Reality is Relative

“I believe that sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it.”
-Garrison Keillor

If we chose to accept every reality life threw at us, we'd have no hope.

In reality:

• Our environment is going to fail us and us it at one point or another.
  
• Teenagers are getting more rebellious and experimental by the generation and there's nothing that can really stop it.
• People who are famous for nothing other than having money are making better livings than those who save lives everyday.
• People have issues that they may never recover from and sometimes have no desire to.

If we accepted all of these facts as inevitable, we'd have no desire to fix them. The reality of the situation is not always the best case scenario of it.

If we start now, we can take huge steps to save the planet.

If we make good choices, we can pass them down to younger generations making them more respectful to others and themselves.

If we can stop glorifying the material we can instead see praise the ones who help people for a living.

If we listen and are there, we can prevent despair.

I'm not saying that these things won't always be realities, after all, there's only so much we can do.

Eventually, the Earth will fall victim to the damage human's have inflicted on it. Scandal will always be more "interesting" to the masses than good. Some people will still refuse to be helped.

None of this means that we can't have hope for the future, deny the realities of our world as inevitable and try to fix them.

Hope is a virtue and amazing to see. If only there were more of it.

-Rachel

I Feel Accomplished

I meant to do a quoteblog Friday. Whoops. This week :)

Today I took the last MCAS test I will ever have to take in my life. I can hear the Hallelujah chorus!

If you don't know, MCAS is a standardized test that every Sophomore in the Massachusetts school system has to take and pass to graduate. You start preparing for it in like 3rd grade and don't stop until Freshman year. It's annoying and stupid and nobody likes it.

And I never have to take it EVER AGAIN!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D

And now for an Updated list of books I've read this year:

1. What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
2. Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
3. Maybe by Brent Bunyon
4. Getting the Girl by Markus Zusak
5. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
6. Antigone by Sophocles
7. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
8. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I'm reading now:

1. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Sarfran Foer

In two days, I have read 118 pages of this book. So far, it's pretty fantastic. The way it's told from different, seemingly unrelated, points of view and how they all come together is extremely well done. The book also manages to have ways of touching a topic in ways that I believe everyone can understand with honest LOL humor thrown in, in the prefect places. I'm loving it. Kudos, Mr. Foer.

That and I got an 80 on my Algebra test from Monday :D. Except now I don't understand what we're doing. But I picked a thesis (or the start of a thesis) for my English paper. And I got a bunch of comments on my last 7AB video from people from Sri Lankens saying how happy they were that their contry was finally entering peace after I talked about how their biggest terrorist group was captured. That made me feel good.

Good week :)

Also, I can't stop listening to Green Day's new album. They may have outdone themselves...again. :)

Quoteblog coming this week, promise!

-Rachel

I Feel the Need....The Need For Sharing my Life With the Internet

Hey Bloggies,

Warning: Cat Blog

What I've Done Today:

1. Woke Up
2. Went to School
3. Read 10 pages of Fahrenheit 451
4. Got all my sources for my research project
5. Watched movie clips in Latin
6. Worked on my pointillism project in D&P
7. Hopefully did well on an Algebra quiz
8. Came home
9. Watched the first Pokemon movie
10. Did algebra homework
11. Watched the Hunchback of Notre Dame
12. Watched YouTube videos
13. Blogged

What I still Need to Do:

1. Latin homework
2. Put my English sources into MLA format
3. Read more Fahrenheit
   
4. Go on Skype
5. Sleep

I'd say today has been a productive day so far.

I plan on doing another Quote Blog soon this week, just need to find a quote. Any suggestions?

Okay, off to lay down until dinner and then finish my homework.

-Rachel

I Finally Understand the Meaning of "Sophomore Slump"

I expected this year to be amazing school wise. I don't know why I thought this, but my Freshman year of high school is a big contributor. Freshman year rocked; everything was new: the people, the classes, the bell schedule, everything.

Sophomore year has not lived up to my expectations. Not only did 2008 as a year suck (I lost my grandfather, I had a ton of family problems,) but this year I honestly just didn't really care about school.

In all honesty, I just want it to be done.

Granted, 2009 is going much better than 2008. It started off a little rocky but has since progressed to everything moving in the right direction. Katy, if you're reading this, you can attest to that. I believe I ranted and cried to you the most out of the 7AB.

I think the only classes I've really liked this year were Latin II, English II, and US History I.

History:

• I generally don't like the subject matter because I'm just so sick of learning about the US, but my teacher made it entertaining
• Mr. Gillen rules. He's the reason I'm taking AP US History next year as well as Psychology.

English:

• We're reading really good literature. (Ethan Frome & Macbeth are awesome IMO)
• My teacher is a little out there, but she's super nice and makes sure you really know what you're doing.
• I'm good at English, and the class isn't that hard.

Latin II

• Mr. Scanalan is possibly the best teacher I've ever had. He's super laid back and understands/sympathizes if you don't have the homework done because you were going to cry if you looked at one more text book.
• I love Latin. A lot of people don't understand why or think you're stupid for taking a "dead language." The thing is, Latin isn't spoken anymore but it is FAR from dead. Nearly everything in the English language comes from Latin. Seriously, it's awesome for better understanding English.
• Roman culture is fascinating, and in Latin you don't just learn the language like a lot of other language courses, you learn the mythology and ways of the culture as well.
• We're doing the best project ever: Find a movie that has something to do with Roman culture. Pick a clip. Present clip to class. (I chose Disney's Hercules) :)

Hopefully this "kill me now, school sucks" attitude will pass next year. It's not that I don't like school, I really like it, I just now totally understand the term "Sophomore Slump."

I promise this will be the last blog of me complaining about high school for a while. I'm getting annoyed with myself.

-Rachel

PS: I'm going to see 17 Again tonight. I'm excited! :D

Typical Rantings of a Student who Hates Homework

It really bugs me when teachers give you homework that takes more than an hour to do.

In all honesty, I don't mind homework that much...when it helps me learn the material, which most of it does. However, in some cases, the homework is so abundant that it becomes tedious and makes most of the class, myself included, refuse to spend three hours finishing the work and resent the class.

I honestly do not understand why we can't just do more practice in class, have at most an hour of homework (excluding projects and essays, obviously,) and get some rest.

I have friends who get, at most, three hours of sleep a night. One of my friends is lucky if she sleeps at all.

In all honesty, it isn't because they are just night owls or like staying up late, it's because of school.

Teachers don't always take into account the amount of hours students put into extracurricular activities when they assign the 60+ problem packet to do that night. With sports, clubs, and fitting in family time is added up, the student is up until 3 a.m. doing homework and is expected to wake up at 6 a.m. to get ready for school.

They pile all this stuff on so they can get into a good college and it just ends up being an endless cycle of running on no sleep and trying to keep up grades.

It pisses me off, mostly because I don't want to do my algebra homework tonight.

Really, this rant is pointless, I know homework helps me learn. I just don't want to spend my entire evening doing it is all.

-Rachel

Want to Leave a Legacy?

"I would like to be remembered as someone who could make people laugh. I would just like to be remembered really."
-Dominic Monaghan

So I happened to be on Dominic Monaghan's IMDb page the other night when I stumbled across this quote from him. Now, usually on IMDb, the quotes from actors are usually just ones about their work or personal lives and none of them really made me think...until now.

Now, when asked how we'd like to be remembered, the usual answer is "I'd like to be remembered as...[funny, sweet, charitable, awesome, dinosaur like, etc.]" But no one ever really addresses the fact that they don't care how they are remembered, just that they are.

This also addresses the perpetual desire to be famous. Some people, when they say they want to be a famous actor or singer, say they want to do it because it's what they love to do. For some people, this is true and you can tell in their work. For others, it may be what they enjoy doing, but an underlying and sometimes subconscious motive is the desire for fame.

A celebrity's work remains long after they are gone, which, in a way, makes them immortal. It is evident with Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Clark Gable and a plethora of others who have found fame throughout the years. This however, is not the only way to achieve "immortality." What most people don't realize is that they don't have to make a fool of themselves or be in big name productions to have a shot at being remembered.

Authors, soldiers, people just trying to do the right thing. John Green, Ross McGinnis, Shawn of the Uncultured Project. There are countless names we recognize. None going out of their way to be remembered. All doing what they can for the benefit of others.

I quote my friend Ali: "We are some of the most insignificant creatures on this planet. Our memory only remains as long as our families and loved ones speak of us. We get, what, maybe 100-150 years on this planet tops before our names, everything about us, is forgotten. That is the plain and honest truth and there is no getting around it."

When you look back in history, it is never the celebrities or names in pop culture that we learn about; we learn about the activists, the generals. Those who contributed most to making us think, making a difference with no intention to go down in history as a predominant name in it.

If we live our lives well, in a way we are all immortal. Maybe not immortal to the planet, but immortal to the ones who care about us enough to want us to be remembered. That is really the most important thing: how you live your life.

The end of the world is going to happen, and then no one will be remembered. There will be a day where there will be no evidence of the human race, not even the so called "immortal" ones, regardless of what we'd like to think.

If I'm going to be remembered, I'd rather be remembered as a "good, caring person" than a "vapid, selfish celebrity" while I can still be remembered as a "good, caring person," wouldn't you?

-Rachel

I Need A Break From Life

Is it odd that now and then I just need a break from my IRL friends. It happens once in a while, I start to get annoyed and then I just ignore them for a few days.

It's not that I don't care, it's just that I start to feel overwhelmed and just want to talk to my Bookworms, or Jake, or one of the other URL friends I'm just now making.

I need time off from high school and talk about prom and boys and dates that I'm not going on. I love my friends, but I just don't want to talk about things that I can't contribute to because of lack of experience. AKA, everything listed above except for high school.

When this happens, it starts to get to me. I'm I just hopelessly awkward or socially defective?

This may just be the cold/allergies talking, but I'm in one of my angsty, low self esteem moods.

I'm just confused.

-Rachel