My Goals as a Writer: Junior Year, Fourth Quarter

At the beginning of the school year, my main goal was to create a blog with a unique perspective and a common purpose: to express the life of teenagers through the eyes of a teenager. During these past months, I have realized that I was completely right in assuming that a plethora of interesting ideas comes with writing about adolescents. However, while I am more convinced than ever that our age group is among the most interesting, I have realized that a lot of the problems facing today’s youth also blend with the problems of the adults in our culture.

I have covered eating disorders, financial struggles, and social and academic pressures. And through this, I have uncovered the secret to end all teenage myths: we may be less subtle in dealing with it, we may be in the spotlight solely because of our dependency to our parents, but adults and teenagers are not different creatures. This is how I want to improve my writing skills during the fourth quarter of my Junior year: I want to work on my specefics. I want to delve deep, discover the seedy underbelly that truly is today’s teenager’s, and find topics that aren’t only dramatic and shocking, but also truly, one-hundred percent teenager.

I am not going to claim that my blog helps adults understand teenagers (if anything, I’m sure it blurs their understanding a bit) or that teenagers can find help through my words, but the purpose of my writing is to expose different people to all sides of teenagers. I wanted to put it out there that teenagers are not just living simple lives, getting weekly allowances and doing nothing but coasting through their adolescence. Some teenagers actually have legitimate problems, and I hope that even if only one person ever reads my blog, that one person feels validated in some way, like their personal problems are recognized, even through a generalized statement.

I think that by blogging about next year’s choosing of our course schedules and all the anxiety that is associated with those five or six simple decisions, I can actually meet my goal of writing more selectively about teenager’s experiences. Alameda High is seriously absorbed in having to decide class schedules: Juniors are deciding whether to take five or six classes next year; underclassmen are facing the hard fact that they may have to repeat that dreaded math class they slept through all year; people are chewing their nails to the bone over the hard fact that that class they so desperately crave a spot in may be full by the time their names are considered. This last quarter, my classmates and I are coming to terms with the fact that blogging and the freedom that comes with our online posts is coming to an end, and long, monotonous novels written by decrepid authors of the past are in our future. I want to take advantage of this freedom; I want to improve my writing by writing about what us Juniors are truly thinking: what is going to happen once Alameda High leaves us with nothing but a diploma, four years of unflattering yearbook pictures, and memories we will have with us for a lifetime?

Monthly Review: "The Great Gatsby"

For what audience(s) is this book intended,

and how can you tell?

(In other words, for whom would you recommend this book?)

The Great Gatsby is an acclaimed novel that has become a staple in the curriculum of many schools, so when I began reading the book, I had expectations. I expected the novel to be slightly mundane, if not a little boring; this was not because I have heard that Gatsby was uninteresting, but because I was simply drawing on years of believing that a book that could be assigned to a class would be safe, and completely monotonous. However, I began reading this book and I felt that I could completely sink my teeth into it. Fitzgerald paints pictures of his characters so vividly and romantically, his delusions create a world so realistic that you almost forget that it is set in the roaring twenties, a decade that has long since escaped into our history books. The fact that I can relate to the almost childish ways that Gatsby forces himself back into Daisy’s life makes me believe that Fitzgerald’s writing was geared towards a younger generation. While the sophisticated lifestyles portrayed in the novel aren’t completely in sync with my generation, I think that they are conducive to the generation before ours. Gatsby writes to a generation that he is writing about: the men and women in their twenties, their thirties, settling into family life but still very much living a spontaneous lifestyle, one where the liquor flows freely and the parties never die before the sun comes up. I would recommend this book to anybody from my age bracket (i.e. the youth of today, who are just starting to step foot into the exciting reality of adulthood) and those who are a generation above us who have more insight and experience, and can actually translate Fitzgerald’s works into their own lifestyles, and compare the two.

How would you describe the author's style of writing?

What's your opinion of the style?

Fitzgerald’s writing supports symbolic images, and is gloriously descriptive. If I could choose one writing style to be a part of all the novels I read from this day forward, it would be Fitzgerald’s. His way of describing a single person is genius: he doesn’t just describe what they are wearing, and the color of their hair, but he tells us who the person is, and relates it to what they are wearing, whether it is the latest style or a sophisticated suit that drapes over a businessman. He goes one step further and answers the why, and in answering that, he clues us in to much more than the person’s fashion sense. I have read many novels where the authors have similar writing styles as Fitzgerald’s: they describe every deep line in a tree, and every unique strand of hair in a beautiful passerby. But Gatsby takes it one step forward and creates a complete scene. In The Great Gatsby he described the way the band at Gatsby’s party was playing; the interesting movements of the dresses the women in the twenties so often donned; the loneliness the narrator felt when he was socially out-of-the-loop. Fitzgerald used the single expressions to create for the readers an experience that literally jumped off the page. He beautifully described the way Gatsby’s face reacted to hearing of Daisy, being a room away from Daisy, re-connecting with Daisy for the first time in years. He let us in on his emotions so completely that we felt his vulnerability and I, personally, was almost shaking with nervous anticipation. I believe that Fitzgerald’s writing is so strong because he tries to engage his readers in a way that I have rarely experienced. He lets us in on the most private of moments so incredibly that we become immersed in the scene, like a third party standing in the room, somebody who can smell the grass on Gatsby’s lawn, and the cool stench of pool water beneath his finger-tips. Fitzgerald proves he can intertwine a fabulous story line with raw, descriptive writing and create a piece soaked in brilliance.

Pick a character that interested you

and write about them in depth.

I know it may be cliché to pick the main character of a novel as the one person to describe, but the character that stood out to me as the most intriguing and curious character was Jay Gatsby. When Gatsby confessed that he wanted to be reunited with Daisy, I assumed he had ulterior motives. After all, he hadn’t seen her in years, and she was married to a rich, successful man and apparently very happy. But when the reason for his interest in her was found out to be pure love, simply the fact that he wanted to reunite with his soul-mate, he got more interesting. So far in the novel Gatsby had been depicted as the man across the street, the one who was never alone, who had more servants than he needed and more faceless strangers to keep him company. The narrator of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s neighbor, certainly viewed him as we ourselves did: mysterious, hard to figure out. One of the more shocking parts of the novel was when he fired his servants and stopped throwing nightly parties, all because Daisy had become a frequent guest at his house. While their affair was still unknown at this point, his deep love for Daisy became obvious. He had spent years living a lavish lifestyle, engaging in random romances and affairs. The thing that perplexed me the most was why he would give it all up: why, with the scores of women who would fall into his arms without a second though, adore him for his wealth and charm, would he chase after a married women who he had not seen in years? Why would he buy a house across the water from her and her husband, and dream about seeing her face one again? Gatsby totally changed the stereotype of rich playboys for me; I had always assumed that they were set in their ways because, frankly, their ways were fun and casual, the ultimate experience. But while Gatsby had all of that at his fingertips, he craved more. Up until his death, he loved a woman who would go home every night to that house across the water and settle into bed with a man who would support her financially, who would give her children and adventure. Gatsby was truly perplexing; even after his death, I felt mourning for not the end of his life, but for the fact that he will never find true happiness with Daisy Buchanan.

The Great Gatsby, Pt. 2

The second section of the novel The Great Gatsby was considerably more crucial than the first section was. In the first section, characters and their relationships to one another are established, which ended up being a vital contributor to the story line that developed in the second section. In the second section, we realized the motives behind Gatsby’s wanting to get to know Nick so well; it is almost as if he sees his five-years of loneliness slipping away when he realizes Nick’s connection to his long-lost and now married love, Daisy.

The ridiculousness of the roaring twenties is still capitalized on in this part of the novel, but I think the way Fitzgerald writes the parties as increasingly boring, unable to interest Daisy, helps our attention shift almost as if we are seeing him and his priorities in a different light. I thought it was interesting how, in the last part of the section, Gatsby reveals that he fires all of his servants because Daisy comes over “quite often”, and he wants to keep the gossip to a minimum. Fitzgerald was very clever in writing this: he showed the old lovers as re-connecting at his party, and then hinted to a new affair but never actually came out with it. And even though I have seen the movie, I closed this section of the book thinking: “Okay, are they having a full-blown affair now, or are they still just friends?”

I am very interested to see how Fitzgerald writes the last section of this novel. Right now, it seems like an impossible situation: Daisy, rich, privileged Daisy, starts enchanting Gatsby once she sees his lavish lifestyle, but her motives seem to revolve more around romance, almost as if she married for money. Now she realizes she doesn’t have to choose between the lifestyle she wants, and the love she wants.

Can Online Games Help Save the World?

…Sorry this is so long, but the Ted Talk today was really controversial.

In my personal experience, the very fact that somebody believes that excessive online gaming will help save our world means that that same person was probably suffering from a mental break-down, brought on by video-game binges. I believe that not only are our video games a powerful way to promote laziness and procrastination, but the games at their very soul are designed to tempt us into level after level, never completely satisfied until the game is complete, and we have mastered every round and sleighed every beast. I understand what this woman was saying about how we feel more comfortable in this alternate reality, because its challenges are not unbeatable, and we are recognized solely for our achievements, and are constantly praised by villages and victims we have saved. But the very fact that she condones these false perceptions of self-worth and, infact, supports it, is so distrubing to me.

Part of the reason we have recluses, socially awkward and lonely people is because instead of learning to adapt and make new friends, reach out to people, these people find comfort in their video game lives. They look to the game to support them when they are feeling down, and they conform themselves to the idea that the real world is a harsh place, full of rejection and uncertainty, and the world of video games is a magical place where they CAN be the best, they CAN prove themselves, they CAN find support in friends who would otherwise not be in their lives. Why is this a positive thing? Why, in an age so full of devices and networks, ie cell phones and social forums, that stunt the growth of person-to-person interaction, do we need to fuel this fire by not only creating an electronic barrior between the people we communicate with, but also create imaginary people to share this reality with.

I understand the basis of her argument: she thinks she can set up false realities that will help people in times of a crisis, or an unusual situation. But whatever happened to the old trial and error method??? It is an important, essential part of our basic human development to not only learn, but to try. To try and to fail in the real world is something that helps shape who we become as adults; we can’t log onto a computer and mentally check into a world where our three children are hungry, but there is a drought and slaughter-houses are protesting, etc., etc., etc. and find a way to survive in this small world so we can apply this knowledge to something that could happen in the future. What is the point of that? We can prepare for millions of disasters and unfortuitous circumstances, but for every million we spend hours a day preparing for, there are two million other possible things that could happen that we will not be prepared for because we have been learning text-book approaches to specific happenings.

Despite the obvious fact that creating an entirely new life for yourself, one where people in the real-world are no longer a priority and your job is something you shy away from thinking about until the next morning is unhealthy, it also stunts our imagination. By going outside and experiencing the unpredictableness of life, something that’s reaction hasn’t been predetermined by a system, we get inspired. The outside world, the people we talk to and the things that we see, act as our muse in every single way. I know that the point of this Ted Talk wasn’t to convince us to spend all of our time online, but this woman wants us to spend at least an hour a day on video-games, and, realistically, a lot of people will not stop at an hour. It is a very addictive industry; the people who have created these games know our weaknesses and they know what will draw us in, make us empty our pockets and keep coming back for more fictional death and ventures.

I remember hearing a presentation dedicated to video game addictions in my Current Life class last year. The girl who was presenting told of men and women who would get so addicted to these games, they would literally forget to eat, keep buckets near by for the bathroom, and become so sleep-deprived that they became so mentally ill, they can not retract themselves from the game. I know that these are extreme cases, but these are things that really do happen. People DO cross the line. More bad will come from multiplying our number of hours on the computer world-wide by 7 than good. We can not allow ourselves to become so immersed in technologies that we forget to think and act for ourselves. If we do what she says and play these games in preperation for what could happen, we will be missing what is actually happening. How can anybody be OK with that???

87 Days Until Summer

Lastnight, I was on the computer and I decided to check up on Mr. Sutherland’s website, cruise the dailies, see if anything new has been assigned to our Junior Class. And then, something magical happened: I scrolled down his page, and saw the words “88 Days Until Summer” hidden on the bottom right corner of his website. Now, if it were up to me, I would have a huge countdown clock smack dab in the middle of the site, font bolded and larger than the rest, sprawled proudly for everybody to see, because when I looked at that number, I WAS proud.

I remember the first day of school; I remember Mr. Sutherland showing us his famous “Ted Talks” video; I even remember what desk I was sitting in that morning. But what I remember most, was the feeling of anxiety when I looked at the number on the countdown clock. I can not remember the exact number, but I do remember that it was two hundred-forty-something days. Two HUNDRED –forty-something days. And every week before we went to the lab to blog, I would look at that website and watch as the numbers slowly dwindled down. I am aware that the third quarter is almost over; I know that Junior year is running low on days; and I have even come to terms with the fact that I am going to be a Senior. But there was something that happened when I saw that number on Mr. Sutherland’s site: it hit me that this year is almost over.

Some signs that could have hinted me towards the fact that school was 3 months from over: 1) Posters hung around school advertising yearbooks, 2) Junior Prom has already come and gone, 3) My Senior friends are starting to get accepted into colleges, 4) The long-anticipated Talent Show has graced us with its oddness, 4) My weekly blog post now has 29 entries, 5) The sun is shining harder than it has since first quarter, 6) Everybody is making summer plans for cruises, Disneyland trips, visits to family members who live in the middle of nowhere, 7) People have begun to wear shorts, skirts and flip-flops again, 8) My sister is taking the Sophomore-required High School Exit Exam, 9) My counselor is constantly reminding me about the importance of my success in Summer School, 10) I have been making more tips at a job whose success is very much controlled by the weather.

Yet despite the fact that all these things have been intense reminders of the fact that my Junior Year has almost ended, I feel like the number “87” has completely come out of left field. Sure, when you think about 87 more days of school, you don’t exactly associate it with the school year being almost over. But when you compare it to the two hundred-forty-something days we were faced with mere months ago, 87 is not that big of a number at all. It is even scarier to think that a year from now, there may be 87 days until high-school graduation. Now that is something worth counting down to.

The Great Gatsby, Pt. I

Dear Ariel & AK,

The Great Gatsby is a book whose praises have been sung by almost every English teacher I have had since middle school; it is known as a classic, a “remarkable read”. So, naturally, when I began reading this book, my expectations were high. Since we had watched the movie in class, the plot line was spoiled, but in some ways I looked at it as a blessing. I could sit back, not get too overwhelmed with anticipation, and just simply and sincerely enjoy the writing that F. Scott Fitzgerald was so well known for.

When I began reading the novel , I was thrown off by the descriptiveness of the book. The writing is so amazing, it leaves very little to the imagination, describing every detail of the roaring twenties. While this is a gorgeous way of writing, I was worried if the plot of the novel was getting too blurred by the descriptiveness of it all. Now that I have progressed into the book, I have realized that this way of writing was important to the story: Fitzgerald describes Gatsby and his lavish lifestyle so vividly, we feel as if we are dancing on a table-top at his party, running into somebody drunk in his library.

Something that I enjoyed most about reading the first third of The Great Gatsby was how it allowed us to be distracted by little things, like the previously mentioned drunk man in the library. While this twist has no ties to the basic plot (at least that we can see), it contributes to our opinions on Gatsby’s guests, and the unpredictability of his parties. I loved how Fitzgerald approached Daisy and Tom Buchanan: the narrator told of his connection to the two and his connection to Gatsby at two separate times, letting us form our own opinions of the two groups uniquely, before he merged them together in a shocking twist. Overall, I am very excited to keep reading The Great Gatsby!

Who Are You Really?

Identity is a powerful thing; it contains information on our ethnicity, our marital status, whether or not we are successful. And while every individual has the power to shape his or her own identity, I believe there are certain things a stranger will immediately associate you with, regardless of what type of person you truly are. Those of us born into a rich family would almost always have the newest shoes, the shiniest car, and a refreshing calm when considering future college loans: this is an example of somebody who is born into their identity. People can take one look at them and assess their bank account; while this person may do everything in their power to get people to see past the designer handbag, first impressions can definitely lay a hand in shaping your identity.

In high-school, stereotyping ties into identity. With over a thousand students populating campus, and new ones introduced each year, each individual can never truly know every student. But we can recognize them, their baggy jeans or their graphic tees, the stench of marijuana, the gothic novel underneath their arm, and we can form opinions from the identity that they themselves have made. Racism and sexism are issues that have plagued our generation, and many generations before us. The primal need to be the dominant race has molded a society that may not outwardly act on their feelings towards blacks, jews, women, but will always have a thought about them in the back of their mind.

We can make jokes about it now because our society, for the most part, has evolved past hate crimes and into a more understanding civilization than even just a hundred years ago. But in the back of our minds, whether we agree with it or not, we associate people with the identity they were born with: their race, their sex, their religion. We laugh when comedians mock blacks for the ghetto mannerisms because we have accepted that this stereotype is NOT a fact; but I was at a party lately where it was dominantly blacks, and all I would here was how ghetto the party was. Why? Because we look at people we don’t personally know, and we identify them with their stereotype. We see mothers and we know that while they may be successful, driven women of the workplace, we automatically assume that they, above their husbands, would stay home and raise the family, don the apron and do the cooking. These identities that we are born with are something that we can never escape. But I believe that, for the most part, we have the power to shape our own identities, although it may not affect strangers’ views on us. Ms. or Mrs. is an identity we very much control; the thousands of women a year who dye their hair blonde (me included) control this identity, although we are constant victims of blonde jokes.

While I would like to believe that we individuals completely shape our own identities, some of the most popular assumptions towards people derive from their race or their sex, an identity that they, for the most part, cannot change. But since we have evolved into a society that will mostly turn a blind eye to your skin color or Ms. or Mr. status and look instead into who you are as a person, I think I can safely say that identity is something that you control. We just have to remember that people will see what they want to see, unless you give them a chance to see something more.

"M'm M'm, Good!" "So Easy, a Caveman Could Do It." "They're Grrrrreat!" "Can You Hear Me Now??" "Just Do It." "SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!"

Do newspapers, magazines, television, radio, movies, the Internet, and other media determine what is important to most people?

Nowadays, advertisements are absolutely everywhere: the movie theater previews, the billboards on the freeway, and even the posters that decorate the walls of our schools, promoting clubs, charities, events, our school’s “politicians”. Everywhere we go, we are bombarded with these subtle ads that slightly warp our perceptions each and every time we see them. We may listen to the radio while in the car, and logically, if we hear a Pepsi commercial, we are not going to be tempted to go out and buy a Coke. We pay attention to the brands of clothes that are sending us spam e-mails, or the five-star luxury SUVs that are seducing us through the TV.

The other day I was buying makeup from my favorite store Sephora, and I get to the mascara aisle, and there are literally forty choices. And then, in the midst of my extreme confusion, I see a brand that I recognize from a popular commercial, one that tempts us with long-lashed models and unusually flake-free lashes that were undoubtedly applied by makeup artists. I grab this brand, and rush to the check-out counter. With every product that we see advertisements for, there are hundreds or possibly thousands of similar products on the market; yet we are more inclined to buy the items that we are constantly seeing ads for, because subconsciously, I believe that we go for the exaggerated qualities we see through ads. Realistically, most people who shop for clothes don’t walk into the mall, completely unaware of what store they are going to frequent. We develop our tastes around what we find attractive, alluring, ideal: and don’t those three terms describe advertisers main purpose while promoting that beer on TV, or that singer on the radio?

This past month, I have seen more charities dedicated to the Haiti disaster than I’ve ever seen dedicated to a single cause in my life. We look at the starvation and disease that is running rampant through these recently homeless communities, but what about the scores of small towns that have been suffering this devastation so frequently that it is now incorporated into their lifestyles? We have watched the 24/7 news coverage on Haiti, read heart-wrenching stories in the paper, and because this tragedy has been forced into our own lives so completely, we donate, and we stay connected, interested. And when another disaster strikes, Haiti, very much in need, will be put on the back-burner because it is simply old news: we will not hear about it as much, they will attract less support and less money, and they will stray further from our thoughts.

Let’s face it: word of mouth is not as powerful as it used to be. I found out about Michael Jackson’s death through a Facebook status update. I know when Jack in the Box’s tacos are suddenly $1.29, because commercials tell me so all of the time. And I know what show to watch on a Monday night because a radio duo dedicated ten minutes of air time to Tinley vs. Vienna. Humans, in this respect, are not complicated people: show us a product, a cause, a famous person associated with positive or negative connotations and we are instantly going to form an opinion that has been tainted with the opinions of those who endorse a product, or spread false rumors about a celebrity. Are we really thinking for ourselves if, before we are given a chance to truly consider whether we need endless soup, salad, and breadsticks, we are foaming at the mouth after seeing savory dishes, and slashed prices?