Craftsmanship

I get absolutely nothing out of my skill of painting or drawing. I could invest as an artist, or even a my own Henry's Handmade boutique. Would it be more expensive? Probably. Definitely. I spent twenty-three hours on this handmade vase, it's probably something you'll never see in your life again, so yes. Pay me. I understand the extensive prices of authentic art pieces. What do I get out of my artistic gift? A worried father and a cliché unique skill. 

I think I can cook. I can bake? I can cook an amazing omelette. I baked a chocolate cake once, but I used Betty Crocker. Betty Crocker is the seed machine of cake. It's easier. I get food out of this rare skill. I could also get food if I just leave the house. There's always an easier way out.

Are my skills going to be needed in a decade? A couple of years? 

"I am a Millennial"

Humans. We yearn for exquisite love. We strive to be the bees knees. Our entitlement and narcissism defines us. Our defining trait? A numbness to suffering. We are selfish. Give us technology, give us advancement. We want more. Why would we ever be content with what we've got? We endeavor for magnificence. Satisfaction is never achieved. We are stuck on a medium; we are stuck on an eight. Is a ten attainable? As said, we have a numbness to suffering. Technology, the unachievable, the notion of the impossible fills the vacuum.

This is a generalization.

Humans. We are lines of functions intersecting. We are parabolas that will intersect. We are never the same line.

How to Wreck Your Resolutions Three Days After January 1st: An Autobiography by Me

“Next year's words await another voice.” 
-T.S Eliot 

Hating myself was a habit of mine this year and I absolutely admired it. Assuming that self-loath was what gave me my brilliant character, my bubble of modesty burst, and all I had left was days until the New Year with absolutely no recollection of what I've actually done in 2013. There are some vintage selfies of my wildest moments of this year, but all of them include a bathroom backdrop or me scarfing down PF Changs. This is what fun looks like in the eye of a fourteen-year-old, not so much in the eyes of a fifteen-year-old girl who hysterically chokes on her own jokes.  What are we doing with our lives?

I don't see school as the cause to my melodramatic breakout of boredom. It's me. It's my exaggerated joy of going to the mall, or my unrealistic admiration to watch movies all weekend. What if I leave high school and the only evidence of my existence is prom? My mom's never been an avid story-teller, ironically, but do I really know her? She's never told me about her first kiss, how she met my father, what she was like pre-marriage, or if she's anything like I am now; it's horrid, and hopefully this warped idea of authority won't reflect off of me. How am I supposed to trust that she knows what she's saying? "She's your mother", yes, but who is she?

What if I morph into her?

Worse; what if I am her?

What if I'm dull, average, and enjoy buttered popcorn much more than I should? Is this what defines me? There's nothing I've done that has defined who I am, not an award nor book that has made me a household name. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but the only resolution I could possibly follow through with is defining myself without the compulsive need to give up on the effort of doing so. I'm not really sure if I've given up yet.

Mental Environmentalism

      I'd be lying if I told you that I've never tried to picture every tiny, unnecessary detail or thought that somehow winded up in my mind as a Picasso masterpiece.  I try to separate my thoughts into those dull business compartments, and they're set up inefficiently. There's a compartment that illuminates fluorescent lights, and I guess people would refer to this compartment as "priorities" - I'd say this compartment was the CEO to my mind. Every action, every word, and every step is immediately referred to or consulted by that compartment, slightly dominating, I know. We've got other inferior compartments such as body image, ambitions, and innovation, I'd say body image was slightly a higher rank than the rest. It's ridiculous of me, of course, to even consider something so insignificant as it's own compartment, but this is just another component that contributed to the chaotic mess of my mental state. I'm not shallow, I don't believe that your opinions of yourself reflect anything about who I sincerely am, but what options do you have when there's bankruptcy storming through your compartment?

      "What pollutes our environment, girls and boys?" asked the seventh grade science teacher. "Smoke!" "Gas! "Vehicles!" "Industries, duh!" "This is easy: littering!" The teacher laughs, and suddenly becomes stern "What pollutes your mental environment?" The class goes blank, no one's sure what's going on - okay, I'll stop this metaphor of mental environmentalism now, it's starting to sound like a horror story. "Standards!" "Technology" "Expectations!" would be a good answer for that teacher, though. I, half heartedly, will admit that I am the cause of the chaos going on in my gray matter; I opened the window during a storm of pollution. Do I feel guilty about it? No, why would I? Am I terrified? Yes, obviously. Have I tried closing the window? Numerous times. We've all tried. We all want to keep the pollution out as soon as we realize it's in; we read books, we write in our little black notebooks, we run, we try to do some Jane Fonda yoga, and sometimes we try to be children again, but that's my last resort. We've tried, but have we succeeded? Maybe, but the window is faulty. Don't worry though, the older that window gets, the sturdier it becomes. The Strange Case of Wellington Window - lame.
      My mind is polluted. It's as simple as that. This is one of those miraculous Miranda Hobbes discovery that leave you in shock for about three weeks before it's completely processed into your mind. I have a slight addiction to my cellphone, but I could beat it. Do I? No, I'm irrevocably obsessed with the entire concept of the web and technology; I cringe when I try to imagine myself perpetually going through a stack of books instead of Google. If you've got the technology, flaunt it, embrace it, but seriously don't overdo it - talking to those of you who legitimately have their phones super glued to the palms of their hands.
     Don't forget about the pretty side to my mind, the less dull, distressing side that is made up of colors, shapes, and thought bubbles - good thought bubbles. I've got it split right down the middle: a haunting grave yard that smells like the Corniche on Sunday mornings on the right, and a world of rainbows, ponies and Harry Styles to my left. It works, I guess.

Constitution Comparisons

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mkwGKnszyb87Z059b6dKYEFzDOxVUDHhP2nmP75-KKM/edit?usp=sharing

Comparing other countries constitution's with the Constitution of the United States Assignment

(Sorry I submitted it late! I almost forgot, but Veracross just sent an email). 

Was it a Revolution?

Paragraph on Britain
Historiography
My opinion

In total honesty, do you believe that all revolutions begun in "hope and moderation? This could be considered as euphoric, because did they all begin in moderation or wasn't it more like this sudden attack that took everyone by storm? There's one thing we're all certain of though: each of these revolutions have ended in something similar to dictatorship, which just brings all the revolutionary rebellions back to point A. Three of the four revolutions have experienced this cycle, except for one, of course: the American Revolution. Now, the cool/brainy stuff comes in; why would the American Revolution be isolated out of this category? Was it not a revolution? In my opinion, this Revolution stands neutral on Brinton's scale; it's not your run-of-the mill revolution. The following paragraphs take into consideration of other's perspectives and opinions upon whether or not the American Revolution was actually a revolution.
Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution states:

The Whigs (19th Century)- This political party portrays the American Revolution as though it were some fairy tale that got passed down for several generations without truly knowing what actually happened. It was like repeating the tale of Cinderella's phenomenal moment of meeting Prince Charming, but completely avoiding the fact that she got terrible foot fungus after losing her shoe. They claim that the Revolution did indeed spark up "progress, advancement, and improvement", but reference to a work of literature by Ray Raphael, who claims a “good deal of the conventional understanding of the American Revolution is based not on factual accounts or evidence but on the dubious creativity of these 19th century biographer”. To sum this up, we all idealize the American Revolution to be some grand step in mankind, even though we greatly praise it for the mere fact that they stood up for their rights and fought for what they believe in; no one cares about the political, government-related stuff, people don’t make movies about that. Later within the 1800s, the dreadful, not-so-fairytale side of the Revolution is focused on. “More rigorous uses of evidence and analysis were used” such as analyzing the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. These documents were considered the end to Western philosophy, democracy, and liberalism, which allowed the American’s to finally obtain their perpetuate desire for freedom and progress.
Side note: Historians that contributed to the advancement of the Whigs perspective included George Bancroft and John Fiske.

The Progressives (early 1900s)- “The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution” is one of many sources that the Progressives used to attack the Whigs’ perspective upon the Revolution. Schlesinger’s interpretation of the American Revolution reveals that although there was a good deal of revolutionary “sentiment” within the 1760s and 1770s, the entire thing was the result of American businessmen (or women, for the modern feminist) that were eager to increase their personal profits with the only way they knew how: oppressing the British trade regulations and obtaining power within “British-dominated markets”. Merrill Jensen proceeded to argue that the “economic slump of the 1780s” was the consequence of the wars that took place. These historians were capable of altering the view that others had about the American Revolution, which eventually left the Whig idea abandoned.

The Imperial School (early 1900s)- In contrast to the previous articles’ views about the American Revolution, this group of historians takes the British Empire’s point of view into perspective and allows us to grasp both sides of the story. They focused on the growth, management, and mismanagement that occurred within the Empire, but did not deem mercantilism and the Navigation Acts to be “oppressive or restrictive”; if they had been either of those, then the American colonies wouldn’t have been as notoriously successful as they were.

Despite the several opinions that were formed based upon Brinton’s anatomy of a Revolution, historians will forever debate whether it is correct to actually classify the American Revolution as a revolution. The prominent historians that have the leading, most persuasive arguments are The Whigs and The Progressives, in my opinion. They both allow the reader to comprehend every aspect of the revolution: political, financial, liberalism etc. The Neo-Whigs lacked sufficient evidence, in my opinion, so I did not take their opinion into consideration. All in all, as I said earlier, the American Revolution stands neutral on the scale of Brinton’s anatomy.

American Revolution Trailer

(Scenes taken from others videos)

The Trailer