What Are the Odds?

Last year I learned a new game. It's called What Are the Odds and how it works is person A suggests something foolish for person B to do and asks what the odds are. Person B then chooses a number (usually 10) and person C will count down from 3. After 1, person A and person B will simultaneously say a number between 1 and 10. If it is the same number, person B has to do what person A asked. The higher the odds, the less likely person B is to have to complete the task.

Recently, many of my friends have been asking about when I will know if I was accepted to the schools I applied to transfer to. I've been trying not to get my hopes up because frankly, I have no idea what the odds are. I know that often a higher percentage of transfer applicants are accepted than freshman applicants and it is a smaller pool but I have no idea how I stack up against the other applicants. Basically, it's just caused me a lot of stress so far. But that's not what got me thinking about odds. Last night I was talking with a friend and we got into a deep conversation about family and illness and I was recounting my mom's cancer story. She had a unique type of tumor that affects only 1 in 1,000,000 people and at the time there was a 1 in 5 rate of survival of 10+ years. Needless to say, it was an extremely unique, unfortunate circumstance and it was hard to believe she could be that 1/5 of 1/1000000. It still chokes me up to talk about it because we got so lucky.

We love to hear story of people defying the odds. Whether it's the Cubs rising up to the occasion and coming close to fulfilling the Back to the Future prediction of them winning the 2015 World Series or someone conquering cancer, we always want to believe that the odds can be in our favor. We want to believe we are the exception to the rule and that miracles can happen every day and to ordinary people. Disney taught us to believe that. Of course there also movies like "He's Just Not That Into You" and unfortunate, sad cancer stories that come along to remind you that's not always the case, but I guess the point is that even though you're not always the exception and the odds won't always be in your favor, to believe that they can be and believe it'll work out in the end.

Procrastination

Things you can be doing instead of what you're supposed to be doing:
1. Check Facebook on your computer
2. Start stalking someone from your past
3. Start stalking someone else you find on their page
4. Realize you're a stalker and close Facebook
5. Move to your phone and check Instagram
6. Then Twitter
7. Then Facebook again, just for good measure
8. Send a snapchat using those fun face filters
9. Spend 5 minutes deciding on a playlist to listen to
10. Read some articles on Hello Giggles, TFM, The Odyssey, Spoon University, TSM, Her Campus, Buzzfeed or other source of news and posts like this
11. Open Netflix but decide you're not ready to commit to a full 42 minute procrastination session
12. Call your mom or dad
13. Call an old friend
14. Check what homework you should be doing that you aren't
15. Look up when your next tests are
16. Stress about how you don't know any of the material
17. Decide to change focus
18. Start thinking about what you still have at home and what you need to pack for fall break
19. Come up with a plan for spring break
20. Or maybe winter break first
21. Daydream about snowy days inside with hot chocolate
22. Remember that where you are it mostly just gets cold, not snowy, and that class is never cancelled
23. Pout about the impending cold
24. Remember its still fall and mentally remind yourself to appreciate the trees tomorrow and grab a PSL
25. Check social media (again)
26. Look for new people to follow because there isn't aren't new/interesting posts on your feed
27. Calculate how badly you can do on what you're procrastinating without messing up your grade completely
28. Look up pictures of puppies (new personal favorite puppstagram - Kono_In_Orlando )
29. Watch videos on EllenTube
30. See what Zac Efron has been up to lately
31. Go to a news website thinking you might actually be an informed citizen
32. Decide the news isn't interesting and go back to looking at pictures of Zac
33. Watch 17 Again or Neighbors
34. Realize it's been two hours and you're far enough behind that it's time to finally get it together or just give up and go to sleep because let's be honest, one grade isn't going to ruin your life.

The Best Four Years

Adults love to say that college is the best four years of your life. During that transitional period between high school and college, some look down on those who thought high school was the best four years for a variety of reasons. However, I don't understand why college is supposed to be the best four. If it is, that means the rest of your adult life (the longest part of your life, might I add) is your decline. You peak in college and then spend the rest of your life knowing you'll never be as happy as you were then. I hope college isn't the best four years of my life. I want to make a life and a name for myself. I want to work my dream job and have a family and spend the majority of my life happy, not just 4 years. So for everyone not going abroad because they love college too much, or trying not to graduate early, just remember there's so much more to life than four years of tailgates and dartying. 

Hate Lists

This is probably the best thing I ever learned from my high school best friend, Monica. It's not as malicious as it sounds, I promise. A hate list is simply a way to get out all of your angry thoughts and they work surprisingly well. You take out a piece of paper and a pen and start writing. 

Example: 

I hate the color pink. I hate flamingos. They're stupid animals why are they popular now. I also hate pineapples. They are a food you eat, not an accessory. I hate girls and pettiness and college and this state and how boring my German class is and being talked at. (Note: this is not all necessarily true) 

Basically just a chain of things that are currently getting under your skin. It works great 

A) because then you don't have to find a physical person who will listen to you rant 

B) you're not talking to yourself or a stuffed animal or other inanimate object

C) it's a great stress reliever that doesn't require breaking a sweat. 

D) you don't have to worry about offending anyone or giving off the impression that you're a mean, spiteful person. 

Next time you're stressed I would highly recommend trying it. And if you're worried about harming the environment with the paper you'll be waiting, it works just as well in a word document. 

Education Reform

Like many Americans, I spent my Wednesday night watching the Republican Presidential Candidate Debate. One of the topics addressed, as it usually is, was education reform. Former Florida Governor Bush spoke about higher standards for schools and how he improved the Florida school system. Here’s my problem with education reform: how schools test what students are learning is by tests. The main problem with schools is tests. In some of my high school classes we had so many tests we didn’t have time to learn the material before we were supposed to be tested on it. The more tests teachers are required to give, the less they care. Teachers, the good ones, want to learn from their students. Not only that, but some of the best teachers I had were the ones who let us, or rather, encouraged us, to discuss current events. The teachers who taught to a curriculum and didn’t stray were boring, less invested, and didn’t give us, as students, a reason to want to learn the material. Students want to learn about things relevant to their lives. No one really enjoys high school calculus because everyone has the same problem with it – we’re unable to see how it’ll be useful in life. No one is going to go home and say "Hey mom, let me show you how to take the derivative of a number with a lot of variables," but they might go home and say "Mom, what's your opinion on [insert current event here]," and when she asks why, you'll respond, "my history teacher brought it up in class today and I think [insert opinion here]," and you could have a great discussion about what's going on in the world with your parents. With history, economics, and like subjects that can be related to the current world, the teachers who embrace the media are going to be the ones who are remembered and who teach the most. I can’t tell you what I learned in eighth grade, but I can tell you that my history teacher started every class with current events, and that when I got home from school and my mom asked what I learned at school that day, I would talk to her about that class. When Nelson Mandela passed away, we not only talked about it in my European history class, but were incentivized to learn more about his legacy by being offered extra points if we watched Invictus and wrote about what we took away from the movie. The summer before 11^th grade I went on a summer program that took me to the concentration camps in Poland. I came back to school educated and wanting to share what I had learned. Luckily I was taking American History II, which covered America from the Industrial Revolution through present day. I got to know my teacher by bringing up my travels and I ended up making a presentation to share with him and my class with pictures of things I had seen and stories I was told. He kept the presentation and is able to still use it today to show his classes what the camps look like now and give them different perspectives. This was possible because he liked to talk about current history in the making, not just what came out of our text books. School is not just about what’s in the book; it’s about challenging your mind, learning how to form opinions and informing yourself on the past and the future. The most life-changing, important class I ever took was broadcast journalism. Not because I learned how to write news or because I directed a music video, but because the teacher genuinely cared about all of his students. He taught us not to play the blame game and to be proactive with our work. He showed us what we were capable of, and always required we were well informed of what was going on in the community, as well as around the world. That’s not to say calculus and biology aren’t important, but for many teenagers high school is when you grow, form study habits,  and decide what kind of student will be. It’s the opportunity for teachers to get you interested in learning, to show you that the world is bigger than just high school, and to make you a more globally aware citizen, and that can’t be measured by standards. 

Diamond Rings and Old Barstools

In my short life I have gone through a number of best friends and boyfriends and with every new boyfriend comes the test – how will they interact with the best friend. In middle school, although relationships weren’t serious, they were a big deal. The most serious of my middle school boyfriends was at the peak of my elementary school best friendship. Since I knew him from religious school and her from public school the two had never met. On Halloween, he came with us trick or treating. Let’s just say things did not end well. The two hated each other. That was more or less a microcosm of my grade school relationships. This weekend, my current boyfriend got to meet 3 of my closest friends. In the shower, I had the line of “Diamond Rings and Old Barstools” (Tim McGraw) stuck in my head that goes “some things just don’t mix like they should” and I was thinking how happy I was that my boyfriend and best friends got along. It struck me for the first time that the test was a test of both parties. I had always thought it was just the boyfriend trying to impress the best friends and prove his worthiness, but I realized today it’s really a test of friendship too. Real best friends want you to be happy and therefore want to like your significant other as much as you do. It makes a difference if they’re trying the same way he is to show him that you have really good friends. You know you’ve picked the right boyfriend and best friends if they get along because A) they’re all great and fun and B) they want to get along because they care about you and your happiness.

So here's to you Max, Lily and Leah  

(Keep up the winning streak Mets!)

(The Jesse to my Woody)

(Polaroids aren't actually meant to be shaken)

A Rant A Day...

I've gotten accustomed to having to wait 10 minutes for hot water in my house. Granted, the water does eventually get really hot, just not right away, and I'm an impatient person. I was never big on washing my hands at home because of this - cold water is not a good friend of mine. At school, however, there was always hot water on command - it was great (it's the little things in life). Because of this, I began to really enjoy washing my hands because of the nice warm water and the clean feeling afterwards. However, with this, I became mildly more germaphobic. Once my hands are nice and clean I become reluctant to touch door knobs or other things I would classify as dirty, especially in public. I was never a big fan of public toilets or bathrooms in general so having to touch dirty door knobs after making my hands nice and clean is basically a nightmare. What I've noticed, however, is that this problem can be avoided entirely, depending on how manual or automatic the bathroom is. It's really great when everything is automatic, but only works if everything is. Example: automatic sink, automatic soap, automatic hand dryer - doing great so far, automatic door or no door - perfect! Door handle - ruins everything. As soon as I have to touch the door, the entire hand washing process just seems like a waste of water, soap and energy. Now lets go to the flip side: manual sink and soap - turn on with dirty hands, take soap with dirty hands, clean hands, now what? Take nice, clean paper towel, turn off dirty sink handle and open dirty door and make it out fresh as ever. And now that I've taken you through a nice, little rant about public restrooms and dirty door knobs, don't forget to wash your hands.