Hey, a short post today, but I just opened our mail and got my ACT score: 34! Love you all!
Joseppi
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
I made the National Newspaper!
Hey, just letting ya'll know that my article I wrote about the Placer County Peer Court has been published in the National Scholastic Newspaper for journalism! check it out at
http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/newspaperid/856/Default.aspx
my story is the "Peer court loses funds" one. So cool!
http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/newspaperid/856/Default.aspx
my story is the "Peer court loses funds" one. So cool!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Expectations are overrated
For months before my family’s summer Europe trip, my mom did obscene amounts of research and planning to make this trip the best it could be. Countless hours of online planning ruled out any and all possibility in our minds of anything going wrong.
This was going to be the trip of a lifetime.
The day after we arrived in Paris, my mom was pickpocketed in the subway system. I didn’t see it happen: the girl just got on the train, unzipped my mom’s purse, slyly swiped her wallet and was gone.
We were duped by a professional thief, and as a result my mother had to spend the next two hours and $200 to cancel all of her credit cards.
A few days later we took a ferry across the English Channel to Portsmouth. My brother and his wife had been sick for the whole trip, and it was only getting worse; their coughing and hacking was keeping them up all night.
So we decided to get some help for them. We went to a medical dispensary in Portsmouth and asked if we could get some medicine for them.
But what we got was more than we bargained for.
Suspecting they had swine flu, the doctors and nurses quarantined all of us in a hospital room for the next six hours, only paying occasional visits while covered from head to toe in blue aprons and face masks like some sort of hazmat team coming to eradicate radioactive material.
The mood was just a little awkward in that hospital room.
It turned out that this was just the beginning: after we were kicked out of our own pre-paid hotel room, cheated out of our pre-paid car and missed half of our $500 tour, I finally dubbed the vacation the “trip of plan B.”
I thought to myself, ‘Why was everything going wrong? What happened to our picture perfect trip?’
Well, after some inward Zen-like contemplation, I came to the conclusion that nothing went wrong – I was just looking for the wrong things.
It’s like the time I chomped down on what looked like an M&M and surprisingly got the fruity, chewy taste of a Skittle instead of the crunch of candy-coated chocolate; it doesn’t taste bad, it just isn’t what I expected.
The problem with my Europe trip was I expected everything to go as planned, and as such, I expected too much.
I wanted the trip of a lifetime, and I got it – just in a little different way than I expected.
See, for the most part, I think expectations are overrated, in more ways than one. I have always been told to “reach for the stars” and “shoot the moon.” But why can’t I just be content with “reaching” for my daily bowl of cereal, or “shooting the moon” in a game of Hearts with my friends?
Because, as I’ve discovered the hard way, shooting the moon isn’t always in the cards.
Some expectations are unrealistic and lower our appreciation of what is going on around us every moment of every day.
So now, I don’t expect my group members to get their work done, don’t expect my friend who is always late to get to a place on time, don’t expect myself to get an 8 or 9 on my first English essay of the year.
And do you know what the result is?
Now in everything I do, I always either meet or exceed my expectations.
And I love it.
So as I go into this year, I expect there to be mistakes in this newspaper: I expect there to be some biased stories, expect there to be spelling errors, expect there to be flaws. But I also expect everything will work itself out.
What I can promise you is that I and the entire Gazette staff will do all we can to make this a first-class newspaper.
Life happens, mistakes happen; we might as well enjoy them.
This was going to be the trip of a lifetime.
The day after we arrived in Paris, my mom was pickpocketed in the subway system. I didn’t see it happen: the girl just got on the train, unzipped my mom’s purse, slyly swiped her wallet and was gone.
We were duped by a professional thief, and as a result my mother had to spend the next two hours and $200 to cancel all of her credit cards.
A few days later we took a ferry across the English Channel to Portsmouth. My brother and his wife had been sick for the whole trip, and it was only getting worse; their coughing and hacking was keeping them up all night.
So we decided to get some help for them. We went to a medical dispensary in Portsmouth and asked if we could get some medicine for them.
But what we got was more than we bargained for.
Suspecting they had swine flu, the doctors and nurses quarantined all of us in a hospital room for the next six hours, only paying occasional visits while covered from head to toe in blue aprons and face masks like some sort of hazmat team coming to eradicate radioactive material.
The mood was just a little awkward in that hospital room.
It turned out that this was just the beginning: after we were kicked out of our own pre-paid hotel room, cheated out of our pre-paid car and missed half of our $500 tour, I finally dubbed the vacation the “trip of plan B.”
I thought to myself, ‘Why was everything going wrong? What happened to our picture perfect trip?’
Well, after some inward Zen-like contemplation, I came to the conclusion that nothing went wrong – I was just looking for the wrong things.
It’s like the time I chomped down on what looked like an M&M and surprisingly got the fruity, chewy taste of a Skittle instead of the crunch of candy-coated chocolate; it doesn’t taste bad, it just isn’t what I expected.
The problem with my Europe trip was I expected everything to go as planned, and as such, I expected too much.
I wanted the trip of a lifetime, and I got it – just in a little different way than I expected.
See, for the most part, I think expectations are overrated, in more ways than one. I have always been told to “reach for the stars” and “shoot the moon.” But why can’t I just be content with “reaching” for my daily bowl of cereal, or “shooting the moon” in a game of Hearts with my friends?
Because, as I’ve discovered the hard way, shooting the moon isn’t always in the cards.
Some expectations are unrealistic and lower our appreciation of what is going on around us every moment of every day.
So now, I don’t expect my group members to get their work done, don’t expect my friend who is always late to get to a place on time, don’t expect myself to get an 8 or 9 on my first English essay of the year.
And do you know what the result is?
Now in everything I do, I always either meet or exceed my expectations.
And I love it.
So as I go into this year, I expect there to be mistakes in this newspaper: I expect there to be some biased stories, expect there to be spelling errors, expect there to be flaws. But I also expect everything will work itself out.
What I can promise you is that I and the entire Gazette staff will do all we can to make this a first-class newspaper.
Life happens, mistakes happen; we might as well enjoy them.
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Tomato Cannery of Heck
So yesterday I went to the tomato cannery to do 5 hours of service. The Sacramento cannery now provides ALL the tomatoes for the entire church, and I needed the community service hours anyway for school.
It took a little while to get there, and after we arrived and got all prettied up with our plastic garb and mesh hairnets, we were ready to start. A bunch of people stood in front of the door to the inspection line, where we would work, and I swear it looked like the Gates of Heck were before me. Now, I love tomatoes. But the smell was a bit much...ok, it was a LOT much. The overwhelming stench, combined with the heat and red color everywhere really brought to my mind's eye images of Heck. But, I knew it was the Lord's tomato cannery, so I toughed it out and went in.
After the first 2 hours of peeling and sorting tomatoes, I started to bore. So my friend and I entertained ourselves with a "friendly" tomato fight. It was so much fun, and provided some much needed tension release. Squishing tomatoes is very therapudic. Try it sometime.
Anyway, we were there from 5:00 to 10:00, and I came to a very important conclusion. I want to get a VERY good education, so I never have to do assembly line work for the rest of my life.
That really would be heck.
It took a little while to get there, and after we arrived and got all prettied up with our plastic garb and mesh hairnets, we were ready to start. A bunch of people stood in front of the door to the inspection line, where we would work, and I swear it looked like the Gates of Heck were before me. Now, I love tomatoes. But the smell was a bit much...ok, it was a LOT much. The overwhelming stench, combined with the heat and red color everywhere really brought to my mind's eye images of Heck. But, I knew it was the Lord's tomato cannery, so I toughed it out and went in.
After the first 2 hours of peeling and sorting tomatoes, I started to bore. So my friend and I entertained ourselves with a "friendly" tomato fight. It was so much fun, and provided some much needed tension release. Squishing tomatoes is very therapudic. Try it sometime.
Anyway, we were there from 5:00 to 10:00, and I came to a very important conclusion. I want to get a VERY good education, so I never have to do assembly line work for the rest of my life.
That really would be heck.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Thoughts on my covered piano
We're painting my house right now, and it stinks. Literally, figuratively, it all stinks.
I went to play my piano – Poulenc's improvisation "Hommage a Schubert" was running through my mind. I needed to get the music out of my head and channel it through the ivory keys, but the stupid canvas painting sheets were covering it up. They're those ugly ones, that are all scratchy from the sandy paint and blotched with the colors from the past 10 houses they invaded. It doesn't seem right, that beautiful hand-carved piano being covered up just like the couches and chairs, masked as a simple piece of furniture. It's so much more than simple.
I guess it's for the best – I wouldn't want paint to mar the beautiful perfection of that piano; but it at least deserves a nicer cover. Maybe a new paint sheet would set it apart from the rest of our covered up furnature. But I digress – as I sit here writing, the music is still running through my head. Then again, I guess it isn't that bad I didn't play today – I played it a million times over in my mind, and it sounds better in my head than I can play it anyway.
I went to play my piano – Poulenc's improvisation "Hommage a Schubert" was running through my mind. I needed to get the music out of my head and channel it through the ivory keys, but the stupid canvas painting sheets were covering it up. They're those ugly ones, that are all scratchy from the sandy paint and blotched with the colors from the past 10 houses they invaded. It doesn't seem right, that beautiful hand-carved piano being covered up just like the couches and chairs, masked as a simple piece of furniture. It's so much more than simple.
I guess it's for the best – I wouldn't want paint to mar the beautiful perfection of that piano; but it at least deserves a nicer cover. Maybe a new paint sheet would set it apart from the rest of our covered up furnature. But I digress – as I sit here writing, the music is still running through my head. Then again, I guess it isn't that bad I didn't play today – I played it a million times over in my mind, and it sounds better in my head than I can play it anyway.
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