I haven’t been this impressed since Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls!
I have neglected my little blog lately. I’m sorry little guy. I need to upload my past stories and columns for the last three weeks or so.
This update however, is this: My school has an anonymous message board set up by some random person and it has gotten a little ridiculous. However, what truly made me mad was a post about our paper, the one i work on. While most of the comments were positive despite pointing out we still have some typos, etc. that our editing class misses, there was this one person who was so upset that our sports pages cover lacrosse games even when we lose yet we must resort to online stories from our website for our track team which is number 1 in the division.
If you’re mad about something, don’t complain anonymously to a message board, do something about it. The paper is understaffed. We only have one or two people covering all of the sports for the entire school. And in the spring there are like 10 sports or so. It just really made me angry. If you have the chance to change something and to make a difference do it. Don’t complain and then do nothing. It is a student run newspaper therefore it is up to the students to do the interviewing, reporting, writing of stories, editing, and layout and design.
Ugh.
To continue with my ranting: I heard a guy talking tonight while at my observing session for astronomy, and he actually said this “When was the Civil War?” I am sorry but being American you should know when the Civil War took place. How do these people get into my college? It’s supposed to be very selective, etc.
Then the kid didn’t know some of the names of the individual buildings on campus. He has to have been here a year, or at least a semester by now. HOW DO YOU EXIST ON THIS CAMPUS AND NOT KNOW? We only have 6 buildings in use on the academic side of campus.
Then I remembered how many students they let it based on how much money their parents have to pay for their schooling. If you’re going to be a small private liberal arts college that costs $40,000 a year, then BE MORE SELECTIVE. Just because someone has money does not mean they belong in this atmosphere. It is unfair to the those who don’t have as much money and are here on scholarships they received through academics (and need based).
I really need to write this research paper
Note to self: Watch How I Met Your Mother and Miss Guided.
Defending what I do
You know, I am sitting here reading a story written by someone I do not know, and I am falling in love with it. I have always been this way. Ever since I can remember I have been reading books and watching television and movies. I am fascinated by fiction. I fall in to these stories, I become so invested in these characters that I almost forget they aren’t real. This is the reason I want to write.
I know I do not write fiction, but that is because I am not creative enough. I’ve tried. When I was in the first grade I wanted to be a writer. Then a teacher, and a slew of other things over the years, but last year I realized I truly wanted to write. I have had a blog in some way or another since 2004. I just love to write.
So if I can’t actually write these stories or create these characters that people fall so in love with, then at least I can write about these stories in hopes that I can help others like me find something as enjoyable.
A lot of people don’t understand what I see in reading all of those books or watching all of those hours of television. It isn’t because I am bored. I do not own 48 DVD sets and countless movies because I get bored. I own them because I truly care about the characters that are created in them. And when their stories end I truly become upset. Most people just think I am insane, but if you truly appreciated these works of fiction the way I do, then I think you might understand why I love them so much.
The characters are real. Their problems are real. Their relationships are real.
I only wish that people would stop judging me for loving to read and watch these personal stories. It allows me to escape for awhile and it makes me happy. I don’t care if they don’t exist in this reality. I wish people still appreciated these works of fiction for what they are. Mostly I am talking about the books here. I myself have stopped reading for pleasure as much, due to my amount of school work, but when I find a book that draws me in, I will do nothing but read it until it is finished, even if it means I lay in bed all day without eating or showering. Good books do this to me. Good television does this to me.
I hope it means as much to others as it does to me. Because a life without these stories would be very boring.
The Onion – FCC on Alyson Hannigan
Everyone should learn to love The Onion, “America’s Finest News Source.”
Prof’s son takes first in ‘Future City’ competition
Lynda K. Hall, professor of psychology, has something to smile about. Her son, Jeremy Boyd, a seventh-grader at Heritage Middle School in Westerville, Ohio, was part of the school’s team that took home first prize in the Future City National Finals Feb. 18-20 in Washington, D.C.
The mission of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition, now in its 16th year, is “to provide a fun and exciting educational engineering program for seventh- and eighth-grade students that combines a stimulating engineering challenge with a ‘hands-on’ application to present their vision of a city of the future.”
Hall said she could not have been more proud of the work her son did on the project.
As a member the Future City team, he worked to put together a simulation of their city with the videogame SimCity 3000, write an essay and an abstract about the city and make a scale model to be presented at the competition. The model had a budget of $100, so most of it was created from recycled materials, Hall said.
Boyd’s team placed their city of the future, RA, in Egypt, an unusual choice among the teams. Most chose well populated areas. Hall said they chose to place it in the desert to “look at how people will adapt.”
The topic for this year’s essay focused on how nanotechnology would be used to monitor the city’s infrastructure.
Their winning essay focused on how this technology would be used to manage their city’s sewer systems.
“The technology would provide RA engineers with precise data, a state-of-the-art monitoring system, automated repairs and precise problem detection that is economically advantageous, protects citizens’ heath and preserves the environment,” the students wrote.
The Future City competition consists of 1,100 middle schools from across the nation. Hall said she believed most schools were private schools which had more of a say in the way students spent their day.
“One school had Future City as a class period. We did ours on evenings and weekends,” Hall said.
Heritage Middle School won their regional competition held Jan. 19 at the Columbus Science Institute, qualifying their team for the national competition.
The presentation team, which Boyd was a part of, was only part of the group that created RA.
A group of twenty students, their teacher and a volunteer engineer who served as the team’s mentor, all worked hard on the competition’s four areas. The group then voted on the three students who would represent their team at the competition.
Hall said the Heritage’s volunteer mentor, Ted Beidler from the Franklin County, Ohio Engineering Department, let the students decide what they wanted to do with their city. He was hands off but would step in when he saw a problem.
“He pointed out their pitfalls,” Hall said.
The students were expected to know about their city and to be prepared to defend it, as they would be judged by a panel of engineers during their presentation.
After the top five schools were chosen, the students had to repeat their presentation in front of a larger audience consisting of the judges, parents and the other teams.
There has been only one other team from Ohio to place in the top five of the competition, Hall said.
One of those students, now in high school, helped this year’s team with their project.
Hall said the team was thrilled when they made the top five, let alone the top spot.
“We were really shocked when we realized they were the first place winners,” Hall said.
The rest of the teams immediately congratulated them after the awards were announced, she said.
“They were all so supportive of one another,” Hall said. “Their character really impressed me.”
Hall said the most surprising part of this adventure is not that the team took home the first place trophy, but that these students were determined to create a better way of life for the future. They were set on creating a safer, more efficient and “greener” world.
“They want to be part of the solution,” Hall said.
FROM: Volume 146, Issue 18: March 6, 2008
