The crisp, cool air swirls around me, catching my hair playfully. Red, yellow, brown leaves crunch beneath my cozy boots. My teeth crunch into a juicy apple. School is just getting started and everything is still neatly organized. Cool-weather clothes line my closet once again, thin sweaters and jeans.
Romeo and Juliet
I don’t really believe in love at first sight. After all, how could you know anything about a person’s character from just looking at them? The first time Romeo and Juliet meet, the attraction is most likely simply physical. Romeo says in line 48 of act 1 scene 5, “Beauty too rich for use, for Earth too dear.” However, by the time Romeo is banished, Juliet states in lines 84-88 of act 4 scene 1, “Or bid me go into a new-made grave and hide me with a dead man in his tomb- Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble- And I will do it without fear or doubt, to live an unstained life to my sweet love.” Why would she say this if she were not truly in love? Why would they both end up killing themselves if they were not truly in love?
Parent Grades
I think that teachers grading parents is a very interesting idea. I believe it is true that parents are a very important part of children getting a good education. It has been stated many times that children develop habits by what they see their parents doing. If parents are responsible about their children’s education, the child will develop responsible habits for later in life when they have to be disciplined about their studies, and then farther into the future when they have children of their own. However, the students need to eventually become more independent, so the parent grades should stop after elementary school. Parent grades could also help to identify homes where a bad situation needs to be addressed. If a parent constantly gets ‘unsatisfactory’, there might be a problem in the student’s home.
Digital School
I definitely think a completely digital school could be a reality for future students. However, I don’t think it would agree with the learning styles of many kids. I know this because I actually tried a virtual school (K12 Online School) for two months in 7th grade. I thought at the time I started that it would be a great way for me to learn at my own pace and be able to do a lot of activities outside of school with all my free time. The reality was that without the presence of a teacher to motivate me, I got lazy and started pushing back all the hard assignments and only doing the easy ones. There was no competition with other students and nobody to make me feel guilty about not turning in work. I think the social element of school is a very necessary one for a lot of people, even if, like me, they don’t realize it at first. I think we would waste a lot of potentially great minds by converting to virtual school.
Rhetoric Argument
Did you know that two-thirds of eighth graders do not read at a proficient level? What about the fact that 47% of high school students who took the ACT in 2009 did not reach the ACT College Readiness for the reading section of the test? These are some scary statistics considering that reading is such a huge part of most adults’ every day lives. High proficiency in literacy can change the course of a person’s life. For example, only 4% of adults with strong literacy skills live in poverty. So why study film in high school if it is so obvious that our country is falling behind in literature? As a high schooler, I see technology used all around me in the forms of tv, video games, and texting. It is always frustrating to try having a conversation with someone who is distracted by a screen. In fact, 8- to 18-year-olds spend an average of 7 hours and 11 minutes using screen media per day! Our country would be much better off if we concentrated on more important ways of spending our time, choosing to study literature over film as we have chosen in the past.
College Plans
One of the most important factors for me when picking a college will be to make sure it has a great reputation for the arts. I have been considering schools like SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design). However these are pretty expensive, and I want to be careful about the amount of money I have to spend. I was thinking about possibly going to a community college for two years when I am still taking more broad classes and transferring over when I start taking classes more specific to my interests. I would prefer to attend a college closer to my parents and brother, but I would probably sacrifice that for a better school.
Under Appreciated Movies
In my opinion, movies based on classic novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, aren’t noticed or appreciated as much as they should be. Watching movies based on the past is a good way to educate ourselves in history, while also enjoying a storyline with interesting characters. The book by Jane Austen is written in older, difficult language, and her story is often dismissed as too hard to understand or not worth the time it takes to read. However, movies do most of the work for you. Even if you don’t understand exactly what the characters are saying 100% of the time, the actors tell the story with their expressions and reactions, as well as their words. Check out Pride and Prejudice and you might find it much more lively and interesting than you ever expected.
Reading
I definitely feel involved when reading. If the story is described in lots of detail and is easy to picture, I easily feel like I am there. However, some stories require imagination to see what is going on, which requires the reader to actively work for the story they are getting. For example, Ender’s game isn’t the most descriptive of books and only tells what the reader needs to know to understand the story. Sometimes, if I need help really getting into the book, I pick a character and become them, saying all their lines in my head and sort of acting out their part.
Violence in Media and Society
I believe that violence came before media was even in existence, but then violent media contributed to what was happening in society. There was violence between humans about food or shelter before there was ever newspaper or tv to reflect what was happening. However, think of school shootings that have been going on lately. The people who view that on the news get so used to seeing that that some think it’s ok and go on to try it for themselves. Also, a lot of humans are trusting media more and more and a lot of the information they are getting isn’t even true, or is biased. This can lead to misinformed and violent decisions. Violence and society are definitely building on each other to increase violence in our everyday lives
Technology
After reading Philip Dick’s idea about technology, I thought of how dependent we have become on it. Most of our generation would have no idea how to write a research paper withought the help of Google, while our parents had to physically go to the library and spend a large portion of time actually searching for the materials they needed before beginning to write. They were also limited in the information in that particular library. We now have such a huge amout of information at our fingertips, accessable by as little effort as the click of a few buttons. This is good for some reasons, but harmful for others. For example, a benefit of technology is what we were talking about today in class: because books can now be and have been stored on thousands of devices, such as computers, phones, and iPods, it is virtually impossible to burn books. However, I think the cons outweigh the pros. One con is that a lot of people trust everything they find on the Internet even though nobody checks most sites for validity. The scariest thing about technology for me is the lack of effort required to do things. It seems like our society is getting more and more lazy with each Apple device that comes out. The movie Wall-e displays this idea in a shocking way. Even though it’s a kids’ movie, it has an eerily close estimate of the future in my eyes. In Wall-e, the people are so dependent upon technology that they are too lazy to walk, or even take the energy to chew their food. We need to make sure we are in charge of our technology, not that technology is in charge of us.
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