My First Poetry Blog Post: A Poem I Really Like

This poem is written by Wilfred Owen, a wartime poet who captured every horror of war with harsh but honest words:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.


Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.


In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.


If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.


Just like I myself have done, I imagine many first-time readers wonder what the "Old Lie" is and then look it up, just to punch them in the gut. Here, I'll spill the beans: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, it is sweet and honorable to die for your country.

Btw I'm just copying my essay word for word lol, but the point still stands.

Standardized Testing

About a month ago, I received my score of the two available tests that are used to gauge high school students’ “college readiness”, and it wasn’t the SAT. I took the October ACT, and like any standardized test I have taken, it was certainly no fun. More than a million high school students take the ACT each year, and each student goes through four hours of tiring testing. I’m certainly no advocate for standardized tests in general, but I do see their purpose. The ACT is an exam used by most colleges to help them make admissions decisions. Grades, G.P.A., availability of activities and extracurriculars of students are all relative to what school a student goes to. The ACT, however, establishes one common criterion that can be used to compare all applicants, transcending this variability. Standardized tests focus on important basic skills that all students need to master. Even so, how well this test represents the students is a question that’s worth considering.

There so many variables that determine students' scores that create a system that's not entirely fair. First off, one well known problem is that standardized tests favor those who are high in socio-economic ladder. Money can get you special resources such as books, online practice tests, and even special tutors. All these resources will help a student better prepare and as a result, achieve a higher score. Furthermore, these students who don’t have the money typically go to schools in a low socioeconomic area. These schools receive less funding than the rich private schools and this once again leads to fewer resources and less preparation. There is a clear socio-economic gap that gives way to an uneven playing field, a field that companies such as the CollegeBoard and ACT inc. ironically seem to be against.

Standardized tests don’t value creativity, a vital skill in the “real world”. Standardized tests adopt a multiple-choice format where there is one, and only one, correct answer. You’re either right or wrong. Today, our world needs people who can invent things, come up with new and clever solutions to problems. Standardized tests also, as we all know, create stress. We all handle different amounts of stress differently so again, there isn’t a level playing field. When stress becomes too overwhelming, the brain shifts into a “fight or flight” instinct. At this stage, it's really hard, if not impossible, to engage in the higher-order thinking processes in order to correctly answer the test questions.

An interesting thing to note is if you take a look at PISA scores, you can see Finland topped international rankings, and Finland doesn’t use any external standardized tests to score and rank their students. I’m not saying that America should abolish the use of standardized tests altogether and follow Finland's lead, but maybe the emphasis and importance that these tests currently have should be significantly reduced.

OK Boomer

It’s commonly believed that wisdom is associated with old age. The older you are, the more experienced you are. With this experience, members of older generations can pass down valuable knowledge and life experience to the members of the younger generation, so that they can learn how to successfully live their lives. But, is there anything that older people learn from the younger generation –the generation that I am a part of? Well, the world that we live in is constantly changing, and this naturally creates generation gaps. As a result, each generation should have its own qualities, characteristics, and philosophies that are specific to them. This must mean that there are things that older people can learn from our generation, and one major difference between the old and younger generations is the use of technology and its capabilities.

My parents aren’t as fast as I wish they would be when it comes to the use of technology. It can take forever for them to complete simple tasks on a computer, or even to just to scroll through their phone to select an app (Alright, it might not be that long, but it can sometimes feel like ages). For any member of my generation, they could complete these same rudimentary tasks with their eyes closed. When asked to connect old age and technology, there is one immediate image that comes to mind for many of us. We visualize an elderly person needing to be taught how to use the features of the Windows 10 operating system on their computer. It’s a fact of life that as we age, it tends to be harder to grasp new concepts than when we were younger. The world we live in is rapidly changing due to the current swift growth of technology. Ideas can be transported across the globe in seconds, and information can be accessed and readily available to anyone in seconds. Technology constantly reshapes our environment and it is inevitable that the rate at which the capabilities of technology will increase faster and faster. Older generations must adapt to these new developments that didn’t exist when they were younger. Our generation was brought up in a world where this is natural. And now for my attempt at a metaphor. We are all swimmers in this stream of technology, and we all, with varying degrees, must put effort into counteracting its downstream flow. The “effort” that must be applied by everyone is affected by their age: the older you are, the harder it is to adapt to the use of new technology. When it comes to understanding how to use technology, older people can benefit from the knowledge that younger generations have.

Once older people become “technologically literate”, they can still benefit from younger generations by learning the applications of this technology. For example, older people can adopt the practice of almost all teens today: the use of social media. Social media allows you to participate in communities and/or networks that at one time you could not have possibly had access to. It brings the world closer to you. Adopting this practice, for example, can act as a solution to an enormous problem among seniors –loneliness. The recent (and by recent, I mean around the last decade) boom in technology has given us endless ways to keep in contact with our friends, family, or to meet people we have never met before, and this can massively help the elderly overcome social isolation, if the problem may arise. Technology acts as a gateway to a new world, and older people’s unfamiliarity with it makes it something they can learn from our generation to change that.

My Travel Mishap

During the Summer of 2017, my family and I travelled to Tunisia from Chicago to visit my aunt and uncle for 2 months. It was a fun trip and all, from visiting my uncle's candy shop to purchasing illegally made apparel, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. Although the airport experience at Chicago was already unpleasant, with multiple delays, my experience at Tunisia was at a whole other level.

An airport is never a place I like to step foot in. Walking into an airport, I can always feel my heart rate go up for every step I can take. It's almost as if airports are designed for everyone but the passenger. My parents would always tell me when I begin to travel alone, to easily understand the process of flying, it is essential to familiarize yourself with five stages: planning, check-in, security, gate, and boarding. Even then, every visit to the airport must bring at least one disastrous event. This could range from repeated delays to, in my case with coming back home from Tunisia, not being allowed to travel at all.

So here's the full story. We bought our ticket, said our goodbyes, and checked-in to the airport. This was when things got messy. The thing is, my dad did not come with us. And Tunisia has a policy, which my parents never knew of, that in order to travel outside, you must have your paternal figure with you. This essentially meant we trapped ourselves in, and we were stuck in Tunisia till my dad came. School was fast approaching, and a ticket to Tunisia and back for my dad was not cheap. I was also pretty sick of Tunisia, so that didn't help. I was afraid I would become a permanent Tunisian resident and only be able to leave when I'm an adult.

Luckily, my fears were unwarranted and after an hour, we were able to convince the TSA at the airport that calling my father would be enough. After a long call with my dad confirming his identity, we were able to enter the airplane at a minute before departure and finally rest. It seems that the rule was lifted recently, so other travellers would not face the same fate as my family and I.

Dealing with Stress

How do I deal with stress? Procrastinate, clearly! I used to be a huge procrastinator. I’d procrastinate on almost every assignment I needed to complete. I still remember a time back in fourth grade where I didn’t start putting together my science fair project until the day before it was due (and somehow got an A). I always waited the last minute for most of my assignments and usually everything just worked out somehow. Though high school showed me I needed to better manage my time in order to keep up with all my classes and activities, there are times where I’ll just have zero motivation to do any work, such as writing my nonfiction essays. Here, I’ll set up a scenario:

I stare at my laptop screen, barely holding up my head up with my arm. As I try to work on an assignment, my brain begins to offer a new idea instead of working. “Hey, go ahead and postpone your work for just fifteen short minutes. This’ll help you reenergize and get you back into your groove!” My hand begins to unconsciously move the computer’s cursor towards my bookmarked YouTube tab, as I’m in a back and forth debate with myself over whether or not to procrastinate. These almost always end in disaster.

I open up YouTube and start my journey, going to their trending page and selecting the video I find the most interesting. I then let the AutoPlay feature do its thing, and by the time an hour passes by I’m watching the most random and weird videos such as “Jimmy Neutron Happy Family Happy Hour” that are for some reason a thousand times more interesting now that I am procrastinating. I snap back into consciousness realizing that I’ve just spent an hour wasting my precious time. I go back to my assignment, but now, not only do I feel less motivated to do my work, I am more tired than before I took my “little” break. And the cycle repeats all over again, until I’ve felt enough guilt to either force myself to get back to work, or worse, go to bed and just rely on myself to wake up tomorrow and finish it tomorrow.

I try to procrastinate to relieve stress, but in fact it does the opposite. My brain will keep reminding me over and over again of my important tasks, thus clearly causing a lot of stress until the intensity of the reminder is too much and I’m forced to work, or I’m screwed. I feel guilty and unhappy, and it’s really hard to bring myself to stop procrastinating once I have started. Real sad boi hours. 

My most prized childhood possession

Pokémon defined my elementary school experience. I would watch every new episode as it aired live on Cartoon Network, re-watch the few movies they had, and even draw sketches of Pokémon such as Pikachu and Piplup. But during my “phase” I was most obsessed with the trading cards. Although there is a game to these cards, I mainly enjoyed the trading aspect of these cards. I wanted as many high leveled cards as I possibly could get my hands on, and my school was the perfect environment to achieve this goal. I had one main goal before I graduated from elementary school: trade up from a few cards that I bought at Walmart to a Zoroark–a jumbo promo card that was only sold during the premiere of Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions–that one of my classmates possessed.

I brought my Pokémon trading cards to school every day to trade with the other kids. Almost a third of the student body had Pokémon cards, and because of this, everyone was constantly focused on all the deals and trades they could make. This led to a big distraction to schoolwork, and the administration thought it would be necessary to impose some rules: If anyone was caught trading Pokémon cards during class their cards would be taken away from them. Recess changed from that day on. Instead of running around and playing on the monkey bars, we’d all huddle around with our trading cards offering cards we wished to trade. Accordingly, the administration made a slight adjustment to their previous rule: If anyone was caught trading Pokémon cards on school grounds, they would have a special disciplinary meeting with the principle in addition to their previous rule.

Trading Pokémon cards at school almost became like dealing drugs. But this didn’t stop me. We took this seriously. We could not get caught. Desperate circumstances called for extreme measures. I would talk with others about potential deals as we pretended to play during recess like the school administration wanted us to, and when the time came, we’d make the trade at our “secret base”: a rock-climbing wall that caved in with just enough room for two people to be completely hidden.

I remember doing very scummy things (which I do not endorse) to get the Pokémon cards that I wanted, such as forging Pokémon cards by printing the image of a rare card onto one of my cards that no-one wanted. In the height of my trading career, I was stacked with multiple high leveled cards and finally struck a deal for a Zoroark. It was quite the deal; I had to deal a majority of my rare cards to set the trade. When I have finally achieved my goal of having a Zoroark for myself, I began to lose my high for trading. I traded my cards outside of Pokémon cards, with the most notable being an iPod touch, Nintendo DS, or just cold hard cash. Although I have certainly outgrown trading Pokémon cards in its entirety, I still keep my most prized possession with me; a symbol of my elementary school days:

 

Currently being sold on eBay at a price ranging from 50 to 150 dollars.