Remember Your Favorite Song

While watching SNL (Saturday Night Live for those of you who have been living in a cave for a good portion of your life,) I heard the song “Eet,” by Regina Spektor, and though it was not the best song I have ever heard, it really spoke to me. I was sitting on my couch, waiting for the next hilarious comedy skit, when I heard the lyrics “…It’s like forgetting the words to your favorite song. You can’t believe it. You were always singing along. It was so easy and the words so sweet. You can’t remember. You try to feel the beat…”

I had never heard of this woman’s singing, and was not paying much attention. But it was those lyrics that meant so much to me. It was so easy for me to get the meaning from those few verses. It was like I thought the same things as her… I just hadn’t been listening to the right song to fully understand what I was trying to tell myself.

We all loose our way some times. As Ms. Spektor puts it, it’s like forgetting the words to your favorite song. You can’t believe it and you don’t even know how you got to the unfortunate place that you are in. It might not even be that a horrible thing has happened to you. You may have just lost sight of what is important to you, and what you are living for. There’s always going to be a time when we don’t even know what we’re doing. I have definitely had moments like that when the only thought running through my head is, “what the hell am I doing here?” Excuse my language… I am just trying to give you the full effect of being so lost, and the feeling of loneliness. That is the feeling that her lyrics are describing. Sometimes you just totally forget what you are here for.

Also, when you forget the lyrics to your favorite song, it’s like you’ve lost something much, much more than just a song. I don’t know why this is, but our favorite songs are such a comfort to us! Forgetting the lyrics to it? What else do you have if you don’t even have the comfort of your favorite song? Sometimes, I just get so out of it, I won’t be active, I do the minimum homework, watch T.V., stay up late, and am pretty much a blob. Sometimes I would even zone out when people were talking to me. I’m one of those people who has to stay active, or else I’m not happy. Being happy is so important.

And along with Ms. Spektor’s song being sad, she also used a simile that could be inspirational. Although you forgot the lyrics to your favorite song, or lost your way, you can always listen to the song again, and in no time you’ll be singing along again! Of course, getting your life back together isn’t as easy as remembering the lyrics to your song again, you can do it. We all have things that just… well, simply make us happy. Enjoy those things! They can ultimately make a big impact on your life!

Link to lyrics for "Eet"

Link to song on youtube

Help YOURSELF!

As I read the article, Rigor Redefined, by Tony Wagner, I actually started to understand what my English teacher has been trying to tell me this whole time. I thought that when she was explaining that we have to learn how to think for ourselves and ask good questions, that I knew what she meant. I didn’t fully understand, though… until now. I think the fact that this article explained those things with examples helped a lot.
Tony Wagner did observations in classrooms. To sum it up, most of the kids didn’t seem too concerned about their learning. A group of three boys in a science lab class did an experiment, along with their classmates. Their concoction started to smoke. When asked by Wagner what they thought went wrong, they just shrugged, and said, “I dunno.” they waited for their teachers’ assistance. They were waiting to be rescued.
As a high- schooler, I know that tests really count toward your grade, even if you get 100% on all of your other assignments. But, how can we get good grades on tests if we don’t know where we went wrong. I believe we must know what went wrong, because that’s what matters! I know that it sounds obvious, but you must understand, that unless if you question what went wrong, and don’t just correct your work, that you will never truly understand.
You cannot just correct your tests. Make sure you know what you did wrong. I am shocked to realize, that right now, I sound like a teacher! “Make sure that if you don’t understand, get help!” We hear that phrase over and over again, don’t we? I am disappointed in myself to realize that I don’t very often do that. If I correct my tests, usually just leave them untouched, and never look back on them. If I started to correct, and go over them, then I would probably understand it more. Even if it’s the end of that unit, and we aren’t coming back to it, there’s still finals! I would probably fail that section of my final if I didn’t understand it the last time we studied it. I could probably cut my studying time in half if I asked good questions. Because, really, if your questions are answered, you will accept the answer better than just reading it from a textbook, or hearing it indirectly from a teacher.
Also, if you are a teacher reading this blog, thank you, at least someone out there is reading it! Also, the main point is we learn better if we have to think to get the answer. It helps if you answer our question with a question… but a helpful question, of course! One such as, “Have you considered…” or, “why do you think that?” or, “What does your partner think?” We pay more attention to the answer that way, instead of stashing it away in our notes that, lets face it, will probably never be looked at again.
So, as hard as it is sometimes to get up my nerves to ask a question that may seem obvious to the whole class, it will ultimately probably end up getting me a better grade than them.

Hope Saves a Doomed Village

I read the CNN article, Malawian Boy Uses Wind to Power Hope, Electrify Village, written by Faith Karimi. It triggered a very powerful emotion. Hope. As you’ve noticed, if you’ve read my previous blogs, is that I usually do CNN articles about other countries. This is no different. But, I hope you’ve noticed that, though they all are different stories, they have the same concept. Those countries are dangerous, but these articles that I report on all have inspiration in them. All of these amazing people rise above discouragement, and never gave up. This article was about a 14- year- old boy, named William Kamkwamba who lived in an African village filled with poverty. There was a HUGE drought, so his father, who is a farmer, could not make money to support his family. William was soon kicked out of school, because he could not pay the amount to continue schooling. He said he thought to himself one day, “If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too.”

Since he wasn’t going to school, he had a lot of free time on his hands. A book about windmills caught his eye. He decided to try to make a windmill. He used parts found at the dump, such as pipes, old bike parts, tractor fans, and car batteries. When people asked him what he was doing, he told them of his plan. They did not accept this idea. So, after time, he just said that he was playing with the car parts. That seemed more reasonable to them. He never gave up, though he had his fair share of doubts. He now has built five windmills! One (the tallest,) standing at 37 feet. No one thinks anything relatively close to him being crazy now. William’s sister says, “All of us, even my mother, thought that he had gone mad.”

I don’t have a story nearly as miraculous as Williams, but hearing his story kind of reminded me of backpacking. I had never done it before, and had NO experience in that area, but my friend and I decided to do it instead of just standard camp. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Especially with not much support coming from either of our families. Pretty much, what they were saying was, “good luck with that!” I think backpacking, along with being VERY tough, was the BEST experience of my life. I now LOVE to backpack, and I do it every year. We should all try new things, even when everyone, even ourselves, are doubtful. It might pay off in the end!

Whose Choice is it?

I read the article in the New York Times, Support Appears to Drop in Abortion Rights, by Laurie Goodstein. I know, that as teenagers, we like our opinions out in the open. We like our intent and our reasons to be clear, and more than anything, it seems that we want people to agree with us.
Last year when the election was taking place, a lot of arguing was going on. I think that is because we are teenagers, our hormones get the best of us, and we just can’t seem to accept the fact that not everyone will accept our opinions. When the debate was going on, I was very convinced that I was a democrat. While I still do believe I am a democrat, I take into consideration all of the policies our presidents have. I am WAY more careful than other students about what I say! I didn’t realize until last year how heated those arguments get from people who don’t even vote yet! While I like to air my opinions, I don’t like to get into arguments with people I see every day. I think we like to hear that other people (usually the ones who are for the same party) like to hear what we have to say. I have re- written this paragraph about three times already, trying to figure out what I should say. Should I go into why I like Obama? Why I don’t like McCain? I decided against it. After all, how much do I know about either of them? I got to know a lot about their policies last year… I am glad to say that I got VERY involved in the election last year. Back to the main topic! See what I mean? It’s so hard to stay on one factor when it has to do with politics! Anyways, I am a pro- abortionist. If that’s even a word… What I want to know, is why people only semi- agree with abortion. Why is it ONLY if the mother is in danger, or if she was raped? What about us teenagers? We all make stupid mistakes, and I doubt that it would be a wise choice, even if we think we are in love and going to spend the rest of our lives with someone, to have a baby at this age. Shouldn’t we have the right to NOT have the baby? I know, we can give it to a firehouse or hospital, or adoption, but who wants to go through being a pregnant teenager? I’m not talking about physically, though that is something to take into consideration, but I’m talking about the stares we get, or not having people look at our face when they talk to us, but our stomachs. I’m not saying I wouldn’t keep it, but would I stay at Arapahoe? With all my friends? I read the Littleton Newspaper, and it interviewed a girl who went to Arapahoe, got pregnant, and was practically kicked out. I’m sure that Arapahoe wouldn’t forcefully remove her, but that they would “strongly urge her” to go to a school for “girls like her.” Is Arapahoe accepting girls who are pregnant? And what about the guy? He can just waltz around, like he did nothing wrong, but the girl has the evidence everywhere/ anywhere she goes… Where’s the justice? I believe that a girl has a right to an abortion, but I VERY STRONGLY believe that she has a right to show up at school, just as much as anyone else.

Peace Brought on By Father

I read the article, Teen Athlete Fled Taliban Stronghold to Pursue Dream. I found that this article, summed up into a few words is: motivating. Inspiring. Emotion- filled. And most of all, Heartfelt. It is about a girl, named Maria Toor Pakay, who is 18. She lived in a small village in South Waziristan. There, suicide attacks are just their way of life, and it happens all the time. So, as you can imagine, it’s very dangerous there. They “punish girls who attend school- let alone play sports.” I can’t even imagine living in a place where bombs are going off- and definitely not being able to go to school, or play sports. “They have no future,” she says. She was not like most of the girls. She had a buzz cut, and played with the boys. “If someone argued with me, I used to beat them up,” she said. Her father knew from a very early age that Maria was different. Someone special. “I didn’t want her talent to go to waste. If I would’ve kept her in the village, all she could do was housekeeping.” In the game of Squash, players hit a ball to the front wall of a court, until one misses. This barely ever happened to Maria. She is an excellent player. Wazir, her father, packed up the family’s bags, and headed off to Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province. Here, Maria won the Under 13 Championship, then the Under 15, then the Under 17 Championship! Today, Maria has gone pro, being the 91st ranked in the world! “her fathers sacrifice… made her success possible.” Maria’s father says, “I sacrificed because I want to promote a message of peace. If the tribal people picked up a racquet instead of a gun, there would be peace.” So, this story is not just about a strong, independent young woman who overcame violence and sexism, but it is also about her miraculous father, who helped her achieve her dream.
As I stated before, this article is captivating, and most definitely motivating… but, there is a serious issue at hand. Maria’s father was not a common one, and not many of the other girls’ fathers would do what he did. Even if the other girls was as great as Maria. What we have here is a serious case of sexism, and violence. What do we do about this? I believe that we should try to help as much as possible. But how do we do it? It’s a VERY dangerous place, and I most definitely would NOT feel safe going there, especially as a young girl. Would it even help to go there? It’s more than likely that violence would come out of us going there. We have to make a choice here. Our safety, or the girls of South Waziristan’s safety?

A Well Deserved A?

From my education feed from Google Reader and through Mr. Fisch’s blog, I found Mr. Krause’s blog, The Possibility of More, Part I. I found this blog to be very interesting, though the topic was very predictable; another new teaching style. There’s no surprise there, as Arapahoe is a very good school, and we must have very good teachers. Mr. Krause thought to use the technique to give all of his students an A from the very beginning of the semester. Now, there is where the interest lies. An A? At the very beginning of the semester? Here’s the catch: at the end of the semester, you have to write a final on why you are an A student. After a while of thinking, I thought, “why not?” It seems that as a student, I would get an easy A. That suits me just fine. I don’t have to do any work, just write down my good qualities at the end of the semester. But then, I thought even more, and came up with the conclusion that this blog is disusing a TEACHER’S teaching methods, so I didn’t think that I liked Mr. Krause’s ways of teaching… but, what if the student didn’t do their homework… that would NOT make them an “A worthy” student, would it? No. An A student should do their work, even if they get an A no matter what. And that, I believe, is the whole point. It’s not about the grade, it’s about your ways of learning. The way that you see things, and how far you are willing to go to not only get a good grade, but a good education. Your good qualities don’t matter, in the end, if you don’t have any desire to learn. This is SCHOOL, after all! It all comes back to what our teacher’s are always telling us… YOU control your learning, and how far it takes you. Not a grade. Even if you don’t get a 100% on every assignment, that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve an A. It all comes down to what you personally took away from the experience. So now, Mr. Krause’s Juniors will decide… Do YOU deserve an A?

Technology: a Whole New Meaning

I read the article Text- to- Speech Technology Reaches an Inflection Point, from the New York Times. I know that in Mrs. Comp’s English class, we talk a lot about technology being a good thing, and how it helps makes things simpler and easier. I agree with that. But my opinion is even stronger, now that I’ve read this article. It said that “people with speech- impairing conditions like A.L.S., autism, Down syndrome, and strokes have started to discover that general- purpose devises… can in many cases help them communicate better and more cheaply than the… speech devices covered by Medicare and private health insurance.” Okay, so not only is technology making life easier for handicapped people, but it is making them have less of a struggle with money? That is even more than I expected from all of the technology that is available to us. Why we think i phones are great is totally different from why people who have speech impairments think that they’re great. This gives my definition of technology a whole new meaning. Technology not only makes life easier for writing, blogging, or just listening to music, but it can help with your speech, too. I’m sure that in a few years technology will do things we think are impossible at the moment.

Shift; Make It Happen!

I read Mr. Fisch’s blog, “180 Days?” It made me think about different points of view. As a student here at Arapahoe, my mind is always busy thinking about homework, class work, and, yes, even how much time I have to go to Starbucks… but I never put my teacher’s world into perspective. What do they have to do? I never thought about how they manage their time, or what they have to do to get us where we need to be by the end of the year. Although we already know (as they have repeated it several times) that we control our own learning… not the teachers. We are responsible for how far we make our brains stretch to learn the most. But… is it really us who decides WHAT we learn? In my opinion, no. I suppose we can teach ourselves things, but the teachers decide what we learn, and we decide to what extent we learn it to. Is it a bad thing? No. I don’t believe so. There just isn’t enough time in the year to learn everything we need to. Which brings me back to the main point… how do they decide what we learn? Scientists, and historians learn new things all the time, which always changes up what we learn EVERY YEAR! So, regardless of what ourselves and our teachers think is important, they all have to decide on what we should learn together. A lot of things must be taken off that list. Things we never even thought we should be learning about. But, now that technology is getting more involved in our lives, we HAVE to change up our learning. Some teachers are more resistant to this. They don’t want to change or learning or their teaching style. They don’t think we have “enough time.” But I believe we have to MAKE TIME. Everyone’s life is hectic and busy, but we are the future and we want to do this right. “This,” meaning our learning. As I mentioned earlier, our learning is not just in our hands, but our teachers hands, too. They need to make sure we are learning the most essential things, and I believe we need to shift our learning strategies, because as we know it, technology is becoming more and more essential to get jobs, or to get into college. Like Mr. Fisch has pointed out, shift happens. Not only do we have to let it happen, but we have to MAKE it happen.

Michael Wesch and The New Literacy

I read the article The New Literacy. While I was prepared for the fact that I would not agree with all of the opinions stated in that article, I was surprised that I only agreed with a few of the statements. The professor John Sutherland believes that texting has destroyed the “crafty” essays that used to be written. As I don’t know him, I cannot be sure, but he doesn’t seem like a guy who would text, therefore, how would he know that texting is ruining the way teenagers are thinking, or writing? Andrea Lunsford said that we are writing more than any other generation! Isn’t that a good thing? We are writing all of the time! Whether it’s texting, blogging, or just typing on our laptops, we are writing more than ever. In my opinion, it’s more convenient to text, it’s just easier. I can text/ type longer than I can writing. My hands don’t get as sore, and I get more done in a more reasonable amount of time. I believe we are more conscious about what we write if it’s going somewhere else other than the teacher. We actually express ourselves! We talk about what interests us if we are blogging. No matter if it’s what movies are good, or whatever else they are interested in. WE LIKE PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO US!!!!! We can do that with blogs. We need a reason to write… and blogging IS a reason! People might actually care about what you’re thinking, but you’ll never know if you just hand in your essay to your teacher. Lastly, some professors think that we “text write.” I don’t know about anyone else, but I have never used a texting phrase in my writing, nor do I use them while I’m texting! Maybe other teenagers do, but I have never used the phrases “lol, ttyl, etc.” I don’t know of many kids who do. Every now and then, you might shorten a word, but I don’t think it’s a habit of mine. I also watched Michael Wesch's youtube video. I agree with it very much. It shows many of the infinite possibilities of the internet. It also shows how writing contrasts to texting. They're both just... different. Texting is ... simple. Easy. Nothing is holding us back. The whole system of the internet was designed to help us and simplify everything... and it has! Even though I disagree with some of the things in our article, I learned both opinions. I also wasn't too sure whose side I was on at the beginning, but somewhere within reading that first paragraph, my opinion turned from unsure to perfectly sure about who I agreed with.