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Fun Holidays This Month
The month of March often has a negative stigma attached by students due to the lack of vacation time. However, there are some fun holidays celebrated during the month to look forward to, including some widely celebrated and some lesser known events.
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March 20: the first day of spring. Though there still is a chill in the air, winter officially changes to spring in late March. If winter is a favorite season, some may be saddened by the transition, the promise of warmer (and longer) days ahead is something to be excited about for lovers of spring.
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(Also) March 20: Extraterrestrial Abductions Day. Earth dwellers beware! An annually celebrated holiday, holidayinsights.com warns people to be ready to run and hide from any aliens that may wish to abduct humans into their aircrafts.
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March 23: National Puppy Day. Created in 2006 by celebrity Pet & Home Lifestyle expert Colleen Paige, March 23 is a day to celebrate puppies and encourage adoptions.
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March 29: National Mom & Pop Business Owners Day. Though the creator is unknown, this holiday was created to celebrate small business owners. National Mom And Pop Business Owners Day celebrates small businesses and their contributions to the economy.
Though March typically offers little for vacation time and ends up being quite boring, there are many holidays that can be celebrated that are fun and can even help contribute to local businesses.
The Tet Offensive
Tet is an exteremely important Vietnamese holiday that celebrates the Lunar New Year. Prior to 1968 there seemed to be unspoken agreement between the warring parties (South Vietnamese Army/US vs. North Vietnamese Army/Viet Cong) that there would be a halt in fighting during the Tet festivities. This all changed in January of 1968 when General Vo Nguyen Giap of the North Vietnamese Army carried out surprise attacks across southern Vietnam.
General Giap hypothesized that these attacks would lead to the eventual collapse of Southern Vietnamese forces. Giap also hoped that these attacks would intimidate the South Vietnamese Army’s powerful ally (the US) and cause the US to pull out from aiding the southern forces. As a distraction from the true attacks, Giap’s troops heavily attacked a US Marine garrison in Khe Sanh. As expected by Giap and his troops, US President Johnson focused on defending Khe Sanh while Giap’s troops carried out their true goals.
While the attention was focused on Khe Sanh, all the while Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers were able to invade and attack thirteen cities in southern Vietnam as Tet celebrations went on. On top of those cities, important/government buildings were also attacked and there were over one hundred attacks in total. This included a risky Viet Cong attack on the US Embassy in Saigon. What came to be known as The Battle of Hue also was part of the Tet Offensive.
Hue was a city where a majority of battle took place. Before the arrival of US and southern forces, Viet Cong soldiers destroyed culturally significant temples, monuments, etc, killed over twenty eight hundred civilians who were said to have ties to the South Vietnam Army, and threw their bodies in a mass grave. Inevitably, Giap’s Northern forces and Viet Cong soldiers were subdued by Southern and US forces. Their defeat was due to the fact that they attempted to carry out too many attacks, in various areas, over a very short period of time. Giap was over ambitious.
The Tet Offensive showed that the Vietnam War was certainly not close to an end and caused the US to send an additional 200,000 soldiers to Vietnam to continue fighting. It also caused President Johnson to limit bombing areas in north Vietnam and pursue further negotiations to end the Vietnam War peacefully.
I Hate Myself
I hate myself
The words come to mind like a bullet: fast, ripping through walls of substance in a single second. I cannot bring myself to utter them because there is a finality in voicing this thought; as much as it is true, I wish it false.
I hate myself when I cough: gulping air, intaking breaths that stab pain and frustration into my overused muscles. It has been three months of this, and I often wonder if one step away from an ill peer, one dollop of hand sanitizer, could’ve saved me.
I hate myself when I look in the mirror: the big one, reflecting my bed where I sit writing this blog. I envision what I could be — an idealistic view that I will forever reach to obtain. I glare at the blemishes that speckle my skin, the thickness of my thighs, the dullness to my eyes that life has put there.
I hate myself when I fail. I miss homework assignments on the daily, so afraid of imperfection that I refuse to try. Hell, I’m pretty sure I am close to ten blog posts behind my classmates. Each instance is a chink in my soul, breaking down the wins until I only recall my flaws, my guilt, bright in Braille on my arms.
I hate myself, but I am still moving. Perhaps that counts for something.
Fear
Being as the Ap tests are only weeks away and every Ap student is simply terrified, I thought there is no better way to express such a fear then in the form of a blog post. As the days slowly creep away I feel as though my best bet at getting through such a hurtle in my life is to simply not go. I’m tempted to “come down with something” on the day of, to avoid the confrontation all together. Im fearful I will walk in and my pencil will be out of lead. I’m fearful my brain will simply decided to stop working within the first five minutes of the exam. However, most importantly I’m fearful of the fear. I feel as though by such a point in my junior year I should feel prepared enough to take the Ap test, and yet I don’t. Of course I know not to use the words it, this, and you on my paper because the writing will appear to be lazy. Of course I now know how to implement words such as syntax, diction, and pacing into my writing. Of course I know each body paragraph of a well written essay must start with an argument, so well written, the reader will immediately think of the claim from the one sentence. Of course I know all of these things, but doesn’t every other student there? How do I be different, how do I stand out enough to get a 4 instead of a 3? I want the 97 dollars I put down, to take such an awful test, to be worth every penny. I want to feel confident going into testing day, I want to feel smart, as if I can do anything. I want to do good, but the fear inside of me, twisted up within my veins and rooted at my heart, is making such a task nearly impossible.
Eve Holbrook
Tiny House, Big Benefits
It has come to my attention that living in a tiny house when I’m older will benefit me in more ways than just satisfying my need for one. I could go on and on, but for starters, tiny houses can help you to save tons of money, live a greener lifestyle, save tons of time, make room for nature, take your home on the road, bring out your creativity, make things the way you like it.
Picture this: you just graduated college. It is time to find a place to live. Should you move back home with your parents, rent an apartment, or buy a house that you probably can’t afford? None of the above! Build yourself a tiny house! Make it just the way you like it. When living in a tiny house, you don’t have to spend a ton of money on fen, property taxes, heating and cooling expenses, general maintenance, or a mortgage. Also, tiny houses consume significantly fewer resources to heat, cool, and construct the house. Tiny houses take up less space and require less electricity than the average house. After a long day of working at your new job, do you really want to come home and have to complete a bunch of house chores? Well, in a tiny house, it won’t take you nearly as long to clean the floors, etc. compared to how long it would take to complete the same tasks in an average sized house. Want to travel the world, or easily relocate but have the comfort of sleeping in your own bed every night? You can easily transport your tiny house! Just put it on some wheels and attach it to the back of your car. Get creative with how you want to organize all of your belongings in such a small space because in the end, it is your tiny house after all, and you can design it to be just the way you like it.
Whether you are retiring, or just kicking off your life in your own, tiny houses are the way to live.
– Isabella Dube
Self Motivation
Oftentimes, motivation and having the ability to motivate yourself, is the hardest task of all. Self motivation is challenging mostly because no on else can help you with it… this is something you must achieve on your own. If you are someone who struggles with being able to encourage themselves, three major techniques may help. This includes self bribery, the “I can” mentality, and knowing when to take a break.
For starters, when it comes to self motivation, there is nothing wrong with a bribe. You can ask any parent and they’ll tell you that when all else fails, go for a bribe. In most cases, bribery is a cop-out, but sometimes it’s the only thing that works. In the case of self encouragement, this may mean telling yourself that if you achieve a goal or finish a task, you’ll treat yourself to a movie, or a manicure, or a day trip, or whatever else resonates with you. Sometimes, going back to the basics really makes a difference.
Additionally, it’s important to always maintain the “I can” mentality. Many of us doubt ourselves and begin on the path to achieving a certain goal with a negative mindset. That negativity could be the difference between meeting and exceeding, or not even partially fulfilling a given goal. The moment an individual tells themselves that they won’t be able to achieve a goal for whatever reason, their chances of success immediately begin to deteriorate.
Finally, at some point brute force and tenacity begin to not be enough, and a break is needed. As much as hard work and perseverance are necessary to motivate yourself, too much of anything is a bad thing. Knowing when to take a step back, and giving yourself a much needed timeout, helps avoid burnout and poor consequences in the long run.
At the end of the day, self motivation means something different for each individual person. For me personally, these techniques tend to steer me in the right direction. Unfortunately, these same techniques may not be possible solutions for anyone else. The key is to experiment and find your own perfect combination.
Music, Yes’m
My headphones are nestled in the crannies of my ears nearly every free interlude. The five minutes between classes, on the way home, working on an extensive project, laying in my bed in the dark. I need the sound, the distraction from thinking. I need the full sound of a cello, smooth piano, the deep hum underneath the fast pace of a pop song, the synth the drives every 80s hit that I’ve listened to a thousand times. It’s almost just noise at this point, yet still, with my mind empty, a feel every note and take in every sound. The isolation of my own world with my own sounds, not the cars speeding by, the conversations of the people that pass me, my footsteps on the concrete. All I hear is the song, and all I feel is the sound.
I sometimes lay on the floor of my bedroom, my eyes closed, floating in what feels like a pool with sound surrounding me. I mouth the words, and sometimes I lay completely still, but remain nowhere near a passive listener.
I imagine a world that represents the song, a scene of a film in which the sound would be heard over the action or in the background. I see the colors that a song emits, whether it is more of a neon sign or the soft light of sun on a picnic blanket.
I tap my fingers on my leg or my desk or the back of my phone, hopping between the bass or the drum beat or the different notes of the singer’s voice. I get lost, trying to listen to every part of the music, honing in on a separate aspect one at a time, then coming out of that focus to be welcomed by a swell of sound flooding in all at once.
I don’t mind the silence, but the sounds of every day don’t do it for me anymore.
Signs of Spring
Although March for many people may seem like a dreaded month, there is much to look forward to with the sun shining and the promise of a brighter and better tomorrow. I believe March receives a bad reputation solely because of its connotation with tireless days and no real holidays as well as the threat of snow falling or the mud season commencing. However, the month of March can bring about a more joyful mindset.
March is really the last month of winter each year, the warmth of the sun peaks its head out, while the cold hands of Mother Nature start to lose their grip on her control of the frigid weather. March not only brings about the official beginnings of spring, but some of the physical signs of spring too. In may not be that buds are blooming, but just the sweet smells that fill the air. Just outside of windows are birds chirping, bringing in the news of creatures coming back to earth’s surface after months of hibernation or migration. It is finally the time to close the doers on winter and its bleakness and instead look forward to days filled with sunshine and smiles.
March is this transition and instead of being seen as a dull and uninteresting time of the year, maybe a closer look at what actually occurs during this time would give it a different connotation. March should not be seen in any drear light, but as a time of new opportunity and beginnings, for the first hopeful signs of spring are already surrounding us, if we would only open our eyes and look.
Self Care
Emma Gosselin
As I was scrolling through thesaurus.com trying to find the perfect adjective for my podcast, I realized something; I realized that a lot of the words and phrases I use daily, probably have a different dictionary definition than personal definition. As an example, I will use the word lit (which I say way too often). The dictionary definition reads “past tense and past participle of light” (merriam-webster.com), but my personal definition just describes something that is super fun and cool. Another phrase I use too often is self-care, and once again, my definition is very different from the dictionary definition. Merriam-Webster says self-care is “care for oneself” but I say self-care is something else.
As someone who speaks English and a very tiny amount of Spanish on a daily basis, I trust dictionary definitions and follow them to the best of my abilities. In other words, I’ve never disagreed with a definition of a word, until now. Although I don’t think the definition of self-care is wrong, I don’t think it is completely correct either. I think the definition is missing a certain feeling that I get when I think of self-care. Personally, when I think of self-care I get a very relaxed and relatively relieved feeling, whereas when I read the dictionary definition, I feel like I’m sick and need to care for myself in order to get better. If I could change the definition of self-care, I’d change it to anything that makes oneself feel zen. The dictionary definition and my definition may not seem very different, but with context they are. Take “I didn’t do my homework today.” as an example. If the reason why I didn’t do my homework is self-care, I personally mean I didn’t do it because I needed a day off and to be free. From the dictionary’s perspective, it seems as though I did my homework in hopes of making myself healthy again. Even right now, I know this blog post is definitely not that great, but my excuse is self-care; I’m running low on good ideas and need to let my brain refresh for a week before coming back strong with a better topic.
Thornton Academy - AP Language 2018-2019 