No More IB Student.

I'm no longer an IB student. However, I did not get the IB diploma. Shocking. Yes, I know how sad it is to not get the diploma yet I do not feel that way. I feel released from this enormous pressure that had been plaguing me for two years now. It feels good to be released of burden. It doesn't bother me one fact that I did not get the IB diploma. After all, it is just a single piece of paper. And is crying over a piece of paper worth it? No, I hope not.

Now and Then

I lead a typical teenager life where I go to school to receive education and play sports. I also work on the weekends and work that is not to difficult to complete. I live in a house with 6 bedrooms and 3 bathroom facilities. The people whom I live with consist of my mother and father, my sister, and my uncle. Everyone besides my sister works because she is too young. The typical hours that my parents work is 8 hours when the hours are convenient to them. My parents both receive benefits from their work and healthcare if anything ever happened to them. Now thinking back to a time before any work reforms or health and sanitation reforms, before human resource reforms were made, the working conditions were often brutal and inhumane.

Like my family, the typical coal mining family was large but the pay they received was significantly less than what our entire family makes. Their hours usually range from 10 to 12 hour days and their pay around 50 to 70 cents per day. They did not receive any healthcare or were not properly equipped to survive a fatal roofing collapse that would instantly kill them. The safety of the coal miners was in jeopardy because safety laws were not created to ensure the safety of the miners. The life of a coal miner begins at an early age and they rise up in their ranks throughout their lives. Their lives were on the line because their jobs are very dangerous. I think that I would never be able to work in the mines. The working conditions in the mines are dangerous and unsafe in this period. Now that I think of it, miners never really had any personal possessions besides their pick and what they wore. The miners were never really had anything that they could call their own.

Along the way, a movement to end Child Labor ensued. One particular position that children held at work was newsies. They are usually between the age of 8 to 10 and they worked late hours. Sometimes they worked very late until midnight and the work was dangerous. They could catch illnesses such as pneumonia for selling newspapers in the rain or get killed by cars. Many of the newsies are young and they carry tons of newspaper. They always look unhappy in pictures but when grouped together with a bunch of newsies, a little enthusiasm can be found. I think that child labor was a bad idea because young children were exploited and lost their education and future as well as their lives. I think it was a good thing that child labor was abolished. Imagine my little sister going off into a factory to work 8-10 hours a day with little time for rest and little pay and no healthcare or safety codes. It would be a very dangerous job for them to do.

Living conditions in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were as horrible as they working conditions. The sanitation in the city was horrendous. The current sewage system was ineffective and many people lived in houses that were on the brink of destruction. Spaces in the houses were cramp with only a window to allow fresh air. Usually there would only be one bedroom where all of the family had to sleep in and the living room would be near the kitchen. I prefer to live in my house because I have more space and freedom to arrange whatever I want in my room and the fact that I have multiple rooms in my house. The Hull house is an example of a modernized building. It is acceptable to our standards today because they have the modern things such as plumbing, sanitation and open living quarters.

The comparison between the working conditions, the age limit to when someone can work and the living conditions now and then are entirely different. Without the necessary reforms, children would still be working at an early age of 8 and men and women of all ages would be working in unsanitary and dangerous situations where they risk life and limb to gain so little pay.

Theme for Spanish and ETC.

Okay, since we recieved an assignment pertaining to the question of how we are going to present to our spanish class, a tutorial if you must that shows how to do a particular subject. Many ideas proposed was how to play chess, how to do yoga, etc... However, finding a subject that I am passionate about is very hard because there are things that I dive into and others that I just dip my feet in the water to test the temperature. Since I cannot figure out a theme, I will sidetrack myself into talking about a lesson that I had today in Theory of Knowledge. It was whether animals have or do not have language. In this case, there were three definitions of language. I believe that animals do have language because although it may sound primitive and foreign to us, we can try to hone our hearing ability so as to decipher that contents that the animals speak. It is just the same as hearing a eastern European language when you are an American. It is very foreign sounding and at first it does not make any sense because you cannot comprehend it. However if you took the time to learn the intricacies of the language, then you can figure out the language. Same goes for animals. Animals are living organisms and we only base language as a reference to ourselves. When we say that one subject does not have a language, then we are basing this statement on ourselves as a species. If we can consider ourselves a species and not as a superior being, then the similarities are quite obvious. One example is that one of my friends named Eliza, she discussed about how the behavior of cats is completely opposite of the typical human stereotype of cats. They only purr and meow towards humans and not towards each other. Why is that? It is because they use a body language of their own to communicate with each other. And thus we come to a Knowledge Issue. What do we consider to be communication and what do we consider language? The details are very hard to separate but communication is when you are using your body and physical gestures to speak with others. Language is a form that can be transmitted through words and be written on paper. Actions can be described in words written down or spoken but can not be fully explained in words or by speaking. And I have come to the conclusion that animals do have a language and that the reference to which we based our statements from is false.

Okay, It's Time to Get Serious

Hm. Over the past few weeks, it has been difficult for me to actually do anything productive. It seems that I am too stressed out. What I needed was some free time to do some thinking. Well, I tried to do all of my homework one day without any outside influences. Didn't turn out as I expected. The last two days I have been completely silent. It was because of a stupid dare that my friends made. As everyone knows, I'm very stubborn and will most definitely win the dare because I don't like to lose. When I was silent, I started to think more abstractly and this is what I came up with: I like staying silent, It gives me a clearer thought, I am more pensive. Rather then active, I'm being passive. A passive observer. Observing is mind boggling. Well, What I've said was completely true in a sense. If you talk, you listen to your voice talk because you recognize your own voice and pay attention to it more than you would your friends. When you don't talk, your brain as one less thing that it has to worry about doing. Therefore, it can focus on other things. For me, I was able to ponder why this is what it is. I've realized that the one most silent is the one most thoughtful. That explains why most people think better in an environment where they don't interact with other things. The idea that listening to music can help you better learn is true because you are not really interacting with the music unless you are tapping to the beat of the music or singing along. Well, it's pretty late. I have an IB History test tomorrow that I have to prepare for.

Monday Brain Bomb

Today is Monday, September 15th, 2008
It has only been the third week into the school year and many of the classes were taking it slow and getting us all adjusted to the IB curriculum. Today, something terrible has happened. In our HL English class, we were challenged to take upon a presentation that we would have to do in about 24 hrs. Everyone is freaked out about what they are going to do for their presentation. Along with the presentation, many other classes have given out notices of tests and quizzes. I think that most people will be busy up to their necks this week. As for me, I'm sacrificing cross country practices so that I can make up my homework. I am currently thinking about my presentation for english and how I will present it to the class. I know that I won't do a great job because it was such short notice. Now that I think about it, I get the phrase, "What did you expect? IB is trained to be harsh and time consuming." True, I did not know what I was doing when I signed on to the course(it was out of spontaneity), but I truly believe that I can do it and all other IB students reading this should not give up!