nicks11thgradeblog

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I'm feeling

With the work that comes with the last week before winter break also comes a lack of sleep. No matter how good you are at getting your work done in class or how quickly you can do your work at home, this week is definitely not a fun one.

I personally have been hit harder than usual by this lack of sleep because of all of the sleep I missed during the weeks leading up to this one, that I never made up for. This compounded effect has not helped at all, and it's only made it harder and harder to focus to the task at hand, and harder and harder to study for tests.

Basically I'm going to be complaining about not getting enough sleep.

During a person's teenage years, schools expect them to learn immense amounts of content, and to remember them well enough to write papers about it and take tests on it. And this is all while the students are given increasingly less and less time to do this work.

At the same time, students find it easier to stay up late doing their work, while finding it harder and harder to get up in the mornings to go do it all over again, and this compounds to the point of constant exhaustion at times.

And after all of this they have to take crazy tests the week before they are finally allowed to take a break

Do you see the point I'm trying to make?

There are scientific studies that have shown that getting up early is actually bad for teenagers, because they genuinely need the sleep, and this coupled with staying up late coupled with being brain dead from school is not a very fun experience.

"I've forgotten what it's like to have a normal sleeping pattern" - Unknown

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I'm feeling

Final week of first semester. We've all been there.

Everyone's scrambling to do the work they procrastinated about all semester, everything's due at the end of the week, and sleep is at a premium. And although ever since I wrote my post about procrastination, I've been trying my best to get my work done quickly, without procrastinating. But I'm not perfect.

As with every year, all of the work is due before winter break, however this year, for the first time, I've had larger projects that I have to work on in my free time, which have been difficult to not procrastinate too much about.

Although I was able to get most of my work done on schedule, I still have to read a book and write an essay on it by the end of the week, but when I'm done with that, I'll be free.

This year, all of the extra work that has been piled on me has given me a new insight to what it's like to really have to hold myself accountable for getting my work done, and keeping myself on track with my projects, without the support of my teachers.

However, I've almost done it, and in a week, I won't have to worry about it anymore.

The best way to get something done is to begin - Unknown

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

Everyone wants to be a better person right? Then why does nobody ever want to do anything to make themselves a better person?

Self-help books have always been the most popular books in bookstores by far, and yet there is a stigma about self-help, nobody thinks they need it, and if they do think they need it, and go through the effort of buying books on self-help, they oftentimes don’t end up reading and if they do, they oftentimes don’t finish them. 

Self-help is also somewhat shameful in today’s society, nobody wants to admit that they have a large enough problem to where they need external help, and even if they can admit it to themselves, they will almost never be willing to admit it to other people. It’s actually quite sad, because there are some truly amazing self-help books out there, ranging from relationships, to NLP (which I will talk more about in future posts), to books like How to win friends & influence people, by Dane Carnegie, which I think that everyone should read at least once in their life. 

All of these books are made to be read, and are made to help people who may be struggling to keep a healthy mindset, and healthy relationships, or a healthy life physically, and this shame of reading these books, because it means admitting that we have a problem in the first place can be detrimental for people who genuinely need to the help. 

Don’t be afraid to admit that you need help, everyone does at one time or another. It’s better to solve your problems now than live with them forever. - Me

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I'm feeling

When reading the Leonardo book, I thought a lot about how much of his research was incorrect, or merely limited by the beliefs of his time, and even though I've already written a blog post and an essay on the topic, I still can't get it out of my head, so here we go.

I was talking to one of my friends about it, and he mentioned that what I was talking about is known as the half-life of knowledge, the amount of time in which half of all of the knowledge of one specific thing to either be disproven or revamped completely.

Upon further research, it seems like I am definitely not the first person to have wondered about this, people have graphed out the different half-life's of the knowledge of different subjects or topics, and come up equations modeling their half-life's well into the future.

I found this incredibly interesting, because on one hand, I can't believe that scientists are conducting research based on knowledge that they know will be obsolete in a given amount of years, but then at the same time, I know that if they didn't take their knowledge for fact, they'd never be able to disprove it or improve on it.

And all of this is only considering the fact that we are making incorrect assumptions that we don't know are incorrect because we haven't discovered what's wrong about them yet, this isn't even mentioning the research we can't do because we are limited by modern knowledge.

As of now, we cannot discover whether or not dark matter exists, or prove or disprove string theory, or travel through black holes, or travel faster than the speed of light, or a whole host of other "impossibilities" of modern day, but in the future it may be discovered that many of these problems may have been incredibly simple to solve, we were merely missing crucial information.

This is making my head hurt, I'm done. This is good food for thought though.

Everything we know has an expiration date - adapted from Samuel Arbesman

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I'm feeling

While self-confidence in one's looks is something that I've already shown as being lacking in our society, self-confident in one's decisions has been incredibly prevalent in contrast.

I personally have always thought of myself as a level-headed guy, although I do have mood swings and emotions just as often as the next person, I don't tend to let those cloud my judgement, and I have always trusted my own judgement because of that. And I've found that this sense of generally being "right" is much more common than I had thought, everyone thinks they're right because they are doing the best that they think is possible with the information given to them. However, this may not always be a good thing.

While it has never been, is not now, and will never be easy to get everyone to agree to any one thing, be it politics, preferences, or what have you, this idea of always being "right" isn't helping.

This problem of always believing yourself to be right is also based partially in the trend of closemindedness that is also prevalent in today's society. Many people find it incredibly difficult to accept other people's perspectives or opinions, everyone is so rooted in their own beliefs that they can't accept the possibility of being wrong, which isn't good for anyone involved.

While like I said before, I tend to (naturally) trust my own judgement on most topics, but although I generally believe myself to be correct in my beliefs, I am not afraid to admit when I'm wrong. You can't tell people to not to have opinions that don't match your own, that's just stupid, especially in situations where there is no right answer, but what I do believe should be changed is people's inability to accept that they may be wrong.

We live in an age of information, however not all of the information we see every day is completely true. People need to learn how to make sure they have informed opinions, with valid reasons for believing what they do, and not just opinions based on feelings and hot air.

I want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public. - Chelsea Manning

[nicks11thgradeblog]

What's happening in the book I'm reading

For my third book in honors Humanities, I read Leonardo, by Martin Kemp, which is a Biography of Leonardo's life's works. It is a very interesting book, although it is a bit long and does drag on a bit at times, but overall it told a very detailed story of much of Leonardo's work, and a summary of where he went and what he did with his life.

One of the most interesting parts of the book however, was reading about Leonardo's research of natural phenomenons and laws, because it showed just how much his genius was limited by the beliefs of his time. I based my entire response paper to the book on this topic, because it was something that really got my attention, for multiple reasons.

The first reason is because Leonardo himself was a genius, there is no doubting that, and some of his ideas were amazing, and did make sense, but because they were either based on, or limited by the beliefs of his time, or by a lack of knowledge of certain factors, they were fundamentally incorrect, although he himself generally realized when this happened.

A good example of this was his collection of calculations predicting the path of a projectile launched from one of his war machines. He said that while he thought that if you took a machine with a launching force of X, and a loaded a projectile of Y weight, the projectile would go Z feet, however, he found out that launching a projectile that weighed 1/2Y, would not make it travel 2Z feet like he thought, but instead would only travel slightly farther, if at all.

I found it fascinating to read his notes on the subject, because since I know about external factos like wind resistance and friction, and mach speeds (which probably werent reached but whatever), and aerodynamics, I can see where he overlooked the laws of physics in his calculations, because he didn't even know they existed. Because of this, no matter how great his intellect, and no matter how diligently and meticulously he calculated his distances, he would never get the correct answer, due to his flawed equation.

This made me think about just what Leonardo could have achieved if he had done his calculations with the assistance of modern understanding of the laws of physics, and just how much more he could have done with the benefits of additional knowledge.

Not all truths stay true forever - me

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

When looking for a quote for my post about talking to people, and having people to talk to, I came across a quote by ronald reagan of all people, and it really stuck with me so much that I felt like it deserved it’s own post. 

In our society, there is a large fear of judgement that I very apparent even in mere day-to-day, innocent conversations. I always noticed it, and I’ve mentioned it to various people over the years, which generally resulted in them saying “yeah, it’s kind of sad”, and that was it, but when I mentioned it to my Friend, from one of my prior posts, she said “Yeah, it’s because people judge each other a lot”. Well, I hadn’t really put 2 and 2 together until then, and yeah, it makes sense...

People tend to subscribe to the idea that judgement is what takes the place of knowledge when there is not enough knowledge available to make an informed decision, and it has perpetuated this mentality of being constantly afraid of judgement, which is really sad. This on top of the emphasis on political correctness, which is not always in and of itself a bad thing, people are constantly trying their best to not be misunderstood, for fear of the consequences of being thought badly of, heck, even I hate being misunderstood, because oftentimes my strong opinions tend to make me look like an (mean person) if I am misunderstood. 

The quote speaks for itself, but I just feel like it is something that more people should keep in mind, because it also ties in to the idea of talking to people when you disagree with them, instead of keeping your opinions to yourself, and sulking. Maybe sulking isn’t the best word to use, but you understand what I mean. 

In short, try keeping an open mind when people are sharing their opinions with you, and make sure you understand what they’re saying before you pass judgement on it. 

I’ve always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other. - Ronald Reagan

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

Since today is thanksgiving, I am going to be keeping this post short, and also since it’s thanksgiving, I’m going to be writing about Gratefulness.

Gratefulness is something that is very easy to understand, merely appreciating what you have is something that everyone aknowledges is a good thing, but in my opinion it’s a much healthier practice than most people think and it’s something that shouldn’t just be limited to holidays when we remember to do it. 

Most people only remember to feel grateful at holidays such as thanksgiving or christmas, or when they have something extraordinaly fortunate happen to them, which I think is almost unfair, considering how fortunate most people living in America are compared to people living in other places in the world. Most people living in America are able to live relative comfort compared to many people in third-world countries, and while I won’t go into the specifics, I want to make the point that even things that we generally take for granted, like being able to go out to eat, having a dry, warm place to sleep, driving places, even clean water, are things that are worth feeling grateful for.

And I’m not going to say that everyone should try to turn their life around and remember to feel grateful for everything that they have because if they don’t then they’re bad people, all I’m trying to say is that if you have the time, and you happen to remember reading this, just take a moment to just feel grateful. You don’t even have to be grateful for anything in particular, you can just feel the sense of gratefulness rush through you, and if you need something to feel grateful for, just look at whatever is closest to you, and be grateful for it.

Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings. - William Arthur Ward

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

Throughout modern society, you will see countless forms of propaganda telling us as civilians that we should look a certain way, act a certain way, think a certain way, etc. And since I’ve already talked about society’s part in telling people they should act certain ways, and I do not have the mental capacity to go into how society tells us how we should think, I’m going to be talking about society’s part in the ruination of self-love. 

In modern society, there are countless celebrities, models, and other people which the media loves to show pictures of, as examples of what people “should” look like, and many people just take it for granted, without thinking about the implications of having so many pictures of “perfect” looking people dominating what the modern youth see every day. 

I’m sure everyone knows my upcoming argument about how the portrayal of these people as idols messes with children’s minds, and makes that seem like the norm, so I’m going to gloss over that, because that part is not particularly difficult to understand. 

The main part I want to describe is the effect of children thinking that they should look like the people they see every day, on television, in magazines, on billboards, on advertisements, on the internet, and just about everywhere else.

All of these images if “perfect” looking human beings, and this idea that everyone should look like the people who are on Tv, messes with people’s minds, and makes it impossible for them to accept their own bodies, even if they are at the physical peak of human excellence. Since the images of models are almost always touched up in photoshop, it is impossible for people to ever reach the level of perfection they see everywhere, and some people go to expensive and extreme lengths, and oftentimes dangerous lengths to look like that, because they don’t want to be considered “ugly”. 

Everyone has heard a story of someone starving (mainly herself) themselves to look skinnier, or doing insane things to look more “beautiful”, and it just breaks my heart to realize that oftentimes people think that that is necessary, because it isn’t.

The normalization of impossible beauty standards has made self-love impossible for many Americans. People need to start realizing that they don’t need to look “perfect” in society’s eyes to be beautiful, and just love themselves the way they are. And I know it’s not as easy as just reading this post and being free from wanting to fit into societal beauty standards forever, even I am oftentimes encouraged by my own mind to make myself look “cool”, at times, but I do hope that knowing that there is no reason to fit into society’s mold will make people at the very least remember to not always blindly do as they’ve been taught. 

You will never look like the girl in the magazine. The girl in the magazine doesn’t even look like the girl in the magazine. - Unknown

[nicks11thgradeblog]

Something that happened to me

As you may know if you’ve read this blog before,I didn’t have a lot of people to talk to when I was younger, and that really had a big impact on me when I got older. When I was younger, I always subscribed to the male stereotype of being very mature, and in charge, while having strong opinions and feelings, although the one feeling I could never show was pain or hurt. Since I always thought that it was improper for me to show my pain, I never wanted to talk to people about things that hurt me, because I didn’t want them to see me when I was weak. Due to this and other factors, I grew up not trusting a lot of people, and not having many people I could talk to about important things. My saving grace however, was my best friend, who I was comfortable talking to about everything, the only problem was that he didn’t understand a lot of the more complicated things I’d talk about. 

Over the years, I, like many other kids/preteens/teens learned to keep my sadder emotions to myself, and only show my best self on the outside, and figure out all of my problems by myself, which was definitely not healthy. Because of this, I used to be a very self-confident person, which I’ve found is a very rare outcome for people who have never had people to talk to. Since I was forced to solve my own problems, I got to know myself very well, and I learned to think of life in a very rational and methodical, almost mathematical way.

However, overall, being self-reliant was not a good experience. When I was the only person who could solve my own problems, my views of the problem would often make solving them difficult, because I would not have the proper perspective of them from which to solve them. For example, a person who has only one eye should not be the sole person trying to figure out how far away the backdrop of a photoshoot should be from the subject of the shot, because the shot will look the same to that person no matter the distance between the person and backdrop itself. I would oftentimes encounter problems with my own behavior that I would not be able to solve partially because I oftentimes overlooked them because I was acting upon them subconsciously, and oftentimes because I couldn’t properly grasp their magnitude because I was the one doing them, and my opinions altered my reality. You can now start to grasp the complexities of self-reliant problem-solving. 

Once I found people to talk to however, when I found people who cared enough about me to talk these things over with me, the quirks in my personality, my unfortunate habits, my social incompetence's, and all of the natural flaws in my character, I learned to properly correct them based on how they came across to others, who did not know my reasoning behind my actions, and therefore could not understand why I did the things I did. Having people to talk to also helped me put my problems in perspective, and make me realize that the things that had been hanging over my head all of my childhood, the fear of judgement, my social awkwardness at times, my oftentimes inability to connect with people, were things that everyone goes through, and things that I actually suffered less from than most people, which I am extremely grateful for. 

And yet, I consider myself to be a luckier person than most because of my chances to connect with so many people who really care about me and my life. And the knowledge of what it’s like to live without anyone to talk to has given me the angle from which to properly appreciate just how much of a gift it is to have caring people in your life, and it is a gift that I think that everyone should receive, and yet it is not.

There are many, many people who go through large portions of their life without talking to people about how they feel, or being able to talk to people about personal details, and really connect with people who care about them and properly understand them, and it makes me incredibly sad. I think that everyone can attest to having gone through a period of not having had anyone to connect with, of not having been able to talk to people personally, for any number of reasons, and it can be extremely detrimental to people’s mental state. Being alone with only your thoughts, emotions, and problems can either lead to immensely productive sessions of self-discovery and self-acceptance, but more often than not, it leads to devastating periods of uncertainty, self-doubt, and sometimes even self-hatred and depression. 

I feel like everyone deserves to have someone to talk to, and I know from experience, that even the “minor” side effects of isolation and of not having people to talk to can lead to immensely difficult emotional problems, and I don’t want anyone to have to go through that, much less anything worse. 

So if you notice that there is someone in your life who doesn’t seem to talk much, or seems very withdrawn, take a few minutes out of your day to check up on them and ask them how they’re feeling. Make the effort to connect with people who may find it difficult to connect with others, because while it may be a trivial thing to you to merely say hi, it may mean the world to them that someone cared enough about them to talk to them. 

Say “HI first. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that if you want to talk to someone, talk to them, go out on a limb. Do not wait for them to talk to you first because, odds are, they’re waiting for the same thing. - Unknown

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

On this blog, I like to rant a lot about modern society, and the problems it has, and the ways people are expected to act, and my opinions of all of it, and tonight I am going to do it again. Ooooh boy am I bad at intros.

That is a very good segway into my topic however, which is not caring. I would use a curse word and use an asterisk instead of a letter, but I’m not sure if my teacher reads this or not, so that may not be a good idea. 

Not caring is something that I was actually never good at growing up. I used to be the type of person who would take everything very seriously, be it praise or insults, and because of that I would always get offended or hurt easily when people would mess with me, or joke around with me, which was never good. All throughout middle school, I felt like people would pick on me unnecessarily, and only make jokes about me, and only do mean things to me, and it made me really sad because I felt like nobody liked me.

Because of this, when I got to high school, I came in expecting things to be the same, but hoping they wouldn’t be, and when I realized that people aren’t always as mean as they were in my middle school, it made the few jokes that were thrown at me a lot more bearable. Over time, I just started caring less and less about the way people would lightly insult me (most people respect me enough to not insult me anymore), or just joke with me, and it all came to a head over the summer, when I just stopped caring all together. 

Over the summer, I went to a summer camp, returning for my second year, and it was amazing, I’ll never forget it. I don’t know quite what it was about this summer that really helped change my mentality about a lot of things but during those months of just being with people I cared about, people who didn’t judge me for being me, I really started to realize just how stupid it was for me to care so much about such petty things. Ever since then, I’ve just stopped caring about a lot of things all together, including what people think of me, how I look, how I act (within reason of course), etc. And it’s extremely liberating. 

Now none of this to say that suddenly I was free from all social constructs and cultural beliefs and societal influences, because I wasn’t, at least not all at once. It took me a good month or two to really stop caring about pretty much everything, and while those beliefs are still there, I still sometimes feel self-conscious about what I’m doing, I’ve just learned to recognize when it’s a good idea to listen to that feeling, and when it’s best to ignore it and be yourself. 

People care too much about what they’re supposed to do, what will make them look “cool”, what will make sure they don’t get singled out as the “weird kid”, and such, but if you can be yourself, and handle the emotional side effects by just not caring, then I believe that you are a step ahead of the game. Be yourself, and if other people don’t like it then they’re not worth your time. 

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not. - Kurt Cobain

[nicks11thgradeblog]

Something that happened to me

Throughout my life, as I may have mentioned before, I have always prided myself in being an overall very honest and blunt person, never afraid to tell the truth, and always speaking my mind without censoring myself more than necessary. I bring it up because I feel like honesty and truth in the face of uncertain facts and easily hurt feelings, is more important now than it has ever been, because I believe in the inconvenient truth. 

When I was younger, I was always used to speaking my mind without censoring myself, and just saying what I thought because I assumed that since I was living in america, and there was nothing wrong with giving your opinion, then why not give it and be proud of it? This was the same as eye contact, I grew up used to it, and it never really occurred to me that in the saying about an inconvenient truth and a comforting lie, that there were people who would take the latter option.

Now I’m not here to bash on lying at all, quite the contrary. I believe that lying, if used sparingly and only on good occasion, is not a bad thing, and is oftentimes even necessary under certain circumstances. I also believe that it is impossible to live your life without uttering a single lie, nor should you want to. I myself find myself lying more than I’d like at times, however I know that sometimes, the pros of lying can outweigh the odds in undeniable ways. However, I will leave the judgement of timing of lies up to you, the reader, because each person has their own individual life, and their own, individual reasons for why the truth may not always be the best option. Just, don’t forget your conscience. 

Now comes the part where I start bashing on liars. While there are many times when lying in necessary, those occasions are vastly outnumbered by the times when lying is not necessary. My qualm about lying is the possibility of the person I am lying to finding out the truth, and what would happen if they did find out that I had lied. Because no matter how good of a liar you are, and no matter how intricate and seemingly foolproof you weave your web of deceit, you are never safe from the truth, that’s just life. 

The way I judge the importance of the occasion on which I am maybe planning on lying is by asking myself this: If the person I am lying to were to find out the truth, would I be able to live with the consequences, and would that person understand why I had to lie, and forgive me for it? This method works for me, although it may not work for everyone, but let me explain why I chose it. 

“If the person I am lying to were to find out the truth, would I be able to live with the consequences?” I’m sure everyone who’s reading this has, at some point, come across a story like that of the movie Camp Rock, where a character tells a lie for a stupid reason, and has to keep lying to make sure nobody finds out they’re lying, and at the end everyone finds out. That is an exaggerated version of what I am trying to avoid. As I will go over in another post, I have grown into the type of person who doesn’t give much of a sh*t about a lot of things that many people find unthinkable of doing, and telling the truth about myself is one of those things. I don’t care if people know what I do with my time, I don’t care if people know my flaws, I don’t care if people know my personal failures, I don’t care if people know about every time I made a mistake in my life because it is my life, not theirs, and they can give whatever opinion they like about it, and I will choose how much importance to give it based on the quality of the observations and the person it comes from. 

But I digress.

A while ago, I realized that many of the lies I was telling, I was telling to avoid the truth, and to avoid other people finding out the truth about stupid things that, when looked at in hindsight, weren’t even that important. Ever since I realized that, I have decided that if I am to tell a truth, then it had better be for a better reason than avoiding embarrassment. 

“Would that person understand why I had to lie, and forgive me for it?” This is my reasoning for personal lies, this is what I ask myself when I am about to tell a lie to someone, a lie which may make or break someones mental state, or lies of similar importance. This is actually a self-check that as I tried to ween myself off of lying, that I’ve found myself using less and less, more so than the first. This is because as I’ve matured, I’ve realized that while there are times when you have to lie to someone to get them to do certain things, more often than not, that person would much rather appreciate you telling them the truth, and helping them move on with that knowledge, no matter how terrible it may be. 

Comforting lies are something that I am an immense hypocrite about, before, I mentioned that when I was younger, I never understood the need for comforting lies, but as I got older, I realized that there are times in people’s lives when the only thing that can get them to continue functioning enough to accept the truth is a comforting lie. And I hate it with every fiber of my being. 

While lying is oftentimes necessary, it oftentimes break my heart to have to lie to people. Why tell someone a lie when they would be better off with the truth? because oftentimes people aren’t capable of handling the truth. And while I wish it didn’t have to be so, as I mentioned earlier, lying has it’s time and place in this life, albeit a sad one. 

When you are about to lie, don’t. Think again. I’m not going to say to never lie because that’s impossible, but remember to check whether or not it is necessary. If it’s not necessary, don’t do it. If it is, don’t hesitate, we each do what we need to and we all have to live with the consequences of our actions, whether we deserve them or not.

Lies are like scars to the soul. They destroy you. - Lana Winters

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

Awkwardness. That thing nobody really talks about because it’ll make things “awkward” and nobody wants that. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I feel like people get way too awkward way too easily these days, and it’s gotten to the point where people will actually make conversation difficult, just because either you or them did something outside of cultural norms, and they don’t know how to react to it. 

There are countless times when I have been talking to friends of mine, and I’ve brought up sensitive topics like talking to people they like, or things that are perfectly normal to talk about from my point of view, and they’ve just made the situation “awkward” for themselves, and stopped talking. And it’s happened enough times for it to actually start getting on my nerves.

I myself am the type of person who prides himself on almost never getting embarrassed by almost anything, because I’m perfectly okay with people talking about whatever they want to talk about it as long as they talk about it maturely and as inoffensively as the context will permit. Because of this, I find it annoying when I am trying to give someone the space to talk about whatever they want, while in return expecting them to let me have at least a measure of the same privileges, and they ruin the conversation by making their participation difficult. 

And part of this stems down to people in modern society not wanting to be confrontational about their beliefs, out of the fear that they may offend someone. However, I don’t necessarily this is as bad of a problem as awkwardness itself, not wanting to say things out of the fear offending someone just leads to people not talking about certain topics, or steering conversations away from those topics, while awkwardness while talking about those topics makes the difficult conversation stretch on as if time were molasses. 

And something completely different that I will talk about in another post is anxiety about what other people think of you, which can cause awkwardness. This, again, doesn’t bother me, because it stems from merely not wanting to be thought badly of. 

What is bothersome, and what I do think more people should be aware of, and avoid doing, is making things awkward because it’s not “cool” to talk about those things, or because it’s “weird” to talk about certain things. These topics can range from crushes people have, certain things people are embarrassed about, to certain politics, and political views. These things are what make conversations difficult, and what make certain topics almost untouchable in day-to-day conversation, all over mere discomfort because of cultural norms. In my opinion, it is quite ridiculous. 

Say what you need to say and don’t be embarrassed about it, people will either talk about it or they won’t, and there’s nothing you can to do change that, if you say your piece respectfully and the other person declines the topic of conversation, then there is no need for awkwardness on the topic, let it pass. - Me

[nicks11thgradeblog]

Something I did to be a “better” person

There are many things that people generally attribute to being “good things to do”, many of those including things like donating food and clothes to shelters, goodwill, or charities, doing volunteer work, etc., and tonight, I did the most common one of all (at least in San Diego), which was feeding the homeless. And honestly, I understand why it’s one of the most common ones. 

Growing up, I always knew that feeding the homeless was a “good thing to do”, but I have always had a fear of doing it, for really dumb reasons when looked at in retrospect. I always thought of feeding the homeless in a negative way, because I immediately would think of people with schizophrenia, and other mental disorders, and I would get scared, but after my experiences tonight, among the other experiences I’ve had feeding the homeless, this is completely untrue. I realized that my mental generalization was completely unfair and untrue, and that my fears were almost completely unfounded. 

Tonight, as I went to feed the homeless, I realized just how much things like this mean to them, these people are living on the streets, don’t have proper beds, don’t have steady meal sources, don’t have almost any income, and are mostly just normal people like you and me trying to make it in this world. Tonight, when I went around, handing out bags of food and water bottles, I saw that when I would ask people if they wanted a meal, their eyes would light up, and they would be incredibly gracious and polite, and it made me feel incredibly grateful that I had an opportunity to give back to the community like this, and that I was able to make a positive impact on these people’s lives. 

Another thing I realized while writing this is just how much people look down on the homeless. Many people see people on the street and just assume that they did something wrong that ended them up on the streets, or that they are drug addicts, and many times this just isn’t the case. My mom tells the story of an aunt she had, who during the course of her life, went from being the romantic partner of a millionaire, going to casinos in Milan dripping in furs and diamonds, to being almost homeless, and living off of minimum wage cleaning houses, through almost no fault of her own. 

Stories like this make me realize just how much we stereotype people in our society, and how much we need to change that. I feel like too often, people pass judgement on others without knowing the whole story, and don’t try to help others because they assume that they “deserve” to be where they are. 

I feel like helping out others who may not be as fortunate as yourself, is a great way to give back to the community, like I said, but it’s also a way to keep yourself grounded and humble. If you can help, then do, if you can’t, don’t, and be happy knowing you will when possible.

Don’t be so quick to judge, you never know when you might just find yourself walking in that person’s shoes - Unknown

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

Over the past week or two, I’ve started having a lot of deep conversations with good friends of mine, and one thing I’ve realized I’ve been doing a lot through of all of these conversations is that I don’t actually talk as much as I used to, and contrary to what most people think about how much they talk, I’m actually glad about this. 

All throughout my life, I’ve always been very good at keeping conversations going, because much of the time, I tend to dominate discussions and such, by giving very lengthy opinions, and talking a lot, and I realized that many people didn’t really appreciate it. Last year, I went to a NLP training, NLP being Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a class that I’ll talk about in another post, but one of the things they talked about was how to make a good first impression, so that others will like you, and will like being with you. And one of the things they mentioned was listening more than you speak. 

When I was younger, I realized that if I was having a conversation with someone, and they said something I wanted to add to or respond to, I had to say it quickly before the conversation transitioned into another topic, so I got used to making time in the conversation to make sure I said what I wanted to say, and people were generally pretty respectful. I felt like what I had to say was important enough to merit this intrusion at times, and I was fine with it, but as I got older, especially as I started to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with people, I realized that I wasn’t always the only one who was dying to say something.  

When I realized this, I didn’t do too much about it, because I felt like I was already letting people talk enough, and that I should be able to say what I wanted to say as well, but the importance of listening, and at times merely silence during conversation was shown to me the most during the NLP training. During the training, they mentioned a story about when the instructor had met a famous person who had developed a famous product that the instructor didn’t care much about, however he didn’t want to make a bad impression, so he went into the conversation with those intentions in mind. 

When he started the conversation with the man, he found out that the man was actually very interested in talking about his work, and that he was very proud of his achievements. Since the instructor was a naturally curious person, and he wanted to be polite, he asked the man to talk more about what he’d done, and how he did it. When asked this, the mans eyes lit up, and he started talking, and talking, and talking, and he almost didn’t stop talking all night. The instructor was kind enough to let him speak the entire time, and at the end of the night, the man thanked him for his time, and said he really enjoyed the conversation, and that he felt connected to the instructor, or really thought he was a good guy and got to know him during the conversation, or something to that end.

This blew my mind a bit. Here was this man, who had realized that there was someone who had something to say, gave him a chance to say it, and was appreciated greatly for it, and this allowance of speech made that person feel more connected with him, while having learned almost nothing about him. And yet, the more I think about this, the more it makes sense. 

By being able to realize that the other person has something important to them that they want to say, and giving them the space to say it, you are showing the other person that you are observant of other people’s emotions, and caring about what they have to say. By letting someone talk about something you may not even care about, you are showing genuine interest in other people, which is rarer than you may think, and showing that you are patient and polite enough to let others talk without changing the topic, interrupting, or showing boredom, which means the world to some people, myself included. And finally, by letting someone talk for as long as they need to, you are again showing that you understanding of other people’s need to get things off of their chest, and that you are genuinely trying to help them both release pent-up thoughts and emotions, and giving them a space where they feel like they can be heard and have their opinions respected. 

All of these things together, when I thought about them, made me realize just how important it is to let other people talk when they need it, and just how important it can be to people, and how much your patient interest can mean to them. Because of this, I’ve started making these ideals a part of my everyday life. Since I always felt the need to speak my mind as much as possible and make sure I said what I wanted to say when I wanted to say it, I’ve made it another goal of mine to let other people who need to talk, to talk.This fits in with my message about wanting to be there for people who want to get things off of their chest, because I haven’t always been able to do that, and I want to give everyone else I know the ability to speak to someone who will listen to them if they need it. 

“Listening is a magnetic ans strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” - Karl A. Menniger

[nicks11thgradeblog]

How I’m feeling

When making my post about silence, I brought up the point of eye contact, mentioning that I would make a post about it, and here it is. 

In my eyes, eye contact is in the same boat as silence in a way, it’s something that has it’s place in conversation, however recently society has been trying to remove it from it’s place, for multiple reasons. 

When talking to people, I pride myself in being able to meet anyone’s gaze, not matter how intense, and I therefore expect others to respect me enough to meet my gaze as well. I wasn’t always like this however, when I was younger I never realized that I was different because I looked people in the eyes, I assumed that it was a given that you would look at someone when they talked to you. It was only when I got into high school that I started realizing that people were shyer than they had been in middle school, and that oftentimes I would have an entire conversation with someone, and yet only have them glance at me a handful of times throughout the entire conversation. 

When I was younger, it was expected of me to look people in the eyes when I talked to them, so I grew up used to being able to look someone in the eyes no matter how forceful their gaze was, it was how I was raised. And because of that, I found it incredible that people didn’t get offended in high school when they would try to have a conversation with someone who was on their phone just messing around, wasting time, and that person would not even show them the respect to look them in the eyes. 

Before I go any further, I want to make the distinction between the two reasons why someone may not look you in the eyes when they are talking to you, and my opinion on either of them. 

The first reason why people may not look you in the eye is because they may be busy. And I say “busy” very loosely here, because being busy looks different to different people, and different people have different beliefs about what someone should do if someone tries talking to them while they are busy. Now being too busy to look someone in the eye while you’re talking to them isn’t necessarily, maybe your gym partner is doing their sets while you’re trying to talk to them, and they need to focus on their sets, or your friend is doing their homework while they talk, or maybe they have a hobby or project that they’re working on that demands most of their attention, and in my opinion, not looking someone in the eyes while doing these things is okay. 

However, where it is not okay in my eyes is when people are too busy wasting time on their phones to look at you when they speak, and even I am guilty of this. Sometimes, someone tries talking to you while you’re in the middle of sending a text, or doing something on your phone, so you finish up what you are doing, and then give them your full attention, but what I cannot stand is people merely looking through their phone because they are bored, and don’t look at you because they are busy scrolling through their instagram. I feel like this is especially insulting, because the unspoken message that is being sent is that their instagram is more worthy of their attention than you are, which is never the case. In my opinion, this reason can be forgiven if it is a rarity with someone, but if that person makes it almost a habit to look at their phone while they are talking to you, then it is definitely not okay. 

The second reason for why someone may not look you in the eyes while talking to you is because they are nervous and/or don’t want to. In my opinion, this action actually speaks more about the character doing it than the first action. When someone is looking at their phone and you can’t see what they’re doing, you automatically assume that it must be important, and generally wait until they’re done to continue the conversation. On the other hand, if someone isn’t looking you in the eyes when you’re talking to them, someone like me would question their intentions, are they not looking at you because they can’t stand your gaze? If so, why? Are they lying to you? Are they nervous about something? Are they going through something emotionally? Is their mind elsewhere? For me, when someone doesn’t look me in the eyes it bothers me because I want to know why. 

And while some people may brush eye contact off as just a pleasantry that is not always available, I would argue that that “pleasantry” is more important than most people believe. The way that you meet someone else’s gaze can also say a lot about your strength of character. If I were to have a conversation with 2 different people, one of which stared me directly in the eyes when I was talking to them and seemed engaged in the conversation we were having, and another who was on their phone and merely nodding along to what I was saying, I personally would go as far as to trust the first person more, because they seemed more involved in the present, and acted in the world, instead of reacting to it. It would also show how strong-willed the person is, someone who can stand up to intense scrutiny by an intense person is generally going to be perceived as more educated and more trustworthy. Looking into people’s eyes while discussing things is also a sign that you mean business, and can actually get you a job. I’ve done it, it works. 

People simply don’t make eye contact anymore - Eric Kripke

[nicks11thgradeblog]

Something that happened to me

Yesterday I, like most people, went to a halloween get-together, in the form of a party, and it was great. That’s not the point though. When I got there, I had to get there early, and spend the entirety of the evening doing my homework while hanging out with people, because I had so much that I wouldn’t be able to do it any other way. All throughout the party, I was diligently working on my computer while talking to people in between breaks of concentration, and when I was doing that, I realized just how unnecessary most of the homework that teenagers get really is.

Before I continue writing this, I do want to say that I get an incredibly small amount of homework compared to normal high schools. The point I am trying to make with this post is that because someone like me who gets an incredibly small amount of homework still can’t make time to do the things he wants to do and still do his homework is a bit ridiculous.

At the beginning of 9th grade, I thought that I had had a lot of homework in middle school when the teacher would tell us to turn in a math packet by the end of the week (yes, I know, I was a sheltered child, I had a homework-free childhood), but as I got into high school, I realized that the amount of homework actually increased exponentially. And now that I’m in my junior year, the amount of homework that I get is at an all time high, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

All of this homework has made me realize just how much time students spend doing schoolwork all together, just about every student goes to school for about 8 hours a day, and then they go home and do anywhere from 2-4 hours of homework or more! And just what is all of this homework teaching us?

In school, I believe that the main focus should be to teach students materials so that they will learn them and remember them for when they will need them later in high school or beyond, however this doesn’t seem to be the main focus of the schools. In school, kids are given homework almost as busywork, they are taught something in class, they get a packet to fill out to make sure they memorize the new concept over the next few days, and then they move on.

I feel like this style of teaching isn’t actually helping the student out very much, if all they are doing is memorizing dates and formulas, they don’t have the brainpower to spare to think about how different pieces of information relate to each other, or delve into the topic at all, they just have to memorize it and get it done as quickly as possible, and move on to the next piece of homework.

Testing is very much like this as well, almost all standardized tests can be aced by merely memorizing the test material minutes before the test starts. Homework is the same way, much of the time it takes no resourcefulness  on the part of the student, and all the student has to do is just practice comparing notes on one sheet of paper to answers to homework on another, which in my opinion isn’t really learning.

I feel like the fact that students are given so much homework, homework that doesn’t even challenge them in a helpful way, and serves either to waste their time, frustrate them, or on occasion help them learn, shouldn’t really be as important as it is now. I think that in school, kids should be given homework that challenges them to learn, and teaches them while they do it, not just something to memorize how to do and then do without growing in their knowledge of the topic at all.

As of now, knowledge has to be sought out in school, it isn’t imparted to all students by the professor equally. As of now, school is a game that you learn how to play, both to get good grades, and to properly learn, and I don’t think that it should be advantageous to the people who play the game better, as I’ve discussed in other posts.

If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to lean, no one can stop you. - Unknown