I want to go to college

By: Michael Lenoch

I want my college decision to be a good one,

For this life-changing choice to be made with a degree of seriousness,

I will therefore decide on a number of principles and ideals;

I want a challenge,

I want the average student to be more intelligent than me,

I want to grow, and learn from my peers,

I want to be social, and on the same level as my peers,

I want to progress myself,

I want to use my peers to build my horizons, and wish they do the same to me,

I want to strive to be better, continually,

I want to propel myself, ever thirsty for more knowledge; hungry for more answers,

I want to establish a degree of camaraderie,

I want an environment that supports both play and study,

I want to get along, be a part, be someone’s friend,

I want to challenge my mind and body; mentally and physically,

I want to join clubs, intramurals, and possibly sports,

I want to be involved in the community,

I want to attend mass as a group regularly,

I want friends who support me for doing so, and accept me for who I am,

I want to be greeted by smiles, and to smile back,

I want lazy days with hot chocolate in the winter, and I want vibrant summer days in which we all go outside and play,

I want to be comfortable, but more often than not, uncomfortable, forced to grow,

I want programs that interest me, and ones that can further shape me as a person,

I want classes that deepen my ability to analyze,

To write, and think,

I want to go to college.

Psychological Tidbit

In the same way we are instructed to re-think the way we define the parameters by which individuals are defined as "disabled", or "sick", or "different", we should assign equal emphasis in promoting the effort of re-defining our fundamental understanding of intelligence. College professors and educators in higher forms of learning tend to be rather rigid in their definition of "intelligence", and should therefore be responsible for the widening of the modern child's currently consolidated imagination and level of creativity. Intelligence refers to one's ability to think in a multitude of conditions, to draw connections from one object to another, and to always be steadfastly thirsty for knowledge.

The Average Sunday Afternoon

While Jessica types until her bone wears away, I feel a sense of jealously coming on, and decide to write something for my blog. Jessica chats over the phone with my father, stressing about her homework to no end as I indulge in a therapeutic web surf, consuming all the media I missed out on during the arduous schoolweek. I act this way almost as if to completely contradict Jessica’s hive-minded, horse-blinders, lab-mouse mentality, so I can step back and laugh at her ridiculously intense level scrupulousness. I do this though, at the risk of my reputation to her and my potential bed time. See by not investing myself at every minute of every possible morsel of free time, I can appear, although maybe only marginally, lazy. But I don’t care. Also, by expending as little energy as possible by procrastinating and not doing my homework until the last minutes of Sunday’s schoolnight, I risk going to bed at a significantly later time, if not date, however less significantly for the latter. While writing this, I contemplate the fact that I had slept for a good two hours or so prior to this writing. I say “Hmm” to my self, not fazed one bit. I look over as Jessica checks Facebook. Not as scrupulous as I once suspected, sister. The truth comes out! I uncharacteristically turn up my iTunes volume level to compensate for her IQ-depleting talk with friend, Grace. I move on, and groove out.

Hippies, What Can You do about Them?

LAUGH AT THEM!

Alas! I Return for Yet Another Critique!

It's been sometime, and I have even gone on the record for saying that I would pursue to create my own website as opposed to reverting to this mere blog. Yet such a task still has not been completed.

So I come to you, loyal fans, with a brief critique: YouTube. It is home to countless morons, hedons, and downright less-than-scrupulous people. With usernames including symbolistic digits such as, "420", or "69", the comments on the video sharing website are inevitably and unavoidably negative. Always claiming one music artist is superior to another, or divulging into irrelevant and uncalled for political, societal, and racist debate and commentary, YouTube commentors are a violent breed.

As is true with all forms of art, there is absolutely no way to please all potential consumers of a given art form, other than to not bother with creating the art in the first place, and letting people get on with their needlessly and perpetually busy lifestyles. So in short, there is no ubiquitous pleasing of the entire volatile YouTube community. We know for certain that there will always be people there to tell you that you suck, you "fail", you "fail at life", or to more shamelessly, to go "kill yourself". I feel YouTube embodies a virtual space for anonymous public commentary.

Early in the world wide web's infancy, there were charming, little forums in which nearly every member would take the time to explain a detail or a solution to a problem in ostensibly any given hobby's respective message board. Back then, web users never heard of "griefing", or the act of making another user's experience less than ideal, whether that means it takes place in the form of negative comments, "thumbs" down, poor reviews, or other types of internet user-to-user sabotage. Today, whether you're aware of it or not, this is an unfortunate reality of the average person's anonymous internet behavior. It's nigh impossible to join a web forum today without at least at some point encountering a jerk, never receiving a negative comment review, or a "thumbs down" in one form or another.

So, this begs the question, why do people behave this way? Simply put, it's the sense of anonymity the average internet user feels when he or she leaves a comment. Theoretically, a user can leave the deepest, most scarring insult on a contributor's YouTube video, and forget that he or she even did so. When we make verbal mistakes in person, though, even slight name mess-ups, we remember them for weeks afterward. It's clear people perceive the internet as a netherland, a virtual place where nothing so much matters, because anything can happen. Hypothetically, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo, and any other major website could all crash by the skill of a single hacker, and the quickness of his or her mouse. Anything can happen on this internet, and for the most part, the unexpected happens.

The Sign of a New Era

AH, SUBCULTURAL.BLOGSPOT.COM,
You have been good to me, providing a valuable platform to showcase my opinions and ideas for the past two years or so now. Yet it is worth saying that you boast some ungainly un-capabilities, such as, the inability the copy and paste text to post on the blog. You also do not offer the ability for users to post music from say, their soundcloud accounts, or to sync their Facebook accounts with their blogspot ones so that Facebook friends are alerted whenever a new Blogspot entry is added.

So with all the Twitters, those YouTubes, and them Facebooks, Blogspot.com has miserably fell behind the pack of modern blogging tools, and now is a horrible shadow of its once-glorious self that has primative monetizing, writing, and media tools that in my mind, no longer serve to adequately present information and media in a suitably contemporary fashion. I'm sorry Blogspot.com, but we can still be friends, right?

Well now that that's over, I guess I'll start a website of my own! Yep, I've been bored lately, and could desperately go for a challenge (that's not school-related), so what could be more challenging than web design? Now here's what seems to be an even greater challenge at the moment; coming up with a URL domain name!

Now what on earth do I christen my excursion into website mayhem? I'm thinking something lasting, easy-to-spell (to avoid confusion), non-embarrassing, non-German, [my] name, nor video game related. Well if you have any suggesstions, post them in the comments box, and I'm also hoping for a URL name that has .COM available to maximize visitors.

Cheers!

One Glaring American Issue

I can write and argue all day as to what I disagree about American society -- their favorite sports, their political leaders, their military decisions, the foods they eat, the reputations they boast, and the arrogance that they wear on their sleaves. But one problem that is endemic to all of American life is how prevalent industrialism is. Workaholicism, or the hobby of working-overtime seem to be purely American innovations. Wherever you look - in absolutely every sector of our homes and lifestyles - are shaped around work, or recooperating from excessively long hours of it. Our environment, our understandings of happiness, our glorifications of these utterly secular lives have all but aided us in a blatant pursuit to lose sight of quality family and individual values.

We understand happiness in the form of a new iPhone. We see success in a businessman or businesswoman's new Porsche. And most sadistically, we are willing to risk the health and safety of the environment in order to benefit ourselves.

Yet this collective mentality only remains so resilient for the sheer amount of supporters that thrive on its existence for food, secular goods, and most enamoringly, social acceptance. It's like a party. You're either in it or not, and if you're not, or was not at one point or another, you can detect the flaws. And if you are "fortunate" enough not to have ever seen its rough underbelly, then you simply keep sipping your Kool-Aid, and defending your so-called beliefs from the "haters", until one day, you realize it's all a big sham.

Quotable Hasten

Possibly the most charismatic teacher in all of Saint Ignatius College Prep is Mr. James J. Hasten. You will find that his quotes are funny, outlandish, wise, provocative, witty, and poignant, despite oftentimes not making a whole lot of sense.

From the margins of my Intro to Economics spiral notebook are tens of sayings James J. Hasten has gone on the record for. Note that some may be entirely out of context, and therefore may be irrelevant. Get ready to "Zzz" away!

1. "Perceptions govern much of reality."

2. "Do you enjoy your own company?"

3. "There is nothing normal."

4. "Being humorless [in class] is less of an offense than sleeping." (Clearly, he doesn't take to sleeping in class all that well.)

5. "Blackboard economics always works."

6. "The superbowl [is merely made out] to appear it's a bigger event than it truly is."

7. "Experience is a very good teacher."

8. "My two favorite books are The Grapes of Wrath, and Winnie the Pooh."

9. "You are not here [in class] at the end of a spearpoint."

10. "Charity is not a means to produce something."

11. "Nature hates a vacuum."

12. "Ignorance is bliss when it is a folley to be wise. [Which it] ...never is a folley to be wise."

13. "Don't hem, don't haw."

14. "You are tortured what you come to know."

15. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

16. "Don't just give me word-vomit [regurgitation]. Think. Think. Think. Think."

17. "I would rather play golf than work here for free."

18. "Actuarily?"

19. "Do good by doing well."

20. "Adverse selection."

21. "Percentage change saves people from having to withstand calculous."

22. "Ham-handed method -- clumsy, more or less accurate, approximate."

23. "... undaunted in your resolve."

24. "Americans have been pig-head for far too long."

25. "... leaves one more confused than enlightened."

26. "You don't define something inasmuch as you describe it."

27. "Cooperative survival = democracy."

28. "[satirical] Thought to self: don't ruin Mr. Hasten's grand, metaphoric explanation."

29. "Money is meaningless unless you run out of it."

30. "That won't feed the bulldog in terms of economic growth."

31. ...going ganbusters."

32. "The heart of your criticism..."

33. "Here I lead you to the primrose path of error [deceiving lesson]."

34. "You know it as well as you know your name."

35. "Ergo -- Therefore."

36. "Earn a living, and do well in the world."

37. "[Have a] smug satisfaction that you know more than most people."

38. "We may never [fully] eliminate the oscillations of the economic system."

39. "Don't ever let past data lead you to conclude future data."

40. "Mathmatical proclivity."

41. "How much time and money do we have to spend protecting ourselves [referring to military].

42. "[They ] didn't [even] agree on the time of day."

43. "When there's no fault, there's no responsibility [Utilitarian worldview]."

44. "Mightier forces have to be at play... to..."

45. "You know you've arrived when the world comes up with an adjective for you."

46. "It takes a lot of horses to have a horse race."

47. "And oh, by the way... [Very common phrase found in Hastenian language]"

48. "[Sorry Raul,] I don't speak Mexican!"

49. "I think I'm going to join a Monestary."

50. "Poncho, get Raul, and get him a burrito."

51. "French people commonly say, [French accent] oui, oui, I don't care about living."

52. "At college, everyone is a little homesick."

53. "If you don't annoy me, I don;t annoy you."

54. "You seniors, do what you're supposed to do for the next seven days."

55. "Mr. Hasten and YouTube don't belong in the same sentence, it's a contradiction."

56. "For my money, which counts for more than yours. It does."

57. "If you seniors miss the final, you'll have an alternative assignment that is from the lower reaches of hell."

58. "It's not all that much more advanced than rubbing two sticks together to create fire.'

59. "You would hope most people of the adult persuasion would do the same."

60."It's a fun final!"

61. "No one will be adversely affected by the final, unless you are."

62. "I'm not the Holy Roman Emperor, so I have to work for a living!"

63. "I'm consulting -- that's code fo I don't have a job."

64. "Magic. Well, I am. [nods]."

65. "Keynes' writing, while brilliant is difficult to comprehend."

66. "Even a dead cat bounces."

67. "Even an economy that doesn't have way much oompf will be affected by some government spending."

68. "The dog bit me in the thigh, and I had to go to the hospital!"

69. "Take that Goddamn dog away, and shoot Father Ferguson."

70. "It's not for the money why I'm here. It's not. There are ten, or twelve thousand other things."

71. "Well, we've had cocktail parties in class before. I tell you, the students we're actually drinking!"

72. "If I drank, think of what this [class] would be like."

73. "I'm actually part Russian. That's the bad part."

74. "There's no geographical boundary to Poland, which is why everyone attempts to take it."

75. "Oh, and, don't drink too much at a cocktail party, because you're not as funny as you think you are."

76. "Why should I fill out forms if you're failing? Filling out those forms means I would work harder than you. Then who's failing?"

77. (on homesickness) "If what you're missing is worth missing, then good for you."

78. "If leaving high school wasn't bittersweet, then it'd be awful."

79. "Sushi's something you put on a hook. It's bait!"

80. "I was in Zimbabwe for fourty-five minutes. It's true. [nods]"

81. "If I worked for free, then that'd be saying what I'm doing is not worth very much."

82. "Part of the world has become more antiseptic."

83. "We live in a [largely] antiseptic world. Not all for the better."

84. "Students used to give teachers booze as Christmas presents."

85. "The only objective of homework is to complete it, and move on to the next assignment, which is why I don't believe in it."

86. "For virtue's sake! Find something by which to motivate yourself!"

87. "In the 17th Century, in the Netherlands, peopled payed more for tulips than for houses."

88. "... vomiting projectorily at the sight of our national debt."

89. "Economics is a foreign language that happens to be in English."

90. "Some of you [students] are sucking rear-runner."

91. "[If we had school during summer] I would be the least comfortable in this oppressive heat."

92. "Don't give up, you've come a long way, hang in there. In some ridiculous fashion, this will all somehow make you better."

93. "I would be the last person to say that economics explains everything."

94. "Not knowing economics in this day and age renders you illiterate."

95. "You have my best wishes now and forever."

It Makes My Blood Boil

As of late, our dearest religion teacher has taken leave due to a critical fall that has broken her left arm, preventing her from performing various daily acts such as driving and grading papers and the like.

So in her stead, our class has been presented with a clown, a white knight, a theologian, a philospher, a former Marine and alcoholic, a soccer player, a skilled impersonator, as well as a righteous cowboy and conservative, hailing from the wild, wild west -- or as others choose to call it, Texas.

Such a great variety of personalities all invested into one person makes for a highly entertaining, but at the same time, rather disproportionate classroom experience in which various Englishmen, southerners, teenage girls, and the infamous Beavis and Butthead will stop by for tangenital commentary.

So this replacement teacher espouses some highly conservative Catholic views for which may have stemmed from his fight with alcoholism, his experience in the armed forces, his divorced household growing up, and likely from a lack of satisfaction with the Anglican church.

And as I mentioned earlier, I find his class to be quite 'disjointed', or 'uneven' -- probably for his childlike loyalty to the Catholic church in which little questioning seems to occur, and a great deal of condemnation is delivered to my peers. Most of the time, his comments are more backhanded or subtly condescending, but there are instances where he'll scrutinize a classmate head-on -- all the while, implying that he is 'leading by example', he is the righteous one, and that he is the white knight.

In line with the famous quote, "W.W.J.D.", or "What would Jesus do?", I have a hard time fathoming Jesus would so viciously attack or scapegoat the less than pious in our class, and make light of the teachings of Aristotle, Plato, Kant, More, Saint Ignatius, Aruppe, and Day by sprinkling the aforementioned Beavis and Butthead references throughout.

What's more is that this unnamed teacher is well read in some of the most legendary theological and philosophical writings, yet insists on so juvenilely refuting my classmates in favor of a grossly traditional Christian belief. It is my perception that in order to be a fully committed Catholic, one must "make up", or envision the teachings in the Bible for oneself, rather than adhere to a standard, universal belief. (E.g. You believe that Jesus literally roamed the streets of Jerusalem after his resurrection, while I feel that's a merely metaphorical depiction. Now whether you feel that way or not, it's likely for someone that has an interpretation of the Bible that does.)

To be completely lucid, I only take offense with said teacher's remarks for he clearly has been unexaggeratably insititutionalized from school to the United States Marines, and yet enduring so much in hopes of achieving ambitions so tall, constantly reverts to childish remarks, references, jokes, anecdotes, and even scolding.

While I realize those mannerisms aren't exactly meant to be taken seriously, it's not only that he oftentimes lacks seriousness in the classroom, but rather it's the amount of disrespect I feel he has for our class. He will assume to [seemingly] no end that students attending our school have ubiquitously engaged in casual sex and autoeroticism, take, or smoke drugs, and drink alcohol. Now this is particularly where I find reproach with such a teacher's principles.

Regarding students overwhelmingly as smokers, drinkers, and former virgins is not the kindest and most reverent outlook to commit to. (And in fact, almost makes me wish to engage in all three this instant out of active rebellion. Although I admit I would achieve nothing but a warm sense of pride in doing so.) But my point is that being fully "Catholic", at least in my mind, involves giving people the benefit of the doubt, allowing them to redeem themselves, and treating them as one may wish to be treated. That certainly doesn't seem to be the case with this teacher.

For this, I thought it'd be appropriate to bring up the etymology of the word "Catholicism", or "Catholic" -- according the Etymonline.com, a widely trusted etymology database, the word, "Catholicism" dates back to the mid 14th century, and implies "of the doctrines of the ancient Church," or "universally accepted". I can only speak for myself, but I interpret the phrase, "universally accepted" as one having no barriers for which to respect another human being in fashion that Jesus may have, and being fully willing to acknowledge and include all people of all backgrounds, religions, sexual and political orientations, despite past decisions made in his or her life, and definitively because it is our Catholic belief that every person has been made in God's image. Now whether you believe that or not, it's sure as hell to contribute in some way, big or small, to making the world that we live in a progressively better place in which to thrive and love.


And to that end, I realize this teacher for which I clearly have mixed opinions, in fact has an ego the size of Texas, principals as insurmountable as claiming America for oneself, and is as hypocritical as the Scribes and the Pharisees.

A Stolid Classroom

A stolid classroom,
No laughing, winking, pointing, or talking allowed,
Utmost attention at all times is an expectation,
The man conducting the class, fearful to say the least,
With his eternally stern disposition and his peppery black moustache to boot,
He plays no games, and makes no [good] jokes,
He is not your friend, nor anyone else's for that matter,
But he is a cipher, a means by which to absorb useless knowledge of science,
Equations, facts, and answers are by what a student lives by,
Attentiveness, though is what said student fears,
For staring in such a man's eyes is likely to cause one grave insanity,
The intense look in his eyes is indescribable, it intimidates, it confounds, it is profound, but never spontaneous,
And by that regard, it is like an equation -- it is standard, and it is routine,
The class for which I speak boasts an undoubtedly militaristic atmosphere,
Students quiver for fear of being called on,
The instructor will uproar should an answer be incorrect,
Students will cry with joy should this instructor be absent on any given day,
His rudeness is only paralleled by his formality and seemingly insatiable expectations,
His expressions convey complete orderliness, discipline, and decades of arduous work,
No one knows for certain how to please this disgruntled old man,
A correct answer is met by a retort that in essence, says 'You should have gotten this correct anyway', nothing especially gratifying, but everything especially penalizing,
He shoots down one's most earnest efforts, and rarely approves of much of anything,
He is strict, does his work respectfully, formally, and sternly through clearly traditional means,
Do your best, and you'll get a half-hearted 'Way to go',
Fail, greatly or slightly, and you'll encounter the most humiliating body language and unrelenting verbal abuse imaginable,
There is little margin for error, if ever in this militaristic science class for which I bear each day.