Projects

Projects can sometimes be quite annoying. There are the times when you have a kick ass group that everyone participates in, and sometimes you have the group of incompetent kids who don’t do S**t. Now im a very productive kid who likes to get good grades and actually participates in the group. For every project ive ever had, I have always been on of the hardest workers, or the only worker. These past few weeks I got pretty lucky, I got a smart group who all do work and are all pretty smart. But that wasn’t the case for everyone, there was a couple of groups with "single workers", but luckily I got a good one. When I do get a good group we usually end up getting a good grade because we all participate and make our project the best that it can be. But I did have a project for American history where I got stuck with three idiots who don’t do anything and don’t car about anything. That’s the time when projects start to suck, when you have to do ALL the work by yourself. Now I did get an A, because im awesome but other people aren’t so lucky.

Projects can be a big help to some people, and it can bring up your grade a lot. But I have never been in that case. I have always hated projects because they have never really benefited me except for keeping my grade the way it is. Projects are suppose to be opportunities to help you get the grade you want. But all they have been for me is extra work at home where sometimes I have to do the whole thing. Anyway projects do sometimes help people and im sure they will end up benefiting me some way or another, maybe not grade wise, but I know that I was able to learn a lot form the GLIDES project.

Blogging!!!

I never really realized but blogging has really become a part of my life, mostly because it is homework but the only nights that I don’t do it are Friday and Saturday night, which when you think about it is a lot of blogging. It is really not that bad and it is a great way to express my views on really controversial topics. I mean this will probably be the last week that I ever blog, well you never know, but at least for now it will be. But I have really been able to express my thoughts on these blogs and I have gotten a lot of feed back, which lets me know that they are interesting topics, that many people have a lot of different views on. I have been able to introduce some topics that have even intrigued mrs.stoklosa, and when she responds to one of your blogs, that’s when you know it’s a goody.

But honestly this has been a pretty cool experience, which I have learned a lot about others through there blogs, but mine as well. Blogging is a new technology in this world that I think will become extremely popular in the future, to the point where everyone has a blogging page, because it’s a very good way to get your ideas out there for people to see and respond to.

The end of the year

The end of the year is an anxious time for everyone, even teachers. Everyone just wants to get school over with and be in summer where we can all chill and relax. But that does unfortunately mean that many people are starting to slack and especially with AP classes out of the way. I know plenty of kids who had to or more AP’s this year and just don’t care anymore, they barely come to school because they are just fed up with everything. After AP's people usually don’t want to do much work and they feel like it is about the end of the year. But many people are wrong, there are still three weeks left of school and even if we which they didn’t, they do matter. The teachers who teach honors are on that home stretch and are giving us a lot of busy work and a lot of work that is pretty challenging. Some kids decide to slack off because it’s almost summer, but this is a bad time to start slacking off. With that amount of grades we are getting right now, if we fail a couple of assignments it brings our grade down and jeopardizes all the hard work we have done throughout the year. So we all have to get off our lazy butts and do the work.

I personally don’t want to do any work, im so tired of school, and I want summer to be here really bad. But I do understand that school is still very important right now and that if I messed up how hard I worked all year just for the 4th quarter, then that would just simply be stupid. I am trying to stay on task and finishing all my work so I can end the year with good grades. Plus there’s SAT's on June 8th so I have to stay focused and study so I can hopefully pass with a good score. The end of the year is hard and annoying but we have to tough it out.

The impact of technology

Is our reliance on technology too big? I personally think that technology is an amazing thing that has opened so many new doors for us, it has let us travel at incredible speeds, given us the ability to talk to someone across the globe no matter where you are, and it has simply made our lives longer. Technology has done so much for us, and it is getting so advanced that instead of helping us, it is becoming us. I know this sounds a little crazy but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. We are becoming reliant on technology, we are dependent on it now, and we are always in front of the TV, computer, or our cell phones. It has taken over every aspect of our lives, and almost everything we do is using technology.

The fact is that technology might be crippling us, things like twitter could actually be lowering our social skills, and things as simple as an everyday calculator may be taking away our ability to do math without it. Technology is a good thing, but we do need to control it and the way we use it, we can let it become part of us, it’s just not healthy. If we become too reliant on machines, what will we do if they are suddenly taken away, I don’t think that we would all be able to survive in the wild, it would just be impossible. We have lost many of our natural skills because of technology, but we are getting new ones, the people a couple of centuries ago all knew how to hunt, and now we all know how to play video games or use the internet. It’s crazy how much our society is changing because of technology. We shouldn’t take it away because it is an amazing thing, but it is like everything else, too much anything isn’t good.

GLIDES

Ok so as you all know, we recently started this project called glides, which I think is the most challenging thing. Its not that it’s hard to do, but coming up with the content is the hard part. I have recently started to get the hang of this project and I think that me and my group are actually going to do well on this, but I do have a good group. The GLIDES project is based on self teaching and the ability to teach yourself, which in some cases is good because you get to explore anything that you want to, but at the same time it is a challenging thing to do because in some sense you do need to be creative, and it is hard to fully understand what you have to do because there are no guide lines, you just do it yourself. Luckily we do have a little bit of guide lines and a few examples from last year, but it is still something that is challenging to complete. I think that it will help develop certain skills that were not use to using but I still like regular projects better where you are actually assigned something, this is more along the lines of, this is a glides project. Do it.

It also depends on the group that you have. I think I got lucky and got a pretty good group with smart kids who can do the work that they have to do. I think that everyone in my group will do their part in order for us to get a good grade. But for some groups it might be hard because some people are slackers and it is hard to have a good project when no one else is helping or when one of your group members doesn’t do the work. But luckily I have a decent group and I hope that we get a good grade on this project. Even though I don’t like it too much im going to try and get the most out of this complicated project.

SAT

Ok well first of all, to put my opinion out there, I HATE the SAT, I think that it is the most ridiculous thing out there that doesn’t prove anything about anyone. There are plenty of smart people, such as me, who don’t do that well on the sat, while I have a 4.3 core GPA. It just doesn’t make sense for anyone to have their future be determined by a test that you have to take in a little amount of time, and that is a lot more challenging in the reading than in the math, and it’s not just because people are good at math. I don’t see how my future career would make me make choices in a little amount of time like the SAT gives us, while if I do have time, I can get straight A's no problem, so I don’t see why we need a stupid test to "prove" how smart we are, when in fact it just proves that you can take a test well, but in my opinion that is completely bogus.

For example, if I would want to get into Cornell, they only take students who got a 1300 or higher, when I know that I could excel in those classes even though I didn’t get a high score on the SAT because I would have the time to do my work and not squeeze 40 questions plus having to read articles in 30 minutes, its just ridiculous. I know that it could sometimes be beneficial, but in my case it doesn’t help me at all, unless I can get a high score it almost nullifies my GPA and my actual performance in school and real work, just because I didn’t do so well on a stupid test. If I don’t get a high score on the SAT then really good schools won’t even look at me, when in fact I can do good in school but I just can’t take the SAT. Its ridiculous and I think that there should be some other way of judging students, because the SAT in some cases doesn’t prove anything.

Abortion

Now this is an extremely controversial topic that many people don’t agree with, but I would have to say that I am pro abortion. I'm not saying that if you just don’t want a baby and you have the income to support one that you should be so quick to kill a human life, but I believe that there are many cases in where it is undeniably justifiable. I think that it is wrong in every way to kill a human life, but to make one suffer and give it pain by not being able to take care of it or by giving it a crappy life is just plain inhumane. I understand where people think its wrong, its not right to take away a human life, but making a human suffer by one way or another is just unfair and it would’ve been better to just let it be out away when it wasn’t even in existence instead of creating a bad life for yourself and a bad life for it.

The most justifiable case I can probably think of is a pregnant teenager. Teenage pregnancy is a horrible thing that actually doesn’t kill one life if you decide to get an abortion but practically too because not everyone lives like us in Weston, and most teenage pregnancies are with people that cannot support another life, so why make two crappy lives for the mother and child, instead of having an abortion and giving the mother a chance at a normal life. People say that they should just put it up for adoption if they don’t want it, but seriously, if it was my kid I wouldn’t want to be giving it away to a stranger and I wouldn’t want it to know that its own father/mother left them because they couldn’t AFFORD them, I think it would be horrible to find that out when you were about 10 or so. It’s just unfair to both the teenager and child to not have an abortion, in most cases.

There are many more reasons why an abortion would be justifiable, but im not really going to get into all of them. I am personally pro abortion, now I know many people will and will not agree with me, but it is my opinion and I do think I do make some good points when I argue this. Sometimes it is just better to end the existence of a person before they even exist than to birth them and slowly kill them on the outside form one way or another.

Twitter and Facebook

Okay so this has become a major topic in today’s society, these are probably some of the two most important websites for getting information out there for people to see. Some people have made it their lives and are on these websites 24/7 because they are apparently hooked. There are even reports that OBAMA has twitter, how crazy is that? But it might not be such a bad thing.

Honestly I think these websites aren’t as bad as people might their they are, just because people are chatting online and are intertwined in each others lives, does not mean that they will stop social gatherings and actually seeing people, if anything this makes us all more connected and gives us the opportunity to communicate with a range of people, instead of not doing anything, but I don’t think someone would substitute talking on twitter or Facebook instead of actually being with the real person. Now im all for this, these are pretty amazing websites that allow people to communicate and they don’t necessarily allow personal information to be given out if you choose not to do so, so they aren’t really dangerous unless you make them. They are great communication websites, that even our president has, so he can be connected to the public, even though he must have like a billion fans, it’s a good way for him to connect with our society on a different level. These are just the gateway to a higher communication where people can interact more often, but I don’t think it will actually decrease the amount that people see each other in real life.

I have heard that twitter is becoming better than Facebook. To my knowledge I can’t even make that assumption because I don’t have a twitter account, not because I don’t want one but just because I don’t feel like making one and learning how to use it. But I don’t understand how people are choosing one over the other, probably because you can get more information out of a lot more people on twitter, but it seems limited with only a 140 word restriction. But in any case these are still two great websites that help out our society and broaden the range of communication for people all around the globe.