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Posts by Alyssa

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Fri, 2010-05-14 14:12 with 1 comments
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    I didn't realize until a couple of years ago how important summer was to me. I always thought it was a pain to endure the burning hot sun, I hated all the yard work that lasted from morning till night, and I often found myself getting extremely bored with all this free time on my hands. But once the sun started to go away and the months started turning into fall and winter, my happiness started to fade. The days were so short, and daylight was usually blocked by stormy clouds. If we spent any time outside, we would come back inside with a horrible cold or frostbite. There was nothing good about months without sunshine, and I started to feel tired and unmotivated every day. The closest thing I can relate this feeling to is Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD is a form of depression that occurs when someone is not receiving enough light. When I first learned about this, I wondered why anyone would even bother considering this a disorder. I experienced unhappiness a lot when I didn't have light, but that didn't mean I was suffering from an actual disorder. I was still happy during fall and winter months, I was just happier during the summer.

Technology: A Demon Or A Saint?

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Thu, 2010-04-29 21:48 with 2 comments
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What I'm good at

Anywhere you look these days you find technology. Mostly found in the form of a cell phone, computer or television, technology is creeping into every crevice of our lives. Our generation can't go a day without some kind of technology, and even though we say we could manage without it, we seem to go through withdrawls when we aren't able to text someone or message our friends on Facebook. I've even personally texted someone who was sitting right next to me instead of breaking a four foot gap to talk to them personally. Of course I take part in this constant use of technology, it's almost impossible not to. Well I know I wouldn't be able to function nearly as well without a cell phone or computer, it's easy to recognize our world is headed into complete electronics. One example of this is the bluetooth, a device that allows you to talk to someone over the phone completely handsfree. While maybe these are handy for car rides, they are just obnoxious in public. I'll walk by someone in the grocery store and they'll start conversing with what appears to be no one. I mean c'mon, how hard is it to hold a cell phone?

Stereotypical Assumptions

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Thu, 2010-04-15 13:44 with 4 comments
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Lately I've been wondering what makes a stereotype, and how do you know if you fit into it?? Most people pay attention to the way a person looks on the outside, and then sticks them in some random category according to it. I won't lie, I often do the same.
 

Making No Effort to Cure "Senioritis"

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Sun, 2010-03-28 16:40 with 0 comments
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It's reached that time of the school year where anyone who is in their last year of high school is experiencing some sort of distractions. I've always had trouble concentrating in school, but the emergence of Senioritis is making it practically impossible. Thinking about it now, I'm not even sure some of the reasons for my distractions are logical. They can be petty things like "Oo I hope I have a good lunch today" or "I wonder if Alice in Wonderland is worth eight dollars" or even "What's for dinner tonight??" Sometimes they can be bigger things like constantly stressing over college and worrying that I simply won't be able to survive on my own, or planning something big to do with my friends this weekend. Whether it's big or insignificant I let things distract me, and sadly enough for my cumulative GPA, I don't care. I guess it all comes down to three major reasons: Summer is only a short ways away, I would much rather be spending time with friends then boring myself to death with school, and I'm only about two months away from graduation.

Racial Bias Within the Death Penalty

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Sat, 2010-03-13 15:43 with 2 comments
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In a current class we are learning about several issues within the death penalty. One that I focused on was the issue of racial bias within the system. A number of people are opposed to capital punishment based on the fact that there have been cases where it was thought the only reason someone received the death penalty in the first place was because they were of color. Although not as prominent now, there have been past statistics that prove this. The most common are cases where the murderers are people of color, and their victims are white. Cases where a minority kills another minority rarely end in capital punishment. In Maryland it was found that if a white victim was killed, the murderer was two to three times more likely to be sentenced. Along with that black defendants were two and a half times more likely to be sentenced to the death penalty than white defendants. A study at Yale University also found that :

Geometry, Trigonometry, What?

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Wed, 2010-03-03 21:47 with 2 comments
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Math is one of those things that no matter how hard I try, I cannot get better at. I pay attention all the time in class, I ask questions when I need to, I read the book (which is ridiculous), I have even had extra lessons with the teacher to try and understand. Still, I walk out of that class wondering what the hell just happened. I have had times when I have been exceedingly good, such as during algebra one, geometry, and the occasional trigonometry. If I have the equation and all I have to do is plug in some values, then I can do that with ease. Really, anyone can. But when it comes to problems such as identities and logarithms, all I can do is stare at the paper and hope I will suddenly realize how to do it. Not to mention when in the hell am I ever going to have to figure out why sin2 t + cos2 t = 1? Or that loga(u/v)=loga(u)-loga(v)? The words of Jimmy Buffett sum it all up:
 

Materialistic Teens

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Sun, 2010-02-14 23:13 with 2 comments
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    I recently went car shopping with my to purchase my very first car. For two years now I have been driving around in one of my parents cars, that is, if they are available. When I was told that we were going to go out to look for a new car, I was so excited. I knew I wouldn't be buying a $10'000+ car, but I was at least expecting something nice. We looked online for a while, wrote down some numbers to call, and then headed out to State Street. The first lot we pulled up to was a complete dump. Just about every car had multiple cigarette burns in the seat and looked like they hadn't been cleaned since the factory made them. I turned to my dad with a disgusted look on my face and he simply said, "It's just aesthetics." I couldn't convince myself. We stopped at every lot on State, which I'm assuming is somewhere from 30-50. Just about every business on State is a car dealership. We were looking in a price range on $2,000 or under, but I was so picky that we couldn't find a single thing. Everything looked like crud, and I was being snotty and thought I deserved better than crud. This is a little concept psychology likes to call entitlement:

The APA/MLA Struggle

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Wed, 2010-01-27 16:23 with 0 comments
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One of the most ridiculous things all students have to do at some point in their life is write a research paper. Even more ridiculous that the paper is the reference page. Before the wonder of automatic citation web pages existed, we had to do it the old fashioned way: Find the author, publisher, year published, place published, etc. And it wasn't just these things we needed to find, because we still have to find these things to enter them into the website, but we also had to put them in the correct order and form. It is seemingly impossible. Different websites give different ways to do it and all claim they are the correct, not to mention there are two different styles: APA and MLA. Most of my life, in fact all of my life, I have written in MLA. I recently had to write a paper in APA form, and I can't really say that I enjoyed it. There were changed such as a running header, page numbers, semi-different format, and the reference page was the worst. I spent about forty-five minutes trying to get my reference page correct. Of course I didn't know there were wonderful tools like automatic citations. Here is the general format of APA citations:
 

Hallucinating While Sleeping..Is It Strange?

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Wed, 2010-01-06 15:05 with 2 comments
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    A while ago I had an "incident" that occurred in my trailer, in the middle of the night, at a cozy campground in Island Park, Idaho. It was about the third morning since we had been there and my mother came up to me and said "From now on, you are not allowed to sleep alone." After some inquiry and complete disbelief, I discovered that I had a hallucination in the middle of the night. I woke up and got straight out of my bed, shaking and using all of my force to smack my pillow against the bed. My mother came in and asked me what was wrong and snapped back, "Ursala! Her tentacles are all over my bed!!" (with some attitude, according to my mother) and I didn't stop until my mother assured me there was nothing there. Of course I had absolutely no recollection of this, none at all.  Since then, there have been a multitude of hallucinations, sleep talking, and sleep walking.

Disection of the Transformation of Jane Eyre

Discussion by: alyssabird14 on Mon, 2009-12-14 15:25 with 0 comments
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audio/mpeg iconAlyssa Jane Eyre.mp3

A small summary of Jane Eyre, and a more elaborate passage of her character.

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