'Cause we hopeful

So, I'm still on that MOTIVATIONAL LET'S SAVE THE WORLD high. 

Yesterday, half of us year 10s went to a university for an open day kind of thing. Same ol', same ol' - uhmm... okay, admittedly, I've never been to one of these things before, but it seemed rather typical. They talked to us about our pathway options, why uni is good, the ups and downs, how to pay, blah di blah blah. We got a tour around the place, and I found it impressive but once again, I've never really toured around universities before. Not officially, anyway.

There you go - I'm being thrust into the grown up world -_-

Whatever. So there was lunch, and the people who eat halal (i.e. moi) got to go downstairs to the halal cafe and pick whatever we wanted to eat, while everyone else had Subway. They were jealous. They told everyone today to be halal ^^

And THEN, they had this speaker come in. This dude, I forgot his name, but I wouldn't tell you anyway, but I know for sure he can be referred to as Dr B. Dr B was not related to the university, and he was there to speak to us about personal learning styles and boring stuff, but he was... so infinitely awesome.

He started with that questionairre - I'm sure you've heard of it? The giraffe in the fridge?

It goes like this:

The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a professional. The questions are NOT that difficult.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend.... except one. Which animal does not attend?

Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross but it is used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?

Correct Answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

Yes?

So he started with that, which I found curious 'cause teachers are never interesting like that. He said that professionals, like lawyers and doctors and businessmen, when asked these questions, tended to fail. Primary school children usually got at least two right. Why? Because at a young age, we are curious and open to the world, we want to know everything, we want to learn everything. As we progress through school, into highschool, picking up specific subjects, going to uni or TAFE and becoming a 'specialist', suddenly our knowledge is 'specialised' to whatever we HAVE to know to do our job, and we forget about everything else.

He said the important thing was not just learning what you need to know, but learning to learn. To never stop learning. 

Then he told us about how to train elephants. Basically, when the elephant is a baby, if you tie a rope around it, to a stake, and dig it in the ground so it's impossible for the baby to escape, this will retain in its memory. When it gets older, it's possible for you to tie a simple string around it with a flimsy stake in the ground, and because it remembers its childhood experience, it will assume that to escape this is also impossible.

Learned helplessness. 

He applied it to our group, saying how some of us might fail a maths test or two, and then just assume we will forever fail maths and never try again, and how we should NEVER EVER FALL TO THIS.

He showed us a Nike ad, where a basketball player moves around a court, playing with a ball, rattling off excuses: 'I'm fat, I'm too short, it's too cold, my head hurts, I don't feel like it, I'm fat, I don't have time, I'm not in the mood, do I have to?, what's the point? I'm fat, I have better things to do, it's too boring, I'm fat...' etc.

The whole time, you only see the top half of him. Finally, at the end, it shows his lower half, which is actually on a wheelchair.

He says, "...And, my feet hurt."

Cue the catchphrase: JUST DO IT.

He put up a whole bunch of quotes about either people who were told they were failures but showed otherwise(Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan), and stuff that people said that were also proved otherwise, like some dude who basically said nothing else needs to be invented. He told us we should never just settle for something, we have to test our limits, never stop questioning, etc. Then he spoke a bit how we make excuses and how we have to stop with this, get on with what we have to do. He said the key to success came in five words...

 Summarizes it, dontcha think? 

After that, it was all the personal learning style stuff, (I'm predominantly visual, btw), and even though generally that's boring, he made it sounds sooo much better. AWESOME, AWESOME dude, he's on my hero list though I don't know his name o.o

COMETH TODAY. Or.... TODAY COMETH. Take your pick.

The other half of the year 10s went on the university experience, and only Jane and I were left from our class. Not that it particularly mattered - French, we had a few people, OO we had a few people, maths we were doing a test, and GS... well, here, I'ma speak about GS.

The year 11s and 12s were having a 'Road Safety' lecture thing today, and because the teachers had nothing better to do with us for GS, we went along too. The people running it were a dude called Shane, another called...Pete, and the last, a teacher from my school, who's Dave. 

They were speaking to us about how we drive (I don't drive... and after seeing all the trouble you can get into, gosh, I don't think I want to learn for a while), about accidents. They said to us: 'We're not going to tell you not to drink and drive. We're not going to tell you not to speed. We're not going to tell you not to text or talk to someone on the phone while you drive. But we're going to show you what happens when you do. When you crash."

The starting video was a straightforward crash that was really realistic. Basically, three chicks in a car on the freeway, driver is texting, she hits another car, gets knocked onto the opposite freeway, and a family car hits her. Slow motion of how their bodies impact. It speeds up again, the driver is the only one alive, and she has this awkward cry that makes it more real, and she just screams in agony. Another car slows down and a guy gets out, tries to help but can't get the door open. Ambulance and all the rest are called. Shows them getting her out, looking into the other cars. The thing that really touched me?

They showed the paramedics/firefighters going to the family car, the parents are dead, but there's this little girl sitting there, eyes wide behind a ridiculously large pair of glasses, and she's just asking: "Mummy, wake up! Why won't mummy wake up? Why won't she wake up?!"

And so it goes. They told us how it's not always blood and gore, it might not even show. But when you're travelling thismanyk'sperhour, and you hit the breaks, the first impact is the car hitting whatever, the second is your body hitting the dashboard, and the last, the killer impact, is your internal organs, still travelling, crushing themselves against your ribs, or ripping themselves out of place.

Charming, right? They had all these demonstrations. This guy had to throw a waterballoon full of red liquid against a white sheet to show what our organs looked like after a crash. These girls had to walk across a line while texting, to demonstrate how texting while driving is like driving blindfolded. So on.

They really reached out. The main reason for this is, their jobs, in real life, what inspired them to come talk, is that they're the ones who cut the bodies out of the cars. After a crash.

Even the teacher from my school. Added to my hero list, apparently this teacher (who I haven't actually had before), on top of being a teacher, is a lifeguard, does this body cutting out thing and volunteers for the CFA too. HE'S AWESOME.

BUT, the other thing was, they had one of the receptionists from our office up there, and Pete, he's like:

'Do you know this lady?'

(No answer)

"No? Well, go introduce yourself to her. Get to know her. You don't want to meet her the way I did; I was cutting her son's body out of a car."

... and she cried.

On that topic, I have nothing more to say.

I just want to give back to the community. I know I sit here and whine and seem pathetic, but I'm trying and nothing ever seems good enough. One of the comments on my last post referred to finding internal satisfaction (interesting ;) ) but I don't think, with all the stuff that goes on, I ever will.

ATM:

Reading: Life of Pi. Yann Martel. Haven't had time to read much lately, BUT THE ZEBRA WAS EATEN ALIVE.

Writing: Untitled. Hah. Something for Linchy's mental disorder contest :D

Listening to: Hope. Twista ft Faith Evans. Another oldie, and it's beautiful. They just don't make 'em like they used to.

Feeling: Confined. I think you know why.

I also wanna watch the movie this is from...

We will never break, don’t devastate, we shall motivate,
And we gotta pray, all we got is faith.
Instead of thinking about who gonna die to day,
The Lord is gonna help you feel better, so you ain’t gotta cry today.
Sit at the light so long,
And then we gotta move straight forward, 'cause we fight so strong,
So when right go wrong,
Just say a little prayer, get ya money man, life goes on
Let’s hope!

'Cause I’m hopeful, yes I am, hopeful for today,
Take this music and use it
Let it take you away,
And be hopeful (hopeful) and He’ll make a way
I know it ain’t easy but that’s okay.
'Cause we hopeful! 

Peace in,
Laila

I WANNA BE A SUPERHERO

Ever heard of the the girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes?

 (or 6?)

Okay, I donno if you've seen this video before, but I certainly didn't, and yeah, it left me wowed. You're going to watch it. Now. Because I swear, it's worth every minute, in my opinion.

But firstly, I'll just give you the little background information I have: The girl, Severn Suzuki, a partially-Japanese Canadian, was an ambitious, wise, super amazing and aware child. At the age of 9, she put together a group called ECO, standing for Environmental Children's Organisation. In 1992, when Severn was 12, the group raised a lot of money so they could go to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. This, my friends, was their result:

Come on. Isn't that impressive? She was 12. She's my new hero.

Think about the generation WE'RE surrounded with. The BelieberTwihardFacebook airheads. 

Doesn't that make you just want to do something?

I was in media yesterday, and these girls were listening to some Chris Brown song... charming young man. The lyrics... gosh, they were looking up the lyrics, and the words were so FOUL, and VULGAR, and .... it was like every awful word was specifically incorporated into the song, and they were just bouncing up and down, giggling, singing along, saying 'OMG, this is my favourite song!' like that was completely okay.

They obviously saw my unenthusiastic expression, and I just said, 'how can you listen to this stuff? It's vulgar and horrible.'

They laughed it off, and I just.... tuned out. Next time, I'm going to skitz it and lecture them big time.

I wish... people listened to nicer things. Stuff that wasn't so degrading and disrespectful. I wish people in my year level could be a little more conscience of what they do, think about bigger things, etc.

Star and I were talking yesterday, about how boring school is, how awesome it could be, how pathetic our peers were. We were thinking of all the things we would do if we were principals. Like, at the end of year 12, we'd give everyone a box of Crayola crayons and tell them to go out there and colour the world. We'd let the use chalk (why do they ban CHALK?!) on the grounds, and get one of those awesome artists to make something epic and inspiring on one of those empty concrete areas. We'd try organise more community projects or something. Even if a lot of subjects HAVE to be boring, can't we surround the stuff around them with creativity and fun? Get some enthusiasm going?

And when I saw this video Star sent me, I was just thinking, if I was a school principal, I'd play this to the new year 7s that come in every year. I'd say, 'don't you want to do something great like this? Don't you want to make a change? Are you really satisfied with pointlessly gossiping on Facebook, listening to trashy music, acting pathetic and disrespecting the universe? Is that all there really is to you?'

Clearly, Star and I aren't the most confident of people to go lecture the world. But we've got our own project going, and we're going to up it up a little. Remember the sticky note thing I mentioned? Basically, it's like the thingsweforget campaign thing: write inspiring quotes or whatever on sticky notes and put them up around the school ninja-style.  We used to try aim for the perfect spot where they'd last the longest, but now we're going to just stick 'em anywhere because even if it's on only for one second, and only one person reads it, so what? That one person got something, hopefully, from it, right?

I wish I could do something bigger though. 

I WANT TO SAVE THE WORLD.

ATM:

Reading: Life of Pi. Yann Martel. Quirky, intriguing book that so far I'm in love with - recommending it to whoever even though I haven't even got to the middle of it ^^

Writing: Chipped. Or maybe just 'Chips'. Or 'Chip'. I'm going to hopefully post a chapter today... or tomorrow.

Listening to: Mariella. Kate Nash. It's a funny song Mia sent me :)

Feeling: Inspired.

Even though currently I want to do anything but glue my lips together...

At school Mariella didn't have many friends, yeah,

The girls they all looked at her and they thought she was quite strange.
And the boys, they're not really into girls at that age.
And the teachers, they thought Mariella was just going through a phase.
But Mariella just smiled as she skipped down the road 

because she knew all the secrets in her world.
yes, she always got the crossword puzzles right every day 

and she could do the alphabet backwards, without making any mistakes. 

Peace in,

Laila