I get so tired of hearing the "Mature" adults of this world complaining about how it is the youth's fault that our world is declining dramatically. They blame all of the problems on the younger generations but fail to take responsibility for what they have bred. I am not referring to the actual breading of children but the breading of negativity that surrounds those children. When one takes a step back from this fantasy of blame, they can see the reality of where these ideas that the children carry come from. How does a baby learn to speak? They learn it from observation of those around them. The baby learns their behavior and abilities from those they have contact with. So where do these younger generations learn their ways? They learn them from the culture and world they live in. They are constantly surrounded by the negativity of nudity, violence, drugs, alcohol, and illicit sexual behavior. Is it really a wonder why people turn out the way society creates them?
No one escapes life without facing obstacles and hardships. Each life is unique in this manner and each obstacle is different than others.Sometimes we think that nobody is going through what we are and that we are alone. Many use this as an excuse for failure. They try to use this excuse of difficulties to fool others, yet fail to realize that they are only fooling themselves.
Today I got the opportunity to hear Dominic Carter speak about overcoming hardships in life. Dominic grew up in the projects of New York City. His father was never around and his mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, leaving him in a tough position growing up. He went though foster care and knew what it was like to be poor, not having anything to eat and no money to live on. As he grew up, he seemed to be an average type person and never thought he would grow into anything special. He figured he would be a product of his environment and end up like the rest of his friends; either dead or in jail. However, this attitude changed the day his guidance counselor told him something. Upon asking for a financial aid packet for college, his counselor remarked “Why waste your time? You’ll either be in jail or dead”. This was the defining moment that pushed Dominic to crave success. From that moment forward, he worked as hard as he could to prove that he was not a failure nor would he be another statistic. As the years passed, he graduated from Cortland in three years with a BA in journalism and continued onto Syracuse University. Now he is one of the leading journalists in America and has gained success which most only dream of. He started with nothing and he’s raised himself up to the top on his own.
The main point to his speech was that at the end of the day, if you have failed, you have nobody to blame but yourself. There are no excuses to be heard because you chose not to give it your all. If you want something badly enough, there is nobody who can stand in your way except yourself. In an attempt to make everyone understand what he meant, he used the example of a train. If a train is on course heading for its destination, nothing can stop it. It keeps going until it stops. That stop is up to the conductor and nobody else. I’m sure you got the reference that the train is your goal and the conductor is you. In the end, nobody can stop you but yourself. When you come across an obstacle, you must persevere and flip the bad into good.
In order to find success in life, you have to be able to learn to turn the negatives into positives.For example, a young girl is in a car accident and loses the use of the lower half of her body. After all of the pain and rough times, she still has a very optimistic attitude and she uses her new personality she has gained from her trials to help her continue on. She took her hardship and turned it into strength. This young girl has accomplished something many people never do. She has learned how to overcome hardships. She has taught herself to live on despite her circumstances. If she wouldn’t had learned this, she would had lost her life, not in the sense of death, but in the sense of never accomplishing anything and allowing time to slip from her until it is too late to get it back.
In order to overcome obstacles in your way, you have to find a way to push yourself past them. You have to find a way to control your mind to believe that you can accomplish anything that you need to in life. You have to train yourself to always believe in your potential and forget about those who tell you that you can’t do something. If you allow yourself to listen to people who are negative towards you, then you are only allowing yourself to fail. If you let this negativity be around you or a part of you, you will never have the ability to push yourself forwards past it. At first you may have the strength, but as time goes by, it removes your ability to succeed and brings you down to a level that is hard to rise up from.When it comes to overcoming your difficulties, everyone has to do it a different way. Sometimes it’s by using the negativity towards you to propel you forward whereas other times it may be using your personal difficulties to drive your success. It does not matter which way you find to move you. What matters is your strength and need for a good future.
It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, black or white, male or female, rich or poor. It doesn’t matter where you start out. What matters is where you are going. The past is gone, but the future is constantly being built. Every decision we make, everything we do, shapes our future and lays down the path of ours to follow. We cannot rely on others to make this path for us, only we can do it. In the end, it is up to us whether or not we want to succeed in life. Hard work is the only way we will ever accomplish anything true for ourselves. There are no tricks and definitely no excuses.
For English class we are reading "The Catcher in the Rye". This story is a very intriguing one. For those who have read it, know what I mean, but for those who haven't read it, I will give a brief summary. I must warn, however, that the part I did not like about the book is the language that is used on occasion throughout the whole story.
This story is told by Holden Caulfield, a young teen boy who behaves a little beyond his years at times. He is your typical "troubled" kid. He is a loner, disregards authority, and he has an attitude that turns people away from him. He is afraid to let anyone close to him, so he builds these walls around his personality so people will stay away from him. He figures this is the only way to protect himself from getting hurt. Everyone he loves ends up leaving him in one way or another, and he wants to prevent that from happening again. You also see his quest to find a balance between innocence and maturity as he struggles with over compensating for his age and many a times acting like a fool.
The interesting parts of this book is the fact that he is telling the story from a mental hospital and the fact that you get to see his growing deterioration throughout the book. Set back in the 1950's, the story still relates to today's youth in their troubles facing life. Holden has severe depression and is socially awkward. He doesn't know how to talk to girls the right way, nor does he know how to treat friend. He is somewhat stuck in the past when it was a much easier time. He moves from school to school, but eventually ends up in the streets of New York trying to survive.
This book, despite the language and sexual references, has one of the best stories I have read, and I read a lot.It is a little hard to follow, but once you get into the mind of Holden Caulfield, it makes you question what is really the line between sanity and insanity.
Today I had to meet a man outside for a delivery of mobility aides for my mother since she just returned from the hospital. A van pulls up, the door opens, and there is a man inside. He introduces himself and we strike up a conversation. His van was extremely cool because it was completely equipped to fit his wheelchair and physical needs. In my opinion it was one of the coolest vehicles, equipment wise, I have ever seen. As I was trying to unload the mobility aides, for my mother, I was having a bit of trouble. Being on forearm crutches, it can be a little difficult to move things at times. So this man suggested I ask a lady walking down the street for help. It is not my custom to ask strangers for help, but I did this time. She was very nice and helped me move a few things. After the van was unloaded, the man and I talked a bit. He had been hit by a drunk driver and now he was bound to an electric wheelchair and forced to live with many obstacles facing him.
After a small chat, the man drove off and I was left there thinking. Going through all the trials that I have faced, I have learned to do anything I need by myself. I learned to either get it done by myself or not have it. This "either-or" attitude is something that helped me survive many hardships. As I stood there thinking, my mind kept going back to the man and how he had no problem asking for help. I learned a very valuable lesson today. That is that I shouldn't be ashamed to ask for help. It doesn't make you lesser or helpless to ask. It actually makes you stronger to put aside your pride and realise you need a little help sometimes. This realization has actually changed me and I hope that it will happen with everyone who feels they can be Superman all by themselves.
My Government class is very open to where we can talk about anything. Okay, well it's mainly just the teacher and me talking since the rest of the class seems to zone out before the class even starts. My teacher was telling us about this 17 year old guy who got into a lot of trouble for having nude pictures of his 16 year old girlfriend on his cellphone. Just to clear this up before I get into my opinion on this issue, I do NOT agree with the couple's actions, nor do I believe that promiscuity of any sort is acceptable.
So anyways, this 17 year old guy has to be forever labeled a sex offender because of an act that he AND his girlfriend did together. The part that bothers me is that she was mutually involved in this act, yet she had no legal repercussions for it. I then brought up the topic of statutory rape. For those who don't know what that is, statutory rape is defined as "sexual intercourse with a person (girl or boy) who has not reached the age of consent (even if both parties participate willingly)". Please note "even if both parties are willing". Again I do not agree with illicit sexual relations between adult or youth. The thing that bothers me is that the law almost always favors on the side of the girl. This is however the opposite if the girl is of age and the boy is not. Coming back to this.. if a boy and a girl the age of let's say 16 have sexual relations with one another, the law will find the boy guilty but the girl will not be found guilty because she is not legally able to consent to such an act at that age (but a boy is??).
The law has not caught up with the times. Nowadays, women are much more likely to engage in a sexual activity than they used to be. I don't think that the law should force punishment on the guy but not the girl even though the sexual relation was completely mutual. One thing that our government tries to promote is that in the US there is equality under the law. How is this equality if it is biased? I don't care if anyone agrees with me or not, but I see this as completely unfair. The law should consider both parties equally guilty if the act was indeed mutual and not forced.
Today whilst on my way to school, I started a random conversation about slugs with one of my friends. During the chit-chatter of the conversation, a question came to my mind, "How do slugs reproduce?". To search for the answer, I went to one of my favorite teachers. Here is how that conversation went...
(me) "Mr. Mihalko, I have a random question for you" (him) "Yes, Shana?" (me) "How do slugs reproduce?".
You should had seen his face drop into that really distorted HUHHH look. It was priceless. Anyways, he didn't know the answer, so I went to another teacher who thought of using Google to find out. Are you ready for the answer of how slugs reproduce?
Here we go... Slugs are hermaphrodites (has both male and female reproductive organs). Once a slug finds it's mate, they entangle themselves in a ball with their portruding genitalia. Once the mating is concluded, each mate bites off the male genitalia from the other, which leaves each slug forever female. Once they decide to mate again, they can only mate with another slug which has not mated yet since it will be the only male mate in this act of reproduction. This is one of those disturbing yet interesting facts to know so I had to share it with everyone.
