This I Believe

I believe in driving without directions. Last Thanksgiving, my best friend and I took a 45-minute ride to Taco Bell, only to discover that it was unfortunately closed for the holiday. We were in a highly developed industrial area, so I assumed that there must have been another one open somewhere. Three Taco Bells later, still none were open. We had another two hours to kill before our 10:30 movie began, so, we played a game called “Pick a Highway” which involved making a random last-minute decision every time the road split or an exit appeared in front of us. We still made it to our movie in perfect time. It was the most fun I’ve ever had on a holiday.
I have never in my life been lost while driving, nor have I ever been anxious over the thought of getting lost. I’ve taken roads that I’ve never even heard of, just because they seemed like the right way to go. But not once have I ever had to stop and ask for directions, nor pay the $2.99 for a 24-hour application of my Verizon Navigator GPS. Just this weekend, I went on a 4-hour long trip very far away from familiar roads. The person I brought with me, while preparing to leave their house, asked “Did you get the directions?” to which I replied “No. I’ll figure it out.” And this was entirely true. I had not gone to Mapquest and typed in my starting and ending points only to receive thirty steps of directions to blindly follow. I feel much more confident knowing that I’m reaching my destination on my own by trusting what I think is right, rather than obeying the (R) and (L) symbols and exit numbers spit out at me by internet directions, which, by the way, are often wrong.
If I happen to make a wrong turn or get off at the wrong exit, to me, this isn’t called “getting lost,” and it’s not a time to get nervous and ask someone to tell me where I am. I call this “exploring” or “going on an adventure,” and for me, it’s a time to see new things and learn alternate routes, for the next time I happen to find myself there. Sometimes I do this voluntarily. I purposely get lost… just for fun. I always end up in a familiar place, no matter how far away from home I venture. A few nights ago, I intentionally got myself lost in Bayonne, New Jersey after a long, horribly frustrating day. I made turns, went down one way streets, and got on and off of highways until I truly did not know where I was. Then I drove, and in less than an hour, using the glowing New York City skyline as my guide, I was in a perfectly familiar place, happily heading home, all my frustration lost on the roads behind me.
It has been said before that all roads lead to Rome. Well, that’s not true, because Rome is on a different continent. But all roads do lead to somewhere, even if they take us on routes we never knew existed. And just like the decisions we make in life, they are all interconnected somehow, no matter how far apart they may be. There is always a way to get back on the way to where we wanted to go, no matter how big of a mistake we may have made to get there. Even during the times where we feel lost and confused, if we just keep going and trust that we will soon figure it out, we will always end up somewhere that we want to be.

A Modest Proposal

It is an unfortunate situation to those who observe me trying to write a proposal on a topic about which I am clueless when they see me stressing myself out, calculating how much my marking period grade is going to drop for a bad grade on this assignment, and contemplating just not doing the assignment altogether. I, instead of being able to put forth my best effort, am feeling forced to just write the first thing that comes to mind in order to get it done so I can go to bed and not make myself sick from lack of sleep. For when I do this, I fall farther behind in school assignments due to involuntary absences, or feel less likely to improve my work the next time around, or become disappointed with myself for allowing my mental stress to cause physical illness.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this elevated level of stress for the sake of a number on a returned sheet of paper or on a final report card at the end of the school year is not a very good way to spend one’s final few months before entering the world of college, law school, and eventually a career, which is certain to be even more stressful than high school work in an AP class. If anyone could come up with a solution for this miserable situation, they would deserve my full and loyal appreciation, and I would owe them a great deal of reward.

But my intention is very far from being confined to only provide for those of us struggling to write modest proposals when we are not famous satirists, but in fact only teenagers in high school. It is of a much greater extent and my proposal is designed to alleviate this issue from all AP students who would certainly appreciate a little room to breathe, especially in the very few crucial weeks before AP exams begin.

As to my own part, having contemplated for many days about this important topic and put great effort into doing this assignment the right way as other students felt was the best way to go about this, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their logic when suggesting that I should put even more of my time and energy into this one assignment to do it flawlessly.

I am assured by the letters sent out by prestigious colleges that the amount of work a student does in a class over the course of the year is no indication of whether or not they are fit to attend the university. When the valedictorian of our high school, who has likely never missed a single assignment or done one below their full potential, is rejected from a college despite massive amounts of hard work, it is obvious that these lengthy, difficult assignments must be eliminated.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a slacking student of my acquaintance that a strategy of just blowing off all assignments altogether and receiving perfect scores on tests is plenty sufficient to keep a passing grade in all classes and does not interfere with one’s ability to get an astounding 2100 on the SAT. I make no doubt that this individual will one day be highly respected in their career and receive large salaries one day.

I do therefore humbly offer it to consideration that of the hundreds or possibly thousands of assignments that I have diligently completed during my high school career as an AP student, one single assignment may be reserved to complete it in an utterly ridiculous manner, where the structure and idea is correct, but the content of the assignment is more than likely not what the teacher was expecting to read in this proposal, and the reason for this is, considering there are only 36 days left of high school (in which I have not yet ceased to work incredibly hard) and I have far more things to be concerned with than this one single assignment, the method which I have chosen to complete this assignment is perfectly acceptable.

I have reckoned that an assignment such as this one will earn me no lower than a C+, and if I can still manage to structure it well and meet all the criteria, the grade on it may increase to a B+.

I believe that the amount of energy and stress I am sparing myself by choosing to write this ridiculous proposal is very proper, considering I am still putting in my time to complete it and I just cannot bring myself to consciously skip an entire assignment, despite frustrations and feelings of inferiority to others that have already completed it and done it the way we were probably supposed to.

I have already computed the amount of extra stress I would be placing upon myself if I sat here all night and tried to come up with a legitimate idea for a modest proposal that is exactly what is expected of me to be approximately 3-4 extra hours of lost sleep, printing, stapling, and blog posting included. Thus, by saving myself this time and allowing my body and brain to rest before returning to school tomorrow, I will be far more able to clear my head and work up to my full potential for the final thirty-six days of my high school career.

Although up to this point in my writing I have attempted to follow the structure of Swift as closely as possible, the original Modest Proposal contains an entire single-spaced page of words that I wish not to read again, and I certainly do not have the mental capacity to write my own long paragraphs such as these. Therefore, I shall continue with my subject. For first, it greatly reduces the amount of stress that I already experience on a daily basis due to AP language, two other honors classes, my job outside of school [which is seasonal, and right now happens to be our absolute busiest time of the year], and preparation for graduation and college. It is proven that stress causes irritability (leading to a decrease in the amount of people that wish to associate with me), tendency to fall asleep in class, physical illness, and early death, and I do not wish to experience any of these anymore than I have to.

Second, I will now have some time of my own to do something that I have wanted to do uninterruptedly for several weeks: sleep.

Third, whereas my best friend of thirteen years is sitting at her dining room table, diligently working while also driving herself mad over AP Euro, I lounge here on her couch with my laptop computer spewing out this silly proposal just so I can feel confident in the fact that I completed it. She is currently getting sick, and I am not.

Fourth, besides the guilty conscience that I am avoiding by not choosing this alternative method of completion for this assignment, I am not subjecting another individual to the time commitment of writing two modest proposals: one for themselves to hand in and one to sell to me for my own use.

Fifth, this proposal may bring comic relief or a self-esteem boost to those who need it. While others may feel like criticizing their own work on their proposals for fear that it is not their best, their opinion will soon change if they read mine, and they will think to themselves, “Wow, mine isn’t as horrible as I thought it was when I wrote it.” The friend mentioned in the third item of my list of benefits of this proposal is already laughing at me, and it is making her feel better.

Many other advantages might be enumerated, but it would defeat the purpose of this entire proposal of mine if I continued to write despite the fact that my eyes are soon going to require tape in order to remain open long enough for me to drive home. After looking at the clock for the first time in quite a while, it just occurred to me that I have been working on this for almost exactly two and a half hours, not including the time two days ago when I first attempted to brainstorm ideas for this assignment.

Of course there are other solutions to this problem besides the one I have just presented. Some of these include: not doing the assignment altogether, forcing myself to focus harder and write a legitimate proposal, searching the internet for one written by someone else and “borrowing” it, or perhaps skipping school Friday and Monday and pretending to have no internet access (hoping that during this time, I would wake up at three in the morning with a sudden genius idea and ability to write intelligently about it).

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least ulterior motive in endeavoring to make this necessary proposal. I have no other intention besides protecting my own mental and physical health. I do not wish to impose guilt on the person who may have assigned this modest proposal to my AP language class, nor do I wish to brag to my best friend who is still working on writing her second paragraph while I am now finished with my assignment and free to go home and go to sleep for nine full hours.

1984 vs. Brave New World

Although both Orwell and Huxley have presented us with visions of the future that seemed completely far-fetched and fictional during the time they were written, the two visions placed society at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as the "downfall" of humankind. Orwell envisioned us in a world where we are miserable, oppressed, and controlled by an external force, but contrarily, Huxley envisioned us in a world where there is no such thing as misery because there is no such thing as an ability to form complex emotions or thoughts. As for today's world which has come to be heavily controlled by the media and technology, one would likely assume that this degree of control is an Orwellian perspective; however, Postman is accurate in claiming that Huxley's view of the future has proven to be more accurate in our society.

Postman makes a point that is relevant to our society when he claims that "What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one." When one considers the influence of the internet on our society today, and how that influence is steadily becoming heavier, the idea of no one ever wanting (or needing) to read a book seems plausible. When we need information for a paper on, for example, elephants, does the first step consist of going to the library and looking through the "E" volume of an encyclopedia, or does it consist of going to Wikipedia.org and typing in "elephants" in the search box? We have come to a point where, if we can't find the answer to something by typing it into Google, then we won't be able to find it anywhere, ever. This point is reinforced when Postman states that "Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism." This is exactly what has been created with the widely available internet with an infinite amount of available information. We can use the internet as a tool to do anything we could possibly want to do. We can cheat on our school assignments by typing homework questions into Yahoo! Answers, create a new identity for ourselves by hiding behind a blog screenname, steal someone else's identity by discovering a simple six character password, and express things about ourselves on Myspace and Facebook that we wouldn't dare express in person. These are freedoms that humans couldn't have dreamed of having before the internet became available to the public as a universal communication tool. On the other hand, in Orwell's world view, we would be so oppressed that such mass communication and widely available information would never be allowed for the general population, but only to the ubiquitous Big Brother.

It has been argued for decades that the culture of America (and perhaps even the world as a whole) is dissolving as time progresses. Our "culture" in America currently consists of reality shows starring celebrities whose millions of dollars from decades past went to waste on drugs and prostitutes, Weight Watchers and McDonald's alike for the overweight population that is simply too busy to cook a healthy meal or take a walk around the block for some exercise, and sex coming from absolutely everywhere. According to Postman, "Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy..." It has become literally impossible to go one day in America without seeing or hearing of sex on TV, on the internet, in the hallways of middle (and perhaps now even elementary?) schools, in songs on the radio, or even in the books we are required to read for English class. I can recall VERY few books that I've read in high school that never once mentioned sex, if any at all. It is literally impossible to watch even the news on TV without hearing something about sex or seeing a suggestive commercial. If our world was really becoming the Oceania that Orwell predicted, we would be completely opposite of what we are today as far as the presence of sex in society, as we would not be permitted to have even the slightest exposure to sexual subject matter. We must now be concerned about whether or not our twelve and thirteen year old children are being provided with proper sex education. Teen pregnancy and STD infection rates are exponentially higher now than they were sixty years ago when premarital sex and promiscuity were virtually unacceptable. Surely many people who read Brave New World were shocked like I was when reading the part about the "erotic play" on the playground among six year old children, but with thirteen and fourteen year old parents becoming less and less unheard of in today's society, it appears that we are definitely approaching something along the lines of Huxley's vision for the future.

I feel like being angry today

At the moment I am rather stressed out, not just about AP language, but about a lot of other things too... so please excuse the potentially angry nature of this post. I just need a quick break from synthesis prompts and other homework. I'm currently sitting here in a store with a smell equivalent to that of sticking my head in the YMCA pool's chlorinator (which actually exploded all over my dad one time while he was working on it and made his black sweatshirt a dalmatian print sweatshirt, true story). Also, I am out of pretzels, someone drank all the PLAIN WATER in the fridge in the back, leaving only sugary lemonade for me to drink. I hate sugary beverages! Why am I doing this rant on my AP language blog? I have a personal blog for this nonsense... and there I can say bad words if I want to. Hooray.

All finished. Hopefully by third period tomorrow I will be in a significantly better mood. Unless of course we have a snow day... then I will be very happy to wake up at an appallingly early hour just to look outside and go back to sleep.

School Issue Argument

High school students today often lead busier lives than the adults in their families. For seniors, the stress may be even greater since they must use this year as their last year in preparation to enter the adult world of college or the work force. Although HPRHS requires all students to remain in school for nine periods per day, seniors are only required to take two of these nine classes to graduate. One hundred thirty five credits are required for graduation, and for students who spend their first three years with a full schedule of classes, far more than the required number of credits can be earned with a senior schedule of nine periods per day. Many seniors in this position begin to sign up for “filler classes” (lower-level electives with minimal work that are rarely required by colleges) and as many study halls as they are permitted, simply because they must fill a nine-period-per-day schedule. This time could be put to much better use as students would have more time available to do things such as homework, working to help save money for college (or prepare for a career if the student chooses this over college), or even enrolling in a few classes at community college. Although it is necessary to have some degree of challenge and to require some degree of work ethic for high school students, it would be beneficial to allow seniors who have accumulated a sufficient number of credits for graduation to leave school after the periods during which they are enrolled in required classes for graduation.


Not all students choose to take “easy” electives and study halls in their senior year, and many who are applying to competitive colleges must engage in a rigorous program of study during their high school years in order to meet college requirements. These students would absolutely have the option to remain in school for a full day. Prospective college students should be given the right to decide which courses they need to take to gain admission to their desired school and which courses seem to be nothing more then a waste of time for them. However, not every student plans on going to a competitive admission college, and some choose not to go to college at all. It is unfair to require these seniors to sit in a class in which they have no interest if it is not a required course for graduation. Students who spent their entire high school career putting in minimal effort in an attempt to just pass their courses are not going to benefit from being required to take nine classes their senior year any more than they benefited from it in previous years.


Concerning elective courses, students at HPRHS are required to take one year each of a course in fine arts, practical arts, and technology. Many underclassmen sign up for these courses in order to complete them early, and they are often placed in an alternate class due to class size restrictions or scheduling conflicts. If the seniors with no real interest in these courses were removed from the classes, it would create more free space for underclassmen who desire to get these requirements fulfilled as early as possible. It is not fair to give a student with no interest in a class priority over a student with interest in the class simply because they are a senior who is being made to fill up their schedule.


Some would argue that allowing seniors to leave school early would not guarantee that they would use the time to do something productive. However, even now that seniors are required to remain in school for a full day, some of them still choose to go home at the end of the day and not do their homework, not participate in after school activities, etc. Nothing would change by allowing them to leave early besides the fact that they would sit home rather than sit in school for a few more hours. Seniors who are underage would be required to have parental consent for them to end their day early, and those who are eighteen or older are considered legally responsible for their own decisions. The minimum age of compulsory school attendance in New Jersey is sixteen. Eighteen year old students who decide that they do not want to be in school all day can simply choose to terminate their education, but allowing them to leave early after attending their required classes would give them the opportunity to still obtain a diploma. Many of these seniors would be more willing to attend school if it was only for a few periods a day, which is a much more beneficial option than dropping out simply because they do not wish to sit in school all day.


Although it is arguable that requiring seniors to remain in school for a full day is in the best interest of the students, it is clear that not every student has the same aspirations and educational needs, and permitting students to leave school early and decide what to do with their time after school can be more beneficial for some than forcing them to sit in classes that they only scheduled because they needed to schedule something to fill up their day. The Board of Education has already set educational standards and requirements for students to graduate high school and receive a diploma. None of these standards would be violated if students still were required to take their required four-year classes, complete their community service requirement, comply with the attendance policy, etc. Since it does not deny seniors who wish to maintain a rigorous course of study the right to remain in school for a full day, but instead simply gives them another option, no students are negatively affected if given the choice to leave school early.

German Folktales

This is the topic on which I am going to write my blog... when I feel better and can actually sit here to write it.


=(


All right, (Why isn't "alright" grammatically correct? I hate the way "all right" looks, but I hate improper grammar even more than I hate "all right," so I suppose I must deal with it. *sigh*) this is my perspective on the effects of German folktales on young children. When I went to Germany in December of last year, my dad and I spent a lot of time on sidewalks, in restaurants, in markets, etc. I got to observe the differences between American public behavior and German public behavior. Now in America, imagine you're walking through a mall and you see a mother and a small child pass by an ice cream store. The kid wants ice cream. The mother says no. What do you think happens? Of course, the kid throws a fit. How do many parents of young children in America threaten their children into good behavior, especially in December during holiday season? Of course, they tell the child that Santa will be bringing them coal instead of presents. Now during one of my walks through a little "Christmas market" in Berlin, I observed something very interesting. I saw a mother and a little girl walk past a stand that was selling chocolate fudge. The little girl asked her mother for some fudge, and her mother said no. Now this is the part that amazed me: the child simply walked away and didn't say a word about it. No temper tantrum, no crying, no violence, no nothing. This continued all week. I passed by many little kids, and not ONE of them was misbehaving. After recently studying German folktales, I've come to a conclusion as to why this is.


One of the legends in the German culture is of a character named Schwarze Peter ("Black Peter"). In America, we have Santa Claus, who comes for both the good children and the bad children, except he brings coal to the bad ones as punishment instead of presents. Well in Germany, kids are not just threatened into being good with the idea that they'll get coal for Christmas. Instead, Schwarze Peter will come to their house, put a sack over their head (yes, he carries one just like Santa), suffocate them, and cut their hands off. Now this is only one version of the story... I'm sure other people have heard ones that aren't nearly as graphic as that one, but when I have kids, that's the one they're going to hear.

American kids get away with a lot of bad behaviors because the only real threat they face is not getting presents for Christmas (which, of course their parents never stick to anyway). It's the same punishment for any transgression, such as not eating one's dinner, thumb sucking, playing with matches when told not to, not playing mean pranks on adults, etc. In Germany, these things come with far worse consequences, and children are taught these consequences at a very young age... as soon as they are able to understand fairy tales. I am a senior in high school (one who doesn't mind the sight of blood or guts or brains falling out of the skull or decapitations or anything of that nature), and some of the German fairy tales I've read are gruesome enough to make me a little uneasy. There's one that I read about a little boy who refused to eat his soup. He started to become skinny, and after about five days he weighed less than two ounces (yes, specifically in the story, less than two ounces), and the story in this picture book ends with the boy dying of starvation accompanied by a picture of a gravestone with a soup bowl on top of it. And the little girl who played with matches while her parents weren't home? She caught on fire and ended up as a pile of ashes with shoes (pictures of the entire burning process are included in the story). The kid who wouldn't stop sucking his thumbs? A tailor came to his house and cut them off and made blood get all over the floor. The two boys who put a bag full of junebugs in their Uncle Fritz's bed and cut holes in the bags of grain at the flour mill? They got poured into the grinder at the mill, got ground up into little pieces, and the pieces got eaten by ducks.


When I have children, they will be the most perfectly well behaved children in the world. I'm going to teach them every one of these fairy tales.


I have a theory about "Hansel and Gretel" and its effect on world events, but that's a story for another day.

O'Brien Response

Although his experience in the Vietnam War certainly changed his life and will always remain unforgettable, Tim O’Brien is right in saying that the essence of a person remains the same no matter what they go through in life. Ultimately, the only thing that changes is a person’s own perception, not the person themselves. Even if a person has an experience that truly changes nearly everything about them, such as O’Brien and his experience in Vietnam, that change only applies from that point forward. Since one cannot change his or her past, they essentially remain the same person forever, with their life events and perceptions being the things that do change.
Despite the fact that I have never gone through something nearly as extreme as O’Brien did in fighting the Vietnam War, even I can say that I have always been the same person, despite how different my perspectives have become over the past several years. Before I entered high school, my outlook on the world as well as my personality were completely different from what they are today. I believed that there was nothing I could ever do that could be considered wrong, and nothing in life was to be taken too seriously. I knew this was not just something that young teenagers feel as a result of being that age, because the people I looked up to for this reason were well into adulthood, and they too had the same attitude as I did. I believed at that point that all consequences were short-lived, and nothing would ever present me with a difficulty as far as moving on from it. However, around the time I began high school, I made some decisions that I still think about to this day, and I still question why I made them and even whether or not I regret them now. The events of the previous three years could not have been more different from what I had expected prior to that, but even today I do not feel I am any different as a person. Knowledge gained from experience does not equal permanent change from one person to another new person.
Because one will always remember how they used to be, they will, in essence, never change completely. Even though their feelings about a vital situation may have been even the opposite of how they feel about it looking back on it, this is simply a change in perspective, not a change in person. For example, before O’Brien left to go to war, he saw himself as a coward “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war” (61). But even decades later as he tells the story, he still remembers that this is exactly how he felt at that point in his life. After all that had happened between the time he left and went to war and the time he wrote The Things They Carried, he obviously does not feel the exact same way about life as he does now, but the important thing is that he does realize that these are the things that made up his life, and he still, forty-three years later, feels they are important enough to tell now. A person is not simply made up of what they are now, but rather they are made up collectively of everything they have ever been, no matter how different the past is from the present.