Time Time Time

I always seem to blog about what happens in culture identity class, and I'm doing it again! I guess it's just because we talk about some really thought provoking topics sometimes, things that are really really hard to truly wrap your head around, and it kind of drives me crazy! So this past week, the big thing that we talked about was time. I prefer to just not think about how we as humans created time and things like that, and just take it for what it is- days, hours, minutes, whatever. But then I realized that we really have created this concept of time, and in America especially, we allow it to completely control us! That's pretty insane, I sort of wish we could actually control it a little better, and go back in time or pause it, that would be pretty cool. Another thing I noticed was that during our "time" discussion, our teacher was asking us questions instead of giving us information, which was very difficult for me beacuse I like to just be given the info from my teacher, and that is that. So very Charter of me, I must say. I guess I have a very hard time being creative when it comes to learning in the classroom. I should work on that too!

First Day of Spring!

It's finally finally the first day of Spring, and for most of my friends, that is synonomous with one thing in particular- free Rita's water ice. So I was thinking about it as I stood in line earlier, and I realized that on any other day a regular sized water ice only costs about 2 dollars. This seems kind of funny becuase I then realized that so many people stand in insanely long lines for free Rita's on the first day of spring, yet it barely costs anything to begin with! I think this is pretty funny, and also pretty typical of our culture. We honeslty will do almost anything for something if it's free, no effort involved. That is just the way we like it! And free food is even more thrilling for most of us teenagers. It really is the little things in life that make us the most content sometimes.

Unhealthy American Culture

This week as I sat in culture and identity class a feeling of anger and helplessness washed over me. This was pretty strange to me because I actually love this class- but what got me was what we were discussing. As we read selections about how culture affects our health and safety I longed to just change American culture altgether, a task much too great for me to complete by myself. You see, we learned abot a small self sufficient town in Pennsylvania that was founded by Italian immigrants and modeled exactly as their home town in Italy was.Over the years doctors discovered that the rate of heart disease in this town was greatly lower than in the rest of America, and the only difffernetial factor was the light hearted culture, not diet or exercise. This clearly shows that in America our ideal of health is certainly skewed. We simply have way too much stress! And honeslty who likes stress? I certainly don't, but in America there is virtually no way to be successful in life without tons of stress. Basically I just wish that our culture was not so centered on efficiency and convenience and time, because if It wasn't, we'd all likely be much healthier.

Running, running, running

Running is my thing, it's what I do, it's what my life tends to center around, and it's what makes me happiest and maddest all at once. The thing is, sometimes I wonder why I let such a seemingly unimportant activity rule my life to such an extent. Millions of Americans do the same thing, especially teenagers. I guess we find pleasure in sports and other after school activities and that is what makes us so interested and eager to pursue them. Plus, we're never assigned an actual grade- the progress we make is soley related to how much we want to succeed on our own, and the only negative consequence we face is not improving or winning. What really made me think about all of this is how today at track practice I didn't run as fast as I would have liked, and it automatically caused my mood to spiral downward and a whole lot of frusturation. I felt like I'd obviously been slacking if I was running that slow during the workout, and I began thinking of all of the things I need to change in order to get faster. Not only this, but I felt like I was letting down my coaches, like they were upset with me, when all I really want is for them to be proud! These are the problems I battle every day as I run, but once again I just can't figure out why I place so much weight with my running. I mean running is probably not getting me into college, or getting me a good job, or building my future at all. I have to wonder if this is just an American thing, or if people all over the world go through this as well. Who knows!