The Price of a Human

Many have often pondered at how much a human being was worth. In Chicopee, Massachusetts, a man seemed to have found the answer. Outside of a Pride gas station on May 17th, the man went up to a station maintenance man and offered to trade his three-month old daughter in exchange for only two 40-ounce beers.
“For two 40s, you can have her,” Brace told the employee, according to Chicopee Police Chief John Ferraro’s account.
The maintenance man then immediately called the police on 24-year-old Matthew Brace, Northampton resident. When the Chicopee police arrived on the scene, they found Brace and his daughter hiding behind a trashcan at the hotel where the man was staying, directly across the street from the gas station.
Details of the case have been released and are as follows: Representatives from the state Department of Children and Family Services took the small girl into custody and, while Brace was not arrested, he has to appear in court on the charge of reckless endangerment of a child.
The baby’s mother, also at the scene, was in the gas station convenient store when the event occurred. She was buying cigarettes and was not charged.
Is the world happy now that Matthew Brace has put a price on a person? Are we relieved that the answer has finally been found? Does anyone else think that it is ironic that the event took place at a Pride gas station? Only time will tell.

“Is There Something That You’d Like to Share with the Class?"

Those are the age-old words that always seem to come out of a teacher’s mouth at the worst possible moment. No matter how much a student says that, yes, they were listening to every word of the lesson, the teacher still does that believe them. Your doodling in class is their way of proving that your thinking was elsewhere. There are no excuses. Until now.

Recently, a study has been conducted by psychologist, Jackie Andrade to find out who, when listening to speech, remembered more: people who doodled or people who did not. The results were shocking and would satisfy many of the world’s doodlers, fidgeters, and pen-clickers.

Andrade asked 40 business people to listen to the same 2 1/2 minute tape. 20 of the participants were instructed to shade in squares and circles on a piece of paper, which was the psychologist’s sly way of saying, “doodle.” The other 20 were not. The tape was meant to be rather boring and contained 16 specific details, such as names and places, that the 40 people would be asked to remember and recite to Andrade afterwards.

The people who drew while listening to the tape, or the “doodlers,” could recite an average of 7.5 names and places. The people who did not doodle could only remember an average of 5.8, which was 29% less than the doodlers.

There is not a proven scientific explanation for why doodling, fidgeting, or clicking your pen allows a person to remember more details. However, psychologist Andrade has many theories, one of which being that doodling causes a lack of daydreaming. Daydreaming requires much of your brain power and leaves less for listening and memory. Doodling does not demand nearly as much brain power, but enough to occupy your brain and keep you from daydreaming. Doodling, the happy medium, is such a low use of brain power that you can still pay attention to your surroundings.

This means that technically, during class, it may be argued that it be smart for teachers to encourage their students to doodle rather than the alternative: daydreaming. So while you’re sitting in social studies class, and drawing a flower up the side of your paper, know that that flower is helping you learn more.

3rd Marking Period, 2nd Article, April Fools

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3rd Marking Period, 1st Article

THE PRODUCT OF A SNOWSTORM

What, I ask you, is a girl supposed to do on the sixth day of a snowstorm when she cannot safely leave her house? There can be many answers to this question, many productive, and not all legal.

So let me rephrase the question: What is a girl to do on the sixth day of a snowstorm that wouldn’t have the cops beating down her door? That’s better. You couldn’t possibly answer that question with something illegal.... unless you added “and not get caught” to the end, I suppose... You know what, let’s move on. I could spend hours phrasing the question differently and there would still be ways to answer it illegally.

Needless to say, I was stuck inside today with nothing to do. I tried aimlessly wandering my house, but I soon grew bored of that when my parents found me and tried to get me to do something productive. How absurd. Productivity would simply not do on a snow day.

Then I tried getting something to eat. I opened the fridge, saw nothing I wanted, opened the pantry, and, again, saw nothing I wanted. I tried the fridge again, hopeful that something new would have magically appeared since the last time I looked. Much to my surprise, I still saw nothing I wanted. Shocking? I think so.

It was then that I realized I was out of ideas. So I figured, hey, maybe my brother Collin will know what to do! I found him in front of the TV and proceeded to sit on him until he answered me. I may not seem big, but 100 pounds on a 75 pound boy can do some major damage on a long-term scale.

He said that I needed to get off of him immediately or suffer the consequences. In all honesty, I was scared of my 12 year old brother. I was also scared of whatever “the consequences” were, so I left him alone, disappointed and still bored.

Do you know those little boxes that your mouse can make on your computer desktop? They are the answer to the imaginatively bankrupt, and I was making those boxes for at least half an hour. Now, in my defense, it’s a very addicting activity.

After making boxes, I had an epiphany, if you will. I would make a blog! It would take up at least an hour of my time and it was legal. Brilliance, right?

So a blog is the end product of hours of boredom on a snow day. I hope you’re happy, Collin, for not giving me anything better to do. That disaster is all your fault. I love you. Maybe.

Second Article, 2nd MP: The Woes of a Journalist: Coming up with Article Ideas

Have you ever sat and stared at a computer screen, trying to think of something to write your next article about? That was me, just five minutes ago. I had searched every news website, googled “article ideas,” and even asked my mom. After all of that, I was still at a loss. What could I write that would still be relevant in two months, when this article would be published? What topic would be long enough and interesting enough? Why couldn’t I think of anything?

In the past two years in journalism class, I have learned that writing articles is much more difficult that it seems. You may be thinking, “Oh, writing stuff to put in a newspaper is easy! All you have to do is grab something off the internet, change a few words, and you’re done.” However, I am the person who gets to tell you that you are wrong. There are many things to take into account when writing. You need to make sure that your article won’t be outdated by the time the newspaper is published, you need to make it interesting, you need to be creative, and, contrary to most people’s beliefs, you can’t just steal things from other, professional newspapers. That’s called plagiarism, but that is a topic for another day.

I am thoroughly convinced that I am not the only person that this writer’s block happens to. When I look around the journalism classroom, I frequently see kids frantically searching news websites, to no avail. I see kids just sitting there, lost in thought, trying to come up with an article idea. I do know that one thing that is running through everyone’s mind is, “I wish I could just make a word search,” but if we let everyone do that, our newspaper would be gone, and in its place would be a puzzle book. I’m not sure that the dean approves of a whole class devoted to puzzle-making.

Every writer in the world has a time where they are stumped for an idea. It’s not just middle school students. It’s a nice feeling to know that if you were to call up Stephen King or J.K. Rowling and ask if they were having a writer’s block, there’d be a good chance that they’d say yes. Then you think, if a famous writer has writer’s block, it’s okay if I do, too. This is somewhat encouraging, until you realize that you, unlike them, have a deadline to make.

I cannot sit here and tell you that I have a cure for the dreaded writer’s block. However, I can tell you some things that I tend to use as inspirations. Sometimes an article of mine is written based on a funny joke I heard that day, a story a family member shared, or something that a character in a movie said. Something just usually sparks me, and I go with it. It may take ten minutes to figure out, or it may take ten days, but I can always use things that I hear around me.

Occasionally, when I’m lucky, I will have an “AHA!” moment. This is when, after thinking for hours, a completely random idea will come to me. Therefore, it requires minimal thinking. I think it’s safe to say that I like when this happens.

You could also try asking your friends for ideas. Other people’s brains are a goldmine for new, fresh concepts. They break you from your usual way of thinking and make you think out of the box.

So yes, it was five minutes ago that I was picking my mom’s brain for things to write about. It was when she was finally out of article ideas herself that she said, “Why don’t you just write about not having anything to write about?” And that is what I did.