First Semester... Ruin?

High School started. We are going through what some people call "the best years of their life", and others refer to as a tragedy. Ninth grade was good enough for most of us, due to the benevolent attitudes of the teachers, but tenth grade has been definitely tougher. I have gone through the first semester as if I were surfing the wave... backwards. I personally feel like this last semester was not good at all, not for me as a person nor for my grades and academic development. 

My grades in Academic Leadership were, as always, good enough for my content; but if I were to compare the rest of the school subjects I have been taking, these were not so good and the numbers were relatively low. My lowest grade last semester reached some poor 74% in Chemistry. I am ashamed of myself for putting such scant effort on my classes. 

I personally was in a difficult moment in my life outside of school, and I did not see the way I could have gone better, but now I see my mistakes and understand that the real problem was not the difficulty of the matter seen in class but the density of my feelings in that moment. This semester, I found who I am and who I want to be. Who I want people to see from me and what I want to do in life. It is all decided and it all diverged from last semester's rabid attitude I went through.

During these months yet to come, since my attitude towards my daily life was modified, my academic potential will be increased, as I would like it to be. I would like to study more for every class, enjoy the resources I have available and complete the work I am given to do at home, in time. These three factors will be part of a major increase in my development this semester.

For the time these recent vacations we had took, I found myself understanding my ideas and getting to know what I am meant to do in this life. I defined my personality and found my passions. I encountered my habilities, and this time I will indeed use them in my favor. For example, this coming semester I will be more responsible with my homeworks due to my relish for introducing events in calendars and making lists. 

Also, I will enjoy what I find gripping: art. I will start outside-of-school courses for art and self-discovery, and I will explore my artistic capacities from painting to sculpting and from designing to building models. This will help me get to college more easily, since I wish to dedicate my carreer to illustration and graphic design, and I will let my feelings be reflected in my art and just then I will see myself free of any influences of the social world we are into. 

What I see now that I did not see before, is the simple future in my own, bare hands. I have the power to manipulate it, palpate it even. I have to make my choices and choose my ways through life, seeing the easiest road and the toughest one, and knowing what to pick. Life is a long time, and I believe that if I do not enjoy it to its fullest then it will not have any purpose at all. Life should be enjoyed and surfed like a wave. This time, my board is heading straight to the beach, and I am not turning back.

How should I study? Here are some tips to get ahead!

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Communication between nations is one of the key factors for world peace, together with respect and understanding. One of the most terrible conflicts known worldwide is between Palestine and Israel, and how these two cannot coexist without segregating themselves into groups. The Palestinian and Israeli societies are segregated into little urban gatherings, differing from Jews to Christian to Muslims to many other religions, and they can not find the way to share that territory in a human way.

In the film we saw during Academic Leadership class, called Promises, there was a clear analyzing of the situation made by a jewish man, who keeps his religion secret until the end, called B.Z.. He traveled around these two countries with no further intentions, just to make regular kids talk through their conflict. He made these seven kids tell their opinions on how Israel and Palestine were separated so rigorously, according to their nationality and religions. They all live 20 minutes apart from each other, but none of them know how each other’s life is like, from the other side of the fence.

These seven kids - Moishe, Faraj, Mahmoud, Daniel, Yarko, Sanabel and Shlomo - all live in different universes, and once in a lifetime, they get the chance to meet each other. The goal of this meeting was to let all the kids share their opinions and their perspectives on the conflict, but they went far beyond that point and, in one day only, they became friends.

The only kid who was not offering to meet the others was Shlomo, a Jewish quarter, Orthodox, son of a Jewish rabbi from Jerusalem. He was not willing to take the opportunity of meeting the other side, since he believed that their split of the territories was fine, and the pain and suffering that the others went through had no effect on him. His decision took him to isolation and ignorance, in my opinion. He never met the rest of the kids.

Daniel and Yarko, twins, Israeli boys living in Israel, were the most accepting and tolerant kids in the film, I think, due to their curiosity to know more about the other nations. They were honest kids, respectful and benevolent. They were indeed the most pacific people in the movie, since they were looking forward for understanding between nations. They were the first kids to communicate with the other children.

The point is, communication made everything easier for the children who met all together. They told each other what they felt, they had talks about how the world is, and they finally got to a conclusion in the end of the day: nations need to talk to each other, meet, understand and collaborate to have a better present, with equality and world peace.

I believe it is not possible at ANY rate, since nations refuse to talk through their conflicts. People will die, but even if it is not possible to have absolute peace, the only thing we can do is try to have some. The answer to every problem, is the word. Communication, understanding, respect. We all need to have those three, and share them, to get to this common goal we can have, and pursue.

"What does it take for someone to move from a position of hate and racism to a position of tolerance and respect like the transformation that occurred in Derek?"

When we think about racism throughout the world, we may think that we're out of those groups, but what's really happening is that minorities are often persecuted by other social selections, with different social status.

In my Academic Leadership Class we saw a movie called American History X, that was about two brothers, who were raised like normal kids, and when their father left, they became skinheads. They were normal kids, going to High School, and they became skinheads, to honor their father's belief. All this was caused by talks that this man had with the family, in casual occasions, like having dinner. The father of these kids told them that black people were taking over, and that they had to stop believing what they told them, because that was “nigger bullsh*t”, quote from the movie. From that moment on, Derek and Danny became haters of the black people, judging them for everything they said. In this movie, there was a clear example of racism, because none of the two boys really knew what racism was, and why were they committing it.

Everything changed when Derek had to go to jail for two years, under the charges of killing a man brutally and bloodily. The time he stayed in jail, he had different kinds of experiences with people from his enemy’s team, and ended up liking that people too. He also learned how to appreciate the enemy’s habilities, and to respect people. When Derek learned that, he taught Danny about the great things that this people can do, and that they are good people, just like them. Danny then understood that his father was wrong, and that he could be a better person, just by respecting and accepting other people. He also learned that what you did, can be covered by good actions that you can do, but they will never disappear.

In the movie the situation is just as it would be in reality, because it shows how dangerous and threatening it can be, if you go against a group of people or ideology, and then want to change to be different. We can clearly see that the transition between hate and respect can be tough, but it’s possible to make, and if you’re in one of those situations, you have to ask yourself if you really benefit from what you do. When the feeling good turns into a feeling of hate and selfishness, you decide that what you’ve done can be changed, and it’s not late to make sure you change, so your life can be better, and other lives too.

Why do kids hate school?

Why do kids hate school? Why do they say they don't want to go? What do they want in a perfect school? All these questions and some more come to our minds when we are in school for a long time. To find the answer to these questions we can analyze different facts in these days' education systems, so we can find certain deficiencies in it.

One of the things that kids don't like about school is having class. There are two types of classes: interactive and not interactive. Kids usually get bored in non interactive classes because they do not require them to do anything, and just sit and listen to the teacher talk, or read a book and do activities. During these classes, children use to talk more often in the desire of interacting. Also, these subjects usually cause the kids' attention to diverge and focus on minor facts, like what's going on outside the class, or what is his/her classmate doing. Often this is what causes that kids have a lower grade in this class, and this can influence the child's emotions at the moment of getting to class.

Other aspect that makes students to be not motivated to go to class is the probability that he/she has to get a good grade. This relates to the previous point, because both of them refer to the grade as a motivation. When students have low grades in a subject, sometimes is because they don't pay attention but sometimes it's because they feel like the subject is too difficult so in their uncontious, they give up in the class.

When the kid has this kind of reactions, sometimes it might be due to a student-teacher relation, which relates to how do the kid and the teacher behave with each other in class as well as in person, or due to a way that the teacher explains the subject. When teachers talk about the subject to learn as something really easy and doesn't give his/her full attention to it, the student might feel like that is too easy, so he won't study for tests and quizzes, and that is reflected in the kid's grade. Another thing that contributes to the children's unhappiness in the class is that the teacher can have a way to make relations with the students that is different to the way the kid makes relationships with his family and friends, and this can cause a difference and a feeling of disconfort in the student.

There are many causes to students' discontent with some teachers and the school, but all of them are not so important, because students get motivated by friend and school mates to keep meeting, at the same hour, in a regular schedule, in one of the most important places they will ever be: School.

Response to the Seattle Boycott Article

Standard tests are usually the most efficient way to test teenagers in order to get into college but, is it the only thing necessary?

Many colleges in the United States have changed their way to evaluate the people for the application, adding a portfolio, which is a way to describe yourself with no bonds and no restrictions. 

The personal portfolio is probably one of the most important tests to do on an application to university because it is about yourself, and through this method, the proffessor can know more things about you without even meeting you before.

Normally, in the US there weren't many universities that required the personal portfolio and stated that the best and unique test was the standard test. This evaluation included a simple way to put the students into challenges that were hard to solve, but it was very efficient. 

Suddenly, something happened: the whole state of California refused to do the standard tests. This caused a disaster in the college world, so the group of people that did the exams re-designed the test for the state of California. Even though this happened, many teachers of the Garfield School in Seattle refused to make the test in their school.

This is what happened to some states of the United States and we should have a reflection about this, so we as a class thought; would our parents support the elimination of standard tests for college applications? The class had a discussion, and finally decided that some parents would, and some wouldn't because some of them a so used to standard tests that no one can think of any way to do it better, but others are so open minded that they'd think of new ideas to test students for college.

Getting into college is important, but also very difficult. The standard tests have to be strong and useful, and are not the only thing necessary, in my opinion. I think that it is very important for a university to require a personal portfolio and a standard test, because it's important to know that the university knows you and why you are there.