Of Sponges on Roller Coasters

Jordie Guasch

11.11.10

Pd. 5

Of Sponges on Roller Coasters

Teenagers are like sponges; they are capable of absorbing massive amounts of caffeine, chocolate, greasy foods, and outside influences. However again like sponges, teenagers come in all different shapes and sizes.  Adolescents who can deal with the hardships of their story transitional period where a kid wants to be an adult and the adult still acts like a kid can be contrasted to big sponges. They can absorb all of their trial and errors without all of it bleeding out. However, this only covers a certain amount of teenagers. The remaining teens are ultimately similar to small sponges; they can only soak up so much before the pressure makes them burst. The vacuum that is teenage life is unbearable due to the fact that stress can pose a very heavy burden on these unready backs.

Due to copious amounts of stress teens experience early on in life, consequently they are more likely to engage in risky behavior.  Adolescent emotions are similar to a roller coaster—one moment they’re up and the next they’re down. This makes teens prone to making unwise decisions, such as participating in harmful activities. Some of these dangerous activities include substance abuse, self-mutilation, engaging in criminal activity, and eating disorders. These unwise decisions can be heightened to due the pressures that a teen may feel, whether it comes from the home, school, or peers.  Anxiety caused by family problems such as divorce between parents, the passing of a loved one, or abuse. Obtaining good grades at school or comparing oneself to a higher achieving student can degrade a student’s will to persevere. Friends can cause difficulty in a teenager’s life through fights and rumors.  All of these are ‘normal’ factors of what causes teenagers to stress out and what makes them vulnerable to making big mistakes.

Incidentally because of the negative stereotypical behaviors and body images portrayed by teenagers in the media, in time the draw to join the crowd becomes too great for teens to resist. For example, teenage girls obsess over their appearance, and many turn to the media for guidance. What they don’t know is that many body images shown on TV, in movies, and in magazines are nearly impossible to attain unless you were either born like that or photo shopped. The most commonly known issue that influences a teenage girl would be their weight compared to the weight of the women in magazines and TVs The pressure to become just like the models on the television is so great that some girls think that they’ll never be skinny like the models in pictures, so a few girls either become bulimic or too depressed to eat. Others may start abusing drugs to lose weight to attain this stick figure physique. This is just an alarming example of how easily it is to leave a large impression in a teens’ life.

         Teenagers aren’t grown ups, nor are they still helpless children. They have the power to decide for themselves at some point, and some teenagers know that and abuse it. This behavior is mostly likely due to the fact that they have had a lot of influence from many places that would tell them what is right and what is wrong. In a sense, they don’t really know any better, and to escape the pressures of life, they take matters into their own hands. Whether or not their decisions are good or not, their actions are made because they are trying to find a way to deal with their tremulous lives. Though some teens have control over how stress will affect them that does not mean that all teens will have that ability to deal with the pressures of being a teenager.

The Puppeteers

Jordie Guasch

Period 4

The Puppeteers

Children watch approximately 40,000 commercials a year on their TV or computer. This translates into about 110 commercials a day. Each commercial is filled with different things like new movies or TV shows, ads for companies, and self-improvement items. Teenagers are at the most influential point in their lives and tend to mimic whatever they see on TV, bad or not. The problem with the media nowadays is that they sometimes advertise “negative” behavior such as glamorizing sex, violence, substance abuse, being “perfect”, or other things that set bad examples of how teens feel like they should live their life. The stress of attempting to follow these trendy lifestyles that the media presents can affect not only a teen’s idea of self-worth, but it can be damaging to them later in life.

Teens are constantly trying to improve their appearance to the opposite sex by buying new clothes, trying make up on, or flirting. Magazines and TV commercials are usually what help teenagers decide what’s new and what’s fashionable. However, this just adds a load on teenagers’ shoulders, as it’s another aspect of life that they feel that they have to pay attention to on top of family, school, and friends. According to the Nation Institute of Media and the Family, “One in every three (37%) articles in leading teen girl magazines also included a focus on appearance, and most of the advertisements (50%) used an appeal to beauty to sell their products.” Teen girls are more likely to fall victim to wanting become perfect in the eyes of the opposite sex than boys due to that statistic. However, that doesn’t mean that boys are completely safe from the alluring spell that the media casts. According to the same institution, “In a study on fifth graders, 10 year old girls and boys told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show "Friends”.” Teenagers set very high bars for themselves these days and they can easily cave if they feel like they aren’t doing enough to achieve their goals.

Sometimes, the stress to be the best can result in eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. Studies indicate that “…by their first year of college, 4.5 to 18 percent of women and 0.4 percent of men have a history of bulimia and that as many as 1 in 100 females between the ages of 12 and 18 have anorexia. “ Both of these eating disorders are when someone starves them self or when someone throws up all of their food to lose weight.  Both disorders can lead to serious problems such as acid erosion to the teeth, an unhealthy obsession to maintain a “healthy” body weight, and self esteem issues.  The media’s ability to make teenagers want to be something their not puts so much weight on their shoulders that it’s often unbearable. In some unfortunate cases, teens resort to suicide or accidentally kill themselves because they think that they aren’t attractive enough. It is suggested that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. “A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5 – 10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18-20% of anorexics will be dead after 20 years and only 30 – 40% ever fully recover.“ There should be no reason for the media to advertise such fake images of people because that just sets an impossible standard in many teenagers’ lives.

            Keeping up with appearances is not all to what stresses out teenagers nowadays. The slew of summer box office hits, video games, and TV shows offer a variety of violent scenes and motivation to be “bad.” The National Television Violence Study found that “...nearly 2 out of 3 TV programs contained some violence, averaging about 6 violent acts per hour.” Teenagers are more prone to getting into fights today more than ever because of how the media presents violence. “Incidents of sexual violence and sadism doubled between 1989 and 1999, and the number of graphic depictions increased more than five-fold.” says the Parent Television Council. How this affects teens is that they become less and less attune to human emotions and the void between reality and fantasy stretches out even more. Witnessing repeated violent acts can lead to desensitization and a lack of empathy for human suffering. The media has done such a great job at glamorizing violence that teens also might be tempted into joining gangs or intentionally get into fights to feel the rush of adrenaline that they might feel when they’re watching violent fighting scenes in the movies and in their video games. The pressure to be one of the cool kids from their fantasy worlds often gets teenagers into more trouble than they bargained for.

    One more thing that can stem from violence in the media is the urge to abuse all sorts of substances. Teens like to act as if they are someone special or dangerous. By smoking they can act on those feelings. Teenagers are always seeking attention, and the thrill that they receive from breaking the law is enough to get them hooked.  The media doesn’t help to bend teens from these temptations because they depict smoking, drinking, or doing drugs as something cool. However, these come with their consequences as well. “40 percent of those who started drinking at age 13 or younger developed alcohol dependence later in life. Ten percent of teens who began drinking after the age of 17 developed dependence,” says Teen Drug Abuse. In many magazines, there are numerous advertisements of alcohol or depictions of people smoking. These are not images that the media should be sending out to the teenagers of the world as it could easily ruin their lives if they fall for the temptation of drugs and alcohol.

Finally, sex is one of the most glamorized things in the media. Teenagers everywhere are engaging in premarital, unprotected sex and run the risk of catching STDS such as AIDS or HIV. Movies like American Pie for example may give teenagers the feeling that they aren’t true “adults” unless they’ve had sex before college. The pressure to be like everyone else in high school is what most often leads to a teenager’s downfall and what causes them to regret their actions later in life. “46% of high school students in the United States have had sexual intercourse. Although sex is common, most sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex, which suggest that sex is occurring before youths are prepared for its consequences. 1 case of an STD is diagnosed for every 4 sexually active teens.” The problem with teenagers having sex early is that if they catch an STD, there is in some cases, no cure for the STD and may result in the death of the teenager when they’re older. Sex in movies may spice up the movie, but the media should put stricter ratings on things like that to prevent the upcoming generation from becoming so corrupted in their journey to adulthood.

The stress to be perfect in this dog eat dog world of teenagers is often filled with a lot of regret and disappointment. The pressure can be too much and may eventually lead to the unnecessary death of a teenager who couldn’t handle all of what was happening in their lives.  The media makes their pawns dance themselves to death with stress. The stress to be perfect, to be cool, to be accepted into a society that almost nobody can handle. Grinning their hardest, they leap into the abyss before them.  The media will greedily consume all of them baited by the flashing lights and beautiful faces.

Resources

http://depts.washington.edu/thmedia/view.cgi?section=bodyimage&page=fastfacts

http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm

http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/facts/mediafacts.asp

http://www.nccev.org/violence/media.html

http://www.teendrugabuse.us/teen_drug_use.html

Her Father's Fire

Jordie Guasch

Pd. 4

Her Father’s Fire

I was never good at sports. I couldn’t dribble a basketball, couldn’t keep the soccer ball from going all over the field, and couldn’t hit the tennis ball back to the other player. The only games I was half-decent at in elementary school were softball and contact sports like football. I really dreaded some PE days back in elementary school. This was because I knew that at the end of the class I knew my face would be red from embarrassment. I could never be the athletic kid; I would always be sitting in the sidelines. Gosh, did that feeling suck.

             I was about 8 years old when my Dad tried teaching my younger sister Jeanine and I how to do fight. Dad wanted my younger sister and I to take up the martial art that he most dearly loved; Taekwondo. It is a martial art that originated in Korea, and it means, “The Art of the Foot and Fist.” My older sister Janielle, who was 16 at the time, had started up Taekwondo when she was 6 and won various medals to show for her hard work under my Dad’s wing. Now, he wanted to do the same for my sister and me. We didn’t pick up the martial art too well, and eventually we gave up. Looking back, I know my Dad was disappointed. He loved Taekwondo so much; it was his driving force as a teenager and it shaped him into the man he is today.

I decided after a couple months into my freshman year of high school that I wanted to better myself. Knowing very well that I am not very good at group sports, I decided I wanted to take a martial art. I confided this to my parents and I told them that I wanted to take up Taekwondo. The light in my Dad’s eyes, the excitement in his voice makes me proud. We researched a couple local Taekwondo gyms and found one that wasn’t too out of the way; the Oahu Taekwondo Center. The gym was located in Aiea, right next to the elementary school.

             I remember walking through the doors with my Dad on a Friday night in a white panda t-shirt, brown shorts, and feeling so out of place. My Dad breathed in the smell of sweat and feet as I could literally feel his memories coming back to him. He hadn’t done any Taekwondo since we moved to Hawaii since he’d been busy with putting food on the table for us. So, we sat down on the floor, and watched the students spar. I could tell you, I was amazed at the speed of some of these kids. They were all around my age, which was awesome too. I remember I kept thinking; if they can do it, so can I. I left the gym with my Dad with a new zest for life. There were so many things I could achieve, now.

             I came back the following Tuesday, as that is when the adult classes are, dressed in shorts and a shirt. But, my Dad figured he’d buy my uniform already. The moment we stepped into the gym was the turning point; there was no looking back now. The teachers kept me aside with some of the new white-belts as well, and I remember how frustrated and embarrassed I was because I couldn’t contort my body enough to kick the pad correctly. When I left the gym a second time, I urged my Dad to teach me how to correctly kick something. But he’d somehow managed to injure himself while doing the kicking drills, so all of the teaching would have to be through my Dad telling me verbally what I was supposed to do.

             I progressed fine with my Dad's guidance. My Dad had gotten his black belt at 19, and started Taekwondo at 15. I wanted to get my final belt within the same time frame as he did. I remember studying like crazy for my first belt test. There was a verbal exam on some of the basics of Taekwondo like what some of the Korean terms used in class meant, how to count to 10 in Korean, where Taekwondo’s origins, and how to address the teachers. There was also a physical test that included doing the basic kicks—low kick, axe kick, front kick, and forms—4 rotational kicks and 4 rotational blocks. My Dad drilled me through that and more. He taught me how to do my first Taeguk form; Taeguk being a detailed pattern of defense-and-attack motions and techniques used in traditional martial arts. It was a long and arduous process, but I practiced when I had enough space to get it right. I had to make my Dad proud.

The testing day rolled around faster than my father and I expected. I remember walking into the gym, breaking into a nervous sweat already. My class started their usual warm ups—running, jumping, stretching. I was pulled away when we got to the stretching section to practice one last time before my test with 3 orange belts. They were testing with me at the same time, which, I thought was fine; the less spotlight on me the better. I looked up every now and then onto the balcony where my Dad was sitting. He was watching me with that manic smile on his face; he was excited. I bit my lip to stifle my laughter as I bowed before the master and began my test.

Hana, dul, set, net, ta-sat, yah-sot, e-gup, ya-dail, ah-hop, yol.

One to 10 in Korean. I remembered messing up halfway when I was counting but I caught myself and continued on without making a big deal out of it. The rest of the test progressed fine; I had done my kicks fine, and my form was nice and clean. I’d been dreading my board break; I didn’t know if I had enough ‘kick’ in my kick to snap the board in half. The orange belts did their kicks first; they had to do an axe kick. An axe kick is when you raise your leg up as high as it can go, and you force your heel down--similar to a guillotine dropping down on a board. Two of the three orange belts broke the board on the first try, but the last orange belt took 6 tries to break the board. I started getting nervous: what if I couldn’t break my board?

            My master came up to me last with the board in hand. He put it on the ground next to his feet, held up his hand, and told me to do a practice kick at his hand. I managed to sneak a glance in the direction of my Dad before I did the jump kick. I hit his hand gently; I didn’t want to break his hand! I hit my small, soft target and he placed the board where his hand previously was at an angel. I stared the board down for a moment and kicked it. I heard a snap, and something scratchy rubbing against the top of my foot. I looked, and saw that my foot had gone through the board and now the soft splinters were scraping me. I squeaked and retracted my foot as I heard the studio fill with clapping.

I beamed towards my Dad. If his manic smile could possibly get any bigger, it just did. I bowed to my teacher and he handed me my two pieces of board. I stared down at the board as I headed towards the stairs to give it to my Dad. I had reached an obstacle in my life and broke through it. I held out my board to my Dad and he hugged me as he shook the camera he used to record my test. My Dad looked like he’d cry out in joy, but he knew better. The celebration would have to wait until after class because when I walked out of the doors, I felt like I could take on the world.

Love Requited

Jordie Guasch

Pd. 4

9.24.10

Essay Topic:
USC’s speaker series "What Matters to Me and Why" asks faculty and staff to reflect on their values, beliefs, and motivations. Presenters talk about choices they have made, difficulties encountered, and commitments solidified. Write an essay about an event or experience that helped you learn what is important to you and why it is important.

A Love Requited

love
noun, verb, loved, lov·ing.
–noun
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person or thing.

             The summer skies haven’t shone on my face and the winter chill hasn’t shaken my bones enough for me to know what it’s like to love another person. I know nothing of love and affection on a romantic level for a human being. But in time I’m sure I’ll find that person who can feel for me in such a way that in a moment beyond today, we will both instantly know that we are doing the right thing. Until then, the only love that I’m sure of is my art. My creations on paper, the breath of life, the spring in my step, the gentle kiss of inspiration in my mind.

             I am not a writer, but I’m sure I fooled you with that beginning paragraph. I am a painter, a drawer, a computer techie, a dreamer, and a realist with a vision of color and movement. I usually draw with black or blue ballpoint pen on regular printer paper, filling the white space with sketches. When I find one I like, I take my low quality camera and take a picture of it. I upload it to my computer and tweak around the photo with Photoshop. The low quality of my camera makes the photo look rougher and grungier.

             However, when I start slapping on layers of color, it gives a smoother, more refined look with scratchy undertones. I feel that this kind of describes myself in a way; most people see the bright colors in my art, but there is so much more complexity and thought beneath the dazzling overtones. And the love that goes into making an image… No one realizes it, but artists have to love what they’ve done before they have the courage to put it out for everyone to see.

             Painting with watercolors is another pastime that I thoroughly enjoy. The way the water blends the pigments, the way color flows onto the page, and with a flick of my wrist, how I control the amount of water is empowering. When I was six years old, I picked up a Crayola watercolor kit. I didn’t understand how to control the water amount, so everything came out blurred and indistinguishable. I vowed to never pick up a watercolor pallet again.

             I entered 8th grade, and one of my neighbors was moving away. She knew that I liked to draw and paint, so she gave me a few brushes, a set of gently used watercolor tubes, and a few pages of blank watercolor paper. I was older now; I understood that controlling the amount of liquid was key to a cleaner looking image. I came up with an idea, put the brush to the paper, and never looked back.

             I am so passionate about my art that I once went into drawing withdrawals when I went on a trip and forgot to bring paper and pens. Needless to say: I resorted to drawing on the paper that holds sticks of gum together with a wooden pencil that threatened to break at any moment. I can’t even begin to describe how happy I was when we finally got to a department store so I could pick up suitable drawing materials. It was crazy; I can’t believe I was so desperate to draw something that I resorted to gum wrappers. Maybe I should’ve started this paper out with the definition of ‘addiction’. I hadn’t realized what it was like to not have the utilities to draw until that vacation. It took a toll on me, and now everywhere I go, I always remember to bring supplies for me to draw.

             Art has been my safety blanket for longer than I can remember. Whenever I’m bored, I draw, when I’m upset or depressed, I draw, and when I’m happy, I draw. My creativity becoming a real, tangible thing has done so much for me because I see things differently than my peers. I take the world in from a different perspective-- colors, shapes, and moods... Art is my driving force; it’s who I am and who I will always be. To be more specific, it pushes me to try harder because I know that Art schools are extremely competitive. It just makes me want to strive harder so I can reach the top and show the world what I’m made of. I love my art, and there is nothing short of lack of art supplies that will stop me from progressing, learning, and bettering myself.

Angry Letter Draft

94-509 Hoohele Pl

Waipahu, Hawaii 96797

December 14^th, 2010

United States Postal Service,

94-245 Leoku Street

Waipahu, Hawaii 96797

Dear United States Postal Service,

For many years your mail carriers have delivered my parcels punctually. They have mostly gone out of their way to drive up my 75-foot driveway to make sure I get my mail and I am grateful for their service. However, there have been several incidents of what one could call “laziness” on the mail carriers part.

Sometimes bigger parcels aren’t delivered to me because the mail carrier didn’t want to get out of their car. There was one instance around April 2010 where my family and I were obviously home and the mail carrier drove into my driveway but neglected to ring the doorbell. He left a note saying that our package was not delivered. We were expecting the package and were upset that the mail carrier didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell.

Another happening concerning late mail was on Saturday, December 11^th 2009. My neighbors were having a party and somebody’s car was blocking my mailbox. I was expecting a delivery that day because I had tracked the item on the USPS website and was not happy to have had to wait longer to receive my delivery.  I have read on the FAQ portion of the USPS website that “Mailbox blockage by a vehicle may also prevent the delivery of mail. According to our policy, the city or rural carrier should get out of the vehicle to make delivery if the mailbox is temporarily blocked by a vehicle. However, if the carrier continually experiences a problem in serving curbline or rural boxes where the customer is able to control on‑street parking, the postmaster may withdraw delivery service.”

My mailbox is normally unobstructed and this was just a once in a blue moon occurrence that there was a car in front of my mailbox. My driveway was also free of cars so the driver could’ve driven in to give me my parcel, but the postmaster had skipped my mailbox altogether. I can understand if the mailbox was being blocked for several occasions in a row, but I can’t grasp how hard getting out of a truck and walking 5 feet to put a package into my mailbox must be.

Without going into further detail, I’ll just sum up how many times our mail has not been delivered on time in the past year: 8 times. Many times it is because the weekend postmaster doesn’t want to either drive up my driveway to deliver the packages or doesn’t want to ring my doorbell to face us. I’ve noticed many times that when a package is not delivered; it’s on a Saturday. I don’t know if the Saturday postmen are working part time or seasonally, but its very exasperating to have missed a package on Saturday because mail isn’t delivered on Sundays.

            I am actually very disappointed with how my house is effectively “skipped” by the mailman. I feel that more specific changes towards the obstruction mail delivering policy and more disciplined weekend postmen would result in happier mail deliverers and receivers in Hawaii and around the world. With a stronger policy, if a customer comes in complaining, you can point them towards a line in the policy and they won’t be able to do anything but admit that they were wrong. In a sense, it ultimately works for both sides if the policy towards mail delivery is expanded upon.

Sincerely,

Jorjiane Guasch