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An ode to sleep
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Written by Joshua Scherrer, The Eagle Senior Writer
An Ode to Sleep
Sleep. It’s our favorite pastime, a great excuse to not pick up your phone, and the best thing you can do after eating. Above all though, sleep is a necessity for our health and even our survival.
As teenagers, our sleep is quite different from that of any other group. The American Pediatrics Association says that we need 9 ½ hours of sleep each night and that our bodies tell us to go to sleep later than other people. These are medically proven facts from a reputable organization. Let’s say that again,medically proven facts. However, the CAS association, (Yes that’s right, the people who make the “gifted” program) are quite certain that a CAS student should have 5-hours of homework each night.
Let’s see how good their math is, shall we?
In our school at least, we get out at 3:15, and if a school gets out at an earlier time, they start earlier, so the times end up being the same. So 3:15 is the number we will use. Then with your bus or car ride, which could take an average of about 30 minutes, you get home at 3:45. Then you may have a snack to tide you over till dinner for about 15 minutes till 4:00. From there you do your five hours of homework till about 10:00. The extra hour comes from eating dinner. So if from that homework you go straight to sleep and wake up at 6:00 A.M, you get 8-hours of sleep.
This is an okay amount of sleep, but a little bit short of what you need. However, this schedule was drawn up with no account for extracurricular activities, time with friends, study breaks, uncontrollable situations or relaxation. With those things added in we get a very different picture. With an hour of extracurriculars, plus a half hour of time with friends/relaxation and study breaks each, we have you going to sleep at 12:00 and waking up at 6:00. This is definitely not a great situation, not to mention the fact that these estimations are very generous for such the other things I have listed (for instance it is not uncommon for students to get home at 8:00) all of which are necessary to the healthy development of a human being. In addition, this doesn’t take into account teenagers’ natural drive to fall asleep later, which can ruin even the best laid plans.
Seems like the people who make the CAS curriculum could us a little math lesson themselves.
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Michaela Hammer: Tough economic times? We’re on deck.
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Written by Michaela Hammer for The Eagle
I know young people like me don’t like to hear adult lecture about the economy. I mean, no lie, it’s boring, and we don’t want to hear about the government. But you know, my English teacher Mrs. Wilson explained it to my class a lot more clearly recently.
We talked about the people protesting downtown, and how they feel about the bank taking our money to give to foreign workers who in turn, are taking our money and our jobs. And the more I thought about it, the more it became clear that we are the next generation.
What’s the economy going to be like when we grow up and begin our adult lives?
The economy is going to be falling apart by the time we get there, so how we are going to deal with that?
We’re just going to be just learning how to buy a car and how to keep up with bills. It’s going to be even harder on us because to tell you the truth we won’t even know what we’re doing or what we’re about to go up against.
And from my point of view looking around at all the immaturity some of the students in school, I don’t think our generation is going to make it.
So now that I think about it, listening to adults talk about the economy is kind of interesting to me. Because just think, whatever happens now in the economy is going to affect us in the future.
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Modern education and school lunches: not the best of times
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Written by Yoka Rooney, The Eagle Staff Reporter
Education Today…Really?-
Honestly, an education today is almost exactly the same as it was back in the 1800’s. You’d think they would have wanted to change it up a little in a span of 200 years.
Of course some minor changes have happened or are currently underway, for example the IB program. The IB program is somewhat of an improvement, a lot more interactive, and gets students more involved than usual. But it’s still not enough.
When education was founded it was made for the working era, which basically said that once you finished school you were guaranteed a job. And at these schools they’d teach you all the basics of math, reading and writing.
Unfortunately in this new era, today, we are not guaranteed a job if we finish school. And to add onto that, the kids are not motivated to work. The teachers and parents who raise these kids are reprimanding them for getting distracted with all these new innovations like IPod’s, TV, computers, etc. which were not present back then, and we wonder why kids think school is boring.
School Lunches….or naw
The school lunches provided for us are absolutely disgusting. If they’re going to give us food that’s extremely unhealthy for us, then at least make it taste good. If I’m paying two dollars for a crappy lunch it better taste bomb! I know that my money isn’t going towards the school lunches either because if it was, the food would taste a lot better. Kids literally don’t eat lunch because they’d rather be hungry than eat what the lunch ladies serve us. Some of us remember the times in Frick when we had a line where we could buy wraps which not only were healthy but tasted really good! I think this would not only promote our healthy outlook, but more kids would want to buy a lunch. Maybe if we get a wrap line then kids could actually get a lunch to keep them going through the day.
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The “joy” of summer school
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Written by Nick Nordquist, The eagle Staff Reporter
Failing a class has no bright sides. You don’t feel good about it, your parents do nothing but yell, it looks bad when you apply for college, and worst of all, you end up in summer school.
-Summer school this past year was held at Allderdice. They held all of the classes on the top two floors, and the building has no air conditioning; and in the middle of the summer, Taylor Allderdice High School can get to be well over 100 degrees.
-For the month of July we sat in classrooms… doing nothing. The kids who go to summer school aren’t dumb, they just didn’t want to do their work. The teachers know this, so they have no reason to put in their effort to teach us. So we spent up to 6 hours just sitting; doing nothing.
-Personally, I paid $100 for my summer school “education”, and it was a waste. If I had a say in it, I would have a testing option to make up your credits, instead of wasting your entire July.
-There is no transportation provided to get there, so if you plan on taking the bus, that’s another $90 out of your wallet.
-The school where summer class are hosted changes every year, so you better hope it’s held on your side of town. We “East-Enders” had a hard enough time making it to Allderdice, I can’t imagine making it all the way to Langley.
-Attendance is the top priority in summer school. You can only miss 2 days before they kick you out and keep your money. So if you miss a third, don’t even bother coming back.
-The lunches were awful. You’d think if they wanted us to learn, they’d give us something we’d actually eat? I guess not, because they were definitely worse than we had here, and that’s saying something.
-Coming to class late was not an option. If you showed up more than 5 minutes late, they wouldn’t even let you in the building. So you had to wait there, on the steps for the hour and a half until they opened the doors for second period.
So now, as we head into December, I’m already keeping the summer of 2012 in mind. There isn’t any upside to summer school.
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Ean Quick on concussions: Are we going overboard?
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Written by Ean Quick for The Eagle
Sidney Crosby is back. The post concussion symptoms that have sidelined the star for the past ten months have finally subsided.
Violent hits, like the one that hurt Crosby, are a part of hockey. The NHL and a few of its players, including Crosby’s teammate Matt Cooke, have been making a valiant effort to make the game safer. Cooke was one of the dirtiest players in the game, being suspended from the entirety of the playoffs and several regular season games last year. This year he has completely changed his style of play and is quite effective at it.
The same thing is going on in the NFL. The anti-concussion topic is in full swing across the sports world. Leagues are attempting to reduce the risk of life changing injury, but is it too much?
Players are being penalized for hits that used to be considered good plays. In a recent Steelers’ game, Ryan Clark was penalized and fined for a hit that coaches used as an example of how to break up a pass.
I’m all for trying to protect people from trauma but honestly aren’t we going a bit overboard? When coaches are describing hits as good when the commissioner is calling them bad something is wrong. Reducing risk is good, but not to the point that we can’t tell right from wrong.
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Dezarae Parker: The he said-she said shuffle
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Written by Dezarae Parker, The Eagle Staff Reporter
I’m pretty sure everyone has that one friend who acts real tough and thinks they can talk to people anyway they want. Well, on the inside that person is as soft as they can be; they are just putting on a show for others who try to make them something they aren’t.
Normally, the people who act like that are nobodies and lames within school, people, well more like gossipers, are more than likely jealous of the people whom they talk about. It could be simply because that person has something that they don’t have, such as friends, popularity, looks, and the way they dress, in other words their “swag,” those people can be known as attention seekers or they could just be fake.
For example, they could waste their days hyping up the whole school over a pointless situation such as an incident that happened at the beginning of the year, and we are about three months into the school year. Come on. Are you serious? Get over it already! That person who says they are going to do something when they really aren’t, isn’t concerned about the stuff they claim they are. They are simply intimidated by that person they were talking stuff on. They are what people of our days call punks.
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