Journal #43

There is an interesting topic today that I get to write about and discuss.  The topic is standardized tests for sanity/insanity.  Told you it was interesting! I really do not think that you can conclude that someone is sane or insane by them filling out a standardized test.  I think that to judge their sanity, you would have to do it orally to see how they act.  With a standardized test, you have multiple choices to choose from, where some of the answers are obviously more insane than others.  The test takers would be able to alter their test score by choosing the least insane answer.  If someone did that, their test results would come out as sane.  This person could actually be insane and the outcome of the test is sane.  This right here is a problem.  Also, when a test is put in front of someone, a lot of pressure comes upon the person.  This pressure could also affect the outcome of the test.  As I stated before, an oral test would result in a more accurate outcome.  For an oral test, the mental specialist or psychologist would ask a series of questions that could result in a disturbing or normal answer.  The answers would have to be come up by the person getting questioned.  The answers would not be provided so choosing the least insane answer would be harder.  Another thing with oral tests, the specialist can observe the behavior of the person.  Some of the questions may trigger certain memories that would affect the person.  The behaviors could steer the outcome more towards sane or insane.  The thing with people is that they will do things that an insane person would do just because they want to.  Some people are not actually insane and they just make bad choices.  On the other hand, there are people who are actually insane.  They do the things they do because they find enjoyment in them.  All in all, I think that judging a person's sanity based on a standardized test would be very difficult and inaccurate. 

Journal #42

The last blog that I wrote was all about heroes.  I just realized that I did not include the definition of a hero.  Wow silly me! My definition of a hero is someone who puts themselves before others and makes sure that they are safe.  This is just my definition and other definitions may vary from this.  This blog is still on the topic of a hero but it is now supposed to be about a hero who does right but for the wrong reasons.  Most of the time a hero is someone who does not stop and think, they just react to whatever is happening.  However, there are people in this world who strive to be known as a hero.  In some situations, people will stage events so they will be able to swoop in and save the day.  For example, I just thought of an example of this.  I was watching a show on Disney channel awhile ago and in the episode, one girl was trying really hard to have her picture taken and be put on the front of the newspaper.  This girl happened to be popular and of course she wanted to increase her popularity so that more people would strive to be her.  I do not remember the girl's name, so I will call her Rachel.  Rachel started to come up with a plan so that someone would catch her being a hero and therefore, she would have her picture on the front page of the newspaper.  Every time she tried to create an event where she would seem like the hero, it failed.  For example, one day in the cafeteria she told her friend to act like she was choking.  Her friend, who was loyal and wanted to make Rachel happy, decided to play along.  This friend just so happened to be not very smart and instead of faking, she actually ended up choking.  Rachel came to her rescue and was able to dislodge whatever was stuck in her throat.  Although the initial intention was for the wrong reason, Rachel ended up being a true hero.

Journal #41

What is a hero? What characteristics make up a hero?  The theme of this blog is to describe a hero.  I know a lot of heroes in this world.  There are fictional heroes like Batman and Spiderman and there are real life heroes like parents and firefighters.  I will talk about all of these.  Movies, books, and comic strips were all created to depict heroes such as Spiderman and Batman.  Although neither of these characters are real, they are still considered heroes.  They are not heroes in our world, but in the world that they live in.  Both Batman and Spiderman have a rival that wants to destroy the happiness in the world.  Batman has the Joker and other villains and Spiderman has the one dude who lost his arm.  The guy who lost his arm injected himself with this chemical to regrow his arm back but it ended up turning him into this huge reptile thingy.  They are considered villains becasue they bring chaos into the world creating scenes where people get hurt and sometimes die.  The job of both Batman and Spiderman is to get rid of the evil villains so that way people can live in comfort again and not in constant fear.  On the other hand, there are real life heroes.  Some heroes are known as moms, dads, firefighters and police officers.  People consider their parents heroes because they went through the trouble of taking care of and raising them.  When a woman gives birth to a child, she has an option to take care of the baby or to not, as much as I hate to say that.  If you decide to have a child, it is your responsibility and in my opinion, you must take care of them.  Sadly, there are a lot of people in this world who feel that it is not their responsibility.  As I was saying, parents are heroes because they  put their children's lives before their own to make sure that they have a good life.  

Journal #40

This blog is supposed to be dedicated to whatever I want it to be.  That means I have to pick a topic and write the whole time about that specific topic.  What topic should I choose to write about? I have decided my topic and it is AP Chemistry.  Last year as a sophomore, I took Chemistry.  That year, my regular teacher got pregnant.  She had some problems with her pregnancy so she had to be put on bed rest earlier than normal.  The school found someone to cover for her while she was on maternity leave.  The person they found was really smart and knew what he was doing.  I was learning stuff with him.  One of the chemistry classes was rowdy and thought it would be fun to mess with the substitute.  The knocked off of his glasses and laughed at him.  The substitute thought that he had dealt with enough and decided to not cover for our teacher anymore.  I can't say that I don't blame him because those kids were really mean to him.  The school had to find yet another substitute.  Luckily they were able to find one.  This teacher was also pregnant! She had been a previous chemistry teacher in the past, but with a small class.  She knew what she was teaching but she did not have a good handle on controlling the class.  I passed the course with an A although I was not prepared for what AP Chemistry would have in store for me.  Over the summer, we had to complete four lectures and do the homework along with them.  At that time, i though they were the hardest things.  Now I look back and I miss the easy things.  The class I am in has twelve people.  We had thirteen but one person dropped out.  I am glad they dropped out because now we have an even number of people for doing labs.  It is sad that they could not stay in the class because it really is a good class.  My 325 words are up!

Journal #39

Today, we have to write about about our spring break and what occurred during our spring break vacation.  Growing up, every year for spring break my family and I would go to a place in Florida to vacation, called Palm Island. My aunt and uncle discovered this place many many years ago and recommended it to my parents.  My parents then started to go and vacation there when they had time.  To get to this island, you had to take a ferry from the mainland.  The ferry ride takes about ten minutes so its not like it is a very long ride or anything.  Ever since I got into high school though we have not been able to go anywhere for spring break.  This is because I take part in the school's softball program.  In middle school, softball was during the fall, so nothing was going on during spring break.  In high school, softball is during the spring, so we always have either games or practices during spring break.  Softball took up a big chunk of my spring break totaling with two games and four practices, one of which was three hours.  After the three hour practice, we had a cookout.  Our coach bought hamburgers and grilled them for us.  Each grade was assigned to bring a certain thing.  I brought spinach dip because the juniors were supposed to bring a side dish.  The rest of my spring break was made up of hanging out with my friends.  I hung out with my friends almost every night of spring break, which was WONDERFUL.  I love being with my friends because we all get along and do weird things.  One night we helped our friend ask his girlfriend to Prom.  Another night, we went to my friend's house for a birthday party.  There we played basketball, ate lots of food, jumped on the trampoline, and watched Taken.  Taken was such a good movie and I cannot wait to watch Taken 2.  

Journal #38

My job shadowing experience was horrible.  I will be blunt about it because that is the truth.  I hated it so much.  I will give you a run through of what I did.  First off, I job shadowed at Illinois State Police because forensics interests me.  We were told to arrive at 10:00 in the morning and enter through the South entrance.  There were five of us total that were job shadowing.  We were led into a conference room and we sat down.  Yes we were at a police station and we were in a conference room, which is where we would be for the next hour.  Sergeant Natasha was the woman giving us the presentation.  She gave us a presentation on how to become a state trooper. The presentation was boring and she didn't even make it.  She got it from their ISP website online.  Once the presentation was over, she asked if we had any questions.  Sergeant Natasha made us each ask a question because no one wanted to ask a question.  It is really sad that the young adults job shadowing a potential career did not want to ask questions because they were so bored.  I HATED IT SO MUCH.  I DISLIKED IT VERY MUCH. VERY VERY MUCH.  This career is an option for me but I still do not know anything about it at all because I DID NOT LEARN ANYTHING.  The only free thing I got from job shadowing was a business card and a packet on doing an internship with ISP.  The internship is only for people in their third year of college or older.  Very helpful thank you.  NO.  It is not helpful at all.  The only good thing that came out of my job shadowing experience was that on my way home, I stopped at Headwest and got my dad and I a sandwich.  I also got a Jones soda, which was delicious.  I wish that I could have gone somewhere else because so many other people had fun and actually did things.  

Journal #37

Right now I am listening to a song.  There is no singing and I find it quite soothing.  It is jazz and blues mixed together in one.  The song is called "Blue Monk" and it is by the Thelonious Monk Quartet.  Right away I think of a monk, which makes sense because it is in the title of the song.  The monk is bald and he is wearing a brown robe with sandals.  In his hands, he has a saxophone that is silver and gold with shiny buttons.  The strap on the saxophone was made out of rainbow strings braided together.  The strings were really tough because it had to be able to carry the weight of the saxophone.  The monk is not alone.  There is a whole group of them and they are playing jazz music together.  some of them are playing the drums, while others are playing the keyboard.  There is no singing though because where they are singing is not allowed.  Usually monks are not allowed to make any noise because they are there to find their inner peace and get away from the noisy and busy world.  But these monks that I am talking about are different.  They can play music in their free time when they are not learning or being peaceful.  One of the monks is wearing a pink bracelet.  It represents his love for pigs.  Yes I am really thinking that.  I do not know why but for some reason that popped into my mind.  I almost put pooped instead of popped.  That could have been bad.  Anyways, the monk really likes pigs and he wears it because back at home he has a farm.  His best friend is a pig named Chuck.  They gave each other friendship bracelets so they would not forget about each other while they were separated.  All of the monks were thoroughly enjoying their time together as they made music with their instruments!