On Friday, I got an World History essay back. I didn’t do too badly, a 90%, but I was quite irritated. You see, I was rather proud of that essay because it was filled with nuances I loved and a very structured flow to it that I adored. I wasn’t quite sure how I did it, but I did. It was the first essay in a long time that I loved. But, I got a 90.
The comments critiquing it were mostly that I didn’t define words that I was supposed to, or include details I should’ve. I admit, I might have been overconfident, but that wasn’t the first time last week.
On Thursday, I submitted one of my poems to the Literary Club at my high school. I thought I did a great job on the poem, even though it was short. I had written it in 5 minutes, but I was confident that I could get a unanimous vote. Boy was I wrong.
Once again, details. I forgot to clarify some things I should’ve (not everyone undergoes the same experiences, duh), left a lot of the subject matter to interpretation, and went off of the assumption that everyone knows acupuncture.
For these two examples in the past week, I tried to look at the bigger picture and neglected to understand the intricacies of my tasks. Although my previous blogpost stated that we need to see the world more generally, it also pays off to pay attention to the little things, which will contribute to the betterment of the whole.
My eyes are currently very tired from the hours of homework I have on my computer/iPad. In the past week, I’ve must’ve logged onto my iPad a hundred times and my computer a thousand. This may just be me complaining about my privilege, but hey, that’s means I’m checking it, right? Anyway, I noticed something very peculiar about using the iPad for homework. When I had to write something down or annotate a PDF, I had to zoom in. Nothing special right? Well, all of this zooming in has made me forget about the bigger picture.
Before using the iPad, I took notes on paper, as I’m sure everyone did at some point. They weren’t neat notes, and I didn’t use them to study, but whatever. I encoded the information in my head from writing it by hand. Everyone does this, right? Okay. But if you look back at your notes, you can see the big picture, the entire sheet. On the iPad, you can’t do that. You can only see a little square whose borders you have decided and sometimes, you can’t even see the whole page when you zoom out.
So what has this done for me? Well, in some ways, it’s been good. I can focus on one thing at a time, something my little brother’s television programs advocates for. But I can’t step back to see what I’ve created/recorded. I can’t visualize the entire page in my head.
Switching to the iPad hasn’t impacted my grades by a whole lot, but it has impacted my productivity. Fortunately, I’ve still been able to prioritize and get things done, even if it means burdening my family a little bit. I’ve been reading less, and I’m only starting to get back into at least four books a month.
So do yourself a favor. Do what my English teacher likes to mention every once in a while, something to the New York Times has to allude to in every Sunday Review: unplug. I’m trying to do it more often, and it’s helped my eyes. Without your eyes, what could you focus on?
(I apologize for the unexpected hiatus for the past two weeks)
I don’t have a snapchat. I barely use my instagram anymore. I primarily reblog posts on tumblr. I only watch videos on youtube. My output on the internet is far less than what I am consuming, and I think I’m okay with that.
Nowadays, we are pressured to show every bit of ourselves and be as revealing as possible of our personal miseries and daily conflicts. Pictures of awesome sunsets are often shared with even the most distant of colleagues, and beautiful moments of our families or alternately intimate moments are just content to be shared. Everything in our lives is not copyrighted and we have the duty of stealing it to find followers, friends, and subscribers.
This is definitely an exaggeration. People on the internet are generally understanding, and if you don’t want to share the details of your lunch: fine, enjoy it yourself. But that takes self-discipline, which many of us don’t have these days. And so we fine tune the details of the dust on our lunch tables and clear up blemishes on our skin with photoshop all for the sake of a few comments from our closest friends (that would see you that day anyway), and then we move on.
I felt this pressure when I was first starting out on the internet, primarily on instagram. It didn’t feel right to take the contents of others so that I had a coherent aesthetic, so I constantly took pictures. I took pictures of my calendar, I took pictures of my cousins and my brother and my hands and the world. Then, I edited them with my app of choice and posted them.
However, one day, the truth of it actually struck me in the form of light. I was walking to school and when I turned the corner, and I saw a magnificent sunrise. (Before that, I had only seen peeps of beautifully colored clouds above the roofs.) Naturally, I felt the urge to translate this feeling into words, or at least to pixels, but my phone was at home and my paper was in my backpack, so I didn’t. I continued to walk and admire the sunset, and when I got to school I wrote about it. As I was writing, and this happens frequently, my brain shifted. I thought about my lack of materials, my lack of energy to get them, and I wrote about that instead.
To this day, that sunrise stays in my heart as one of the most beautiful in my short life, because I realized that I didn’t need to share those moments. I could collect them in this brain of mine and relish them without accessing anything.
There’s a certain comfort in not giving too much of yourself away, of keeping little pieces of your personality tucked away so that only the people that bother to look for it will find it.
(I apologize for the cliché post, but I just had to write something about this.)
When I was in third grade, I went over to my friend’s house for the first time, and her mom told me to call her by her first name. As a person who has grown up respecting adults, I found this odd. Eventually, by fifth grade, I was calling her what she wanted me to, but it still felt weird on my tongue. I went around calling parents by their last names, and they all thought that I was a perfectly well-mannered child.
When I got to ninth grade, no longer close friends with this person, I discovered that most of the people in my grade had no idea what the words filial piety meant. We learned it as if it was a vocabulary word in school, something foreign and something that we could forget once we passed the unit on ancient China. But they are so wrong. They are so so wrong.
In China, a great insult is to say that your parents didn’t raise you well. In America, this might be mildly offensive, but we view ourselves as separate from our parents. We didn’t chose them, we have no choice. It doesn’t matter. But, there are stories of Asian children who respect their stepmothers even when they starved and froze. They had no choice of stepmother, but they acknowledge that they are elders and that they must be respected. (As a result, in one of the stories, the boy is recognized by the Emperor and when he dies, the boy becomes the Emperor.)
Maybe it’s just a phase, a normal part of growing up in America, but I would like to change that. Sure, when we get to college, we understand the pains of taking care of ourselves and our children, but why not recognize that as teenagers? Why not appreciate our parents, who have spent long, sleepless nights letting us suck on their breasts, now? Why wait?
I understand that some people will never understand their parent’s sacrifice, and some might not realize it until it’s too late. In that case, do what the Chinese do- mourn for three years, repent, and move on.
On the east coast, it snowed really hard on Saturday, and on Sunday, we spent the entire day shoveling it. But something rather personal happened on Friday- my brother and my dad got in a fight again. But by Sunday, they were totally fine.
Call it a case of teenage angst, or denounce it as a phase, but I believe that the snow brought them together. How?
Well first, snow reduces travel ability. So, my brother wasn’t able to escape to his friend’s house or to the gym if he was angry at our dad. All he could do was head upstairs where our dad could still reach him, making it hard to keep grudges.
Another thing that they did together was shovel the snow. My dad and my brother, as the “men” of the family (My mom and I are fully capable of shoveling, but someone needs to watch the baby), had to work together to free our two cars. And our driveway. And the sidewalk.
Another point includes the pride that you feel when you finish shoveling. It’s amazing when you, with that puny shovel of yours, can liberate your means of travel. Therefore, when you share this feeling with someone, you are undoubtedly going to grow closer.
(Another point: my baby brother really loves watching them shovel the snow. That joy of giving happiness to someone else also contributed to resolving their dilemma.)
In conclusion, when you are feuding with anyone and there’s a snowstorm coming your way, be prepared to make up.
Sometimes, for whatever reason, babies are raised by more than their two parents. Because of this, children end up becoming spoiled with love and attention.
About two years ago, my mother gave birth again, therefore, I have a brother that I’m much older than. It may seem a little odd for people that aren’t familiar with this type of sibling arrangement, but it has worked out pleasantly for my mother and for me. My mother gets the benefit of a live-in babysitter, and I get the experience of handling a baby. It makes me laugh to think that I have more childcare experience than my 18 year old cousin, who was scared to hold my brother.
The main reason that I recognize myself his grandmother instead of his mother is the amount of time I spend with him. Mothers have to deal with their children throughout the night, waking up constantly to feed them and/or play with them. As a teenager, I don’t have that responsibility. I’m not even disturbed by his cries because I sleep on a different floor than he does. In addition to this, I am also able to hand him off to my dad or my mom when I have an excess of homework. Mothers don’t have that option. (They could hire a babysitter, but for the night?)
Another major perk is that I still get the same affection from him. Sometimes, because I’m home more often, he favors me over my dad (or maybe it’s just that I have the milk that he wants ^_^). He affectionately calls me when he wakes up from naps(“姐姐!” he screams as I write this, meaning older sister in chinese), learns the words that I teach him, and accepts that I’m putting him to sleep for this nap.
I could just be romanticizing motherhood, or even grand-motherhood, but I do find pleasures in it. Or, these could be the things that mothers look forward to when their children have children. I guess I’m lucky that way.
(I realize now how much of a “Look at me, I’m so special!” kind of blog post this is, so I apologize. I don’t mean to be arrogant.)
Music is something that flows through your veins like a sugary drink without the artificial flavors. As I pass by people walking on the streets of Manhatten, I have counted the majority of them wearing earphones or headphones. The little nubs of white are one of the most noticeable staples of American streets and schools. In my school, people are constantly wired, receiving melodies and harmonies personalized for their ears. But some find this music illegally, which I find an interesting practice.
One of the people I can single out for doing this is my brother. He always has his phone syncing to the computer so he can transfer his most recent files for later listening. He downloads it from the youtube-to-mp3 website, and it’s free, so my mom doesn’t see anything wrong in it. I don’t either, but I’d rather not.
I am at the other side of the spectrum- on my apple devices, I have bought about $100 worth of music (not a lot compared to one of my other friends). Although we are not poor in any aspect, my brother sometimes condemns me for this. “Why do you spend money when you could just get those songs for free?” is one of his frequent complaints. I shrug my shoulders and continue on my way.
Recently, I’ve gotten into the practice of not taking earbuds with me at all. I leave them unplugged if I do, and instead, I hum. It’s one of those pleasures that we deny ourselves nowadays, one of those things we did before we had walkmans or smartphones. I’ve taken to humming again, humming when I walk to school, humming when I walk down the hallways, or humming when I sit in the car. It’s quite relaxing, actually. Making music with your throat as you leave mistakes and intonation behind to focus more on the feeling the music gives you.
Although I doubt that my brother will start humming instead of downloading music, I encourage you to do so. It might mean the start of a new habit, and could be annoying to your family members, but humming will capture the essence of the music you love and reduce the need for music to constantly bombard our ears.
Before winter break, after an event at our high school, my friends and I started talking. After a while, a poster on the wall brought up a new topic. “Did you hear that Dominic started dating Meagan? Yeah, I know, how can one fall so low?” (Hypothetical names, so my classmates don’t sue me.) At the time, I didn’t think anything about it, and laughed along uneasily, as usual. But now, I am saddened and a little bit disgusted. (I don’t blame my friends, let’s make that clear. It’s obviously a product of the society that they’ve been born into, and they haven’t met the circumstances yet to overcome it. They will eventually).
Now, as my fingers are adjusting to the heat of my house, I come with a renewed opinion on the topic. I just came back from the mall, and I am struck by how much our opinions are based on looks and how much effort people put into their appearance. I am wearing a completely black hoodie and completely black pants without much texture, so you can imagine the fashion disaster I am right now. But I’m actually not a disaster- I’m a focused girl with white earbuds and a solid idea in my head.
Psychology tells us that first impressions are formed within a matter of seconds, or even nanoseconds. Because of this, people are constantly obsessed with how they look. What if you meet someone that could be your soulmate, but you are underdressed and he or she disregards you? It’s sad to think about, but this is how we are hardwired. Getting rid of this type of thinking would require an intense change in thinking, which many people aren’t up to.
So, while this was supposed to be a rant about how materialistic our society is, instead, I find myself praising something else- the Internet.
I know, I know, how biased of me, a resident of the internet, of course I’ll admire it. But listen- the internet is a place where we don’t have to share how we look. You could, and many people do, but you don’t have to, and people can judge you based on your content, your words. Which is what you’re doing right now. Judging me based on my words.
So, even though the internet has its faults, this is one of its good parts. I’m not suggesting that you spend all of your time on the internet, but instead, maybe adapt an internet-type perspective when dealing with real life. For people like me. Thanks.
(Sorry for a rambling post, I had an unproductive winter break.)
Yesterday, I took a practice ACT, and it was horrific. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answers (which I didn’t for many of them), but rather that being pidgeon-holed was suffocating. The room was hot, and I was in a room with people that refused to budge when it came to the breaks. Walking through the hallways to the exam room, I found the streams of people to be unaware of this conformity. They were content to be in groups, to be subject to this clear-defined society that we have where getting a good test grade is all that matters.
Granted, things have changed a lot from before, but a lot of it still remains the same. Often, the students with money and tutors do better, and in turn get to better colleges. I reside in a community with a lot of these cases, and it’s often pity-worthy because they don’t listen in class.
By about halfway through of the testing, the science portion, my brain was fried. I stared at the words and started to hum songs that I had been listening to that morning. Then, I tried again. Needless to say, I didn’t read most of the questions.
Then, there was my favorite part- the essay. This was where we were supposed to be free and express our opinions. When I was writing it, I thought about all of the topics they could have chosen besides college athletic scholarships. For example, what the student’s experience with Standardized Testing was. I would have loved that.
By the end, I had eaten my protein bar and drank about half of my bottle of water. The weather was cold, and when walking home, I had plenty of time to think about how tired my eyes were and how I couldn’t even recognize one of my classmates under the midday sun.
This wasn’t the first walk home where I felt the effects of testing. In June, after an intense night of rain, I walked home on the same route with a feeling of bliss and stupidity. I had registered for the wrong test, and in turn, left. (I wasn’t prepared to take the actual SAT, and I wasn’t going to waste 50 dollars taking it for practice.)
In conclusion, my experiences with standardized testing weren’t too good. Of course, there will probably be other experiences (I’m not done with high school yet), but these frustrating ones are the ones that I will remember.
It’s been a few weeks, and the “Challenge Day high” (as my English teacher affectionately calls it) has pretty much dissipated. I participated in this school-sanctioned cry-time last year, but an event in the past few months brings it back to me. What that annoying week of blockades tries to do is bring the entire grade together as humans. For those who haven’t experienced it, let me describe it for you. For one day, you skip all of your class in order to talk and cry to a group of people about past struggles. In a less cynical view, Challenge Day is a day for understanding, love, and making friends with the people that aren’t necessarily giving off an amiable air. But as for myself, I was given the amazing chance this summer to go to China with a small group of 8 (including two teachers). Perhaps it was the foreign air, the personal experiences we forged, or the duration of the two experiences, but I feel that my experience in China was more efficient at making friends than a 6 hour intensive therapy session.
One point that a fellow China-mate (and now friend) has brought up is the idea of past versus present. Because people in Challenge Day are relating to their peers about their struggling past, it brings a different sort of experience. Going to China (or any foreign country) is much more introspective, because even though you live in the present, there’s a certain amazement and wonder that forces reflection. Going ahead with life is better than trying to cringe about the past, as I’m sure many people believe in. Trying to dispel judgement and stereotypes is a great idea, but did it really work? I don’t see a change in the way people judge each other in the hallways, and I can especially feel their eyes searing into my unfashionable sweater as if I’m a freak of nature. So no, in this aspect, Challenge Day did not help. One of my friends noted that people still ridicule her for being outspoken, boys still find her amusing when she rants about her favorite classical composers, and even if people are more compassionate, they don’t act like it. Acting on intentions is another thing that needs more discussion. You may say that you are a good person, but if you talk behind the backs of teachers or steal mechanical pencils from your classmates, you’re no better than someone with the worst of intentions. Well, maybe slightly better. But not completely.
Another difference the two experiences had was their durations. I did go to China for two weeks as opposed to the 6 hour event that was Challenge Day, but people have had life-changing before-and-after sort of experiences that have happened in a few hours. So, if Challenge Day tries to compress that sort of experience, they better do it right. I didn’t feel a personal connection to the people I was supposed to bond with, and sometimes, they don’t even greet each other in the hallways after that fateful day. Time is relative, and if you can stuff as much meaning into a small space of time, great. But as most people can note, small matters of genius that take place in an instant are so rare in history that you could probably collect a list of all of them. I admire that you(creators of challenge day) are trying to accomplish something dreamed about by the greatest minds of history, but do you realize how improbable it is that one day will affect a majority of the projected audience? For most, a trip will be more affective than a 6 hour counterpart.
One of the major problems I found with Challenge Day was how isolated we were. Most of them are carried out in gyms, with taped up windows and blockaded hallways. This isolation from the outside world, when you are trying to advocate for the awareness of reality, is really ironic. Instead, why not have a school camping trip? That’s worked well enough for various schools, taking their children to monasteries or forests where they can learn to deal with physical and psychological stress. In addition, putting your needs behind that of the group proves to be a valuable experience. In China, we had to wake up early to get to our group activities on time, which meant making yourself less important and putting yourself as a part of a whole (which, though Emma Goldman disagrees with me, there are some pleasures in being part of a community).
In conclusion, please reconsider the choices you make to provide a better school experience for your children. Think about the other options, the ones that might actually bring people together, the ones that promote things like community as opposed to solving individual problems. Live in the present, stop dwelling on the past, and instead absorb all of the new information that is coming your way at high speed, begging for your attention.
Skies and Clouds 