Oops.

                Today in Human Geography class we didn’t do much, as it was a shortened period and Mr. Schick didn’t have a review based thing for us to do. On Tuesday, it was a review day before exams, so we had a modified schedule that allowed us to have every class we attend in one day, but with shortened periods so we could review for midterms this week. Mr. Schick first told us our curved grades for our climate change test, which he curved up about four points. I got an eighty-seven with the curve, which isn’t great, but is considerably better than the eighty-three that I originally got. After that (which took a reasonable amount of time) Mr. Schick told us the basics of our mid-term. In the most basic format, he said there was going to be a huge amount of multiple choice questions, along with two five paragraph essays. I’m a little worried about this (not a lot, because stress doesn’t help when taking exams) because I’m an extremely slow writer, even if I write well. I’m just hoping that I can get my two essays in before the time limit. We didn’t do too much the rest of class, and it was kind of uneventful. Probably why I forgot to write this blog until Wednesday…..

Earthquakes are clearly caused by global warming... clearly.

                Today in Human Geography we took our climate change test. Hurray! I did some quick studying (before Mr. Schick told us we had five minutes to study) then went on to the bungie website for game information. Bungie is the company that makes the Halo series, but they have currently backed off and are making another game series called Destiny. Yes Mr. Schick, I am a gamer. And yes, I play with my fifty-year-old Scoutmaster. After getting the test, I, like an idiot, did not read the directions on the top of the page clearly stating what to do for the honor pledge. I regretted this later when I went to ask Mr. Schick what to do. Looking through the test, there weren’t a lot of hard questions, and some of them could even be done by just using common sense. The hardest questions were mostly statistic based, and I had memorized those so they were easy. After taking the test and turning it in, I did this blog.

Rain Tax. Because rain is a pollutant.

Today in Human Geography we reviewed and finished our climate change PowerPoint. When going back through the PowerPoint, we skipped the first couple of slides which we had already seen or didn’t have any notes to take. We started doing some deeper review on some slides that were right before our last stopping point. After reviewing the PowerPoint slides we had already went through there was three slides at the end, one totally new, and two that we had went over but did not use the Internet links attached. One was about oil, the second about opposing viewpoints, and the new third about the new head of the EPA (Environmental Protections Agency) elected by President elect Trump. The link on the oil company slide discussed how oil companies deal with global warming, as their byproduct can and does have many ecological and atmospherically based backlashes. However, oil companies aren’t really interested in improving the environment because that would cut off the massive flow of money they get. So, oil companies fight regulations and pay scientists to come up with false results to support the falsity of global warming. On top of that, oil companies tell everyone that global warming isn’t real, then proceeds to refit their oil rigs against rising ocean waters, a side-effect of global warming. Then there was a slide about opposing viewpoints, which we did not look at links for. The last slide was ‘breaking news’ about President Elect Trump putting in Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. Scott Pruitt has before sued the EPA multiple times before and is pretty much in self-denial over the fact that global warming is happening.

BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY!!!

                Today in Mr. Schick’s class we continued our environmental change PowerPoint. The first thing that showed up on the screen was my favorite scientist; Bill Nye the Science Guy. Goofily grinning, it was a picture of his younger self with some bullet points on the side talking about who he was and what he does. The next slide had a video link on it (YouTube, why are there so many Viagra commercials on your ad stream? It’s driving Mr. Schick insane!). The video talked about how temperature increase is affected by humans, the supporting facts behind these points, and what it does to the environment. At the end, Bill talked about what everyone can do to help, and even named some that I’d never heard of like not eating as much meat. The next couple of slides covered the main points of the video, and we took notes on these. There was a nice pie chart that showed the different percentages of gases that make up greenhouse gases. CO2 made up 82%, while methane being second at 10%. You’re probably asking, “why is methane a big factor”? Apparently the large amounts of animals (especially cows) on the planet, if you’ll excuse the pun, beefing it up, are creating large amounts of methane which then become part of the greenhouse gas layer. This is why Bill said to eat less meat. Remember, less demand equals less supply. The temperature rise of the Earth affects the ocean the most due to the ocean’s generally stable temperature. Rising temperatures also raise acidity, which is an important factor when it comes to the ocean. Life in the water for animals with the exception of few must maintained stable or the animals will die and the ecosystem will collapse. Oceans are also rising due to the polar caps melting, also upsetting the natural balance.

Climatic Apocalypse! Yay!

                Today in Human Geography we started our environmental geography PowerPoint. This PowerPoint is about climate change and global warming. First there was a slide talking about the video we were going to watch. There weren’t any real notes to take on this slide. Once the video started, we got a great 10 second look at a Viagra commercial before Mr. Schick turned the projector off. Once the commercial was over, we began the video. I have heard about the greenhouse effect before, but never really heard proof behind it. Before watching the video I thought that climate change was based more off of the earth’s axis changing, but I’ve changed my perspective a little bit after hearing about the 1.4-1.2 degree increase in overall world temperature in the time presented. The video first explained how global warming worked, where greenhouse gases trap and release certain amounts of radiation from the sun on the Earth’s surface. Human machines are producing greenhouse gases, upsetting the atmospheric balance. This causes more radiation to be trapped in Earth’s atmosphere, which in turn causes the temperature to rise.

Bashar Al Assad = Hitler reincarnated?

                Today in Human Geography we took our culture test. This test was a multiple choice and ‘match the religions to their proper facts’ test. Before the test, we had about 10 minutes to study. Unfortunately I couldn’t because SOMEBODY next to me was using my mouse to click around my computer (Just kidding, I studied in the period before). When the test finally came, I looked at it and found it to be a little easier than I thought. Of course, I got Buddhism and Hinduism mixed up just as I thought I would, and there were a couple statistics questions I didn’t expect, but I think I did pretty well.  After taking the test I did the survey (I’m not revealing my answers here) and did my blog. While I was doing my blog Mr. Schick handed me back my last test, which was not an 89, but a 94. What was really funny is I put a note next to Bashar Al Assad that said “He reminds me of Hitler for some reason”. Mr. Schick then proceeded to finish the mustache and hair and wrote “lots of reasons” next to it. I’m debating on whether or not to photocopy this, cut it out, and put it on the Schick-mobile, but we’ll see.

Genocide! Yay!

                Today in Human Geography we finished our culture PowerPoint and went through the rest of our religion PowerPoint. So this makes more sense, I’m categorizing the information I got by what PowerPoint it was on, not by when I received it. First I’ll go over the rest of the culture PowerPoint. We covered the rest of the language section first. Language as stated before can divide or unify a region, however Switzerland has four national languages. It’s funny, because everyone gets along in their country nicely even though there are four different accepted dialects. Canada has two national languages, French and English (This creates an odd mix of French and English, which my family calls Canadian French. Truth be told, when speaking French most Canadians won’t call a hot dog un chaud chien, they most likely will call it ‘un hot dog’.) The U.S. has no official language, but English is spoken here in large amounts and is a ‘bridge language’ for business. Brazil speaks Portugese even though the surrounding area speaks Spanish because early settlers of Brazil (from Portugal) spoke it. Next we did a section on religion. Throughout the whole world, Christians (and their other denominations) make up 1/3 of the world. Muslims make up 21.01%. The smallest current religion listed on this pie chart was Judaism, at 0.23% population made up of Jews in the world. We also went over ethnic heritage, and how ethnicity has affected certain cultures. In Yugoslavia, Serbs were taught to be Yugoslavic first, and Serbian second. When strong leadership in the country died out, the nation fell into civil war and became five separate countries. The U.S. have a very diverse population for all the obvious reasons, but some countries such as North Korea or Japan have only one ethnicity due to the way the government is run. After finishing the culture PowerPoint (ending with mass genocide) we continued the religion PowerPoint. The last and final religion on the list was Judaism. There are fourteen-eighteen million adherents to Judaism (Keep in mind still 0.23% of the world population). There are high concentrations in Israel and the US, and the founder is considered to be Abraham. They uphold some of the same law as Christians, such as the Ten Commandments, and they have considerably large amounts of tradition in their religion.

My Eightfold path to waffles

                Today in Human Geography we continued the culture unit by starting a PowerPoint on world religions. Of course, the first religion we covered was Christianity. I had no idea there were so many denominations for Christians! I did know all the names presented, but I had never really thought about how many there were until I saw the list. The second religion was Islam. The two main denominations of Islam are the Sunnis and the Shiites. The Sunnis outweigh the Shiites in about a 3:1 ratio, and in the Middle East they actually bomb each other and fight against each other because of their religion. You usually don’t hear about this because you don’t generally get news about stuff like this unless it affects you in some way. There are a lot of contradictions in the religion, and it has a lot of tradition involved that affects how their society works (the role of women for example). Their main basis of teaching is the Five Pillars, being testimony, prayer, alms-giving, fasting, and surprisingly, pilgrimage. The third religion we covered was Hinduism. Mostly all Hindus live in India (for whatever reason, I’m not sure). Hindu teaching consists of thousands of short verses meant to be memorized and sung, and all composed in a book called the Vedas. Hinduism isn’t really a religion, it’s actually more like a set of principles or philosophies to follow. The next religion was Buddhism, with the largest stretch of possible numbers on the list. Buddhism is similar in the formatting to Buddhism, in the ways that it is very philosophical. However, Buddhism is more strict and more like a religion than Hinduism. Buddhism has its own set of rules called the Eightfold path. These eight principles tell you how to have a better life. Buddhism has a large area in Asia, being concentrated in China, Japan, southeast Asia, and Nepal.

Soda bath for the elderly... The Fountain of Youth!!!

Today in Human Geography we continued our culture PowerPoint. The next slide we went what language meant. It was mostly like last time but even more deep into it. The slide said that language can unite regions in some ways, even if they are not legally bonded. There were two examples given, and I think one was about the Middle East and one about somewhere in Europe. The slide also talked about how language can also divide a region, where two different languages can be spoken in close proximity, creating a sort of divide between two areas (language barriers, anyone?). Cultural characteristics are a part of everyday life, and Mr. Schick had put in a map that showed the different amounts of people in the U.S. that call soda different things (pop, coke, soda, other). It was interesting to see the regional influence on the culture, and also interesting to see how the 100^TH monkey theory proved to be correct in some cases. An example was Florida at the southern tip. You would normally think, “Oh, it must be the influence of Cuban immigrants!” but you would be wrong. The change in the regional soda-naming was actually caused by a large number of northern retirees moving to Florida (In that specific area) which caused the regional name to change from one term to another.

I came back better than Arnold Schwarzenegger!

                Today in Human Geography we started a PowerPoint on cultures. We first went over the definition of culture. Mr. Schick, as usual, went out of his way to get three sources for the same definition. Overall, a summary of the three definition is that a culture, or culture, is a behavior or knowledge shared by a group of people, that are usually passed from generation to generation. There was a long list of points on the next slide that covered what culture could be and then some. However, there was another slide with the key elements, being language, values, norms, and beliefs, social activity and interaction, and the arts and sciences. Language, by definition, is a set of symbols used to assign and communicate meaning. Language can be represented as the spoken word or written symbols. Language also enables us to find meaning for the things in and around us, and communicate about it. Beliefs can be represented by religion, faith (which I thought was the same thing as religion), or family. Norms a behaviors or activities that are considered to be ‘normal’ by the culture there. Norms can be anything culture related, as long as it is present in the way a society acts.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Mr. Schick!

                Today in Human Geography we had our world leaders test. Of course, I played MLG airhorn noises (I got some pretty funny looks from some people for that). When we got to study time I was actually watching videos about LEGO replicas of video game guns, and there are some really good copies of them. I eventually did study, but it was only for a couple seconds to re-review the information. Mr. Schick had us do our pre-test prayer, and then talked about the test a little bit. He said that he wanted all capital and legible letters, and that after the test we could do stuff, but not to distract others with what we’re doing. When I looked at the test, it was relatively easy, and most of it involved elimination. I turned my test in first from my knowledge, and Mr. Schick using his X-ray vision automatically knew it was an 89, which he promptly wrote on my test in pencil. Once I got my test done, I did this blog.

Captain America destroys communism!

                Today in Human Geography we continued our world leaders PowerPoint. For the first couple leaders I already had their information, because I went through the PowerPoint a little bit ahead of where we were and copied notes when I was done with what we were supposed to do. We looked at more corrupt leaders, more morally wrong leaders, and Trump (He gets his own section for reasons already obvious). While we went through the PowerPoint and we were on the slide about Syria’s leader al-Assad, Angela asked why didn’t the lowly Syrians rise against Assad and take power? There is a lot of complex politics that take place around this, so it’s very hard to explain to someone who has never really thought about it before. Luckily, due to Marvel comics and some other sources (but mostly Marvel comics) I learned about how this works. You’re probably thinking “James, how would Marvel comics help you learn politics”. The answer to this is quite simple. Back when communism and other such governments had more power (and do mean more power) comic books were printed during wartime to boost morale and help explain why the way other countries do things are bad. Sure, there were some stretches in the storyline to make it more interesting, such as a human-impersonating robot that was strong enough to take on the Avengers single-handedly, but the main ideas remain the same. Tyrants with big weapons create a sort of elite group of people with power. Those people get guns and resources from the tyrant, and they make their own groups. Each time the amount of power given out is lower, until you reach the common people. This system is mostly based on a lost and greed for power, or simply because an underling wants to stay on the good side of the local leader who has everyone else with him and against you. If do or say anything that displeases the higher parties, they will most likely threaten or destroy you (in the case of Syria) so that you can’t influence others. There are other factors that go into this, and they can get very complicated, but this is the basics of it. Another point that came up was about Vladimir Putin and nuclear war. It was a short conversation by our standards, but I believe that as long as nuclear power can destroy a world, no one will use it, simply because everyone would start pushing buttons and everyone would die. After that, there would be nothing to rule, and there would be no point in firing the missiles in the first place (or there would be no one left alive). Just for reference on that Marvel comics politics thing, all of this occurs in Avengers issue #18 (You should be able to see it on Marvel.com with a free preview).

20% more jump scares than the leading brand....

Today Mr. Schick was absent from class so we had a sub. I didn’t know who our sub was, and I also didn’t figure it out for the whole class. However, he seemed like he was a tech guy because when we were in class he was talking about the class feedback graph. During advisory the when everyone tried to get on the site it worked for basically no one because the servers couldn’t handle the amount of people trying to access it all at once. During the class he had us do the survey for, and it worked. Since Mr. Schick wasn’t here we were left with the Google Slides presentation that we were looking at yesterday. During our sort of study hall I used the Google Slides presentation to fill in the incorrect slides on my own Google Slides Presentation. I was pretty surprised when I saw that Mr. Schick wrote in the corrections in red, but it wasn’t too hard to finish it up correctly. I had lots of fun filling in the correct or missing pictures with some choice pictures I found on Google, so my Google Slides presentation is now filled with 20% more creepy pictures of politicians.

My PowerPoint?

                Today in Human Geo we continued learning about world leaders. Everyone looked at my world leader PowerPoint while I was in NYC, which seems pretty weird. I asked Kate what everyone thought of my picture of the Queen, and she said the class talked about it for a long time. The PowerPoint we looked at contained the leaders of each country, their government, and a picture of them. This was the same as last time, however for each leader there was a second slide that contained extra information on the leader. In class we went through the slides for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, and Israel. It was interesting to look at leader’s backgrounds, as many of them had something or other about them that was corrupt. It was also interesting to see that multiple leaders are basically geniuses. What was really funny is that the current president of Brazil is under scrutiny for corruption, while the previous president was impeached for the very same reason. I also thought the Israeli president interesting, especially his quote about the state of Israel and the Holocaust.

NYC Trip

                Today instead of going to school today and attending Human Geography, I got to go to NYC and look at art. You may say, “James, isn’t skipping school bad? And don’t you just make fun of the art that you see the whole time you’re there?”. The answer to both of those questions is yes and yes. After getting up at 5:00, I got dressed and left the house. On the way to school me and my dad stopped at Wawa to get breakfast and bumped into of the guys that are in my art class and also attending the field trip. When I got on the bus, I sat around for a little bit and ate my breakfast while everyone waited for all of the attendees of our field trip to get on the bus. We got to pick our seats, and there was only one other guys freshman that I knew (who didn’t sit next to me) so I sat next to my chaperone for the trip. On the way there we organized our groups. I got asked to be in a group by a girl that I sit with at lunch, and I joined. Unfortunately, there was no guys in the group so I just spent the day walking around with two of the group members (both freshmen who take AP Human Geo. Sorry Mr. Schick.). This trip was supposed to be educational, and it was, but not to the extent of a normal field trip. The main idea was that you would go around and see art from different cultures, and learn something from it. We visited the Metropolitan Museum of art first. This museum contains lots of old art from a collection of cultures, and the first room was Greek art. There was a Greek bathtub in the room with a description that said Greek bathtubs were eventually turned into coffins for Christians during a certain time period. There was an Australian native room filled with large wood sculptures representing various things, such as avenging the dead. Once we left we went to lunch in a place called the Chelsea marketplace, and I can successfully say that if there were ever a place that can be for millennials, it was that place. The whole setting was intentionally made to look rustic, but had many modern aspects about it, such as tahini. Afterwards we went to the Whitney Museum of modern art, which I highly suggest you don’t go to. I thought modern art was weird, but they made it exponentially weirder. Some of the floors were OK, even if they were weird. One of them called the Dreamland floor, had a sort of virtual experience that seemed like you were dreaming. It actually seemed like a dream, and they had a whole floor below it devoted to the develop of the art in that section. Unfortunately, after this trip I think I’m going to have permanent ‘Nam flashbacks about it because of the things that were on that floor that I’m not privileged to write about on the Internet as a Christian. My group skipped through half of that floor because of how weird it was. After going through the whole museum, we had an extra hour of time which we spent walking on the elevated garden. My group dragged me to a coffee shop, and then we got on a bus and went back to school.

America's got talent Trump style

                I am relieved to see that today Donald Trump has won the election. Mr. Schick gave out prizes to only two people in our class, because only two people out of our whole class said Trump was going to win (against all odds). One of them got an American flag balloon, and the other got a jigsaw puzzle. After that, we discussed what we thought Trump was going to do in his first year in the White House. Turns out this is also a project. Yay. I think that the first thing Trump will most likely do in office is abolish Obamacare. There are multiple reasons why Trump would want to, one being that he dislikes Obama. Trump will most likely want to get rid of whatever ‘legacy’ that Obama has left behind, even if there isn’t much there. Secondly, it is a relatively easy thing to do on his to-do list. Trump will also be able to test his new power over the nation through this, and use it as a warming up for his bigger projects. I think Trump will not be able to finish much else in the coming year, mostly because everything that he plans on doing is a long-term plan. I’m mostly guessing that this will be mostly foundation laying and planning. One thing that I have almost no doubt about is that Donald Trump will find new and innovative ways to make his plans work. You have to remember, Trump didn’t get his fortune by doing what everyone else did. The fact that he’s president now shows that he thinks creatively and diversely or he wouldn’t have tried to run (or even gotten elected if he did). Trump is, and always will be, a businessman, and will most likely think like one throughout his term. The one thing that differentiates him from a normal businessman is that he has passion. This is what drives him to do what he does and how he thinks. This combination should make him an effective leader, even if he’s never led a government before. I’ve included a little video that should make you laugh (just in case you’re sad Hillary lost).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbHgJUDUYg

Confirmation class in school....well.....that's interesting.

Today in Human Geography we watched videos and then discussed them. We introduced shadows, then Mr. Schick started the discussion. He discussed his opinion on who was going to win, and about an SNL skit where ‘Trump’ and ‘Clinton’ make up and go around and hug random people. Kiana pulled up some statistics, and we discussed those. Unfortunately, Trump is at a steady drop according to the polls, but I can still hang on to the hope that they’re wrong. After that, PBJ/bowling ball girl (The one, the only) Mackenzie Hopkins suggested we watch a video about a man who sued the school system for what he thought they were doing wrong. What was funny about this video is that it reminds of all these teen oriented videos that we watch in Confirmation class in the way that he presented his information. Some of the similarities are that he used lots of analogies, rhymed his sentences (I think?), and paused but spoke loudly. Watch a couple videos like I’m talking about and you’ll get it. After watching the video we had a discussion on what we thought about the video. I agreed with the man, that we should personalize education to fit the student and not the other way around, and improve the way we teach, but there are some things that you can’t get rid of in a traditional school system. It’s good to start kids out in a structured school system, because this helps build the ability to think in a structured format, which is an important thinking skill. Even with creativity, if you can’t focus long enough on a task to complete it (or even start) you’ll get nowhere.

Octopus Electoral Ballot

                Today in Human Geography we did election predictions. We had two shadows that were introduced (I knew neither of them) and then Mr. Schick gave us our class assignment. Our assignment was to gather information to form an educated guess on who was going to win the election. Whoever got the exact numbers would win a prize (Bet you it’s a bumper sticker that is themed with some sort of election joke). We had to get four answers, who we thought was going to win, the electoral votes for each candidate, and the popular vote percentages. I was originally just going to use whatever an octopus thought as my answer, considering there’s one that predicts the Super Bowl winner, and the president accurately (Hey, octopuses are really smart). Unfortunately I couldn’t even use it as a tiebreaker because the only octopus predicting an election predicted Raila would get presidency in some overseas country. Instead, I used my second best formula. I took all the numbers from the polls for each candidate and averaged them out to figure out the best number for each statistic. Unfortunately, my computer was having trouble loading and maintain the pages, so I only got through the electoral votes and didn’t get to the popular vote section. Secondly, Hillary Clinton won on every poll, so I had to write Hillary on the board to win the election (Curse you electoral college voting system!).

Hawkmoon building instructions

Today in Human Geography we were supposed to have a sub. When we got to Mr. Schick’s classroom, we sat around a little bit waiting for the sub to arrive. When we finally realized there wasn’t one coming, the supervising teacher looked around for answers and told us we were taking a field trip to classroom 319. When we got up to the class, the sub took attendance and we were told to keep working on our Factbook project. It took me most of the class period, but I managed to get it done. When I got done, I went to the bungie website (a game making company) and looked around. The reason I was doing this is that you can get a lot of information about real time events happening in the game form the site, and I wanted to see if anything new was posted. I didn’t find any information about the Halloween event going on or anything else really important, but I found this really cool website (I’ll put a link down below for it). I spent the rest of class exploring this website, and I learned quite a bit on how plastics are used to create different objects through molds and all the interesting nerd stuff is on the web.

http://www.impactprops.net/

Bat-dawg!

                Today in class we continued on in our section using the World Factbook. Unfortunately, even though the Cubs won, we didn’t get a free period. For the first fifteen minutes of class we discussed the final World Series game (which I only saw 3 minutes of) and how it was such a cliffhanger of who was going to win. After that Mr. Schick discussed that even though we were getting through the Factbook pretty well, he still wanted to help us try to ‘connect the dots’ on it. Mr. Schick assigned us the assignment of finding more information about the countries that we recently researched about world leaders. What was awkward is that Mr. Schick forgot where we were work-wise and tried to get us to do something that we weren’t ready for (oops!). Once that was sorted out, we continued our research about the countries. Mr. Schick occasionally flashed more pictures on the board that he took while he was away (Bat-dog, anyone?) and started looking up pictures of the ‘hot Canadian prime minister’ with the girls. When I saw this I sort of just sat there and thought “What is this man doing? He really shouldn’t be feeding Kate Gromacki’s fantasies about Canadians!”. I managed to get a couple slides done, but didn’t manage to finish.

How the World Series really went

                Today in Human Geography Mr. Schick returned from his trip to the World Series. Mr. Schick wasn’t actually able to purchase tickets for spots at the game, but he was outside the park partying all night (Just joking Mr. Schick). Mr. Schick talked about how all of this is tied to his family because his whole family are Cub’s fans. Mr. Schick also showed us some pictures of him there, which were pretty cool. When he was going through the pictures, one of them was of just his face with the entrance to the stadium behind him. The smile on his face was clearly of pure joy, but I almost fell out of my seat from surprise (Still joking Mr. Schick). Mr. Schick showed us more pictures, and while he was doing so told us why he took the pictures and what was going on. Mr. Schick also showed us a video that a crazy man on his flight took of the man walking down the aisle while getting all the Cub’s fans to sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’. Unfortunately, the Cubs lost that night and the weird man’s video somehow never had Mr. Schick in it, which left me wondering if Mr. Schick was sitting in higher class seats than the weird man taking the video. Mr. Schick also talked about how odd the time delays were when he was watching a game that was occurring only a couple hundred feet away over ‘live’ television. People would cheer in the stadium, but everyone outside was just left wondering what was going on inside until the pitcher pitched the ball a couple seconds later. Mr. Schick also talked about the different places he walked to in order to see the game, and I thought that the whole story was pretty interesting (Teacher stories are always really good).

Updates. They're fun.

                Today in class we reviewed/finished our PowerPoint and got assigned our weekend homework. We first reviewed the last slide on the PowerPoint. This slide was defining what an independent state was, and what it took to be an independent state. This took up most of the class time. After finishing this slide of the PowerPoint, we finally got to our assignment. This assignment was to use the CIA World Factbook and a list of countries to learn information about world leaders. We were supposed to find out the country’s government type, it’s leaders name, and the leader’s title. Finally, we were asked to include a picture. What I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure about is the ‘title’ part. I’m assuming it means official title, however, except for Queen Elizabeth II, who is only an honorary leader, most leaders are termed ‘President’. I’m not sure if this is fact or if the Factbook just labels all leaders with the term president. Unfortunately, I only really got to work on the assignment later, because my computer was having issues connecting to the internet. When I tried to restart it, my computer had to update (slight disappointment in technology). When my computer finally finished updating, I still had issues, but I managed to work on my assignment a little bit before the bell rang.

Social Engineering: Does it really involve math?

                Today in Human Geography we continued our PowerPoint. We didn’t really get through any slides since last time, because we were discussing social engineering in sort of an open debate format. Originally we started with what social engineering was, and how it is used in school. Social Engineering is a way that people influence the way you think. The tendency of news networks is that they have twenty-four hour news service. This means that they occasionally talk about the same subject for long periods of time until a new one comes along, or revisit a past subject. By using this type of news system, it makes us hyperaware of everything going on. However, when it comes to the presidential election, each news station seems to have on candidate that they bash on the head for hours. This makes news stations more and more like propaganda machines. One thing that I will say is that I think Fox News is more balanced than CNN when it comes to politics, even if they are right leaning. We then moved on towards how children’s networks tend to target children with lots of social engineering. And the fact of the matter is, young children don’t really have barriers against this, and the social engineering children’s TV stations employ is so the parents spend some money that goes to them. This, combined with actors on television that are of the child’s age, can cause serious behavioral issues. Child actors on TV (as well as adults) portray people that don’t act like real people. Children then copy this behavior and are worse off for it.

Cubby Puppy

Today in class we started our unit on political geography. This unit also centers around world leaders, a little bit of map work, and the World Series (???). Through political terminology, we learned these three terms. Country, Nation, and State. By best definition of Mr. Schick, a country is an identifiable land area, a nation is a group of people with a common culture, and a State is a population under a single government, often synonymous with country. Although there was a dispute over whether or not the definition was correct, I think it is correct for everyone, even Americans. America’s culture is our diversity, which we all share. Going into deeper detail, a country regulates its borders, distributes money, social engineering, transportation, public service as well as police power, sovereignty, and finally, external recognition. A nation is a group larger than a single tribe or city, that share traits such as religion, language, or historical background. An independent state has internationally recognized boundaries, has a person to represent them around the world on a regular basis (The U.N.), and has an active and engaged economy.

ANOTHER 89!!!

                Today in class we got our tests back. After deciding who was going to sit on the floor in order to make sure all the shadows had space at a desk, we introduced them. Two kids from my old school, St. Joan of Arc, were here. I know one of them, but the other one must have transferred in from another school in the past year because I didn’t know who she was. After that, one kid named Austin had to take his test, so we sort of just sat around quietly and waited for him to get through it so we could hand out the rest of the tests to everyone. I started writing this blog at that point so I could save time later. According to Veracross, my test score was an 89. I have no idea why I got this score, because I was very confident that I did well on it. This unfortunately bumped my overall grade down to a 90.8, so I need to start trying harder in my classes to maintain my GPA. After looking through the test, class was over and everyone left.

MLG AIRHORN CELEBRATION!!!

                Today in class we took a test. To celebrate the test, I played airhorn sounds on my computer. Unfortunately, Mr. Schick misinterpreted this as the fire alarm, but figured out that it wasn’t the fire alarm eventually. For the first page of the test we had ten minutes to fill out twelve questions. These questions were all statistic based, and we could use our computers. However, once time ran out, you couldn’t use your computer anymore for the first page. I managed to get this done with two minutes and sixty-three seconds to spare. After that, there was some matching as well as some two answer questions. I’m 95% sure I got most of the questions right, but some of them took some time to figure out. What was really funny was the trick question Mr. Schick put in at the end of the test for extra credit. The question was “What is the net migration of the whole world”. Well, since no one can get off the planet and move to Mars or some other planet yet, the answer is 0.

Poor Dog! He can't drive with that bad paw!

                Today in class we discussed crazy drivers and looked at the CIA World Factbook. Mr. Schick told us a story about a crazy woman in a Jeep that almost smashed the back of his car. Mr. Schick was driving the speed limit because he had his injured dog in the back of the car, and this lady in a Jeep was basically tailgating him on a curving road. This lady followed him for a long period of time, never slowing down. When she finally passed him, she screamed profanity out the window about Mr. Schick not knowing how to drive. We then proceeded to discuss why people do what they do when they drive, and we mostly agreed that when people drive they think with more self-centeredness when they drive. Afterwards we looked more at the CIA Factbook. Whenever we do this I sort of just get lost and I listen to whatever other people find on the website. When it comes to finding information that links together other information, I’m just not good at making the connections. After that, Mr. Schick discussed our test on Thursday that involved the factbook.

News Recording

                Today in Human Geo we listened to a news recording. Conveniently enough the recording that was playing also came with a script, since sometimes I needed to read over (repeatedly) what the person said. As we went through the recording, Mr. Schick would occasionally stop the recording to have a discussion about what was said. The overall news report was about the upcoming election and what ethnicities were voting for who. This tied in directly with our population pyramids, because they were discussing types of people and what the population consisted of. Most pyramids are centered around age and sex, where those statistics tell the ages in five year periods. Some other population pyramids are based off of other statistics, such as race or religion. America mostly consists of whites, and most whites vote. In comparison with other races, American whites vote more than other ethnicities. During the news report, two people were interviewed. Each lived as a child during the 50’s. Each discussed whether or not life was good during that time period, where the white woman said that it was good. However, the black (man or women, I don’t remember) said that her experience was not so good. As I suspected, civil rights during that time were not as good for blacks as whites, leading to better privileges for some than others.

Warning! Shadows Approaching!

                Today in class we had somewhere around five to six shadows (it might have been more). After introducing shadows for the first fifteen minutes, we continued our go over of the video. We started a little bit farther back, so we went over some of the stuff we did a couple days before, and the day did consist of a lot of review. We did however look at more population pyramids and what certain spurts or shrinkage of population meant. We also discussed why there seemed to be many more boys in a country. Overall, parents want boys because boys apparently earn more money, and they can later use that money to take care of their parents in their parent’s old age. This happens because in most countries there aren’t assisted living homes for the elderly. To ensure that they get a boy (This being applicable with Japan’s one baby rule) rich families use money to do an ultrasound, then bribe doctors to do an abortion on the woman. This is very common, leading to more boys being born than girls in some countries. However, some poor families who can’t afford to get an abortion or an ultrasound just keep having babies until they get a boy, which does level out the population between boys and girls. Afterwards, we looked over the CIA website for population pyramids, then analyzed them and guessed why each pyramid had spurts if shrinkages of growth.

Population Pyramid Power Nap

                Today in class we looked at population pyramids. We watched a video called TED ED that covered how population pyramids work and why we have them. A population period is sort of like a bar graph that has a vertical split and bar graph lines going to the left and right. Down the center of the graphs are five-year age groups that go from 0-4, 5-10, and so forth. The pyramid had men on the left and women on the right. Each five-year age group had a line going out in the appropriate direction, which could occasionally appear like a pyramid shape. This pyramid is an easy visual tool to help see where there is spurts of age throughout the groups, and can even be used to see where certain events took place, such as WWII where there was many deaths during the years the event was happening, making the lines shorter there. There are three main intervals for the pyramid. The three intervals are pre-reproductive, reproductive, and post-reproductive. Note that pre-industrial countries have higher life expectancy and lower child mortality, and vice versa. Also note that the picture of the man with his hands on his head is most likely losing his hair.

Sad dog, worse amnesia

                Today in class we saw and discussed dogs. More like sad puppies with brain tumors and half of one leg missing. All of this is true, however we also discussed more important things, such as the syllabus for Human Geo. We went over how the class gives no extra credit, and how late work is treated. Mr. Schick also told us cool stories about his daughter and how she went to work at a college newspaper. Since she went to work at our school newspaper, The Patriot she managed to get a job on her first day with no previous college based training or schooling. Her job was the Sports News Editor (correct me if I’m wrong Mr. Schick), which is a pretty important position as she edits and makes sure that the newspaper is correct before it’s released to the public. Most importantly, we went over the technology policy. After that we discussed whether or not we should let the sad puppy in the classroom turn in his papers that were late. I think that this is an iffy subject depending on whether or not the person really tries in your class to turn in work. However, this reliability can easily be established from my point of view on how the student has performed in the past.

CIA investigation part 2

                Today in class we continued our investigation of the CIA. Before we started our classwork, we had to listen to announcements, pray, and say the pledge. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hear any of it because the seniors were running down the hall screaming and shouting the whole time (I thought it was funny). The six new slides we had to add to the PowerPoint were about obesity, literacy, overall GDP, and GDP per capita, how much of the world speaks English, and how many people in certain countries are Catholic (Some of these categories were represented in percentages). I got the last two slides, those two being the percentage of the world that speaks English, and the percentage of the certain countries that is Catholic. English is not actually the world’s leading language, the leading language is currently Mandarin Chinese. I’m guessing it’s the leading language due to so many people being in different countries that speak the language (Asian countries tend to have a lot of people). Catholicism is the leading religion in Mexico, at 82.7%. Afterwards, I helped a little bit with some of the other slides, then started this blog.

Happy readings, Mr. Schick

                Today in class we watched and discussed the opening of Newsroom. This film was filmed about four years ago. The clip from the movie we watched was of the reporter at a debate. There is a lot of time spent where the other reporters are arguing while the main character sits and listens. After a period of time, the main reporter is asked a question, and the reporter gives a neutral and comedic answer. The debate moves on, with more arguing from the Republican and Democratic sides of the argument. After another period of time, the main reporter is asked another question. The moderator asks the says to the main reporter that he hasn’t upset anyone so far because he’s remained neutral. Then, the moderator asks the main question: What do you think makes our country the best country. In the back of the room, a lady holds up signs that (I’m just guessing this) give brief notes on what he’s getting paid to say. The main reporter then goes on a speech/rant about how he thinks that there isn’t a reason to call our country the best country. He names a lot of statistics that show America isn’t the greatest country (Most of which we researched on the CIA website) and goes through all the things that America did that was truly great, and how we’ve declined. Afterwards, we discussed the video. I for one agree totally with what he was saying, paid or not. I think that America has declined greatly because people have become complacent. People aren’t informed enough or don’t care enough to be to make any real decisions. Another thing that I have to add is that Americans are constantly restricting themselves because we are afraid to hurt someone’s feelings. One example is Isis. Isis has grown big enough now to technically call themselves a small nation. If we weren’t so afraid of offending the Muslims by absolutely decimating terrorism, then we wouldn’t have this problem. Another is the whole ‘political correctness’ thing. For example, if someone insulted me by calling me stupid, I think I would try my very best to prove them wrong. Nowadays, if you call anyone a mean or in any way insulting in the slightest bit, it can be considered totally rude and hurtful. If you truly care enough to be insulted by someone’s comments, then you should be prepared to do something about it and prove them wrong. Overall, people have become complacent with how they are, and I think that this can ruin the country (and already is doing so, however the amount of people who care still outweigh the people that don’t).

The REAL CIA Investigation

                Today in class, for the second day in a row, we had FIVE, I repeat, FIVE, shadows. Each of the shadows introduced themselves (I knew none of them). Afterwards, we started classwork. For class work we researched information on the CIA website for a miniature project. Out of 10 topics, I did population, birth rate, and death rate. We had to get information on each of these for the top three countries, the bottom three countries, the U.S., and two other countries of our choice (Hopefully relevant to the topic of research).  Finding the information was relatively easy, as it was just a matter of copying and pasting the information next to the name of the country. On the other hand, it was extremely time consuming and took me the whole class period. At the end of the school day I had to reformat the PowerPoint because when I copied the words it put a weird white block around them. Fortunately, I got it done before I even got this done.

The first CIA Investigation

Today in class we continued our migration and settlement PowerPoint and explored the CIA website. We only went through one slide, and it was about TFR (Total Fertilization Rate). TFR is made up of the average number of children born for each woman. For the population to remain the same in an area the TFR must remain at 2.1. Any higher, and the population goes up, and lower and the population drops. The current world TFR is 2.42. Therefore, the world’s population is growing. As noted before, the undeveloped countries tend to have a higher population growth, which means they have a higher TFR. After that we visited the CIA website. CIA stands for Central Intelligence Agency, and the CIA has a lot of information about every country on the planet. We explored individual countries specific statistics, but it appears that the CIA has info about a wide variety of subjects for each country. A brief list would include population, religion, and the economy, along with other categories.

I present our new student, Mr. Schick! (First name Mr., last name Schick)

Today in class a new kid joined honors. His name is Alec, and he is in band and plays the flute. Because he didn’t see the PowerPoint we went through yesterday, we had to go back through the PowerPoint in a squished form. The presentation was run by Kiana, while the other new student, Mr. Schick made helpful comments. The whole first part of the PowerPoint took up most of the class, but then we started getting new information on migration. We discussed migration rates, and a lot about why you would want to migrate from one place to another. The overall two groups of reasons to migrate were push and pull factors. Push factors are factors that make you want to leave the country. Examples of these could be the government, or lack of it, religious persecution, environmental changes, as well as others. Pull factors are factors that make you want to come to a country. Examples of these would be better healthcare, better economy, or generally everything that is better than what you are currently living in.

How can half a person be born in a second?

Today in class we started our population and settlement. After a brief comment on not being a stenographer, we started the PowerPoint. The first slide was mainly statistics about the current amount of people on the planet (7 Billion is the current count) and about how many people were being born every second (We didn’t copy the statistics part but 2.5 people are born every  second). The next slide went over population growth in different places, and the current longstanding fact is that the countries that can afford to have more people the least have the most people, and vice versa. America and other developed countries (developed meaning having an infrastructure such as roads, a government, etc.) have actually leveled out on population growth. However, undeveloped countries such as Africa and parts of Asia have large population growth. Some developed countries are even instating population control by only allowing small amounts of children for each family. Our next slide went over life expectancy. Apparently, all over the world women live longer than men due to the fact that they take better care of themselves. Monaco has the highest expectancy rate due to it being a ‘playground’ for the rich, where richer people can afford better health care. The lowest expectancy rate is in Chad, where the average life expectancy is 49.81 years. The next slide was about measuring population, by using the crude birth and crude death rate to create an overall average.

Magical Test Review

Today in Human Geography Mr. Schick gave us back our tests. Mr. Schick introduced a long standing tradition where whenever someone got an A they got a ring on the bell, and 10 and above got two rings. Unfortunately for me, I got an 89 (so close to a ring I could taste it!). Apparently our overall class score was an eighty-nine. We went over the correct answers with the rest of the class, and we went over the short answer questions in great detail. The short answer questions were based all off of the Greek section for our class (How the agora works, Aristotle’s trial, etc.). Magically, our test turned into a study guide after going over it. This took a very long time, as somewhere around 3-5 people gave their opinions for each question that was short answer. The handing out and going over the test took about the whole class period too complete and I wish we could have done something else so that I could have more to write about for this assignment.

Shadow Day Hypercube

                Today in class we had two shadows. The shadow’s names were Kelly Ann and James. First, Kelly Ann goes to St. Joan of Arc, my old school. I actually know her and her brother, so it’s pretty cool that she’s thinking about coming to our school. Second, there are way too many James’ in our school, although I don’t really have an issue with another one joining, it’s just that it’s going to get even more confusing. For the whole class we mostly discussed the pros and cons of automated cars (based on the statistics in the video presented yesterday) through agora style discussion (without Mr. Schick moderating and without the standing). There were many pros to automated cars, most based toward convenience, some more geared towards people that drunk drive or are falling asleep at the wheel (Pokemon GO while driving, anyone?). The cons were that your car could get stolen by hackers, or that the car would be too expensive to buy. Also, the word of the day is Latin Hypercube. If you don’t know what it means, go look it up and learn something.

'Did you know' problems of the future paradoxes

                Today in class we watched and discussed a did you know video. This video talked about population growth, technology, and lots of statistics for the future. The video mainly focused on how the world is going to be in the future with technology, as well as very advanced concepts involving the birth rate and how that will affect our whole world in the future. The video went into so much detail it’s very hard to write about it without the reader having to watch it, but the discussion that ensued was even more interesting. During the discussion we discussed how the issues that affect us now would be totally different later, and that we need to be prepared for things that we don’t even know about yet. The crazy thing is, our technology is advancing so fast that by the time high-schoolers are in their third year for college the stuff they’ve already learned will be outdated. The speed of acceleration of the knowledge we gain has multiplied so much that everything we learn will outdated within years. This discovery rate is also supposed to multiply over time, making our learning and the ability to out date our current information even greater, raising the new question. How will we continue educating the next generation of people?

Adventures in the Metric System

                Today in class we had a choice. The choice was either to have an agora type discussion, or just do homework. For about 20 minutes we debated over the specifics on debating. We mostly discussed what the topic would be for the debate, but some people also suggested doing both choices. Mr. Schick also discussed how many people actually vote in the country, and how most of them are old people. He also said that teenagers should be allowed to vote at 16, which I think is pretty cool because teenagers at 16 are smart enough to vote correctly and they probably won’t make the mistakes of their ancestors (That last part was sarcasm). After about 20 minutes of debating, we finally had a vote. It was a landslide towards homework time. After getting my papers, I started my biology web quest. This web quest was based on the metric system (It’s about as exciting as it sounds). After finishing the web quest, I did this blog.

                Today in class we had a choice. The choice was either to have an agora type discussion, or just do homework. For about 20 minutes we debated over the specifics on debating. We mostly discussed what the topic would be for the debate, but some people also suggested doing both choices. Mr. Schick also discussed how many people actually vote in the country, and how most of them are old people. He also said that teenagers should be allowed to vote at 16, which I think is pretty cool because teenagers at 16 are smart enough to vote correctly and they probably won’t make the mistakes of their ancestors (That last part was sarcasm). After about 20 minutes of debating, we finally had a vote. It was a landslide towards homework time. After getting my papers, I started my biology web quest. This web quest was based on the metric system (It’s about as exciting as it sounds). After finishing the web quest, I did this blog.

The open brain surgery test.

                Today in class we took a cumulative test on what we’ve learned so far. The test was relatively easy (Thanks to Mr. Schick teaching us correctly! Thanks!). I think I may have gotten one or two questions wrong, one about who was president during message to Garcia and one about words that had originated from polis. I put in police and policy, but I’m not sure those counted. The essay questions took some time, but those were pretty easy too. All I had to do to remember all of this was Mr. Schick’s role play scenarios, and I’m 90% percent sure I got the essay questions correct. The one thing that I didn’t really like was the format for the multiple choice question. I’m OK with the formatting because it’s easier on the teacher, but for some odd reason I don’t like the format. Overall, I think I got an A on this test.

Agora style debate tactics

     Today in class we did agora style discussions. We discussed whether or not it was disrespectful to not stand when the national anthem was played. Our basis for this discussion was multiple sports players protesting black lives matter movements by sitting or kneeling during the national anthem. Many viewpoints were brought up during this discussion (and I kind of wish we could have kept going after the bell rang). Me. Schick moderated, questioned, and pointed out things throughout our discussion. This argument was actually about two issues, not one. The main issue was the flag disrespect, the second issue being the black lives matter movement. Due to my ideas on the second issue most likely being misinterpreted and making the overall debate much more confusing and heated, I chose not to voice these opinions. However, I did openly voice my opinions on the disrespect shown to what the flag truly represents, being freedom, liberty, justice, and everyone who died for it. There were many opposing viewpoints on this, most pointing towards the fact that the players could have been doing something worse. Others said that they approved the support of the black lives matter movement.

Aristotle goes to court for free dinners.

                Today in class we finished our Socrates/pep talk slideshow. We went over Socrates’ trial in more detail, as well as his death. Socrates was accused of poisoning the youth of Athens and of impiety. Impiety in this case meaning that Aristotle wasn’t loyal to the gods of Greece (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and so forth). Aristotle didn’t hire any lawyers, instead choosing to defend himself. Aristotle didn’t deny that he was the one who said those things, and openly stated that he did. Aristotle actually used philosophy to try to win the court case. Aristotle’s two major arguing points were that he A.: Was the gadfly to a horse, meant to stir up the horse from being complacent and to doing other things; and B.: That he was doing Athens a favor and deserved free food. Aristotle almost won the trial, out of 500 people he lost somewhere around 221 to 227. Aristotle was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock, and he accepted the punishment due to not wanting to disrespect Athenian democracy.

This blog is totally pointless, so please read it.

Today in class Mr. Schick reviewed our blogs. We had a lot of free time for the class, so I took advantage of it. I worked on my Short Story Literary terms for English class. We are starting a short story unit where we first are going to be doing a PowerPoint on writing/Short Story terms. Of the five I had to do, I did Imagery and Perspective as two of the slides. The slides took up most of the class time. Meanwhile, my classmates were talking about an interesting mix of things. One of them was discussing the multiple incidents involving Mackenzie trying to give me peanut butter. (I’m actually allergic to peanuts, so it was an interesting conversation.) Mr. Schick called me up to review my blog, and said it was O.K. He even helped me set my time to Eastern Time, which was a very odd process (Hint hint to whatever Blogger programmer is reading this). Overall this blog was extremely hard to stretch write in order to fit in 150 words.

Socrates on WWE? 9/7/2016

Today in Human Geography we went through a PowerPoint with Mr. Schick. This PowerPoint went over some of the things we already learned, and added some new things to the bank of knowledge as well. First we went over the finer details of A Message to Garcia. Apparently A Message to Garcia was so popular that it went from a short story, to an extremely well known and published book. Originally handed out as pamphlets, it eventually turned into a 37-page book. That’s an incredible amount of stretching, and I don’t think even I could accomplish something like that on a paper. Eventually, ‘take a message to Garcia’ became a well-used household term. A Message to Garcia was also made into a movie. Twice. We even went over vocabulary that was used in A Message to Garcia; some words being slipshod and imbecile. After reviewing that, we went on to Socrates. We went over some of the Greek terms we learned, and talked about Socrates’ background. Socrates had quite a bit under his belt, being a stonemason, what would have been WWE standard material in his day, and even being a ‘heroic’ Peloponnesian War veteran. Socrates apparently had his meeting spot for his followers right outside the local agora, in a workshop.

The Return of the Schick (Star Wars Episode VI.2) (9/6/2016)

            Today in Human Geography our teacher Mr. Schick discussed the values of hard work. We reviewed what we went over with our sub in the last few days. We talked about Aristotle, and how he died. Mr. Schick also asked us to research Aristotle’s trial. What I found by using the History channels website is that Aristotle was actually forced to leave Athens due to anti-Macedonian sentiment. This sentiment was due to the death of Alexander the Great. According to the site, Aristotle died of a stomach issue. I’m not totally sure this is reliable, but the fact that Aristotle died of causes that had to do indirectly with politics and directly with bodily issues (hemlock?) this leads me to believe that there is a connection between the two different stories. Mr. Schick also discussed how he doesn’t think that teenagers are the only ones that are self-absorbed (or Narcissistic) about ourselves. I for one agree with this, although there are the occasional few who are really what the media says they are. As always, there’s an exception to every rule. We discussed the Message to Garcia, and a little about the Spanish-American War. Mr. Schick also went over his syllabus on the class.

Five Points to Excellency for High School

My Five point path to excellency for this year of high school is:
1. Start my path to Eagle at Boy Scout's
2. Get all A's every grading period
3. DO MY BEST!
4. Practice for band more than last year
5. Act like Jesus and be nice to everyone

Ancient Greece Terminology and history

Today in class we learned about Ancient Greece. We learned some Greek terms, but we mostly focused on Socrates. We learned a lot of terms having to do with the city-state and a little bit of politics. We learned Agora and Polis, which both have to do with the city-state as Agora means meeting place or town square, and Polis means city. We also learned about two words that tie in with A Message to Garcia. The two words were Arete, and alternatively, idiot. Arete is a summary of good qualities that make a good person, where A Message to Garcia demands the reader to act with good character when doing work. The word idiot when spoken by the Greeks actually meant a secluded, self-centered person that didn’t make very good decisions. An ‘idiot’ in Greek terminology usually didn’t make good decisions, and also didn’t have a professional job. We also learned a lot about Socrates, but not about his teachings, with the exception of the Socratic method. I did do research before this class on Socrates for a school project, and Socrates taught some of the values that are represented by A Message to Garcia.

A Message to Garcia

            Today in class we reviewed “A Message to Garcia” by Elbert Hubbard. The passage is about a man who is asked to deliver a message to an insurgent group in a jungle during the war during the U.S. and Spain. When the man (named Rowan) is asked to deliver the letter, he asks no questions and does the task as asked. According to the story, the task was long, hard, and dangerous, and yet the man completed the task with no questions or complaints. This can relate to everyone as a worker, and the writer talks about how every worker should be like Rowan. This is true and it can also apply towards us as high-schoolers. Our class had a group discussion about this after reading the passage. We discussed different ways that this could apply to us, where the different categories included school and sports. Specifics on school involved us discussing how we could do better in school if we respected our teachers and didn’t ask questions about our work that delayed the process, and instead doing our best without any shortcuts to it. This could be applied in sports the same way, and even hobbies. We also discussed how the army still uses this (from almost every country) because they want to instill in the soldiers hardworking values. Following orders as Rowan did in the passage would definitely improve army efficiency.

My First Day at School

My first day at John Carroll was really good. The schedule was very easy to follow and I got to class

on time for every subject. Getting stuff in and out of my locker was a little bit of a hassle, but I got it

done. Classes so far have been great (Although they are mostly about syllabullus’). I’m not sure how

to spell that word. Homework has been pretty lenient so far, and I like my teachers. I got to hear

‘horror stories’ from my biology teacher and drew chocolate and planes in drawing. There was a lot

of paperwork involved today, but Veracross should help fix any issues I have at home. Eating lunch

was pretty catastrophic as I didn’t make any plans with my friends, so I just sat down at a random

seat where someone I knew was sitting. For band this morning we went out onto the field and

managed to play and march the opener for the football game this Friday with a certain amount of

decency. Overall, today was exciting and interesting for a first day of school.