Outsmarted By A 14 Year-Old

Note: I tried to emphasize that my current political standpoint is not at a closed minded or set-in-stone stand still, and I don't want to come across as having something against religion. I don't want to offend anyone and am always open for discussion or debate.

Ah, how much I love the North Carolina state fair... rip-off carnival games, rickety roller coasters, deep fried everything-you-can-possibly-imagine... and stupid politicians?

I went to the fair today with two friends of mine. After mindlessly wandering, wasting money on games from which we won a total of 6 stuffed animals combined (but then I lost one -.-), and watching me fall on my face, we focused our efforts on finding the awesome political stickers that everyone was wearing.

If I were eligible to vote, I'd base my votes on liberal/independent ideas, depending on the subject. I declare that outright. However, it's because I am atheist with humanist ideals, and trust in science more than anything. It's not that I renounce those with faith, I just personally don't have one (I even got a sticker from the faith tolerance/world peace booth from the fair XD). One of my two friends, let's call him Joe, is far more outspoken than me. After noticing him run into a lot of people, I jokingly called him clumsy. "I'm only running into people with Romney stickers," he replied.

Pledge For Peace sticker because it's awesome - did not sign the actual pledge because I don't want to be leaving my name and address in a public place, but I support this.

Naturally, this personality resulted in him debating against a man twice his size.

With Joe, our other friend, and I wearing Obama Biden stickers and passing by "Republican Row" in the Hunt Horse Complex on the Fairgrounds (I think...), a random man standing beside a booth looks at me and asks, "Want a sticker?"

It was a "Vote Republican" sticker, so I kind of smirked and said no thanks. (I smirked cause I didn't think he'd offer me one with a blatant Democrat sticker on my shirt, not cause I hate Republicans or something!)

Sticker on the shirt

I asked for four - here are the other three!

He called after me, "Another guy in an Obama sticker came by and took one of my stickers!"

And that unleashed the crazy, unabashed political debater in Joe. He headed back to the man, a Republican candidate for one of the positions on the Wake County Board of Commissioners, who proceeded to say, "there was another man, the one with the Obama sticker, who took one of my stickers after he talked to me, because he listened to me and figured out I was the better candidate."

Joe: "What makes you the better candidate?"

Commissioner candidate: "I'm not like the other guys, my constitution is better."

Joe: "What's different about your Constitution that makes it better?"

Candidate: "I follow my Constitution and my supporters know that. I follow my Constitution."

Joe: "Right, so your Constitution is better because you follow it..."

Joe takes the sticker and begins to walk away, when the candidate called out, "Now you're just being sarcastic, young man!"

Over his shoulder, Joe responded, "No sir, you're wrong. I was being sarcastic the whole time." And promptly throws the sticker away.

None of us even remember this man's name. He was on the right of the Romney-Ryan booth. We also don't know whether this guy was a good candidate or not. Whose fault is that? Joe didn't attack the man because he was looking for a good show. He asked innocent questions that could have been skillfully and smoothly answered. But they weren't. We didn't take flyers or read them because the candidate was right there. Can't he tell us his platform? Tell us what separates him from other candidates and why his position is superior? No?

Get interrogated by a 14 year-old and not be able to answer a single question? What kind of leader does that make?

Quotations are again not exact, but close to truth as I had both my comrades "fact-check" and correct mistakes. Purposeful unintelligent-ification was not used; he really did respond with vague, inconclusive answers.

The Marathon

Wow, it's already well into October, and I have barely been preparing for NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo, what? Is that some kind of weird computer program? No, dearest non-writers. It is National Novel Writing month. And as far as the rules go, it is a marathon.

NaNoWriMo is almost pointless, in retrospect of my decision to absolutely yank myself through it. In one month, aspiring writers write a full novel: 50,000 words. The month of November is only 30 days long (glad they didn't do it in February), so around 1,700 words a day are required to just meet the deadline. Really, to some, that's no challenge. However, my longest story is roughly 9,000 words total. And it's wordy and ramble-some and full of unedited prattle.

Why is that useless? The point of NaNoWriMo is the rigor of novelization. It's about the length; quantity is valued over quality.

I've never tried it because I never have comprehensive enough ideas to make into more than a short story, and never enough time or desire to attempt. This year, I have the least time of all. But if I keep putting it off, then it's never ever going to happen, right?

To my few readers: the one with the initials M.C. should totally try it too. Actually, that's two of you, isn't it?

Yep. Really excited to total fail at this.

Side Note: PSATs and SATs are coming up! I took the pre-ACT (the PLAN, harharhar) two weeks ago, as required by my school and probably the whole county. Also required, the PSAT is this week. As for the SAT, I take mine on November 3rd, the 3rd day of the marathon. I'm trying to get accepted into NCSSM, a public boarding school here in the Triangle. It's extremely selective, which means I've got to get my act together! Give me a hug, SAT vocab list!!

What Kylie Is Up To

Kylie is currently camping out in my room. With her beloved Mrs. B. I spent 15 minutes teaching her the names of three characters from Doctor Who, and she's got them down pat. Then came time for AP World History homework.
"Go find daddy, Kylie."
"No."
"See if daddy has any toys."
"No."

[many minutes and brain cells lost later]
"Kylie, do you have a bear?"
[blank stare]
"Mrs. B? Go get Mrs. B!"

She trotted off to retrieve her plushy teddy and sat down in my closet. Yes, the closet. It's her cave, apparently. A second play area besides the living room.
I'm not embellishing this post because previously mentioned AP World homework is still unfinished, but there is a toddler in my bedroom singing to a teddy bear, using the teddy bear s a pillow, putting the bear down for a nap, and trying to feed the bear...

Enjoy:

- Chichi

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.