My two cent clarification: In defense of Carlynton High School and Small Education

Hang on, this is going to be a long one.

A warning: the following is an opinion. As a journalist, I don’t like having those. Understand that opinions change and evolve as time does, and please respect the place I was coming from whilst writing this. Also I use Oxford commas, don’t judge me. I do not advocate for any candidate or particular legislation or anything beyond dialogue. Want that to be clear before I proceed.

So last week I shared a post from a Carlynton alum that I attached some comments to. I was under the impression that the commentary was an assessment of the district I graduated from in the aim of opening a dialogue on the faults in the education system as a whole.

Boy was I wrong.

I completely own up to sharing it, and further to misrepresenting a blanket approval from me of this statement with added commentary. I thought it was (and, full disclosure, I didn’t read the whole thing that late at night) an attempt to open dialogue and I shared to push further the reach of that dialogue. I also did it as a way to promote someone I felt at the time should be heard by my reach. I recognize that the alum can stand behind what was said as an opinion, but I want to make it clear: that opinion expressed in the piece isn’t mine.

The fact of the matter is when you share across your stage or your platforms, the assumption is that anything you further share you agree with. I need to add the whole “RTs do not equal endorsements” bit to my Twitter for this reason, but I’m not here to preach about social media, I’m here to preach about what my views are on the education system and what I meant to say originally.

I graduated two years ago from the Carlynton School District. If you’re fairly new to my adventures, the Carlynton School District is a tiny (and I mean tiny – my graduating class was 92 strong) school district five miles outside Downtown Pittsburgh. I’m currently pursuing a B.A. Journalism degree at Point Park University, a subject I consider a passion and a school I consider the best decision I’ve made.

The original alum commented on apathy at my alma mater and said quite bluntly (and quoting an unnamed source) that “this place is a disease.” I won’t argue that apathy exists within the education system but I have to argue that the source misidentified the problem. This place – being Carlynton High School – is not the disease. It has the disease that comes along with being (against its own will) a part of a governmental system that puts numbers ahead of people and tests ahead of education.

I’ve said for years privately that the strength of the Carlynton School District lies in its faculty and students. Teachers (and I’m dear friends with some education majors, I count them here also) don’t get into such a cutthroat business without a passion or a drive to accomplish something greater. It’s a drive to change what they experienced, or to provide something greater than themselves to their students. If you don’t have a drive to change it or to affect some sort of change, you’re not going to last in education long. You. Burn. Out.

I want to challenge the original poster to think about what honestly was said: was the lack of challenge you described you had experienced your senior year a result of climbing an academic pinnacle as I had, or was it because of a chosen apathy on the part of the participant? You said you chose against taking Advanced Placement yet expected the same level challenge at a general level class, what did you expect? I am genuinely curious.

I’m not going to lie, by my senior year I wanted to get out of Carlynton but that was because by that point I felt I had outgrown it and I had a taste of the real world and college life and wanted to move forward beyond the K-12 system. It’s a system that I strongly believe is designed that way for a reason so you can make a clean cut when you walk across that stage and be ready mentally to take on the next step, whatever you determined that to be.

If I didn’t feel challenged in the classroom, I did this potentially self-destructive thing I do in college where I get CRAZY involved with stuff to challenge me further in a way outside the classroom and to challenge the ways I think and the means by which I communicate. I’m not saying it’s the best way of doing things, but I will say that the challenges I didn’t find in a classroom I found elsewhere through in-class resources.

I want to step back for a moment and talk about resources. Carlynton doesn’t have many because, well, it’s tiny and is not the wealthiest district. But isn’t that a shame to say? I mean, seriously. Should size even matter when you talk about resources for students? Why does the per-student cost to educate vary from district to district and why should resources be tied to standardized testing?

Further, why are we allocating resources with preference to certain groups? It’s a television trope to have schools buy new equipment every year for a football team while the band uses decades-old instruments. I’m not saying that is true within Carlynton, but I have heard stories along these lines at other schools.

Also, why is the education system still structured in the way it was during the Enlightenment where local government meant something? It makes NO sense to penalize a district’s funding because of standardized test results, frankly those that struggle should be given MORE resources to bring them up to speed in my humble opinion.

Single A designation should not be a death sentence, nor should it inspire any sort of victim situation. It doesn’t at Carlynton (with the only exception I can think of being an oddly specific school board meeting in 2013 or 2014 where the justification by the superintendent for class scheduling problems was “well, we’re a single-A school, you’re lucky you get to have electives) but I know it’s true in some other districts. Being small means more individualized and community-based education.

Parents pick a school for its resources, and I’m proud to say my family found a district whose nonphysical resources (teachers, programs, etc.) are incredibly abundant. We have fall plays and spring musicals and 19 sports. How could a school of less than a thousand do it except by having people who care and others who can stretch a dollar?

Am I saying Carlynton fell behind? No.

What I am saying is that as a whole the education system has fallen behind. Money that could have gone towards offering unique electives and challenging students’ ways of thinking is instead going toward mandated remediation on testing, diagnostic programs, and compliance with further regulated yet seemingly innumerable and indistinguishable revenue-sucking mandates. It’s not the Carlynton School Board or the principal deciding this, it’s someone at the federal and state level telling these people they have to.

Do you know how often I was given diagnostic testing ahead of the Keystone or PSSA exams? Nearly monthly. Imagine, that’s at least 10 days outside of the classroom every year. Don’t forget, several of these tests were multi-day, and you had to do some sort of buildup prep to the diagnostics, and then the build up to those tests...

This testing obsession is classroom time spent chasing your tail in an effort to save the school that you’re being set aside from. It’s circular and so, so wrong. And let’s not forget those diagnostic tests are expensive to use, and could go to, I don’t know, journalism books, or psychology books?

So where am I going with this? It’s no myth that the education system is broken (at least by my assessment) but it is a myth that the individual district is to blame. Do you feel trapped? Good, it’s the system that got you to the point where you can realize it. Challenge that system.

I was reminded recently that the successes I’ve had and the career I’ve chosen didn’t come from the classroom. I never once took a journalism class, and it wasn’t for lack of trying either. The teacher of the journalism course did pull me aside at one point and told me I wouldn’t have benefitted from the curriculum. Why? In part, it was out of date books and a lack of resources to do real journalism. But at the end of the day, it’s important to remember this positive: my love of radio stemmed from a gifted education teacher passing along the information for a program at WYEP.

Yeah, Carlynton didn’t teach me a lede from a nut graph but can you seriously blame the high school for that? There should be no reasonable expectation that every profession should have an offered elective that prepares you for that individual, specialized profession. It’s unreasonable.

What Carlynton did offer me was the access to that gifted teacher who shared the WYEP project, or to that band director who let me try my hand at announcing, or that English teacher who (and I still don’t understand how this happened) let me run a newspaper as a high school senior or the drama teacher who rescued me from hating theater after a bad experience and let me anchor the TV morning announcements after being a technical director there, and I could go on but hopefully you get the point.

Was I saying to myself junior year “dang I wish I could drop out and move on to college”? Of course. What teenager wants to be a cog in a politicized state-level machine that hasn’t been working well?

But why do you stick around? Two key reasons in my case: because your end goal is a diploma so you can keep moving on to that liberal arts school in the city, and you stay out of respect for how you came to that conclusion.

The reason you want to leave high school in the first place is because you discovered the ‘real world’ a teacher on the inside helped share with you. In other words, you can’t realistically wish to be a part of a different world if you had never heard of that other world in the first place.

So what was draining about Carlynton? The public school system. The helplessness you feel on a daily basis where the decisions are made for you in either a board meeting or some faraway marble castle in Harrisburg. It’s not some sort of deeply engrained lackadaisical work ethic in the teachers or administrative support staff, it’s an apathy at the extreme top that trickles its way down to resources at the feet of those who truly care.

If Carlynton didn’t challenge you, it’s you that failed. Not because it was supposed to consistently hit you with ridiculous workloads or whatever effort you expected of it but because you didn’t seek more. In the real world, people don’t work with you or for you. You have to seek out your own challenges or support for what it is you’re trying to do.

It’s a lesson I feel this alum missed. By choosing to enter and remain in this supposedly toxic environment (read: it isn’t) then complaining afterwards it didn’t help you, apparently you hadn’t sought those challenges out through the system? I don’t know, I can only guess your position, but from mine I feel like there is some action on the participant’s part that is missing here.

I know this much, however: the reason I got where I am is I sought out and sucked up every opportunity I could inside and outside the classroom. There isn’t any professor who asks you to become Editor-in-Chief of your campus newspaper your freshman year. It’s Josh Croup and your friends who you’ve surrounded yourself with who convince you to take that leap. It’s the professor who tells you you shouldn’t be doing it.

This is probably the longest post I’ve written in a long while but I wanted to make this incredibly clear: I can’t endorse the notion that Carlynton is some sort of wretched wasteland where dreams go to die or whatever yarn that you want to spin. It’s a wonderful place where teachers do the best they can with what they have. It’s a place where you have to find your own path because that’s how the real world works. It’s a place where you have to seek a challenge, you can’t expect it to be served to you because that’s not how the world works.

If there’s a problem, it’s the lack of resources allotted to these base-level programs because of a flawed administrative/governmental system. I’m not endorsing anarchy, I just want to start a responsible dialogue. Comment if you’d like, I only delete straight profanity.

It's a Different Kind of Danger

It's February 24th, 2016. I last posted here quite a bit ago - it was the massive "Let's See How Far We've Come" update on my life and the year that was. Since I started school in August, I've met amazing people and have done some absolutely amazing things. That all being said, my life has been moving at high speed and things I should be doing (like keeping track of what is going on here) has fallen by the wayside.

Since starting a new semester, I've found quite a few things that I identify with, and quite a few things I cannot wrap my mind around. Contemporary Christianity still confuses my old-school self and the craft of journalism has taken on a new meaning to me. I have this crazy passionate broadcast professor who drilled into us day one the importance of journalism: to inform the electorate is the job of journalism and if you don't get that right and don't understand the importance of it you're not going to get along in this industry.

I haven't talked much about my journalistic fanaticism on here because it's more or less something I thought went without saying: I think what I'm doing is important because I feel it's going to help people. I'm not giving blankets to the homeless or anything (well, at least not professionally) but if I can bring attention to issues that impact people directly or can work to inform citizens what their elected officials are doing, in that way I can affect social change. One of the keys to this, as my professor has said, is going where people cannot and giving them information and experience.

Overall, the semester has been flying by, and I'm still loving every minute of it. I'm a host on two radio shows and I produce/write/created one (The Globe Live and On the Horizon respectively), I wandered into the world of television, and I am still involved in as many ways as possible with the newspaper. In other words, I value news and productivity over sleep because I can make a difference.

Speaking of newspapers, I'm happy to announce that I have been chosen to be the Globe's Editor Elect. What this means is for the calendar year 2016 I will be the assistant to the Editor-in-Chief, Josh Croup. Together we'll do editing stuff (like final proofs of the paper and other fun administrative work) but Croup handles all of the important high-up stuff whereas I follow his lead and provide support and such. In January of 2017, God willing, I will become Editor-in-Chief of the Globe, handling and shouldering the day-to-day operations of our humble campus newspaper.

Needless to say, this has been an involved application and approval process that I've been working on as early as November, but I'm proud to be able to announce it finally.

In completely unrelated news, I met Rick Sebak. He came to our campus yesterday for a screening of his most recent documentary, Return to Downtown Pittsburgh, complete with a Q&A session and reception. I was there as a Sebak fan, but also to cover it for the Globe. So stay tuned to the Globe website/newsstands for that whenever I write it, but bottom line he's just as awesome and fun as I had hoped.

L-R: My roommate Vince, Beth, Me, and Rick Sebak himself

He graciously let me interview him and talked about his documentaries, how this is only the second time there has been a screening, and how he didn't know how awesome Point Park was until he shot it and talked to our illustrious P. Henni (University President Dr. Paul Hennigan). In other words, I was geeking out the whole time because RICK FRICKIN SEBAK.

Does this man sound familiar? Like in this blog? Because if you've been reading for a while, you remember the 2014 Rick Sebak sighting in the South Side. If you don't you can read it here: http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2014/02/i-can-show-you-what-you-wanna-see-and.html. TL;DR: I saw him on the street waiting for a bus after a WYEP excursion.

Speaking of WYEP, Reimagine media and I crossed paths yet again, but this time I was covering the Reimagination project for the Globe because, you guessed it, WYEP has teamed up with Point Park to do the project. So effectively it's 2014 all over again but with a newspaper and college and stuff.

So basically I'm living the life I've wanted to live for a while and it's quite fantastic - it's exhausting and stressful but I absolutely love it, and the people that surround me. When I posted my Editor-Elect announcement to Facebook, my phone exploded with notifications. I frankly didn't know that many people cared, but as of the time I write this post, 96 people have liked the status. That just doesn't happen. Meh, I digress.

I'm so glad to have these amazing people in my life and to be doing what I love in a place that's just awesome. Yeah, it's too expensive but that's another rant for another time. I'm living this crazy life that I'm excited to be a part of. I don't hate my roommate, I'm involved with stuff on campus, people (somehow) actually like me, and I met Rick Sebak. What more could I ask for right this second? Maybe a bit more sleep, but that's my own fault.

So to past me - somehow you've made it this far, and just continue to be your crazy big dreamer self. I'd give that same advice to my future self - don't stop dreaming and stay crazy.

I think I'll shut up now.

Let's See How Far We've Come 2015: The Year in Review

I did this two years ago, and missed last year because my computer was consistently on the fritz, but that makes no difference. 

For a year where so much happened, I posted the least amount of things (this makes 19) that I have ever posted in a year. It's a paradox really: when you do so much, you have less time to document what you've done, and so on your blog it looks like you did nothing. But as usual I digress. 

I did write a Christmas letter this year, and if you're interested, here's a link to it. My problem with it is its brevity. I needed to write it to fit on a singular piece of paper in 11 point Georgia which limits a year to a mere five or six paragraphs. So here I expand my narrative. Sorry about the rest of my family, but this is my blog... Let's do this! Sorry in advance for how frickin long this is going to be.

January brought my Eagle Court of Honor, along with the Carnegie Talent Show. I don't have anything else on my calendar, and honestly don't have my Eagle COH on the calendar, so that shows you how my state of mind was at that time. I did my job shadow at KDKA. I was also working for The Cougar Times at that point prepping the January issue.

February brought my venture to Dormont for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I didn't give an annual Valentine's Day message (thank goodness. If memory serves me right, my then-girlfriend and I split that day anyways so....). I was in the midst of Senior Madness, which is what I'll call the first five months of the year. 

In March I bought an album (Hozier's self titled album which is still fantastic). I also went to a SHASDA dinner where we talked about the future of education. I was named to Trib Total Media's Top 50 Outstanding Youth Citizen list. Which is cool, but didn't come with a journalism job offer so... 

April brought with it my 18th birthday, as well as the Trib Total Media Top 50 OYC banquet. I went to the They Might Be Giants concert with Clay, and attended High School Musical the next day at Carlynton having sufficiently blown my eardrums out. I was also on the radio as a part of WESA's Life of Learning Education panel. And Troop 831's last ever Court of Honor. 

May brought a whole lot of school-related nonsense. I took my AP tests, and I went to Washington DC with the band. I also went to prom with some friends. And that was all fun. That whole whirlwind was reflected upon in a blog post linked below under "graduated form high school".

In June I graduated from high school. I also got my diploma. Along with it, I was awarded a $5,000 scholarship from Carlynton, which was pretty freaking awesome. I also began my journey at Point Park by attending the Pioneer Experience thingy.  I had my graduation party, and a lot of other stuff happened.

In July the world kinda stopped. I dropped off the face of the earth, and for a while was employed by GetGo. I'm not going to talk about that.

August began my new life. I went to the greatest city, Chicago, with my Aunt and mother. I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and a week later I moved into my new home in Thayer Hall with my fourth floor family. Later that month I started school, and was quite great!

There's a lot of stuff that happened in September. I started writing for the Globe, started a radio show on WPPJ, was elected to the United Student Government, and started working for the Post-Gazette. I also ended up emceeing the Carlynton Festival of Bands. Which was kinda great to get back in touch with my alma mater. There's no easy way to link blog posts, so here's the September archive: http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2015_09_01_archive.html.

October continued September's new adventures. I kept working for the PG, and was hired on as an assistant news editor for the Globe. On Halloween I invited my floor to my house for a campfire and passing out candy and such. 

November was more of the September-October Blur. I broke momentarily for Thanksgiving, was a part of Rock-A-Thon for WPPJ, and attended the Eagle Scout Recognition Banquet, as well as spoke at it. 

In December I finished my first semester of college ever. And I reflected a bit on that. I also began Christmas Break after helping participate in a 24 hour film festival with some friends. Here's what I'll say about my fourth floor family, and I already wrote it once: 

Besides that, I'm going to live in Carnegie [again] for a little under a month. While I'm excited to see my family again, I will greatly miss my extended family - those 22 goofballs I live with on this floor - and I'm also aware my family all work during the day, so perhaps I'll start writing a novel or something. I don't need a pastime, but I do need to learn how to take a break because since August 24 I've been running at a consistent 100 miles an hour and now I have no more highways to speed on, I'm relegated to back roads for a while.

So with that, I'm easing my way into 2016. Since August I've been going a hundred miles an hour, and during the break I eased it to about 65. Still not technically legal on a highway, but entirely okay considering where I was. 

Here's to a 2016 just as full of adventures, and just as much insanity. Why post today and not tomorrow? Tomorrow I'm going on a hike and possibly attending a NYE party with my high school friends. We'll see. I just had the time now before my shift at the PG. 

We Were Dreamers Not So Long Ago

I have officially completed everything for my first semester of college, which is pretty insane. Unlike high school, the break surrounding Christmas in college separates semesters, which by hours is roughly equivalent to a year of high school, and in several ways it's just as exhausting. But at the same time, perspective must be maintained.

The reason people say college goes by so blindingly fast is that it truly does, but it also doesn't take as long as high school did, for the most part. Actually living and working in the same place on the same projects makes things go faster, and frankly boosts your productivity.

But now I find myself at yet another 'in between' place. I'm in between semesters, and by credits in between years, I'm just in between several things, but no real one place, you know?

For years I've avoided completing things like the plague because I was fearful of what would happen upon its completion. That fear stems from a spectrum of everything from lackluster final projects to the downright laziness of not wanting to start something new to a downright creative block. At the completion of high school, I had exactly this: nothing much to do, no real places to focus my efforts, and I'm desperately trying to avoid that same feeling of nothingness and (not necessarily counter-productiveness but like) un-productivity. So I've signed up for more shifts at the Post-Gazette, and I've made several lists of things to accomplish over the break. I'm also going to send Christmas cards because I'm a little old man.

If I'm bored enough they'll all be typewritten.

Besides that, I'm going to live in Carnegie for a little under a month. While I'm excited to see my family again, I will greatly miss my extended family - those 22 goofballs I live with on this floor - and I'm also aware my family all work during the day, so perhaps I'll start writing a novel or something. I don't need a pastime, but I do need to learn how to take a break because since August 24 I've been running at a consistent 100 miles an hour and now I have no more highways to speed on, I'm relegated to back roads for a while.

So you'll probably see more of me here as I ramble about different things. We'll see. So we beat on.

Angry Roads Pricked With People Rolling Forward Like Onions

The post title comes from a song we played on our radio show, Don't Let Me Die At Coco's, an obscure song that I have no idea where it came from.

We're almost halfway through the semester. So that means it's almost midterm season. And time flies by like crazy.

So last time I posted on here, it was part of an English paper. I try to avoid discussing things that I'm assigned to in class, but I felt it would work well as a crossover. We got back the grades on these things earlier this week (or maybe last week, I can't tell anymore how time passes because down here the sun don't shine and the lights always flicker with a 1 a.m. overworked glow) and as is usual the professor made some comments on the whole to all of us.

She said she liked the blog posts better than the academic papers. So I want to attempt to explain why that is. In a phrase, blog posts are more free form. They're our own. That's what our teacher said, and I tend to agree. But to digress a bit, I want to talk about how the education system strips us of our personality and then tries to force it back.

I always had a bit of an issue with writing English papers. We were told for years that we aren't qualified enough to have opinions on subjects, thus everything we had needed to be cited within papers. Once I figured out that bit, my papers let my sources sing. I used their collective voices to prove points I myself felt but was unqualified to have.

This year, our English professor is saying that our essays don't properly reflect our own voices in the same way our blog posts do. Duh. Here I am, freely expressing myself without worry about form or elevated language or making sure I used academically approved sources to prove points. In other words, it was my work as a confluence, but not truly my own working opinions, And she wants us to change that within an academic sense.

Cool. So how do I do that when I've been trained I'm unqualified for any opinions, and all academic papers must be on the shoulders of these untouchable scholars? And why? What relevance does writing an academically cited and categorized paper have for me? It doesn't. I create content that at some point may be put in an academic journal, and then your force the next group to use your paper for their papers. It's a perpetual fight to stay relevant: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me just write a newspaper article already.

Speaking of, I'm now the Assistant News Section editor for The Globe, Point Park's Campus newspaper. So that's kinda crazy and I'm really excited about it!

On Education and the Wealth Gap

If this seems a bit different than my average post, it's because it's for a class... Sorry for breaking the fourth wall (then again, I usually do that. I just never talk about why I blog. Semi-related: I don't think I've ever blogged specifically for a class.).

Anyway, I recently read an article by John Marsh in my English book about access to higher education and its relation to poverty. Interesting topic, in my opinion, but that's perhaps because I'm directly impacted by the whole higher education discussion, and I've thought a lot about income inequality.

Basically the argument is that access to programs to help boost enrollment/education don't do anything in the grand scheme of fighting poverty and income inequality. He argues that programs like his, the Odyssey Project, which are aimed at getting gen eds out of the way and giving people who wouldn't otherwise have access to higher education get a jump start, are ineffective.

I have no personal experience with such projects, so I researched the link between education levels in general with income inequality. The goal was to settle it, because frankly I thought Marsh's argument was pretty solid - education guarantees nothing except education. We'd like to think that the fairy tale of keep-up-with-education-go-fight-win is true. Unfortunately the data shows that just isn't true. Education, per the studies I researched [side note: if you're really curious, I found three studies that I used for these conclusions: one by Andreas Bergh, and Günther Fink, one by Ronald H. Carlson, and Christopher S. McChesney, and then one by the amazingly named duo of  Péter Földvári, and Bas van Leeuwen.] doesn't guarantee income increases beyond the standard of living/average wage earning. In other words, that bachelor's diploma is a life raft in the world of wages and anything below that is just bobbing in the open water.

The researchers found that the higher the education, the higher the wage (duh) but what it proved wasn't the case was that education causes any real upward mobility, just a promise of stability.

I point that out for two reasons: 1) it's important for the argument and 2) I'll be able to sleep tonight knowing that this expensive college adventure is worth something more income wise than the Carlynton High School diploma collecting dust on my mantle at home.

The research is solid, and found that the wage gap is a thing (duh), it's widening (duh, just ask the Occupy people circa 2012), and education cannot be considered a cure for income inequality. The one study concerned itself mainly with enrollment figures and public funding. In other words, aid programs not unlike Marsh's Odyssey Project but more tax based, did not boost enrollment. In other words, these programs are ineffective at getting people in the door, let alone having them succeed in their bachelor's, which as previously established, doesn't guarantee much of anything past an education.

Education is important, and knowledge (especially applicable knowledge) is extremely important but it isn't the cure for the financial social ills of the world. I want to say this much though, it could be used as an aid in combating a major social ill of the world: mass ignorance and stupidity. 

I didn't want to depress you entirely, but I wanted to impress this much: education shouldn't be used as a mass cure for poverty. It's a fairy tale that someone somewhere started to get policies changed to force people into education without questioning it. I say we need to question education, and the education system in general, but I've said that for years. I just ask that you not consider it a cure for poverty, because it isn't.

Graduation: Go Pick Up Your Diploma

I am neither the valedictorian nor salutatorian, in fact I think I'm like 10th or 11th in the class, so I don't get to give any speeches at graduation. Frankly, if you read my Eagle speech, it's not that much of a loss. Nevertheless, since this is my house and my soapbox, I'm going to say some stuff about graduation and the sort.

The way I see it, it's poetic that the commencement diploma distribution is a lie. We're called up one by one, shake hands, and receive a "diploma" that in reality is just a holder. In order to get the diploma that goes in that holder, you have to go back to the gym to pick it up. So why is this poetic?

Education, or at least public education, is often looked at as a free ride, something that's handed to you. It really isn't. Well, success isn't at least. See, the only thing they hand to you are the bare bones - the four required English classes, the three maths, the very basic classes. And even then, you just have to pass.

The poetry is this - in order to succeed, you have to take another step - you have to go to the gym, or like go and do stuff above and beyond - to actually accomplish something. That's been my experience at Carlynton these past 13 years. The school will support you in whatever you do, but in the end your success depends upon the opportunities that you take advantage of. If you take no action, in the end you just have a diploma holder.

I don't have any deep and profound wisdom for anyone - after all, I'm only a recent high school graduate - but I do have this one quote I found a few years back. It's a quote from the autobiography of Walter Cronkite that I read in the 10th grade, and I've used it as my email signature ever since.

I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got

That's it, you just have to give this crazy game of life all you've got. Take opportunities, meet awesome people, and just keep doing things. It's cliche to say that this is just a beginning or whatever sunshine rainbow quote you usually hear at these things, but I guess it's true. In a less abstract sense, it's the beginning of your own choosing. The last thing you do as a high school student is to walk out of here and pick up your diploma to put in that holder. But that's also the first choice you make as a high school graduate.

So don't forget to go pick that up, you earned it.

We'll Name Our Children Jackie and Wilson and Raise 'Em on Rhythm and Blues

Hi! Long time no write. The title is from Hozier's "Jackie and Wilson" on his album which I bought yesterday and IT IS FANTASTIC! This is going to be quite disjointed. Sorry.

These past few Fridays I have been out and about with friends, and Saturdays have been spent for the most part doing assorted nonsense. Sundays are never good, which means I've neglected my blog for the past while.

It's really strange to be doing things on Friday Nights, especially with friends. For the longest time I've been the type to prefer a night in to anything else, but I have (some people may say FINALLY) come out of my shell. I'm now proposing to go out, and to get people together doing something. I guess that's what senior year does to you: the freeing from caring about consequences leads to more leaps of faith. Or something profound like that.

I'm going to try and run quickly through the latest developments and the sort so in the future I can look back and say "I didn't post because..."

• SHASDA Dinner - fancy dinner with administrators from area school districts where they invite once a year students from each district for a forum about education and the sort. Two main points: technology is coming to our classrooms and we should try and get on that as opposed to hoping it'll just wash over like a wave, AND I've found a new line about standardized testing that was met with applause (like really? since when does Alex Popichak get applause for things he thought of on his own. I usually get C papers for that) that new line being: "I think we should start building the test to fit the curriculum as opposed to trying to jam a curriculum to fit a test". Who accompanied me to this dinner? None other than our assistant principal. 
• Trib OYC Top 50 -  I was nominated for an award and invited to attend a dinner. Every year, the Tribune-Review sponsors an award called the Outstanding Youth Citizen award and they take nominations from schools and individuals for the area's Top 50. I am honored to be named one of the Top 50 in the West division. The winner of gold medals will be announced at the dinner, as will the winner of a $5000 scholarship. The dinner will be held in April and I have to get working on that scholarship app...
• Operation Alex Pays For College  - has commenced, and I'm working on trying to find a way to pay for college. The Point Park University Presidential Scholarship and Opportunity Grant are amazingly helpful, and after federal loans I'm down to a commitment roughly equal to room and board, which is manageable. When you think of how absolutely insanely expensive it is just to get a degree, I feel I am blessed to have worked this hard and get financial aid based on that. It's weird to be recognized for stuff, but I guess that happens? I don't know. How to be humble without being a jerk...

I think that sums up some of the bigger stuff. I don't know. Sorry if this was a disappointment to all three of you who read this...

Something Shiny

So I finally have my computer working. Sort of. Basically I reinstalled the OS and started over. Not really an answer, but alright, whatever.

It's a requirement for the graduation project at Carlynton to either do an interview or job shadow. I thought it would be a lot more beneficial to do a job shadow, so I decided to ask my Aunt Marie (of John Green, KDKA fame) if she would ask around KDKA and see if anyone would be willing to let me shadow them.

I want to break here and say honestly: I had no idea what I wanted to do really. I just knew I wanted to go into journalism of some sort. I was open to shadowing any form of reporter, editor, or whatever. My aunt suggested feature reporter Dave Crawley and he agreed.

So this past Tuesday I went on a job shadow. Dave Crawley (we learned after like a half hour of twiddling my thumbs at his desk) apparently was on vacation in Columbus, so I wandered into the 9 am meeting with no one to really shadow.

The 9 AM meeting is where the 4, 5, and 6 o clock news truly starts. Reporters converge in a conference room and the assignments are handed out: reporters take stories, and photographers are assigned to those reporters fitting the need (ie if they need a live truck versus a regular van without the mast). Following the meeting (which was actually pretty fun. I've heard horror stories about morning meetings, but these seem pretty chill) I went back to Dave Crawley's desk. His desk is across from Heather Abraham's desk, who was working on a piece for sweeps and was explaining how that process works. She's a morning reporter and is a very kind person answering a lot of my strange questions. His desk is also next to Lynne Hayes-Freeland, who started talking to me about what was going on. I asked her if she'd be willing to have me shadow her for the day, and she kindly agreed.

Her assignment for the day was a follow up on the previous day's story about guns at a Propel charter school. She was looking for a direction to take the follow up, seeing as both suspects were in custody and no official word had come from Propel about changes (or lack thereof) to their security policy. So she looked at another angle - the parents.

She reached out to different people and waited for a response. In the meantime, one of the news director people took me aside and showed me how the microwave/broadcast trucks get from really tall mast to television screens. Basically, there are towers in every nearby county that they beam to, and with those towers they can either take in the live feed, or record their video packages.

I then talked to a producer (she was producing the noon news, which was about a half hour away) who showed me the insane program that connects assignments to reporters and anchors and directors and basically the thing that makes the news run. Each story has a spot, a source, and a script to accompany that. It's a lot of moving parts and she says for the noon news she starts at 6AM scripting.

Since we hadn't heard back from anyone about the gun story, I was then taken to the control room to watch the noon news. About 3 minutes before the broadcast, Ms. Hayes-Freeland told me that there was good news, and bad news. Bad news was that we had to go interview someone. Now. The good news was that I could watch the 4, 5, and 6 o clock news from the control room.

I met up with her and the photographer (who fittingly enough is the father of a former scout in our troop) and we went to interview two parents with two separate opinions.

When we got back to the station (around 2 at this point) we had nothing to do but wait for the stuff to upload to the server, so I took a lunch break. When I came back I listened to the footage we had and she gave me an assignment: see what sound bites I would use if it were my story. We picked entirely different clips from the same footage. Interesting.

She shared her script for the story, and then introduced me to an editor, Kenny (not editing our story, but something for the 6). I spend about half an hour with him and he was about to hand me the reigns (which I honestly didn't have a clue how to use the final cut/premiere/after effects hybrid) when I was tapped to watch the 4 o'clock news from the control room. I watched the 5 from the telepromter/camera operation area. All in all it was a fantastic day, I learned a lot about the industry ("you do realize this is a dying field" - I was told this at least three times) and saw a newscast from start to finish. It was amazing and kinda confirmed that this is what I want to do with my life.

So again I'd like to thank my aunt, Ms. Hayes-Freeland, Mr. Colabine, Kenny, Erin Shea, and everyone else who made it possible for me to have this experience. It was the most exciting day of my week at the very least.

PICTURE TIME!!!

The Teleprompter Deck

Look at All Those Monitors (Control Room)

The View from the Teleprompter Deck

The Robotic Camera System

This is the KDKA 5 O'Clock News Pano

A Dangerous Idea... Almost Makes...Sense

I've been listening lately to the soundtrack for Baz Lurhmann's The Great Gatsby. It's an interesting soundtrack, produced by Jay-Z including everything from this Jack White cover of a U2 song (Love is Blindness) to a songs from Andre 3000, Florence and the Machine, and a bunch of music you wouldn't expect to work together but it does.

This week has been quite stressful, and from about Tuesday on I've been sleep deprived. What have I learned? I have made it pretty far with what I want to do, yet I have miles and miles to go before I sleep (see? I can't even be original I've stooped to stealing from Robert Frost for heaven's sake!*).

Stress is an interesting thing for me. I produce some of my best work under deadlines and under crazy stress, but if I get past a certain point I just stop. Stop everything. It's really counterproductive, kills my grades, and drives those around me (family and my few close friends) into maddening confrontation. But unfortunately, like I said, I do some of my best work in my dizzying solitary stress circle.

Dizzying solitary stress circle? I like that, but it seems like one of those "writings of a madman" you'd see painted on the walls in a comic-sans-esque manner.

In Physics this week, we watched one of those Mechanical Universe videos. According to our physics teacher, these were originally on laser disk, and then migrated to VHS tape, and now is on DVD. It always (and I mean always) starts in a CalTech lecture room with the same guy explaining some physics concept and it fades off to some voiceover lady with 80s echo-synth background explaining math derivations. Every time they go to have some historical background, they cut to these historical dramatizations of Newton just creating things, and Keppler as a mathematical wanderer, and it goes on.

It was through this sort of bizarre historical dramatization that I learned that Newton went insane. Like, literally insane. Now I'm not sure how they determined this, or how he became insane, considering he was a solitary individual who was obsessed with math, gravity, and how it all coexists (I think he was insane the whole time, just good at hiding it...). Newton was brilliant, but he was still crazy.

In completely unrelated news, I am in talks with WYEP and Reimagine Media to start a podcast. We have already recorded at least one episode of it, but we are in the process of finding a home for it. Hopefully in a weeks time I'll have a link where you can listen in.

I'm in the middle of planning my eagle project as well as about ten thousand other projects. Sorry it's not all that coherent. Though I love writing, and I love posting here and talking with people (who never comment) about stuff I write about here, I have to have my priorities straight. My posting schedule and sanity suffers immensely for this.

*See what I did there? I cited the source, sort of.

Now There’s Green Light in My Eyes

So last week I finished F. Scott Fitzgerald's (affectionately known to some of our English class as F. Money Bojangles) The Great Gatsby. Generally, I don't like classics until long after I've read them, but Gatsby struck me as endlessly intriguing. I know I'm not of the bourgeoisie but I was still able to identify with Gatsby in the simplistic analysis of the American Dream - or rather, as I've come to understand through a study on the wealth gap, meeting with Occupy Pittsburgh** and others is the American Fairy Tale.

What I think I identify most with is the idea of invented social inequality, and Nick Carraway's fantastically broad pronouncements. We have to take his word on everything because he is the first person narrator, but I find it interesting that for once I can look at a narrator as attempting to be objectively transfixed with everything.

I'm (obviously) no literary genius, and I don't pretend to be but I think this piece is a great conversation starter on the topics of the wealth gap, lust, and built up personas. One of the lines that particularly stuck out (there are so many, but this one is the one I can quote off the top of my head):

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, and the tired.

This applies to love, wealth, success, and I'd go on but the beauty of this statement is that it can be applied to pretty much anything. It's a basic observation about human existence, and for some reason I'm fascinated by this.

I really like this book for that reason: nuggets of things that may not actually be that profound (I'm 16, not some time-honored critic*) but make you say "hmm..." after you read them. Within and Without.

At this point though, I'm feeling quite tired. Have a nice week.

*Another theme of this novel, and prevalent throughout many of Fitzgerald's pieces is the emphasis we put upon superficial authorities: celebrities, scholars, etc. to the point where they are no longer a person but rather an idea. We only allow time-tested authorities to sound off on certain things. We are only allowed a choice of certain giants to stand upon the back of, it seems. The best example of this objectification/idealization is the Petrarchian lover. You fall victim to being in love with the idea of being in love or the idea  of the other person to the point where they are idolized, they are no longer a person but an idea of perfection.***

**No idea what I'm talking about? Here: http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2011/12/visiting-with-occupiers-and-education.html and here: http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2012/10/occupy-one-year-later.html

***JayScribble's book Paper Towns contains one of my favorite quotes: "What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person". A person is only a person [that is the extent to which I'll comment on the whole Alex Day thing, and I felt it fit with this post. Anyway, yeah, Gatsby.]

You May Select This Title, or Select One of Similar Literary Quality

I've been trying to start less often with the standard "So [insert start of post]" because honestly, it's not necessary. I first started thinking about this when Greg Joseph of the Clarks brought it up at the selection meeting of Reimagination CD, how he was trying to start less spoken sentences with "So." From there I started analyzing it, and it turns out that I do that a LOT, and it's really hard not to.

And yes, I realize this is a Sunday. I write when I can and how I can.

I want to talk about two things: the first being my research project, and the second being the adventure at the station. I'm doing a research project for English on the concept of 'literary merit'. Specifically, my paper is going to try and argue that YA fiction, specifically the case of John Green, has literary merit. In researching this, I've found a lot of differing viewpoints but mainly the question by these 'scholarly sources' is this: is literary merit and thus are merited to be required reading limited to the classics? This has been something I've been ranting about for years: who sets up what we read? why do we read what we read? and of course, what is the point of it all?

The answers aren't simple. <rant>* The education system in America as it exists today is a broken and crazy system. People who argue otherwise have not seen NCLB implemented, and have probably not talked to a teacher lately. The question I have is this: is society able to adapt to a group of strange people standing on the backs of giants, or do we have to all be of a certain classical mindset on the backs of certain giants? </rant>

Yesterday we met at the station with the ten acts that will be contributing to the Reimagination CD. The thing I love about working with Reimagine is that we start really small - meetings with four or five people -  but when it comes to the projects we work on, we do huge things.

Here is what a ten artist/ten track compilation looks like sitting in a room:

May not seem like much, but it seems pretty impressive to me. We enlisted five or six producers, the GM of WYEP, and we're having it all recorded/mastered at a professional facility, Church Studio in Carrick. But the thing I am continually amazed by is how something goes from talk to reality, it's an amazing process, and I'm so glad to be able to be a part of it.

I won't go into much detail because everything is just starting at this point, plus I don't have much detail at this point. Nevertheless, it is looking like the next few months are going to be good.

*This is a nod to HTML tags. Before anything can begin, it must have an opening tag, and then when whatever code or style or whatever is done, it must be closed. Thus, the rant has an opening and closing. I don't even know what I was saying there...

I'm Gonna Make it Through This Year if it Kills Me

Those are lyrics from a song called "This Year" by the Mountain Goats. A bit more dismal than how I feel right now (and it has nothing to do with the bulk of this post), but it's a fantastic song. You should go listen to it sometime.

I returned to school Thursday, and we immediately dove into new stuff. More specifically, in English class we are going to study the work(s) of Stephen Crane. Our English teacher usually adds some sort of contextual end to it [in this case to Red Badge of Courage] , but only after introducing some of the author's other works. In this case, we read Crane poetry. And I couldn't stop reading, which is really weird for me. I cannot poetry, end of sotry.

So when we got home, I googled Stephen Crane, and read through the intro to Red Badge, and found some interesting bits about him:

• He was the son of a [Methodist] preacher
• He worked in journalism for a while, and connected through some articles what war was like. Namely, the American Civil War.

The poetry is something I could've written (not in the average "oooh, I don't understand art" way but in the "I identify with this person" sort of way). Read this, for example:

A Man Said to the Universe
BY STEPHEN CRANE

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!"
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

Since I read this, I've been thinking about how true it is. In essence, the universe picks and chooses what is notable, much like society. It sort of reminds me of that scene in The Polar Express where Santa Claus tells that know-it-all kid that a bit of humility could do him good. Humility can do us all good.

One should not be judged on anything but the merit of his/her deeds, the motives for those deeds, and how they reacted in the face of it. Arrogance is not a virtue, it is annoying.

After pondering all this, my hallucinating mind came to the startling conclusion: I am Stephen Crane. The evidence is (not) concrete:

• I am the son of a[n Orthodox] priest
• I am considering photojournalism as a career path
• I am a docent at the Espy Post: a museum dedicated to the Civil War vets
• His style reminds me of what I perceive as my own style (wacky, disjointed, yet metaphorical in its meandering to the point where I can understand it)

This proves quite concerning, considering he died at age 29 and never married, but past that I can probably deal with being Stephen Crane, except, you know, tuberculosis. See what English class does to me? 

Title to Post, I'm Lost and Tired

So I've mulled over a few different topics to talk about: The Pirates again, the Duck again because let's be honest; it is AWESOME!, and I've also looked into something borderline profound. I don't know what counts as profound, and when I label these posts, I do so in the vacuum of the back end of the blog here.

Usually I am able to just write - whatever is on my mind, or I'll pick a song, title the post, and then write the post to fit the title. But honestly, I don't feel like that does anyone except for my view count good. I have to ask myself every now and again why I keep going on with whatever it is I am doing. Why announce? It's fun, and I love nothing more than representing my school in a way that puts it in a good light. Why act? For the heck of it. Why sing? Because I enjoy doing it, and because we don't have a choir per se at our church.

I ask myself why I write this blog week after week, and it seems that the reasoning is threefold: 1) to force myself to improve my writing (and I'd say that works, considering I started this in the seventh grade) 2) When I'm able to come up with something, I love writing and 3) I feel like it's my job to make sure this thing gets finished: I need to have something posted at least periodically here until 2015.

I came to the realization recently that I'm a junior. This is my second to last year of high school. Up until now, I moved forward with the safety in my head that there are grades above me, seniors were a distant group that you get sort of close to, and then they disappear.

But then my friends became seniors. It's a strange reality to come to; though you consciously know that life moves forward, I don't think I understood what it meant to move with it. I attended my first college visitation Friday, and I realized that for once this stuff is pertinent. The stuff that was just words about who is coming to visit and to talk about what suddenly becomes relevant.

I'm trying to figure out where I'm going with everything: why it is I am doing what I do, why I choose to surround myself with the people I do. Why on Earth we put up with the stuff that we do. How we associate with one another, and whether or not we are just trying to relive what we once lived.

I don't know. It's late, and I'm lost. As I told a gentleman who appeared at my house from the Church of Latter-Day Saints, I think in a broader sense, we are all lost a bit. We have to be, and eventually we may find ourselves, but we never stop looking, and never stop redefining who we are.

Go Giant Rubber Duck, Go Cougars,

I Can't Tell Where the Journey Will End But I Know Where to Start: The Carlynton Student Section

So it's a friday night, and that means Boys Varsity Football (American) here in Western Pennsylvania.

The cool thing about announcing for the band is I get to see all of the Carlynton football games for free and I get to see every game. When we traveled to Clairton last week, that wasn't exactly the best game, but it was still seeing guys I know play a sport they love, and that's still pretty cool.

And then there was tonight.

Background: Canevin (Bishop Canevin High School) is a private school that geographically is roughly the same area. As a result of this, we are rivals in one another's back yard.

Something amazing happened, and it was quite evident in the air. The student section (which I eagerly was a part of) exploded and so did our marching band and cheerleaders. It was wild, and our Carlynton Cougars won 37-12. But I don't think that was the important part, the winning that is. Granted, that is still quite great to be a part of.

The thing I love about the student section is the sense of unity that comes with it. People screaming all at the same time for the same reason. Heck, even our new principal got into it for a while there. It's something amazing to be a part of, and I think it's great to be able to be a part of something.

And it continues past the time you graduate too, at least in spirit. I know one of the biggest players in the student section still tweets about how he wishes he could be back there with us. I talked to at least two alumni tonight about it, and it's just an atmosphere that's contagious, whether we win or not. But it helps to have won.

More coherant posts to come. I hope. And the giant rubber duck is coming in like two weeks! Oh and FreeBurgh Fest is tomorrow at 5 in Schenley Plaza. I'm done now.

I'm Moving Slowly for I Dare Not Want to Cause Alarm

(Alternatively Titled "I've got that Summertime, Summertime Anti-Sadness" I don't know what I was going for though. End Parenthesis.)

So I sort of misled you in that my last post I alluded to having been done with vacation. But I was actually in Delaware at the time, enjoying the last few days/hours of my vacation. The following day I took a ferry to Cape May New Jersey from Lewes, Delaware where I took this picture of a picture of Chris Christie:

If you look closely, you can see someone's lipstick on the lovely face of Chris Cristie. Inspiring.

I just thought I'd share that with you. Cape May was quite lovely, and pictures from there and the adventures following that will be up on Flickr in the coming weeks... Sorry, I'm bad at that.

Then we went back to Delaware and the following morning set back for Pittsburgh. I already wrote about taking road trips, but I had absolutely no idea of what happened roughly 30 hours after I hit publish. I was navigating shotgun, getting ready to circumnavigate Baltimore, when we got into a crash. Well, it was a fender bender, but being about 5 feet from the majority of the damage shook me up quite a bit, I'm just very glad I wasn't driving at the time.

But I'm not going to ramble on that, we got back into Pittsburgh on a Sunday (with thankfully no delays, yay! Seven hours in a car FTW!) and I started junior year on that Wednesday.

One of the things that comes inherently with this cycle is readjustments. And it's hard to adjust to new courses, and to at least two people I've met this week, it means adjusting to a whole different world. Because let's face it, each high school is it's own little world. But for the first time in a long time, I adjusted, and for some reason like zenned out (is that a word? I don't know...) which I think is fantastic. Hopefully it's a sign of things to come.

That Friday I came up with a crazy idea which I'll probably announce sometime this week, and we had the first football game of the season.

It was wild to be back in an announcer's booth to again announce the band. Even though I'm scripted, I still love the feeling of it. And what was even weirder was that when the band started marching, nothing happened but cadence. However, as soon as I said "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN please welcome to the field YOUR 2013-2014 Carlynton Golden Cougar Marching Band!" everyone cheered. And that's awesome too. And to top it off I spent the weekend at camp.

So it was a week of strange contrasts from ferries to tall ships; from DelMarVa to New Jersey; from DelMarVa to Pittsburgh; a beach to an announcer's booth.

This coming Friday is an away game at Clairton, and Saturday brings the CHS Festival of Bands, which you should totally come to and listen to me help emcee, or perhaps come for the fireworks, and the fantastic bands. It's 7PM at Honus Wagner. More details on a site I worked on: carlyntonband.org. Click the graphic on the home page for more info.

T-Minus 25 Days Until the GIANT DUCK!!!

Summer Reading Adventure 2013 Part I: The Awakening

So one of the things that I'm required to do to keep in my honors level courses is read a book. Well, actually for English I need to read two books, write two rhetorical precis, two outlines, and two personal responses (one in each category due by July 15). For Social Studies I need to read a book, then read the first four chapters in my textbook and answer some questions.

So I test-drove the idea of book reviews last year with Withering Away Heights and I think I'm going to do it again. This contains plot spoilers, and may very well ruin the book for you. Sorry, but I am warning you now.

The first book I've read this summer was The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Where the heck do I start with this plot? It's about this woman who decides she is unhappy with her life as a married woman with children, and didn't marry for love, and wah.

It's set 19th century New Orleans and the whole aim of the piece is to highlight the lack of choices women had in the way of self expression, and what happens when they bow to social conventions and have to follow strict class expectations et cetera. 

The plotline follows Edna Pontellier experiencing a personal awakening that she didn't marry for love, and falls in love with a lovely younger gentleman named Robert. But, again: She is married to a guy already, and has two children. He loves her back, so he moves away to remove himself out of the equation.

I want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that her sons names are Étienne and Raoul. 

Anyway, she decides that she also wants to be an artist. Her husband is the breadwinner and she is expected by social conventions to serve as homemaker and loyal wife and downright dull stock character. So she sends her kids to her homeland of Kentucky, her husband off to make money in New York. And she moves out. And Robert comes back. 

And what Robert essentially tells her is: Lady, I love you, but I can't be with you because, you know, adultery and stuff. So what is the logical thing to do at this point. You guessed it - she commits suicide. The end. Because that 

Okay, so I get that class culture is something important here. So are gender roles, because together they essentially drive this Edna chick insane and she kills herself. But these are social constructs of the 1890s. 

I understand that gender gaps are still a thing. In fact, a much better (and expanded) argument can be viewed here: http://tiltingsilver.tumblr.com/post/51872916055. So we have a long way to go, but I am not sure I am getting out of this what I should. 

I saw gender roles, and Edna's struggle to be an artist to a world not kind to women wanting to be artists, not some tragic love story of a woman wanting what she cannot have. 

I think we've come a bit further than having to resort to suicide because your on the side lover wants to preserve the sacrament of the existing marriage. And I'm also trying to figure out its relevance to me personally. I guess it's cultural awareness of gender roles, but in the context of a 1890s tragedy. 

Honestly, I didn't like the book. I liked what I interpreted as the message, which really was only made clear through reading criticism. It was quite Dickens-y with the whole 'let's describe every detail of the dresses at parties' thing, but it's a short (200ish page) read. Wouldn't recommend it, but I would recommend this criticism on it. Which, I guess requires reading the book: http://www.gvsd.org/cms/lib02/PA01001045/Centricity/ModuleInstance/3232/Critical_Essay-The_Awakening-A_Refusal_to_Compromise.pdf

</rant>

So this week I celebrated four years since the first post in 2009. I got bored and played with my image editor, and this happened (left)

But seriously, Thanks. No matter how long you've been reading, or if this is like the future and I'm in year like five or whatever, thanks for reading my nonsense week after week, despite how rambly these things get. 

Thanks for reading, because honestly, without people reading this, I would've stopped a long while back. 

Stay tuned for more (slightly comical, I hope) book reviews. Meh.

I Come From Where The Rivers Meet The - Well, Rivers

The Fountain! (Excuse the poor quality)

So I'm free, as most people are, from high school until August 20-something or other. I've done this thing over the past few years where the last day of school (which is usually just a useless day anyway) I do something decently cool during the school day, and then that night do something I haven't done in a while. I spent my day in the video lab, and the evening at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, and watching a musical in the Cultural District.

But first I want to talk about Sunday, the first trip to the Arts Festival. My mother was nice enough to accompany me going into town for the Re(imagiNATION) showcase on Sunday. We were put up in Point State Park (the newly renovated... with the fountain up!) on the "creativity stage". Since no one else was there when we started other than Matt (you should follow his twitter for free Pittsburgh Stuff - @ItsFreeBurgh) I ended up emceeing and introducing the bands.

The disappointment in it all was that I had to stay in the area and couldn't look at the art and the fountain... so I made my mother come down again with me early before we went to see the musical.

So that's exactly what we did. We took the T (Pittsburgh's Subway system) into town and explored the Three Rivers Arts Festival. We also took a walk to the fountain, where I took some pictures of the fountain (see top) and of the "Three Forks" marker.* I talked to a bunch of local artists and saw a bunch of works varying from repurposed scrap metal to photography.

I always get the urge to do something creative when I'm in spaces surrounded by works of other people. I realized that I enjoy photography, so I want to sometime take a bunch of pictures of various local things. I started a flickr, and want to get into that creative end. If you're interested, my flickr handle is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/95500973@N06/

Anyway, I love these sorts of events where people are sharing and collaborating and above all, creating stuff. So I guess if I want to make a Summer's resolution, I want to be more creative. We'll see how that works out.

On a final note, I'd like to congratulate the members of the CHS Class of 2013. It's insane to think that that'll be my class in two years. Wow. Special shout out to my senior friends: Isabella, Lana, Aidan, Lindsey, Ben, Seve, et al.

Now to why I put the star (*) by the three forks notice. So I took a picture and posted it of this cool ground marker. It marks the start of the Great Allegheny Passage at the point, and marks the exact confluence point for the Ohio River. Well, after some research, it turns out that they are having an official unveiling of that exact marker tomorrow (6/15). So I saw it and posted it when no one was supposed to see it. It's on the flickr, but I am not putting it here, because that's mean to the the GAP people.... maybe next week?

Smile Like You Mean It

Note: I apologize if this is hard to understand. I am losing my mind with finals in school and assorted other things... Your understanding is appreciated.
So today was the last regular Friday to my sophomore year. Wow was that crazy. I'm one of those people who walk to the top of a hill, and look back. Then I decide to move forward because, honestly, there's so much more ahead.

So today in English our teacher brought out our 'portfolios' which are a collection of selected works of ours from each year going back to 7th grade. It was interesting to see how far I've come as a writer, and how poor my handwriting has become.

I'm again reminded that things progress.

It's wild looking back after something to see what it actually was. By this I mean that I am an idea guy, and to see something actually come out of an idea, or whatever the case is, is satisfying.

I look at the end of this year, and I sort of feel the same as I did last year (http://2015blogger.blogspot.com/2012/06/don-know-what-to-write-centralia-and.html), but in a different sense of becoming those older people, and realizing how much has actually been accomplished.

I have yet to do finals, but already I know this much: sophomore year is over. And even though I may not have done so great in chem, and struggled writing research papers for social studies and English I've learned a lot - about the world around me, as well as myself.

I've learned a bit from everything ranging from how to put on an arts festival of sorts, using a studio, how relationships work, how to work in a lab, and ultimately where I plan to go. We'll see how this all pans out.

I can't wait for this summer to come, because I plan to go to Delaware (which I can never spell), and I want to get lost in the awesome of downtown Pittsburgh again, and do so many things... I don't know. I am just excited to be where I am now, and to be moving forward.

For the record and for those keeping track at home, this brings the count to roughly two years until this blog becomes relevant. Thanks.

And I Swear: We Are Infinite.

These lines end the movie that I recently watched, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Granted, watching it before reading it goes against my whole mantra here, but I made an exception, and I'm glad I did. But I'll get back to that.

This line is actually a part of a larger quote, and when put in context, at least to me, it should read "We Feel Infinite." But it doesn't. It reads "We Are Infinite" because it is talking about a point in time where there is no sense of time; all that matters is what you are doing in that moment, and how you respond to that.

I hate the common thought by adults that "teenagers feel they are invincible". In some ways this is true, (I have a lovely story for another time about some idiots taking a test) but for the most part that is wrong. What I think is true is that teenagers feel that they are infinite, that where they are at that one point in time is all that matters, and all that will.

I'm not saying that teenagers are all self-centered people, but rather that since we have little time to base off of, each day is a large fraction of our life. Let me rephrase that. Take, for example, that I'm 16. I only remember about 10 or so years of that, so in memory and in things I can base off of, I am 10. Someone that is, say, 40 has about 34 years to base experience and that sort of thing off of. We are rookies here.

However, I'd like to challenge anyone reading this that for one day, just one day, live in the present. I know I'm preaching here and not practicing it as much as I want, but at the same time I am setting this for myself too.  Live infinitely in the world that you're in, and gain some interesting perspective on things.

I've been feeling sort of lost lately; and I don't mean this in some sort of "waah I have no friends" or some whiny way but rather in some deep way, which I cannot exactly describe to someone outside. I want to fast forward to the part where I am where I want to be, surrounded by those people whom I want to be around, but society prohibits that. So I guess for now, I have to live as if I am infinite, until I become finite.