My Feelings About the Spring School Season

Sometimes school sucks.  Not always though.  I like seeing my friends and being around people and even learning on a daily basis.  This post will talk about some negative and positive feelings I have about school.

1.)  Negative - This is probably the only time of year I would write a statement like this and that is because right now the stress level related to school is really high.  Teachers keep piling assignments on us.  In one class I have three long-term assignments and in another I have four.  APs are coming up and exams are starting to creep into the forefront of my mind. 

2.) Positive - Like I said earlier, all my friends are at school.  There are some people that you see in an out-of-school context but there are others whom you only really see at school.  Its nice to just hang-out with your friends and have social interactions.

3.) Negative - I ask a lot of questions and I'll admit sometimes they may not be the best questions.  But sometimes I think they are pretty good questions.  Frequently I'll ask a question during class to help clarify.  I rarely ever get an answer.  Instead I get a dirty look from the teacher because either they don't know the answer or they don't understand my question or the teacher gets angry and repeats what they just said - not answering the question.  (This happens when I ask both good and bad questions).

4.) Positive - Learning can be fun.  School gives me something to do with my time and it teaches me things.  School is a privilege and an opportunity, so why not take advantage of it?

Now you have read some of my thoughts on school.  Maybe you agree or maybe you don't... I have included a picture of a school to compliment my post. 

 

 Image Source: School House

Why I Am Fed-Up With School Computers

So I know that last week I said I would be posting my documentary on my blog but when we were trying to export it the computer freaked out.

This wasn't the first time that I have had problems with a school computer while working on my documentary project, or any project at all for that matter.  While some of these problems may have been my fault/someone in my group's fault, some of them were also computer malfunctions.

Problems I have had that have not really hurt me include the computer just not logging me in, the computer taking a solid 20 minutes to log me in, the computer not logging me out, or the computer taking at least 10 minutes to do absolutely anything (open a document, go to the internet, go to a given website...)

Other problems that I have had have more affected my work.  During the documentary project, our project got saved to some random folder and it took us an hour to find it (this problem was probably self induced.)  Also, during the documentary project, we would try to render what we had made so far and it would take anywhere from 45 minutes to and hour.  Another time, I clicked on a document to open it and then all of the sudden the most high pitched, obnoxious beeping anyone could possibly imagine started happening.  We finally got it to stop by unplugging the computer - which obviously made us lose the most recent work we had done.

The most recent experience I had - which is why I am not posting my documentary on my blog this week - is that my group mate went in at lunch to export our documentary.  The computer said it would take an hour, so she left and went to class.  The next day, I went in at lunch to try to upload it to my blog and my group mate was still logged into the computer and there was a message up saying the export had failed.  Not only was this extremely frustrating, but I had to make sure that the documentary was not altered in anyway.  I know that maybe had she stayed something could have been done - but everyone in our group had class.

This entire experience has been very frustrating, but for some reason I am still looking forward to our next video project.  I will probably begin posting about it soon so...

 

This is a picture of a Final Cut Pro screen - the program we use to edit our videos

Image Source: Final Cut

Gross Feet!

 

Last week CAP hosted around 14 foreign exchange students from England.  During their stay we were assigned a project where we had to make a 60 second film in the one week.  The catch is that we had to use a random prop.  Ours were these huge, gross, disgusting feet. 

When we first saw the prop we got we were all freaked out.  If the feet look horrible in the film, they looked even worse in real life.  Then, we had to start brainstorming for out video.  It took awhile, but eventually we all agreed on an idea.

The premise is that there is a new girl who has normal feet and everyone else has the weird feet.  The new girl thinks that her new class is strange and they think that she is strange.

From this project I learned how to crop the screen on final cut pro.  I didn't know how to do that before and I think it is a good skill to know.  I also learned how important it is to plan your script in advance (ours didn't have the greatest detail which made filming difficult) and how important it is to take multiple shots (we had to go back and redo one or two shots and some we didn't have time to redo so we just made the best with what we had).

I thought this project was pretty fun and I also liked how it was different from everything else we've done.  Originally I thought we would not finish, but we did, and I am happy with the results.

A list of our shots:

-Setting the scene that this is a classroom.  We are trying to make everything seem normal.

-The new girl comes in and seems a little bothered.

-The class sees the new girl and seems bothered/grossed out.  Sorry that the camera is a little shaky.

-Close-up of the new girl's face.  She is really freaked out now.

-Shots of the gross feet.

-Girl's face being freaked out.

-More feet.

-The new girl's "normal" feet.

-The class being freaked out about the girl.

-The teacher introducing the new girl.

-The teacher's weird feet and then the new girl's "normal" feet.

-A student asking the new girl what is wrong with her feet.

-The new girl being totally freaked out.

DON'T Start School Later

I don't really feel like reviewing another article, but that was really the only idea I had so I thought I would write about this whole petition to start school later.

I don't agree with this and I don't think that it will be easy to sway me in the other direction so I'll try to give some of my logic behind this - I'm not saying it will make sense or anything though.

Reasons That I Don't Want to Start School Later

• First of all, if school starts an hour earlier than it will end an hour later.  Therefore, for high school students in CAP and Magnet, they will not get out of school until 4:00.  For me that would mean I would not get home until 4:30, for most of my peers it means 5:00 or after.  We have A LOT of homework and that hour we spend in school is lost, meaning it is no longer homework time, so we will be staying up an extra hour.  If you're following my logic, we really will not be getting any extra sleep.  Also, sports practices will not end until 6:30, meaning  that we would not get home until 7:00-7:30.

• This petition would make it so middle and elementary schools would start later as well because the buses wouldn't be able to get all three age ranges to school at 8:15.  Elementary schools would not start from 9:50-10:15, which is a HUGE inconvenience to parents.  My parents at least would not have been able to stay home that late.  Many parents need to get to work by 8:00 or 9:00.  They would be an 1-2 hours (even more in most cases) late to work, meaning they would have to stay late and not be able to be there when their kid gets home.

• The petition also says that this will allow kids to get more sleep.  But come on, lets be honest, kids will just procrastinate on their assignments that much longer.  Also, we're just going to stay up later than we normally would because we'll get to sleep later - again, we won't be getting any more sleep.  If kids want to get more sleep than it is their responsibility to do what they have to do and get themselves into bed at a decent hour.  It is no one's fault but their own when they claim that they haven't been getting enough sleep.

I have tons of more reasons for not starting the day later but those are my main ones.  Also, and most importantly, I don't want to start school later.  The afternoon is my time to do what I want to do.  A random hour in the morning is not enough time to let me have soccer practice, or hangout with friends, or go to a movie, or do some other thing that teenagers supposedly like to do.  And losing that time in the afternoon is not going to let me do those things either.

So there you have it.  Please don't make school start later.  Or at least not until I graduate - but even then don't do it either.

This New Post Assignment About My Passion or Something

So today I read this article from the Washington Post called Montgomery County students adjusting to healthier school lunches.  This article sort of inspired this post, but their only real connection is the main topic of nutrition and the role schools play in it.

I'm into the whole healthy eating thing.  I've read some books on different nutritional philosophies and how the human body was made to eat (small amounts of food throughout the day) and what it was made to eat (grains, with all their nutritional values still packed in there, and less than 3 ounces of meat and animal products in general a day, according to Mark Bittman).

Anyways, the point of this post is not to give some lecture on what you should be eating.  I just want state a sort of opinion on the issue revolving around child obesity.

This is where the article I read plays in.  The article talks about how some Montgomery County schools have been introducing healthier school lunches.  I am a big supporter of this, especially because I believe what kids eat at school is a factor in child obesity.

At my school, and at my past schools, the lunches have all been the same.  Greasy pizza (wet cardboard with stiff cheese), nachos (stale chips with oil), slurpees (wonder where those are made...) and so on.  None of these include essential nutrients, or seem particularly appetizing.  These foods, which kids consume once a day for 5 days a week, some more than that if they buy breakfast at school, make up a good percentage of kids' food intake.  These foods are not particularly healthy and they send the impression that these are the foods that one should regularly be eating.

I know this has been kinda disjointed and all so I'll try to sum it all up real quick: I think that if people really want to do something about the child obesity issue it needs to start in the schools, with the schools only offering healthy and nutritional foods, not just some "alternative" that kids are encouraged to take (or required to take but just throw away).

                                     Is this really the best they can do... really, what is that????

Image Source: Gross School Lunch