Who Needs Sleep?

            After a relaxing first week of the second semester, it seems that everyone is ready to kick it into high gear. To most students, this means working hard in school, doing a substantial amount of homework after school, as well as staying fully committed to extracurricular activities. Somewhere in between all of that, students will find time to get some sleep in. But with all the hard work they are doing, are they really getting enough? This video should give some insight as to whether or not high school students get enough sleep at night:

            There were a couple things that I saw as a mirror image of myself. The girl with the coffee, for example, drinks it to wake herself up every day from being up late the night before because she was working. I drink some form of a caffeinated drink, which is generally tea, in order to get myself going in the morning when I am at school. The fact that many students go to bed at or after 11:00 also resonated with me because I often find that with my hectic schedule and heavy workload, I am struggling to make it to bed before 11:00. Although I am supposed to be getting more sleep than my parents, that is never the case, as I am going to bed later than them, yet waking up at the same time.

            I then started to wonder why teenagers in our society have placed such little value on sleep. It seems that there have been extremely high expectations set on getting high grades, excelling in extracurricular activities, and getting into prestigious schools, yet none on leading a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Health and sanity have been thrown out the window at some point in this race for excellence that we have in our society.

            But why? Why has our society stopped valuing the simple things such as sleep? At a certain point, doesn’t it seem more worthwhile to get more sleep and feel rested, or are we all just wired to work nonstop? When does this deprivation of sleep for the sake of success become too much?

The Meta Post: A Summary of My Growth in the Blogging Experience

            Our assignment: write one blog post a week during the semester. It seems like a fairly simple task to accomplish. Yet the amount of thought that went into these posts turned out to be much more than I had ever anticipated. Looking back, I think my style of blogging has definitely changed, but not necessarily all good changes. Two changes that stood out to me when reading back through all of my posts were my analysis of articles, and use of quotes from the article, and my use of questions to trigger responses.

In my very first post, A Jobless Nation, I decided to quote the author of an article I had read. I took an entire block of quote, saying that the author “ ‘understands that we all want paychecks—or at least money. We want food, shelter, clothing, and all the things that money can buy us. But do we all really want jobs?’” This year we talked a lot about analyzing quotes in class. One key rule that I will always remember is to never leave a quote standing alone. You have to analyze your quote. In this particular post, I did not do a sufficient job of analyzing quotes. I may have thought that I did, but I clearly did not. Another rule I remember was to only quote what you are prepared to analyze. No offense to myself, but I don’t believe I was prepared to analyze almost two whole lines of text. But then as the semester went on, I regretfully never showed any growth in this department. I never really took a chance in trying to analyze many direct quotes. All I did was pretend like I had by summarizing the points of an article pertaining to the topic I was discussing. In one of my later posts, Television: Exaggeration at its Finest… I simply stated that “according to one article, the show helps people be more accountable for themselves in terms of their workouts and their diets,” instead of actually taking a quote and using it to make my case stronger. I did this same thing in many of my posts. I would read an article pertaining to my topic and summarize. I have now learned my lesson that this is not an effective strategy, and I think I should work on that in the future when I am blogging.

Although I was unable to grow in terms of analyzing evidence in my blogs, I think I did grow in terms of the questions I asked at the end of my posts. In one of my first posts, The Price of Modern Society, which I happened to think was one of my strongest, I asked, “What has made Starbucks this huge phenomenon? Why is it that we allowed Starbucks to impact our culture so much?” These questions are way too general. There is a wide range of answers I could have gotten that had nothing to do with my post, simply because I did not as a specific enough question. However, in my later posts, I think I was able to come up with more specific questions that triggered better quality responses. For example, in my post, When Athletes Burn Out, I asked, “Why are the expectations now so high for young athletes to perform at a high level?” This question was a lot more specific. I didn’t ask a general question like “Why do athletes burn out?” Instead I took a much more specific approach and asked why expectations are set so high for young athletes.

I have learned through the types of posts I have put up the kinds of things that I value. For instance, I know based on my posts that I value social aspects of American life. I knew this before but I confirmed that I value education and competition. The experience of looking back over all my posts allows me to realize the things that I truly feel passionate about. It also shows me that in the future I should look more towards these topics to talk about in my posts. Overall, the experience of blogging has been a very interesting one, and I definitely look to use this experience to improve upon my writing skills in the future.

When Athletes Burn Out

            This weekend, more than ever, I realized that although it might have been a disadvantage in the short run for me to start specializing in tennis earlier than most of the girls I am competing against did, in the long run, it may serve its benefits. I recently switched coaches and got a lot more serious about my tennis, (I was before but not like I am now) and am seeing huge improvements in my game. However, as I look around at the girls I am competing against, I don’t see the same improvements. I see either plateaus or even decreases in performance.

At first, I thought it was a discipline or motivation issue, but then after looking into it some, I realized that specializing in one sport at a young age and overtraining causes athletes, not just tennis players, to suffer from “burnout,” or overtraining syndrome. I came across an article that answered my question of why a lot of girls that I used to consistently lose to would never be able to beat me now. That answer is “burnout.” According to the article, it’s very easy for an athlete to decrease performance in a sport if they had specialized early in the sport and/or had excessively trained for that particular sport. Athletes are not machines; they will eventually get tired of training, and if they are pushed too hard, they will break and interest lever will drop. Therefore, it’s almost a given that performance will drop as well.

To me, I think that it’s amazing how much sports have changed since my parents were kids. My dad explained to me that back when he was growing up, there was much more emphasis on growth and enjoyment in a sport rather the excelling at it, and rarely would somebody specialize in one sport before highschool. What I really wonder though, is what caused sports to change so much? Why are the expectations now so high for young athletes to perform at a high level?

My Super Sweet, Ignorant of Reality Sixteen

            Today I was watching My Super Sweet Sixteen, in my opinion, one of the most insane shows on MTV. Every time I watch an episode, I cannot believe what I’m seeing. On one episode, a girl expects her parents to get her a custom car for her birthday, and on another, a boy orders his dad to get him a $30,000 watch just because “it’s fly.” The kids on this show are so ignorant of reality it’s sickening sometimes. In case you’ve never seen the show before, here’s a clip that basically sums the show up:

            Here we see a spoiled teenager upset because her mom gave her a car at the wrong time and apparently, it wasn’t even the right car. This mom is obviously depriving her child… (note the sarcasm). What I don’t understand though is why. Why do parents allow their kids to get this way, and more importantly, why is this nonsense then put on television? Most of the time, the characters on TV shows are relatable, but the kids on this show in particular have nothing in common with most of the kids in America watching the show. It’s even been discovered that approximately every 1 in 5 children in America live below the poverty line. And even for kids like me living in a very privileged area of the United States, none of the things these kids get on the show would most kids here expect the get in their wildest imaginations. According to an article I read, these parties can cost as much as $200,000. There’s no way my parents would ever pay that much for anything in my life besides perhaps for college, (and honestly I don’t really know how much college costs so I don’t know how much they’d pay).

            This show is completely ignorant of reality in the United States. Most birthday parties are spent in someone’s basement drinking soda and watching movies, yet it’s been projected to us through shows like these that having a huge birthday bash is a must. Why, though? I just can’t understand why these shows are on TV. I watch them from time to time just to see how crazy people are, but then I always ask myself, what kind of value does a show like this have? Does anybody have sanity, or am I the only one who thinks shows like these are crazy?