Weekly Blog 1-5 (40): The Cogs Keep Turning

Hello ‘Ilima

(Author’s Note: I’m kind of stupid, I originally had a whole section celebrating my 50th weekly blog, but I had read the numbers wrong and I’m actually on the 40th blog. It’s a bit embarrassing but also pretty funny. Anyway, let’s continue on with the blog.) This week felt very fast looking back at it. Or maybe I just forget the detail. Well anyways, we still had Flag Football this week and it was pretty meh. It was the same cycle and same steps over and over again which just got boring. The only thing that really changed was on Thursday. Majority of the 8-3 students in Leadership needed to do a Social Studies Assessment because Friday was an ISA event that SBG needed to attend. Two people had asked Mr. Damo, the Social Studies teacher, if they could do the test during their Leadership period, but he said that the only opportunity he would give for us to do the test was doing Advisory. This got Mr. Ing a bit annoyed because there really was no difference between taking the test during our Leadership period and Advisory, but we still took the test while the 8th graders played flag football. The test was really easy as it was just the same questions from the first quiz and the same essay from the second one. Next, there was ISA Cross Country which was what I eluded to earlier. This was a very new experience for me. Our job was to get pictures and videos of the students participating. It was pretty simple and we got it all done, but it was just an different environment. There were other schools who also had their camera people which I had never realized that other schools did similar things to us. It was also pretty hot there and I had forgotten my water bottle which was just a recipe for disaster. Interviewing the kids was also something very new. I had prepped a couple questions earlier on and I just had to search for random people to interview. There was one interview with 3 boys that was just absurd. They had weird answers for all the questions and one guy even cussed at the end. I ended up deleting that interview, but all of the other ones were pretty good. Overall, it was a pretty decent experience but I need to be much more prepared next time. Everything else in this week has honestly gone passed my mind. Football season has started which has been pretty fun. I’ve watched 3 games so far and the best one has definitely been Eagles vs Packers. It was very high scoring and it went all the way done to the literal last second. So overall, this week was pretty fine.

SBG Before ISA

Cheyanne and I During Flag Football

The first highlight from this week probably be the Football and College Football seasons starting. I’ve become a huge fan of sports since the start of 7th grade, so the beginning of the new season got me really excited. Also, it was announced that Kendrick Lamar was gonna perform at the Super Bowl Halftime which I NEED to watch. The other highlight from this week was probably Cross Country. It was a nice break from such a long week but that’s probably the only positive. I guess it was also interesting to watch the race itself but it was really only the start and finish we could see. The first lowlight from this week has to be Flag Football. It’s such a draining activity that I’m so sick of. I can’t believe I used to enjoy it last year. Maybe because the games were actually exciting last year. Another lowlight would probably be school itself. I’ve felt so tired, despite getting more sleep than useful. Waking up early everyday has become such a painful routine and I feel like I slowly decay everyday. If I were to control things, I would change the schedule a whole lot. To begin, I would shorten how long school lasts. Let’s say 10-2 or 5 hours. This allows for kids to still have time after school was also being able to be more rested in the morning. Then, we shorten each class to 1 hour. It’s very possible to give a whole lesson in a hour as they used to do it in either shorter times during distant learning. That leaves 2 hours for break time. You can have recess last 30 minutes and then each lunch last 75 minutes. This allows for students to spend more time with friends and lets teacher get prepared better for the next class. Then school ends and everyone is happy. Student productivity would be higher, teachers would have longer breaks so they wouldn’t be as stressed, and lessons are more efficient than before. If they could just do this then maybe students would actually enjoy school. I kind of went off the tracks but there really isn’t much other to cover. 

There is multiple lessons that can come from this week. The first one is to expect the unexpected. Going back to football, the Cincinnati Bengals lost to the New England Patriots as a HEAVY favorite. I was completely jaw dropped when I saw how bad the Bengals were. This just tells me that sometimes the expected result doesn’t always happen. Something could be so much greater than another thing, but the lesser one could still come out on top. So I should know not to always expect the expected outcome to occur and keep an eye out for upsets or other things happening. The next thing I learned was that some people just think about themself. Mr. Ing brought up the point how there has been a lot of selfishness going on with the ‘Ilima teachers which I’ve noticed from Mr. Ing’s experiences. Like with the Social Studies test and how the teacher wasn’t thinking about our time, rather theirs. It’s interesting to note just how much people can only care for their own backs and how not all people can be trusted. With that being said, this concludes my blog. I hope you have a great week. Cheers to another day!