Emily Spittler
Mrs. Brownlee
College Level Comp.
15 September 2013
The
Right-Angled Woman
I
walked alongside my mother next to the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy in July of
2011. The City of Canals was a two-day stop on our whirlwind European tour, and
by far my favorite place in the world. It’s a winding metropolis on the banks
of the Mediterranean, made of 118 small islands with a population of around
270,000 people, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. There are no cars, just serene
gondolas and dapper gondoliers. While we walked along the canals near the famed
St. Mark’s Square, we encountered a poor woman I will never forget that opened
my eyes to the differences between the European wealthy and deprived. The
phenomenon of hard work vs. the status you were born into is exemplified here
in the glorious City of Canals.
For
a city built in a swamp on small islands, Venice is remarkably ornate,
detailed, and rich. Blown glass workshops line canals, while St. Mark’s Square
exudes wealth with its Basilica and a 100-meter tall bell tower. Overpriced
gelato stores and coffee shops fill in the cracks next to souvenir stands
shoving fake Louis Vuittons down your throat. Next to this magnificent display
of wealth and prosperity, there is a group of people overlooked by the general
populous and tourists alike: the poor.
The destitute and
hopeless poor are seen, but not heard; just like some say children should be.
Some perform magic tricks or act as statues for tips, but most simply beg.
Tourists see them with their mostly empty hats or cups, hoping for coins, or if
they’re lucky a small bill. But they’re ignored by most, shunned by all. One
woman in particular is memorable to me. She was older, and so stooped over that
she couldn’t pull the top half of her body up farther than parallel to the
ground. She was a right angle of a human, holding a Styrofoam cup in hopes of
leaving St. Mark’s Square with a few more cents than she started with. At the
time, I didn’t think much of her. She was just one poor woman out of hundreds of
thousands in the world. I couldn’t do anything to help her. Now, as I reflect
on my time spent in the city, I realize I should have helped her. A euro could
have made the difference on whether or not she ate that night, and I had no
real use for the money, other than buying fake Coach bags, of course.
Not more than 20
feet away from the woman was a yacht large enough to
rival my house in size. My tour group was told that to dock in St. Mark’s
Square, you had to shell out 3500 euros a day, which is almost five thousand
American Dollars. How could this giant difference in wealth be so close to each
other? What I began to wonder was what has this wealthy person done so right
that they had their own yacht in Venice while the nameless poor woman, stooped
severely, begged for coins? The circumstances surrounding the wealthy person’s
upbringing must have had something to do with their success. A supportive
family goes a long way, and supplements hard work with resources and
assistance.
My mother
whispered in my ear. She had noticed me staring at the right-angled woman.
“She’ll be okay, someone will help her.” I realize now the person to help her
should have been me. I could live without a faux Vuitton, a counterfeit
Coach. But I focused on what she must
have done wrong to end up in such a predicament; I didn’t feel pity for her, I
felt disgust. Now I realize I was wrong
to feel that way towards her, because it’s more likely she was just born into a
family deprived of resources. No matter how hard she could have worked, she was
still destined to fail in life, just because of the situations surrounding how
she was likely raised: poor. You hear great success stories of people who were
born in poverty and achieve greatness, but these are rare. Most people born
poor stay poor. While not as strict as the Indian
Caste System, most of world subscribes to this basic belief: the poor stay
poor, the rich stay rich, no matter how hard you work.
While hard work
can provide you with the tools to have a good life, you must have access to
opportunities only a supportive family/ environment can give you to truly
become successful in life. This is what the right-angled woman taught me in two
minutes without any words exchanged.
College App Essay
Emily Spittler
College App Essay
Brownlee
24 September 2013
Failing in Success
Everyone is
unsuccessful at something in his or her life. Even that 4.0 GPA football star
headed to whatever university he wants has struggled at history, or the girl in
every science and math club at her school has perhaps flopped at painting. I personally
know someone whose biggest failing is his inability to cope with failure; this
is why he’s graduating as valedictorian with A’s in easy classes and I’m
leaving high school with a 3.8 and Calculus (in which I earned a C. Proud of it,
too). Perhaps your biggest failing is that you can’t crochet like your grandma
did, or your poker skills need some work. While I’m working on my poker face
and crochet skills, my biggest failure is deeply rooted in success. I am drum
major for my high school marching band. Center field drum major, no less. Well,
I was.
Drum majors have
to be coordinated, musically talented, and have the ability to wave their arms
around for twenty minutes uninterrupted. If you’ve been placed at the center of
the field by your band director, that means you are The Best. The Best stands up
on a five-foot tall pedestal to lead the rest of the generally unruly students.
For about a month, that was me. Then came The Incident. Or Set of Incidents,
really. First off, I dyed my hair pink. This didn’t make my directors all too
pleased, even though the bass clarinet player was sporting cherry red hair.
Then, a fellow co-drum major (we shall call him Jacob, for that is his name) started
to work harder. He improved while my abilities stayed the same. On one fateful
Thursday, I was replaced. He got the center spot, and I was pushed to the side
of the field to conduct. I no longer was the one who started the marching show
- the one everyone looked up to.
While I was still
drum major, I was no longer the head honcho. And while I resented Jacob for
taking my spot for quite some time, I began to realize that my director was
right: Jacob was better than me. I was crushed. I cried on the inside for hours
before I was finally granted some privacy to cry on the outside too, and
drowned my tears in a whole box of Kleenex. I sniveled and sobbed for an hour,
my trashcan was full of used tissues by the time I was done. I had failed at
the biggest opportunity I’d had in the band. I’d failed my director, my band,
and myself. Then I realized something
very cliché; I didn’t have to be the best to be happy with myself. I could find
happiness inside myself, not from my surroundings. I realized I’m still a drum major;
I’m still a leader. Just not The Best. I’m okay with that.
While not exactly succeeding
at drum majoring, I can still be proud of the accomplishment that I was center
drum major for the month of August 2013, and then just a regular drum major for
the rest of the season. Jacob the drum major could be number one, and I would
cope with second best because I was still happy with being a leader for the
group I’ve been involved in for seven years: the band, which means the world to
me. So while I still can’t crochet afghans like my Grandma or play Texas Hold
‘Em to save my life, I have succeeded through my failures. I have learned the lesson
of finding happiness inside myself.
Culture Essay
Emily Spittler
College Comp.
Mrs. Brownlee
28 October 2013
Death is like a Casserole
Death is like a
casserole. Everyone starts as an individual but then becomes this giant nasty
mess no one wants to deal with. We as a species have solved this problem by putting
our dead in the ground. Someone on Earth dies approximately every second,
adding up to millions of corpses needing to be disposed of every year. For
millennia humans have buried their dead in the soil for multiple reasons. Other
methods of burial are less common, but still practiced. The most common of
these is cremation, the burning of the body into ashes. Traditional burial and
cremation both provide for basic disposal needs, show respect for the dead, and
provide a sense of closure for the family and friends.
Traditionally,
the body is buried underground for many reasons. Decomposition is a smelly and disease
spreading process, and placing the body underground prevents the living from
becoming sick. Burial prevents animals or other humans from eating or
destroying the body, a symbol of disrespect in many cultures. As well, many
religions and cultures believe in an afterlife, and the body needs to be
properly treated for the soul to be received after death. Lastly, burial
provides closure to the friends and family by removing the corpse from daily
life and activities, so the living can begin to move on from the death.
In the United
States and other developed countries, before being buried many bodies are
embalmed to preserve the remains and to make the body presentable at a funeral
or memorial service. This process involves multiple chemicals and devices to
prevent the body from decaying before it arrives to its final resting place.
The body is then dressed in generally formal clothes and placed in a casket for
presentation and eventually burial. The funeral takes place, a graveside
service as well; the casket is placed in a metal or stone vault to prevent contamination
of soil or groundwater, and buried.
Cremation is the
burial method of choice in many Eastern cultures and is gaining popularity in
the United States and other Western cultures. Cremation provides for the basic
disposal needs much less expensively then body burial. There is little to no embalming, a casket
isn’t necessary, and the process is faster for the family and friends of the
dead.
Depending on when
the funeral or service takes place, the body may not need to be embalmed at
all. The body may be partially embalmed if the body is present at the funeral
and cremated afterwards, but many opt to cremate the body quickly after death
and only have the ashes present at the memorial service. Caskets aren’t needed
because there is not a body remaining after the cremation, only a few pounds of
bone fragments ground into “ashes”. Cremation also is quicker than body burial
because the embalming time is eliminated or reduced, the cremation itself is a
quick process, and the burial or scattering of ashes replaces the time of
burial itself.
Cremation shows
respect to the deceased by not allowing the body to be mutilated or
disrespectfully destroyed and scattering or burying the ashes of the body helps
provides closure for the friends and family of the deceased. The person may
have requested a place to scatter their ashes, or the family may choose their
own location, often a beach of natural area. Some religions that prefer body
burial but allow cremation, like Catholicism, request that ashes are buried or
placed in a monument for respect.
While
both body burial and cremation are very different options for disposing of the
deceased in the United States, both provide for basic burial needs including
removal of the body, respect for the dead, and closure to the living. So while
a deceased individual becomes an ingredient in the world’s biggest, nastiest
casserole, the practices of burial and cremation have crossed cultural lines.
Persuasive Essay
Emily Spittler
College Comp.
Mrs. Brownlee
8 December 2013
Why
Schools need More Effective Sex Education
On
average, half of all high school students aged 14-18 are sexually active in the
United States (Gish). Based on this national statistic, this means of the
approximately 2800 high school students in the Liberty Public School district,
1400 of them are likely to be sexually active. The United States also has the
highest rate of teen pregnancy of 3.1% in the developed world (“Teen Births,”
2013). This is often caused by a lack of information about sex due to unregulated
instruction (Manhart). Sex education is a necessary part of curriculum in order
to properly explain to students the facts of sex, understand and prevent the
spread of sexually transmitted infections, and be able to make informed
decisions in their lives.
Sex education began in the 1960s as small
programs that stressed abstinence before marriage, which is now call
Abstinence-Only sex education. However, by the 1980s, sexuality was being
taught as a part of the larger human development or health courses and the
HIV/AIDS outbreak caused more information about contraceptives to be introduced
to curriculum to prevent the spread of HIV and other Sexually Transmitted
Infections, or STIs. (Pardini) This combination of abstinence and contraceptive
education is called Comprehensive sex education, or Abstinence-Plus today, and
it covers all aspects of human sexuality, along with preventing unwanted pregnancies
and decreasing the spread of STIs (Gish).
Sex
education is critical to today’s youth to understand their growing and changing
bodies, along with their sexuality and sex itself. While both Abstinence-Only
and Abstinence-Plus are effective methods of sex education, Abstinence-Plus has
been shown to delay the start of sexual behavior and has been linked to the
dropping teen pregnancy rate in the United States (McKeon). The teen pregnancy
rate has dropped from 6.2% in 1991 to 4.1% in 2006 is also linked to increased
contraceptive use, which is included in the instruction of Abstinence-Plus sex
education, giving children and teens the information they need to know about preventing
pregnancy (Manhart).
Opponents to sex
education in schools argue that it is the responsibility of the parent to teach
their children about their changing bodies, sex, and sexuality. This means that
if a parent doesn’t wish to discuss this information with their child, they may
never learn it. When asked how they responded to their 4-7 year old child
asking them about sex in a British study, 38% felt embarrassed, and 31% didn’t
know what to say, leaving this 69% of children with no information on what they
asked about (“Many parents ‘oppose school sex education for children,’” 2011). This
child will grow up in a world completely devoid of information they need to
understand their own bodies and their future as adults. They may resort to the
Internet or a friend for information, which is often inaccurate and unreliable,
or experiment sexually, which could lead to an accidental pregnancy or the
contraction of a sexually transmitted infection.
Parents who do
explain to their children about sex outside of school may not have the most
accurate and current information either. While this is better than completely
ignoring the subject, it can lead to the child once again resorting to the
Internet or a friend for missing information, which may cause as equally
serious consequences as no instruction at all.
By placing sex
education in schools, it is guaranteed that all students will receive medically
accurate information about their bodies, sex, and their sexuality as humans. By
having educated instructors provide children and teenagers with accurate and
reliable information about sex and their bodies, children and teens will be
less likely to make mistakes in their sexual lives, contract a sexually
transmitted infection, or be involved with an unplanned pregnancy due to a lack
of information and knowledge on the subject.
Works
Cited
Gish, Alice. “Sex Education.” Grolier Multimedia Education. Grolier Online, 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013
Gish, a writer for the online
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia published by Scholastic, explains the types of
sex education in the United States and how the school district and state
governments instead of at a national level decide curriculum. I used this
resource to gain significant background information on sex education and learn
about the two types of education.
“Teen Births.” Center
for Disease Control. n.p. 5 August 2013. Web. 8 December 2013.
The Center for Disease Control, or
CDC, is the government agency assigned to all aspects of health and disease in
the United States. I used this small article to find out what the teen
pregnancy/birth rate in currently in the United States and to see how it’s
changed in the past 20 years.
Manhart, Lisa. Kohler, Pamela. Lafferty, William.
“Abstinence-only and comprehensive
sex education and the initiation of sexual activity and teen pregnancy.” Journal of Adolescent Health. (2007): n.page.
Web. 8 December 2013.
Two doctors and a registered nurse
who have worked in the pediatric and adolescent fields wrote this article from
the Journal of Adolescent Health. It contains large amounts of useful information
about the types of sex education and their influence on the recipients. I used
this resource to validate that there is no increase of sexual behavior due to
sex education and that comprehensive sex education actually has lowered the pregnancy
rate in teenagers.
“Many parents ‘oppose school sex education for children.’” BBC News. BBC, 05 May 2011. Web. 8 December 2013.
This article from BBC news explains
why parents of 4-11 year old children in the UK don’t endorse sex education in
schools. This article was helpful to see why some parents don’t want their
children being instructed on sex and sexuality in school. I used the article to
see how parents reacted to their young children asking for information on sex.
Pardini, Priscilla. “The History of Sexuality Education.” Rethinking Schools. Rethinking Schools, n. d. 8 December 2013
Rethinking Schools is an
organization that publishes educational materials and is in favor of
elementary, middle and high school curriculum reform. The article was very
informative on the history of sex education programs and I used to include the
years where sex education was significantly changed or impacted in it’s
history.
McKeon, Brigid. “Effective Sex Education.” Advocates for Youth. Advocates for
Youth, 2006. 8 December 2013.
This article on the types of sex
education and facts about each is from the Advocates for Youth, an organization
in favor of sex education and the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The article was very
helpful by providing me with information about the outcome of each type of
sexuality instruction, and how each works in schools.
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