My Life

I have been dancing for the past 14 years of my life and I love it. I am involved in both poms and orchesis at school, which involve dancing. Next weekend is the orchesis concert, the dancing show that orchesis puts on every year in March. We work really hard from the beginning of the year to produce the best show that we can. There are professional choreographers as well as some of the juniors and seniors who make up the dances. We spend so much time at school the weeks prior to the show, we might as well sleep there. We have orchesis Monday-Saturday and for many hours each night. Right now we are teching the show, which means setting up all the lighting cues and sounds. There are no set times so we are here very long every night. The first show is in five days, and we have a lot of work to do still. The next couple of days we have dress rehearsals and will be here very late. So far the latest we have been here is 9 o'clock at night, but I am sure it will be later soon. I am in six numbers total, three of which are from professional choreographers and the other three are seniors that made up the dance. Two of the dances have every single person in the company in the dance, which is 41 girls. We have been selling tickets during lunch this past week and next week, and hopefully we will have a big crowd. There are posters all of the school advertising our show Rush. Tickets are on sale now, come see the show!

My Favorite Days of the Year

One of the things I look forward to most in the winter are snow days. Ever since I was a little girl I used to hope and hope for snow days every time it snowed. I followed all of the silly rituals such as sleeping with my pajamas inside out the night before and keeping a spoon under my pillow. Most of the times I did this I still had to go to school, but every time there was a warning for a blizzard I would still complete these rituals I thought always worked. As I grew older, I realized that these rituals didn't really do anything, but I still hope and hope for snow days.
The best feeling is waking up at 11 am on a school day and having that second-long panic attack that you overslept for school, when you look outside and realize that it is a snow day. I am never cold, and love playing in the snow. I could stay in it for hours, whether it is sledding, building snowmen or making snow angels.
For the past week, all anyone was talking about was the "2011 blizzard". It was supposed to be the worst storm in almost fifty years, and everyone was preparing for it. I heard about it and was excited, obviously thinking about my chance of getting a snow day. Monday and Tuesday, all of the teachers were saying we would not be at school on Wednesday, but I did not take their word for it because I did not want to be disappointed as the weather men tend be wrong very often. Tuesday during school we found out that Deerfield and Highland Park high schools had gotten an early release and already called school off for the following day. We had heard nothing about our school except that they were going to be making an announcement at the end of the school day. Everyone was screaming through the hallways as they already called school off for Wednesday and canceled the after school activities.
Although I did not get to experience the great feeling of waking up to a snow day, I got to know right after school and did not have to do any homework that night. Four of my best friends came to my house after school and slept over because we knew we would be stuck at my house for awhile because of the massive amount of snow falling from the sky. The next morning we were out in the snow, drinking hot chocolate, and celebrating the first and maybe only snow day of the year. All of my friends except one had left as the snow had stopped falling, and we began to think about doing our homework. My friend was still at my house because her street and driveway were not yet plowed, so she had to stay at my house until she was able to get home. We had no idea how long it would take and what she would do about school the next day. It was about three in the afternoon and we just opened our books to study, when I received a text from one of my friends that school was canceled for the next day as well. Not believing this, I went online to check the GBN website but nothing was up. There was a website being sent around, emergencyclosingcenter.com and I screamed after reading that GBN was closed again! I was so much more excited than I was the first day, because I was not expecting another snow day. Having school closed the second day was more fun for me, partly because of how surprised I was. I went out to lunch and sledding with my friends, and had a great time. I had such a great two days, it was like a weekend in the middle of the week! The best part is that tomorrow is a Friday so we have one day of school and then the weekend to play in the snow some more!

Something I Will Always Remember

It always puzzles me how I can remember certain events from my childhood perfectly, but not what I had for dinner two nights ago. When I was in fifth grade, a scary thing happened to me and I almost went blind. I can remember this day perfectly and I know it is something that I will never forget. It was at field day, which is one of the last days of school in June where there are a bunch of games set up outside and we play games all day instead of having class. My class was playing a game where there were three slingshots set up and we had to take tennis balls and try to make them hit a target. I was standing at the middle slingshot ready to hit the five point target, when the parent chaperon asked me to move back because they didn't want all three slingshots going at the same time and for someone to get hurt. After I had moved back, the person who was to the right of me was pulling back their slingshot back very far in order to fling the tennis ball really hard and the slingshot snapped and immediately hit me in the face, at my eyes. At first I was in shock, and had not realized what had happened. A few moments later I realized I could not open my eyes and had my teacher and other parents and kids surrounding me. Luckily the school nurse was at the game next to where I was, and escorted me inside to the nurse's office. My mom was at work downtown when this happened, and they immediately contacted her and told her what happened. My dad was at work as well and so my mom called my grandpa to come pick me up and take me to the eye doctor. My family friend is an eye doctor, so my mom called him and they said they would take me right away.
When I was at the eye doctor my grandpa had to fill out a bunch of papers and we sat in the waiting room for a while. Once I was taken, they dilated my eyes and gave me a bunch of tests to make sure I could see okay. After it was determined that my eyesight was perfect, they brought me into a room with a machine three times the size of me to check the inside of my eyes and make sure nothing was damaged. A bunch of bright lights were shined at me for about ten minutes, and they told me to wait in a room so they could read the results. It was determined that my eyes were in great condition, and there was not any damage to the inside of my eyes, and my eyesight was unaffected. They did figure out, although that the slingshot hit my face 1/4 of an inch away from my right eye. If it had hit my eye however, my perfect eyesight would have been ruined for sure and there was a good chance that I would have gone blind. My face hurt and my eyes were sore for the rest of the day, but after that I had gone back to normal. At an elementary school with about 500 kids, this story had spread around the school in five minutes. My sisters came home from school freaking out because they had heard that my eyes had popped out. It turns out that my sisters weren't the only ones who had heard this, at school the next day I had about fifty kids come up to me asking if my eyes had popped out. In fact, two of my former teachers and told me that their classes had asked them about it because they heard the same time. I am so thankful that I was okay after this incident, and learned how fast rumors spread and also how inaccurate they can be.

ExtravaCANza

These past two weeks at school we have been collecting cans for a local food pantry. All students are encouraged to participate, by bringing cans to their first class and the classes are in a competition to see which class can bring the most. My chemistry class decided to participate, and we set goals for ourselves, to ensure the win. Our first goal was for each person to go around their neighborhood and get twenty cans for the next class, and to bring five dollars which we would put towards buying a collection of cans with money from our entire class. Only three people in my class have their licenses, me being one of them, so we were in charge at the end to go and buy the cans with all of the money. Our second goal was not specific, but just to bring as many cans as we could and two more dollars to ensure we would reach $200. In total, we collected $238, all which was put towards buying more cans for the canned food drive. Our third and final goal was to go out and buy as many cans as we could with the money that we collected, and the people that weren't going out to purchase the cans had to spend a total of thirty minutes going around the neighborhood and getting as many cans as possible.
Just ten minutes ago I got home from buying the cans, and I knew right away that I was going to blog about my experiences. We decided to go to Costco to get the cans because we figured it would be the best place to get a lot of cheap cans. After calculating the price per ounce, it turned out that there were not that many different food items we could get, in order to be cost efficient. Our best option was to get macaroni and cheese, a boxed dinner that was seven dollars for fifteen packages of macaroni. We ended up buying thirty three of these boxes, which ended up being 495 packages total. After waiting in line and approaching the register, they would not let us buy anything because we were under eighteen and for some unknown reason not allowed to make a purchase. The employees put our thirty three boxes of macaroni aside, and we went looking throughout the store to find an adult that we knew that would help us buy the macaroni. After splitting up and searching the store, we found a senior that graduated from our school last year, who also happened to be my peer group leader. Her and her mom were nice enough to come up to the register with us and since they were over eighteen, we were able to make our purchase. With the twenty dollars that we had left over, we went to Jewel, right down the street and found chicken noodle soup cans for only 69 cents. We bought thirty of those as well, and all of the macaroni boxes. Doing this made me feel so good, buying all this food for people who cannot afford it, while I can just walk downstairs and I have food stocked in my refrigerator, freezer and pantry. Not only did we have fun buying the food, but we helped so many families with my classes' contribution.

Stressing Out About School--Is It Needed?

For students, the biggest focus in school is grades. It is what everyone worries about, and all that anyone cares about. In all grade levels and in all subjects, it does not matter what was learned, as long as a good grade was the result. I am guilty of this too, obsessed with getting good grades. Part of this is the societal pressures put on students to succeed, another part is competition. Getting into college is very important,and the only way to do that is excelling in school. However, this should not be the only focus in school. Students stress out from all the homework, quizzes, tests and projects given every night but, "Grades follow learning, learning doesn't follow grades." This quote was said by my chemistry teacher Ms. Gallagher-Bolos, a big believer in learning, and not grades. This is Ms. Gallagher-Bolos's blog, look at the article "I don't show my own children their report cards," pertaining to this issue. gbnchem.blogspot.com
Reading this blog made me think a lot about the focus put on grades in school. Most people don't pay attention in class, don't care what they learn, and study very hard for the test so they can get a good grade. This puts tons of pressure on the student, trying to cram the night before, and this is a big reason why students get so stressed out. If we all payed more attention to learn the material when the teacher is teaching it, we would not have to study as hard. This is because we would have already learned all of the material, and the test would just show what we know. As opposed to studying FOR the test and memorizing the material. Studying for the test would be going over terms on a study guide or concept list, to make sure all of the material on the test would be learned, but not caring about the extra concepts not on the test but still pertaining to the subject matter.
My chem class has changed my views a lot about this topic. I still believe that grades are important, but not so much as it dictates intelligence, as I thought before. No matter what grades I get in my classes, I am still the same person and I am no smarter or stupider. I take school very seriously, always studying for my tests, very motivated to get the highest grades that I can. Because of this, it took time for me to realize that they don't take over the world. The good thing about colleges is that they don't only look at grades, which lightens the focus a little bit. ACT scores, essays and extracurricular activities are all parts of getting into college, emphasizing that grades aren't the only thing that matters. A big reason that students are so stressed out is because of grades for college. This stress is put on by parents, most teachers and other students as well. If everyone could realize that grades are not important as everyone thinks they are, stress could be eliminated and learning could be increased. This is not to say that grades don't matter and students shouldn't try in school, but less of the focus has to be put on the grades than the amount right now.

The Meaning of Music

Among many other things, music is known to relax and help reduce stress. I was thinking about this earlier today, and realized that it helps me concentrate as well. When I do my homework for example, my mind tends to wander off and think about things unrelated to the problems I am trying to solve. This tends to be a problem because I get really unfocused and my homework ends up taking twice as long. When I am listening to music, for some reason my mind is concentrated on listening and focusing on my work, so I get it done quicker. Along with this, music helps me relax and calm down when I am having a bad day. I have talked to friends about this and they agree and find the same effect. I decided to look on the internet, and see what others thought about this concept and researched. I typed into google, 'music relieving stress' and immediately 123,000 hits came up. This just shows that it is not something that teenagers do to calm themselves, but doctors, teachers, and scientists use this all for the same reason. After doing some testing, experts figured out that the beats in the music are what helps to alleviate this stress, even though most people are unaware of that. Using music to calm ourselves is something that can be tracked all the way back to when we were in the woom. Listening to your mothers' heart beat is the rhythm that calmed you down before you were born. Having this as a basis has caused us to be more attracted to music and the feeling that it gives us.
What I found most interesting, was that there is not one type of music that is soothing for everyone. Most people would think that soft, classical music is the most calming, and heavy metal would be one of the least types of calming music. This is not the case, but the type of music most calming depends on the individual person. It is proven that the music most appealing to a person, is the kind that calms and relaxes them the most. For me, country music is the most calming, not real country, but the Taylor Swift kind, that is not real country but classified as that. My favorite music that I listen to are songs from camp, mostly this "country" kind. It's partially upbeat, but still slow and calming. Listening to the songs I learned from camp jog my memory back to how much I appreciate camp. It brings back the memories associated with each song and just how much I would like to go back. This music relaxes me and puts me in a great mood, making me want to listen for days end. That is almost the only music I listen to, and I have even showed my friends some of this music and they enjoyed it. In fact, as I am writing this blog post I am listening to camp music. This music helps me get through hard times, and even when I am in good moods just strengthens my happiness.

http://www.holisticonline.com/stress/stress_music-therapy.htm

On Top of the Glistening Lake

If any of the girls at camp were asked what their favorite activity was, almost every single one would respond with water skiing. No matter what size and age, everyone at camp can waterski and there's always a new trick to try. We can do anything from going on two skis, to slaloming, to trick skiing, to holding the ski rope between our toes, to holding it out on one foot, to jumping off a three and a half foot ramp. I have tried almost all of these, and the more tricks I try, the more I fall in love with this sport. Camp is the only place that I get to waterski, which makes it all the more special.
The feeling I get while waterskiing is something very hard to describe. As my ski is drifting on top of the water moving in and out of the wakes, a sense of freedom emerges. I think about all the things I can do with my life, and how lucky I am to have all the opportunities that I have. Looking at camp from the lake is a gorgeous site. There are birch trees everywhere I look, there is green grass being mowed by the camp director's father with kids running through it. I look at all the girls playing on the waterfront; swimming, canoeing and kayaking. I realize that this is what I look forward to every year and how much fun I am having. I now look on the blue dock and see all my camp friends and counselors talking, laughing, having fun. As the white sea ray boat turns to go back towards camp, my body relaxes, waiting for the drop into the ice cold water. I come in off the boat and all my friends cheer for me, congratulating me on the new skill I have just completed.
Luckily, I get to ski at least once a day, maybe even twice. This same routine happens every single time, putting me in the best mood. This seems like something small, lasting for only a couple of minutes, but the feeling I get after lasts for so much longer. Just thinking about it now makes me smile and remember everything that happened this summer. My friends and I like to double, both of us skiing with two different ropes on the same boat. When doing this, even though it can be problematic, is one of the most fun things at camp. Not only am I doing my favorite activity, but also skiing with my best friend right beside me. We can switch ropes, drop one of our skis, and even ski on the same pair of skis! Laughing and singing the whole time while doubling, is one of the greatest opportunities I experienced at camp this summer.