game after game, including duck-duck-goose, and games just from their community.

I loved spending time with the kids, and getting to know them all. They always looked forward to the camps, and it was the cutest thing ever.

At home, Elizabeth and I mainly hung out with our host sisters, Leila, 11 and Rocio, 6. Feisty but adorable, they would take us around the community, showing us every nook and cranny, and introducing us to different community members. Back at the house we would also play cards – I must have played at least 100 games of UNO.

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I know I made an impact this summer, and that’s an awesome feeling to have. I have a sense of accomplishment that I couldn’t achieve in any other way.

The fact that I built relationships with so many people, all in a different language and living so differently than what I’m used to, is pretty incredible to me.

I may not have changed the world, but I think I’ve impacted the lives of a few. And I’ve had an experience unlike any other, which I think is amazing within itself.

Live by Curiosity, Not Fear

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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.

How can I focus on anything but grades?

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“Don’t focus so much on your grades.”

Teachers have said this over and over again since I started high school.

They constantly tell me to not focus on the end result, but to focus on the material, to develop an interest and study it out of enjoyment, not because I want to get a passing grade.

I don’t understand that at all. Why am I being told not to care so much about my grades or to not study only because I want a good grade, when in reality everything comes down to “intelligence” being perceived from a grade.

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They say that the grade you get isn’t the important part, so why do we get grades at all?

For a teacher to tell me to calm down and relax and not concentrate or obsess so much over what my grade will be, is hands down the most frustrating thing a teacher can ever say.

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It is simple, if teachers don’t want me to focus so much on the grade, then don’t “reward or punish” with a grade.

SAT TESTING ROUND TWO

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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.

Super Scary (and Sexist) Halloween Costumes

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

Breaking down the Dam

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Writers block is such an odd sensation. It’s like knowing what you want to write but you don’t know how to formulate it coherently.

It is literally an all-encompassing feeling of frustration and confusion.
The most frustrating part about writer’s block is that there is nothing that will make it go away except time and it can last for what feels like an eternity.

Writers block can strike at anytime, but it feels as if it is most common when there is a deadline that is fast approaching.

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Breaking through the writers’ block and having the words just flow out is one of the most satisfying feelings.

It is like a dam that has been holding back a vast amount of water, and that dam finally breaking down and all the water pouring out. Once that dam has been broken down you feel almost unstoppable, like the water that just continues to flow.