Survival of the Fittest...
So it's coming down to the wire. Kids seem to be dropping classes left and right. Mid terms are next week and people are hoping to get a no mark and not a zero in the class. It also seems to be the teacher's last push to demoralize students who 'shouldn't' be there (according to the teachers that is). Last week brought many tests... and a few of them were meant to shake you up. For example in chemistry the teacher purposefully made 3/4 of the multiple-choice questions wrong. He'd make impossible questions like what atom is represented by 1s^2 2s^2 2p^7 3s^2 3p^4 (where of course a p orbital cannot have 7 electrons, especially not when their are unfilled valence electrons, and where it was stated the atom was in ground state) or he'd make multiple right answers (i.e. A and E would be the same, yet, correct answer). So for me, it wasn't that difficult, I have the confidence to tell the teacher their wrong... but many people are either unable to or second guess themselves at every turn. It also seems to be that 'epiphany' time where people get the idea that they can't do something, that things are just getting to hard. I don't know about them but I’ve been staying up until 2:00 every night to make sure I do things right and up to par. I can't speak for others but I’m sure many don't go that far, or simply don't approach these things effectively. I don't think I’ve ever had that 'feeling' that I couldn't achieve or do something if I just didn't work hard enough at it (don't get me wrong, I don't have enormous "natural talent" I just have hard headed perseverance and a thirst for knowledge). I guess I could say 'languages', they seem above and beyond me... but I’m trying to remedy that as well. I understand were everyone is coming from though, it's not like grade 12 is easy and I realize that the marks they receive determine the university they get into. But at the same time doing badly on one test, or one assignment isn't going to kill you, if anything it'll humble and humanize you.
On another note next week I get to go do two interesting things. One, I have a field trip for drama =D, and two, I have another field trip for drama because the play I’m acting in is part of sears fest, I get to go and run the script in front of an adjudicator and they'll tell us if the student written script has any merit or not. It's an interesting concept... I'm not sure how my play will do, but I need to memorize the entire thing by wed so I can perform it.
On another another note... I had to write a narrative essay for English... but it turned out to be much more fun then I realized, so I’m going to post what I have here (it's 2nd draftish, so it's not perfecto):
Lucid Reality
The first time a person puts on his glasses his eyes water with a child like awe, he rediscovers the world in which he’s contently idled by, he does a double take and realizes how distorted and twisted his construct of reality really is.
Sitting on the daily bus ride to and from school, I began to spend my time by listening. Listening to people, listening to the world, but on this particular day, listening to a book.
“This realization that you’re going to have will most easily teach you to learn and discover and develop yourself more than anything else in this tape.”
Kenton Knepper, Neuro-Linguistic Programming teacher to the unknowing, had, on the last CD of his 12 part series, set aside 20 minutes to discuss an idea so profound in it’s implications yet so glaringly obvious that people gloss over it constantly. In only a few seconds a deeper understanding of the world was to hit me like a wall, to shake the foundations of everything I had and was to perceive. It took my hand, leading me up the cave’s passage to a world my eyes had never seen, to a world filled with the shadows of my former but a world in which I was not bound to that singular dimension.
“Think about this, know it, understand it, and live with it. Practically ALL words and ideas are in an of themselves Presuppositions and nearly any word or idea ALSO implies the opposite of that word or idea.”
After 15 years of learning, 15 years of paving my own path, 15 years of attempting to free myself from this world’s influence, there it was. So cleverly hidden, so ingeniously simple: suggestion. It only took one moment of insight to realize how deeply influenced I had been by everything that surrounded me. What things I focus on when I look into crowd, what clothes I wear, what colour the stop sign is, what words I use to describe things. Indeed, it was obvious now that everything carried an unspoken, implicit suggestion and that each and every suggestion is a reflection of me, the person who has been conditioned by this world to be exactly who he is at this specific moment in time.
My head slowly rose, I turned off the tape and peered out past the hand drawn !PLEH on the window. The world: what a beautiful place, what an ugly place, expansive, yet isolated, colourful but rift with black and white. A world of contradictions and distinctions, a world by definition: Taoist. Was I shocked? No, I was in awe. How misspent my life had been, to spend so long a time not appreciating reality in this fuller conception. How ironically funny, to live for so long and neither see or be able to imagine the sheep’s wool.
Life, it is filled with these ideas, these philosophical epiphanies, but even these philosophies will change with time, with me; everyone receives new prescriptions and will once again be able see a reality composed of new dimensions. However, it is these moments, these realizations that are defining and paramount in one’s journey of life, “The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.” (Anais Nin).
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So I'll end this post with another QUOTE OF THE DAY:
Quote of the Day:
"Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse."
~James Carswell
On another note next week I get to go do two interesting things. One, I have a field trip for drama =D, and two, I have another field trip for drama because the play I’m acting in is part of sears fest, I get to go and run the script in front of an adjudicator and they'll tell us if the student written script has any merit or not. It's an interesting concept... I'm not sure how my play will do, but I need to memorize the entire thing by wed so I can perform it.
On another another note... I had to write a narrative essay for English... but it turned out to be much more fun then I realized, so I’m going to post what I have here (it's 2nd draftish, so it's not perfecto):
Lucid Reality
The first time a person puts on his glasses his eyes water with a child like awe, he rediscovers the world in which he’s contently idled by, he does a double take and realizes how distorted and twisted his construct of reality really is.
Sitting on the daily bus ride to and from school, I began to spend my time by listening. Listening to people, listening to the world, but on this particular day, listening to a book.
“This realization that you’re going to have will most easily teach you to learn and discover and develop yourself more than anything else in this tape.”
Kenton Knepper, Neuro-Linguistic Programming teacher to the unknowing, had, on the last CD of his 12 part series, set aside 20 minutes to discuss an idea so profound in it’s implications yet so glaringly obvious that people gloss over it constantly. In only a few seconds a deeper understanding of the world was to hit me like a wall, to shake the foundations of everything I had and was to perceive. It took my hand, leading me up the cave’s passage to a world my eyes had never seen, to a world filled with the shadows of my former but a world in which I was not bound to that singular dimension.
“Think about this, know it, understand it, and live with it. Practically ALL words and ideas are in an of themselves Presuppositions and nearly any word or idea ALSO implies the opposite of that word or idea.”
After 15 years of learning, 15 years of paving my own path, 15 years of attempting to free myself from this world’s influence, there it was. So cleverly hidden, so ingeniously simple: suggestion. It only took one moment of insight to realize how deeply influenced I had been by everything that surrounded me. What things I focus on when I look into crowd, what clothes I wear, what colour the stop sign is, what words I use to describe things. Indeed, it was obvious now that everything carried an unspoken, implicit suggestion and that each and every suggestion is a reflection of me, the person who has been conditioned by this world to be exactly who he is at this specific moment in time.
My head slowly rose, I turned off the tape and peered out past the hand drawn !PLEH on the window. The world: what a beautiful place, what an ugly place, expansive, yet isolated, colourful but rift with black and white. A world of contradictions and distinctions, a world by definition: Taoist. Was I shocked? No, I was in awe. How misspent my life had been, to spend so long a time not appreciating reality in this fuller conception. How ironically funny, to live for so long and neither see or be able to imagine the sheep’s wool.
Life, it is filled with these ideas, these philosophical epiphanies, but even these philosophies will change with time, with me; everyone receives new prescriptions and will once again be able see a reality composed of new dimensions. However, it is these moments, these realizations that are defining and paramount in one’s journey of life, “The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.” (Anais Nin).
---------------------------------------------------
So I'll end this post with another QUOTE OF THE DAY:
Quote of the Day:
"Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse."
~James Carswell
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