Bad Haircuts Along the Oregon Coastal Range

I know this blog is being posted literally an hour after "Cans of Tuna Versus Learning Trees", but I assure you all that both of these posts are summaries of a busy months worth of thinking...


Anyone in Oregon who has driven to the beach before knows that stretch of highway where the forest has been chopped down in particular patches. However, if you have not been out that way for a couple of months you may not be aware of the intense transformation that area has undergone. Now, when you drive out that way, there are practically no trees alongside the road and the hills have these terrible bald patches. These bald patches looked as though they were formed by a very angry someone who reached right down to pull a fistful of trees out of the ground. The entire forest has been hacked away in patches to the extent that it is unbearable to look at it. 

My lovely trip to the back two weekends ago could not have been less lovely. The scene that was laid before my eyes through the car window was completely horrifying. I was horror- struck by the vast area of forest absent from the side of the road and from atop the many hills along the coastal range! It was shocking to me that such an immense amount of deforestation could have taken in place in only a few short months! I couldn't understand how so much forest could just disappear- I mean, where did it go?

The answer is probably my own city, Beaverton.

Well, probably not just Beaverton, but all of the suburbs surrounding Portland. All of these suburbs are growing more quickly than there are space and resources. Not to mention, the structures being built in suburbs are made from wood; this wood comes from those forests on the coastal range. The evidence of this stands close to my home. There is this lot of new homes near me that sits upon the bed of a forgotten forest. These homes, I suspect, were made from the lives of those who were toppled along the Oregon Coastal Range.  

We must end deforestation and stop the growth of suburbs. We do not need more wooden homes, we need to build up towards the sky, not out across the land. 

Cans of Tuna Versus Learning Trees

In "Signing a Paper is All it Takes Not to Drop Out", I said that in order for there to be a point in going to school, curriculum had to serve a purposeful purpose. Curriculum nowadays does not allude to any use outside of school. Shouldn't what we are learning be something we can apply and use in everyday life? Why are names and dates so important? Why do we need to know the quadratic formula? And why do we need to know what the significance of an orange is in a poem?

Teachers rarely know the answers to questions such as these because they don't even know why we need to know all those things. Yes, maybe finding what role an orange plays in a poem helps build up critical thinking skills, but analyzing poems for weeks at a time destroys any potential poetry loving by students and leads to an extreme hatred towards going to school. Aren't there other ways to build critical thinking skills without these horrendous consequences? Are there more applicable methods of instilling critical thinking skills in students?

A curriculum that provides applicable information to students would be one that gave answers to all my previous questions. One where math classes taught you how to use the quadratic formula in everyday life. One that did not analyze poetry but allowed you to enjoy poetry. One that made you ponder what is truly most important in life and gave you the right frame of mind to solve real world problems. 

The same type of classes would be available but there would be an emphasis on concepts and no information would be given without reason or use. Students would no longer be cans waiting to be filled with tuna, instead, they would be their own individual trees, learning and growing through applicable knowledge...

Painting Happy

For the past two weeks, I have been constantly happy. I can't even begin to recall the last time I felt so at peace; I just know it was a long time ago. I do not know exactly why this has happened and I do not wish to overthink the possible reasons. Still, I know part of it is due to painting. 

I have spent over twenty- four hours in these two weeks just painting. These hours have been spent on an old forgotten canvas at home as well as on pieces of a set for Portland Community College Sylvania's theatre production, Hairspray. It is without much ado that I can say I have fallen in love with painting. 

I was once told by my former therapist that doing art matches exercise's ability to improve the health of your mind. It wasn't until now that I know with certainty that it is true. Nevertheless, why is this so? In my own opinion which was not formed through any research on the psychology of it, I think it has to do with the matter of becoming extremely focused on one project as well as with performing an activity that allows your creativity to stream out, unrestricted.

It was in a documentary that I once watched called "Happy" that I learned about this thing called "flow". Flow is what a person experiences when they become completely focused in performing a task, or activity of some sort. People who can experience more flow in their day are seen to be more satisfied in life than others who do not experience an adequate amount of flow per day. I do not know what is a good amount of flow, but I suspect it varies amongst people. In these past two weeks, I have spent a good deal of time immersed in painting. Moreover, there is that great feeling of satisfaction you feel once you complete a project that has taken you hours.

When you paint, you are in charge of what goes onto that wall, or that canvas, or whatever other medium you choose to paint on. You can see what is going onto that surface as you apply more strokes of the brush, or roller. You can see all the colors and textures you are creating with your own two hands. It is easy for you to manipulate the paint on the surface, and to quickly fix something that is to your distaste. There is also that freedom you have to get paint all over yourself! While painting, you are free to do anything you wish and that can give you a happiness that lasts forever. 

No Respect for Paper Towels

Throughout elementary, middle school, and high school I have always been referred to as a treehugger by my peers. Funnily enough, this all began in the bathrooms of my elementary school.

I remember those thin brown paper towels that were in the bathrooms. Their crumpled forms often littering the bathroom floor. At times, a soppy mess of them could be seen directly below the sinks. It was disgusting to me that there were so many; so many covering the floors and falling out of the trash cans. I knew why there was so many, and it was not due entirely to laziness.

Whenever I would go to the bathroom with a friend or two, I would notice how many paper towels they used to dry their hands. Let me tell you, it was more than just two. They used four, sometimes five. My question to them was always, "why do you need so many towels to dry your hands?". Their usual answer was: "Well, why not?". The answer was: "Well, you're wasting paper. You're killing trees,".

As I was growing up, my parents made sure to bestow in me knowledge about the consequences of wasting resources. Due to this, I knew that the more paper towels we used, the more trees were lost. So I did my best not to use any more paper towels than it took to dry my hands, which should be only one. 

In high school, much to my dismay, nothing had changed in the bathrooms. The same scene I described above was still present! Had my classmates still learned nothing??? 

It certainly appears as though people do not give much care to how they use resources. Many people have hope for future generations, but I think that is wishful thinking. The future adult generations won't be any more aware of their actions than the current ones because there are not enough people teaching their kids about the importance of conservation. And they certainly don't spend much time in school exposing students to the idea of being environmentally friendly. In all my time in school, we have only spent Earth Day talking about being green- that's it! That isn't enough! What's worse is that it doesn't matter if you educate people on the environment if you are not following through with what you are teaching. People truly learn by example. All my friends who would use five paper towels, they learned to do that by watching everyone else do it and finding that no one told them to do otherwise. 

We cannot continue to use resources so frivolously. All people should have a clear idea of the consequences of wasting resources. Our planet just can't afford to have us use so many paper towels. 

Greeks are Not so Different from Us (Thoughts on the Next 5 Pages of Classical Rhetoric Now)

You always hear about the intellectual Greeks and how "before their time" they were. Thus, I was surprised to learn that they didn't think of women as people. They believed women were not human enough to make decisions, but men were. It is astounding to me that such "wise" people could believe such a nonsensical thing. Women were meant to be the caretakers of the family and the house. This is exactly what everyone still believed (and continue to believe) up until fifty years ago when Betty Frieden let the cat out of the bag with her book, "The Feminine Mystique". She wrote about what every woman was thinking and what every man was obviously oblivious to. She wrote about the fact that women were not living meaningful lives; they were living as maids, bearers of children, and entirely dependent on their husband.

The Tale of Keystone is Longer than its Tail...

There are only about thirty days before Keystone XL will either be signed in, or rejected. The idea of it being allowed is alarming. It has been said countless times that this pipeline would mean, "game over for climate change" by Hansen, a former NASA scientist. Already, they are clearing forest and "removing" bears to make room for the construction of Keystone XL. The Boreal Forest is in the path of Keystone, and it is likely large parts of it will be destroyed– this forest is home to over 35,000 animal species! The thought of all this destruction is appalling. People who are in favor of this dirty pipeline are only thinking of themselves and the convenience for the human race. They never think of other species out there who are unwillingly dying for our comfort. How would you feel if you and your family were forced to leave your home, or worse, be executed just because you were an inconvenience? Not only will those things occur, the dirtiest fuel in the world would be making its way down to Texas, and once there, would pollute the air, only adding to the large amount of greenhouse emissions already present. If this doesn't bother you, the fact that the pipe will travel near the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest supplies of water in the U.S., will. If the pipe spilled, it would be catastrophic for you and other species. This is plausible, as a previous, smaller pipeline built last year [2011] had twelve spills in the first six months of it being built. Green energy creates more jobs, with Keystone only creating 35 permanent jobs, and is better for the environment in the long- run. 

The piece above is something I wrote in the ninth grade; that is how long I have been following the tale of Keystone XL Pipeline. Unbeknownst to me back then was how long it would take for Congress to make their final decision on the pipeline. It is 2015 and I am still awaiting their decision, which is said to be next week sometime. However, they have been saying that same thing for the past five years... Keystone XL might just reveal how ineffective our government has become. 

After studying AP US History back in high school, all I can remember is Teddy Roosevelt and how quickly it seemed he and the U.S. government could make decisions. His term was eight years, but he managed to do so much more in that time. Nowadays, it seems as though nothing ever gets done. I am not sure if that is true to others or not, but it is just the feeling I get from what I hear and read. 

Among the constant emails I get from Sierra Club and NRDC about Keystone XL lately, one thing is clear to me, Congress is just wasting time. From what I have been reading in the newspapers and my emails, I see that Obama has promised to veto any approval of Keystone XL by Congress. My question is only, why are they spending so much time on trying to pass this pipeline (which is bad for the environment by the way) when they know all their efforts will only be in vain? Yes, they will try to get the necessary amount of votes to override Obama's veto, but couldn't they be spending their time more wisely trying to figure out how to fix our education system? Disturbingly enough, our government cannot even accept that climate change is real; this past week, Congress voted against stating that climate change was real and humans are causing it. Regrettably, I am beginning to believe that there is not enough time for us to get our acts together. 

Signing a Paper is all it Takes not to Drop Out

In the ninth grade, my entire class and I made a pact to graduate together by signing a huge piece of paper that was to be hung up in the school. It wasn't until now that I realized how incredibly ludicrous that was. The school district couldn't seriously believe that would work, could they?

 As a recent high school student, I can empathize with those who either dropped out or wanted to. Personally, I never wanted to drop out due to the fourth grade when I decided it was my dream to become an architect and design treehouses for writers (maybe me someday) to live in. Nevertheless, imagine yourself as a sixteen year old with no career aspirations, struggling to find meaning in your classes and piles of homework. Think how incredibly frustrating it would be to spend five years struggling to survive your math classes whilst dealing with the typical dramas of adolescence. If you had no career plans or were not a lover of mathematics, you'd note how pointless your math classes were and wonder why in the hell you were learning the quadratic equation. The same can be said for Literary Composition 9-12 or the sequence of sciences: Physics, Biology, and Chemistry. Why does the average person need chemistry? The answer to that question is (as said by multiple Beaverton School District Counselors), "People should have a well rounded education behind them". This could be translated as, "People should have a load of useless knowledge in their heads so that nothing actually important can take up space" or "You learn what we tell you to learn". Yes, chemistry would be important for a would-be chemist, chemistry teacher, or someone who wanted to be in pharmaceuticals to know. But everyone?

In other words, the educational system does not adequately prepare you for college, a future career, or life in general. The system is inflexible and not designed for  students to succeed in the long term. Everyone basically goes through the same curriculum no matter their dreams or talents.

This is the basic path most students take 

with minor changes based on student choice.

Curriculum that is standardized such as this is doomed to failure. When someone starts taking all these core classes for seven years straight without any clue of why they are doing it, they can only begin to ponder if it is a waste of time. This is why so many people enter careers they are unhappy about, are conflicted about majors in college, or drop out of high school; the standards are neither personalized to the student or give the students an accurate idea of what they want to do. If students were to become involved in a more intense career exploration early in middle school, by the time they reached high school they would know what their talents were and what they were interested in, or enjoyed doing. In turn, they could form a personalized education that would allow them to study a particular field of work that they would enjoy. I truly believe something to this extent is worth a try.

Strictly speaking, the schools should not expect that signing a poster will keep students from dropping out. A new form of education that is personalized to the student is needed. The standard one size fits all does not work.