Bullying part 4

This will be the last part of the bullying blogs. I wrote these blogs not to harp on people about teasing others or to throw statistics in people's faces that I am sure have been on the news or in the paper or somewhere that is easily seen. My point is to possibly wake some people up to the reality of what impact you have on people's lives. We are going to college for some of the people reading this, and in college try and make a promise to yourself to be more open to people. Don't ridicule someone because they are different because you never know when that is their last straw, when they no longer can do life anymore. I once read a book called "Thirteen Reasons Why," by Jay Asher( I truly reccomend this by the way) and it was about a girl who had committed suicide but not before creating 13 tapes that were to be sent to every person on a list that had some impact on why she decided to commit suicide. It went through her story of how everything ended up linking together and causing one massive situation that she couldn't handle anymore. That book truly shows that you never know what someone is dealing with outside of the environment you see them in. You don't know what they deal with when they go home, or what they have to handle in other classes. We have so little time in some people's lives and do you really want that little time to be you bullying them or making them feel inferior to you for whatever reason?

What people chose to say to others does hurt, that saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me," Is wrong, it can hurt you. It is not okay to chose someone out of a crowd and make them feel alone or inferior, because chances are what you are making fun of them about they probably can't change. If you do anything in life at least try to remember that you may think its funny but that person probably doesn't and would you want to wake up in the morning and read in the paper about how someone YOU bullied died because something you said? Personally I woudn't want that on my conscience. I have my moments where I forget this very thing I am hoping people will learn to do, but I am getting better and I hope that someday it never happens because life could be so much simpler if people learned to accept others for who they are and not avoid them because of things they can't change.

So here is a blog I found about bullying, one story of millions that happen all the time.. http://bullyingstatistics.blogspot.com/

Here is a link where I found some of my statistics http://www.pascack.k12.nj.us/70271919141818/lib/70271919141818/Bullying_Statistics.htm

and this is a link to a video about a bullying project movie or show that is coming out..
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/04/27/bully_project_movie_trailer/index.html


I hope that even if you chose not to go along with what I say that someone out there learned something and maybe was able to change a few lives in the process.

(Oh and sorry Mrs. Healey that this one is like 13 minutes after 12!)

Bullying part 3

I know many people may read this and say, bullying really? What more is there to say about bullying? What haven't we heard about that growing up, especially in todays society? If you turn on the news you can hear stories about someone being bullied all the time. So what are the effects of bullying to someone? What will happen to them in the future? Well let's find out..

Bullying has many effects on different people, and can depend on your personality and whether you have real friends and even how your home life is. There will be those people who are bullied and when they get to college will have found what they are meant to do and be, and not worry about what other people called them when they were in 5th grade, but this isn't what happens to everyone. For example, imagine that there is a student who is now in highschool, they have been bullied nonstop every year since at least 5th grade. Their home life is horrible, their parents treat them just as badly as those people at school do, what do you think will happen to them? Well they will either toughen up and harden themselves from being able to be hurt or they could get extremely depressed because they feel as if they have no one. That feeling of loneliness has a huge impact on a person's life. They could start to believe what everyone tells them and even start to do worse at things like classes or not perform well, they become self-fulfilling prophecies. However, again this is not the only outcome, some cases do lead to suicide.

Yes I went there suicide, a topic I have heard many people talk about in ways that I am shocked beyond belief by. People look at those who have killed themselves or try to hurt themselves and say there must be something wrong with them, they have to be crazy, why would you ever do such a thing? Then they continue to ridicule them as if they up and did this for no reason. This appauls me that no one sits down and thinks to themselves, you know I wonder why they did that? I wonder what the breaking point was? No one tries to say, "Hey maybe they aren't crazy, maybe they just had a lot going on in their lives, you shouldn't judge them because they did that." So many people not just teens die from suicide because of what someone else has said to them. Due to abuse they have received and isn't that what bullying is? Abuse? So many people do not link those two words together but even when a parent abuses their children that is still bullying. Even when two adults bash each other based on something that is bullying!
People assume that this word has one finite definition, a definition that people are excluded from when they reach a specific age, and a definition that is limited to only being two children or two teenagers involved. I am sorry but that is NOT the definition of that word, and we make judgements about that word without even thinking about what it does to someone.

Bullying doesn't just effect the person you hurt with your words or actions, it effects everyone in their life that they communicate with, that they live with, and that they are around on  weeky to daily basis. People forget that as humans we have feelings and that feelings DO matter, that what we do to others makes a big deal and should be watched.

Bullying part 2

So to begin this post off I decided to show some statistics. 1 out of 4 kids are bullied. In a recent study 77% of the kids were bullied physically,mentally, and verbally. 1 out of 5 said that they were bullies or did bullying of some kind at some point. 8% of students miss one class per month due to being scared of being bullied. Playground statistics- Every 7 minutes a child is bullied. Adult Intervention -4%. Peer Intervention -11% No intervention-85%.

These statistics go on and on. Students everywhere have to wake up in the morning and go to school worrying about who is going to beat them up, who will make fun of their hair, shoes, clothes, or whatever that person decides. Some students live in constant fear of being attacked by someone around them. My question to that is what kind of effect is this going to have on those kids? Being in constant fear, unable to feel welcomed or unable to belong to something would not be pleasant. In fact it would go past that to be downright unbearable. Most of the time you will hear stories about people only being bullied about one thing, maybe they had an embarassing fall and everyone saw, they may be laughed at for a little while but eventually people forget. But what about those kids that are bullied everyday? What do they do? How do they live?

Those people have to feel so insignificant, so separated from the rest of their classmates and their peers. I for one know that feeling inferior to someone is not fun and makes for less self esteem or confidence in  your abilities. The feeling of inferiority can make someone doubt their abilities about something they should be able to do with no problem.

There have been laws, and riots, and protests against racial bullying and racism, yet in schools all across America and across many other schools in the world bullying still exists. I remember being that age and thinking that you couldnt tell your parents or you couldn't tell a teacher because they would call that kid's parents or tell the principal which never helped because once the bully got in trouble, you felt more of the pain. Honestly those kids were right, it is hard to tell on a bully, because the system for dealing with them does nothing. That system does not help whatsoever. So what is a kid to do when they feel desperate and feel alone because of bullying? That situation doesn't leave much room for safety in a child's life.

Now in today's society with the booming technology with more and more people having cell phones that get the internet, that have the ability to have emails sent to their phone and a connection to social websites like facebook without needing a computer, information spreads quickly. Before it used to be that the school building and area around it was the only danger from bullies. Today that isn't even where most of the bullying takes place. The internet has spawned a bullying beyond what it used to be. It has spawned something that can create a falsehood, spread it within minutes to hundreds of people, and do it all anonymously because it doesn't have to be face to face anymore. What does this mean to those who fall on the lower end of the social network? It means utter humiliation not just in school but outside of it and with the ability of spreading something untrue and reputation destroying so much faster than before.

Bullying is not something to take lightly, in can have tremendous effects on someone all the way through adulthood. Many people assume that bullying at grade school age is normal, its a rite of passage almost, everyonse has it happen to them and it is just the norm. What I say to that is why does it have to be the norm? Why is that ever okay to let people make judgements about someone because they are different or because they can? There is no benefit by someone being beaten up or emotionally abused by someone, there is never and will never be a good outcome of bullying or abuse. So my question to America is why haven't we done more to help the youth of this country? Why don't we try to stop it to change the views because at those ages we have the ability to mold their future habits, and if we let it happen when they are little, they will only learn to do the same thing to adults as they continue to get older.

Bullying part 1

Bullying. There isn’t a human being on the planet that doesn’t know what this word means. As soon as you hit the age to be in school it will happen. Whether you are the victim or the bully, or whether you are an adult who watched it happen you know what it is. So many people, adults and children, around the world and in many homes have to deal with this word. Chances are they have felt the pain of this word at some point in their lives, and probably did it to someone else too. When people hear bullying they think of two children, possibly on the playground or in classes at school. However, only thinking bullying happens in these two places, and only these two places are naïve.  It doesn’t matter what age you are, bullying can still happen, the difference is that when people are older, others feel that they should be able to handle it and are probably being dramatic if they can’t handle it. I remember being in middle school and I think many people would agree with me that at least for girls middle school was one of the worst times to be a kid. Bullying was a commonplace thing and when everyone got aim accounts it became even easier to attack someone at home and not just school anymore. With the internet steadily growing bigger and bigger and invading more homes and more opportunities to invade people’s lives the aspect of bullying grows tremendously as well.  To imagine being a middle school child in this era where it’s extremely easy to get on the internet and harass someone, it would be much worse. I’m sure the feeling would be claustrophobic and one that would feel as if you couldn’t get rid of the person who was making fun of you. It’s sad to think of what that would be like and how you would deal with that. The feeling of not being able to escape what someone was saying, and not only that but being able to have it spread to more people faster without control. Imagine all this is stemmed back to one kid bullying someone else because they are different or just because they want to, it doesn’t seem to be just in the playground anymore does it?

Quarter Three Project

My readership has greatly improved since Q2. The month of December I had 14 views, the month of November was 91 and October was only 12 views, the entire month of February I had 218 page views. I think the biggest difference from before was that in quarter three I started putting my blog as a link on Facebook a couple times a week and after I made a new post so that more people could reach it. I also put labels at the end of my blog so that anyone searching those could possibly find my blog that way too.

            My two most popular posts were my contribution post and my MTV 16 and pregnant post. I am not sure why the contribution post received so many views, but as for the MTV one I know that I advertised on Facebook for it and I told my friends to go read my blog. This worked really well because MTV is a very popular TV channel and many people my age would be interested in reading something that had to do with a TV show they would understand. The other posts that were after these two, were also posts that had to do with main stream ideas, like for instance American Idol, I noticed that the more I made my posts about something many people would know about, the more people I had that viewed that particular post.

            My referring sites were mainly Facebook and Google. The only key word I had where someone found my blog was from the MTV 16 and pregnant. These referring sites taught me that many people are on Facebook all the time, and the best way to get more people to read your blog is if you advertise it on a website, like Facebook, that can be spread quickly and effortlessly.

            Some questions I have would be why some posts weren’t as popular as I figured they would be. I had assumed that most people would know American Idol more than they would know about MTV’s 16 and pregnant. However this was not true.  During the third quarter I also became a follower to more than just the other students in my class, and I only had one person follow me back. It showed me that some of the bigger blogs won’t necessarily follow you back just because you follow them. If I would assign myself a grade I would say that I would give myself an A. I kept up with the weekly deadlines of doing a post every week, and I also accomplished getting more readers for the third quarter than I had in the second quarter. Not only that but I tried to broaden my topics so as to attract more readers that way and I would say that I did succeed. More importantly is that I branched out to other blogs and started to follow them, and by reading other people’s blogs who had many followers, I was given ideas on how to improve my blog so as to gain more followers as well. Lastly, I read my fellow classmates blogs pretty religiously, I did not always comment on everyone’s blog, but at the very least I did read a majority of the blogs that they all wrote.

            In doing this assignment with the blogs I learned that sometimes when you want to gain more readers, the topics you write about have to change. For instance some topics will be more popular than others, and at the very least if you choose not to pick relevant and popular topics, you must have a theme in order to keep people coming back to your blog. I feel that my writer persona did change when I was writing for other people. When I first started I blogged about whatever was in my head at the time or a topic that was important to me. During this quarter I had to adapt that idea and make it more relevant and important to readers than necessarily to myself. For future writing I will remember this so that if I want people to read it and the writing to not just be for me, that I need to write it differently. I need to make sure I consider the audience in my work instead of just making myself feel better afterwards.

College

Today while we had off at school and everyone was sleeping in I was waking up at 5:45 to get on the road to go to a Spring Open House for University of Maryland. Granted I am one of those people who knew what college they wanted to go to as they were applying, which is a huge advantage. When I went to the Fall open house I  basically knew I was going there and that I was going to major in elementary education. I wouldn't say there was an A-ha moment with University of Maryland the first time I heard about it or even got information on it, but I was definately excited after that fall open house and agreed that the education program was a great one. Today was like 200000x that feeling of excitement. Not only is there only like 40 some days left of my Senior year in highschool, I also got to learn more about the process that my Education major was going to take me in the next four years of my life. The open house started off with an introduction which had some musical entertainment of an acapela group called the "Faux paz" which I have to say were amazing. They were all extremely talented and performed with a lot of energy. Once the other parts of the day happened with the meetings and what not at the building for my major I was so ready to be there in classes, to be at college and living that lifestyle. I am so beyond excited to go to college after today that I can not even explain it, I don't even really want to go back to high school on Monday, even though I know I have to.

College is going to be an amazing experience, and I cant wait to be one of many new freshman as the Class of 2015 to be partaking in this experience in the fall. The feeling of taking classes that may be CORE but you have more options of and then doing classes that involve your intended major is so exciting. The atmosphere is so different than high school, and even though I will miss that part of my life, I can't wait to start my next journey.

Dreams

As I was watching American Idol on thursday it occured to me that many of the contestants this year that made it through to the Hollywood week and then to the top 24 were under the age of 18. I then imagined myself being on stage and in front of all those people, which of course is not something that I would particularly like, but even without liking being on stage I can not imagine being that young and doing what you want the most, to perform to the entire country. It must be an exhilarating experience to go and sing in front of millions of people and in front of well known artists like Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. I think that it is wonderful that they get to fulfill their dream at a young age, because many people don't even get that ability. My dream job isnt something like singing, but I definately have dreams that are large and could potentially never happen. For instance I want to travel to a lot of Europe and see many countries, and even though I have started and been to France and Spain this past summer, I don't know if I will be able to see all the countries I want to. I think its important for people to have dreams, because even if they all don't come true, its something to live and strive for, its a goal that could be obtainable, and having a goal and ambition is important.

So what are your dreams? If you could do anything what would it be?