leave it to teens

Teenagers today can be monsters. It's well known an outrageous number of teens are teased on a daily basis. It's tradgic that the common teasing has led to serious school shootings. So, why is it that a few of the thousands of teasing cases lead to shootings? The answer is all in the is just behind a closet door. The most offensive word you can call a teenage male is gay. Basically, the word takes away their masculinity. Everything that defines them as a guy is destroyed when someone throws the word fag in their face. All of the boys from these school shootings heard those names on a daily basis. Yes, it is horrible that they each had to live like this, but those people who teased the boys were not the ones who pulled the trigger on a room full of classmates.

At Stevenson, I don't think we have a huge problem with teasing. I know it happens, but at Stevenson, there fear isn't hanging over your head to prevent you from stopping the teasing. In other words, there is no "popular crowd". Almost everyone has their own group they fit into and if your friend is having some trouble being bullied, you have no problem standing up for them. I feel because Stevenson is like this, its easier to come to school without the fear of a classmate snapping.

the Man

Ever since we were little, we were told to listen to the teacher, do your homework, and stay away from the "bad kids". Little did we know those bad kids could actually end up having the potential to be more successful than those who have done what they were told. When we read the article about Beavis and Barbie in class today, I agreed whole heartedly what it was saying. It happens all the time that a Beavis in class has the ability to slack off, not do his/her homework, not listen to the teacher, but still be able to pull off as good as a grade that the model student Barbie recieves. Sometimes, kids just have the ability to not do their homework that is ment to be practice and still succeed because they can pick the material up faster than others. I don't think they should essentially be punished for this, but then again I do think its unfair that a hard working, obedient student should get a lower grade than someone who may be a disturbance to the class.

Why is nothing so .. awkward? I attempted the nothing assignment while I was at Lifetime. I thought there would be no better place to do nothing at the place you go to to do something. I stood by the stairs and really concentrated on letting myself go. It was really funny and somewhat uncomfortable to find that just about everyone seemed to notice me. In a room full of people running as fast as they can, lifting to much weight, and stretching until they cry, everyone noticed the one girl who was just standing. Not going to lie though, I would have done the same thing. We rarely see people simply standing because its the best way to draw attention to yourself. It's like walking down the hallway. Someone can bump your shoulder but it doesn't annoy you half as much as it does when someone is just standing directly in your path.

This was one of the easiest and hardest assignments I have been given in my entire high school career. How is it that standing and shutting the rest of the world out such an abnormal action?

coupons anyone?

The American Values reading we did earlier this week related to my family so well it was ridiculous especially when it came to the part about the grocery store. When my mom takes her weekly grocery shopping trips, the first thing she makes sure she has is her coupon binder. Thats right, binder. She has this little accordian folder that she has sectioned off into categories for each group of her coupons. Rather than paying attention to how much she spent on her trips, I think my mom looks at how much she saved from her coupons. There have been times she brought home food my family doesn't eat, but it was such a a bargain she couldn't pass it up. It sometimes makes me wonder exactly if coupons are benefitting us. The coupons say we're saving money, but when we're buying two to get one free or buying something solely because its 50% off what it was two days ago, aren't we defeating the purpose of holding onto our money?

My second cousin came in from Denmark a couple of months ago to stay with my family. On Sunday when the dozens of adds came with the newspaper stuffed with coupons, she laughed. My mom looked at her while she was cutting some out and asked her what happened. She told us she was sorry but she had heard of the ridiculous shopping tactics Americans had but didn't believe they were true until she saw how many coupons we had laying out on our table. I still didn't realize after she had said that that Americans had such a distorted view on spending money than the rest of the world. After discussing all of this in class, it got me thinking about whether or not our country would learn to spend money wisely especially since we're having such economical problems. I think its far fetched to say we will get better.

Culture Shock

Learning new things about other cultures is always very interesting, however, experiencing them first hand can be very unexpected. When I took a trip on a cruise with my family, we made a stop in Dominica. Dominica is a very unmodernized island. I remember coming off of the ship and having no clue what my family and I were going to do to entertain ourselves. It was like no other place I had been at before, especially on a vacation. We found a tour guide who took us in a large van around the island. First off, the van was not totally enclosed which is awesome for a tour on an island, but not when the driver of that van is cruising around at a nice speed of 60mph on a very curvey road overlooking a very steep moutain. As i feared for my life, the tour guide reached into his glove compartment, pulled out a few beer bottles, and offered those of us taking the tour. My dad politely told him no thank you and asked what Dominica's laws were regarding alcohol and driving. The driver told us the cops never really enforced driving under the influence laws. I really did not understand at the time how the police could allow people to drink as they drive around especially on such dangerous roads. Now that I think about it though, how many policemen could the small island have? Surely it can't like America where there is a cop car around what seems every corner waiting to catch its next speed victim. Maybe the few policemen this small island had were preoccupied with more serious offences than DUI's. Anyway as we were nearing the end of our very interesting tour, we passed a few men carrying either a machette or a machine gun. Now, in America you do not see someone walking around with such a weapon unless they're up to no good. In Dominica, however, these men were part of the island's small army. The men walk from one place to another everyday with their weapons.
We left the island of Dominica in one piece with a very different outlook of the world. I had never seen a place with so little modernization. Our tour guide had told us it was a very rare thing for people from Dominica to leave, meaning if you were born there, you stayed there for the rest of your life. Basically the culture that he was accustomed to had been the same from the beginning of Dominica. I think it was very cool to see such an untouched culture because normally when you vacation, the location has been totally influenced by tourism. I hope that tourism to the island remains minimal so it can keep as much of its ancestory as possible.

Bronx Story

I really liked this movie. I think the way C was molded from a young age from all the different groups wrapped up this unit well. The thing I think was the most interesting was the way the different ethnicities "stuck to their own kind". The way, like Sal pointed out in class, the neighborhoods were separated like country borders that were difficult to pass when you were not welcome. All of this reminded me of the movie Freedom Writers. Like C and his family of Italians, the teens in Freedom Writers were bound by their ethnicity. In Freedom Writers, there was no question you always stuck to your own kind. It created alot of gang violence, just as it had in Bronx Story. I think in each story the characters had the habit of having close ties with their own kind because of tradition and habit. They were taught as infants that they had to always protect their own. All of the focus on their own ethnicity created a strong sense of prejudice thereby creating gangs that would attack eachother as soon as they felt threatened. I think C did not have the same sense of strong prejudice as his friends did because of the way his father and Sunny brought him up. Sunny had encouraged him to follow his heart with Jane, and Lorenzo had always been friendly with all ethnicities that came onto his bus. Overall the movie was an awesome way to see what we have discussed in class on film.

Overboard

So i was not one of the people in the boat on boat day. I am kind of glad because I got to watch each person's reaction to the decisions everyone was trying to make. Each of the people who had been kicked off the boat I thought to myself I would have booted them off as well. It got me thinking, though, what is it that made me think the exact same as the 16 people who were in the boat? Why did we choose to save certain people and discard others with the same reasons? This is not an exercise that we would learn to deal with in school but somehow we all had the same strategy of making decisions. It became clear after we discussed in class how different groups subconciously make the same choices because it is the norm for the group. Each and everyone of us in the class is connected by at least one group, if not many more. I wonder if the data would differ from city to city or state to state. Or better yet, is it more than just our community that is causing the parallel thoughts that we experienced?

I had cheerleading practice today for the first time this week. My teammates and I had never been more excited to see one another even though we had just spent two full days together and pass eachother in the halls at school. It opened my eyes to how much we thrive off of our little group. Its so much more than just a team because it feels like a community from the degree we depend on eachother. From what we discussed today and how everyone in the class seemed to relate to their respective groups, I think each group a person belongs to is more like a family than a culster they happen to belong to.