Money Doesn't Grow on Trees

      This doesn't really have anything to do with what we talked about in class, but it definitely has to do with the United States.  The other day my mom showed me an article from the Chicago Tribune about the national debt.  (I would link it but I couldn't find it anywhere... It's titled "The U.S. Debt: Zero In On This" in case anybody wants to look) The nation has a debt limit, which is $14.294 trillion.  That is a LOT of money.  On June 1, 2010, the U.S. was $13 trillion in debt and as of December 31, 2010, the U.S. was $14 trillion in debt.  That's $1 trillion in 7 months. $1,000,000,000,000. The Tribune did the math and that comes out to $54,084 per second that the U.S. loses.
     From what I've learned the government, specifically Obama and the Democrats are pushing for the limit to be increased, while Republicans are doing their best to keep it.  I'm not really sure where I stand on the issue, and I definitely don't know enough to pass a judgement.  What I do know is that $14.294 trillion is a LOT of money... It seems ridiculous to keep a government functioning at this rate if we lose money at the rate we are losing it.  What happens to the U.S. credibility and accountability in the world? When do people start to realize that the U.S. isn't the best investment, that maybe a place like China is?  Money doesn't grow on trees.

Man vs. Woman. Or is it Woman vs. Man?

     In class we were talking about New Trier alumni.  We talked a little bit about the wall that shows some old students and "Where They Are Now."  All five of the people there are currently college professors and three of the five were African Americans.  This topic led to the topic of a fundraiser New Trier is doing with a "Hall of Fame."  A group of five New Trier graduates were picked who supposedly represent our school's motto of "to commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion, and lives to the service of humanity." The five people chosen were Christie Hefner (the CEO of Playboy), Donald Rumsfeld ((in)famous politician), Rainn Wilson (a famous actor from the popular television show "The Office"), a guy who won the Nobel Prize in physics, and a humanitarian.  That was how the names were given to me.  I looked the last two up and found Jack Steinberger to be the Nobel Prize winner but I still have no idea who the other man is.

     As a class we started to talk about whether or not those people truly portray New Trier's motto.  It is my opinion that the Nobel Prize winner and the humanitarian definitely do, quite clearly representing the first and third part of the motto respectively.  But I don't know so much about the other three.  They were the names that people would recognize because they are famous, and I guess that's what a Hall of Fame should do but not necessarily under the facade of representing the New Trier motto.
     What struck me most though, is that in class we have also been talking a lot about women versus men.  We took an opinion quiz, a few of the questions being are girls more mature than boys? And, are boys inherently more curious and mischievous than girls? Then an article titled "The End of Men" was brought up.  It brings up the idea that the future of society might be more focused on women than men, and that women may be "better suited" to it.  I went home and read the article which was very long, but I also found it to be very interesting.
     Then when I thought back to class, I realized that only one out of five of the Hall of Famers is a woman and I don't know if any of the "Where Are They Now" people is a woman.  Maybe because it's the past, but it isn't that far into history.... Why aren't more of the representatives women?

Apples to Apples

On New Year's Eve I spent time hanging out with friends waiting to watch the ball drop.  We were playing the famous childhood game Apples to Apples and the word that we were describing was "American."  The cards played included words from "motorcycles,"to "George Washington" and "Abraham Lincoln."  Yet the winning description of American was the card that read "Super Bowl."
Now Apples to Apples isn't a game with correct answers, because one of the players is the judge who chooses which word he or she thinks goes best.  I found it interesting that football beat out two of the United States' most famous presidents...  How is that possible?
I probably would have chosen the Super Bowl if I had been the judge, too and that got me thinking about America's image.  Even though Apples to Apples is sometimes more about picking the funny answer than the true answer, I still think that football over presidents might reflect badly.  Pop culture over government...

It's MY Life?

Whenever people realize that I am a junior in high school the discussion always turns to college.  Where are you going to apply? Have you visited anywhere? Do you know what you want to study? What were your ACT and SAT scores? etc.  Those are probably the four most common questions I get, and of the four, only one of them seems really exciting to me right now.
Throughout grade school, junior high, and high school all of my classes have been chosen for me (except electives once I got to high school).  It seems to me that college is my first chance to choose to study subjects that interest me and that I am passionate about.  I understand that in order to find my passion I first have to get a general idea of potential options, and that's why my classes are very similar to most other juniors' in the country.  This brings me to a point I want to make about Doc Oc's most recent post How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Screw Up a School?  He opens it by talking about a lady named Diane Ravitch.  According to Doc Oc, Ravitch used to support standardized testing, but is now against it because she doesn't like the idea of a "one-size-fits-all test."
As much as I hated taking the ACT and will hate taking the SAT, I think that they are necessary.  It's clear that there isn't a "one-size-fits-all test" but there needs to be some level of comparison to differentiate between students applying to colleges.  I'm not saying it's fair to judge an AP Art student based on an SAT math score, but I believe that standardized tests are necessary and do a pretty accurate job in demonstrating potential students capabilities.
Even though standardized test and a typical grade school curriculum don't encourage that "out of the box" thinking that Ravitch is pushing for, they both provide an ample background for a student to find out what he or she wants to focus on.  Also, I think it is necessary that the standard classes persist through high school.  For example, in fourth grade the one class I hated more than anything was science.  Now as a junior, science is one of the subjects I am most interested in.  Continued exposure has allowed me to come to that realization.

World Wide Web

While trying to figure out what I should write my post on today, I visited the usual sites like Yahoo! AOL, CNN, FOX, etc.  But I couldn't find anything I wanted to blog about.  Then I tried looking at some classmates blogs, commenting on a few, but I felt like a comment was sufficient in most cases and I didn't need to make a whole post on it.  Then I saw the "Next Blog" button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, and I clicked it.  It took me to a random blog, which I would link but something made me think twice about it.
I understand that the internet is the world wide web and that blogs can be viewed anywhere, but I felt like some of the blogs I viewed should have been more private.  There were family pictures and details of how and where Thanksgivings were spent, and there were teachers posting pictures of their students who were in second grade.  I wonder if those students parents know that there children's pictures are on the internet... Seeing that made me realize how people really do have to be careful about what they post on the internet.  I found this picture and it made me laugh, but it is also pretty accurate.

Lies to Protect

Why do people to lie?  It's a simple question with many answers.  To cover something up, to protect someone, or even just for the heck of it.  In The Crucible, Elizabeth Proctor lies in order to protect her husband and his reputation, because she doesn't know that he has admitted to lechery. We talked a little bit about why people lie about a month ago in class, but it's not really a topic that goes away.  In the book, Elizabeth is the image of purity and a saint.  She forgave her husband for cheating on her, she knows the 10 Commandments perfectly, and, according to her husband, she can't tell a lie.  But then she does.  And her whole image of being a saint should shatter, but when I read about her lying, it made me think of her as an even better person.  She was willing to protect her husband over telling the truth and hurting him.  The truth hurts, it's true, but a good person isn't necessarily someone who always tells the truth.  I think the lie that Elizabeth told was a noble one because of the way that she put her husband first.  But then again, had she told the truth and said she had known of her husband's lechery, then the whole plot of book would have changed.  Her solid no-lying status wouldn't have changed, her husband had already admitted the lechery, and the court's ruling would have most likely changed.  So maybe the lie wasn't a good idea...

Yale's Elect

The other day, while we were going over some background information on the Puritans in a Power Point, we talked about predestination.  The Puritans believed in this concept created by John Calvin which claimed that it was determined whether a person would end up in heaven or not before birth.  The way it was made known to the people on Earth if a person was part of "God's Elect", or one predestined to go to heaven, was known as the conversion experience.  A person would literally get up in front of the congregation, or the people who were already chosen as part of God's Elect, and present an enlightenment experience.  Then the congregation would vote on whether the person's experience represented the person proving to be a saint, thus joining God's Elect.

DocOC brought up a very interesting point in the middle of this, he compared the conversion experience to the college application process.  And after thinking about it for a few days, it makes complete sense.  In every single college essay, a person is writing a story about themselves, trying to explain what separates them and makes them unique.  If their essay is "good enough" (as well as other things like grades and standardized test scores) then a person is accepted into the college.  It's much the same with the Puritans conversion experience.  The Puritans would tell a story, hoping it would spark something in the minds of God's Elect, in order to allow them to be "accepted" as an additional member of God's Elect.

It seems that today a majority of students I talk to have been told that it's necessary to get into the "right" or "best" college because that's what is going to make their lives easier as they get older.  I think that people also seem to think that a person who graduates from Yale is much more respected than a person who graduates from a community college.  This is probably very similar to what the Puritans were told, or what they saw: that the lives of people who were part of "God's Elect" were superior to those who weren't, and that they were given more social privileges, like sitting in the front pews at church.  The fact of the matter is that there is more than one "right" college so one college's admissions board shouldn't determine your future, and "God's Elect" was a group of people judging another human being to determine his or her fate.