too cool for school

      When people think of being stressed, they usually associate negative things with it- but I'm here to change that. To most, stress is synonymous with school, the thought of the future, maybe even life in general, and people often then feel burnt out from this and then kind of give up on life, but in fact, stress is like blooming flowers on a beautiful sunny spring day, and here's why. First of all, when you get stressed, you most likely will feel the need to stay inside and not leave your house to cope, and this in turn means that you won't need to worry about having to drive to places, which ultimately means that you'll save hundreds of dollars because of how much gas prices have been rising. So basically, you're going to become rich by osmosis. Next, by never leaving the house, your parents will never have to worry about your safety. Our parents and teachers have always warned us about "stranger danger," but by being so stressed out that you refuse ...

  Why is it that going against the “norm” warrants so much hate from those who comply with societ y ' s wants and expectations ? We praise those who find success from carving their own paths, yet we tear them down every chance we get until they get there. People must sacrifice their place in society to explore their individuality, yet this exact thing can be what leads them to their downfall.  

     This week in our book club for The Awakening  we talked about Robert's weird character as he flirts with all the wives, Adele Ratignolle's "perfect" women characterizations, but mostly how she contrasts with the main character, Edna Pontellier, who consistently tries to shed her societal roles as a mother and wife. What stuck out to me the most though, was when Mrs. Feldkamp joined our book club and we started discussing about Edna's resentment for her kids. Edna has a maid who takes care of her kids for her, and it was stated multiple times in the story that she "forgot" about her children a lot. Mrs. Feldkamp was telling us how she read this book multiple times and how every time she see's the book in a different light, especially after having kids of her own. This struck a memory of a thought I had had just the year before.      Last year in AP Lang we read The Great Gatsby , and to be honest I was a little underwhelmed. It was coveted to be ...

       How much of our lives are predestined, and how much of it is in our control? If everything is fate, does that mean our whole lives have been mapped out, and now we're just the pawns in our own stories? Does making a "wrong" decision in our lives mess with our fate, or is that mess-up what ultimately leads us to our right paths?     I always thought about these things, and when this overall theme came up in our new studies of  Oedipus, I was reminded of my curiosities. If we say our whole lives are planned out, then can't people just give up because of their life circumstances, and blame it on destiny? To what extent can fate control our lives? When I think of fate, my mind immediately goes back to 9th grade when we read Romeo and Juliet, and in the Prologue we were told, "a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life"  (Shakespeare). We knew their fate right from the beginning, but we didn't know what led up to that moment- the freewil...

      Do we write for the forsaken embrace on the desire to express, or for the unmistakable grade? Do words have meaning, or are they just a product of the minds fabrication, waiting to be undertaken?     I distinctly remember in second grade, our teacher was scolding the class because we didn't write enough on our assignments. This was the first time I ever wrote a full paragraph, and I was mad. She held up one of my peers work, and said that she was the only one that wrote enough, but I didn't understand. She barely wrote anything, she just wrote really big so it looked like a lot! I had maybe written double, but just really small, and for that I was scolded for. After overcoming this (a decade later in that), I now look back and think, what makes a piece of writing good? I've had some teachers in the past where how "good" an essay was, was directly correlated to the quantity of work, but I feel that this is wrong.  My first instance of learning tha...