Early Admissions

This week, many seniors hear back from a variety of colleges that they applied early for. A New York Times Blog called "The Choice" posted an interesting article about the increase of early application acceptants. I thought it was interesting to read that many schools increased their acceptance numbers early, meaning many more incoming students will be willing to pay tuition early. What happened to the bad economy? I also wondered what the pro's and con's are for early admission since all of us will be going through it next year. My sister applied early decision two years ago and got in. The rest of her senior year she was able to relax and have fun, but still maintain her grades. I really can't think of any con's besides the fact that some early decision schools make an acceptance that is binding. I know that it's kinda early to think about, but it is good to start looking at options! What do you think you will do next year? Do you think applying early is a good idea?

Who's Your Mommy?

I came across an interesting article today about a married couple who were unable to conceive a child. They used both an egg and sperm donor and also a surrogate mother. The strange thing was, she did all of this online. She picked the egg and sperm donors off one website, and the surrogate mother from another. Last July, the twins were born, but they only stayed with the couple who "purchased" them for one month. The police showed up at their Michigan home and took the babies away from them and returned them to the surrogate mother, the one who cared for them for the whole nine months. Turns out, the surrogate mother found out that the adoptive mother had a mental illness and she got a court order to retrieve the babies. The surrogate mom did not want anything bad to happen to the children over the years, so now she is their gaurdian. What about the adoptive mother and father, will they get their money back? I don't think that this is fair, I believe that having a mental illness is not enough to take children away from their mother. Her husband could take care of them if she ever had a relapse. What do you think?

Read the whole article here.

How do YOU Blog?

After reading Mr. O’Connor’s blog on creativity, I found myself thinking about my creative ability and others creativity. Actually, I did not know what to blog about so I am blogging about my lack of creativity this week. A lot of the time I find myself stuck on finding interesting blog topics. I search desperately on news websites and try to get a lead from an article. When I don’t find an interesting article, I try to search in my brain for clever blog topics. Usually it takes a while for it to come up. But other times I know exactly what I’m going to write about. Why? Do you ever seem creative at one point and unimaginative at other points? How do you find blogging topics?

Image via: http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/tonyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/blog_logo.jpg

Procrastination Station

Last Saturday I shuttled myself off to the library in hopes of finishing all of my weekend homework early. I was very proud of myself because I felt very studious. But somehow, I ended up on Facebook. The whole point of my visit to the library was to not get distracted. So why did I log in??? That’s the one question I have been struggling with throughout high school. Don't get me wrong, Facebook is great, I’m on it everyday. It’s nice to have conversations with your friends and a site to post pictures. However, I think it is always a big time waster. I continue to stuggle with procrastinating and I just log on to Facebook to browse around. I got disappointed with myself because I did not finish all of my homework at the library. If I continue to spend all my precious free time on Facebook, I don't think I will ever learn self-discipline . Do all of you struggle with this too? Is facebook your friend or your foe? I hope to only log on every once in a while now!

Food Fight = Arrested

I read an interesting article today about 25 kids from Chicago who got arrested for a food fight. Wait, a food fight, really? I didn’t think it was possible for a food fight to turn into a criminal offense. The article also states that the kids were suspended from school for two days. This seems like the better punishment. It seems ridiculous for 11-15 year olds to get arrested for a classic prank like a food fight, but it’s true! The charges were for reckless conduct. I thought that the article would report on injuries or how the food fight got seriously out of hand, but nothing else was reported in the article. With all the recent violence in schools in Chicago, it seems like having a couple officers in the school would help. Also, it got me thinking of their records for the future. Having this episode is ultimately going to hurt them finding jobs in the future.  But was this arrest really necessary, was the so-called ‘reckless conduct’ a reason to throw kids in jail? Does the punishment fit the crime that these kids did?

(image via http://teezaday.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/food_image.jpg)

Follow George!

As we've been discussing the Con-Con in class, the idea of following George Washington's actions came up a lot. Many people looked up to him as the most powerful man in America and approved whatever he approved. People worshiped him! And apparently, we should all still follow his example! I was walking through the New Trier library the other day and posted on a bulletin board was this poster. We've all seen the "cover your cough, stop the spread of germs" poster, but I've never seen the George Washington inspired one. It's a remake of his famous portrait by Gilbert Stuart. I thought it was interesting to see our founding father on a national CDC campaign. I wondered why the CDC decided to make this poster with George Washington instead, maybe, Barack Obama. But on the other hand I said to myself, 'hey, if George covers his cough, I'll cover mine', which is the main goal of the CDC. What do you think about the poster? (Sorry for the picture quality. I took it on my phone.)

"Sorting People"

I just took the "Racial Sorter" that was posted on the side of anamericanstudies.com.  I have to admit, I thought I was going to get them all correct. But actually I got maybe half of them wrong. I also found it quite interesting that there was a game like this, I would think some people may find it offensive because some people don't like to be categorized. I then searched that website for more information about race and 'sorting'. I found the US Government's correct definitions for different types of race. It listed all the different types of race and gave an in depth definition. For example, the definition for American Indian was, "a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community recognition". I couldn't help but ask if people actually use any of these definitions when using self-identification. Why does the government even have these definitions if laws passed in 1970 said that citizens could choose their own classification? Do these definitions come in handy when people are 'sorting' themselves or are they there to actually categorize people?