Sunday, October 28, 2012

I'm Back!

Why hello there.

It's been a while since I last posted on this blog, and I feel quite bad about that. Unfortunately, school and travel has gotten in the way.

Travel?

I just got back from Myanmar yesterday and have been too tired and lazy to deal with all the photos and videos I took. Hopefully I'll have that done sooner rather than later.

So, I know that Myanmar is one of the more controversial countries to travel to. Regardless, it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Highlights:

Balloons Over Bagan
Inle Lake
The Procession at Inle Lake and the market afterwards
The giant golden temple in Yangon
The food! Pork was super yummy there



More about this all later. I'm sleepy.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Stage One

I was walking into the cafeteria when I realised that I was basically living in what could become  a science fiction world. Not the cool science fiction world with Star Gates or humanoid computers, but the scary science fiction worlds that are supposed to make one reflect on humanity and society.

On the tables in the cafeteria was food, books, and laptops. Beautiful glowing screens, each containing worlds of education, entertainment, and general time-wasters. Though people were talking (and quite loudly at that), there were enough people just sitting side-by-side, lost in their screens, for me to notice.

Now, I can't exactly condemn such behaviour. I'm sure my friends and I have done it before. I mean, I even have a level 60 wizard in Diablo. I know a fair amount about how entrancing computers are, and the endless hours of entertainment they can provide. 

All of this got me thinking, though. It's not just the computers that students carry around every day on their backs. It's the smartphones, the television that no one really watches anymore, the endless streams of information. Western society is transitioning into a place where who you are in real life doesn't really matter. What you post on the internet can become your identity, what you play can become your "other-you" and what you read becomes 100% true. I still haven't forgotten all the hype about KONY 2012. Where did that ever go, internet? 

Thomas Hobbes believed that men without government were unable to use reason, and essentially were wild beasts. The internet is becoming a great example of people in their "natural states". There is some good on the internet, once in a while. There are educational sites, free college courses, news articles. However, the internet is also filled with the trash of society- the haters, the bullies, the really really stupid people. 

Society isn't going to keep developing if this internet trend continues. Instead, we are going to become solitary creatures locked in our own little worlds. When will invisible internet friends truly be enough to satisfy our desire for human interaction? When will artificial intelligence be good enough that we won't need people altogether? When will we no longer crave a genuine smile, touch, or kiss of a loved one?

It sounds crazy now, but if we're not careful, this could be in the near future. 

We're in stage one, people. 

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Let's Get Real

I suppose that since I'm an upperclassman now, it makes sense for me to feel more stressed out. But I think part of it is the culture of this school. There's the strangest sense of stealing time away from homework whenever you're doing something else. Right now as I type this, I'm trying to recall what I have left to do tonight. Unfortunately for me, when I'm stressed the first thing that I lose is my memory.

Some people take stress better than others. Some write excellent essays, some can't spell their names. Everyone eventually breaks under constant stress, though. Watching the seniors going through their applications for college is terrifying. I know that's going to be me next year, hovering precariously around breaking point. 

When my parents were teens, life was still stressful. My parents didn't have it easy growing up, and in many ways I have life considerably easier than they do. However, they didn't have expectations weighing heavily on their shoulders. They didn't have to think about how many AP courses they could take, and which ones were easier than others. They worried about their college applications, but they didn't place all their hopes, dreams, ambitions and souls on them. 

Yes, living in the "real world" is difficult. There's lots of hard work there. But as teenagers, it's not healthy for us to work quite as hard. We shouldn't feel guilty when we want to head out to a movie with friends or go for a walk. There are ways to learn outside the classroom that may be more beneficial than sitting and learning about numbers. Teenagers are not adults yet, but we take on the workload and the stress of adults and are expected to still be cheerful. When we're not, adults roll their eyes and hope we grow out of the phase soon. Well, adults don't take stress so well either, so excuse us when we've only gotten 5 hours of sleep and still have work left undone. 

There's got to be a way to change this system. There are a shocking number of students who go to school but manage to learn nothing. Perhaps it's because there are some people who aren't supposed to get great grades and go on to get their PhDs. Maybe it's because not everyone can be brilliant, despite the culture of this school. 

Maybe we should all just stop worrying about our futures, live in the moment, and cherish that we are young. Maybe we should make mistakes, because we'll learn from them in the future. And maybe I should stop writing now, because I still have another 2 hours of homework to do. 


In the meantime, since things won't change, I hope the seniors get into the college of their choice, the juniors get great SAT scores, the sophomores get used to so much homework, and the freshman stop getting lost around campus.

:)

Thursday, October 11, 2012

All Cancer is Bad

Okay, I'm going to write something kind of... well... I'm not supposed to say it. It's something unspoken, something that is staring everyone in the face but no one wants to say.

Something came up in school today, and I can't get it out of my head. I was listening to some of my classmates talk about what they would do if they were millionaires who could give away money to any charity. A couple of girls all agreed that they would give millions to breast cancer research. When I joined the conversation and said I would also donate to cancer research, they were shocked that I wouldn't donate explicitly to breast cancer. Yes, I'm female, but does that limit me to only donating to breast cancer? Women can get other truly-female-only cancers too, you know!

Then I started thinking.

Why are we giving so much funding to breast cancer?

Yes, it's a terrible cancer. Yes, lots of people die from it every year.

But it's not the only killer, people. Let's put this in perspective.

We hear about lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and pancreas cancer sometimes (these are apparently the biggest killers/most common). We hear about how smoking causes lung cancer, how old people should get colonoscopies, and read the occasional story (like Steve Jobs)  about pancreatic  cancer (though what Steve Jobs had was different, it still cast a bit of spotlight on pancreatic cancer).

And hey, let's throw aside the whole gender thing with breast cancer and prostate cancer and whatever and think. Lung cancer is killing more people every year than the two of them combined, but it receives significantly less funding. Just a thought. And no, it's not a smoker's disease at the end of the day, considering like 80% of the people who get it have never smoked, or haven't smoked in at least 10 years. But it's totally okay that it gets so much less funding than breast cancer even though it kills more people every year and stuff... yup...

There is pink everything for breast cancer. You can find pink mugs, pink bathroom supplies, pink you-name-it-and-it-exists. All are sending some, or all of their proceeds to breast cancer research. Yes, some of that money just goes to "cancer research", but more money is being poured into breast cancer research than any other type of cancer research.

What ever happened to skin cancer? Ovarian cancer? Blood cancer? Lymphoma? Bone cancer? Brain cancer?

Why don't those get as much funding for research? Ovarian cancer is known as the silent killer, because often times when its detected, it's too late to save the woman's life. Blood cancers are super common, but they don't receive nearly as much funding-per-case as the big five (breast, colon, prostate, pancreas, lung).

I could keep making examples like this, but I think you get the point. I don't think it's fair that everyone is so keen on finding a cure to breast cancer and just leaving thing else in the dust. Even prostate cancer, which can be considered the male equivalent (though men can and do get breast cancer sometimes), gets less funding. I just don't get it.

So going back to my classmate's discussion today, I realised something. Maybe it's really the general hype about breast cancer that makes funding it so popular. Everyone at some point has read an article about someone dying from breast cancer. Several famous people have gotten breast cancer and made their stories very public. It's not that other cancers are inferior to breast cancer, it's that they don't get the attention they need.

I don't want it to seem like I'm putting down breast cancer, or advocates for breast cancer research/treatment here. Because while it may seem that way, I'm really not. I just think that every cancer needs funding. Everyone deserves the chance to fight for their life.