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Teen Editor's Welcome: May 17th-20th, 2012
Goodbyes and Hellos
By Amanda Bourne, High School Editor
I considered writing this in letter format, starting with "Dear Readers" and ending with "Yours Truly", but that sounds a little bit too much like something in a mystery novel, so I won't. Maybe I've been reading too many mystery novels lately?
This is my last editorial post in the high school stage. No worries - I'm not going anywhere. Eric at Stage of Life has been awesome, and hence I will now be writing in the college stage.
The end of this week, I will graduate high school. Yes, (by jove), isn't it crazy? I'm one AP exam and a bit of homework away from being done. Forever. Until college in the fall. (That's not forever, but who cares?)
I'm already there. I'm ready to be done with senioritis and other high school games. But I'm slowly coming to realize that despite how much I want (yearn) to, I cannot skip this summer and the changes (transformations) that will come with it.
Is it odd to want to just go to college and skip summer? I know. You're welcome to call me crazy, a workaholic, etc, but it's true. I'm not sure it's the summer I want to skip, but maybe I just want to bypass the process of ending this stage of my life. Severing those detrimental friendships that need to be severed, wrapping up my continual involvement in various groups and activities, and trying to realize what is important to keep close to or pull away from.
I'm not even done with high school, and this process has already begun.
On the bright side, I'm looking forward to moving into this new stage of my life. At a time when I'm continually examining and reprioritizing, the good things that I've already achieved in the college admissions process give me a goal to work towards.
Sometimes, I think having a goal to work towards is more important than the struggles along the way. They say that the journey is more important than the destination, but it wouldn't be much of a journey without a destination, would it?
Keep working, my friends, towards your goals. You can do it.
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Teen Editor's Welcome: May 15th-17th, 2012
School's Out for Summer!
By Keilah Sullivan, High School Editor
Hopefully you all know “School’s Out For Summer” by Alice Cooper, because that’s what I’m blasting in my room right now. Why? I’m officially done with my junior year of high school! **Insert fifty-seven more exclamation points here.**
Normally, once school’s out I’m inclined to stay up till o’dark thirty reading dystopian novels, sleep in as late as my 6:30AM circadian rhythm allows, and loll around the house like a lazy bum. Now that I don’t have weekly lessons, I don’t practice the piano. Now that soccer season’s over I get lazy and don’t practice as often as I do during the season. Now that I don't have to read literature for classes, I head straight for my usual barrage of New York Times bestselling YA novels.
However.
I just finished taking a class called “Rising Above Cultural Mediocrity” this semester. Uh-huh, heavy-duty stuff right there. Part of the class’s purpose was to help you seize your time and use it wisely. While taking the class I realized that I’m pretty good about seizing my time during the school year . . . but not so much during the summer.
So this summer I’ve decided to create some goals to aim toward so I’m not a big slobbering scalawag come August. My goals include:
1) Read at least two classics per month.
2) Juggle the soccer ball/practice drills for half an hour a day.
3) Walk the dog every day. Poor dog. He gets kinda chunky during the winter.
4) Not sleep in past 8AM and not go to bed past 1AM (with occasional exceptions for sleepovers and such . . . heh heh).
5) Practice piano four times a week.
6) Volunteer for some event at least once a week.
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How about you? What goals do you have for this summer? Don't forget to enter the monthly teen writing contest! |
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Teen Editor's Welcome: May 1st-6th, 2012
Grad Bash Review
By Meredith Berger, High School Editor
Last weekend, our senior class attended Grad Bash: a fun filled event at Universal Studios exclusively for Florida high school seniors. In previous years, Grad Night was the popular end-of-year event, but the change was made to Universal Studios this year, and honestly I was not disappointed. I’ll admit, I had my doubts. I was dreading the long lines, hectic confusion and the inevitable exhaustion that would hit me around 1am, but I was thoroughly surprised. The lines, although long, seemed to move quickly, and because all the people there were high school seniors, chants about the “Class of 2012” were sung while waiting in line, proving that no matter how different a person was, everyone there had that one thing in common. Also, Harry Potter World was incredible and the diabetes-inducing Butter Beer was enough to keep me awake and energetic until 2am. Everything was fun and exciting and we were all getting along until some seniors found themselves in quarrels when interacting with students from other schools. As a side note, not all the seniors at Grad Bash, or at any “seniors only” function, are going to be friendly, and for those juniors who are thinking of going next year, be sure to not cut lines because, if you do, there are some girls out there who will threaten to “cut you.” (I know this from personal experience…. fights broke out, nails were broken.) Aside from the minimal confrontations, however, Grad Bash was a success and the rides, along with the musical stylings of Pitbull, ensured a good time for everyone. I really hope all you seniors out there are having an AMAZING last couple days of school and I hope your transition to college, or to wherever you may go after you graduate, is smooth and brings you happiness.
Love, Mere
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Teen Editor's Welcome: April 23rd-30th, 2012
The result of too much music...
By Amanda Konstantine Perlmutter, High School Editor
The beautiful noises we made
Stain my heart, soul, & brain
With feelings I’ll never feel again
We touched the highest of stars
And the depths of the sea
Now you’re just so far
Away from me
My mind plays tricks and there you are
In my dreams
Waking up is harder than it seems
Eyes open staring at the ceiling in a sleepless state
Emptiness is the only thing laying beside me
I want to cry out but my voice makes no sound
What’s the point of living
If you aren’t around?
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Teen Editor's Welcome: April 14th-20th, 2012
Simplicity
By Amanda Bourne, High School Editor
Today, instead of writing a long, drawn out post on my college-related experiences, or goodness-only-knows what, I’m going to share with you a short essay I wrote. It details my thoughts in regards to Thoreau’s thoughts on simplicity. In case you didn’t know, Thoreau is the bomb-dig. You either love him or hate him, but something about his writing strikes at a truth deep within us all. I know that I sound like the broken record that may be your English teacher. I’ll stop explaining now, and let you read my response to Thoreau’s call for simplifying life.
“Like pygmies we fight with cranes”. So states Thoreau in the opening sentence of an excerpt, quoted from Where I Lived and What I Lived For. Thoreau’s basic thesis is that “our life is frittered away by detail”. With this basic premise I agree, and although Thoreau and I come to the same conclusion from different beliefs and experiences, our lives are impacted by the way we live this conclusion.
I have lived on a farm for the entirety of my life. I have picked vegetables for that day’s meal, butchered chickens, and watched life paddle by on our creek (in the form of wildlife). As humans, our life revolves around providing for our bodies. In Thoreau’s time, most people provided for themselves and their neighbors. Less so nowadays. Modern Americans often have the convenience of food security - we no longer have to wonder what meal will be our next. Instead, we decide what to pull from the freezer or where to eat out.
From my experience, the less we focus on where our next meal will come from, the more we allow our lives to be frittered away by detail. We allow these details (work troubles, pay raises, Internet, political affiliation) to live our life for us, and these details dictate what we will eat, wear, and how we will act (in many cases).
Many illnesses are caused by stress from these details. Stress weakens our immune system, and allows bacteria and pathogens to enter. All of this is caused by detail, yet we refuse to focus on simplicity.
Simplicity is not worrying about everything. Simplicity is eating healthy, and taking time to exercise. Simplicity is finding a way to connect with where our food comes from, or even better, to grow it yourself. When you rely less on modern convenience, especially highly-processed foods that destroy your body, you allow simplicity to let your “affairs be two or three”.
Children in Africa who eat only once a day have smiles upon their faces, yet we who eat three a day are stressed by detail. Humans have existed for thousands of years, yet only with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of food security have our lives been ruled by detail.
In an ever-evolving, ever-complicated world, we can find simplicity by focusing on the nourishment we put into our bodies, and not the Internet. Simplicity cannot be manufactured. Only by reverting to the past can we abolish the tyrannical rule of thousands of details. “Our life is frittered away by detail”, so “let your affairs be as two or three”, for the sake of simplicity and your own wellbeing.
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Teen Editor's Welcome: April 9th-15th, 2012
Avoid Writers Block!
By Keilah Sullivan, High School Editor
Considering you’re taking the time to browse this fantastic blogging site, I assume that most of you are readers and writers. And as writers, I’m sure you’ve all experienced that dreaded yet inevitable disease “writer’s block.” Ugh ugh ugh. This is exactly the experience that caused me to list “Banging My Head Against a Wall” to my list of “Activities” on Facebook.
And over the years, in the profundity of my seventeen-year-old wisdom (Gasp! Am I really so aged so soon?), I’ve accumulated several How-To-Kick-Writer’s-Block-In-The-Patootie Tips. They are as follows:
1) Read. I think my writing ability is analogous to an algebraic function: the output relies on the input. If I'm not "inputting" a constant flow of creativity (via novels similar to the one I'm writing), my output diminishes dramatically. Heck, it doesn't just diminish. It goes splat, never to be seen again. *slides finger over throat*
2) Freewrite. And by “write” I really mean WRITE. Not typing. Not texting. But actually, honest-to-Godiva writing. On paper. (Do people even do that these days?) Personally, I like to write in a giant 11 by 14 sketchbook with a deliciously inky black uni-ball pen. Oh yes. Just sit yourself down, open up your sketchbook/notebook/Mad Libs-book and go to town. Don’t worry about grammar or consistency or coherence. Just write out your thoughts until a) your hand begins violently cramping, or b) you really have nothing more to say. From past experience, “a” is much more common than “b.” We’re writers. Is it even possible for us to have nothing to say?! Stream-of-consciousness is the key phrase here.
3) Talk a walk. No, seriously. It’s great for stimulating creativity. The experts agree with me. “Moving around is good for creativity,” writes Will Shetterly. “The next line of dialogue that you desperately need may well be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk.” Similarly, A. Bronson Alcott instructed that a writer should “sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth,” etc., etc., etc.
4) WRITE, don’t EDIT. This is my own Achilles’ heel. I’m a chronic editor. I can edit an essay to death. And I do the same thing to my books. I edit and edit and edit and edit until pretty soon I have the most beautiful first chapter you’ve ever laid eyes on. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is still buried somewhere in the recesses of my (slightly screwed up) brain. So even if you’re unsatisfied with the first few chapters of the book (even if they make you want to run to the nearest toilet/bucket/spherically-shaped-receptacle), just let it sit. Write through the first draft, and remember that you can always come back afterward to fix the dangling participles and cringe-inducing typos. As Ernest Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is [crap].” (This is Hemingway we’re talking about, so I had to insert a euphemism.)
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Teen Editor's Welcome: April 1st-7th, 2012
Hungry for Some Hunger Games?
By Meredith Berger, High School Editor
This past week, the long awaited Hunger Games movie was released in theaters packed with die-hard (no pun intended) fans willing to kill each other for tickets to the premiere (okay, pun intended here). I would consider myself to be one of those fans. However, I am not a movie fan as kids my age so often tend to be--I am a book fan who has read all of Collin's trilogy and didn't just go to watch the film adaptation. I really hate that so many people who call themselves "fans" didn't even bother to read the books. It's not so much that I'm disappointed by their laziness (which I am) but more so I believe that being a fan of the Hunger Games movie takes on a whole other meaning than being a fan of the book. The book and the movie are two completely different animals. The core plot is not different but the complexities of the sub-story lines are lost in the condensed "we don't have time to introduce central characters" movie version. Also, the movie portrayal of certain main events such as the fire costume entrance are lackluster and disappointing--not as I pictured in the novel. Lastly, the initial fight scene in the hunger games arena and the final scene with the wolves are both confusing and hard to watch because of the shaky camera and odd vantage points which almost brought me to an epileptic fit. Over all, the opinions of those coming out of the theater after the movie differed according to whether or not they read the book. Those who didn't read it thought the action was awesome and were genuinely surprised when Prim was chosen to be tribute, but those who read the book were just counting the differences between the two and waiting for Haymitch to fall off the stage--which he never did.
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Teen Editor's Welcome: March 21st-27th, 2012
The World at your Fingertips: Instagram
By Amanda Konstantine Perlmutter, High School Editor
So I joined the craze and got an iPhone a few months ago, and I downloaded the fun apps we all love:
Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, YouTube, Shazam, Temple Run, Fruit Ninja, Draw Something, Flixster, Pic Collage, AE, Rage Comics, Tweegram, Mustache me, Lunapic, camwow, photosplash, cool finger faces, sketch me, pimp my text, pici booth, camera FX, goodreads, Netflix, starwalk—among many others, but my favorite app would have to be instagram.
A lot of people who’ve never used instagram think it’s just a photo editing app when really it doesn’t offer much to alter your photos, just a few filters. What really makes it addicting is that it took what everyone loves about Facebook (newsfeed, photos, likes & comments) and combined it with what we all want on twitter (followers & real celebrity accounts) and created a way for us to make friends, share, & view photos from around the world.
You can personalize your account so that its private or public, you can block people you don’t want on there—you really are in control of your account. There are lots of negative things that can go on in the world of instagram though. In my time on there I’ve seen accounts dedicated to drugs, eating disorders, cutting, and other inappropriate things. That’s where user discretion comes into play, you see something you wish you hadn’t, you block & report it, simple as that. Another negative thing is that I believe they should have an age restriction because anyone with an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad can have instagram, and I see lots of young kids on their well under 13 who should not be exposed to instagram and should not post pictures of themselves for pedophiles to look at! I strongly believe they should make it 13 or older like other social networking sites.
Negatives aside, I think of my instagram addiction as a positive one. There are worse things to be hooked on, and there is no harm in instagram! I love all of the interactions I have with my followers, I always reply to their comments, and whenever I get a “like” I always go check out that person’s page and like their pictures in return. I have followers from all over the world, France, Italy, Korea, Sweden, Greece—you name it! I also follow people from all over the world.
The difference between instagram and going on Google images is that when you click in Paris, you don’t only see the Eiffel tower, you can see anything, and all of the pictures are personal encounters. You can see a café someone went to that day, or a park they enjoyed, things you’d never have seen unless you actually got to spend time in Paris without being just a tourist. In exchange, since I live in New York, I like to take pictures of things I see here to share with my followers. From me they won’t only see the statue of liberty, and the New York skyline, but they’ll see places I go, people I meet, things that I do here in the city that they may not have experienced or may never get to experience. There are pictures of fashion, architecture---everything, and it helps you learn trends before magazines spot them because instagram is by people, for people.
It’s also a major confidence boost, when I post a picture on instagram, I get way more likes on them then I would if I posted on Facebook. That’s because most people on instagram are just strangers, they are completely objective. On Facebook, your friends and family may like a picture but not click like for whatever reason and so on. But instagram is just a friendly place. No one really fights on there because no one knows each other. Of all my 217 (and growing every day) followers, less than 20 of them are my friends in real life, the rest are all people who just find my photography interesting and decided I’m worth following. Sometimes it means more to be liked by outsiders then by your own friends and family because they kind of have to like you, these people don’t have to like you because you’ll never see them.
After all of this, my final statement is, GO DOWNLOAD INSTAGRAM & FOLLOW ME (if you are over 13) and always remember to be safe online, because when you use technology the right way, it can be a fun & enriching experience.
Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, & Subscribe to my YouTube channel: @AlwaysWrite28
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Teen Editor's Welcome: March 14th-20th, 2012
Accepting Reality
By Amanda Bourne, High School Editor
Sometimes reality can be intimidating. During the college application process and after receiving acceptance letters, I was truly excited for college. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still very excited. However, as the reality that yes, I have been accepted into my top school, and yes, I am in the honors program begins to settle, I have to face the facts.
It’s really difficult. I don’t want to leave my job. I’m unsure about leaving my home and church. Oh wait – confession. I just lied about being unsure about leaving home. I’m actually pretty darn excited about it.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to wonder if I could just pull a little-blue-envelopes trick and buy a one-way ticket to Europe. If you’ve read 13 Blue Envelopes, then you might get the reference. (But really, what parent would let their 17/18 year old kid go to Europe with no way of contacting them? Really?)
Back on subject now. I promise.
Sometimes it’s easier to dream up a way to escape reality. To escape anticipated pain and difficulties by choosing an entirely different route. To prove everyone around you wrong by pulling a 180 degree change of interests. But in the end, I know I want to go to college and major in journalism. I know I want to move on with my life, and create my own fortunes while I’m “young and stupid”. (A friend spoke about his daughter that way recently, and I thought it was fitting.) But it’s the process of the leap that is admittedly terrifying.
The next few weeks will be spent studying and going to work as per usual. By the time you hear from me next, I’ll have a little more than a month left of high school. {Can it be possible to want high school to be over with as much as I want it to right now?} But in the back of my mind, I’ll be working on confronting reality without being overwhelmed by it.
I have no definitive conclusion for this post. No bright ideas on how to face the reality that I’ll actually be leaving the place I’ve always lived in. However, I’ve put it down on paper (for the whole world to read). And that my friends, is a very good start.
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Teen Editor's Welcome: March 7th-14th, 2012
College Hunting
By Keilah Sullivan, High School Editor
Two words: college hunting. *Thunder booms and lightning crashes for effect.* Oi vey, where do I start?
When I was a freshman, college was nothing more than a big hazy question mark filled with strange, energy-drink guzzling, TI-83-wielding beings congregating in mysterious Greek societies. In other words, an alien world. And I didn’t much care to pursue any answers to the mysteries of college. It was four years away, for crying out loud! I had all the time in the world.
Now suddenly I’m a junior and people are asking me where I’m going to go to college and what I want to study. What? College? I’m sixteen! I have to start thinking about college now? You gotta be kiddin’ me. All the same, I spent the better part of first semester frantically scrabbling through CollegeBoard, searching for The One. The Dream College. My (scholastic) soul mate.
I had my heart set on Swarthmore in Philadelphia. Ah, Swarthmore. An aspiring writer’s dream school. And located in Philly (gorgeous Philly!) of all places. And . . . What’s that? $41,000 a year for tuition? $12,000 for room and board?! And we gotta put THREE kids through college?!?! Can’t the other two just go work at McDonalds for the rest of their lives while I party it up at Swarthie? No?
Oh.
Dreams. Shattered.
After realizing that Swarthmore wasn’t an option, I resigned myself to TrumanU, located in itty-bitty Kirksville. Practically splat in the middle of a cornfield. Great, I thought, now I’ll probably live in a log cabin and study English in a field of grazing cattle.
I thought that since I wasn’t going to go to a big-name school, I wouldn’t get a big-name education either. So when my dad and I drove up to Truman this past Tuesday, I wasn’t expecting much.
But, wow. W-o-w. Truman was cool. It was beyond cool. It had gorgeous, modern, sprawling facilities, great dorms, great classrooms . . . a library with 400,000 books. O_O
As we walked around with our tour guide and he explained the ins and outs of college life, I had something of any epiphany. I thought that in going to Truman, I was somehow going to get a sub-par education. However, I realized that regardless of whether you go to Harvard or community college, ultimately your education rests on your own shoulders.
So what if you can’t go to a $41K East Coast school? You can always rely on your own indomitable auto-didacticism. You don’t need a big-name school to get a big-name education. You just need to have a passion for learning and the willingness to work hard for that education.
![]() All the 4 people/groups of people above have inspired me in so many ways and I want to thank all of you! Don't forget to enter the monthly teen writing contest!
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