Asprin for kids in school?

Have you ever gotten a headache? I’m sure you have. What do you do when you get a headache? Go take an aspirin. What can’t you have in school? Aspirin. Do you get headaches in school? Yes. But you can’t have aspirin in school. How does that work? Simply put: It doesn’t.

Its lunchtime, and the drummers decide to go on a march. They walk by not once, but twice. Each time followed by a militia of screaming little kids, armed with shrilling voices sharp enough to cut diamonds. The diamond-cutting voices combined with the ruthless pounding of the drums makes for a high quality headache. Now, instead of studying for your test next block, you were distracted. You go to next block and perform poorly on your test, because you weren’t able to concentrate. Your parents find out, and you get grounded. This test also pulls your grade down from a B to a C right before the period ends. You get your report cad, and your parents see it, and you get grounded… again. All of this could have been avoided if you could have just taken a fast action Bayer.

We should be allowed to carry aspirin on the school campus. What could possibly go wrong? Why can’t we have them now? Some people would say this is because you can “overdose” on aspirin. I don’t know if that is true, but if it is… you can “overdose” anywhere, not just at school, and the only place you can’t carry aspirin is at school. Other people would say that you could just wait ‘til you get home to take an Advil. That wouldn’t be in time for my big test in third block.

According to the CNN health library, Eighty-five percent of people get headaches. Are students not people too? Another source says that four main things cause headaches. Anxiety, Glare, Noise, Anger. All four of those things thrive on a highschool campus.

After third the test in third block, you head on to fourth. The teacher gives a lecture. You can’t pay attention, because you’re too busy trying to ignore the pain of your headache. Finally its 2:52 and you get to leave, but not before writing down your homework. The next day, in fourth block, the teacher decides to give a pop quiz on the material covered the day earlier. You know nothing of it. Another horrible test. Grades even lower.

If aspirin was allowed in school not only would grades go up, but the amount of attention given to teachers would as well. This would push the FCAT scores up, earning more funding for the school. The school could then spend the money on more supplies for the classroom, or more teachers. This would bump the FCAT scores up even higher. Earning even more money for the school.

Higher FCAT scores will also help you get into a good college. Just another “ripple” effect from the aspirin.

Be it from horrible marching drummers, screaming little kids, bright light in your eyes, worrying over your test next block, studying as fast as you can, or from an annoying assembly in the theater, everyone gets headaches. It’s a fact. Everyone should be able to get relief from the pain, no matter where they are.

Better grades, better test scores, getting into better colleges, staying out of trouble at home, suicide prevention, more money for the school, and higher ranking of the school. All reasons as to why we should have aspirin on campus.

Things Fall Apart

A review of: Things Fall Apart

A book written by: Chinua Achebe

I couldn’t get into this book, at all. Not even a little. If I was to make a list of the best one thousand books I’ve ever read, this one wouldn’t be on the list. In fact, if I was to make a list of the worst two books I’ve ever read, this book would take second only to My Life by Bill Clinton. The best part of the book was when Okonkwo finally did himself in. This is because I knew that the book was finally coming to an end, and that the mental torture would soon be over. The most difficult part of reading this book had to be staying awake while reading it. Seriously though, I could drink several glasses of coffee, swallow a couple bags of sugar, then start reading this book. I’d be out in minutes. Because of this… “Minor” setback, the book took quite a while to read, and I had to do most of my reading in very uncomfortable places.

In a couple of years, some kid is going to bring this book up to me, and be like “hey mister, what one thing do you remember most about this book, and how did it change the plot?” and I’m going to respond with something like: That book, eh? Yeah, I still remember good ol’ Okonkwo killing himself. Obviously it brought the book to an end, which is why I remember it most.

The title of the book could indicate that the authors writing skills are falling apart, however I think he would like us to believe that the real meaning behind the title, a well thought out one, I might add, is just that. Things fall apart. Ways of life fall apart, people fall apart, the Igbo fall apart. Nothing can stand forever, and time is the hardest test anything, and everything, will ever face. Time rips things apart.

I’m sure many ‘types’ of readers will enjoy this book, ones that don’t fall asleep easily and ones that are interested in the ways of life of those who don’t have a lot of technology. A reader that is, for the most part, the exact opposite of me.

I always wondered why they needed to take a young virgin, and a young male, in compensation for the death of this guys wife. What’s the young male for? I also wondered why he got in so much trouble for shooting at his wife, he didn’t actually hit her, what’s the big deal? And I thought Okownkwo’s father was a pretty cool guy. I wonder why Okownkwo couldn’t be the same.

Sheeples

Sheep always follow the herd. Staying with the pack means protection; whereas, straying from the pack opens up the potential of being attacked and ultimately ending up in the bowels of a hungry wolf or other carnivore. Men too, always follow the herd. Being too different - dissenting from the norm - often lands men in trouble. Being marked as weird is the lowest of possible punishments that can range from being disassociated to being mercilessly and brutally killed. Straying from the herd is like leaving the wagon circle: it leaves you completely open to the barrage attacks that almost always ensues.

Ken Kesey makes his viewpoint on the issue of sheep quite evident throughout the text of his famed novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. According to the Kingwood College Library “Challenging symbols of conformity” is one of the predominate central themes of the novel (Goodwin). The predominance of this theme is visible in both the characters themselves and the situations the characters are put in.

The whole idea of the Asylum is a prime example of the fact that straying from the herd gets the unknowing wanderer tagged and excommunicated. Those weirdoes and freaks who decide to be different and step out of line get rounded up and tossed into a place that teaches them to stay part of the herd and to never stand out. The teaching is done by an evil natured woman who feels that she’s doing the right thing for the patients: teaching them to conform. Her method is, in essence, targeting a single patient, forcing him out of the herd, then having the rest of the herd pick on the targeted ‘crazy’. This teaches the lesson that being the target, the one outside the group, is the bad spot to be. It also teaches that one is safe while part of the big group, because you don’t get picked on when you’re not different from the others.

McMurphy goes through several stages while in the mental institute, and all of them cause a change in how sheepish he is. When he first becomes a patient in the hospital, his attitude is that he just needs to get the best of the head nurse. His efforts cause him to stray from the herd a little, which in turn amplifies the nurse’s interest in him and brings on a barrage of counter-attacks. Once McMurphy is told that he won‘t be able to leave unless the Nurse approves, he changes his chain of thought. He decides that the quickest way out of there is to just fit in, to just follow the herd and to be unnoticed. This works for a while, he manages to trick the nurse into being less interested in him while he’s just part of the group. Towards the end of the novel, McMurphy starts getting a soft spot for the other patients, and he used what he learned during the previous stages to do the best he can do for his new-found-friends. He combines being daring with being part of the group by convincing the group to do things with him, and by doing so he successfully holds the nurse off for quite some time. When he wants to watch TV; for example, he doesn’t sit down in front of the off TV by himself, he gets the patients to do it with him effectively hiding in the herd from the nurse.

Ken Kesey obviously believes that like sheep, most men just follow the herd. He also believes that men get punished for thinking outside of the norm, and he is blatantly opposed to this type of society model. Kesey would definitely agree with the quote “Most men are sheep,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if Kesey had read that quote multiple times while writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Works Cited

"FREE Study Guide-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey." PinkMonkey. 20 Apr. 2007 . 

Goodwin, Susan, and Peggy Whitely. "Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Kingswood College Library. 01 July 2006. Kingswood College Library. 22 Apr. 2007 . 

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Signet, 1963. 

"SparkNotes: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." SparkNotes. 24 Apr. 2007 .