Cole Paulin
Mrs. Durkee
AP Language And Composition
15 January 2019
The legal drinking age in the US should be 18 rather than 21. A couple reasons as to why are as follows: experimentation is best while under parental supervision and because it goes against what Thomas Jefferson states in the Declaration of Independence.
The last thing any parent wants is for their child to go partying in college and drink for the first time in a setting of such chaos. Without knowing anything about safe portions of alcohol, a young student may find themselves completely wasted or face down in the back yard. If the legal drinking age was 18, parents would have the opportunity to drink with their kids and to show them how different drinks will affect them. Instead, our government thinks it is a good idea to hide kids from alcohol until they are let loose in a world of unsafe drinking. Drinking under parental supervision can also help create some really rad memories. I cannot speak from memory, but it seems like one of those memories that will always stick with both the kid and his parents.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. In the US, 18 years of age officially marks adulthood. If all men are created equal, then why does a 21 year old have the privilege of drinking over an 18 year old? An 18 year old can vote, can be tried in court as an adult, can serve under our nation’s flag, but can’t have a couple of beers with his or her pals? To me, that seems completely unfair. Our country is breaking the moral fibers it grew up on.
After looking at a few key points, it seems ridiculous to still have a drinking age of 21. To say that a man is not allowed to drink is like saying kids can’t have fun. It makes no sense. I hope that this change comes sooner rather than later because it could have great benefits.
Dawnland
Dawnland
The Thornton Academy Civil Rights Team organized a screening of the Dawnland Documentary
open to the community. The Dawnland screening was a documentary about cultural survival and stolen children. Recently the TA Civil Rights Team has been focusing on Native American issues and Maine Native Tribes. We wanted to put on the event to raise awareness to Maine Tribes and the cultural genocide of Native Americans in general. I am part of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribe her in Maine. Around May of last year I though it would be a good idea to put on this even because I saw that there wasn’t much awareness and knowledge being taught about Native American people. I feel that it is important to teach the history of the sacrifices Native Americans made for the land that a lot of people of people take for granted. The damages that have been made from the stolen lands and the cultural genocide still affects Mative Americans today and People need to be aware. I didn’t want to show the film to make people feel guilty but to educate them about the history and the more contemporary issues Native Americans face as a result of the cultural genocide that occurred because many time the history is ignored or just forgotten about. My role in the event was basically the role of an organizer, to contact the guest speaker and try to get him to the even as well as advertising and where the event would be. I was able to get a worker from the Maine Wabanaki REACH program to come speak more about the movie and how the REACH program interviewes with the movie. I also wanted to have another guest speaker who offered a more personal connection to the Maine Reservations so I decided to invite my mother who is from the Passamaquoddy tribe. The event turned out to be a success and got the point across and educated the people. I hope that the people will spread there knowledge, from what they learned for the event and maybe do something with there knowledge for the better.
Liliana Sapiel
ironies
I enjoying finding ironies in things. It helps to make light of seemingly detrimental situations.
Schools a good topic because it has a lot of possible content. Like, school is a privilege, but it’s also widely hated. Or, school is for everyone, but how many people can actually say they feel like school caters to their learning habits. Or, school is supposed to be the best years of your life, but have fun wasting your whole weekend doing all this homework. Or, getting told “as long as you understand, your final grade doesn’t matter”, but, uh, yes it does, last time I checked colleges do consider final grades. Or, teachers are supposed to teach, but here are some calculus examples, you’ve never seen them, or learned how to do them, but figure it out. Or, “don’t stress, it’s just a test”, but doing bad on said test will highly impact grade. Or, “we prepare kids for their future”, but who’s gonna teach me how to do taxes and buy a house.
Some more that don’t apply to a particular topic… the fact that I swim six days a week, but absolutely hate it. Or, I stress out about swimming, when I don’t even want to be a professional athlete. Or, the fact that I just thought about a bunch of ironies because I didn’t know what else I wanted to write about for this blog, when this is probably not acceptable. Or how most of these “examples” might not even be ironies, but I’m labeling them as such.
A Lovely Man With “Hate” Written on His Knuckles
It was the beginning of Christmas break, and our parents decided to kick off with brunch. We had already known about the famed Palace Diner from a local news report that caught the whole family’s attention. A quirky little restaurant, the Palace Diner made its home an old train car which can only fit about fifteen people. It boasts the claim that it is the oldest diner in Maine.
With high expectations, my parents, my big brother, and I narrowly squeezed through the entrance. The only light wafted threw the weathered windows. We sat down in red-cushioned, spinning stools attached to a long table that housed all of the diner’s guests.
A man pranced up to us and asked if we wanted coffee. Upon seeing him for the first time, I instantly found him peculiar.
He was covered in tattoos. Pale green ink seeped into his skin, spreading outward cell by cell, creating an effect of soft edges that suggested the passage of time. His arms were a tapestry of skeletons, death, and unfamiliar gods. The natural born part of him was non-threatening; his pale skin was yet untouched by stress, save the gentle crow’s feet accompanied with a genuine smile. Fuzzy blond hair subtly poked outward from his chin. From the bottom of his chin, another tattoo began: it was a simple, thin line, needle-pointed into the middle of his throat. It cut down his addam’s apple, then slithered into his shirt.
He bounced away with our orders, tending to neighboring customers. When he returned with coffee mugs in hand, I read the message on his right hand: “H-A-T-E,” one letter per fisted finger.
The waiter dashed into the kitchen, jaunted across the counter, and danced toward the doorway. His mannerisms were endearing; the way he softly sang to himself the projected music he had heard hundreds of times before, how he lightly tapped the shelf above him in tune to the retro songs. In the shady train car, he beamed with the utmost respect and kindness to each customer, welcoming one with a smile and asking the name of another. His infectious optimism made it seem like his disguise of an adult would fade away to reveal the joy of a child.
As I ate my greasy brunch, I pondered the question: how could such a polite person have “HATE” permanently written on their knuckles? Surely, no one with that many tattoos would not attach meaning to them. I tired to picture a life which would compel one to make such a decision. Perhaps this young man had seen death. Maybe, with each skeleton etched into his arm, someone he cherished had passed beyond the void. With each pound of the needle, he shed a tear for the memories of past kinship. When he chose the images of gods, he was yearning for meaning, a reason to keep going, a why, a how, yelling into the deep abyss of his brain, begging for a response from the numbing silence. As the minuscule blade slid down he throat, he was reminded of the fragility of life, and how his live will eventually run out of ink.
We set up to leave with full bellies. The waiter came back, carefully cleaning up the mess of plates and mugs we had left behind. As he cleared my place, I noticed his left knuckles.
“L-O-V-E.” I left, carrying a little of that infectious happiness with me.
Blog Posts on Blog Posts on Blog Posts
I love these blog posts. Reading them gives me so much insight into the minds of my peers (not in a creepy way, I promise) and they all feel relatable in some way. Despite this, however, I don’t necessarily enjoy writing my own—after all, I have a tendency to resent any and all homework that comes my way, regardless of subject or specific type. That is why, instead of writing about something of my own creation, I’d like to write about a pattern I’ve noticed as our time with the AP Language blog has progressed.
Stress. Anxiety. Pressure, expectations, doubts and fears. These are some of the most prominent feelings in my brain at the moment, and, as I already knew, the brains of so many others my age. They are also some of the most prominent topics of this blog. Though we might handle the subject differently, both healthily and unhealthily, we are all still high school students facing a mountain of expectations and commitments, trapped on one side by our own critical attitude towards ourselves and in the other by the looming threat of GPAs and prospective colleges.
When given absolute freedom in choosing our writing subjects, many of us focused, voluntarily, on the anxiety we’re facing. This is by no means a coincidence. The common themes throughout these blog posts and the similar catalysts that propel them into the light lend themselves to the idea that maybe, just maybe, high school has become an overpowering and debilitating force in a teenager’s life, physically and mentally. Furthermore, these writings suggest that school can become not a force in everyday life, but the force, the sole concept dominating the majority of our waking moments.
To an extent, this can be expected. High school constitutes a handful of a person’s most formative and educational years, inside and outside of the classroom. Because of that, mistakes will be made. Lessons will be learned. Limits will be pushed, and personal discoveries will be made. Beyond this, however, the ceaseless and omnipresent anxiety shouldn’t be tolerated. Levels of stress and depression in teens are at record highs. This could be attributed to many things, like the spread of social media and the internet. It could also be argued that the internet is simply the go-between that allowed our generation to voice our struggles and connect, making the stress ‘epidemic’ known. Maybe the American school system is to blame. Who can know for sure, when we’re all busy doing three homework assignments at once? Not me, that’s for sure. But it is still a fascinating, albeit disheartening, subject. Maybe I’ll discuss more anxiety and causes in a future blog post. I can guarantee stress will be on my mind.
Stress is Attacking Me
My personal relationship with stress has been an unpleasant one. Although many, if not everyone, has experienced stress, few of us truly know how to cope with it. For example, my sister: at the age of 24 and in her second year of medical school she runs everyday easily eight to ten miles to relieve stress. Running is great, but when it’s freezing outside and the only other option is staring at a cement wall in my basement on a metal and rubber contraption called a treadmill I would rather not. The big problem right now is my body has an autoimmune disease, more specifically eczema, which covers my body from head to toe. Every time I get stressed out my body literally attacks itself coming to the dreadful action— the itch. Succumbing to the itch is like treason to my own body. Often, I can’t control it. Whether at night when I’m sleeping or extremely tired, when I have a test I’m nervous about, even just sitting in class for too long can cause me to get red, hot and itchy.
It’s winter, it’s dry, but having a dry red face at the time of most insecurity is not an experience anyone wants to go through but something everyone does. If you don’t have problems with your skin, that is just not fair. Coping mechanisms for teenagers of stress just doesn’t exist. We often procrastinate, inflicting more pain upon future ourselves. I once watched a TED talk about procrastination. It talked of how there was a monkey who kind of did whatever it wanted for short lived reward until suddenly there was a “panic monster” who would make the monkey do the work just before it was due. This works, not well, but it definitely works and is how many kids in high school and college get through school and life. Those small rewards mislead the minds of teenagers to believing what they do is okay. But in reality it causes pain, even to the point of physical and mental health issues.
Back to my face…
I ended up going to the doctor because of my eczema. The doctor was like, “yup, it’s stress,” I laughed sarcastically and thought, yay. I went to some medicine and my skin had a massive change in about a week. Getting off the medicine was my next challenge. And everything returned a few short days after causing me to groan and grumble about my stupid face. Teenagers need to be more informed on stress, how it affects your body and outlets for it: working out, hanging out with friends, meditation or just eating healthier and caring more about your body.
Kristina Arabatzis
Should Have Been a Snow Day
Life is a giant stress ball and this morning was just a cherry on top. I was supposed to drive to school on my own in weather that was simply dreadful. Snow was falling in clumps the size of tennis balls. A layer of slush was building up to a few inches in a matter of minutes. About twenty minutes before I was planning to make an exit my father left for work. Shortly after his blue Prius returned and he sauntered in saying, “a girl down the street got stuck in a gulley. I’m grabbing a shovel to go help her out.” At this moment my mother told me I was not going to school. She grabbed the phone, called the school and told them her daughter was new to driving and would not be sent out in this weather. Not even twenty minutes later my phone got a notification: excused absence.
Living in Maine one has to be accustomed to bad weather. Driving in the snow, sleet, freezing rain, normal rain, it’s all dangerous and causes many accidents every year. But it also creates amazing drivers. Maine is known for having some of the best drivers in the United States. We get a few inches of snow and still go to school. Even when there is a half day and they should just cancel school. We still go to school.
The scariest part of this weather is the ice. Black ice is the worst of it. Not being able to see then having the feeling of your car shuffle forward and the break pumping is terrifying. I remember when my sister was driving and we were going down a long tall hill last winter. There was a truck in front of us and the car started to skid. My sisters face became panicked as she realized she had no control over the car. *bang* The car bounced off the back of the truck causing my head to hit the back of my seat. “Shit,” my sisters voice cried out as she began to follow the truck to a nearby parking lot. Although there was much damage in either side I learned that day that on hills to be especially careful, on that hill to be especially careful.
Maine can be a very dangerous environment to drive in, but by learning to drive here in these conditions Maine develops some of the safest drivers in the entire country.
Kristina Arabatzis
The Importance of Tigers
Tigers. Some of the most beautiful and majestic animals to walk this earth; known for their orange and white fur, painted with black stripes. Bengal and Siberian tigers are the most well known tiger, but there are seven other subspecies that exist: Indochinese, South Chinese, Sumatran, Malayan, Caspian, Javan, and Bali. Out of the nine subspecies of tigers, three are extinct, one is extinct in the wild, and the remaining five subspecies are endangered. In the entire world, there are approximately 7,000 tigers left and while 7,000 may not seem like a dangerously low number, it is. There are approximately 30 million deer located in the United States alone, there are about 4,285 times more deer in the United States than there are tigers in the entire world, and the number of tigers is only going to decrease unless we do something about it. But hundreds and thousands of animals are extinct or endangered, so why do we care about tigers?
Yes tigers are a major predator and have the potential to do major damage to small, defenseless animals, they also have a much greater potential to destroy the health and diversity of an ecosystem. A tiger is a top predator, meaning it is at the very top of the food chain; a tiger’s job is to maintain the balance between herbivores and the vegetation that the herbivores eat. If tigers were to go extinct, the entire food chain and ecosystem would collapse and leave behind a scar on the forests. A tiger not only protects the ecosystem he is a part of, a tiger protects the entire forest. Losing tigers would instill a drastic change within forests, making clean air, water pollination, and temperature regulation a much more difficult task for ecosystems within a forest.
Today, and in the past, tigers have always had struggles to face, but one of the more prominent and deadly hardships they endure, is poaching. Poachers, who are people who hunt animals illegally, hunt tigers for their coats, whiskers, claws, and teeth. In places like India and Nepal tiger poaching is a common practice that kills dozens of tiger for no more than money. Although poaching is illegal, it is also very common and extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, to put an end to it. By raising awareness about tigers and spreading the word as to how vital they are in an ecosystem, we might be able to give tigers another chance at life; another chance to reproduce and thrive, and to never be killed and ripped apart for nothing more than money.
Money=Problems
Thoughts of terror seep through her mind as she glazes with her eyes over the numbers on the screen. How? Why? When? Questions dig into her mind as her eyes once again hover over the horrid image.
The words poor, broke, and devastated suddenly serge through her brain. How could all of that money be gone. “Did I really spend that much?”
In the modern day era scenes such as the one above are cautiously creeping up on more and more people. The sudden easy access to bank accounts and the money held within, have caused people to feel as though their riches are endless. However, when money soon runs out after a couple of days, the ideas of riches come to a crashing halt. The questions of where the pay check went, and how could a person possibly spend so much money in just a couple of days soon comes to reach the mind. Instead of worrying about what new top to buy, or what nail color to get, somehow finding away to make the gas in your car last another week is the new reality. Teenagers and adults more and more are faced with these discrepancies of money. As prices rise and people’s ability to manage money decreases the world is soon faced with a new problem of national debt. With the economy predicted to only rise in the future, tackling the root of this problem can only come from one direction. By learning to manage money, achieving a life of happiness and fulfillment is acquirable. However there is no more time to waste, surviving the torments of money and the downfalls associated, is become a harder and harder task every day. The time for change in the country, continent, and planet is now, there is simply no more time to waste
We all are Materialistic
It’s a well-known stereotype that the wealthy, high-class snobs in the top one percent tend to be quite materialistic, but what about the rest of us, the ones who don’t have as much money to spend on new things? We are all materialistic–why are we
To be materialistic means to be excessively concerned with material possessions; money-oriented. Materialism is a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. When we have a desire to own things, we believe that we will achieve happiness when those desires are fulfilled. Whether it be an expensive brand that you have to wear, or a new gadget you want have been waiting for to be released, we believe that the more you own, the better your life will be. The truth is, you only need so much to live a good, healthy life.
Humans crave acceptance, love and status. As a society, we have convinced each other that the way to gain acceptance, love, and status is through the garnering of possessions. We have been led to think that the people who wear designer, have the newest gadgets, live in the biggest houses, and drive the nicest cars, are the people who society looks up to, admires, and appreciates the most, so in return, we try to copy these people in an attempt to gain the love, acceptance, and status they hold within our society.
Continuously, studies have proven to us that buying material objects does not improve our level of happiness. We become miserable when we put too much value on material objects that don’t fulfill our desires and live up to our expectations, or when we just regret spending our money, especially in large amounts, on things we don’t need. So, before you pay one hundred dollars on a plain T-Shirt from that expensive brand, think. Why should I buy this? Why is it better than the Fruit of the Loom T-Shirt for ten dollars that is made out of the same material? The price is ten times higher, but is it ten times better? Will I be ten times happier? Chances are, you won’t be.
What are better than material objects? Experiences. In the end, when you are lying on your death bed, what will you remember and reminisce about? Are you going to miss the time you spent wearing that Gucci Belt, playing on that shiny new iPad, and driving that Porsche? Or, are you going to remember the time you spent with your family on holidays, traveling the world to learn about different cultures, and all of Life’s biggest surprises?
-Isabella Dube 1/10/18
Thornton Academy - AP Language 2018-2019 