Lauren’s Speech: “Take the risk.”

Imagine you are going back to your high school and giving the students a speech about life, academics, success, hardship, identity and/or the pursuit of happiness. What would you tell them?

Adulthood; such a daunting thought. It’s an inevitable part of life, and for many people a place where they’re trying to sprint towards as fast as they can. Can you imagine finally not having a curfew, eating what you want to eat, or being with friends all day? You now have the power to be seen as an adult in the world’s eyes, and you can choose what to make of this privilege that has been given to you. College looms just around the corner, and I know I felt a mix of anxiety and anticipation at taking this next step of life. College means more than just receiving an education; it’s about getting more attuned to yourself and transforming into the person you’ve always wanted to be. It can be lonely at times, and I can guarantee that this bend in your journey through life can be the hardest hurdle you’ve ever faced. No longer will someone be there to constantly nag you to do this, do that. No longer can you unconditionally turn to that support system you’ve built up for years while growing up. It’s your time to step up and take that first step into carving a path you will make for yourself. I’m not trying to scare any of you, but I’ve always wished someone had told me that I should steel myself for this part of my life.

College doesn’t have to be a miserable experience. But it is inevitable that you’ll find yourself completely lost and without purpose at least once. Whether it’s because you got lost on the first day of class, or forced to reassess your life because you realized you hate the field you intended to go into, these experiences help you develop into someone you’re proud to be. High school doesn’t prepare you for the expectations that are set upon you once you go to college. But, it’s all about attitude and creating your own support system to get you by. I can speak from personal experience that it can take a lot longer than you expected to realize that growth is necessary to become successful in life.

I remember like it’s yesterday when I was sitting in your place, getting jittery to get that diploma in my hands. I remember sitting through the speeches thinking “when is this speaker going to end?” I remember I was so excited to “grow up” and go off into the “real world” once I graduated high school. The very thought of living on my own away from the influence of my parents was enough to get my excited about college. I grew up going to very diverse schools where I was actually part of the minority. I found myself more comfortable in a group where everyone was from everywhere and diversity was just a part of life rather than something to strive for. However, once I got to college I became just one of the thousands of ambitious freshman in the biggest class in history since UCLA’s beginning. I wasn’t doing well in my classes and although I was very active in high school, I wasn’t participating in any organizations or clubs during my first year in college. I kept giving myself excuses; “transitioning to college is always hard ,” “no one ever gets amazing grades first quarter,” “first year is always the hardest,” until eventually that’s all I was ever doing: giving excuses. I was starting to sell myself short, and settling to blaming external factors for the fact that I was so unsatisfied with myself. I just accepted the fact that I was just another “average” student that wasn’t good enough to fulfill any of the dreams I once had in high school. My apathetic attitude towards my education spread like a cancer to every thought I had until my whole outlook of my future, my self-confidence, my own strengths spiraled around one thought: I wasn’t good enough. I hadn’t even realized how far down I’ve gone on this road of self-deprecating thoughts and unhappiness until the summer after my second year. That summer was a turning point of my path of self-discovery. I had literally forgotten the person who I used to be; happy, ambitious, goal driven, and now I was so lost and confused that I felt that there was no possible way for the fog to lift. Then, I had the opportunity to get involved at a department on campus called the Community Programs Office. I applied for an internship there even though I was wary of change and unfamiliar places, but I figured I had nothing to lose and nothing to occupy my time during summer school. This one pivotal choice that in my eyes at the time was full of risk and unconventional started a chain of events that changed my entire college experience.

For once, there were people that I felt that really understood the struggles I was going through. I was so used to feeling like the bottom of every possible list that I hadn’t realized that there were others that felt just like me.  This departments’ whole purpose of existence was to help students holistically rather than just focusing on academics. I started to face my own inner demons and trying to overcome them by challenging myself to push beyond my limits. Limits. Limits are a funny thing. They seem so concrete and unmoving, yet with just one choice, one small step outside the beaten path you can begin to see the webbed cracks on the supposed boundaries you’ve set on yourself. Taking that first step into becoming active in spaces outside academics, I began to rebuild my self-confidence and assurance that I WAS worthy. I was pushed in aspects of myself that I had no idea needed help. Professional skills, communication, leadership; all of these qualities were addressed. Over the past year, I’ve seen myself grow exponentially since that pivotal choice I made last summer. This one snippet of time when I decided to just skrew the unhappiness and the confusion going on my life and just GOING for it was the best thing I could have ever done for myself. It was like the world had just tilted just a tad, and now the preconceived notions I had for myself were actually not as true or final as I thought they were. For me, my first two years of college was spent closely staring at one brick of a supposed enormous wall of obstacles and hopelessness. But after taking that first risk, that first step to the side, I realized that the wall wasn’t as unstoppable as I first thought. One shift in perspective can change your whole view of the world and of yourself.

So what’s the point of my long spheal of my college experience? Take the risk. If an opportunity presents itself to you, just go for it! You have so much more to lose by not giving yourself the chance to push yourself to indulge in a new experience. Growth can come in waves if you just make that first dip into new waters. Your life has barely begun, and adulthood is just another step in your journey of self-discovery. Your age may state that you are now an adult, but you will never truly be mature without taking risks. Once you take that first reckless step, more opportunities will open up and in the words taken from my favorite book series Harry Potter, “You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.”

Now graduates of ________ High School, I leave you with this question. What would you do if you were at a crossroads; one continuing along a beaten familiar path that you might not necessarily be happy with but you’ve been walking down for a while now, and the other that has sprung up before you for a split second. While it’s full of uncertainty and the promises aren’t guaranteed, would you go for it? The answer may seem simple now, but actually facing this decision is a daunting task. Just remember that challenges shouldn’t be taken negatively. How would you ever know if an opportunity for growth awaits for you in a seemingly simple decision unless you take that first step by committing? So, live life pushing your limits, growing, and blossoming into the adult you’ve always wanted to be.

Written by Lauren

Jadessa’s Speech: “Life is NOT a Box of Chocolates”

Imagine you are going back to your high school and giving the students a speech about life, academics, success, hardship, identity and/or the pursuit of happiness. What would you tell them?

 

When you close your eyes and think about your future life what do you imagine?  Have you completed your education? Do you have the career you always wanted? Are you happy with your life? Do you like the person you have become? These are questions that can be only be answered through a careful reflection of the self in something I like to call “the life quest of self-discovery”.  As corny and cliché as this may sound to you now, discovering who you really are and what you truly want out of life is the eternal struggle that all of us go through at some point in time, and it is the key to our individual successes.

We all begin this journey at different points of our lives; for some it starts in high school and for others it does not come emerge until later and manifests itself into a midlife crisis. In my case, the quest of self-discovery began in my freshman year of college. I can remember my first ever quarter at UCLA. It was fall 2009 and I was 17 years old. I was so excited about finally having my freedom from my parents and being free to experience all that life had to offer since I had been sheltered for most of my life. I was a college student now; I was part of the cream of the crop attending one of the top research institutions in the nation, UCLA. I felt so validated by where my hard work and dedication got me, all those honors and community college courses I took in high school finally paid off: I was in the big leagues now. Little did I know then that my college years would turn out to be some of the most tumultuous yet eye opening years of my life. As you could probably imagine, my first year in college was not one of my best years. I was struggling to find my way. Here I was, on my own for the first time in my whole life; I did not know how to handle it. My grades were blah to say the least; I was barely able to keep up a 2.0 average. I was in debt to housing because I could not afford to live in the dorm I was originally placed in so I had to move out my second quarter. I struggled financially until I was finally able to find a work study job that would hire me. I did not have much of a social life either. I was still uncomfortable coming out of my shell since I had never really experienced what it was like to go to parties and other social gatherings when I was in high school. Needless to say, I slipped into a semi-depression; I was at the point where I cried more than I laughed and enjoyed myself because I felt so unhappy and alone. I desperately just wanted to go back to my sheltered life, I figured it would be less stressful if I was in an environment that I was familiar with. I felt like I did not belong. With the support of my close friends and the encouragement of my family I managed to survive my first year of college. I would love to tell you all that it got easier after that rough first year but if I told you that then I would surely be telling you a lie. In the words of my mother “ Life’s a bitch and then you die”. As callous as those words may sound, they do hold some truth to them and I have heard them in the back of my head for most of my life.

In my interpretation of what my mother meant by  those words is that life is inherently full of struggles, there is no way of avoiding that. However, you do not have to let the struggles succumb you; overcome them, turn them into triumphs. Take me as a prime example. I have been through much trials and tribulations in this lifetime but I have never let them define me. If I did, I would have transferred out of UCLA my first year because it was “too difficult”. If I did then I would have never taken this path of self-discovery to find out what I am truly passionate about,; I probably would be stuck in the same mindset I was in when I was in high school: suppressed and unimaginative. Life is about the experience. You cannot truly say that you are your full self until you have let yourself be challenged and you have challenged life back. This is a lesson that I am gradually learning for myself and I can tell you that I have never felt more alive, and I know this is feeling is only the beginning. So my question to you today is are you going to coast through life without realizing your true potential or are you going to take control and make life YOUR bitch for a change? Because at the end of the day only you can determine your life so it is up to you to make it a life worth living.

 

Written by Jadessa

Lee’s Speech: “Humans are hardwired to empathize with others”

Imagine you are going back to your high school and giving the students a speech about life, academics, success, hardship, identity and/or the pursuit of happiness. What would you tell them?

 

I come from a small, somewhat isolated town.  When I was in high school, I was closeted, sheltered, and, in many senses, pre-conscious to where I am in life now.  My outlet in those days was storytelling, which become a way of connecting to others and re-envisioning my life as it might be — stories became a place of exchange and representation, as well as realization of myself and others through the liberating lens of ‘fiction.’  Long before I came out, I wrote stories about queer individuals, displaying my own internal (and somewhat unconscious) concept of self, as opposed to the very bland one my overlarge Old Navy jackets, bursting backpack, and quantum physics-related shirts broadcasted (although these certainly told a part of my personality).  At the same time, working for my school newspaper, I began talking to people in my school’s community whom I likely would never have come into contact with ordinarily in my AP classes or extracurriculars — people whose appearance very simply stated “jock,” “gangster,” “cheerleader,” and many other of the cliched labels that abound in high school.  In talking to them in an interview format — in which they were encouraged to share their own stories — I came to learn things about them that I never would have if I had simply judged them by appearance or talked to them in a more social situation.  This is about when I learned that everyone has something interesting about them, some interesting experience or story to tell, and, thus, incredible value.

This probably sounds like an anticlimactic epiphany, but its implications are far reaching.  How many times have you encountered someone of whom you’ve thought, “I don’t care for them,” or “I could never live as they do,” or any other type of judgment?  Next time you think one such thought about a person, though, consider that they aren’t just the external image, the outward actor, that you encounter.  They are a multi-dimension, deeply internal person, just as you are.  They have the same constant rush of thoughts that runs about in your mind. They have the same emotional valences.  They have the same buried broken spots. Everybody does.  Which is simply spectacular.

A useful metaphor here is of life as a tapestry, one which W. Somerset Maugham elaborates in his novel Of Human Bondage:

As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern… Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful… Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.

Narrative, life crafted into art, thus becomes of immense use and immense power.  It becomes a way of relating to people, of viewing and exploring the cast richness of existence and the world that we occupy but too often glance over with disinterested eye.  It also becomes a way of aligning communities not along divisive labels or difference, like religion, class, race, sexual orientation, etc., but along structural similarities, upon immediate experience, which can cross such boundaries, is never exclusive to a certain group.  In this way, narrative can help us become more empathetic individuals with fewer conflicts.

Moreover, this isn’t just nice philosophizing; there’s a new field of neuroscience which is finding that humans are hardwired to empathize with others, and that the uniquely human capacity for narrative aids us in doing this.  As science writer Jeremy Rifkin summarizes:

We are strange creatures. We can put our meaning above our survival. There is no dividing line between what one is and what one ought to be. To our knowledge, we are unique among the animal species in that we are the only ones who tell stories. We live by narrative. Concepts like the past, present, future and the resolution of conflict are all introduced to the child by way of narrative. Narrative is critical to transforming empathic distress to empathic engagement. We are each a composite of the stories we tell about ourselves and the stories others tell about us.

Thus, I leave you all with the questions:  What will your story be?  What pattern will it take?  Who will you share it with?  Whose will you listen to and observe for its own singular artisanry?

By Lee.

Casey’s Speech: “Don’t be naïve or live in a dream land, but also don’t be afraid to dream or lose sight of your dreams.”

Imagine you are going back to your high school and giving the students a speech about life, academics, success, hardship, identity and/or the pursuit of happiness. What would you tell them?

Think of your life 10 years from now. What would it look like? Who would be in it? What would you be doing? What would your job be? Would you be married? Would you have kids? Would you be happy? Why or why not? Now take a moment to envision your ideal, future self. Let that image really sink in and actually try to picture the smallest details, even down to what you look like and what you would be wearing.

Open your eyes, or if you didn’t close your eyes, slowly come back to the present. Now I want you to completely erase all of those images, dreams, and aspirations. Get them all completely out of your head because I’m here to tell you that they are probably not going to happen. At least not in the exact way that you planned. I’m not saying this to discourage any of you; rather, I want to prepare you for adulthood and reality. It may seem that I am being harsh or pessimistic, but I’m not being either. I’m here to keep it 100 with you, to be real and tell you how it is because I care for you all and I want the best for each and every one of you.

The world outside of these four walls is a nasty place. Wherever you go there are going to be people who may not like you. In fact, they may even hate you, whether you give them a reason to hate you or not. There are people who are going to try and take advantage of you, and there are even people who are going to deceive you and betray you. Not everyone is truly going to be your best friend.

There are going to be moments when you feel alone, scared, homesick, and even ashamed. There may be times when you look at your life and completely hate the person you have become because you may do everything you say you would never do. Or you may love the person you have become because the old you didn’t know how to “live it up while you’re still young,” but partying, clubbing, drinking, hooking up, smoking, and all of that gets old  after awhile.

At one point during your college career you are going to break down.  You are going to experience the worst feeling in the world, a feeling of hopelessness and despair. You will question who you are and what your purpose on this earth is. Why are all these bad things happening to you? What did you do to deserve them? Many college students go through an identity crisis at least once while they are in college. Some college kids even consider committing suicide because they do not know how to deal with these overwhelming emotions.

We all hit our breaking point. It’s that point in life where we realize that there is absolutely nothing we can do to be perfect or live the perfect life. I truly hope that you reach that ugly place at some point during college. You know why? Because it is better to reach your worst and darkest point during your college years because then you have the rest of your life to truly embrace and learn from life.  Instead of making the same mistakes over and over again and then have a midlife crisis, you learn while you’re young so you thrive when you are old. So that when you encounter a distressing situation you can just laugh at it and say, “I’ve been through this before; this is nothing.” I’m not saying hope for the worst, but I’m saying be open to change and be ready for whatever life throws at you.

Ok. Enough with the reality check. College is not the worst, most morbid experience that life has to offer as you may be thinking as a result of my speech. I just wanted to get it in your head that college is not all fun and games. There are life lessons that must be learned in order to grow and improve as an individual. There are beautiful, wonderful aspects to the college life as well. It is in college that you meet people who will have life-changing impacts on your life. Your professors, your classmates, your co-workers, people you volunteer with, heck even random people on the street. They are all likely candidates for making an imprint on your life. You may even meet people who remain lifelong friends, those friends that last and are truly there for you.  You get to experience freedom and learn how to live independently. You get the chance to truly figure out who you are and why you believe what you believe. You get to defend your assertions and make an impact on others’ lives as well. You get to network and (hopefully) study things that absolutely intrigue you, things you love. It is that one point in life that you can live freely and explore what the world has to offer you.

From personal experience, the more open you are to growing and learning, the more opportunities you are given to learn, and the happier you become. The summer of 2010 was perhaps the most exhausting summer of my life. I worked two jobs from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m every day. Some weekends I even managed to work a third job as a camp counselor. At one point during the summer I was so exhausted that I got really sick, and I was forced to stay home and sleep. It was at that time that I reflected on the summer. I was so busy working and stressing and struggling to survive that I failed to notice what beautiful opportunity I had been given to make an impression on people’s lives. I was working with babies at a daycare. Who is more impressionable than a two-year-old child? I was working with college students that struggled with their writing. They came to me looking for answers. What an honor to be able to make them feel at ease! At the same time, I also asked the question, “What can I learn from them? What is God teaching me through this hectic situation?” Once I asked these questions, I learned the answers.

I needed to experience these things in order grow. I needed to feel absolutely hopeless in order to realize that I do have hope. I learned that no matter how hard I try, I cannot live my life on my own. I need people, and I need the grace that God has given me through His son Jesus. Working at the daycare, I gained valuable skills that will help me be a better mom than I would have been without the experience I had there. I learned to forgive others, even when I feel that they do not deserve to be forgiven. I learned to stop living in a fantasy land, to wake up and realize that the life I am living is real; time is ticking. I learned to take each situation in life one step, and one breath, at a time. I learned that although I won’t be able to reach every single one of my dreams, I can still dream and I can still hope. But I can’t be disappointed when things don’t go exactly the way that I envisioned.

Bottom line, don’t be naïve or live in a dream land, but also don’t be afraid to dream or lose sight of your dreams. Because once you give into the lie that life is all fun and games or life is completely terrible, the harder it is to take each experience as one that you can grow from. Be realistic, but also stay humble.

I can now say that I am a happier person having gone through some very trying situations. I am happy because I learned to keep my head up and not wallow in self-pity. Sometimes I need people to remind me of that, but that’s what friends are for   Remember: “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Proverbs 17: 22). Live life joyously; don’t resent it; and keep pushing.

Post submitted by Casey O’Neill

Free Speech Friday: “This is YOUR Time; Now Go Out There and Take It!”

Perhaps one of the most inspirational true story movies of all-time, Miracle catalogs the experience of the U.S. hockey team in their historical defeat over the Soviet Union’s hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Not only was this defeat glorious for our country because it meant a gold medal, but it was also a political statement during the Cold War period.

The hockey coach, Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell in the movie), delivered a quite moving and motivational speech to his hockey team.

It’s finals season once again. We ALL need motivation and drive.  Listen to this speech, and you will, in some way, be motivated.

Good luck and good studying!

Post submitted by Casey O’Neill

American Cultural Literacy: “on the level”

“on the level”

IDIOM

Honest, without deception: “We doubted that the offer could be genuine, but it turned out to be on the level.”

Daily Word: Viturperation

vi·tu·per·a·tion

[vahy-too-puh-rey-shuhn, -tyoo-, vi-]

noun

verbal abuse or castigation; violent denunciation or condemnation.

Thursday Take-off: Spring Break or Spring Bleak?

Finals. As college student’s finals are the bane of our existence (next to student fees) but unfortunately they are unavoidable obstacles. With the end of Winter Quarter on the horizon there is one universal thing is on all of our minds…SPRING BREAK! Spring Break is the pinnacle of being a college student. It’s the time when we take fun-filled trips to places like Miami and Cancun with our friends and just have a good time. Or in my case, the time when you catch up on much needed sleep.

What are you doing over spring break? Taking an exciting trip? Spending time with the family? Or just kicking back and sleeping in? Let us know! WSP wants you to have an awesome Spring Break!

Post Submitted by Jadessa

Daily Word: Quixotic

quix·ot·ic

[kwik-sot-ik]

adjective

1.( sometimes initial capital letter ) resembling or befitting Don Quixote.

2.extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.

3.impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

American Cultural Literacy: “play it by ear”

“play it by ear”

Idiom

To improvise: “Rather than plan an elaborate strategy, Andy decided to play it by ear.” Music played by ear does not follow written notes.

Daily Word: Pragmatic

prag·mat·ic

[prag-mat-ik]

adjective Also, prag·mat·i·cal ( for defs. 1, 2, 5 ) .

1.of or pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations.

2.Philosophy . of or pertaining to pragmatism ( def. 2 ) .

3.of or pertaining to pragmatics ( defs. 1, 2 ) .

4.treating historical phenomena with special reference to their causes, antecedent conditions, and results.

5.of or pertaining to the affairs of state or community.

6.Archaic .

a.busy; active.

b.officious; meddlesome; interfering.

c.dogmatic; opinionated.

noun

7.pragmatic sanction.

8.Archaic . an officious or meddlesome person.

American Cultural Literacy: “put your foot in your mouth”

“put your foot in your mouth”

IDIOM

To make an embarrassing or tactless blunder when speaking: “Rob tries to say nice things, but he always ends up putting his foot in his mouth.”

Tuesday Title: Angels in America (+ see it for free at UCLA!)

Angels In America (by Tony Kushner) is one of the most important plays of the 20th century, dealing with one of the most important (ongoing) tragedies of our time — the AIDS crisis.  Importantly, this is a play which envisions a world in which individuals are aligned not on axes of family history, class, ethnicity, etc. but rather upon the conditions of empathy and the commonality of immediate human experience.  Reagan (suffering from Alzheimer’s) becomes level with an out gay man with AIDS, a woman suffering delirium, and a closeted power lawyer also suffering from AIDS.  Particularly interesting of the play’s vision of community is the possibility of divisive differences being subsumed by issues we’re suffering in the immediate present.  If we continue to identify with exclusive labels (our religion, our race, our geographic origin) how can we ever merge into a human community?  America, then, is the “melting pot where nothing melted.”

The play is a fairly quick read and, although it sounds miserable, is actually wickedly funny.

You can watch it for free this week put on by the UCLA Department of Theater.

Posted by Lee.

Daily Word: Pabulum

pab·u·lum

[pab-yuh-luhm]

noun

1.something that nourishes an animal or vegetable organism; food; nutriment.

2.material for intellectual nourishment.

3.pablum.

American Cultural Literacy: “pro forma”

“pro forma”

IDIOM

Doing something pro forma means satisfying only the minimum requirements of a task and doing it in a perfunctory way: “Her welcoming address was strictly pro forma: you could tell that her mind was a million miles away.” From Latin, meaning “by form.”

Monday Money: 1 vs One?

I have always been a bit unsure of when to either spell out a number or actually use the numerical digit in my writing. Here is a great article that breaks down when to use either form. Good luck on finals everyone!

How do you express numbers in your writing? When do you use figures (digits) and when do you write out the number in words (letters)? That is, when do you write 9 and when do you write nine?

1. Number versus numeral. First things first, what is the difference between a number and a numeral? A number is an abstract concept while a numeral is a symbol used to express that number. “Three,” “3″ and “III” are all symbols used to express the same number (or the concept of “threeness”). One could say that the difference between a number and its numerals is like the difference between a person and her name.

2. Spell small numbers out. The small numbers, such as whole numbers smaller than ten, should be spelled out. That’s one rule you can count on. If you don’t spell numbers out it will look like you’re sending an instant message, and you want to be more formal than that in your writing.

3. No other standard rule: Experts don’t always agree on other rules. Some experts say that any one-word number should be written out. Two-word numbers should be expressed in figures. That is, they say you should write out twelve or twenty. But not 24.

4. Using the comma. In English, the comma is used as a thousands separator (and the period as a decimal separator), to make large numbers easier to read. So write the size of Alaska as 571,951 square miles instead of 571951 square miles. In Continental Europe the opposite is true, periods are used to separate large numbers and the comma is used for decimals. Finally, the International Systems of Units (SI) recommends that a space should be used to separate groups of three digits, and both the comma and the period should be used only to denote decimals, like $13 200,50 (the comma part is a mess… I know).

5. Don’t start a sentence with a numeral. Make it “Fourscore and seven years ago,” not “4 score and 7 years ago.” That means you might have to rewrite some sentences: “Fans bought 400,000 copies the first day” instead of “400,000 copies were sold the first day.”

6. Centuries and decades should be spelled out. Use the Eighties or nineteenth century.

7. Percentages and recipes. With everyday writing and recipes you can use digits, like “4% of the children” or “Add 2 cups of brown rice.” In formal writing, however, you should spell the percentage out like “12 percent of the players” (or “twelve percent of the players,” depending on your preference as explained in point three).

8. If the number is rounded or estimated, spell it out. Rounded numbers over a million are written as a numeral plus a word. Use “About 400 million people speak Spanish natively,” instead of “About 400,000,000 people speak Spanish natively.” If you’re using the exact number, you’d write it out, of course.

9. Two numbers next to each other. It can be confusing if you write “7 13-year-olds”, so write one of them as a numeral, like “seven 13-year-olds”. Pick the number that has the fewest letters.

10. Ordinal numbers and consistency. Don’t say “He was my 1st true love,” but rather “He was my first true love.” Be consistent within the same sentence. If my teacher has 23 beginning students, she also has 18 advanced students, not eighteen advanced students.

Link for full article 

Post submitted by Lauren

Daily Word: Mnemonic

mne·mon·ic

[ni-mon-ik]

adjective

1. assisting or intended to assist the memory.

2. pertaining to mnemonics  or to memory.

noun

3. something intended to assist the memory, as a verse or formula.

4. Computers . a programming code that is easy to remember, as STO  for “store.”

American Cultural Literacy: “turn over a new leaf”

 ”turn over a new leaf”

IDIOM

To begin anew; to change one’s ways: “Since he was grounded, Larry has turned over a new leaf and does his homework ever night.”

Free Speech Fridays: Do schools kill creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson does an amazing job explaining his viewpoint on the current education system and how he would want to change it. Not only is his talk thought provoking and engaging, he’s hilarious! I hope all of our readers take the time to really think about how the next generation’s education is going to affect our world in the future. What can we do right now to alter the education system that allows students to flourish and grow to their maximum potential? Enjoy this amazing speech!

 

Post submitted by Lauren

 

American Cultural Literacy: “under the wire”

“under the wire”

IDIOM

Just in time: “Nancy mailed off her application, and it got in just under the wire.” From horse racing, in which the wire marks the finish line.