A Lesson from the Doctor: Why We Volunteer

The Doctor from Doctor Who taught me that humans are hopeful. That's what we are. We endure economic crises, wars, pandemics, but we emerge victorious. And if we don't emerge victorious, we pull ourselves together and clean up the debris, and force ourselves to turn around and pick up right where we left off.

Of course, when I say "we", I automatically exclude myself and most of the people I know.

My friends and I, as teenagers of the 21st century in East Coast suburbs, know little of hardship. We have arguments and drama and uprooting and occasionally, deaths of loved ones. But we do not know what it's like to fight for our lives, fight oppression and disease.

It makes us feel useless. It certainly makes me feel useless. The fact that I have the luxury to sit here and complain about feeling useless in front of my fancy computer next to my fancy camera and all my fancy test prep material makes me feel no more than useless and selfish. So I volunteer. Where I volunteer doesn't matter. It's at charity runs, at local parks, at educational events. It's not ending world hunger, but it's something.

Community service hours are important to high schoolers. Logging them displays "character," that we go out and give our time and (labor) services. I myself have already volunteered over 50 hours this year alone. While it may not seem like much from an adult working perspective, keep in mind that us students also have school and homework and extracurriculars.

But all of that is beside the point.

We volunteer because it gives our coordinators hope in the coming generation. it tells them that we are not all pigs and slobs, lazy bums who do nothing but text and drive, deface buildings, and waste money.

We volunteer because it gives our receivers hope. Often, teens spend weekends at food banks or shelters. And once in a while, we leave an impact.

But we also volunteer because we are selfish. We volunteer because it gives us, as teenagers, hope in ourselves and the world around us. Hours are good for college applications. It gives us hope to our dream schools and jobs. Running around following orders is, well, exercise. It gives us hope that we stay fit, though we rarely think about this one. Most of all, though, volunteering reassures us that we are not useless. That while we have been blessed with the world in our hands, we can also make a change in that same world. That by getting up and getting involved, we will one day involve ourselves in the discovery of the cure to cancer, to AIDS, to global peace.

Need Help With Math?

If you're reading this blog and you happen to be a high schooler in Precalculus or lower, or maybe even Calculus, I'm not sure, visit my friend Kyle's forum here! He is an excellent student currently in Georgia's Accelerated Math 3, which covers mathematics up to introductory statistics, trigonometry, and some physics, and is considered an equivalent of the national math courses Precalculus and Trigonometry.

Don't be shy!

School Has Begun...

High school is brutal. The teachers are brutal, the hallways are brutal (especially stairwell 3 in the 300 wing between first and second period at Green Hope), but most of all, the workload is brutal. I mean, sure, if you aren't an academically oriented person, your homework is going to be significantly less. But here I am, sitting in from of my computer with 7 textbooks for 5 classes on my left, two open notebooks between my keyboard and the monitor, and a mad mental search going for my calculator.

Various experts give various times for how much sleep we really need, but most of the numbers fall in a range of 8 to 10 hours. Last year, this was occasionally achievable; school started at 8:00, so when I went to bed at 11 or 12, I'd get around 8 hours of sleep. This year, my high school has conformed with other schools in our area by starting school 35 minutes earlier. For me, this means adjusting from getting up between 7:15 and 7:35, to sleeping in all summer, to waking at 6:00, hitting snooze, and waking again at 6:15 in order to be on time to class.

No one high schooler I know sleeps more than 8 hours a night. Many of my friends are like me: countless AP's, countless extracurricular activities. Our lives move so quickly that we practically have our personal contrails. Lunchtime consists of a few minutes of eating, then studying, going to tutorial sessions (Green Hope has something called a smart lunch), or attending/organizing/preparing club meetings.

Sometimes, the reality of how much you're taking on doesn't hit you immediately. My friends and I, we were nonchalant and cool with having such an intense workload, even excited. Now three weeks into school, we're all getting bags under our eyes and complaining ceaselessly about our lack of lives and lack of sleep, of not perfect grades, of dissatisfaction. Last weekend, I was filling out a form for a commitment at my local library. One of the requests was to list your extracurricular activities and commitments. I wrote mine down, came back two minutes later with more, and did so again. It's bad when you can't keep track, isn't it?

Yes, yes it is. High school is brutal.

Journalism

***These quotes are not exact, but they are basically what the man I spoke with said. I also didn't get his full name, and will abstain from posting his first name at all.***

When I decided that I wanted to be a journalist, I also had a second profession in the back of my mind, a back-up plan. I find myself frequently questioning Plan A, but when I think about Plan B, I fall in love with the idea of writing stories that could save the world all over again. Today, I was taught that journalism as a profession itself really needed it's own revolution.

I volunteer at least one day on most weekends through a local teen leadership/community service collaboration  Today, I was volunteering at the boathouse of a lake near my house. Within the first twenty minutes of my 5-hour shift, I got to talking to a fisherman in a US Marines T-shirt who was sitting near the dock. Our conversation began as me answering a few innocent questions to myself and my fellow volunteer's school and classes. I ended up casually mentioning that I aspired to be a journalist despite my strengths in math and science.

"Journalist?" He practically sputtered the word, as if it were a bitter taste in his mouth. "When I was in the service, we hated journalists."

"Why?" I guessed why, but I needed to be sure. I don't remember word for word what he said next because I obviously don't bring my nonexistent handy dandy tape recorder to the boathouse with me.

"They don't write the truth. They just write was sells. They're only interested in what puts them ahead in the business, not about talking about the actual news When something happens, they don't investigate details - they jump upon the conclusion favorable to sales."

"So, they lie?"

"No, they just don't tell the whole truth." This man was a US Marine and served in Grenada. What he pointed out to me was that journalists in war zones tended to write about what they wanted, and only covered parts of the story. He gave me the example of Jessica Lynch.

"The American media immediately hooked on this heart-wrenching story of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 19 year old girl, who fired her weapon at her captors until she ran out of ammunition, then switched to hand-to-hand combat before being too injured to fight back. "That's not what happened. The media didn't even mention the other men and women with her, who did fight back. She didn't. She hid under the truck." I told him I'd not heard the story, but when I came home I did look it up.

The story of Jessica Lynch happened when I was 8 and 9 years old, before I was old enough to pay half a mind to the news. While my acquaintance got some of the details wrong, the important facts were correct and his point was taken. The Washington Post seemed to have fabricated the idea that Lynch fought hand to hand, that Lynch even fought back at all. "I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember." "That wasn't me. I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do... I'm just a survivor."

At the time, I went ahead and took this former Marine's word for the story. In my head, I was thinking, that's one story, so what? Journalists make mistakes.Then, he made several more points.

"Say, there's a baby sitting on a land mine. Four or five American soldiers walk by, and the baby gets up. Boom. Kills the soldiers and the baby. [Both foreign and American] media will say, look, the troops killed this innocent baby. But no, it was the foreign insurgents. They planted the mine, they put the baby there."

"You know Grenada?"

"Hmm?"

"Grenade-a, Gre-nah-da, whatever."

"Oh, yeah."

"I served there. Before all our troops got there, the American media was already there. They knew we were coming. Before we got there, one of our pilots was executed, and Time Magazine published the pictures with his hands tied back and him shot... he was castrated and shot by Grenadians. How did the magazine get the photograph if they weren't with the enemy?"

"When I was there, sometimes, my weapon would be next to me, like here on the bench, and my ammunition would be over there where you are," he said, gesturing a distance of about 15 feet. "Troops in Iraq are having the same problem, because of politicians sticking their nose where they don't belong. We're supposed to be diplomatic. The diplomatic approach doesn't work. They'll be getting shot at, then when picking up their weapon, the shooting insurgent will pick up a kid and flip the US soldier a bird, knowing that the US soldier can't shoot without risking an innocent life."

I did some digging on the subject. While I couldn't find the photograph by Time, I did find the Operation that he probably was talking about. Operation Urgent Fury in 1983, the biggest US invasion since Vietnam. The only Marine Corps involved in the ground invasion task force was from here in North Carolina, fitting the man's age and location. I read up on it, but I couldn't fully understand the extent of the matter.

I did, however, find proof of what he said about "fighting a war without bullets." More than one source says that commanders ordered their forces not to load their weapons unless given the direction, and that they only gave that direction after the enemy insurgents opened fire. That's a political thing, not journalistic, but the sentiment is the same.

The American media does report suicide bombs and bombers with blame falling on the foreign forces, but I do also see that there's a blatant anti-troop agenda with a lot of news stories. Sometimes, I read of a situation, and scratch my head, thinking, how does that even work?

"What your name?"

"Chichi."

"What's your last name?"

"Zhu."

"Chichi Zhu. I'll be looking out for you in the news, on TV and such in the near future. In the next 15 years or so."

"Maybe, by then, journalism will be back to what it should be: truth." He nodded at me in response. Journalism's purpose is not to win Pulitzers. It's not a quest for notoriety, it's not a political tool. World news journalism, at it's finest, is informing the public where their brothers, sister, neighbors are doing, fighting some war across the seas. When I become real journalist, I'm going to do just that. Thank you for your service, Mr. Marine. I promise,  nothing but the truth.

Hair Woes

I am a typical American teenage girl (besides the fact that I’m Chinese, but that hardly matters). Teenage girls are guilty of four infatuations: clothes, boys, shoes, and hair. The amount at which I’m guilty of the first two will remain undisclosed, but next to music, gymnastics, and school, I spend the rest of my time thinking about shoes or hair. Okay, that’s a huge exaggeration. No one is that superficial. But I do plan about going on a tirade about hair. 

I have this super thick, just barely curly enough to no longer be wavy, completely unmanageable hair. So far, my solution has been to tie it up into a ponytail or bun.  No amount of mousse can keep my hair from frizzing up the moment it dries. Gel looks weird, and is a pain to get out. Hairspray? No thanks. That’s purely for gymnastics competitions only. 

I recently switched from Head and Shoulders for Normal to Dry Hair to Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine shampoo and conditioner, hoping that it was designed enough for frizzy hair that it could be of some help to my mane-related issues. All it did was make me smell like apricots. 

Speaking of smelling like apricots, having thick hair has its advantages. My hair holds scent extremely well. So even when my shampoo is basically scentless, my hair still smells good. I personally enjoy smelling like apricots…

Back to its unmanageability: school starts on Monday the 27^th. I got a haircut earlier today, and the cutter guy used those weird scissors to thin it as well. We (my mom and I) hoped it would make my hair somewhat tamer, or more tamable, but guess what? It poofed right back up!

“Get a straight perm. It’s the only way to control this,” suggested the hairdresser in Chinese. 

“Aren’t those damaging to hair?” asked my mom.

“I’ve never heard of that,” remarked the assistant who was working on my mom’s hair.

Yeah, and that’s a load of BS. Chemical and heat relaxants (straight perms) break bonds that make hair curly, weakening it and thinning it. Both of those, I wouldn’t mind, but my hair grows unbelievably fast. So while it should last from 6 to 12 months, mine might last 3 or 4 before the newly grown natural hairs start peeping out from under, on top of, and all over the straightened hair.

My hair woes still remain unresolved. I’ll keep experimenting with milder, mostly natural products and hairstyles until something works, I suppose.

The Rise to the Peak: Part 1

See part 2 here!

Two months ago, in June of this summer, a complicated, melodramatic, coaching controversy arose at local Apex Gymnastics. One thing led to another, and the girl’s head coach, former elite gymnast Brittany Morgan, was fired. Suddenly, the Apex girls team was left sans their head coach. The other coaches stepped up and kept the girls motivated, but they weren’t Ms. Brittany. 

To gymnasts, the summertime is crucial in preparation for the competition season to come. The beginning is arguably the most important of all. It’s when the hardest new skills are introduced and drilled for the first time. But for one tear-filled week no short of gossip and blame, the girls were lost. Without Ms. Brittany, they asked themselves, what were we supposed to do?

One by one, all of the older optional level girls temporarily quit gymnastics. None knew how long it’d be before they could tumble on a balance beam again. No longer welcome in their home gym, they were prepared for the worst. Running, jump-roping, team workouts at the local YMCA, these were all part of their worst-case scenario. To do it all in the intense heat would be absolutely grueling. They were absolutely dreading the next step.

In their eyes, what happened next was nothing short of a miracle. The owner of Kenney’s Gymnastics, to whom everyone refers casually to as Mike, agreed to Ms. Brittany’s request to use his facility. Because of the Kenney’s Gym’s generosity, the girls were back in action faster than they’d ever imagined.

One of the reasons the team was so comfortable in following their coach was that there was a plan. Brittany and her close friend, undisputed Team Mom Angie Meshaw, had been planning on opening a gym of their own for a long time. Peak Gymnastics Academy, they’d call it. Like Apex, but not. Now shut out of Apex, what was once a dream really needed to be a reality. And because they couldn’t stay at Kenney’s forever, it needed to happen fast.

After working through their two-week notice back at Apex, the two other coaches, Robert Johnson and Judy Jackson, came to join their team. What began as just the five oldest girls plus Angie Meshaw’s younger daughter soon extended additional advanced girls, multiple rising prep op girls, and most of the littlest pre-team princesses from Apex. The rest of the old teams dissipated into the labyrinth of triangle area gyms. 

“Come on Liann, 110%. Just go for it!” cheers gymnast and pre-team coach Lily, of Apex. Here’s the catch: there’s no Apex girl named Liann. Liann is the only level 7 gymnast on the Kenney’s team, and here, she is learning a front walkover on the beam. The staff and team at Kenney’s welcomed their guests with open arms. The home team even invited the visitors to come along on their annual trip to Wet’n’Wild. In a sport as tough as gymnastics, even in the lower levels camaraderie is needed to mentally survive. 

While there is strong contrast between the coaching styles of the two teams, ideas were shared and techniques passed along. Apex learned leg conditioning while getting prepared for an event was no fun. Kenney’s learned warming up and working out with ankle weights was no fun. Apex learned how to use the most interesting vault training contraption. Kenney’s learned the technique of “T-hands” on the balance beam. Apex’s Mr. Robert is an excellent spotter and helps out recreational classes with too many kids and too few coaches when he has a spare moment. On the days Mr. Robert doesn’t work, the Apex girls ask Dre or Mike or another of the Kenney’s coaches to help out. 

Over the few months at Kenney’s the girls progressed like they would have back at “home.” But as August arrived and September lurks just around the corner, the buzz is increasing about the new gym. If asked, any of the girls would respond along the lines of, “I’m so excited!” and “I just can’t wait.” 

“What colors are our [leotards] going to be?” repeatedly asks team member Caitlin.

“Can we have a trench bar?” pesters Danielle.

“Wouldn’t this be good as our demo leo?” “Are we getting t-shirts? And tank tops too?” “Are you making our team headbands yet?” And the questions just keep pouring out.

Angie Meshaw and Brittany Morgan are much of the way into the process of the “adult, official business.” So patience, girls. The time will come.

Chronology of the Week

Transferred from my other blog: The Adventures of Sisterhood. 
First published: 7-9-12 at 1:34 PM EDT

family went to visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina this past week. Kylie definitely had lots of fun. We left on Saturday, June 30th. On Sunday, we went to a pier in Nags Head just to sight see and the rickety old bridge was ridiculously windy.

The next day, we loaded up in our family SUV and drove two hours to Corolla, which is basically Virginia except not quite. Once in Corolla, we tied Kylie's carseat, facing forward instead of backwards, in a Hummer/Jeep thing. We were in the vehicle for two hours around the beaches of the Virginia/NC state line and saw 17 wild horses. Kylie slept through the first seven, but for all the ones she was awake for, she watched intently and waved good-bye sadly when it was time to drive on.

On Tuesday, we drove to Roanoke Island. We visited a beautiful European-style garden, and Kylie saw butterflies. Afterwards, we went to the Outer Banks NC Aquarium (North Carolina has like three different aquariums). Kylie learned to say "turtle" and "otter." I think she already knew turtle and fish, but she kept calling the otters cats. Later this day, we climbed the sand dunes of Jockey's Ridge State Park and saw both the great Atlantic Ocean and the Sound from the same point.

Wednesday was Independence Day, so we went and saw fireworks, of course. Unlike last year, where Kylie cowered on daddy's shoulder, she sat on his lap and watched intently. Thursday, we fed birds, and Friday, as a family, we visited a lighthouse. Dad and I climbed the lighthouse and rode horses on Friday, but Kylie was too young to join us on either.

Saturday, we arrived home. Kylie is like three shades tanner, and her carseat now faces forwards in the car. She has a blue pail and a yellow shovel and really enjoyed playing with sand. She even learned how to say sand in Chinese, and how to say "big ocean" in Chinese.