Robbing Thanksgiving

Many people will not be able to enjoy their Thanksgivings normally due to having to work. They will not have the opportunity to relax and spend time with their families. Is this fair? Should people be robbed of their Thanksgivings because we all want to shop and get the best deals possible? People should all get the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving how it is intended.

Thanksgiving is a holiday made for eating food and spending quality time with family. It is not intended for shopping and getting ready for Christmas. Many people seem to forget what Thanksgiving is all about. It is about being thankful for everything that we already have, not going out and buying more things to stuff our already overflowing homes with things that we do not need. That is why Black Friday was created. Black Friday is the day where we go shopping and get the deals for Christmas. If all the stores agreed to close on Thanksgiving, then there would be no push to be open on Thanksgiving, because no store would be trying to outdo the other. A small amount of stores have recognized he importance of Thanksgiving and have decided to close. These stores are perfect examples of how every store should treat Thanksgiving. It is a holiday, treat it like one.

People should not be robbed of their Thanksgiving because stores are opening early. Leave that for Black Friday. Thanksgiving is for family, relaxation, eating food, and remembering what we are thankful for. Not shopping and snatching the best deals. Stop robbing Thanksgiving.

Standarized Tests: Exposed

Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our school whole. Of course, on the late, late show no one ever insists that the monster is really doing us a favor by making its victims more “accountable.” In real life, plenty of people need to be convinced that these tests do not provide an objective measure of learning or a useful inducement to improve teaching, that they are not only unnecessary but highly dangerous. (Alfie Kohn, 2000)

 

This quote perfectly sums up what standardized testing has done. Standardized tests have always been something that bothered me. Why should one test determine the rest of your life? Standardized test have been given way too much power throughout the school systems. They should not be the main source that colleges look to when they are looking to give out scholarships and scout new students. Colleges should be looking at how the student has done throughout the four years of high school, not how they did on one test one day.

 

Standardized tests do not prepare you for adulthood, also known as the “real world”. Excessive testing may teach students how to be good at taking tests, but does not prepare them for adult lives. Students spend hours upon hours of studying for these tests, and in the end they don’t retain it.  They just learn it for the test and then forget the material. Why should students work from 1st grade to 12th grade when in the end all that is going to matter is what they score on the standardized tests? Standardized tests should not have as much power as they do.

 

Standardized tests are what schools thrive on. They can make or break you. While schools are focusing on teaching towards the tests, they are doing the students a disservice by not preparing them for the real world. Schools need to focus on the student’s talents and what they are good at, not what are on these standardized tests.

Football and Tutus

In my compare/contrast essay I wrote about football vs. ballet. As a dancer myself, I expected this paper to be a piece of cake. I thought that all I would need to do is give my readers the facts on how ballet is better and harder than football. Once I started researching both ballet and football, I came to the conclusion that they are both extremely similar to one another but they also have their differences. 

Both football and ballet are very physically demanding but it different ways. Football, the players are constantly being rammed into each other and falling and getting bruises. While ballerinas get plenty of bruises, they push their bodies to the limit in a different way. They stretch until their muscles can't take it anymore. They push their muscles to the point of breaking. Ballet and football both put a tremendous amount of stress on the body.

It was amazing to see how two things that on the outside seem so different, but end up having many similarities that nobody has ever noticed before.

TED Talk: “How to Make Stress your Friend”

 

I watched  a TED talk by Kelly McGonigal on “How to Make Stress your Friend.”  She is a psychologist and really opened my eyes on how our minds and bodies can change things that are normally perceived as something negative, to something positive.

She starts out by giving this idea that if we change our mind and outlook on something that it can change how our bodies react. She tells us about a survey that was taken with people who were asked if they had high levels of stress in the last year and then asked them if they believed that stress was harmful to health. They then checked public death records to see who died. The people who had high levels of stress were 43% more likely to die than those who had very little to no stress, but those 43% were the ones who believed that stress was harmful to health. The people who didn’t believe that had no greater chance of death then the people who had no stress at all. This being said she brings up her next point.

She explains that if we take our bodies reactions to stress, such as, when our heart starts pounding and our breathing starts racing, and make them into something positive, that we can change how stress affects us. Instead of getting anxious when these things start happening, we should embrace them and realize that our bodies aren’t trying to make the situation worse, they are trying to make it better. Our bodies are trying to help us by preparing us for whatever obstacle we are facing.

I agree with what Kelly says and I think that this not only applies to stress, but to life in general as well. Our outlook on things is what really matters. If we can keep that positive, then we can overcome just about anything.