I have always looked up to Roger Ebert as a hero of sorts. Among many things, his yearly Overlooked Film Festivals held at the Virginia Theatre may be the most well known and have had the most impact on me.
The event features films that have not been shown to their full potential. I’ve attended a few screenings in the past years, accompanied by my dad, who does some research on film.
This year marked the ninth so-called “Ebertfest,” perhaps the most awe-inspiring of them all.
Since last July, Ebert has been unable to speak after a tracheotomy and multiple surgeries to his jaw and throat due to cancer. Nonetheless, he was still able to attend his sold-out festival and communicated by paper and a computer-assisted voice generator.
Unfortunately I was unable to take part in this year’s event, but I heard many fascinating stories from people who go regularly. According to them, the atmosphere was extremely energetic and touching. In past Ebertfests, this has often been the case as well, as various directors and actors tell heartfelt tales of their “overlooked” careers.
These festivals have greatly catapulted the careers of filmmakers, such as fellow U of I alum Ang Lee, director of “Brokeback Mountain.”
Really, the event should not be dubbed the Overlooked Film Festival, since “Overlooked” is sometimes confused as whether it is modifying “film” or “film festival.” OFF certainly could not be the latter, as it steadily gains a larger audience year in and year out. Which is probably why it has been decided that it will officially be called Ebertfest next year, as it is now widely known as.
And you can bet next year is going to be big, too, given that Ebert most likely will be able speak in his ever-popular Q&A sessions.
I’ve always thought Paris Hilton to be one of the most amusing celebrities. On my bedroom wall, there’s a magazine clipping of Paris with a quote from her saying, “I’m smarter than most people.” This is coming from the girl who asked, “Wal-Mart … do they like, make walls?” She seems to be so out of touch with the real world that it’s almost cute.
I recalled hearing about Paris publishing a book some time ago, but I never thought about checking it out. I told myself that since I’ve been reading so many “smart” books for school, it’s time I give my brain a break and read this “not so smart” book. No offense to Paris, but I doubted that she’s much of a scholar.
Her book proved me right. In chapter one, “How to be an Heiress,” Paris offered 23 “wise” tips on how every girl can feel and act like an heiress.
“1. Be born into the right family. Choose your chromosomes wisely. … If an heiress is in control of everything, why shouldn’t she be in control of who she’s born to?” OK …
“6. Never, ever wake up before 10; never go to bed before 3. Normal hours are for normal people. You never want to be normal. Anyone can be normal. How boring, I’m yawning.”
Her other rules include: Have many cell phones and lose them often so you’ll have an excuse to not call someone back, never wear the same thing twice, and act ditzy and lose things.
OK, so her tips aren’t exactly practical. I mean no matter what she says, you really can’t choose who you’re born to. And she may never have to get up before 10, but for those aspiring Paris wannabes — they’ll probably lose their jobs if they did that.
In the beginning, Paris says that this book will allow readers to know the “real me.” However, after reading the book, I didn’t learn anything about Paris that I haven’t heard on TV before, except that she’s obsessed with Vitamin Water and that she wrote a diary pretending to be her Chihuahua, Tinkerbell.
So “Confessions of an Heiress” wasn’t exactly a thought-provoking book. Nevertheless, it was extremely amusing. It was also a very fast read (since there are so many pictures of Paris), and there were absolutely no big words.
So whether you’re a guy or a girl, a Paris-hater or Paris-lover, check out this book. Guys can look at pictures of Paris in skimpy clothing, fans can idolize her words, and haters can make fun of her pictures in the chapter “My Fashion Don’ts.”
“Confessions of an Heiress” will definitely clear your mind and release some of the stress that’s been building up for the final month of school.
I was in the Mac lab earlier today and randomly came across a few screenshots of what, at first glance, would appear to just be your typical 3D computer game. The person who sat next to me, who was somewhat of a gamer himself, asked me what these were screenshots of — and I told him, “Second Life.”
To my surprise, he didn’t know what that was. And a few seconds later, I realized that I didn’t really know what it was, either. All I knew about this “Second Life” thing was that it’s a virtual online world where users create avatars and then go around and do stuff. That’s right, stuff. If I had to explain “Second Life” to someone at that time, I couldn’t have been any more specific.
So I proceeded to scour the Internets for more specific information regarding “Second Life.” After a few clicks here and there, I got to an official-looking “Product Fact Sheet” (warning, PDF link) and was pleased to find that it was basically just what I was looking for. The three-page document started with the big question in big, bold, all-caps Verdana: WHAT IS SECOND LIFE?
And underneath it was a paragraph, which read:
Second Life is a burgeoning new online society, shaped entirely by its residents. Participants join a world full of people, activity, and fun — a constantly-changing shared reality where they can choose their own goals — travel and explore, claim and build on virtual land, make friends and socialize, or vie for status and wealth. In Second Life, residents can:
… “residents” can, in short, tour places and meet/connect with other people. The social aspect seems to be one of (if not the single) most important theme of this game, which is nice. In fact, one Georgia Tech student that I know of once Twittered that his class was going to meet in “Second Life” for that day, instead of a lecture hall or whatever. “My major rocks,” he added in his 18-word post.
So basically, if you regularly played “Second Life,” it really would be your second life. I love it when things are aptly named.
I also love it when things look nice. The Product Fact Sheet I linked to a few paragraphs ago also notes that the game’s 3D graphics are streamed to players in real time. In these reduced-size versions of (probably already downsized) “official” screenshots of gameplay — Copyright 2007, Linden Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved. — you can see that for something streamed, the graphics are pretty great.
Unfortunately, when you view most SL screenshots at their original sizes, the visuals aren’t so crystal clear; they’re not bad per se, and luckily still retain a pleasing sense of virtualness. But the graphics are certainly a far cry from the 3D graphics that hardcore gamers would be used to. Then again, good luck getting those games in a 31MB download. (Double the size for Macs probably because of the universal binary goodness.)
OK, well I guess that’s enough … if you’re interested, get yourself a free account over at the Teen Second Life. The regular SL is for adults only, probably because there’s a prevalence of sex.
Search for recent news articles containing “second life” to see what’s in store for the future. Here’s a hint: It’s got to do with businesses. And marketing.
Seeing all the tiny kids running around Uni this week reminds me of way, way back in the day when I was a “prospective student” visiting Uni. At that time, I had no idea what to expect from University Laboratory High School. The experience was pretty intense. In retrospect, I have to say that it was one of the greatest adventures I’ve had so far.
First, picture me five inches shorter and sporting a haircut reminiscent of this cool dude. I was just another Asian boy who was prepared to experience Uni for the first time.
I have to say, Sam Klein (who was my subfreshman buddy), made my day at Uni special. Before I actually went to any actual classes at Uni, I had my first extraordinary experience nearby.
It was lunchtime, and since I didn’t bring a lunch, Sam took me to a place called Derald’s. To be honest, I was skeptical at first about food prepared by some guy in his truck. I mean, how good could his double cheeseburger get?
Well, you can say that it was love at first bite. And if you know me, then you probably know that I still enjoy Derald’s once in a while.
Anyway, after that, Sam took me to his Japanese class. On the way to class, the messy hallways and the open lockers at Uni surprised me. It was totally different from the more structured scene at Urbana Middle School.
In Japanese class, it was nice to see the openness and the enthusiasm in the students. I liked the casual atmosphere.
I also remember seeing other little kids my height tagging along with their buddies, afraid to lose sight of them in this wild jungle. I was nervous at first, but I felt welcomed, and Sam showed me a good time.
Overall, it was a pretty cool experience. Although I was slightly nervous at first, I felt more and more comfortable as the day went on. And like I said earlier, it was one of the greatest adventures of my life.
Ray, who I would first like to point out is the best physics teacher ever (brownie points?), recently commented on Sarah Pfander’s column “The future freaks me out.”
“The reason we have so many ‘overachievers’ is not because we demand so much of students but because — ironically, or not — our standards are so low,” Ray wrote. “Kids today do everything! But they don’t do any of it terribly well. Meanwhile, they get no sleep, make themselves sick and stressed out, waste time and money chasing college admissions strategies, and — worst of all — miss the most important lesson: doing one thing well is the key to success, whereas doing dozens of things at minimal competence gets you nowhere.”
This comment is, well, blunt.
But scarier than the lack of sugar-coated fluff is that this comment is extremely true.
I know very, very few students who put their heart and soul into one activity, or, better said, one passion. As a result, I don’t know very many students who are phenomenal at what they do.
I don’t know anyone who is as intense as my mom was. As a high school student she drove an hour to spend every weekend, and some weeknights, at Julliard with a fat, mean piano teacher who would slap her hands if she fumbled on Liszt’s “Grandes Etudes de Paganini, La Campanella.” The ebony wood on her old piano, which stands in our living room, is worn and scratched from the constant striking. I don’t know someone like my swim coach, who, at the age of 11, began waking up at 4 a.m. in order to reach her dream of making the Olympic Trials.
However, my mom and my swim coach are anomalies. They are a part of the special few who were blessed at birth with a raw talent. The problem is that the majority of us don’t have such talent.
Although I’m not saying one needs talent to fuel passion, realistically one needs talent to successfully pursue that passion (which is vitally important in the context of college admissions).
For example, I can have a passion for volleyball. However, with my short stature and extreme bulk, I just won’t cut it in the real world as a real-time volleyball player. I can practice for hours on end, I can certainly be passionate about the sport, but how does that help me if I can’t even make the high school team? All those grueling hours of practice, and I’ve got nothing.
So instead of pouring all my time into my passion, doesn’t it make sense to dip my feet into everything? Shouldn’t I audition for the school play, run on the track team, and participate in a protest on the Quad? That seems, to me, a better use of my time. Maybe after I’ve tried everything out, after I’ve spread myself out way too thin, I can figure out what my talent is, and hope that a passion can grow from those roots.
Furthermore, isn’t part of the point of high school to try everything? Sure, Suzie may realize that she is a gifted potter, but she would learn so much about team spirit and team bonding from being on the Uni High girls swim team.
While I agree with Ray that high schoolers spread themselves out too thin to impress college admissions officers, specializing in one area is a harsh demand. First off, how does one know what to pursue? Is it worth it? Maybe at the end of four years one will realize that they’ve been pouring their heart into the wrong thing. Then what?
Secondly, pursuing one passion, I can guess, could easily lead to boredom and a feeling of emptiness. While solving Calculus 14 math problems is impressive, and most of the time satisfying, doing it all the time can be repetitive, maybe even suppressing. After all, isn’t variety the spice of life?
But, a feeling of loss will creep into little Max’s heart when, driving home from school to crack that difficult problem, he sees all of his laughing buds board a bus for the basketball game in Monticello.
So maybe the thing to do, though naive and easy to say, is not to worry about looking good on paper. If you’re happy and you like playing three varsity sports at Uni, do it. If you like practicing your flute until your throat goes dry, then do it, too.
But the cruel reality is that there is no formula to get into college. Whether it’s being a humanitarian/entrepreneur/nationally ranked golfer/actress/math whiz/poet/12-varsity athlete/activist or a hardcore, seriously talented beat-boxer (who goes to the nightclubs not to shack up with a fine female, but to establish connections so his basement-recorded album can sell), no one can be 100 percent sure.
So, it’s unrealistic for me to say, “Don’t worry about impressing the admissions officer,” because that’s what the reality of high school is — trying to crack the admissions formula. Trying to play the game. The goal of high school today is to become someone and something that looks good, sounds good, reads good, and fits inside a manila envelope.
So what am I trying to say? I don’t really know myself. But, I don’t think pursuing one thing is the answer, either. It’s too hard to first find something that you really want to pour your heart and soul into, and on top of that be talented enough to find success.
On the other hand, we shouldn’t spread ourselves out too thin. Ray’s right when he says students do everything and nothing at the same time. It’s a pointless waste of time to be a varsity athlete, actress, and budding philosopher when you’re not that good at any of these things.
Last night I decided to go to a concert with my parents instead of working on my English paper as I had been planning to do. The concert was of Rajasthani folk music, a type of music that I haven’t had much exposure to, and since it was free, I didn’t mind changing my mind at the last minute
The concert was at the Spurlock Museum in a small auditorium that seated about 200 people. Even though we got there half an hour before the concert was supposed to start, it was pretty crowded.
Most of the people were senior citizens so I felt a little awkward as I sat down. But after quickly scanning the audience I saw that there were some young children and a few who looked like they were about my age.
When the MC went on stage to introduce the artists, the performers, showing true Indian pride, were not backstage. It is standard for Indians to show up for parties and functions at least 20 minutes late, which we call Indian Standard Time. A man sitting in front of me joked in Hindi that they must have gone out for tea.
But the artists only kept us waiting for five minutes. They sat down cross-legged on a mat that had been laid out for them. When I looked at their names on the program I was surprised to find most of them had the same last name. My mother later explained that they all probably came from the same tribe.
All seven of the artists were men, and they all were wearing brightly colored turbans. They each had shawls on with intricate patterns on them. Three of the artists were vocalists, one was on the dholak, a type of drum, another was playing the khadtal — two clappers which are held in each hand — and the other two played string instruments for the most part, although one of these also had a variety of other instruments, such as a double flute called the satara.
The concert was rather slow to start. But once it did it engaged me very much. The vocalists had strong, powerful voices that reverberated throughout the hall, and I enjoyed watching their wide arm movements, which made it look as though they were giving a speech.
The dholak and the stringed instruments provided background music, while the khadtal occasionally added an interesting rhythm to the piece and kept my foot tapping in time to the music. Often the musicians looked at each other to mutely communicate when to speed up and when to stop as all of this was improvisational.
My only complaint was that the program was very short. In all it lasted for a little over an hour, and they only played one song that included everyone. But still, I enjoyed it to the last note, and when I got home I looked up some of the instruments on the Internet. I had never heard of half of them, even though my parents like to take us to Indian concerts whenever we can go.
I’ve officially decided to stop goofing off, and I will give you a reason why.
Last night, I was working on a paper for Poetry about the poet E. E. Cummings. About all that I had left to do was write my bibliography, so I went to the Uni library home page and went to the bibliography format section. I went to the MLA format, then to the “print materials” section, and then I remembered that I hadn’t checked my e-mail at all that day.
Wanting desperately to fix that situation, I opened a new tab in Firefox and checked my e-mail. There wasn’t anything major, so I logged off and prepared to go back to my bibliography. But then it hit me — I hadn’t checked my gmail account!
When I opened that up, I saw a message saying that someone had written on my wall on Facebook — how exciting! I opened up Facebook and read the fairly inconsequential message. Then I edited my “favorite music” section. Then I looked at some other people’s photos that looked entertaining. They weren’t.
But then I got bored with the music I was listening to (which is never good). To remedy that situation, I put “Somebody Put Something in my Drink” by Children of Bodom on. I was immediately amazed with Alexi Laiho’s guitar playing, to the point that I had to find a transcription for the song.
About 45 minutes after I had started, my bibliography wasn’t anywhere near done, so I shut all my other programs, looked up the publishing city and copyright date for a few books, and got to work. Fifteen minutes later, I was finally done. But the bottom line is that it definitely shouldn’t have taken so long.
Hence my dedication to never slacking off again … as soon as I check my e-mail.
Yes, all right, I’ll admit it: I complain about lack of sleep almost constantly. I have written a column about lack of sleep before. But I never seem to get enough of it; sometimes I’ll wake up on a Saturday morning after 10 hours of sleep, and still feel exhausted.
Lately, though, something terrible has been happening night after night after night.
This is how it’s been: at about 10:30, I climb into bed. I turn on the lamp next to my bed and read for a while until my eyes start to blur and my brain refuses to absorb any more information. Then I put down whatever book/magazine I have in my hands, switch off my light, snuggle into my covers, tuck one arm under my pillow, close my eyes, and prepare to fall sleep.
Unfortunately, my eyes eventually open again and I stare at the ceiling. After what seems like an age, I turn on some music. But unfortunately again, the music only serves as a distraction, and I have to turn it off.
I slip back into bed and glance at my clock. The glowing red numbers read 11:50. I am frustrated. I want to talk to someone. I feel very alone in my dark room, and my old fear that there is a monster waiting under the bed to grab me resurfaces.
I pull the blankets tight around me and squeeze my eyes shut again. Eventually, I fall asleep.
Insomnia, quite frankly, sucks. Because through all of this, I know that I am exhausted. I would love nothing better than to fall asleep, but it proves to be impossible. At other times, I fall asleep very quickly initially but then wake up again in the wee hours of morning.
It scares me a little, though, that insomnia is a disease with a fancy name. Doctors can prescribe pills for it. There are different forms of “therapy.” There are all sorts of suggestions: Don’t eat within two to three hours of going to bed, don’t use your bed for anything but sleeping (or sex, according to the Web site that I’m looking at), follow a routine to go to bed …
Jeesh. All I want to do is be able to sleep without feeling like I have an awful mental problem.
It goes away, though. I have time periods like this when I can’t sleep, but suddenly I will be able to fall asleep right away one night. I am waiting desperately for that to happen.
Just one more thought: putting in Avenue Q to help you sleep is a bad, bad idea.
I went to the UFU movie night this evening, partially to enjoy pizza, cookies, and popcorn, partially to hang out with cool people, but mostly to watch the movie being shown, “The Last King of Scotland.”
The movie, starring Forest Whitaker, who won an Oscar for his role as the president of Uganda, General Idi Amin Dada, follows a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), who travels to Uganda to help poor Africans at a mission hospital and winds up as Amin’s personal physician.
The movie, which is based upon a true story, was very good, very engaging, and very interesting. However, it was also disturbing and scary (I hate suspense and even remotely frightening movies, so I am not a good judge of this I suppose).
One of the great things about the movie is the sympathetic portrayal of Garrigan. If you were reading about this guy, you would totally judge him. He was responsible for at least two peoples’ deaths in the movie, he was aware of the extreme corruption and awful, murderous regime and did nothing about it, and he remains Amin’s physician for an incredible, ridiculous amount of time.
However, while watching the movie, that thought never entered my head. I never really judged Garrigan, and all of his decisions seemed totally logical. Everything he did was a result of outside factors that he had no control over, and everything seemed turned against him.
I guess that is kind of a movie’s job, to tell a story about a sympathetic character whom the audience never judges. But I thought that “The Last King of Scotland” did an excellent job.
Plus, any movie like “The Last King of Scotland” which attempts to educate the audience about poorly known historical events is automatically very significant. I knew nothing about Amin’s rule in Uganda before I saw the movie.
I think that for most Americans, corrupt and violent regimes in different African countries kind of run together, until most can’t tell the difference between Amin and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Laurent Kabila of Congo.
Overall, I really liked this movie. I don’t think I was as impressed with Whitaker’s performance as the Academy apparently was, but I thought that “The Last King of Scotland” acted as a powerful statement about Uganda and the regimes that have shaped it.
The other day, in a discussion about immortality, an interesting story was brought up by a friend of mine about a seemingly immortal duck.
It has been reported that a hunter shot a duck and, thinking that he had killed it, put it in his fridge at home. Apparently, two days later when his wife opened the fridge the duck was no longer dead, and it managed to lift its head. The duck was then rushed to the local animal hospital and then to an animal sanctuary for more specialized treatment. During surgery to repair the gunshot wounds in its wing and leg, the duck once again flat-lined, only to spring back to life a second time.
While many might sit and think that having the ability to live for eternity and escape death would be the greatest gift of all time, I disagree.
The will to live is undeniably a strong one, as illustrated by this duck who was accordingly named Perky, but I can’t help but feel that immortality is not only overrated but actually is a fate worse than death.
To live forever — and assuming that you could still maintain your health — would in my mind be comparable to going weeks without sleep. The endlessness of life, and with it the knowledge that as time goes on the human race is only declining in so many ways, seems like a haunting and horrible existence.
To die after living a full life would be a splendid feat and certainly one not worth cheating yourself out of by discovering immortality. So let’s collectively as a society agree not to.
As the wise headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizarding once said, “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
For years I’ve watched movie musicals. Many different musicals. And I can say with almost no exception, I’ve hated them all.
I have never really known why I hate them, but something about the constant singing and dancing in the movies really annoys me. I suppose it breaks my suspension of disbelief or something. It just seems too unrealistic. While I admit it would be sort of cool if people would randomly break into song from time to time and the entire school would join in, it just doesn’t happen in real life.
I’m sure by now you are all thinking that I have no soul, but bear with me.
Here’s the thing. I really hate the movies. I find I always enjoy seeing musicals performed live. I think the three musicals I’ve seen at Uni were really good, and I have enjoyed the handful I’ve seen at the Virginia. I enjoyed the first two musicals I saw at Uni (“Bye Bye Birdie” and “The Pajama Game”) enough to dare to watch the movies. And I have to say that those movies were two of the worst I’ve ever seen.
After being very disappointed two movies in a row, the thought struck me: Musicals really don’t translate well from the stage to the silver screen. In the “Bye Bye Birdie” production at Uni there was a funny scene where the title character, Conrad Birdie, an Elvis-like superstar, arrives in town and everyone is so infatuated by him that everyone in the scene faints. It was funny, and it worked.
But in the movie version, the same scene occurs, except in a large city park. To show everyone fainted there is a very wide shot looking over the entire park and there are hundreds of people lying unconscious — many of whom are no where near Birdie. At this point my suspension of disbelief had been totally killed, and the movie did not get any better.
Unlike a movie, which shows you everything in the scene, plays are much more minimalistic. On set there are only the props needed to make the scene move along, and the scenery which is just enough to set the mood and tell you where you are. Therefore, in a play there is a lot more room for imagination, which works really well for the kind of scene where everyone collapses.
So even though I really enjoyed “Anything Goes,” I don’t think I’ll be renting the movie any time soon.
Let’s think back to 1972 for a second here: the year of the Watergate scandal, the independence of Bangladesh, Bloody Friday, the Munich Olympics massacre, all in the midst of the Vietnam War.
Well, that’s all well and good, but do you know what was really important about that year? Video games.
That was the year when a little game called PONG was released. What could possibly be more fun than spending hours on end manipulating a pixel back and forth across a television screen? Apparently, in 1972, no one had an answer.
From PONG-mania rose the entire video game industry, from the cumbersome consoles of the ’90s to today’s sleek, high-tech machines that, if placed in the midst of a 1972 crowd, might bring about another round of witch trials.
It is rather remarkable how every generation of technology appears so unreachable as it approaches, so ordinary a month after it debuts, and laughably obsolete as the next generation rushes in to take its place.
Case in point: About a month ago, our sophomore history class had a discussion about the pace of technological growth, specifically computers. Teacher Chris Butler showed us his old “portable” computer that had a six-inch sepia-colored screen, a fold-out keyboard, two disc drives, and about 50 pounds of hardware stuffed into the back of the case. Needless to say, it was hilarious to a crowd of 21st century students, but if you go back a few decades, you can almost imagine people of the same age staring enviously at that monstrosity through a store window.
Also during that class, we saw a graphic that demonstrated the exponential growth of computer storage, which raises some questions about the future. I mean, instead of improving the same concept for 30 years, as we’ve been doing, when is someone going to come up with a new method of dramatically efficient storage? (Would you believe hollow microscopic tubes of graphite?)
At any rate, technology is advancing inexorably, perhaps a touch dangerously. According to wikipedia, performing even the most mundane tasks on your cell phone would necessitate an apartment full of 1970s technology. Imagine the fun times that law enforcement would encounter if every hacker and criminal with enough money could carry today’s most advanced supercomputers around in a briefcase.
Oh well. Technology may bring dangers, but it also brings XBox 360s, so I’ll call it even.
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than than 1.5 tons.” — Popular Mechanics magazine, 1949
While I was flipping through last week’s issue of Newsweek magazine, I noticed a short tribute David Gates, a reporter, wrote for Kurt Vonnegut, who passed away about two weeks ago. In it, Gates stated that Vonnegut “lived through three quarters of the worst century ever …”
Can the 20th century really be called the “worst century ever”? Let’s first count off some things that could one could consider “cons.” Two world wars. The Great Depression. Spanish Flu. Chernobyl. The implementation of much modern machinery that has taken a huge toll on the environment. Essentially, the list could go on and on, but those are the ones that came up in my mind first.
How about the “pros”? A relative improvement of social equality. Major medicinal advancements (antibiotics, vaccines, chemotherapy, etc.). Faster transportation. Better quality food and living conditions in general. Again, these are just some of the first few that came off the top of my head.
No, I’m not about to compare the past few points. Those were just to refresh our minds on some of the things that happened in the last 100 years.
So is the 20th century the worst century? Unfortunately, I would have to say I don’t really know. Although it often has a negative image filled with war and strife, there have been a lot of crucial advancements as well.
Who gives David Gates the authority in dubbing the past century so anyway? He didn’t live the whole century. In fact, there are hundreds of centuries he hasn’t lived. How can he compare it to something he doesn’t know about other than what he’s read and been taught? The 20th century, to me at least, seems somewhat more appealing than 1,000 or 2,000 years ago.
True, the 20th century had its difficulties. But guess what, so has every other century. This century hasn’t been off on the best start either. Just last week was the worst massacre of its type to date.
The 21st century hasn’t been too great for me. I don’t have much choice than to deal with it and wait for it to get better. As long as I’m around, I’ll be sure to try and make it the best century ever.
Ever since I got my learner’s permit last summer, I’ve been anxiously waiting to get my driver’s license. Although I turned 16 in January, my parents have been stalling me from taking my road test because they didn’t think that I was capable of driving by myself.
But this weekend, I finally got my license.
On Saturday morning, my dad and I drove down to the driver’s testing facility in Tuscola because we heard that the one in Champaign was always extremely crowded. At Tuscola, we didn’t have to wait at all. We just filled out some paperwork and the examiner told me to go start my car.
My road test didn’t exactly go that smoothly. The examiner was really intimidating and she made me turn off the radio, which just made the environment more nerve-racking because I always drive with the radio on.
First, the examiner noticed that we still had a temporary license plate in the front, so my dad had to change that. Then she took points off because I went over the line at a stop sign. I also messed up on the three-point turn because I didn’t come to a complete stop at the sidewalk when backing out.
Luckily, I didn’t crash into anything or kill anyone. I even made it into the parking space, although I’m usually awful at parking. After I turned off the ignition, my examiner lectured me for about five minutes on all the areas where I lost points.
At first I thought that I must have failed. Why else would she be telling me all this? But in the end, it was all good. I passed. I had my photo taken and minutes later, I received my beautiful, shiny, brand-new driver’s license.
That night, I went out driving by myself. It was such a wonderful feeling — so free and exhilarating — with my radio blasting and windows rolled down.
Now all I need is for “Pimp My Ride” to pimp my car.
I couldn’t sleep the night before the trip — that always happens to me. When I’m excited about something, I just can’t sleep. I suspect that I finally dozed off at about 2 a.m., but then I got up at 5 o’ clock sharp Saturday morning, dressed up, packed my bag, and headed out for an adventure.
It was kind of chilly waiting outside Uni’s gates at 6:45, but the weatherman said that the weather would be good … and everyone should trust a weatherman!
After the distribution of the tickets, I got on Turtle Van No. 1 and watched “Scary Movie 3.” When it finished, I blasted my ears open with an iPod and I attempted to play cards, although the turnout wasn’t good on a shaky, bouncy vehicle.
We arrived at Six Flags around 11 a.m. At the entrance I was scared since I didn’t bring any ID, but luckily none of the people were checking for it. After roll call with Assistant Director Sue Kovacs, I headed out with a gallop for all the roller coasters. (On a side note, weather was good! Thanks Mr. Weatherman!)
First my group went on Batman followed by Ninja. Mainly we were just waiting for Mr. Freeze to open at 12:15 p.m. (advice from experienced Six Flags veterans). Although the ride was called Mr. Freeze and my group was the first to enter into that section of Six Flags, the wait was not cool. However, in the end it was worth it. Like Jason said in his post, Mr. Freeze definitely gets the “most intense roller coaster I went on” award.
Food came next with the most expensive ice cream, pizza, pop, and fried chicken in all of Missouri. Waiting in line for food was like waiting in line for a roller coaster. At $3 for a small soda ($4 for a large), $7 for pizza, and $8.99 + TAX for fried chicken, I could almost feel the holes in my pockets. Ice water was free, but it just didn’t pack the caffeine I needed. As a result, I took as much BBQ sauce and butter to make up for my loss in buying chicken strips.
Afterward I went on several more roller coasters a few more times. Toward the end of the day, lines were incredibly short and people were able to re-ride the rides many times (even Mr. Freeze!).
Sometimes the rides broke down (Superman was “down for maintenance” right before we got on, and Mr. Freeze broke down with some Uni kids on it) and sometimes people puked (which increased the wait for The Boss by an hour), but overall things were just peachy.
At 7 p.m., everyone returned to their respective turtle vans and headed home. We got back at about 11 p.m. I slept as soon as I got home.
“Five more weeks, five more weeks,” I whispered to myself as I walked the two blocks from my parking lot to the school this morning.
Thankfully, this year has gone quickly, a blur of college applications, last-minute socializing, and all the other mysterious things we seniors do to avoid homework.
But in the last couple of weeks, as the weather has warmed up, my heart has begun to yearn to be free. And then, during second period today, I realized that these were the last weeks in my life that I could be a kid.
This summer I have to get a job, to start saving for college. After the summer I head off to Venezuela, without the support system I’ve had with me for the past 17 years. I will have to take sole responsibility for myself; there won’t be anyone there to catch me if I fall.
Pretty soon, I’ll have to cook for myself, clean for myself, and handle the various bureaucratic college systems by myself. Right now, I can just chill on the weekends, not think about anything, and trust in my parents to do right by me.
So what am I going to do in my last few weeks to be a kid? I’ll probably build a few tents out of blankets and chairs, make some mudpies, throw a fit, smear dirt on my face, scream for ice cream, pretend I’m a dinosaur, make a mess and then refuse to clean it up, and generally do nothing for 24 hours.
It’s going to be fun. Any senior who wants to join me, feel free.
I crumple up another sheet of paper, thoroughly covered in scratch work, and position myself at the far end of the room. I toss it delicately toward the waste basket. It goes in.
I have become pretty good at this, because I’ve been doing it frequently for two weeks now. I have been solving practice problem after practice problem in preparation for the United States of America Mathematics Olympiad on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It has grown to be a routine, almost. Last year, the Olympiad problems inspired me: Each problem I solved seemed a marvelous new discovery. I experienced no such feeling this year — I worked through more problems more easily than before, but my stomach only tightened as I thought about the approaching test.
That made me stop to wonder: Are competitions in general just a cycle of practice, reward (through winning or performing well), and pressure to practice more? I think that this dynamic certainly holds true to some extent. Competition is by definition about winning, and to win, you need a certain amount of practice.
However, when I thought about it more, I realized that competitions (of any sort) generally have little intrinsic value; anyone can compete, and it doesn’t make you a better or worse person to do so. And generally speaking, there’s about as much luck involved as there is skill.
What matters, instead, is how you look at the competition. Different people can view it in different ways, but winning alone cannot be the motivation. What happens after you win? There needs to be some context, and this time around I didn’t have one.
Sometimes, we forget to take a step back from the immediate din of things. I stepped back, noticed the bright day outside, and decided to go for a jog. When I returned, I found myself alert but extremely calm. I hope that’s how I’ll feel on the day of the test.
It is one of the great ironies of contest preparation that during the contest, you must clear your mind of everything that you have previously done. Nonetheless, it is precisely the way to think of competition beyond a comparison of two or more people and to draw from it the greatest possible value.
In the words of Edie Brickell, I’m not aware of too many things, but I know what I know … if you know what I mean. And what I know is this: Not only is Champaign-Urbana’s artistic community alive and well, but our entire population is connected through our city’s arts, as demonstrated by this year’s Boneyard Arts Festival.
How do I know this? Empirical data, of course. Over time, I’ve gained a certain degree of experience with the arts in this town, initially through taking summer art classes at the University of Illinois’ School of Art and Design (which I have done for more than 10 years now), and later through museum visits, concerts, plays, music festivals, and the like.
Eventually, I came to realize that art is all around us in C-U. It’s impossible to escape it. Walk through the streets of Urbana on a Saturday morning, and you will probably come across the Market at the Square, filled with craftsmen of all types selling everything from paintings to pottery to jewelry (not to mention the busking local musicians such as the idiosyncratic Michael Powers, or my middle school friends Nathaniel Ruiz and Emma Fell).
Walk through the streets of downtown Champaign, and the effect of our local artists is even more obvious. Almost every alley or blank wall space you pass displays a colorful mural or more spontaneous graffiti. Take a step into Cafe Kopi or Aroma Cafe, and you will more than likely be faced with an exhibit of some local artist’s works. Radio Maria, a fusion restaurant located in downtown, was even founded by artists, and the interior reeks of their creative spirits (using decorated doors as tables and displaying unique mixed-media pieces on the walls).
My point, I suppose, is that whether you’re a fan of Of Montreal (who are signed to the Champaign-Urbana record label Polyvinyl), a scenester who catches all the shows of the 217 Crew, or a Joe Schmoe simply tottering along the streets, you’re bound to verify the slogan of 40 North/88 West (the organization that put together the Boneyard Arts Festival): “Art Lives Here.”
In fact, my experience with this year’s Boneyard Arts Festival began entirely on accident, but still managed to connect me to the larger community in more ways than one.
On Friday, I was walking from my car to join the march for Take Back The Night (an internationally organized protest against sexual assault) when I came across a stage planted in the middle of Chester Street. There were a couple of musicians from Edison Middle School’s jazz band playing, and as I was walking by, I stumbled upon Ben Valocchi, an old buddy of mine from middle school whom I hadn’t seen since 2003. There’s example No. 1.
The next evening, I actively sought out manifestations of the festival. My first stop was the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, for the second annual Prison Arts Festival (a subfest of this year’s Boneyard). I was surprised to find Uni students Shara Esbenshade and Kimmy Pillow sitting on the steps outside as I drove up, and quickly joined them and went inside. There’s example No. 2.
I was even more astounded at what I found inside. There was a DJ spinning, and the stage was lit up with red and purple lights, occupied by four Urbana High School students whom I used to attend school with. One of them was Nick Lyles, a pretty close junior high friend whom I see around every now and then. As soon as he dismounted the stage, I approached and greeted him with a heartfelt embrace. There’s example No. 3.
Above: Nick Lyles, left, with a fellow student rapper.
While I was quite impressed with the student rappers (the shortest one, Kenny Davis, can be seen rhyming rapidly like Eyedea about halfway through the video above), what struck me the most about the situation was the fact that it was my peers onstage at a serious artistic showcase. Saturday’s event is one of the first clear pieces of evidence I’ve gotten of the impending generation shift in C-U’s art and music scene, and I’m sure moments like it will only become more and more frequent as I continue my career at Uni.
When the rap show finished and the break dancing began, I left the dance floor to the experts and retreated to observe the art hanging on the walls. All of it (including the pieces shown below) was created by incarcerated community members, and I found it truly moving that some local prisoners are able persevere in spirit and create beautiful things, despite their situation.
Above artists: Hilario Lopez (top), Nicholas Bryson.
Above, clockwise from top left: “Marvin,” “Miles,” “Bob,” and “Ray” all by Christopher A. Garner I.
After I left the Prison Arts Festival, I headed over to downtown Champaign to enjoy some of the visual art that was available there. When I entered Kopi, I was pleased to see a fresh exhibit of abstract acrylics by Alex Garcia. After I had observed them for a time, allowing my Americano to cool sufficiently, I departed, and as I was leaving I noticed Tatyana Safronova (editor-in-chief of The Buzz) sitting at one of Kopi’s sidewalk tables, chatting it up with some friends. BAM! Example No. 4.
Above: acrylics by Alex Garcia.
Above: Patrons enjoy coffee and art at Kopi.
I sauntered over to Aroma, and while I spent a very brief time there before heading home (and was a little less than impressed by their offering of watercolors by Shoshannah Bauer), I still enjoyed seeing the art and the turnout of townspeople.
Sunday saw my final encounter with 2007’s Boneyard Arts Festival, and while the experience was uneventful in itself, it was indicative of the community-joining that I have been trying to emphasize.
After an appointment with my math tutor, I dropped in at Exile On Main St., my favorite record store, to try and catch the end of Ryan Groff’s solo performance there. Unfortunately, I got there after he had finished his set, but he was still chilling inside with several artsy twentysomethings, including Mike Ingram, a local acoustic folk artist (and expert on the local music scene for The Buzz). There’s example No. 5.
The thing of it is, even though I was undeniably disappointed to have missed Ryan’s set, the nature of the situation offered a dignified close to the festival: Even though the main events were over, the artists were still mingling among themselves and among the general shopgoing residents.
And that’s what I think the festival is all about. It’s like throwing a party to help people get aquainted. “Artists, meet Populace. Populace, these are Artists.” And it all goes from there.
Yesterday morning I woke up last minute at 6 and started prepping myself for the long day to come at Six Flags St. Louis on the sophomore class trip.
Class president Isaac Chambers had told us that absolutely no food or drinks would be allowed in the park, so I thought I was being sneaky by bringing some Pop-Tarts and water. When I arrived at Uni a little before 7 a.m., my classmates were gathered just inside the main entrance, girls with hair still wet from showers and students sipping coffee they had picked up from Espresso Royale.
Nobody seemed fully awake, except perhaps Kareem Sayegh, whose energy seems limitless. Assistant Director Sue Kovacs checked in students right at 7 and we were handed our tickets. Unfortunately the tickets were really wide, so they didn’t fit properly into a wallet.
Kovacs also distributed her cell-phone number among students, since we were required to check in via cell phone at two-hour intervals, warning us nonetheless that making prank calls would be of no benefit since she had a list of the entire class’s cell-phone numbers sitting right in front of her.
We were required to take two turtle vans and one minivan to the park. Personally I would’ve preferred a regular bus considering there were no bathrooms on the turtle buses. And when it started to reach 10:30 the vans got hot, and even though we turned on the air conditioning, on occasion the cool air would turn into blasting hot air and made everyone even more uncomfortable than they already were. But on the bright side, there were movies we could watch.
Once at the park we all gave our tickets to the person at the front and were forced to have our bags checked and walk through metal detectors. It wasn’t exactly a thorough process, though, considering they didn’t even ask me to have my bag checked or anything. Immediately into the park there were official Six Flags photographers who kept telling everyone how gorgeous they were and how we needed our pictures taken.
Considering it was opening day, we had expected there to be insane lines, but fortunately nothing was that bad. The water park was closed, and there was a cheer competition, so there were plenty of halter-topped cheerleaders wandering around the park.
I stayed with a group of friends and went on almost every ride possible. Even though none of us was that scared of the roller coasters, we all screamed nonetheless.
There was one ride called XCalibur, which wasn’t a roller coaster, but basically you got into these seats and they tipped them backwards so you faced the sky. The ride started spinning you really fast. Then you slowly got flipped over so you were facing straight down to the ground while spinning.
Anyway, right when we were getting in our row of seats this giant wasp came into our compartment and caused me and all my friends to go ballistic. The people watching us from the line thought we were crazy since the ride hadn’t even started yet, and the guy in charge of operating the ride just shook his head at us.
The worst line by far was the line for pizza. I expected the lines would be crazy and the food would be overpriced. But $7 for a slice of pizza? And I waited over an hour for one slice. They served you cafeteria style, so you got your food and then went to check out and pay. Lots of people got two slices of pizza and would finish one slice by the time they had to pay, so they only had to pay for one slice. It was very inefficient.
One of the best rides was the water-raft ride. There was some mom in front of us who snapped and yelled at us when she thought we were going to cut her. But that was all right. Twelve of us sat in this raft and got soaking wet. Lor Sligar got so soaked she got up and moved to the middle of the ride to prevent from getting even more wet.
And for some reason they wouldn’t let us wear our swimsuits on that ride either, so our clothes were drenched. We went under a waterfall and almost ran into a hissing goose that was living on the side of the water.
The most thrilling ride was probably Mr. Freeze. I had never been on it, and not many people were willing to go with me. Sheri Grill had told me her mom had blacked out on it, and after about an hour and a half of waiting in line this girl in the car in front of us said her seatbelt wouldn’t work. The bar that’s supposed to come down over your legs wouldn’t stay down for her. All I could think was that if I were her, I wouldn’t have stayed on, but they told her they had fixed it and so she stayed.
Isaac, Alan Liang, Laura Voitik, and I all went on the same ride (but Alan and Isaac were more brave, and sat toward the front). The ride only lasted about 35 seconds, but going up that 90-degree lift and then going backwards was thrilling enough.
Considering the horrible lines we had to experience for lunch, most people decided to skip out on dinner and wasted their money on things like automatic foot massages and winning stuffed animals from park games. When it was time to go, people met back at the front of the park wearing pink Batman capes and getting a few last pictures with the attractive Wonderwoman.
On the way home everyone slept, watched the movie playing, or played with their cell phones. We stopped at a couple of gas stations to pick up cheap candy and at McDonald’s, and around 10 p.m. we made a rest stop where everyone got out and played at the highway park.
Although it was incredibly fun, I was just happy to be home, and if I hadn’t given some of my brother’s friends rides home I would’ve undoubtedly fallen asleep in the car. I hope our class gets to do something like this again soon.
I just got back from the sophomores’ Six Flags class trip, and it was quite really fun. Hats off to Isaac Chambers for organizing this event, and also to the faculty and parents who helped make this trip possible.
Let me get this out of the way first: Really the only thing that wasn’t so good about this trip was that I didn’t get any good pictures. I just didn’t feel like taking pictures as much as I usually do today; maybe it was because it was inconvenient in the park for me to have to take out my camera, turn it on, and everything. Anyway, as a result of this, I don’t have very many pictures to share.
It took a little over three hours just to get to Eureka, Mo., where SFSL is located. Lucky, the 30 or so of us traveled in Turtle Top vehicles, which are equipped with DVD players so that we could watch movies like “The Devil Wears Prada” (which, contrary to what some people have told me, isn’t that bad of a film).
Once we were inside the park and Assistant Director Sue Kovacs did roll call, we split into groups and were basically on our own for the rest of the day. The first thing I went on was “Batman: The Ride,” a rather intense one for someone like me who has never been on a roller coaster before (but I have been on equivalently thrilling rides, so I guess I didn’t miss out too much before today).
(After this picture, I sorta just tucked my camera away for most of the day, so you won’t be seeing any more pictures in this post.)
I waited in the somewhat longer line for the first car, hoping to film the ride with my digital camera’s movie mode. Unfortunately, I later discovered that cameras aren’t allowed on the ride — but how did this guy get his footage, then? I thought to myself.
After the ride, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t feel nauseous, disoriented, or physically uncomfortable at all, and I proceeded to “The Ninja” with little hesitation. It was a much less physically demanding, but still quite thrilling (and, of course, fun) nevertheless.
The last roller coaster I dared to experience before lunch was “The Boss,” which didn’t feature any inversions but compensated for the intensity loss with sharp turns and steep drops. The ride lasted approximately two and a half minutes, which was noticeably longer than the previous ones.
After lunch (which took over an hour due to tremendously long lines), I went on the “Screamin’ Eagle,” the least intense roller coaster of all the ones I rode today. The reduced intenseness is evident in the fact that riders only need to be at least 42 inches tall to ride the Eagle, whereas the three previous ones required riders to be at least 48 inches tall.
The last roller coaster of the day for me was “Mr. Freeze”, my pick for the park’s most intense one. The entire ride lasts only about half a minute (and I waited nearly an hour in line for it!), but it features 180-degree inversions and a maximum speed of 70 miles an hour. Fortunately, even with the Sprite I was drinking just before the ride, it didn’t make me feel nauseous or anything. (And keep in mind that this is from a guy who never experienced a roller coaster before today ….)
After that, a 90-minute wait finally got me on “Superman: Tower of Power,” a 230-foot free-fall. Then came dinner, and finally, a short wait led to “Thunder River,” a river-rafting ride where my clothes basically got completely soaked … and if it weren’t for the extra room in my camera case, my cell phone would’ve gotten drenched as well. A guy sitting next to me also had a cell phone, but not in a protective case — fortunately for him, it still worked. He joked that if it didn’t, he would sue Six Flags.
At 6:45, all of us met up at the entrance, and we left shortly afterward. Despite listening to music at a reasonably loud volume on my MP3 player, I fell asleep for about a half-hour on the way back home — woken up by the stop to the rest area, where I wanted to get something to eat but wasn’t able to since the vending machines wouldn’t take my water-soaked dollar bills.
Luckily, there was stuff that I could eat back at home.
In short, this Six Flags trip was truly awesome — everyone in our class should’ve come, not just half the class. The waiting in line for rides, however, wasn’t all that exciting, especially when it’s hot out (as it was for most of the day today). If there’s one tip I can offer for future Six Flags visitors, it’s this: Get a “Flash Pass” to bypass long lines at certain rides. Unless you want to spend literally half your day at the park waiting in a queue with essentially nothing to do, a Flash Pass is definitely worth it.
I leave you with these videos of the aforementioned roller coaster rides.
On Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, as reported in The New York Times, 5 million Blackberry users were cut off from their precious handheld wireless e-mail devices. After living in agony waiting for service to be restored, they saw their Blackberrys came back to life after 10 hours.
The responses that I’ve read to this blackout from many avid users are indicative of the fact that we as a technology-driven population are hopeless without our cell phones, laptops, and Palm Pilots. I know that I almost never leave the house without my cell phone and am at a complete loss when I do.
The result of this manic obsession with wireless communication, however, I think is less than healthy. At the office, instead of speaking with a colleague face-to-face, send them an e-mail. Sitting at home, don’t bother calling your friend to come hang out with you, just get on AIM and send them a message. Need plans for tonight? Use Facebook or MySpace to get in touch with people — the perks of social networking are endless!
We no longer value or spend the time to actually communicate with the people closest to us, and the toll this takes on the quality of our relationships is tremendous. The double-edged sword of wireless communication is finally getting to me, and it’s sharper than I imagined it to be.
So recently I find a brief article that I couldn’t believe. Apparently, a woman driver registered a .47 blood-alcohol level after she crashed and was arrested.
What is amazing is that no one was injured in the car crash even though Deana F. Jarrett was almost six times above the legal limit of .08 in the state of Washington. That might possibly be a new record in Washington. No one since 1998 even came close. Sadly, that is not the type of record you want to set.
A few days earlier, I heard on the radio that a German truck driver crashed after he decided to cook sausage while driving. What is even funnier, or should I say incredible, is that he was intoxicated as well. Germany is all about beer and sausage. Good stuff — just not when you’re driving.
I can’t decide which story is better: the one with the wasted woman (who was 54) or the one with the hungry German. Oh yeah, did I mention that I have heard a story about a girl doing her makeup while driving? That one is pretty good too.
You would think that driving is a simple task, right? After all, you have taken a class and practiced hours and hours. It shouldn’t be hard to avoid accidents if you follow the rules. But time after time, I hear more shocking stories about what people manage to do while driving.
What I am trying to say is that we should all do our part and keep the road safe. Don’t do anything insane and please, please use common sense. I really don’t want to see your name in the news next for crazy driving.
Recently we got a new TV. With it came a remote. Then we decided we needed a new receiver and a DVD player because our old ones weren’t good enough. Both of them came with their own respective remotes.
I am not one who loves technology. Although I must admit our new TV looks pretty cool, I really didn’t want to have to remember which remote belongs to which appliance. And so for a couple weeks I relied on my brother to start up movies.
But eventually I learned, and I no longer needed my brother’s assistance. However, he still had to help the other members of my family, even after we had had the TV for a few months. Now that I had the remotes all figured out I didn’t understand what was so hard about them.
But then I came upon an article that said that some people have the talent to prevent themselves from learning tasks they don’t want to. I thought this explained a lot. For example, I now understood how some people in my acquaintance have always managed to get out of doing simple chores. All one has to do is to ask so many questions, someone else does the unwanted task out of exasperation.
So really, the case might be that my family just doesn’t want to know how to tell the remotes apart. It is, after all, easier to let someone else do it for you. Or maybe my family is just an expert at being willfully incompetent.
I have a complicated relationship with computers. On the one hand, I can’t live without them: How would I write papers? Check my e-mail? Talk on AIM? Use Myspace/Facebook (although I really haven’t, lately)?
But on the other hand, I live in constant fear of a computer crash. I have so many important things on my computer: hundreds of pictures, all of my music, stories, and poetry and papers that I’ve written for fun and/or for school.
I am most paranoid about my pictures. Pictures contain memories; if I lose pictures, I risk losing memories. Which is simply unthinkable. And this is where photobucket.com steps in.
I have taken to uploading absolutely everything onto photobucket. It doesn’t matter if the pictures are crap. Online they go. Family vacations, photos I’ve taken just for fun, Myspace/Facebook pictures, photos stolen from other peoples’ albums on Facebook … I steal them all.
Now all I have to do is pray and hope that photobucket never crashes, and my pictures will be forever safe.
On the downside, though, I spend hours uploading things. I have such a backlog of pictures that I wonder if I will ever get through them all. And I must get through them all. I hate nothing more than incomplete albums on photobucket (of which I now have three).
But there are just so many pictures.
No matter. As long as there are pictures to be uploaded, photobucket will be my best friend. And after I get through the ones on my computer, I’ve still got baby pictures to tackle. Those will take even longer, considering that I’ll have to scan all of them in.
Every morning there is always an exhausted student taking a dreamy nap during first-hour U.S. History. I don’t blame them. With all the homework we get (it is a known fact that some teachers blatantly ignore the 30-minute-a-night rule), plus extracurriculars, some students have only a few hours of shut-eye every night.
What I simply don’t understand is why such sleep-deprived students willingly subject themselves to homework torture.
History teacher Bill Sutton always tells students to take a stand. Talk to the teacher, see if he or she will understand that the class has a lot going on and will have trouble meeting a deadline. If the teacher isn’t willing to compromise, simply ensure that no one turns in the work.
I completely agree, especially since I’ve had firsthand experience protesting a deadline with an entire class.
Though this “protest” was in Steve Rayburn’s Asian American Literature class, which is a laid-back class with an even more laid-back teacher, it did work. (Granted there wasn’t much at stake since Mr. Rayburn usually doesn’t take off points for late assignments, and futhermore, Mr. Rayburn was the person who suggested that we band together and turn in our papers late.)
So, we all decided that we would turn in the research paper originally due on Friday on Monday.
But I’m guessing the tricky thing about staging any of these protests is that there will be more than a few strike breakers. Even in our Asian American Literature class there was one student who decided to turn in his/her paper on Friday, though they knew full and well that there would be little to no consequences.
However, I would fully support all students in a protest for shorter homework hours in any class. It is not impossible. All it will take is a little organization and a lot of earnest commitment. The power of the pack is greater than we all think.
While listening to Def Leppard and reading Sarah’s column this morning, it hit me: the ultimate way to avoid college application stress. With my method in hand, I am officially prepared to avoid stressing out about where I’m going to go to college.
How do I plan to achieve this, you ask? It’s actually quite simple. I just decided that I really, really don’t care. Why should I care about whether or not some magazine calls such-and-such school the best ever? For all I know, the people who write US News & World Report are on drugs and just randomly put down colleges and call them “the best.”
While complete apathy isn’t really an option, I’m going to come as close to it as possible. Am I going to take 30 APs? Forget about it. Apply to 18 schools, maybe? Nope. Not for me.
While I do plan on applying to around 12 colleges, I only know of one that is considered “prestigious” that I’m going to apply to (University of Virginia), and I’m not going to bother with Ivy League schools. I used to want to apply to Yale, but that has long since passed. The more I thought about my visit, the less I actually thought I could see myself there.
So here’s what I think everybody should do until we get accepted to college: find a certain amount of time every week when we can be completely apathetic and not care about anything. And I mean ANYTHING! Complete absence of thought is good for recharging the body and mind. We should practice it more often.
Right now I feel I have a lot of classwork. Papers, long-term assignments, and the normal load of homework.
But what surprises me is that most of it looks like it will be letting up after the first week or so of May. And that confuses me. What are we going to do the rest of the year?
There doesn’t seem time to squeeze in more assignments, but too much time to do nothing before the end of school.
So I find myself seeing May as a blank. I have little idea of what is going to be happening in my classes then, so I will just pray to the homework gods that there is not much work.
I participate every year, and have done so since I was a wee little subbie. And by participate, I mean wear the rainbow-colored ribbon and lower my average amount of talking by about three words.
But this year it was different. Perhaps I am older and wiser. Or perhaps it had to do with my higher level of involvement in Uni High’s Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA. Whatever it was, I really wanted to be silent this year.
But for those who came to GSA’s meeting last week, we learned that silent is all encompassing. It’s not just that you can’t talk, you can’t communicate.
The silence on the Day of Silence represents the silence that is forced upon members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. People who are unsure of their sexuality or don’t fit society’s norms are unable to discuss it with anyone because they may, as a result, face harassment and bullying.
And on top of that, there are other times when they can’t talk, not only about their sexuality, but also about everyday things for fear of espousing a “gay” mentality.
So, that is why we don’t talk on the Day of Silence. But just like a member of the LGBTQ community can’t solve the inner conflict by writing it on a piece of paper or whispering it, neither can we participants get out of our silence by passing notes.
Thus, my goal this year was to really put my all into this endeavor. I was determined not to talk, and not to communicate at all.
As promised, I felt frustrated, disabled, unable to function.
But the more significant emotion for me was the attempt at the end of the day not to feel self-righteous. Not to feel as if I had just done some amazing thing, and “Wow, everybody look at me and how supportive I am of the LGBTQ community.”
I haven’t done anything great by being quiet all day. I have barely simulated the actual experience of having to hide one’s sexuality, and I haven’t even participated in a unique protest. I just sign up and other people work it out for me. Someone else even makes me the rainbow-colored ribbon.
Do I think it is entirely bad to feel a little good about yourself if you are successfully silent all day? No.
But I think it is important to reflect; to not focus inward, but outward. To look at this day not merely as a way to prove yourself as an ally to the LGBTQ community, but as a way to realize the pain that someone who hides their sexuality has to go through, and then try to work even harder to lessen that pain and make it easier for everyone to feel accepted in our school and in our world.
I can’t wait for the sophomore Six Flags trip that is slowly approaching. Actually, it’s this Saturday, but with three more days it seems like forever. The forecast says it’s supposed to be clear skies and pretty warm, which even leaves open the possibility for the water park! Lots of people in our class seem to never have gone on rollercoasters, but so long as no one is throwing-up I think it should be pretty fun.
Our class in particular has been fairly fortunate, what with last year being able to go to Allerton (for the first time, making it a freshman tradition), and now this year we are able to go to Six Flags St. Louis.
Unlike the Allerton trip, this trip isn’t mandatory so only about half of the class will be actually going, which I personally think is passing up a great opportunity! Also, we are being given a significant amount of freedom considering we get to choose the people we want to hang out with and considering we have virtually no chaperones.
OK, well, we do have chaperones but there are only three adults, none of whom are expected to stay with the students! You’re free to roam free (I’m just praying no one screws up and gets us all sent home).
Some of my friends and I are planning on screaming our heads off, and get some quality horror movies in, such as the classic “Final Destination 3.” (All right. So it’s not exactly a “quality horror movie” nor a “classic” but still, how thrilling is it to watch a scary movie about rollercoasters right before you board?) We are also planning on bringing four or five cameras to take a million photos (can you say slideshow?).
Unfortunately there is a math project due the Tuesday after the trip and a chemistry test the week after the trip as well, so despite the fact that half the class will have one complete day (or at least until 11:30 p.m.) gone, and the other half is probably not going due to conflicting schedules, teachers are still piling on the work! Hopefully I’ll be able to get it done on time, because there is no way I will miss this!
That, as I understand from an old yearbook, is history teacher Bill Sutton’s attempt to explain democracy in two words. I’ll get back to that in a minute here.
From my early history classes, democracy came across as a hallmark of civilization and liberty. If you can imagine, history got a pretty superficial treatment in elementary school, so coming into Uni I more or less assumed that democracy was the perfect governmental system.
However, that was before I learned about the other types of government, and historically, what “worked” and what didn’t. Now, I feel, I can analyze democracy with a bit less bias.
So. Good stuff about democracy: The common people have a say in things, there’s an emphasis on equality, and (in theory) the person who makes the tough, pressing decisions will make the “right” ones in the public’s eyes, because the public decided that that person was fit to make said decisions.
However, one glance at America’s past few decades, or indeed, one glance at today’s headlines, confirms that our system of government leaves something to be desired. Major leaders are elected by public votes only every four or six years — that’s plenty of time for the legislator to change the opinions that the voters wanted to see instilled in the lawmaking process.
Another disturbing trend is that many of our elections have been, and are, to put it very un-eloquently, a [expletive] joke. Voters can be influenced by the most trivial and baseless things.
For example, negative campaign ads. One candidate isn’t quite satisfied with their chances, so they put together a commercial, setting out to prove that their opponent is immoral, inexperienced, weak-minded, and/or incompetent, using grainy black-and-white footage, out-of-context decisions, and unflattering character descriptions, all outlined by an ominous-sounding voice that sounds like it was provided by the guy who narrates the previews for horror films.
This is where our quote comes in. People, it can be said with some certainty, are dumb. A lot of people’s election decisions are going to be influenced by this commercial. Then, what choice does the opponent have but to make a similar commercial — besides, you know, being mature. Pssh. If someone made fun of you in kindergarten, the easiest way to get them off your back would be to fight fire with fire. Apply similar logic in today’s uninformed, celebrity-obsessed society that cares as much about charisma and personality in a candidate as opinions and values.
In certain areas of America during the last round of elections, a certain political party decided to take advantage of the relative isolation of said areas and claim that their opponents wanted to do something along the lines of banning professional sports and alcohol. That’s just one example of the underhanded tactics used by politicians everywhere to scrape up a few more votes.
Even if voters make all the right decisions, which they don’t, the actual voting system still leaves some breathing room for fate. Such as the electoral college.
“Make the Electoral College come alive! Divide your entire school into 50 groups of varying sizes. Then assign a point value to each group roughly based on its size. Have each individual student then vote on an issue — say, “chocolate or vanilla.” Tally the votes but tell them the side with the most votes isn’t necessarily the winner. Instead, calculate the winner within each of the 50 groups, then give the previously assigned point values and see who has more. Isn’t this a better way to figure out a winner?” — “America: the Book”
A majority of voters wanted Al Gore to be the president in 2000. More people in Florida wanted Gore to be the president. Oops. We seem to have lost thousands of ballots in a Democratic area. Well, there’s no use asking questions or standing up for your rights. Let’s not be hasty. Incidentally, how do you feel about voting machines with no pesky paper trail?
Finally, if the voters select the right people (which they don’t), and the votes are counted in a reasonable manner (which they aren’t), the legislators have four to six years to break as many promises and regulations as they can without getting impeached. I don’t need to give examples here, do I?
Of course, I am extremely fortunate to be living in a democratic nation. I take freedom of speech and the like for granted, and I feel rather selfish right now complaining about all of this. However, if people have the right to complain, what do you think they’re going to do?
Wrapping this up: We really only need figures like the president for immediate decisions and international relations. The long-term stuff should be voted on, and if the public makes bad decisions, you have to trust that they’ll learn from their mistakes. Still holding my breath here.
The Virginia Tech shootings: Why we need code red drills
April 16, 2007, will soon be joining important dates such as Sept. 11, 2001, and April 20, 1999, in our nation’s history. The occasion? The deadliest campus shooting spree to date.
This morning, 32 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) students and faculty were killed and at least 30 were injured by an unidentified shooter, who then killed himself. The entire Blacksburg community was in a state of emergency after the two most likely connected shootings at 7 a.m. and roughly 9:45 a.m.
Virginia Tech has gone through a lot recently. Last August, the campus was shut down after an armed escaped inmate was spotted on campus grounds. However, Va Tech’s shooting has not been the only school shooting so far in 2007. On Jan. 3, there was a high school shooting at Henry Foss High School in Tacoma, Wash.
The fact that there were two shooting incidents at Va Tech separated by several hours is a call for concern. Campus security and police could not have controlled the initial situation very well, in which two students were killed in a dorm, since the later far more deadly spree was all the way on the other side of campus.
This tragic event highlights the importance of school safety and drills. In a few weeks, we will be having a “code red” drill, which will basically go through the procedures if a suspected shooter is in the building. For more information regarding our code red drills, refer to a previous Gargoyle article, School safety: Code red drill anticipated for this semester.
While in general people do not take drills very seriously, you should at least pay attention to this one. Uni is a safe school overall, but school shootings are sporadic and unexpected. The more prepared students are, the more quickly and effectively an incident will be stopped.
For more information regarding the shooting, refer to the following Web sites. The Virginia Tech site includes three online podcasts by the president and a timeline of events:
Last weekend, I began writing my 20-page paper on the French Revolution.
As I sat in front of the computer staring a blank Microsoft Word document, I realized that I had no idea what to write about. I glanced at all the books that I had checked out that were spread out across the floor; they all looked so thick and intimidating. And even though I’d skimmed through them, I just didn’t know how to start my paper. There was only one place to find answers: the Internet.
I started out by Googling “French Revolution.” I looked through some sites but soon I was distracted by an ad for a free IQ test. OK, let’s go see how smart/stupid I am. I convinced myself that I’m technically still doing work since IQ tests are educational … sort of.
After I answered a long list of questions I realized that I had to pay to get the results. How lame. So then I checked my e-mail. This will only take a second and I’ll get right back to my paper, I promised myself.
There was a message from Facebook in my inbox informing me that some guy requested to be my friend. I haven’t been on Facebook in weeks, so I thought: Why not? I’ll just log on and accept him as a friend. It’ll take no time at all and it’s rude to keep people waiting.
However, my “short” visit to Facebook lasted almost two hours. The guy turned out to be one of my good friends from elementary school. Through him, I reconnected with all my long-lost friends and talked to them on AIM.
By this time, I was no longer in the mood to do any homework. Talking to my elementary school friends rekindled memories of childhood. So I sought my childhood addiction: Neopets.
Yes, I know, Neopets is for little kids. But actually, it’s still a lot of fun. By the time I had earned a couple thousand Neopoints, it was late Saturday night. That’s when I realized that I really needed to get started on my paper.
So finally, I unplugged my Internet connection and began focusing on my school work.
My point here is that the Internet, although it is undoubtedly one of the greatest inventions of all time, can also be a major source of distraction. I’ve probably wasted countless hours online playing games and chatting with friends.
When you’re working on a research paper, it takes a lot of willpower to stay on topic and not IM someone after writing each sentence. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just disconnect the Internet connection and do some research the traditional way: through books. It’s a lot easier to stay on task.
Mark it on your calendars, because it was a historic event. On Saturday, April 14, 2007, it snowed, sleeted, and rained, and the Uni High girls soccer team played soccer. April 13 was sunny and in the 50s, April 15 was sunny and in the 50s. But, if the girls soccer team plays, the weather has to be bad.
Our first game of the season (vs. St. Thomas More) was marked by torrential rains, prompting me to hold up my imaginary shield, Leonidas style, against the downpour. We were wet, and miserable, for over two hours.
Our second game (Centennial) was windy, overcast, and cold, so was our third game (Charleston).
Despite sunny weather before our fourth game (Macon Meridian), it was snowing and 20 degrees with the wind chill. I thought that was the coldest I have ever been in my life. I was wrong.
During our warmup before our fifth game (Normal Calvary Baptist) the freezing rain turned to fat, wet snowflakes, which turned to freezing rain again halfway through the game. Not only was I cold (cold is an understatement), but I was also soaked right down to my under … armor.
The funny thing is, whenever we’re not playing a game the weather is beautiful: sunny, warm but not too warm, basically perfect for playing soccer.
It’s not like I’m complaining, except that I am, because playing in crappy weather does make me feel really hardcore, but I’m tired of the cold, and the wet; I’m tired of wearing underarmor and a hat to every game.
So please, oh mighty weather gods, give the Uni High girls soccer team a break. If you do, we’ll sacrifice a freshman (or Jono.)
By far the most distinctive component of Uni’s U.S. history curriculum is the concept of the Wheel of Respectability. The term makes such an impression on students (or perhaps students latch onto it so much) that any time the class is mentioned to an underclassman, someone inevitably brings the term up.
The Wheel of Respectability annoys me. There’s nothing wrong with the conceptual aspect of it — it offers an interesting and insightful schematic of certain dynamics in history. The problem is that people like to bring up the Wheel in way too many situations.
Underprivileged kids struggling to keep up with No Child Left Behind standards? It’s the Wheel of Respectability! Working for a respectable grade in U.S. History? It’s the Wheel of Respectability!
Obviously, “The Wheel” does not fully represent the course U.S. History. Instead, it’s just something that gets mentally attached to the class, so that any time we bring up one, we automatically think of the other whether we want to or not.
This brings me to a more general question. Why is it that certain things we learn in classes stick in our minds, even if we forget everything else? Despite actually making an effort to review bits of the material every so often, I have forgotten a significant portion of the content of history classes from the past three years. From subbie history, I remember nothing in detail. Yet I still have a few stray images from that year stored in memory, such as a strange PowerPoint animation about population growth.
I have a theory: We make associations that are self-reinforcing, since each time we recall the association it only becomes stronger. However, usually these associations are relatively meaningless things that are easy to remember. Now if only I could remember important things this way …
Guys, this is the most exciting part of the year. I mean I am jumping out of my seat at this very moment because I can’t wait for the rest of “Class Wars!” This beats everything we have done this year. Spirit Week and the upcoming X-Week is NOTHING compared to the almighty “Class Wars.”
Yeah, I know, you might have forgotten what “Class Wars” is because you are just too darn excited like me. That is a normal side effect of “Class Wars.” DON’T WORRY. I even have to remind myself what it is every morning when I wake up. I will make it easy for you and give you a quick rundown.
There are events that run throughout April such as a debate contest and a photo contest and a chess tournament. And did I mention THE Candy Land competition? How are you not pumped for that? I mean I am dying to play Candy Land while shooting photos while coming up with eloquent verses for the poetry contest.
I don’t know about you, but I get the jitters every time I think about “Class Wars.” I wish I could stay at Uni 20 more years just to participate in this prestigious event. Even our curriculum should be based on “Class Wars.” I know what my dream first-hour class would be: Candy Land Strats. 101 (“Class Wars” edition).
Ahhh. I am too pumped up to tell you how amazing “Class Wars” is right now. I hope you share my fervent enthusiasm for this amazing event. This is the greatest invention/idea since, dare I say, fire?
Wow, honestly, I must go calm myself down now and prepare for the events.
You’ve always heard of the 3 R’s — reading, writing, and arithmetic. I get plenty of papers to write and enough math problems to arithmeticize (perhaps too much at times), but as time passes and as I age into an old man, I seem to be reading a lot less.
English teachers still assign reading assignments and the like, but I tend to rush through them as quickly as possible skimming for answers and vocab. Although every Friday and Tuesday my English teacher allows my class to have independant reading, I still don’t think there is enough reading in my life.
Back in the day I used to average two books a week! I admit that they must have been around 50-paged books … but I had felt the greatness of accomplishment and learning. Now? I’m only reading in class and for assignments. Bare minimum.
I’d like to read more books, but the Internet is far more enticing.
Is the Internet taking over books? I think so. First of all, most books can be found on the Internet, and secondly the Internet allows for communication to talk about books.
However the problem isn’t that the Internet is taking over the books; it’s more as if the Internet is taking over the world.
I could read books on the Internet which would fulfill my life reading requirement … but why would I read when I could be playing “Hello Kitty Island Adventures”?
Technology is advancing at a horrendous pace and is pushing reading out of my daily routine.
I have never joined a role-playing game in my life, since my parents have always vehemently opposed them. For a while I was defiant: Why should I be kept from joining something that all of my friends are doing?
But after I spent an entire afternoon in seventh grade watching my friend play “World of Warcraft,” I decided that I was better off staying away from such games. Not only do they seem to be a complete waste of time, I found they weren’t really fun.
There are probably a lot of people who play these role-playing games, and they would probably disagree with me when I say they aren’t fun. I guess I’ve never really gotten into computer games, but they really are a waste of time, not to mention addictive.
When I spent that entire afternoon watching my friend play “Warcraft,” she had intended to show me one thing on it before we moved on to other things. Instead, once she started playing I might as well have been her cat sitting on the bed watching her. She became so absorbed in the game that I could have left and she wouldn’t have noticed until five minutes later.
And I didn’t get anything out of the game either. True, watching someone play is quite different from playing the game yourself, but the game was so complicated that I think I would get bored after an hour anyway. Thank goodness for that.
You’ve heard this phrase. I even have it on a T-shirt.
Everyone loves an Asian girl.
Asian girls, provided they have long, black hair, are hott, exotic, etc. I
even had a swim coach say to me when I was in sixth grade: “You are going
to be so popular in college. Everyone wants an Asian girlfriend.”
Even the terms I’ve heard flung around a lot (e.g. “Asian fetish” and
“yellow fever”) are used to describe guys who are inordinately attracted
to Asian girls. So, I make the point that Asian girls get plenty of
booty.
But what about Asian guys? My brother belongs to a facebook group called
“Asian Boys Need Love Too — Amherst Chapter.” The group’s description goes:
“Asian boys: the ultimate accessory, so take one home today! Plus, our lady counterparts seem to get offered more action than a Van Damme movie. We just want our fair share.”
It’s true. For Asians there is a double standard. Tinsel Town has a fair
share of female Asian actresses like Lucy Liu, Rinko Kikuchi, Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, to name a few. But where are the Asian actors? Sure, they may be cast as some goofy sidekick type, or be put in a kung-fu movie, but they are never the heartthrob, the lead, the main man.
I already wrote in a previous blog entry that I am totally addicted to Korean
dramas. Not only do I have a new appreciation for Korean pop culture, I have a new appreciation for Korean men.
Korean men, well at least the actors, are attractive. There’s Daniel Henney (the wonderfully hott half-Korean, half-British star), Hyun Bin, Joo Ji Hoon, and Jang Hyuk, to name a few.
I don’t understand why Asian guys don’t get more props. Why don’t they get as much lovin’ as their female counterparts? They are just as attractive, just as “exotic,” just as yellow. Asian guys just fly under the radar — they’re a source that hasn’t been discovered.
So I propose that the next time you see an Asian guy, take some time to stop and appreciate. If everyone can love an Asian girl, then certianly everyone can love an Asian guy.
So yesterday I had the opportunity to, for the first time in my life, talk on the radio. And not just for a really brief period of a few seconds or minutes. No, I got to be on the radio for a full hour and 15 minutes!
Nick Pelafas, a student at the U of I’s Center for African Studies (and a 2000 Uni grad) has a weekly radio show on WRFU FM-104.5, called “Voice of Africa,” and he invited members of United for Uganda to come participate in yesterday’s show.
I was really nervous all day long, because I had so much I really wanted to say on the radio, but I was scared I wouldn’t be able to get any of it across. See, I have this problem — as I’m sure anyone who has ever listened to me talk knows — where I have a lot of good things to say in my mind, but I am horrible at communicating them.
Usually, I end up ranting on and on without ever making my point clear. Sometimes, the point I’m trying to make is clear for a while, but it becomes obscured by all the other rambling thoughts I try to cram in.
Essentially, this happens all the time: when I write e-mails, when I try to explain personal things to friends, when I am talking about a serious topic … anytime I am trying to share my thoughts.
It is a huge problem. I know I have a lot of good things to communicate with people, but because my communication ability — or manner of talking/writing — is so horrible, my “audience” just gets irritated at my going on and on and quickly loses interest. So my thoughts never do get across effectively.
Because of this I was very scared to talk on the radio yesterday. I knew I had a lot I wanted to say, and I was confident I had a lot of good points to make, but I was scared I would not be able to actually communicate my SELF with the audience.
Whether or not I made any sense to the listeners — or whether or not there even were any listeners — I guess I’ll never know. But I tried to say what I wanted to say, and what I felt needed to be said. Whether or not it was actually recieved — the important part — will probably remain a mystery.
[Gargoyle note:WRFU will eventually post an audio file of Wednesday’s interview with Bianca and her fellow UFU members. We’ll keep you updated.]
When I got a message in my Gmail account this morning saying that I had a Facebook friend request, I immediately clicked on the link to decide whether or not to add this person to my (not so) selective list of friends.
When I logged in, however, I noticed that all the little buttons controlling my page were all mixed around. Having only been acquainted with the site’s operating system for a few months, I thought that maybe I was just still not completely familiar with the site’s layout. Hey, it could happen.
As it turns out, I was wrong.
As many of you may have noticed, Facebook has undergone a fairly substantial change. Aside from moving the various menus around (as well as hiding my message inbox that I spent 10 minutes looking for), I can’t really detect anything that the new change has actually done.
Granted, I don’t know everything there is to know about Facebook. Maybe the new change has updated some privacy setting somewhere. Too bad I don’t use the privacy settings.
After all, what do I have to hide? About all people can learn from my Facebook page is that I’m liberal, have 115 friends in the University of Illinois network, run cross country, and like the song “SexyBack.”
So in a nutshell, I can’t make heads or tails of what the administrators have done with Facebook. But no matter what they did, it seems they are out to make my time on their site as aggravating as possible.
As part of the Online Gargoyle’s prom coverage I am writing an article about the grinding rule at dances for Uni students. In order to thoroughly cover and do justice to this topic I went and talked to Assistant Director Sue Kovacs to refresh my memory about the grinding rule.
After several comments about what grinding actually is and what constitutes a sexual organ we came down to her policy on grinding. Basically she needs “one to two inches of space” between the dancers. Whether it is pelvis-to-pelvis dancing or butt-to-pelvis dancing or sandwiching or a grinding chain Kovacs needs “space between the sexual organs.”
I personally do not find this policy to be intolerable. While it may not be the most conducive doctrine toward dancing with your mate it is certainly a decent compromise and it is a far better solution than not letting us grind at all. Theoretically speaking, I feel that this restriction should not curb my enthusiasm for prom at all.
Practically speaking it does.
It’s because not all the chaperones and teachers are as lenient about grinding as Kovacs is. I’ve been reprimanded and warned several times at Uni dances by other chaperones for dancing in a manner that Kovacs did not even blink twice at. “One to two inches of space” allows for all kinds of shades of gray depending on who the chaperone is.
What this ultimately makes for is an incredibly uncomfortable situation. An already self-conscious girl is feeling even more uneasy. She knows that she has several chaperones breathing down her neck ready to give her a warning look if their interpretation of “one to two inches of space” is violated. Her confidence slowly lessens and with it goes the fun in her night out.
There’s a reason why the lights are turned off at dances. At the most basic level it is not so that we can all start “dry humping” each other but rather because dancing can be awkward and in awkward situations it is generally preferred that those involved are not gawked at.
Unfortunately for students, the manner in which the grinding policy has been executed has transformed dancing into a tool for social embarrassment rather than a fun and harmless release of energy.
“Don’t be scurred, show another part of your life/ The more drinks in your system the harder the fight!”
Ahh … the ever brilliant words of Ludacris, rapper, celebrity, icon.
Does someone need an interpretation of these lyrics? Get drunk so I can rape you, the harder you fight the better!
First of all, it is really sad that society finds this music acceptable (“Stand Up” was a hit, a No. 1 single). Numerous topics covered by our most beloved rap songs are completely inappropriate: doing illegal drugs, starting fights, killing people. The whole mainstream genre promotes violence.
But, the worst theme by far, at least in my mind, is that of disrespecting, raping, and hurting women. Or, in the words of 50 Cent, “I ain’t never been arrested for nothing domestic/ But I ain’t gon’ lie/ I’ll punch a bitch in the eye.”
Not only is it completely demeaning and gross, it tells people that it is OK to beat their girlfriends.
Now, I am not saying that guys who hear an offensive rap song by Luda or 50 Cent will then go home and punch their girlfriend. But, the concept, as it is portrayed in mainstream hip hop, does make domestic violence culturally acceptable.
I don’t think that P. Diddy, Twista, and Nelly will stop spewing offensive rap any time soon. However, we can stop listening to it. Especially those who claim to be feminists.
Do we give women a voice when, in rap, they are only boobs and a butt? When they are a body to push around and use as a tool for sexual pleasure?
Google’s built-in calculator just got infinitely more useful.
In the past few months, I’ve come across a lot of different things — videos, news articles, blog posts, whatever — about what jobs at Google are like. The general consensus is that Google is an good awesome place to work at. So awesome, in fact, that it tops Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list.
All the “free meals, swimming spa, and free doctors onsite” which “sets the standard for Silicon Valley” (if you were too lazy to click) pretty much explain why. But if you needed more evidence, here’s some, uh, “unique” stuff that people have found within Google’s services that might be at least remotely interesting or amusing. (The calculation above was one of them, in case you didn’t notice.)
So I guess I’ll start the list, which isn’t really in any particular order, with No. 2:
2 — World Class Driving Directions Forget transatlantic flights; Google can get you from Uni to Vatican City without any airlines, albeit in an estimated travel time of 30 days and 9 hours. The upside, though, is that you’re likely to get in extremely good physical health if you follow through all the way.
3 — Google Moon “In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing,” they say.
At first glance, this isn’t all that exciting. But what happens when you zoom in all the way? “Well, you’ll have to go and find out, won’t you,” according to the FAQ. (I won’t spoil this with a screenshot.)
4 — Google 411 (Voice Local Search) A free, automated 411 service that searches for businesses, restaurants, etc. in the city of your choice. Here, listen to some guy’s recorded sample call (MP3 link), which I’ve transcribed below for those who don’t have speakers or otherwise can’t listen to the recording.
Calling: 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-4664-411)
Google: Calls recorded for quality. Google: GOOG 411, experimental. What city and state? Some Guy: Buffalo, New York. Google: Buffalo, New York. What business name or category? Some Guy: Pornography. Google: Pornography. There was no direct match, but here are some related listings. Google: No. 1: United States Government: Buffalo Field Office. On FBI Plaza. To select No. 1, you can press 1 or say “Number One.” Google: No. 2: U.S. Attorney. On Court Street. Google: No. 3: Canisius College: Where Leaders Are Made. On Main Street. Google: No. 4: Artvoice. On Main Street. To start a new search, say “Start Over” anytime. End of call
When I called searching for the same thing, I got the same results. Interesting.
Look around you. Look around you. Just look around you. Have you worked out what we’re looking for? Correct! The answer is: a YouTube link.
“Look Around You” is a show that aired a couple of years ago on the BBC. As those of you know who watched the linked video of the first episode, “Maths,” the format of the show becomes immediately apparent. The show is a satire made in the format of old educational videos made in the ’70s and early ’80s.
In fact, the show imitates the style extremely well, having a British narrator, old computers, very very simple text overlay, and best of all, a slightly fuzzy quality to make it look all the more authentic.
To maintain the appearance of an educational video, the narrator will sometimes say “Make sure to take notes,” or “Write that down,” and at the end he reminds you to “hand your copybook into your teacher or head of class.”
The focus of the show is math and science, but with little real facts or science. Sometimes there is a little bit of truth connected to these “facts” that they state — such as water being the element “H-twenty.” Other times humor is found in the contrast to real science. For example, in the episode about ghosts, a scientist catches a ghost by inserting a crucifix into a machine, and then chanting incantations. Other attractions of the series include a music video, shooting a gun into a trash-can, a scientist sticking his hand in boiling water multiple times, and reggae music.
It is a hilarious series, and all the episodes can be found on YouTube right now. I urge everyone to watch it when they have time.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the majority of Uni’s population leans to the left of the political spectrum. Incidentally, I find that left-right system a bit obsolete; here’s a neat page that plots your ideology on two axes. I happen to be mental roommates with the Dalai Lama. But, I digress. The point is, Uni is pretty liberal.
“The Daily Show,” hosted by Jon Stewart, is perceived by some as having a liberal bias. I take issue with that; sure, Bush is a frequent target, but come on — can anyone really be blamed for making fun of such an incompetent leader? That’s like blaming cartoons for imitating “The Simpsons.”
A while ago, Joel Surnow (a producer of “24” who believes that America is in its “glory days” under Bush and a good friend of Rush Limbaugh, that beacon of wit and righteousness) teamed up with Fox News to produce a truly horrendous program, “The 1/2 Hour News Hour,” conceived as “‘The Daily Show’ for conservatives.”
Time for a little exercise in compare-and-contrast.
“The Daily Show” is hosted by a likeable, entertaining, dynamic comedian who elicits thunderous laughter and applause from his studio audience.
“The 1/2 Hour News Hour” features expressionless, monotonic anchors whose uninspired quips are met with, as described by Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel, “laughter of an awfully canned variety.”
“Show”: draws its humor from current events, American politics, and popular culture.
“Hour”: employs an array of bland, baseless, conservative humor and weak potshots at well-known liberals. This clip, for example, taps into the vast resource of humor related to Barack Obama. In summation: He did cocaine as a youth, his middle name is “Hussein,” his initials are “BO,” America is obsessed with him, his political experience is suspect, and he is boastful of his graduation from Harvard. I’m rolling on the floor here.
“Show”: is on Comedy Central. Hence, the show is a comedy. It does not purport to be an accurate news source. As Jon Stewart disbelievingly exclaimed during his appearance on “Crossfire” when one of his interviewers pressed him on his newsroom integrity, “The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls!”
“Hour:” is on Fox News Channel. A news channel, especially one audacious enough to dub itself “fair and balanced” while simultaneously granting air time to blatantly partisan individuals such as Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter, has an obligation to present news.
Speaking of Ann Coulter, here’s a nauseating promotion for the show that features Rush Limbaugh and Coulter as the Commander in Chief and Vice President. It consists of nonstop rails against Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and even Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and the subsequent leader of a peace demonstration outside Bush’s Texas ranch (the very same ranch that hosted Bush’s proclamation of faith in America’s ability to defeat the terrorists, all while holding a golf club, and immediately afterwards: “Now, watch this drive”).
In summary, this show is tasteless, immature, and poorly executed, so you can expect to see it on Fox for months and years to come.
So I recently caved into enormous amounts of peer pressure from various sources and got Facebook. My worst fears have been realized: I am, after a full week of Facebook, addicted.
I knew this would happen, the pull of 50 people (50 people in one week, boy I’m popular!) who are all officially my friends is too much to resist when I really don’t want to do that World Since 1945 paper.
Plus you can send messages, and post things on people’s walls, and see what all your friends are up to — it’s so cool. Of course, I know that everyone else has already discovered the awesomeness of Facebook, but it’s pretty raw.
Finally, I’ve reconnected with all my Uni alum friends who go to different colleges. I forgot which colleges a lot of my old friends go to, and now I found them too!
But what I’m totally addicted to is connecting to people who are going to Wellesley with me (sorry, spoiler on my college series) through the group “Wellesley Class of 2011.” It makes me feel better to be getting a head start on the whole friend-making process.
Even better, I was able to contact current students at Wellesley and ask them questions that no admissions officer would tell me the straight answer to. Now that’s cool.
I also started the process of making all-important connections to boys at MIT (thank God for cross registration), so I won’t be starved for male friendship.
All of those things are great, but to me the most important part about Facebook is that I’ll be able to stay in touch with all my friends at Uni when we scatter across the globe. Every day that goes by is one less to spend with my friends, but thanks to Facebook, we can still talk, even when I’m a world away.
Take a look at any college viewbook and you’ll find a bunch of beautiful pictures of campus, happy faces, and a showcase of interesting courses. Man, I really want to go to this school, you think to yourself. Then you flip to the end. And your heart sinks. Attached to this college is a costly $40,000-plus price tag.
In the past few years, the cost of college has peaked. According to an article late last year from CNN, the average cost of college for this year is now roughly $30,367 per year for private colleges, and $5,836 per year for in-state public schools.
Including room and board, books and supplies, and personal purchases, the total costs per year for some of the more expensive schools almost reach detrimental heights.
For most of us at Uni, that much money would be a huge burden on the family. Many parents of Uni students are university professors, who make roughly $80,000 a year, based on studies done on Illinois public universities in 2004. A year at college would be more than half of their salary.
Then again, most colleges give financial and merit-based aid. Financial aid packages for incoming freshmen to some of the top schools can pay for a great deal of the cost. Take Columbia University, an Ivy League school that gives 100 percent of need-based aid, for example. According to its financial aid Web site, its average financial aid package last year was $28,657. That’s more than half of the price gone.
At the same time, there are thousands of scholarships out there, anything ranging from a hundred dollars to a full ride.
Of course, it’s not only students who want the colleges. Every college wants to recruit the brightest students in order to keep its ratings up and to hopefully get something in return from alumni donations.
And really, a few thousand dollars isn’t much for some colleges. Harvard University, the wealthiest college in the world, has an endowment of almost $30 billion. So if you’re willing take the time to make a case, they could probably slip you a few extra bucks.
So really, you shouldn’t be too depressed over college costs. It’s going to hurt for a while, and you’re probably going to have at least a bit of debt when you graduate, but hey, no pain, no gain.
So I’m sitting at home in my warm sweats bundled up like an Eskimo on the biggest red chair in my entire house watching reruns of the first season of “The OC,” and for some reason I’ve come to realize it’s addicting.
For those of you who have yet to experience “The OC” in it’s entirety I will say that it’s a basic chick show. Not to put down the sweet guys who are willing to sit beside you and laugh at Seth or as you tear up when something happens (yet again) to Ryan, but all in all it revolves around teenage romances, and high school, and all the usual stuff you might classify as a “girl show.”
But it’s not just “The OC.” It’s stuff like “Laguna Beach” and “The Notebook” that make girls go crazy. And I’m not saying that all girls like these kinds of things, and I’m not implying that boy’s shouldn’t, but it just seems the norm that girls get addicted to these shows.
Personally I don’t mind sitting down and watching “Family Guy” with my brother, or turning the lights off to watch a scary movie at midnight (though I will admit that I am not the bravest person in the world), but nonetheless I feel so addicted to some of these “chick flicks.” When I asked my friend Charlie Wan to name the last chick flick he saw, he answered“‘Cinderella.” I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t exactly consider that a chick flick.
I think it must just be something about girls. I mean boys go through the same things — they come to school every day, they have friend troubles, they have relationships — but for some reason it just doesn’t seem to click with a guy as a much as it does with a girl.
“The OC” focuses on a boy, yet as a girl I still find it heart-wrenching and touching, whereas I don’t think as many boys get attached to a show or movie in that way (at least not as openly!). I guess it’s just something about girls that have us latch onto these stereotypical TV shows. But what that “thing” actually is, I’m not sure.
On Saturday night, my dad made his weekly phone call to his family back in China. After a while, he yelled, “Your cousin wants to talk to you!”
Man … he wants to practice his English with me again, I thought to myself. I groaned and reluctantly picked up the phone.
My cousin is a freshman at a gifted high school in Anhui, China. As far as I know, Chinese education has always been extremely strenuous compared to American education. I remember that in China, I would get hours of homework each night even in elementary school. Also, because of China’s large population, applying to college is a fierce competition.
When I visited China this summer during their school year, my cousin was attending college exam prep classes even on Saturdays and getting an average of four hours of sleep every night. When I did his English homework one day, it took me nearly an hour just because of the sheer length of it.
So anyway, to my surprise, my cousin actually wasn’t interested in practicing his English. He excitedly told me about the recent death of a student at his high school. The student, a boy enrolled in the accelerated program at his institution, died last month due to stress-related illnesses.
The culprit behind his death? Too much homework and not enough sleep.
After the boy’s death, the father went to the school, demanding an explanation as to how the teacher could possibly assign so much homework and expect students to finish it all without sacrificing their health. The school guards assaulted the father and he later died in the hospital. The boy’s mother, unable to deal with the sudden death of her son and husband, committed suicide.
I was incredibly shocked after hearing this story. How could something like this happen? Why didn’t the police do something about it?
My cousin explained that nobody outside of their school even knew about this event taking place. Because of the censorship in China, he said that he wasn’t even supposed to be telling anyone about it. If word of the incident got out, whoever leaked the information would be expelled from the school. Since it’s a gifted and privileged institution, nobody would want that to happen.
My cousin also told me that when one of his classmates didn’t finish his homework on time, the teacher told the student to choose between two forms of punishment: 1) do the homework again 50 times, or 2) allow the teacher to spit on his head 10 times.
Hmm … it almost seems like one of those “Would You Rather” questions. In the end, the student chose to be spit on.
Unbelievable, right? But sadly, that’s how education is like in many Chinese schools. Teachers push students beyond their limits because they get huge bonuses if their students perform well.
When I was in second grade in China, I got a B on one of my tests. My teacher yelled at me in front of the entire class about what a disappointment I was to her. Being one of the top students in the class, I was so embarrassed by what she said.
But actually, getting yelled at is nothing compared to the other forms of punishment. As for the students who misbehaved or didn’t do their homework, they would often be slapped by the teacher.
Hearing my cousin’s story and thinking about what I went through makes me appreciate how lucky I am to attend school in America. At Uni, we complain about three or four hours of homework, which is relatively little compared to the amount of homework in China.
At Uni, many teachers lighten the homework load or postpone tests if they realize that we have too much going on. We have the right to protest against the administration, such as with the grinding issue. We’re allowed to enjoy summer vacation without having to stress about homework.
Compared to what education is like in many Asian countries, we’re definitely living the easy life.
Over spring break, there was no lounging around at home or hanging around town with friends for me. No, this year, I was going to do something of great importance to the rest of my life: college visits! [insert dramatic music here]
Of all the colleges that I visited (about seven, if I remember correctly), there were some that really stood out to me.
Yale, in New Haven, Conn., was definitely one of them.
New Haven looks like a very nice town, a cozy place to have a college experience if you aren’t looking for a huge bustling city. It also isn’t so small that one could get easily bored or used to it.
“Quaint commercial districts, serene residential streets, the famous New Haven Green, and landmarks of American history are only a few of the highlights of a place that has given the world the hamburger, the lollipop, the corkscrew, and the world’s best pizza,” states Yale’s Web site.
Arriving too late to attend the regular campus tour due to traffic jams around New York City, I managed to sidle in on time to get a tour around Yale’s Science Hill.
I saw a beautiful campus with plenty of resources for its students. Did you know that Yale has a particle accelerator reserved only for the uses of undergrads? No competition with graduate students or professors.
Yale, like Princeton, has senior projects and a good teacher-student ratio (7:1). Santiago (our information session guy) told some amazing stories about the teacher-student relationships that I’m still trying to absorb.
Did I mention that research chances and research internships sound really possible/good there? It’s really easy for a student to just jump on board and get some experience working with a professor.
One downside to Yale is that students don’t seem to go out of New Haven all that often, but that would entirely depend on the student wouldn’t it? Another possible negative would be that New Haven is pretty quaint and quiet — perhaps too quaint and quiet for my tastes. Also, the science college at Yale is extremely extremely small. About only 300 people are accepted out of thousands who apply.
But, in my opinion, Yale’s pros outweigh its cons, and it’s definitely on my list of colleges I’m going to reach for.
I really wish that I’d had more time to check out these colleges. So many places, so little time. I swear, Yale’s tour/info session was the best out of all of them. The students in charge of the tour and the information session completely sold Yale to all the prospective students attending.
I still don’t know. Where do I see myself? What do I see that would have me fit in on a college campus? I’m still looking to see if there’s a proper comic book store at each school …
Lately all anyone has been talking about is prom, and even if you’re not going then you’re still talking about it. (Who should go together? Who is going together? Who is wearing what? What’s it going to be like?) And honestly, that’s very acceptable! I mean, once you’re able to go, who wouldn’t get excited?
On the other hand, Spring Fling is right around the corner (this Saturday at the Levis Center), and it seems pathetic that I have barely heard a mention of it (except of course during track practice when Student Council member Linda Ly was trying to pursuade us all to go). Personally, I wouldn’t mind going except for the fact that it’s on Easter weekend and my family goes out of town.
I remember last year how Spring Fling was this big deal, and since it was up there as one of the bigger dances of the year, girls were talking about it a week or so in advance. I remember thinking I wasn’t going to be able to go, and I almost freaked out! But this year when my mom asked me if I needed to stay in town for the dance I had told her that “Eh … it’s OK.”
Yes, yes, we all know that this no-grinding policy isn’t very favorable; it lends itself to a good flowchart. With the no-grinding there has been a cutback on “grinding-type” music. Then a few people don’t want to go to the dances, although some still do. Then, since they aren’t allowed to leave without parental consent, they figure it’s not worth going. Therefore their friends stop going, and eventually the dance floors become completely empty (or, well, you get the idea).
Everyone’s been talking about setting up their own activities instead of going to Spring Fling, but the freshman class has been doing its best to still make the dance sound appealing. Linda Ly informed me that there would be really nice sponsors there such as Ito Sensei, Ms. Lucken, and Sam Smith, and they got a new DJ who is promising music outside the range of ’70s reject tracks.
I’ve also heard some students talking about starting a “grinding protest.” Apparently word is spreading among students that during a certain song or at a certain time the dance floor is to bust-out into hardcore group grinding.
When I heard about this, students explained to me that they feel comfortable with the plan considering it’s the last dance of the year (“And so what? We won’t be allowed at the next dance? Big deal! There isn’t another dance!”), and if they get thrown out, then they’ll have the opportunity to leave and get hot chocolate at Starbucks. (Better keep your ears open for the when and where!)
I think it sounds kind of interesting, and if I had the chance now I think I would probably go. Ticket prices are lowered anyway, and with the money lost from the Coke machine and the lack of people going to our dances, I think Uni deserves a little extra contribution (if anything, think of it more as a donation). Besides, it’s the last “regular” school dance of the year (excluding prom for the upperclassmen), and you might as well stop by to add to your memories of the ‘06-‘07 year.
I think the whole honesty thing at Uni is just totally blown out of proportions. Yes, there have been incidents with Chipotle and the vending machines, but hey, this is still a high school.
Just because we are at Uni doesn’t mean that everyone here is a responsible, mature person. At any high school, you will find some certain individuals that might do something they should not be doing. That is just the way it is.
In fact, we probably are a lot better than a normal high school. Uno: We leave our lockers open every day! I have my iPod in my locker and it still hasn’t been stolen. Good luck trying to do that at a different high school. Dos: We lend our fellow students just about everything you can name and we expect to get it back.
My point is that when something like the vending machine incident happens, we don’t need to freak out about it. I hope you realize that there are people like that anywhere. And here at Uni, there is less of a chance of something like that happening.
Everyone needs to calm down and realize that your locker is still wide open.
After this week’s vending machine incident I began thinking, how truly honest are Uni students?
It’s nothing new to most of us that leaving food in an open locker means you probably will find some of it gone when you come back for it later, but it seems that more people have been complaining of having their food taken than in the past. And taking things from the vending machine is just as bad, if not worse.
And it’s not just food that’s taken. I’ve heard people say that their wallets have been stolen which, in some cases, contain quite a bit of money.
Are Uni students just not able to tell that taking things from other people is wrong? I don’t mind if people borrow my textbooks once in a while, but I definitely would like them back.
Perhaps we just don’t really think of it as stealing. After all, most people have borrowed money sometime or another and on some occasions, perhaps, forgotten to pay them back.
But there are some people who seem to take advantage of their friends (or their friends’ short-term memories) and “forget” to pay them back. Hopefully their conscience doesn’t feel at ease when they do this. But still, they ought to feel sorry. Honestly.
I had the misfortune to read my mail a week or so ago, as I received my prom invitation. While the invitation being in the shape of a star and a moon was an interesting touch, it couldn’t keep me from turning green at the implications of that piece of postage.
It’s not that I’m not looking forward to prom, because I am. Seriously. The part I’m not looking forward to is having to find a date.
Yes, I realize that Andrea already wrote a blog entry similar to this. But what she doesn’t seem to get is that girls have it much easier than us quiet, not extremely outgoing guys. While they can take their sweet time and wait for a date, we actually have to go out and get one.
When I think about it, finding a date really shouldn’t have been much of a problem. I could have built up a list of possible people I could ask so that at worst I would be going with a friend I could have a good time with. Instead, I put it off until now, when I’ve had to rush and try to think of who I’m going to ask, and then actually go through with asking them.
That in and of itself really isn’t that big of a deal, since I don’t fear rejection that much. The only problem is that I don’t want to feel like a complete idiot if the person I ask says no.
If anybody has an idea as to how to lessen the “idiot factor,” as I like to call it, please tell me. I may need it.
An independent woman would not need a date to prom. I consider myself a very independent woman. My mom, on the other hand, does not.
Let’s recall Monday’s scenario.
“Mom, I have to go prom shopping this weekend.”
“Oh yeah? Do you have a date?”
“No.”
“Well, we’re not going shopping until you have a date. You can’t go to prom until you get a date.”
“What?!?”
“We’re not spending a lot of money on clothes if no one is going to look at them.”
“Fine then!”
“So you’ll get a date?”
“YES! By this Friday. Gosh.”
“Good.”
Today is Thursday. In fact, it is almost Thursay night, and I still don’t have a date to prom. What am I going to do? Will I not be able to get a dress, will I not be able to get my hair done, will I not be able to go to prom?
Why is going single to prom such a faux-pas? Sure, in the end, my mother would let me go to prom. However, if I didn’t have a date, I don’t think I would want to go to prom. Sorry, but standing alone in the middle of the dance floor, or by the punch bowl, doesn’t sound like a super great time.
Which brings me to the question: Is this really the age of empowered women if we still have such old traditions as prom?
If you think about it, prom is seriously outdated. Not only do women have to spend money on the dress, the accessories, the hair, and the nails, we have to go with a date.
Furthermore, girls are supposed to wait like wall-flowers for guys to decide to ask them. Prom is a male-dominated tradition. The guy calls all the shots.
But, dateless guys don’t have it much better than dateless girls. Going single to prom is a big no-no. At least girls, as a last resort, go with their dateless girlfriends. Guys can’t go with another guy without the fear of being called gay. As a guy friend said to me, “It’s just not customary for a guy to go with another guy. They just don’t do it.”
So here’s a shoutout to all the dateless people out there. Go get a dress and rent a tux. And most importantly, show up on the dance floor single, confident, and ready to shake that booty. Prom doesn’t have to be such a traditional event.
My birthday is May 22 and I’ll be turning 16 this year (although I hardly look my age).
I already have my permit, so after some more time and practice I’ll be able to get my driver’s license.
Driving might seem like a big step for some people, but I’m not looking too much towards it. Yea, I can finally go places without my parents and I’ll finally have a little freedom, but I’ll also have a lot more responsibility, and there isn’t even a guarantee of getting a car in the first place.
I’m definitely not getting my own car — anywhere I’ve ever needed to go, my parents have been always willing to take me. I’ll have to use one of the two cars at home, which I won’t get most of the time since both my parents have to work.
Besides, even if I do get a car over a weekend, I’ll have to memorize roads and streets, which is a major pain, especially since my memory is terrible.
In the end, I’m still looking forward to driving, but it’s not that high on my prioirity list. I’d much rather get more sleep.
My brother and sister are currently working on this really cool science project. They work to build an insulating device using boxes, tin foil, and cotton wads. Then, they place a Coke can in their insulator and test their work by pouring 100 ml of hot water into the can and timing how long the water stayed at a high temperature.
Watching my brother and sister sitting in their rooms, happily working on this project, made me realize how much I miss doing similar, fun, educational activities. Whatever happened to designing protection for an egg and then dropping the egg from a height to see if your plan worked?
These kinds of science projects and experiments strengthen reasoning skills, force students through a process of hypothesizing and experimenting, and most importantly, are fun.
Just because I am a high school student, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to have fun. Sometimes, I too want to take scissors, glue, aluminum foil, and mirrors to simulate solar power. Sometimes, I too want to design a mousetrap.
Instead, I get mountains of homework that wear me out and don’t engage me. I write papers that I BS my way through, and I cram for tests but don’t remember anything the next day.
A fun classroom activity, science lab, or exciting project don’t seem like radical alternatives.
I understand that with our busy schedules it would be difficult to put a lot of time into a construction-based project. But an occasional break from the monotony of school would be awesome.
I got done running fitness today about half an hour ago. Despite the cold and the speed workout, though, I stumbled into the locker room feeling pretty content (as opposed to miserably gasping for air as I do on bad days). And why?
Because the music on the radio today happened to be exceptionally good music to run to.
Notice, first, that I added the very important phrase to run to at the end of that sentence. Some of the songs I would normally get bored with very quickly, but when they boom out of the speakers placed strategically around the track, my feet fall into an easier rhythm.
Other songs I just happen to like in general — “Baby Got Back,” for example. “Samantha (Nguyen), they’re playing our song!!!!” I shrieked when it started to play. And it was even better because that song happens to go on for ages; I could just listen to the music and forget about the pain of running.
Perhaps this is why a large fraction of my PE class (the freshman class … yes, I know) brings an iPod every time we have to run fitness. If you have an iPod, you don’t have to be at the whim of the radio station that you’re listening to. Still, I think it’s fun to listen to the music actually come out of the speakers. And knowing me, I’d probably drop my iPod and then step on it, all within five seconds.
I know there have been countless blog entries written about the erratic behavior of Champaign-Urbana weather, but I feel that today’s regional forecast merits another discourse about global warming and the inhospitable temperature of this school.
Yesterday the temperature was a gorgeous 81 degrees Fahrenheit, and the result was a pleasant day filled with the expectation that the cold winter days of blizzards and snowstorms were finally behind us. For those of us who so wishfully hoped this to be true we could not have more wrong. When we stepped out of our cars today our faces were blasted with a 13 degree wind chill and no sun in sight.
We then foolishly proceeded to believe that we would be able to find refuge from the frosty temperatures within the confines of a building such as Uni High, but we were greatly decieved. The University of Illinois mistakenly (like the rest of us) anticipated warm weather and sunny skies for the rest of the semester and as a result decided to begin its transition from heating to cooling this week.
As a result, children spent the day huddling in the lounge for warmth and skating through ice-covered hallways.
Uni’s hard enough as it is, and the situation is only worsened when our brains are frozen because the school is the same temperature as the outside air.
Some time last year, I took the Preparatory SAT (or, more accurately, Preparatory-Preparatory SAT). It was, after all, “early” (read as “before noon”) in the morning, so I was bound to make a few major mistakes on the answer booklet. Namely, I wrote down my e-mail and mailing addresses.
Later, I could only look back helpessly on that foolish act. Nothing happened at first — the trickle of mail into either of my in-boxes failed to experience a notable increase. I naively thought that nothing would come of it, and for whatever reason, when I took a second standardized test (the “PLAN” or something terribly clever like that) I once again scribbled down some contact information.
How many movies and TV shows have you seen when danger seems imminent, but it doesn’t present itself until someone says, “Well, I guess there’s nothing to worry about”? I now have firsthand experience in that particular situation.
At first, it was just a few easily overlooked exciting offers from the Colorado School of Mines and a few snail-mailed items that I probably thought were for my college-bound brother, but before I knew it the wave came crashing down on me.
I would receive two or three form letters from colleges in my e-mail every morning, and a few more colorful packets in my real mail each week. I deleted and discarded them for a while, but eventually decided to start holding onto them, a bit curious just how many I would end up with by the time I actually shipped out to college.
I keep my physical mail in a now-precarious pile on my shelf, and all my college spam is filtered into a convenient folder on my Gmail account. Here’s what I’ve got so far, dating back to the end of January (click to enlarge):
A three-layer-thick collection of impersonal:
For the sake of analysis, I viewed a few letters side-by-side (click to enlarge):
My e-mails are all pretty much the same as well. They’ll begin with some inspiring quote, offer me some amazing guide to the college selection process, and if I don’t respond, I receive increasingly desperate subject headings:
Is —— right for you? > You might want to look into ——. > I haven’t received a reply from you. > You can still claim your copy of ——. > Really, it’s free, just order one. > COME ON, we printed 10,000 of these things! Just CLICK THE #$%!#@ LINK! > etc.
When I start looking for a college, I’m not going to care about which ones took the time to stick my name on a mass-mailing list. And if you’re going to be impersonal and pushy, be impersonal and pushy without wasting tons and tons of resources. Just think of how many trees died so I could learn about the one-of-a-kind experiences awating me at 1,000 different colleges who all send me more-or-less identical crap.
Lots of things have changed since subbie year, and that’s obvious; it even seems like a gigantic leap just going from subbie to freshman year. Everybody seems to have grown a foot or two, our clothing preferences have changed, voices have changed and so have friends.
The other day I had the opportunity of watching skits that were performed by my class during our subbie year. Every year subbies have to write and perform plays, and as a final project Ms. Ridenhour videotapes the performances. It was so amusing to watch little Malcolm Taylor, now a huge track and cross-country star, dashing and rolling across stage and shooting our beloved ex-classmate Nate Kim (who happened to have gotten shot more than five times and still managed to live).
More than half the shows were murder mysteries, and we all seemed so scared of rehearsing in front of everyone. Now, though, there are very few of my classmates who would shy away from the spotlight, and it would be more likely to see someone overexaggerating their role and jumping around thrashing their arms for the pure entertainment of their crowd.
Some people I didn’t even recognize, and some plays (that had made sense at the time) became confusing and random. For example, one play was recorded as a game show. But then randomly at the end it turned out that the host of the TV show was a killer and killed everyone.
In one skit you could hear a loud thump and the next thing you saw was a shot of a girl lying on the floor; something like tripping was just so humiliating! But now it would be seen more as a form of entertainment, and everyone would join in a pleasant laugh instead of gasping and blushing.
This video of all our plays, though, made me reflect on our subbie year in general. Now subbies have access to the elevator whenever they want, but during my subbie year it seemed like the biggest deal to be able to get a ride on the elevator. Often times I don’t even bother to wait for the elevator any more, but during subbie year if the elevator was unlocked it was worth a five-minute wait to catch it.
Also, Bevande wasn’t open at Siebel, and instead of ever going out to get lunch there was a staircase crew. The staircase crew included whoever felt like sitting together on the stairwell connecting the drama room and third floor, and gossiping and eating their packed lunch. During basketball practices in Uni gym girls wore their tiny running shorts (unless they were forced to wear their jersey shorts, in which case they would roll them up a little), and we were actually allowed to grind at dances!
I remember walking into my first Uni dance and being totally astonished. Of course I had been to some of my middle school’s dances, but I had to admit that not that many people would dance (except a couple of the scary eighth graders), and we most definitely didn’t have a little box thing to stand on.
Most people in our class didn’t dance, and instead stood on the sidelines talking, joining in during the occasional slow dance. Winter formal also seemed like the biggest deal ever; it was practically the equivalent of prom! But the majority of the girls in our class showed up with black halter dresses of some variation or another.
We also seemed to have a different group of friends; one group of friends was referred to as “Jehannie,” and then there was the “JS Crew” for everyone with the initials J.S. (which, we found out from cutting edge, was quite a few people).
During my moment of reflection on my subbie year I found some pictures, too. There were people sharing chairs and giggling who I now doubt would ever be seen having a conversation. There were people who appeared to be attached at the hip who I had forgotten had even talked to one another!
During subbie year I was so sure that I had the most homework that could possibly be handed out, but looking back on it I would have math homework every day and the occasional English or science homework … and that was it. In fact, cutting edge seemed like a big deal (Writing a 10-page paper in one semester? Insane!) whereas now there are 20-page papers being assigned due within a matter of weeks.
Overall it’s just fun to see how much we have all “matured” and changed — for better or for worse! It seems as though it’s changed so much just from when I was a subbie (and I’m only a sophomore now), just imagine how different Uni was when the now-seniors were subbies! Whoah!
As much as I enjoy the Internet, and as much information as is available, there is one real annoying problem. Finding old pages.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog entry on Bill Nye the Science Guy, and how I had recently rediscovered him in a video on CNN.com discussing global warming. I had the intention of posting a link to the article that included the video. I even had the exact link to it in my “sent” folder after sending the page to a friend. However, when I went back to check the link I found a disturbing message saying that the page had either been removed from the site, or moved to a different URL.
In the same blog entry I mentioned a video I saw of Bill Nye talking about Pluto being demoted to a dwarf planet. I found this video on YouTube two or three weeks before my blog post, so I went back to YouTube and searched for it using the exact same words as before. To my distress, the video was nowhere to be found.
It is somewhat unusual for stories to disappear from news sites, but YouTube videos are another story. Even when the video isn’t breaking some sort of copyright law, users sometimes take them down randomly for no apparent reason. For this reason I am always hesitant about posting YouTube links.
Aside from deleted YouTube videos and vanishing news stories, in general it is very difficult to find Web pages made in the ’90s.
While the Internet continues to have more and more information added to it, it is also losing older information. It is digital. There is no hard copy of it. So at times, you lose information forever for one reason or another.
Doesn’t it just suck to be a kid? Not only does it suck to be a kid, it sucks to be a teenager. On the one hand you get more freedom, which is cool. I’m not complaining about having my own car, or being able to go out alone at night — that stuff is way cool. I’m just complaining about the whole transition from kid to adult.
The road to adulthood is fraught with potholes and obstacles:
Hormones. These little guys can get you in a lot of trouble. We’re at an age where we don’t have a place to do what we want to do, but we still really, REALLY want to do it. Girls have it better, but for the guys: Cold showers help.
Our more assertive personalities. Once again, we have our own views of what we want to do and when we want to do it, but those adults in our lives still want to force us into doing what they think is best for us. Unfortunately, the adults have the leg up, since they have all the money and pay for all the things we need. Most of the time parents want what’s best for us, but no parent is perfect, and sometimes we know better about what we need than they do.
School. Once again, as Uni seniors can attest to, most teenagers get tired of being treated like an elementary student somewhere around sophomore year (at least for me, some of you might have been early bloomers — another pitfall of being a teenager). By the time we are seniors, most of us start to chafe under the rule of our teachers and administrators.
The biggest change of all. I’m talking about college. This is a huge change for most of us. Many Uni students will be going to a place they have never lived before, away from their support systems, all alone for the first time. For some of us this coming freedom is welcome, for all of us it’s scary. College anxiety (I think) is the worst part of being a teenager.
I have to say, I’m frustrated and scared, mostly scared. Hopefully the adults in our lives will realize that and be more gentle with us during our teenage years.
With the summer-like weather last week, all the girls on campus broke out into shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops. While I was walking by the Quad enjoying the warm sunshine, I noticed a group of preppy, sorority-like girls wearing miniskirts and sporting an orange-ish, mud-brown, and what looked to me, fake, tan.
The color of their skin was far from attractive. It wasn’t the I-just-went-to-Cancun-over-spring-break tan, it was more like the I’ll-pretend-I-went-to-Cancun tan. Unlike the healthy, glowing color that one gets from being out in the sun, their tans looked fake, superficial, and to put it bluntly, disgusting.
Personally, I have never really understood why so many people are interested in fake tanning. The concept of lying inside a blue luminescent tanning bed seems quite frightening to me. Plus, all that UV, no matter what the salon boasts, cannot be good for one’s skin.
When I was about 12 years old, I was up late one night watching a program on MTV about tanning. The show was about a bride-to-be who tanned consecutively for a week before her wedding. On her wedding day, the groom said that an odor similar to rotten meat was emanating from her. Just as she was about to step onto the pew, she died. Doctors later found out that the reason for her death was because all her intestines had become cooked from the tanning beds.
For some reason, I was scared to go to sleep that night. Even though I wasn’t watching “Unsolved Mysteries” or some scary movie, that MTV show really freaked me out. The thought of cooked internal organs posed a morbid image in my mind.
Not only is “fake bake” bad for one’s health, it also looks really bad most of the time. Unless it’s from some really expensive salon, it’s usually not hard to distinguish a fake tan from the real thing.
So you really want a tan? The solution seems simple. Just slather on some sunscreen, whip out those sunglasses, and lie down in your backyard on a sunny day. There’s no need for the fake stuff. And if it’s during the winter, well, there’s nothing wrong with being a little pale. It’s a lot more natural than walking around looking like you’ve been burnt in an oven.
Last Friday, there was a coupon in The Daily Illini for a free Vault, which according to its slogan, “Drinks like a soda, kicks like an energy drink.”
So during the time between the end of school and the girls soccer game, six of us went to Follett’s to redeem our drinks. Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly free, since we had to pay 2 cents per bottle for tax, but it was still a great deal as we saved more than a dollar a piece. It was such a fascinating experience that I kept the receipt.
But why would Coca-Cola give away thousands of free drinks? And not just to anyone, but college students, most of whom would probably jump at the chance for anything free.
The big business we know as advertisement is probably the main reason (though we can never be exactly sure). According to TNS Media Intelligence, the U.S. alone spent $144.32 billion in the advertisement industry in 2005, and in a report conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, $385 billion was spent by the world in the same year.
Is this money well spent? Well, it probably depends on your definition on well spent. It usually doesn’t save lives or anything big like that, but it sure promotes spending and fuels at least some part of the economy.
I personally don’t thnk that’s the best way to spend all that money. Let’s say we use it to buy $40,000 houses for the homeless, even though you could probably use less. Spending $144.32 billion would buy you more than 3.6 million houses. An item earlier this year in CBS News stated that there were roughly 744,000 homeless people in the U.S. in 2005. Those people could easily be given homes, and the lives of several others would be improved drastically.
Advertisement is everywhere in our lives today. Nearly all types of media contain ads, be it paper or online, audio or visual. And it’s working too. People everywhere are being drawn to buying products that they often don’t need or shouldn’t have only because they found some commercial on the TV particularly amusing. Advertisement most likely will last for many more years to come, if not forever. And it’s going to be bigger than it’s ever been.
Perhaps one of the worst kept secrets in gaming history, Microsoft announced the development of the Xbox 360 Elite, which Gamespot expects to be released on April 29 (people discovered this six months prior).
The Elite features a black color modeled after the original Xbox, 120gb hard drive, and HDTV quality 1080p — equivalent to a PS3. Also, Microsoft says that they have corrected some of the faults within the Xbox 360 in the Elite edition.
The Elite will cost roughly $480. People who already own a 360 will be able to buy the 120gb drive for $180. If they wish to get the Elite, a cable will be provided for data transfer.
In terms of price, the new Xbox 360 Elite will still be $20 less than the $500 20gb PS3. However, it will not be may not be fair to compare the core of the PS3 to a 120gb Xbox 360 when the PS3 20gb is virtually useless for gaming without other accessories.
The Wii shouldn’t be compared — it’s in its own competition. The Wii is now the only console that does not feature HD quality, so in terms of power, the Wii is out.
I’m looking forward to the release of the Xbox 360 Elite. I’ve wanted to get a 360 for months and now is a perfect opportunity to get the latest model. Although the PS3 would only be a little more expensive, the Xbox 360 seems to be leading in E3 with games like “Gears of War” and “Rainbow 6: Vegas.” Also, Xbox Live is much better than the online play for the PS3. Even though you have to pay something around $15 a month, you definitely get what you pay for.
What if you’re taking an exam and come across a non-multiple-choice question that you just can’t answer? Instead of leaving it blank, you’d probably take a guess and hope for at least partial credit.
Nice try.
Or, if you didn’t care about your grade at all, you could be “creative.”
Now, there’s basically no way of telling whether or not these were actual responses to actual test questions graded by actual teachers, but they’re pretty funny nevertheless. You’ve probably come across at least some of these before — they’ve all been circulating around the Internets for quite a while. Take this one, for instance, which I’ve heard has already been shown in Physics class:
What if you can’t think of a creative way to answer the question, though? Simple: create your own question.
“Oh dear” is right:
I wonder if the students who answered the above questions are the same people who are working on Google’s TiSP project.
Above artists: Hilario Lopez (top), Nicholas Bryson.
Above, clockwise from top left: “Marvin,” “Miles,” “Bob,” and “Ray” all by Christopher A. Garner I.
Above: acrylics by Alex Garcia.
Above: Patrons enjoy coffee and art at Kopi.
Above: Watercolors adorn the walls of Aroma Café.
Above: “Light’s Descent” by Shoshannah Bauer.
In short, this Six Flags trip was truly awesome — everyone in our class should’ve come, not just half the class. The waiting in line for rides, however, wasn’t all that exciting, especially when it’s hot out (as it was for most of the day today). If there’s one tip I can offer for future Six Flags visitors, it’s this: Get a “Flash Pass” to bypass long lines at certain rides. Unless you want to spend literally half your day at the park waiting in a queue with essentially nothing to do, a Flash Pass is definitely worth it.
Perhaps one of the worst kept secrets in gaming history, Microsoft announced the development of the Xbox 360 Elite, which Gamespot expects to be released on April 29 (people discovered this six months prior). 
