I hate starting essays. I don’t mind writing essays, but I hate starting them. I need to write a 700 word essay on what matters to me, and I have no idea where to start. It’s just such a daunting task! The thought of writing one is just so overwhelming, and it’s the same for any big assignment that I have. I’m not worried because I don’t think I can do it, I’m just overwhelmed because thinking about a 700 word essay when you have zero words- well it’s straight out of a nightmare! But thankfully writing an essay is not like a magic trick, an essay is not some rabbit that you can just pull out of a hat. Writing is a process! So fortunately I know that once I get past one stage of the process I’m on to the next and soon the essay is practically done! But I’m still stuck on stage 1: brainstorming. I either have too many ideas that my brain is swimming all over the place or I don’t have any whatsoever. The former can usually be remedied by the process of elimination, but the latter takes a bit more work. Recently I’ve been given some advice to help me jumpstart my brainstorming process:
Start with a note pad and write down 4 topics.
Then write 4 sentences for each one.
Then put it away until tomorrow.
Next day re-read it and whittle it to 2.
Hopefully these steps will help me sort out what to write about! And once I’ve figured that out, well, then it’s off to the races!
By: Kathleen
Month: November 2016
Arts Education: Always 2nd
A Night in Hungary
I spent the summer in a youth program called Szarvas in Hungary. This is a piece I wrote following it. I’d like to encourage students to take time to explore their personal development and education in a peer setting.
Hadas Marucs
The Shaker Bubble by Anabel McGuan
“We live in the Shaker Bubble.” It’s a commonly used phrase, and many — including myself — are guilty of using it. It’s often accompanied with sarcastic remarks about our perfectly blended salad bowl of ideas, backgrounds, beliefs, and ethnicities, or lack thereof. In light of recent events, I think it’s safe to say that our illusionary bubble has popped.
Shaker has problems, and it’s time for us to face them head-on. Obviously, sweeping things under the bed and pretending we’re all fine and dandy hasn’t been working out too well for us. These past weeks have been tumultuous at our school, from Trump protests to Twitter scandals, finally culminating with yesterday’s bomb threat, lockdown, and emergency evacuation.
I commend school authorities for their calm, organized handling of yesterday’s extremely trying situation. We need more of this. I hope this becomes a pattern of better managing crises, big or small. We need to acknowledge our issues and keep students, staff, and community informed.
As a district, we have our strengths, but confronting difficult situations has presented itself as a weakness. We have potential to be a strong, integrated, diverse community, but we have to first abandon our facade of already being so — we have plenty of kinks to first iron out.
Define Sleep. by Louis Schwartz
Over the past four years of high school the amount of sleep I get has gone down and the amount of stress I am put under has gone up. Why can’t this be the other way? It has been proven by numerous studies that more sleep equals greater concentration and greater focus. So why do teachers give us tests that all fall on the same day or jam us with homework for that one night. Now I guess I put some stress on myself by being involved in theatre and by taking three AP classes this year. But why do we start so much earlier than all the elementary school kids? These young children get up at the crack of dawn, just like us, but don’t start the school day till after 9:00 am. We get up at the crack of dawn and have 30 minutes to an hour to get to school. People are going to the nurse’s office sometimes just to sleep and function throughout the day. I, personally, don’t know what sleep is anymore. I stay up till almost midnight or past midnight every night. Then I am also overly stressed with writing college essays, applications, and picking which college I want to go to. With this long weekend just ending, it’s back to the regular, eight sleepless days, and then we have a whole week to catch up. But there is never enough time to catch up on sleep. We need sleep to function, we don’t need stress to function.