First of all, I'm just going to say that one doesn't love running unless they're crazy. Which, all runners to some point are. We're an obsessive people: We can't stand missing training days, were pour over race results endlessly, we get anxious if we don't think we worked hard enough on a particular day, we will run even when we shouldn't. And we cry when we absolutely can't.
But it's all for a good reason. There just something special about it- the rhythmic thud of shoes hitting the pavement, the beat of your heart, your steady breaths. And the bliss in the solitude of running by yourself or the faithful camaraderie of being right next to just a few other people. It reminds you that you're alive, and you can do this, no matter how much you want to stop. You can feel yourself getting stronger with each step you take, and if you've been running for awhile, you remind yourself that you're good at this. Most people can't go out and do what you're doing.
If you're a beginner, there's the power in starting something new. Running tires you out- but when you're new, your legs are fresh. I remember what made me start running distance. I was in grade seven and had always loved to run. I begged my mom to let me do middle school cross country and track and wasn't willing to give up on running even when she said she wouldn't let me. She told me that I'd never be able to run very fast and I'd practice for nothing. No one in my family had ever tried running (or any sport) before and she didn't like sports. So I did some research and found out that my local community center had a youth running club. It was only two days a week, so my mom let me sign up to see if I really liked it.
The first day of practice, I ran the most brutal 4 kilometers of my life. I liked running, sure, but I never realized that it'd be that... hard to go long and not fast, like in tag. My first kilometer took me 6 minutes, and after that I got knocked to 7 minutes, then 9, then 8 once I realized how slow 9 minutes was.
But slowly, I improved. We did a 10k race at the end and even though I ran 71 minutes, it was still about 7 minutes per kilometer for each lap, nowhere near the 9 minutes I had done on the first day. So I kept running. Not much, but I kept the muscle memory I gained in 7th grade and never again ran like I did that first day. I did my school's winter running club in 8th grade. Youth running club again in 9th.
And then my mom let me do cross country. Except for maybe writing, I have never found something I liked better and I can't understand for the life of me why more people don't run. Maybe it really is because only crazy masochists who enjoy the pain like it. The season is over now and I don't know what to do with myself except run. I dropped 4 minutes in my 5k and I don't plan to gain them back any time soon. I'm not running as much as I did in practice because everyone is supposed to take time off since cross country exhausts your body. But my running routes aren't restricted to my neighbourhood anymore and there's something about the freedom of looking at your watch and saying to yourself, "I have 45 minutes. Where do I want to go?" And just... going until you have to come back. I did just over 5 miles today and I'm sore as heck because I have a cold and I was already tired, but I wouldn't give anything for how good it makes me feel when I look back and tell myself, "I did that. For 45 minutes of my life I had complete freedom and I chose to do that, go there, and I know that I wouldn't trade the ability to run for the world."
Friday, October 24, 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
My Case Against Homework
Now, I'm not trying to sound like a lazy or overly rebellious student. Believe me, I'm not- I've gotten straight A's almost my entire life. I do my homework, or did. Lately I've just been doing enough to make it look like I did all my homework and it isn't out of laziness. School burnout, exhaustion, and a literal mental overload caused by the sheer amount of homework I have all play a part.
During the cross country season, I get home around 5:00, shower, eat dinner, and usually begin homework around 6. That should give me plenty of time to do my homework, have some actual downtime to interact with my family, and go to bed by 9:30 so I get the recommended minimum of 8 hours of sleep per night. But that simply isn't the case. On a typical night, my homework is done around 10:30 -without procrastination!- then I get ready for bed and am usually asleep by 11. So on a typical weeknight I am only getting about 6 and a half hours of sleep, not even in the same locale as 8 hours. Then, I get up for school the next morning, get through the 7 hour day, run practice, and everlasting study and homework cycle repeats.
Okay, so that's for someone who participates in a sport. What about someone who comes directly home from school every day? This hypothetical person arrives home at 3:00, eats a snack, and starts their homework at 3:15. They then do homework for two hours and eat dinner. If dinner takes about a half hour, this should bring them to 6:15. And assuming they have the same amount of homework as me and most people I know, they still have 2 and a half hours left. Which brings them to 8:45. They now have plenty of time to get ready for bed and be asleep at 9:30, but what about social development? Schools and teachers too often discourage this in favour of doing more schoolwork, but should they really scoff at this idea of a social life so easily?
As adults, life won't be all work and no play, and there's a reason for that: it leads to mental burnout. Studies show that the average high schooler today has the same level of anxiety as a typical psychiatric patient in the 1950's. The amount of schoolwork we are given is literally pushing us to the point of insanity. Besides, teenagers will need to have certain social skills that they can't learn from discussing only school-related topics with their peers, and in the real world, as can be inferred from above, they will have time for this. A full time job works 40 hours per week- 8 hours each day Monday-Friday with weekends off. I understand the notion of working overtime and having to tend to certain events, but they certainly don't take up the rest of your time with sheer deskwork that is too often also busywork. School goes 7 hours a day Monday-Friday; therefore, to really prepare high school students for the real world they should not have more than 5-8 hours of homework per week (accounting for overtime), and certainly not 4 and a half per night.
In conclusion, schools should give less homework for the sake of students' health, both mental and physical, and to develop important social skills. As a teacher I had in grade eight once quoted, "Don't let your education get in the way of your education."
During the cross country season, I get home around 5:00, shower, eat dinner, and usually begin homework around 6. That should give me plenty of time to do my homework, have some actual downtime to interact with my family, and go to bed by 9:30 so I get the recommended minimum of 8 hours of sleep per night. But that simply isn't the case. On a typical night, my homework is done around 10:30 -without procrastination!- then I get ready for bed and am usually asleep by 11. So on a typical weeknight I am only getting about 6 and a half hours of sleep, not even in the same locale as 8 hours. Then, I get up for school the next morning, get through the 7 hour day, run practice, and everlasting study and homework cycle repeats.
Okay, so that's for someone who participates in a sport. What about someone who comes directly home from school every day? This hypothetical person arrives home at 3:00, eats a snack, and starts their homework at 3:15. They then do homework for two hours and eat dinner. If dinner takes about a half hour, this should bring them to 6:15. And assuming they have the same amount of homework as me and most people I know, they still have 2 and a half hours left. Which brings them to 8:45. They now have plenty of time to get ready for bed and be asleep at 9:30, but what about social development? Schools and teachers too often discourage this in favour of doing more schoolwork, but should they really scoff at this idea of a social life so easily?
As adults, life won't be all work and no play, and there's a reason for that: it leads to mental burnout. Studies show that the average high schooler today has the same level of anxiety as a typical psychiatric patient in the 1950's. The amount of schoolwork we are given is literally pushing us to the point of insanity. Besides, teenagers will need to have certain social skills that they can't learn from discussing only school-related topics with their peers, and in the real world, as can be inferred from above, they will have time for this. A full time job works 40 hours per week- 8 hours each day Monday-Friday with weekends off. I understand the notion of working overtime and having to tend to certain events, but they certainly don't take up the rest of your time with sheer deskwork that is too often also busywork. School goes 7 hours a day Monday-Friday; therefore, to really prepare high school students for the real world they should not have more than 5-8 hours of homework per week (accounting for overtime), and certainly not 4 and a half per night.
In conclusion, schools should give less homework for the sake of students' health, both mental and physical, and to develop important social skills. As a teacher I had in grade eight once quoted, "Don't let your education get in the way of your education."
Sunday, October 12, 2014
New NaNo, new genre
For this year's NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month), I'm venturing into the place where no one I know in real life would ever expect to find me (and that's just how I want it): Historical Fiction. Usually, I'm a dystopian and sci-fi kind of person to the extreme point where my characters aren't always recognizable as human beings with relatable emotions and abilities anymore: you know what I'm talking about. While Tris and Katniss may be awesome, and sure, there are some ways you can tell they're human, who is actually in a situation that would be familiar to either of them? (And conversely, is their situation ever familiar to you?) I'm not saying anything against stories like that -I enjoyed those trilogies as much as the next person- but I wanted something more realistic, closer to home.
I hated history in every form -subject, class, the grades I get in history class- until I decided to set my story in the Vietnam War era. Then I found myself researching the Vietnam War... on my own time. The history isn't my favorite part of it, but I do love being able to put myself in the shoes of the daughter of a man who was drafted for the war. While I'm 15 years old and obviously have never experienced my father being drafted for war like my main character, Emma, has, I can still put her in a realistic world and have her live a realistic life that honestly, most people can relate to. They know what she's talking about. She's going to school, trying to make friends, trying to fit into a new place, and even if you've never been the new kid, she still goes home every day and to sleep every night and she's not on a train to a capitol where she's going to shoot bows and arrows, and she isn't climbing abandoned ferris wheels and taking aptitude tests. She's doing what you do. And to me, that makes it so much easier to get into a novel and connect with characters.
I've always loved reading sci-fi and dystopian for the fast pace and crazy suspense and adventure, but if I had to pick favorites every single one that comes to mind is realistic or historical fiction. Summer Hawk by Deborah Savage and Waiting For Normal by Leslie Connor come to mind.
I've never written in this genre before and I'm not sure how it will go, but I'm actually doing preplanning for this year's Nano (!), and I can already see how much more I have than when I was writing sci-fi and had a tendency to jump from one plot point to the next without developing my characters as human beings. Last year, I was focusing on having my characters running away from a sinister government that wanted to experiment on them and throwing in some awkward romance scenes without bothering to ask what they were running from. Why was the government sinister? What happened that changed our world into theirs? Why did a genetic mutation come about allowing them to be struck by lightning? It couldn't just be random, that goes against everything dictated by biology. And I didn't want to focus on the running, hiding, motion. I wanted to zoom in on the small moments that come in a world that, while it may change to make sci-fi reality someday, isn't so alien yet. Or even a time, like the 1960's, where the modern world was evolving but yet still simpler than today.
A time I and the readers can understand. And that's why writing in a different genre is so important to me. Because it isn't new, and different, not really, and I'm starting to get older and see that it isn't about being the first, or furthest ahead- for me at least, it's about creating what I know and making it beautiful.
Are you planning to participate in NaNoWriMo? If so, what are your plans? Plot? Characters? Genre?
How do you want to make your readers feel?
I hated history in every form -subject, class, the grades I get in history class- until I decided to set my story in the Vietnam War era. Then I found myself researching the Vietnam War... on my own time. The history isn't my favorite part of it, but I do love being able to put myself in the shoes of the daughter of a man who was drafted for the war. While I'm 15 years old and obviously have never experienced my father being drafted for war like my main character, Emma, has, I can still put her in a realistic world and have her live a realistic life that honestly, most people can relate to. They know what she's talking about. She's going to school, trying to make friends, trying to fit into a new place, and even if you've never been the new kid, she still goes home every day and to sleep every night and she's not on a train to a capitol where she's going to shoot bows and arrows, and she isn't climbing abandoned ferris wheels and taking aptitude tests. She's doing what you do. And to me, that makes it so much easier to get into a novel and connect with characters.
I've always loved reading sci-fi and dystopian for the fast pace and crazy suspense and adventure, but if I had to pick favorites every single one that comes to mind is realistic or historical fiction. Summer Hawk by Deborah Savage and Waiting For Normal by Leslie Connor come to mind.
I've never written in this genre before and I'm not sure how it will go, but I'm actually doing preplanning for this year's Nano (!), and I can already see how much more I have than when I was writing sci-fi and had a tendency to jump from one plot point to the next without developing my characters as human beings. Last year, I was focusing on having my characters running away from a sinister government that wanted to experiment on them and throwing in some awkward romance scenes without bothering to ask what they were running from. Why was the government sinister? What happened that changed our world into theirs? Why did a genetic mutation come about allowing them to be struck by lightning? It couldn't just be random, that goes against everything dictated by biology. And I didn't want to focus on the running, hiding, motion. I wanted to zoom in on the small moments that come in a world that, while it may change to make sci-fi reality someday, isn't so alien yet. Or even a time, like the 1960's, where the modern world was evolving but yet still simpler than today.
A time I and the readers can understand. And that's why writing in a different genre is so important to me. Because it isn't new, and different, not really, and I'm starting to get older and see that it isn't about being the first, or furthest ahead- for me at least, it's about creating what I know and making it beautiful.
Are you planning to participate in NaNoWriMo? If so, what are your plans? Plot? Characters? Genre?
How do you want to make your readers feel?
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
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