Teenagers- The Feelings of Invincibility?

As a teenager, everyone and everything kind of just makes you feel invincible.  It’s been a topic/stage of life that many novels and teens alike have discussed.  But until this week, I guess it hit me harder than usual that as a teen, life isn’t necessarily always going to move on.  In fact, we’re just as fragile, both physically and (especially) mentally, as everybody else.

Perhaps the one biggest thing as a teenager (for me at least), that is a big-smack-in-the-face reminder that life is always limited and should be relentlessly valued is when someone, especially if they are young, passes away.  Just last week, a 15 year-0ld sophomore at my school passed away after being hit by a car.  I may not have known him, but from the words spoken about him by his friends, he was a great individual.  But a mere 15!  That age is too young, even I’m older than him…  So my open ended thought (I guess) is, should teens be told often to treasure everything in their lives and be reminded of the cold hard reality?  Or should they be allowed to remain in their realm of invincibility? (Hm a bit like ignorance is bliss…)

DFTBA,
vicki.

Simply Tedious or Simply Neccessary?

To be perfectly honest, I’m sometimes bothered by the daily workload students are assigned and the manner that they are being assigned all while having to juggle time for friends, family, studying (for both school tests, SAT, ACT, and whatever other extracurricular like Chinese School or piano CM– I just took my piano and theory CM two weeks ago 😀 ), etc.

I’m perfectly aware that there have been many debates concerning the amount of homework students should have.  I will acknowledge that the focus spans of our generation of teenagers have a drastically decreased attention and focus span due to the many distractions in life.  Perhaps the biggest culprit of making time slipping through our fingers, making certain skill-sets of society wane, and cause kids to have less and less time to sleep is the internet.  Based on a study done last year, the average American spends 23 hours a week online, texting, etc.  That’s about 14% of our week and about 19% of the average person’s time awake (given you sleep 7 hours a day… which judging from most teens, that’s probably more than what they’re getting…)  Those numbers are rather scary, that you only have so many years to live and yet, everyone’s spending a great chunk of it on a virtual world (like you and I right now).

 

A random picture I found on Google Images.  I just edited in the words.

Feels of Reading- Denial

*Allegiant Spoilers Warning: I will try not to spoil anything.  No guarantees.

From Creativity to Tedious

One major problem I’ve always run into is how to execute an idea that seems very creative in my head into a reality.  Often times, these “imaginative, out-of-the-box” ideas seem appealing and somewhat simple… but when it comes to actually executing it, it become incredibly tedious.  So my open-ended question to whoever is out there is “when projects and creative ideas (especially if it’s due in a specific amount of time) becomes tedious and extremely complicated when you have to consider the minute details, should you just give up or work harder to achieve it?”

Note: I myself am not a big fan of Edison (more of a Tesla fan), but I will admit his quote is a extremely accurate.

Importance of…

I’ve been reading the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” in my English class and talking about World War I in my European history class.  All the clips and the novel itself make me realize how the everyday society is so removed from the problems of other “classes” and of other situations like war.

This made me think… how many people in the United States actually serve the army?  According to a few sources I found online (Don’t kill me if the numbers are off.  Also, different sources conducted surveys and collected their information around 2012-2014, so some numbers may vary.  I’m pretty sure the numbers I’ve found are members active, not including those in reserve.):

Army (unknown) 535,000

Navy (2014) 323,561

Air Force (2013) 325,952

Marines (unknown) 198,427

Total DOD (aprox., unknown)  1.4 Million

Coast Guard (aprox., unknown) 38,000

Total Armed Forces 1.4 million

The numbers seem pretty large, however, when compared to the total number of citizens/people currently in the United States (about 316,128,839) that number is a pretty small slice.  It strikes me as amazing that out of so many people, society after combat (like the ones people in World War I experienced) would seem to be superficial and unreal.  Although in the eyes of society (at least in the news I’ve been seeing), wars like those in the middle eastern areas seem rather insignificant to us, but to those who are actually fighting, it’s a totally different world.  So to those serving and experiencing what the “average bloke” would (hopefully) never experience and I know words probably wouldn’t even begin to suffice, but thanks for all your services.