To Tweet or Not to Tweet, That is the Question

Social media…everyone’s favorite topic, right?  Wrong.  That’s not to say I abhor it, because I don’t.  I’m almost as in tune with the goings-on of the interweb as the rest of the world, but not everyone feels as warmly toward these social connections as those born in the technological age do.  There are so many forms of social media these days: MySpace (does it even exist anymore?), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and, of course, the ever-present blogosphere.

Personally, I try to limit the number of social media sites I sign up for, merely as a precaution against allowing myself too many mediums for procrastination.  (I wouldn’t want to spread myself too thin!)  For me, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are my main forms of social media.

Facebook always stirs up a lot of controversy.  “It’s evil!” some say.  “Nothing good can come from it.”  Let me start out by saying that no one has suggested that there is never any fault to be found in social media.  There is nothing but bullying on Facebook, right?  If that’s true, why do I get a reminder every time it’s someone’s birthday?  Why is there a “like” button on every post if the only point of social media is to spread hate?  I would say that both of those are in the realm of support.  When Facebook was founded, its main purpose was to help college students stay connected with their high school friends.  Since then, membership has expanded, and many adults have used this “evil” site to reconnect with old friends they haven’t seen in years.  Originally for young people, it has now begun to attract more and more adult users.

Up until about two months ago, I had sworn off Twitter.  Why should I subject the general public to every little thing I do throughout my day?  But when some friends introduced me to this social media mogul, I changed my mind.  Twitter actually helps to keep me on my toes.  Every tweet leaves room for a witty comeback, and there are also numerous anti-bullying movements throughout the site.

The blogging world is fairly new to me, too.  I started mine as a project to go along with an independent study class I’m taking.  Are all blogs completely wholesome?  Probably not.  But each one does have something special to bring to the table.  The blogosphere is full of specially themed pages; there’s something for everyone.  There’s no rule that says if you read a blog once, you have to follow it.  If you read something and don’t like it, simply let it go.  Blogs are places for people to express their opinions in a friendly environment, where they’re given support by those who agree.

Social media isn’t nearly as bad as some people make it out to be.  It is actually stocked with plenty of positivity and helps to keep people who would otherwise miss out on connections connected.  As far as I’m concerned, keep on posting!

National what now?

         

       
          Have you ever heard of National Have a Bad Day Day?  Yeah, neither had I until this November 19^th.  I must tell you, bad days are not too frequent of an occurrence in my life, so when they do come around, they’re usually pretty substantial.  For your amusement, (because, really, who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh at another person’s misfortune?  America’s Funniest Home Videos, anyone?), I’ve compiled a list of foolproof ways to have a bad day.

1.          Wake up late.  Now, I know those bed sheets can be quite cozy, especially in the morning, and especially when you have places to be and people to see.  But if you’re not careful, they can swallow you whole, and you won’t see the light of day until roughly ten minutes before you have to leave if you want to be on time.  Trust me; I’ve learned from experience.
2.                     Hit a telephone pole.  Before you freak out, it really wasn’t that bad.  We had received at least six inches of fluffy, wet precipitation the night before, so in the places that had not previously been driven through, it was nearly impossible to move without sliding.  The first step in achieving a nice dent in your car is to stop at a stop sign just outside the tire tracks of those before you.  This will ensure that as you go to turn, no matter how fast you are going, you will slide.  And when you slide, you will head directly for that pillar of wood.  Now if your father has taught you anything, it’s to never panic.  So, you’ll take your foot off the gas, turn the wheel as far to the right as you can (you won’t flip; you can’t be going more than 5mph), and do everything in your power to avoid hitting that pole head-on.  That would really put a damper on your day.  You’ll jump the curb and wind up in someone’s yard, but the impact (and therefore the damage to your door) will be minimal.  With a sigh, you’ll back out of the person’s yard and continue on to school.
3.         Break the news to your parents.  This may seem insignificant next to hitting a telephone pole, but it’s actually quite terrifying.  Your parents always begged you to be careful when you drive, right?  First things first, you’ll have to decide which parent you’ll tell.  Mom’s out of town, and you don’t want to worry her, so Dad it is.  You’ll call him and tell him as calmly as you can how it happened.  He’ll pause before asking how bad the damage is.  You’ll tell him it’s just a small dent and that you had no trouble closing the door and he’ll breathe a sigh of relief.  “It’s your dent,” he’ll tell you.  “I’m just glad you and your brother are okay.”
4.      Lose concentration in important classes.  Calculus is a biggie.  There are numerous formulas and definitions, all building on each other like the bricks of a building as you move along throughout the year.  It’s typically the highest level of math a high school offers.  If you miss something in this class due to insufficient concentration, you will most likely struggle through later lessons, which can quickly turn a bad day into a bad week.
5.     Take ceramics.  I’m not talking thievery here; I mean one of the various art classes offered at your high school.  That’s not to say it’s a terrible class, because it’s not.  It can actually be quite relaxing, using your hands to mold a vessel of clay.  But it also requires intense concentration, and if you don’t possess a natural talent for the arts, you’re screwed.  On a good day, you’ll do something you actually know how to do, like roll coils and stack them on top of each other until they form some tall, slender vessel.  If you remember though, this is a bad day, so when you walk in the room, Professor Art (also known as Professor Sass) will look at you and say, “Grab some clay.  You’re on the wheel today.”  Under normal circumstances, you’d be excited to try something new, but you’re already exhausted and so easily distracted that this is bound to be a horrendous first experience.  And it is.  After his demo, it takes you six tries to get the base to even stick to the wheel, and by the time you’re able to make your first real attempt, it’s caved in on itself and it’s time to clean up.  Maybe next time will be better.

      National Have a Bad Day Day was the worst I’ve had in a while, but it also made some memorable stories.  Looking back, I can actually laugh at a lot of the things that happened to me throughout the day.  My car still has that dent in the door, but serves as a gentle reminder to be careful while I’m driving. I’ve since taught myself that little bit of information I missed while distracted in Calculus.  As for the mug I tried to make on the wheel in Ceramics that day, it’s an art-form I still haven’t mastered.  Some days are just bad.  It’s not really something you can control, and in the moment, it feels as if your situation will never improve.  Eventually, though, your tunnel vision expands into a world of better days, so keep on walking.

I'd like to buy a vowel.

Recently, I met with a woman who sits in on my English class to discuss the novel I’m writing.  (Yes, I’m writing a novel!)  While we sat, discussing my intentions for the future of my story (i.e. structure, characterization, theme, and focus), she asked me a question I’ve never been asked before.  Why do you want to write?

Why do I want to write?  I don’t know.  Why does anyone want to write?  Some, I’m sure, have an obvious talent for composition that they are aware of and use it to make a living. 

Others have a passion for literature which has turned into a passion for writing, and they write because they love the beauty of language.

Still others merely seek to express their feelings in their writing.  There’s a quotation by Lang Leav which says, “I don’t think all writers are sad.  I think it’s the other way around – all sad people write.”  I think this is true to an extent; my feelings are a driving force behind my writing, but they are not always sad.

As for myself, I’m not sure if any of these apply to my own reason for writing.  There was a time, I know, when I thought that I would do well as a writer, that I could write, publish, and make a decent amount of money, all in a short amount of time.  (I’ve since learned otherwise.) 

Since I could read (at the early age of three or four), I have loved words.  My logophilia began with classics like Little Bear and later extended into short chapter books like Junie B. Jones and The Babysitters’ Club.  From sunup to sundown, I was always reading.  Car rides were never boring because I always had a book; summers would have left me pale as vanilla ice cream if my mom hadn’t made me go outside to play with the neighborhood kids.  Much to my mom’s dismay, I would often stay up way past my bedtime to read by flashlight into the early hours of the morning.   I grew up reading these foundations of language, and now I write them.

I can’t say that any one of these is the reason I write.  Maybe my reason is a combination of all of them, but I’m not confident enough in that answer to submit it as my final jeopardy, and so I cannot commit.  For now, I don’t know.

I’m sure someday I’ll figure it out, but for now I am okay with just knowing that I like something.  Sometimes, it’s enough for us to know simple truths like I like to write.  It’s enough to know who we are in our cores and that we don’t always need a reason for our passions to be our passions; they just are.

 

The Absence of My Cupcakes

                I think the focal point of every birthday is one word: cupcakes.  When I awoke in the morning, my dad was half-way out the door.  As he went, he called out, “I bought you some cupcakes.  They’re on the counter.  Eat them for breakfast!”  I would have preferred to stay in bed…

                And I tried to, which was a bad idea.  By the time I  woke up, I had roughly twenty-five minutes until it was time to leave for school.  Somehow, I managed.  I grabbed the cupcakes as I rushed out the door five minutes later than (but still early enough to be on time!) I usually did.

                I never actually got the chance to eat any before first period.  Or during first period.  And I refused to eat any during second period.  (Really, what kind of girl wants to eat a cupcake with five starving teenage boys breathing down her neck, and nowhere near the right number of cupcakes to feed everyone?  That would be ridiculous…and possibly deadly!)  And so I waited.  When third period rolled around, I took them along with me.

                We had been assigned a “work day” for our final papers on The Crucible, so it was supposed to be a fairly relaxed day.  I still didn’t think I could give them away because we still had too many for everyone to get one.  That is until I was schooled in mathematics.  Apparently we typically had seven people in our class.  (Honestly, I have no idea where I got the number eight!)  With one girl absent, the boys (Napoleon, Juan Carlos, Alfred the Moon Cat, and Copperhead) were practically drooling over the cupcakes.

                It should have been no surprise to me that when I returned from grabbing a laptop that the package of cupcakes had been removed from my desk.  I stopped in my tracks.  “Where are my cupcakes?”  There was silence and then a quiet giggle from the other side of the room. Alfred the Moon Cat.  I looked over and saw the package poorly hidden under a stack of papers on Napoleon's desk.

                Rolling my eyes, I snatched them off.  “Honestly,” I shook my head and tried to suppress a smile, “did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

They gaped at me until Napoleon finally spoke up.  “But…but there are enough for all of us!”

                I grinned.  “I realize that.  And maybe, if you’re good, you’ll get one.  But you’ll have to wait.”  And wait they did, until after lunch.  By that time, their ridiculously pouty faces and furtive glances became too much for me to handle, and I gave in.

                Even on our birthdays, when we expect to be the center of attention, when we expect everyone to celebrate “just me,” we are reminded that everyone else wants to be treated special too. Unless we are living in a cave or a cabin in the woods, there will always be someone who wants to “share in your experience.”  Sometimes you just have to give away your cupcakes.  

Je ne parle pas bien français.

I was ready.  Pen in hand, an empty desk beneath my elbows, and sheer determination to ace that French test.  I’d studied the verbs.  I knew it.  Twirling my pen between my fingers, I leaned forward on my elbows as she grabbed a stack of papers from her desk.

I was ready.

She came around with the stack and dropped the packets on to the desk of the girl next to me.  Turning to look at me, she smiled.  (I must have looked rather bug-eyed.)  She placed three on my desk.  I stared at the top sheet.

I could do this.

“Ahem,” a voice sounded behind me.  “Jena, could you maybe pass those back?”

I nodded my head.  “Oh, right.”

Cringing, I passed back the other two.  I could do this.  I just had to wait for the go-ahead.

But it never came.  Instead, a sharp, blaring noise bounced off the walls around us.  Of course.  A fire drill.  Perfect timing…but, I’d been ready!  Dropping my pen on the desk, I stood with everyone else and filed out the door.  The exit nearest to us was blocked off and we panicked like ants about to be stepped on by a big boot.  (We’d always used that exit.)  Mr. Science’s chem class came out and had the same reaction. 

Someone finally pointed us to the front door of the school.  We strode out into the biting autumn air where we quickly formed what we like to call the penguin huddle.  No longer than a minute later, we were waved back inside. 

Up the stairs, back in our seats.  Miss French was the last to enter the room. 

“You may begin,” she told us.

I looked down at the first question.

Translate these sentences from English to French.

      1.)    We are travelling to Paris this winter.

What?  What?  What was the word for winter again?  I couldn’t remember.

I wasn’t ready.

In Memoriam: an ode

            Last week, there was an article in my local newspaper.  Cursive writing is being removed from our public education system in order to make room for everything future generations need to learn to pass state tests.  So, maybe they’ll pass the tests, but what will this do for their futures?  How will they be able to sign for a package or cash a check?  Having already learned the artistic trade of cursive, I can honestly say that I have benefited greatly from learning this “formal style of writing.”  It is a tool, a reference point, a staple to my everyday life, and I’m sad to see it go.  In light of this recent tragedy, I’ve put together a little ode in honor of this old friend of mine.

Cursive writing:

‘Tis me, old friend, saying goodbye.

Your end – it’s so biting

like the frosty chill of winter

or the stab of a freshly sharpened pencil;

your death can only hinder.

We had so much fun, you and I.

From the little loops here to

the slants there, we thrived.

My black inked pen always raced

across the page – left to right –  

and my thoughts held on with the same speedy pace.

My wrist is strong now, thanks to you;

I wiggle my fingers in fine movements,

but trust me when I say it’s not out of the blue.

I practiced and learned all the loopty-loops;

I turned my paper,

and now my handwriting’s slanted, not soup.

But above all else, I can sign my name

on the dotted line or

that paper check, and it’s always the same.

You take the stage in my education,

providing me with increased critical thinking,

comprehension, and participation.

Because of you I have a chance.

As for the rest – you’ve been banished,

And they’re left in a useless trance.

Honorary Snowflakes

               Last Friday was a stressful day. From the Calc quiz I took first period, to the slab pot (my nemesis) I molded together during second period ceramics, (which then made me late for my third period class), to the lab I had to finish with my always-snowflake group last period, I was ready to leave. And it’s a good thing, too, because right after school, my mom, my aunt, and I were scheduled to take a road trip down to the Grove City Outlets.
               The moment the last bell rang, I gathered my weekend homework, threw it into my bag, and hurried into the warm afternoon sun. (Yes, the air was warmer over the weekend again. And now it’s dipped back down below fifty degrees. Oh, the joys of northwestern Pennsylvania weather.) I sped home in my car (not really…I drive the speed limit!) and shoved some clothes in a bag. Now all that was left was the wait.
               And wait I did. For an hour and a half. Oh, the agony! Finally, my aunt arrived, and my mom and I hopped into our respective seats. The ride itself was pretty uneventful. We mostly just chattered about the trivial things, like homework and Homecoming and unicorns, but I was already feeling better.
               Around five o’clock, we pulled into the hotel parking lot. Our room, (which we reached via super-awesome-cool elevator with a door that read “Call me, maybe”), made me feel like an Eskimo. I would be living in an icebox, an igloo, for a whole, oh, ten hours. How would I ever survive? (But seriously, I thought I might die of hypothermia before the morning.)
               On our way to dinner, we stopped at the information desk. My aunt, (also known as “G-money”), said to the woman behind the counter, “Uh, we were just wondering…is there any way we can raise the temperature in our room? Both of the knobs have been taken off of our central air unit.”
               The woman laughed, “There should be a thermostat on the wall somewhere.”
               “Oh, well that helps. Thank you!”
               Driving a few hundred feet, we arrived at our next stop: The Elephant & Castle English Pub. They sat us right next to a window that put the central traffic of Grove City on display. Our waiter came over for our orders.
               “What can I get you ladies tonight?” he asked us.
               G-money went first. “I’ll have the chicken, please.”
               I, being ever-so-traditional, ordered the fish and chips.
               And my mom: the meatloaf.
               As the waiter walked away with our orders and my mom and aunt jumped into a conversation about their respective jobs, I glanced around me. The walls were decorated with slabs of finely furnished wood, with matching tables and chair. Each waiter wore a simple tee with the restaurant’s name on it and a pair of jeans. It was casual dining, laid-back.
               The waiter came back with our food and I jumped back into the conversation. I looked at my aunt, “So, who’s in your class this year?” (She teaches chemistry at my high school.) And so she listed off the names of some of her students, and also told me about the nicknames she gave them. (For example, one girl is Granny-J, another is Wheezy, and three boys with the same name in one class are each called by their last names…or Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3.)
               While we were chatting about my fellow students, my mom took a great interest in the table directly outside of our window. (Why anyone would choose to eat outside with the traffic nearby, I'm not sure.) She was watching a scene unfold. Finally, she broke into our conversation, leaning forward and whispering so that only we could hear, “I think Mom just broke some bad news to Daughter. They’re both crying.”
                I glanced out the window and then back to my mom, and let out a long sigh. "Mom," I said, gesturing to the rest of the restaurant, "look around you. Does it look like anyone else cares?"
                She huffed, "No, but..."
                I interrupted her. (And also stole a piece of her meatloaf. I'll just say this: yum.) "Well then leave the poor people alone, won't you?"
                She rolled her eyes, "Yes, mom."
                (I swear, sometimes I'm the mom, and she's the child. Ugh.)
                The real tension tamer came later that night. Our hotel, (the one with the thermostat that we promptly adjusted the moment we walked back into our room), also housed a hot tub. We arrived at the perfect time: no one was in sight. As is always the case with girls' weekends, I cannot divulge every bit of information, but I can say this: the water was soothing, and we played a few rounds of those super-lame party games for pre-teens (e.g. Would You Rather, Truth or Dare (minus the dare), and the ever-corny trivia questions). And later, we had a great discussion about Pennsylvanian politics with a man from Georgia. How did our night end? Two words: Mean Girls. The rest of our night consisted of my shouting out phrases like, "You go, Glen Coco!" or "On Wednesdays, we wear pink." (Mean Girls is me, and I am Mean Girls. We are one.<--- And there you'll see my Lion King II reference.)

                The next day, we shopped.  All.  Day.  Long.  There were a few snowflake moments, (but, of course, how could there not be?), but none scarred me too badly.

                We're home now, back to the temperamental weather of the Pennsylvania/New York state border.  The grapes are ready for picking, and we have no idea what the weather will be like tomorrow.  For now, I've been relieved of the stress that's been building up since the start of school.  Sometimes all it takes is a simple car ride out of town, a little bit of girl time, and another snowflake moment.  (Of course, now I'm left to finish all the homework I never took with me, but it's definitely worth it.)