Friday, October 30, 2015

Prologue of the Blog

I have a journal which I should take the time to write in more often (Ha! Time...) But I've wanted to start a blog to share thoughts and experiences. It is also faster to type ideas than write.

Biology is my major here at Ursinus College, where I am a Freshman, and I love the school despite the overwhelming workload. To think freely is something of great value to me, as is passion and love. Not simply a romantic love for significant others or even love of close relatives, but love of life and everything that makes it up. I'm currently starting this at 2:50 in the morning when I have a biology exam at 8:00 A.M. so this may be slightly stream of conscious and not all connected. After studying until 2:00 tonight and 3:00 last night (or morning, rather) I am confident for tomorrow and so with the help of my good friend caffeine, I think I will be okay. 
I think a lot about the things I hear people say. I notice ignorance is extremely abundant everywhere, to varying degrees. Of course, we are all ignorant of many things, but acting on that ignorance and making assumptions or forming opinions based on stereotypes for which there is no actual evidence, or even on personal experience (which is still not always a good thing to make assumptions based off of) is where I see fault. Just today I was talking to a friend about how I have known for a long time I will become a teacher when I am older. He said I shouldn't go try to get a job right out of undergrad school though because I will get stuck at a public school teaching those kinds of crappy kids (his words). I asked what he was talking about, giving him a chance to explain his obviously false assumption on public schools (coming from a private Catholic school in California himself). He said that the kids in public schools always come to school high or have sex in the bathrooms and just don't care, and listed one other reason although I forget what it was. Now, of course, this is in no way reason to stereotype that he is representative of all people from privileged backgrounds and private schools. So, after he said this I said to him that "You have an extremely unrealistic, stereotypical view of public schools that is in no way accurate." He then tried to cite two friends who are form public schools who complained about people coming into school high or having sex in the school, etc. So his opinion was one based off of no actual evidence, just complaints of what is likely a minority of students in a specific high school. What he was told also likely only reinforced his preexisting assumption about public schools, because he did not appear surprised by this and presented it as if it was representative of all public schools. Obviously this could not be further from the truth. I would like to go into this further but I am getting tired. Simple points: If what he heard was true, which I would not doubt, because things like that do in fact happen in most schools regardless, it would likely have happened in a small selective group of people. Obviously he was only told of one or two stories of "bad" students and took it too represent the whole school Also, if the entire school, for the sake of argument, did in fact run rampant with drugs and sex in the school, how would that be representative of any other school other than that one specifically? I could cite just as many stories of my own friends from private catholic schools hooking up in the school, coming to class drunk or high, doing inconsiderate pranks or vandalism toward the school, etc. Can I then make the same assumption about private schools? Or can I use him as a representation of the schools as a place for close-minded privileged kids who think they are above a public school? Public schools are also no better or worse than private ones. Why not similarly point to a school with a glittering reputation and use it to represent all public or private school? Perhaps it is because you do not know much of anything about public or private schools outside of your very confined, subjective view of them. The point is not necessarily about the difference between schools but only that this is an example of the type of arguments from ignorance that I detest. 

Fun fact, star fish don't have blood. they use pumped sea water to move things through their body. How fantastic is that?




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