Turkeys

Yes. I said turkeys. My neighbor has a turkey and it's quite a remarkable animal. The ethereal birds have beguiling prominence and charm anyone who dares to keep them as pets (even if they can be quite more capricious than a more normal pet, let's say a rabbit...). Here's the story:

My neighbors, whom my family is very close with, love animals. They have had anything from fish and rabbits to snakes and degus! [Please don't excoriate this family, they are really wonderfully normal people]. Anyway, as you can see, they are extremely outdoorsy and love to go camping.
One fine day, while they were out at their lake house in New York (I believe), they found a small saturnine poult (baby turkey). As soon as they went to pick it up, the turkey became distressed--it started to cluck and gobble! Implacable as it may have seemed when they picked it up, they eventually calmed it down and looked everywhere for the mother but the mother was nowhere to be found...
Poor turkey; it must have reached the nadir of its life, it lost its mama! So what did my neighbors do?
By golly, they took it home! They have been taking care of it for many months now and it doesn't seem to have any social stigmas. In fact, just the opposite: the turkey is quite personable!
And I don't mean to allay any qualms about this little unconventional act, but I think it's just fine to have a turkey for a pet!

Tumblr

Almost everyone at PV has one. Or at least everyone in the class of 2011 has one. A tumblr. Similar to blogger, Tumblr is a blogging website that is simple to use and, when used correctly, can make certain people socially burgeon. Most people use Tumblr because it is unblocked on school computers. However, some people who are normally extremely social in the "real world" become hermits when it comes to Tumblr. Most coalesce their social "real life" and their social "Tumblr life" but a select few become engrossed in their ephemeral social life (because, after all, a Tumblr can be deleted.

Sometimes, the most garrulous people make the best Tumblr posts but other times they make the most invidious posts. However, no matter the quality of the Tumblr, their blog gets them talking about their most passionate ideas and thoughts. Even the most amorphous people seem to adapt to the social animal called Tumblr!

So my question is, when will it stop? When it come to a point where PV computer police (aka Pico) will notice our little ruse of "blogging" and usurp Tumblr? Does our Tumblr sortie post a significant danger to the socially advanced (or, for that matter, the socially inept)? Will it ever come to that point? I'm sure PV hopes otherwise. Will PV students succumb to the powers of the administration or will we merely shake off the allegations that Tumblr is detrimental to our health?! WILL WE REBEL.

Anyway, whoever is following me, leave comments...

...

Work for home, work for school, work for home, work for school...

Ugh. Homework. I know, I know, everyone has too much homework. But this week has been especially busy. And, consequently, this blog has been in temporary abeyance. So much work, in fact, that it has precluded my ability to blog! Oh me oh my. Anyhoo. This brings me to the topic today: Homework or no homework? [That is the question]...

So as I ignore my qualmish feeling (I'm not sure how my English teacher will react to this blog post), I shall continue. As a High School Student, I spend seven hours in school, working my donkey off--let's keep this PG, folks--and then return home (after a minimum of two hours extra curricular events) to do what now? MORE WORK. And, as most of you have already figured out, junior year is especially bad.

Between the standardized tests and the homework, I'm surprised some of us (cough cough Caylin) haven't dropped out of school! I'm not sure if the teachers assume everyone has a complacent demeanor but I think we should rebel!

[on second thought, this post is getting graded by my English teacher, soooo...just kidding!]

Well, I'm getting sidetracked. Anyhoo, I believe that seven hours of school is sufficient enough. And I also think homework should be optional. Yes, optional. Honestly, I'm quite chary of this three to four hour homework ordeal. Every night, day after day, night after night. And unless the teachers have somehow commandeered every student of theirs, making them part of a giant minion, teachers don't have control over us! And I could be very wrong, but I DO NOT think giving more homework makes certain teachers far more gregarious than others, correct?

IF--and I mean a capital IF--we didn't have to do homework, not only would our overall mood improve, we would be more focused as well. We would get more sleep and be more focused in class. Not only that, but our character would improve. I, for one, haven't had time to play guitar on a weeknight for about two months now. And that dates back to...the day school started!

If we're supposed to go through the labyrinth of life without a hobby, what life are we living? Shouldn't we all be PV's eminent students by being focused and well-rounded? Are we being complete antipodes of well-rounded students by only doing homework after school? Isn't that they're teaching us kids nowadays? If not, I will assume the educational system hasn't evolved since the narrow-minded approach of learning trades and joining guilds...

And here's the final question: Homework or no homework?

PSAT: palpably stupid [and] abnormally tasteless

The PSATs. Possibly the least halcyon test of our teenage youth (next to the SATs, of course). Although I don't mean to exhort an inordinate amount of complaints from the students of PV, I don't understand why we must take this test. It only exacerbates the stress thrown upon the students in this school. And, although I don't mean to impede on the grand educational strategy of this government, the PSATs only serve to emulate the SATs. Therefore, why take both? Students can practice on their own time with their own tutors. This raises another concern; if this test really holds some sort of implicit message (hinting at the fact that to do well on the test, students must be tutored), is the SAT really a test?

^This is probably what you look like right now.

...well, not exactly, but...

Bear with me for a moment. The definition of a test, one would say, is "a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, esp. before it is taken into widespread use" (as stated by the standard dictionary on the Apple MacBook laptops). This being true, isn't this test supposed to analyze how well a student will perform in the real world? I suddenly feel imbued with a revelation...

This being said, I believe wholeheartedly that this SAT, the mother of all tests, [and the PSAT] should do just that: analyze how well a student will perform in the real world. Maybe it should test street smarts as well as school skills--the point being that the SATs should not test how well one takes a test. This is a common criticism of the SATs).
Forgive me if I appear to be lacking any chauvinism for the educational standards but I believe, along with many others, that these tests should not test how one takes a test. And although I may not have known what enigmatic word halcyon meant when I took the PSATs, I sure do now, but not because of living in the "real" world. Rather, I know what halcyon means because of a test. Because, apparently, according to the SAT makers and the folks at collegeboard, halcyon is a common word used in everyday speech...are you a halycon person?

Poetry Ties

My relationship with poetry is one that is very meaningful in my life. Because I have a grandfather who writes poetry for a Yiddish online publication and because he is so passionate for poetry, a little bit of that passion rubbed off on me. However, the harder I try to write a good poem, the worse it is. Therefore, I usually just write when I feel like I have something to say. When my pieces come out the way I wanted them to, I share them with my grandfather, usually via telephone. He always tells me how proud he is of me and I admire him so much. When I look back upon these shared moments over the years, I realize that, through poetry, special family moments have been created. My relationship with poetry strengthens my relationship with my grandfather.

Discuss amongst yourselves...

What makes a novel "a classic"? Discuss.

Often times I've wondered why we read the books we do in our English classes. I mean, most of them are just books written by people who only wrote one book and then went and did something weird, like shoving their head in a hot oven or isolating themselves from the rest of the world. So, okay, does this mean that if I write a book and then disappear into the Bermuda triangle, my book will become a "classic"? Probably not. However, what I've noticed is the following:

In each book we read, there is a thread that connects all of the books to each other. The thread is called controversy. No matter if it was the Catcher in the Rye, Wuthering Heights, or Malcolm X, we learned about controversial people and controversial ideas. Maybe we do this because it provokes discussion. Or maybe the curriculum is this way to challenge us and make us pour out our deepest thoughts about life and society as we know it today. Or maybe they just really want to piss us off...either way--

controversy is what makes a novel a "classic".

My Comments to Others Part II

I don't know whether I'm supposed to do this or not but these are the comments I left to others:

TO ELLEN!
Wow, Ellen, nice 1-2 paragraphs...haha, jk!Well, the program you were watching sounds really fascinating (possibly a little creepy, but fascinating nonetheless). The soul marriages part I never realized existed! Weird, I guess people's subconscious can be so strong that they feel a great need to fix things that weren't fixed in a past lifetime!! Great post but there's just one thing I want to know: do you actually believe in all that spirit stuff you described?!

TO ASHLEY!
Nice comparison to Smallville! Anyway, I totally agree with you on this topic. I think that if a family wants to adopt a child, they should by all means treat that child like nothing less than one of their own! Good post, btw. :]]

TO MAJA!
OMG. NICE PIC. okay, anyway...it sure does sound like you are conflicted. However, I agree with Allison; what if the parents did not raise the children!? The children would not have been "infected" [shall we say] by the parents bad morals! There would be no use in punishing the child because the child would have nothing at all to do with the bad deed! This is like the whole debate with the new generation of young people in Germany and how they might be educated by anti-semitic grandparents...but what if they were separated from their grandparents?!well, nice blog, again, and nice pic!