Hobbies

Hobbies - How They Affect Your Life

Hobbies, you might not have one, but I bet you have looked into a few. Whether it is sports, art, DIY, Technology, or gaming hobbies are the thing you are passionate about and do in your free time. If you are lucky, or if you have the right hobby, it could be your profession. One of my hobbies is Soccer, I have loved Soccer since the first time I played it in first grade. I have gone through many stages of learning in Soccer from at school recesses to rec and now club Soccer. All of these stages are beneficial in multiple ways, not just making me better at soccer or a better teammate. Lessons you can learn from things you are passionate about are the best lessons. This is because you learn the most when you are having fun with what you are doing. Many studies by top neurology websites such as Psychology Today have done research on the help of fun while learning. It bypasses a certain part of the brain called the amygdala which decides if the thing they are doing is effective. In a stress-free and fun environment students are able to learn a lot better. This same logic can also be applied to doing what you love. If you are doing your favorite thing in the world you are unlikely to be stressed and likely to have fun, therefore you learn better while doing your hobby. If people spent as much time on their hobbies as other more important things in their life they would likely get very good at it and learn a ton from what they are doing, for instance, if I loved DIY tech I would, in the process, learn a ton about all the tech that I am working with while still having a ton of fun. This has happened to me in my real life, I was looking into building a PC, and while I was doing research on parts I learned a ton about how PCs actually work and about electronics in general. The best part about that was that I still had a ton of fun doing it. Hobbies can also be beneficial to your life in other ways than just learning about your craft. They are a good way of dealing with stress, as mentioned earlier if you are doing something you love you are unlikely to be stressed out about it. Hobbies can also help your patience because you are usually spending a lot of time focusing on one project that you want to get done. Some hobbies such as team sports can help with teamwork (obviously) and communication, both of which are very useful skills that you can use in the rest of your life. In general, hobbies are a great thing that everyone should have, there are no drawbacks (besides cost) and they can equip you with very important skills for the rest of your life. 

The Culture Of Soccer Around the World

Soccer is a sport. It is a very important sport to some communities and even saintly. When I went to Brazil, everything was about soccer. I was even told, "if you don't play soccer, you can't be trusted here in Brazil." Brazil has produced some of the most prolific soccer players. Such as Neymar, Pele, Marcelo, and more. It also has the most decorated National Team. The National team has won 5 World Cups and 4 Confederation Cups.



Brazil is not the only country where soccer thrives. Let's go back to the birthplace of soccer, England. England has a great reputation for their national team and the league (the EPL). If you grow up playing soccer, you would know that England is the place to be. Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, and Chelsea are the top 4 clubs in England's EPL.

There is one more country... Spain. Spain is the host country of the two best teams on the planet at the moment, Real Madrid and Barcelona (by the way, the two teams are also rivals). As of the moment, Messi plays for Barcelona and Ronaldo plays on Real Madrid. Messi and Ronaldo are considered to be the best two soccer players of all time. Many people want to know whose better, Messi or Ronaldo? Well, Jose Mourinho, one of the best coaches of all time, thinks that Ronaldo is better than Messi.

Soccer has changed peoples lives by giving people a way out to have fun and enjoy life.

All in all, soccer is all around the world and many people play it.



Photo Credit:
latimes.com

My Role Model

Being a younger sister is really fun. Many people think otherwise, but I say it is because I have the best role model ever to look up to... my sister, Ashley. Growing up with her is amazing. She always takes care of me, and teaches me all the tricks and skills. She plays with me, watches TV with me, dances with me, eats with me, and laughs with me. She's truly the best big sister ever. Even though she's 8 years older than me, we still have so much in common.

Swimming has always been a big thing for the both of us. Ashley started swimming when she was 4 years old and swam competitively when she 7 years old until she graduated high school. I started swimming when I was 4 years old and have been swimming competitively since I was 6 years old. My sister's best stroke was breaststroke, and when I was little, I wanted to be just like her. Whenever someone asked me what my best stroke was, I would say breaststroke. Later at one meet, I got my first A Time (State Championship cut) in the 50 meter butterfly, and I decided that my best stroke would be fly. I started focusing and training harder in fly, and two years later, I broke my first Oregon State Record in the 50 yard butterfly. To this day, I have broken 9 Oregon State Records. It hasn't always been easy though. I always have to be self disciplined and determined to win, but there is something else that is extremely vital to my success in the water: my family. My dad, mom, and sister are always there in the stands, cheering me on the entire meet. My parents record every single race, and now they're all saved on a computer at home. They are always packing my swim bag, making my snacks, buying the newest fastest tech suits, and driving me everywhere. I can't explain how grateful I am for all of them.

“Sometimes life seems unfair. It always rains the hardest on the people who deserve the sun.” -Unknown
Like most siblings, not everything is easy or fair. Sometimes my sister and I disagree on things which lead to arguments, and sometimes she gets to do things that I can't do yet, and vice versa. Life isn't always fair and doesn't always go your way. In the end, we always get along though. My sister and I are happy together a lot more than we are mad at each other.


My sister graduated from high school in 2015. Before she left for her first year of college, everything went by so quickly. I wasn't ready for her to leave. I felt like I was forlorn because I've never lived without my sister being at home with me every day. The day we said bye to her and left her dorm room, I was only thinking about what to do next. How to live a good life without my sister back at home. It was a rough transition at the beginning, but later I got used to it, and became excited for the days when she would come back home for Thanksgiving, a 5 week winter break, and a long summer vacation. Even though she wasn't physically here with me, she was always with me in spirit. Last year for English class, we had to write a sonnet, and I wrote one about her:

My Awesome Sister

My sister, Ashley, is swell and the best
But she is leaving for New York right now

She’s going to a college, a tough test

I hope she does amazing and says wow

It feels strange seeing only two sweet kins

It is unusual to not see her             

I peek in her room, and see empty bins

I crave to go back to how great things were

My family and I’ll not at all stress

It has been almost three years since she left

We are all celebrating her success

She’s doing well and is still very deft

I know I’ll have to wait another year

But when she graduates, we will all cheer


Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be her for a day. Would life be easier or harder? More fun or more stressful? Occasionally when I don't know what to do next, I ask myself "What would Ashley do?" and I get through hard times just like that. Being a younger sister is a little stressful when being compared to my older sister, but at the end of the day, we both know that we will be on each other's side, love each other, and laugh together, just like we always do. 


Sister's Cheering
Graduates Throwing Caps
Heart

Being An Older Sibling

"Sure, you can talk badly about your younger sibling for hours on end to anyone who will listen, but if they dare to pipe in with their own statement, you'll probably bite their head off." - Insider

I’m older than my sister by 1 year, 336 days and about 3 inches taller, but I’ve been told that we look like twins. Whenever my friends see her, I notice that they always look at her and then at me and you can almost see their minds calculating how close in age we are. I know that my sister certainly looks older than 5th grade but I really don’t think we look like twins. Maybe people just tend to overestimate in age. But it also leads me to the question of do I look younger than a 7th grader? I really don’t think so. I’ve even heard someone say that she looks like a ninth grader, which somehow makes me feel like a lesser human being than her. What makes her look older than me? I’m taller, wiser (in my opinion), and stronger than her but yet the age mistake still manages to occur. But when I see her next to her 5th grade classmates, I start to see the difference and understand why this mistake might be made. People thinking that my younger sister is older than me doesn’t really bother me that much. The only thing is that it deprives me of the “older sibling” title, the privilege and the power of being the elder child.

I think that the "twin" mistake is almost acceptable because 1 year and 336 days isn't that big of an age difference, really. The difference is small enough to make it so it was easy to play with her when we were little, also it means she's old enough to watch The Office with me (actually neither of us are technically "old enough"). It's nice to be this close in age so that we usually side together when we need to overrule our parents. Together, we can almost always convince our parents to get us dessert, or let us stay up later than usual on a school night.

Of course, being an older sibling, I think that the older siblings should be given certain privileges and rights above the younger sibling. That means that I can pull the "I'm older than you" card whenever I want. But I can’t really say which position is better, because I have not experienced being a younger sibling in any way. I think that being and older sibling is pretty nice but it doesn't mean that you kind of have to make the path for your younger sister to follow. I know that my younger sister might not appreciate having a older sibling at all times, but hopefully she appreciates me at least sometimes, because older siblings (sisters at least) are pretty great for many reasons.

Number one; I give my sister all my hand me downs, which she complains about, but then continues to wear all of them. I must say that the fact that she wears a lot of my old clothes probably doesn't help people who think we are twins. Number 2; We share similar tastes in TV, music and pretty much everything so we can geek out together about what we love most. Although, I have to say it is a little bit annoying when she likes everything I like, it's like she's copying me or stealing my identity. So that's a downside to having very similar tastes. But she CAN thank me for showing her everything she loves. Number 3; I gave her advice about dealing with annoying people. Even though she maybe didn't listen to me, I feel like maybe I was helping (and hopefully I was).

Even though she annoys me a lot (especially when she she calls shotgun before me), I still appreciate her, and I sure hope she appreciates me. Older sisters should be valued because even if younger siblings don’t think of us as the best person ever 100% of the time, they do benefit from us. I also benefit from my younger sister in ways I might not see now, but eventually we’ll both see that 1 year and 336 days is not that much of a difference and that we are important to each other.

Sources:

KeepInspiringMe

Insider

Diaries of a Ginger

Ginger, Matchstick, Carrot-top. Nicknames for Red hair. I’ve been called all three of those. I’m a redhead. It’s as simple as that. Pale skin, freckles, blueish green eyes and the famous fiery carrot top.

There are some pros and cons to being a redhead, and that is what I’m gonna be talking about today. I’ll start off with the pros because I want to sound positive today.

Some of my personal favorite pros are; Being able to generate more vitamin D. Studies have shown that Redheads generate more vitamin D than other hair colors. This to me means that I can basically lie in my dark bedroom my whole life while watching Netflix and never have to go outside or take vitamin D supplements. That sounds like a perfect plan to me. That is until I run out of Netflix shows… Anyways, another pro of being a matchstick is as I age and get old, us gingas won’t go grey. Red hair tends to go blonde or a creme blonde as it ages, meaning there is a very low rate of greying. And here is my favorite one, Freckles! I love freckles. They are probably one of my favorite qualities. The thing is, redheads either want to totally get rid of their freckles or they want more! I want more freckles. I recently found out about the new “freckle tattoos” Where tattoo artists are now giving tiny freckle looking tattoos to people who want them. I think when I’m 18, or when my parents let me, I’d go get these. My freckles, really only “pop” Or come out when I’m exposed to more sunlight. Every year, my family goes to Hawaii for winter break. If I compare a picture of me there, vs a picture of me here in Portland, you’d see a difference for sure.

I’m sorry everyone, but it’s time for the cons. Here we go. One of my least favorite ones is the sun. To most redheads, the sun is your enemy. Though yes, I did say I love when my freckles come out in Hawaii, but the stupid sun also gives us gingers a really nice, so elegant and beautiful, bright. red. sunburn. Okay listen, I know what you’re going to say, “Oh, stop complaining, it's’ just a little sunburn. Slap some aloe vera on it and you’ll be fine by tomorrow.” No. Just no. I’ve tried that, trust me. Thanks a lot, fair skin.

Okay, maybe I over exaggerated a little bit but still, it sucks to get sunburnt every summer. Oh and by summer, I mean in the middle of April. Yes, you heard me. I get sunburns in April. Alright, let’s move on before I continue ranting about this. Next, my “Fiery Temper”. Okay yes, I do kind of like having a temper, but still, that temper just lights the carrot-topped flame on my head like a bomb’s fuse. Alright, I’m moving on. Are you still with me? Good. next, going extinct. Redheads are like the dinosaurs of the humans. Sometime, redheads will go extinct and there will be no more left on the planet. And here is the final con. Yes, I’m finally done. Drumroll, please! Are you doing it? No? Fair enough. Redheads have a higher pain tolerance. It takes more general anesthesia to put a redhead under during surgery than others. I don’t exactly know why, but I’m sure Google does.

Thank you so much for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it. Though it may sound like I don’t like my hair, I really do and I think I am so lucky to be able to have my rare color!

Fear the Beard

Abraham Lincoln

Now, I know what you’re thinking. That I’m just here talk about another old, white, male president from the 1800s. Well, yes, he is an old, white, male president from the 1800s, but he’s also an old, white, male president from the 1800s that cared about racial equality throughout America during a time where that wasn’t normal. Now, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and say that all of his morals about race were in the right place because he probably wasn’t looking to make things completely equal, but he was on the side of the people who wanted to get rid of slavery in the South which was definitely a new concept. Now, who is Abraham Lincoln? I’m going to be honest here and tell you that before doing a little research I thought that he was the guy who cut down some tree. Well guess what that happens to be George Washington NOT Abraham Lincoln. Now Lincoln? He was 16th president of the United States of America and served from 1861 to 1865 when he was assassinated. Abraham Lincoln was president during the time of the Civil War. He was a great leader to many and gave his famous speech the Gettysburg Address(on November 19, 1863) after the Battle of Gettysburg, to honor the people who had died during the Civil War and express the importance of bringing freedom and equality to this nation. He was a strong supporter of the Union side of the Civil War and wanted to end slavery in the South. Although, even after the war, slavery didn’t end all together, his support of the Union was key in both their victory and eventually the end of slavery. If he had supported the Confederate Army, most likely, they would have had the power to defeat the Union and ,if that had happened, there may still have been slavery today and, for sure, the amount of race and gender equality that we have today would have diminished if the Confederates would have won that war. Due to President Lincoln’s support for the Union, my entire life was essentially made possible because without him and his contributions I may not have

even been born. Now what does Abraham Lincoln have to do with anything? Well, my father is African-American and my mother is white so if slavery were still prominent today my parents would never have been able to be together and even if they had had me, I still would have been forced to become a slave. I can’t even begin to imagine life as a slave. I would never be able to have the type education that I have the privilege of now because I probably wouldn’t have any education at all. When I think about it, I realize just how much different life would be. I would be forced to work for my entire life with no pay, treated with little to no respect, when now, I am given tons of opportunities every day to chose my own destiny and become the person I want to become instead of having to become a person that others believe I should be. Mine along with almost all others lives would be completely changed if Abraham Lincoln had not done what he had done in order to allow people of all different races a chance to be in America and become a free citizen. I believe that, even now, we are still carrying on his legacy by changing things to better people of all races, beliefs, genders, ages so that we may all be 100% equal one day. Now, I’m going to ask you. Is he just another old, white, male president from the 1800s? I definitely don’t think so because he was unique, progressive and willing to break the mold and become a rebel in order to do what was right for the country. I guess he is kinda like everything that Donald Trump isn’t… With better hair!!!!!! :)

Sources: Picture of Abraham Lincoln(Black & White), Picture of Civil War Flags:Confederate and Union

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What It Was Like To Be A Girl During The Revolutionary War

What Was It Like To Be A Girl During The Revolutionary War?

    When I think about the American Revolution I think about George Washington and Benedict Arnold. I don’t think of any women. Women may have not been fighting in the war with weapons, but they were at home. These women were taking care of their children, cooking, and cleaning tirelessly. If women lost their husbands in fights, they would not have money to afford food and feed their kids. Women would sacrifice their life for their husbands as they act as heroes, when the women are truly the heroes I feel like there wasn’t much thought that went into how much work women and kids did to establish a healthy and safe living style. For example, if you to make a sandwich, you would need ham and bread. You would need to find a pig, learn to raise it, learn to kill it, and obviously they would have to pay for it. If you want bread you would have to grow wheat. Women have supported men fighting through the war and have worked as nurses for the ill and injured during the war.

.

"Womens work at hopewell furnace." Womens work at hopewell furnace. N.p., n.d.

    Web. 3 Feb. 2016. <http://www.nps.gov/hofu/learn/historyculture/

    women-working-at-hopewell-furance.htm>.

"women in the revolutionary war." women in the revolutionary war. N.p., n.d.
     Web. 4 Feb. 2016. <http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/score_lessons/
     women_american_revolution/>. 

It's not all about winning

  During my time as a two-sports athlete I have learned skills for both ice hockey and baseball but also for life.  A message that was almost always said to me was "It's not all about winning."  I almost never got this through my brain without thinking "Why do I play sports then if it's not about winning."  Looking back on this I realize that at ages 6-9 playing recreational soccer with my friends I  shouldn't have been worried about winning at all.  In physical education class, I used to get mad at what I thought were "bad calls."  About midway through sixth grade, I started loosening up in P.E. and, to my surprise, started having a lot more fun.

(I had to blur the logo)

       In 5th grade, I got average grades and I was happy with them.  I don't know why but when I transitioned to Middle School and 6th grade I used the competitive nature I learned from sports and started doing well in school getting better scores on assignments and tests.  I also started having better time management because I had to balance year-round baseball, hockey, and the seemingly never-ending pile of homework from 6th grade (which is almost nothing compared to 7th grade).  When I transitioned to 7th grade I had to be even better at managing my time because of the increased homework load.

       One of the main things that I have learned is to always know that someone is better than me.  Whether it is in school or sports.  When I came into this baseball season I thought that my throwing motion was really good and that I threw hard.  I started an arm care/velocity program and saw some of the other kids on my team that threw 5 miles per hour harder than me.  When I got a 98% on a math test last year I thought that I had the best score but someone got a 103% (they got handicap points) the reality hit me that someone is always better than myself.  

From Hawaii, Here.

I have moved many places. But one of the most meaningful move was when me, my mom, and my dad moved from hawaii to Portland Oregon.

Almost everything was different about Portland. The weather, the people, the school, and just the place in general. At the time I was just beginning my 13 years of goodness and my sister Olivia was still not born. My parents, as I later learned, also had a hard time moving the jobs as teachers at punahou school in Hawaii. The school had been really the only thing I remember today. I remember running around in the playground and looking through the windows of the classrooms, thinking: "oh no, I'm next!" Our friends in hawaii, named Kalial and Noah. They were my best friends and I missed them a lot.

I have returned to see hawaii and our friends once and that was one of the most memorable trips of my entire life. I remember everything we did from beginning to end. i remember going to the house of Kalial and Noah, and they had this huge inflatable mattress in the middle of their room. There was a bunk bed in one corner and a mess of toys and a computer in the other. The same day we went down to the water where we surfed for a good long while and ate dinner, where I lost a ball we had been playing with to the sea but Noah's dad jumped in and returned with the ball in hand. After two days of play we went to punahou and it was like returning to our old house. We went back to the playground that had been so fun those many years ago and I jumped in a little pond they had there scraping up my knee.

After all these years I still remember our house and our school. And I love thinking that that was the place that I was born. And it makes me feel more open, more different. And I hope that I will be able to return some day again to relive those memories.
Alec Murray

New Team, New Life

So far this year, I've already joined a new soccer team. My first game with them will be in Las Vegas. After that, I'll be traveling to Dallas for another tournament. It's already more traveling than I did with my old team. Playing with the best team in the state is scary, but they are all normal kids.

Soccer thrills me. I love the feeling of adrenaline running through my body. I love running. It makes me feel free and wild. When I play soccer, it gives me a goal. It makes me want to score, to not let any goals in, to win.

Scoring goals used to be a thing for me. I once scored four goals in a game! I was the leading scorer for the season. After that season, I started feeling down. I wasn't very excited when we won or sad when we lost. I didn't try hard because I hated my team. I blamed everything on my teammates. Even when I played badly, everyone said "good job!" That made me mad. I wanted people to be honest to me. I didn't want them to lie to me. I wanted to quit but then the opportunity came up and I sprang. I started playing more. It was more fun and I started to get the wild feeling again. I started getting better, and I started loving soccer again.

 I have always been more of an active guy.  I hate it when I am stuck in one place for more than two hours.

I started practicing with them in September. Finally, all this hard work is going to pay off! Believe it or not, this team is actually easier to play with! My old team was never open, and I felt like I had to do everything. My parents said I regressed while playing with my old team. I can tell I'm getting better every time I go play with my new team. I was embarrassed when I said I played for my old club but now when people ask what team I play for, I can answer with pride.

This is truly a new life.

Moving

Moving

Jobs and new opportunities often lead to moving and change. I should know because for half my life I have lived in 3 states and moved 4 times. Having to adjust to the new environment and culture around me.

In 1820 the industrial revolution started and millions of people moved to big cities like Chicago or New York to seek new jobs and opportunities to support their family.

The Invention and Early History of the Telescope

The first practical telescopes were made in 1608 by a Dutchman by the name of Hans Lippershey. Two other Dutchmen, Zacharias Janssen and Jacob Metius, claimed to make the discovery, and the three share credit for the marvelous invention.

In 1609, a scientist named Galileo Galilei heard of a device which would allow one to see things bigger than they were. After tinkering with it, he made a telescope that could magnify objects to thirty-three times their size. In 1610, Galileo used the improved telescope to see spots on the Sun, phases of Venus, four moons of Jupiter, and mountains and craters on the moon. He used these observations to support Copernicus’s theory that the Sun was the center of the Solar System.

The name telescope was coined in 1611 by Prince Frederico Cesi. It comes from the Greek word teleskopos, meaning far-seeing, and was first applied to the Galilean telescope.

In 1611, Kepler suggested an improvement to the telescope. If both lenses were convex, things would appear bigger, and the field of view would be greater. In 1655, an astronomer named Christiaan Huygens used a Keplerian telescope to discover Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. He later used the data from that telescope to prove that Saturn’s rings were made up of many chunks of dust and ice.

As you can see, the early telescopes contributed a lot to astronomy. Today’s telescopes are huge. The Hubble Space Telescope, which is in orbit around the Earth, weighs twelve tons! But it all started with a Dutch glasses-maker.

Works Cited

DeVorkin, David H., and Robert W. Smith. Hubble: Imaging Space and Time. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2008. Print.

"The First Telescopes (Cosmology: Tools)." The First Telescopes (Cosmology: Tools). N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

"History of the Telescope." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 09 Feb. 2015.

"Online Etymology Dictionary." Online Etymology Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Feb. 2015.

Image credit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Jupiter ,

http://www.geocities.ws/peterochocki/other/binocs/binocs.html ,

http://www.expertsmind.com/topic/optics/keplerian-refractor-95128.aspx

http://www.myschoolhouse.com/courses/O/1/36.asp

John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie: Industrialists Who Paved the Way

Andrew Carnegie

http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/

carnegie/peopleevents/images/carnegie.jpg

When you hear Carnegie and Rockefeller, you think of New York. Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Center. But who are they named after?

They are named after John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, titans of industry in the late 19 century. John D. Rockefeller owned Standard Oil, Carnegie owned Carnegie Steel.

The Water Is My Second Home

My hands shoot forward through the water with a fast splash. I can see the wall just a mere 5 meters away. This is it, the final last strokes that will determine my fate for a race. As my hands touch the wall, I look up at the scoreboard where I can be satisfied or not. This is what it feels like to be a swimmer.

Harder Than It Looks

When you see a drummer playing a drum set, online or live, you may think, because of the relatively simple beat, "I can do that", but in fact, drumming is much harder than it looks.

I started drumming because I wanted to play an instrument,  and because drumming looked easy and very cool. When I had my first drumming lesson, I thought I could be able to play the music given to me the very first day, because it was a simple beat. However, I was mistaken. It took me the whole lesson to begin to grasp the piece, and I was humbled. After getting that first piece, I had moved on to much more complex things, but I will always remember my first drumming lesson, and the knowledge that no instrument is easy to play.  If you decide to play an instrument, be aware of the long road to proficiency that you will walk. That said, as a drummer right now I am having a great time, and doing a good job.

Right now, I am just finishing up a piece of music by Led Zeppelin, called "Good Times Bad Times" I think that the name of the piece is a good metaphor for what the piece has been like for me. There have been good parts, like the first two lines, where I just get the beat immediately, but also very hard parts, mainly the third and fourth lines, where I have to use the bass drum in very quick secession. Just for this piece, I had to do a lot of practice with footwork on this piece. In each piece, there is one  main thing I have to work on to conquer it.

After I became a drummer, about 3 or 3 1/2 years ago, I have discovered a few important things about my self as a learner. I discovered that I learn best when I hear/see someone do something, than try it myself a little bit each day for about a week. I also realized that I can relax by drumming, so I can be in a better mood.

My Goal as a drummer is simple. Keep playing, keep improving, and have fun!


-Focus on what your teacher has showed you: it has helped me a lot to hear and see the piece before I play it.

-If you start to get frustrated, take a break and come back later. I once stopped drumming for a whole summer because I was busy, and when I came back, the piece I had been having trouble with I could play perfectly.

- If a sequence of snare drum hits, try saying something while you play to help yourself concentrait. (3 hits=strawberry, 4 hits=watermelon)

-And, last but not least, have fun!!!

The History of Allergies

  What is an allergy? How do we get them? When allergies were first discovered by Clemson von Pirquet, they weren’t very common, but the amount of people that have allergies now are growing rapidly every year. There are two main hypothesis that people have proposed for why this is happening. One is that humans now are so clean that children’s environments are germ free and their immune systems don’t fully develop and become strong. The second is that chemicals from truck exhaust, rubber, pesticides or cleaning compounds are making our immune system go haywire.

The idea of an "allergy" was introduced in 1906 by the Austrian pediatrician Clemens von Pirquet. He came to this discovery after he said that some of his patients were reacting in abnormal ways to innocuous entities such as pollen, certain foods, or dust. He named this reaction in a person’s immune system an allergy.

Today, one out of every 13 kids in the US has an allergy and I happen to be one of them. Sometimes being allergic to the weirdest thing, sesame, can be embarrassing when explaining to others. “It’s a life threatening allergy”, I find myself saying. But I have had many allergic reactions and I’m still alive, so maybe its not that bad. Having allergies have taught me how to take care of myself and become independent. One summer, two years ago, I decided I would take a risk and try to out grow my allergy. Everyday I would have a bite of an sesame cracker and everyday I would take a little bit bigger piece. My immune system was growing stronger and stronger, but eventually, I stopped. I didn’t really care for the taste of the cracker and I had assumed that my immune system wouldn’t get worse. I was wrong, I hadn’t fully gotten rid of the allergy and it came back after a while.

Many scientist are doing experiments on allergies and how to help children outgrow them. I recently read an article in the Oregonian about how scientist are giving children with peanut allergies small amounts of peanut protein powder everyday and eventually their reactions are going away. Hopefully, someday this form of testing will be very common and less people will have allergies.

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17136331

Homework, The Controller of Our Life

What do you do in the morning? I wake up, brush my teeth, shower, eat breakfast and then drive to school. I double check my homework, because if I have missing homework, my teachers will make me write a email home, and I will get in trouble by my parents. Why should I care? Isn’t school the place to learn, and outside of school is free time to do what I want? Well, if I don’t do my homework then my parents don’t let me do Sports, which is what I want to do with my free time. I want to do good in school and please my parents, but I only want to do good in school, literally. Shouldn’t I spend my free time doing what I want, and not trying to do homework just to please my parents? Welcome to my world.

The point I am trying to get at, if you can’t already see is that our life is being controlled by school all day. There are two different sides to the story. When you ask your middle school head, she will say that school takes seven of the fourteen hours of your day that you are awake. That’s half the time you are awake. When you ask Logan LaPlante, who was in this TED talks video, he would strongly disagree. I believe in the latter. It is true that you are in school seven hours a day, but you are driving to and from school for a hour of your seven hours of free time. So now you are down to six. You have two hours of homework, or the average teen does. So now we are down to four hours of free time. If you participate in any other school club/activity/sport then you have about one hour a day doing that. So quickly we have whittled ourselves down to three hours. We all need to eat, so breakfast and dinner amount to about an hour and a hlaf of homework a night. So now I have one and a half hours of free time. Now if your parents make you do chores that’s another half an hour. So the average kid has about one hour of free time, of the fourteen waking hours. 

Now why would anyone do this? Well for me, it is because I want to impress the people I care about. I want free time to do what I choose, but I want to impress the people I care for. I need to find balance, but how. The only way to do it is to do my homework, but then I don’t get to pursue what I love, lacrosse. I like the idea of Logan’s to hack my learning, or even better, hack the system. 

I don’t mean to hack it by using a computer,  I want it to be hacked by words. The teachers blame the homework load of having too little class time, but to me they are just taking the easy way out. Instead of giving us hours of homework, why don’t they just make their teaching more efficient? This way, we can get more done in a class period. Also, if they need to teach us so much in a year, why don’t the teachers lower their expectations? How about we shoot to be done with Trigonometry by the end of highschool, not Calculus, then in College you could take Calculus. 

What I am trying to get at is the teachers could improve, so the balance is easier for us kids. Now, the reason I think that learning should be changed is when I had a conversation with a high schooler, he said that very few people actually do homework, and he spends his weekends catching up on sleep. This made me realize that their is no balance, you can’t have it both ways, which is why I choose to attack learning in a different way. If there was no homework, then we colleges would have a better look into our personalities, and who we actually are, because we would be doing things we love, not homework. 

 School takes up much more than the seven hours it tells you, as I just showed. I have shown that it is nearly impossible to keep balance in our lives as we know them right now, and that the reason homework is a big deal is because our teachers haven’t adapted but made us adapt. I don’t think that we need to reform our learning, we just need to make it better.

Sources: http://www.easybib.com/cite/view/list/1383078625_52701ae19f7d82.64119068/style/mla7