Don’t get stuck in nasty habits that are hard to replace.

And by that, I’m not referring to the typical teenage rebellion stories so cultivated by society, mostly (I suspect) created by adults to flaunt their own superiority in the face of their loss of youth.

No, I am referring to the opposite kind of problem, one not held up as a horror story, or a nice narrative used to denounce a generation. For just as it is possible to care too little about your future, it is also possible to care far too much.

When you start to care too much over the numbers on your transcript, the assinments you must face, it is all too easy to ignore the life you have in front of you. Dashing homework questions in the library and ignoring friends, it’s hard to fully grasp the sacrifice you’re making until you try to reverse the pattern you have locked your life to.

It is dubious whether or not this kind of hard work will even yield higher grades. Kids I know who put the kind of all-or-nothing pressure on themselves for success end up spending more time procrastinating under the pressure they put themselves under, and may overwork projects in ways that increases the quality of the work without actually increasing the mark.

In the process of this overwork, kids/teens/adults, you forget yourself.

You try to fit into the mold of school without thinking of your own goals and dreams, ignoring friends, and, hells, if you’re not going into the academic straight-and-narrow, taking time away from the development of a future career!

Life is full of its propoganda.  But while it’s true teens can be peer-pressured to drink and smoke, let’s not ignore the increased competitiveness of high school students, increasing university rates, and with it, the increase in overworked kids.

I’m writing this blog out of sheer procratination, facing familiar situations.

I always knew grade twelve would be the year of death (here in Canada it pretty much decides your next four years), I just never knew it would all feel so familiar.

The strain of work, the pressure to pass the latest test is really wearing me thin. It feels like I’m on my last few yards of strained fabric, not because this year has so far been stressful, but because I feel as though my whole life I was headed for the new great chapter, when I don’t even know if this is true.

Maybe I need to change my outlook on life, because this whole all-or-nothing grade twelve build-up feels way too intense for my anxiety-prone mind to handle. Truthfully, I’m not sure if this proposed answer I’m getting in terms of finding the “right school” is believable or just naive.

What terrifies me the most out of all of this is not that continual taunting fear that I somehow won’t do as good as I could have in these seemingly defining moments, but that the finish line/new beginning/whatever you choose to call it of these next four years won’t hold the answers I’m facing.

And I know, I can always switch majors, always switch schools, but frankly, wouldn’t it suck if the thing you were propelled at since a child turned out to be a big lie?

University. The big determinant of our futures.

But now that it’s actually here, I’m quasi-disappointed in myself at mindlessly following the road frequently trodden. It’s just too painful to think of how the sacrifices I made for some sort of facade of achievement could actually equate to nul… and this university game is just society’s propoganda keeping us all on our toes…

As an example, I started off in private school where marks were the crux of my existence. Now that I’ve decided to apply to fine arts instead of something more academic, I’m realizing that marks don’t mean a shit next to your portfolio. And yet, knowing this, I’m trodding along like a sheep, churning out assignments, completely ignoring the art that I both love and have decided to spend my life pursuing.

I’m terrified.

And I quote, from Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, when asked about the governor’s comments that she would not question Israel if they chose to attack Iran.

We don’t have to second-guess what their efforts would be if they believe … that it is in their country and their allies, including us, all of our best interests to fight against a regime, especially Iran, who would seek to wipe them off the face of the earth. It is obvious to me who the good guys are in this one and who the bad guys are. The bad guys are the ones who say Israel is a stinking corpse and should be wiped off the face of the earth. That’s not a good guy who is saying that. Now, one who would seek to protect the good guys in this, the leaders of Israel and her friends, her allies, including the United States, in my world, those are the good guys.

I’m wondering, if after a seven year invasion – and I’m using that word, because that’s essentially what it was -  we really have the right to judge who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are.

If any of you are late checking the interview out, I highly recommend watching it. It touches on many issues, and asks tough questions such as whether democracy is okay if it elects “terrorists” such as the Hamas party and what it means to get foreign policy information by living close to Russia.

Check out the video of the interview here and the transcript here.

I was eating out at a mexican fast food joint with my family when I came across an extremely interesting article. It was in the Boulder post, no less (for those who don’t know: Boulder is a county in Colorado).

What I read pretty much shocked me. Of course, I had read about amendment 48, but I had no idea just how extreme the implications would be once it passed.

What most know about the amendment is that it would define a fertilized egg as a human being, preventing abortion. What most do not know is that it would also render many methods of birth control illegal, as many prevent pregnancy by stopping the newly fertilized egg from attaching itself to the wall of the uterus.

According to the article:

…about 30 to 70 percent of the time, the fertilized egg fails to implant and is flushed from the woman’s body during her next menstrual period without her ever knowing about it. This is not considered a miscarriage because the egg never implanted and never initiated the physical changes of pregnancy. IUDs make the uterine lining hostile to fertilized eggs, preventing them from implanting and thus halting a pregnancy before it can begin.

The article later continues:

Hormonal birth control works to prevent pregnancy in three ways: by preventing ovulation from occurring; by making the mucus in a woman’s cervix hostile to sperm; and by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, should a woman have “break-though” ovulation. The fertilized egg is simply flushed unnoticed from the woman’s body like so many others.

In this case, most doctors say that no miscarriage or abortion has occurred because the fertilized egg hadn’t implanted and therefore the woman wasn’t yet pregnant. But some conservative Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, consider IUDs and hormonal birth control to be abortifacients because they can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. For them, “conception” is the moment of fertilization, not the successful implantation of an embryo. In their view, anything that interferes with that embryo’s implantation isn’t contraception; it’s abortion.

Not only is this the case, but many pregnant women would be denied healthcare in cases where it may potentially harm the embryo, as doctors would have to consider both the woman and her unborn baby as equals. In the three countries that legally recognize fertilized eggs as human lives, the result has been many avoidable deaths of women. Although technically the woman and the unborn child have equal rights under the law, the unborn child ends up having more rights than its mother when healthcare providers are afraid to even consider lifesaving medical procedures for fear of being prosecuted.

Now, I’m not rephrasing the article in oder to make the point that all citizens concerned for the rights of embryos are also committed to killing/hurting women and so forth. I understand the views of those against abortion, even live with some of them. It just seems to me that in the race to legally prohibit certain procedures, people forget how complicated abortion is, and how many unforseen circumstances can arrise when people try to prohibit it.

If abortion is made illegal, or even birth control, it will not stop happening. Instead, back-door methods will be used. Although, in the US, unplanned births are escalating, it’s still taboo to have a random child you can’t support, if the whole Jaimie Lynn Spears fiasco has taught us anything. Even more importantly, getting rid of an option for suddenly pregnant women and girls cuts off one more option, and many end up raising a child they cannot support as a result.

To pro-lifers out there: if you really want to stop abortions, expand people’s options. Promote condom usage and other methods of birth control, fund crisis pregnancy centres, and make adoption a viable option. Taking away abortion rights isn’t helping women by taking away the trauma of the event if they have to spend the next good portion of their life working to raise a baby they can’t afford. Instead, giving women condoms, or creating more comprehensive adoption agencies prevents both uncomfortable circumstances.

Abortion is by no means a simple issue. If anyone is out there considering supporting some kind of amendment 48-type bill, I strongly urge them to think of the real implications before going ahead.

So I’m in Denver, Colorado, staying at a hotel. And it’s weird, because when I’m scrolling through feministing , my fave website in the world, the computer keeps blocking me. The reason? “teen sex keyword activated.” Which is pretty amusing, since, accordding to a poll by NBC and People magazine, nearly 3 in 10 young teens are sexually active (yes, I used a direct quote from the article title. Sue me).

Interestingly enough, the hotel did not prevent me from researching this statistic.

So what’s up, uniguest, service powering my hotel computer? Is teen sex really that unacceptable? And, more importantly, will censoring it really make it go away?

I’m sure, if you haven’t been in a cave this past month or so, you’ve heard about the “racy” or even the “nude” pictures of Miley Cyrus somewhere on the pop culture news. Yes, folks, Disney superstar, fifteen-year-old icon for preteens everywhere is actually a “whore” by some bloggers, a “slut” by others, and, on a late night E! countdown of “Girls Gone Bad” a “Girl About to Go Bad”.

Clearly, everyone should be outraged, and Cyrus should apologize for someone hacking into her phone and putting the pictures of her online. Especially since, in all of these “racy pictures”, none of her is actually showing.

Anyone that blames Cyrus for these pictures, reiterating the whole “you’re too young for your age” rant obviously knows nothing about today’s teenaged girls. A quick look around Facebook or Myspace shows that many other teens seem to have similar pictures on their not-so-private profiles. Pretending to be sexy in front of a camera is pretty much what most teenage girls do.

So let’s take a look at all of the possible misdemeanors here:

-posing sexily for camera

-hacking phone of fifteen year-old girl

-putting sexy pictures of fifteen year-old girl all over internet

-calling fifteen year-old girl you don’t actually know a “slut” a “whore” and a whole other slew of fun things

Ignoring most of the real crimes, pop-culture shows victim blaming at its finest and blames the fifteen year-old girl.

Why is it that they never make bathing suits for girls and women that cover the hair down there region? Even before the age where it’s assumed that everyone’s having sex, it’s expected that – even though no one is presumably viewing this region, girls are waxing/shaving/sugaring regularly.

This really bothers me. You can’t even get some athletic speedo thing without the cut being super narrow in those areas where you would want a little more coverage.

Why is this hair removal necessary? I’m refusing to believe that there is some sort of woman-hood self-confidence benefit. And if it is really for guy viewing, why is it that girls just hitting puberty have to shave in time for bathing suit season?

Bathing suit compagnies, please. A little extra material in the crotch area. It can’t be that hard.

Not that I’m surprised. While looking for pictures for my previous post I came across  this:

Arsenault, who pronounces more times than one cares to recall “I might not be a woman, but I am a lady” or words to similar effect, would have made her case a little more persuasively with a decent pedicure on her not-so-dainty feet. (One toe appears to have an ill-used Band-Aid.) Her voice contains a trace of that tell-tale quack one hears when boys play girls and her delivery is at times not particularly mellifluous.

Not only is it misogynist to comment on the state of an actor’s feet instead of their performance and sexist to insult Arsenault’s manner of speaking because she is transexual, but it proves that the reviewer has nothing intelligent to say.

A few days ago, I saw Ladylike, a play in the Toronto Fringe Festival featuring famous transexual Nina Arsenault, and although the play itself wasn’t amazing, it really made me think of what it means to be a woman.

Ignoring Arsenault’s penis, you could probably argue that she’s more of a woman than I am. When it comes to the physicals, she certainly has done her part to look the female archetype, and when it comes to personality, she does have the stereotypical girl-thing down pat (or the script makes it appear as though she does).

For a while, I feel that there has been a sort of pressure on girls to become more masculine. On the more personal level, whenever there is some sort of statistic announcing that there are more guys than girls in some sort of role/emotional state/ profession, I feel as though I should strive to take on the masculine role to help eliminate this inequality. Maybe this is just me, after all, I did grow up going to camps like ACTUA , the girls-only engineering camp. But Arsenault strove to become the “female archetype”, as she put it, it felt surreal, like that extreme femininity was what made her less believable as a woman.

It really made me think when the show mentioned the “has she gone too far” aspect of Arsenault’s surgery, among other things. A lot of the time things like boob jobs and facelifts seem insulting the uncut portion of us, like, is the female body not good enough as it is? In other ways, the overanalytical part of me jumps to the women in the quiverfull movement (you know – have all the kids you can possible have because God wants you to) that have been denounced as “anti-feminist”. What if that’s honestly what makes these people happy? Do we have the right to condemn this, especially in the name of accepting the freedoms of different female identities?

If people like Nina Arsenault can be nice to their inner woman, I should be able to, too. In a world where guys are afraid of being girls and girls are afraid of being too girly, sometimes it’s nice to get a clear perspective from someone who isn’t technically a woman but who is proud of being ladylike.

I never thought guidance at my school was very useful. When I ask for university advice, they refer me to a standard Ontario universities webpage, and tell me non-truths such as “art schools mainly look at your report card marks” and “you can’t get into an Ivy league; your marks aren’t high enough” (my guidance counselor didn’t actually say this, but sort of shook his head while muttering when I asked him if he thought I could get into Yale. Into the arts program. When their main claim is that they don’t really look at your average as a main indicator. I porbably won’t get into Yale, but still).

Yes, guidance counselors are useless, but now I am really pissed off.

A close friend of mine failed math. Barely. Needing 50% to pass, she failed by 5% (or something like that). The only help her guidance counselor provided was telling her that the school started a day later than it actually did start. Well, I guess they told her the location of the school. Gotta give them credit for something.

It turns out there is no follow-up call for summer school. Which is unfortunate as guidance did not have the courtesy to tell her the time the school started. When the principal of the program finally called back, it was to say that the school had already started, and she had missed one more day than the cut off three days she was allowed to miss.

So really, I’m not just pissed off at guidance, but at the whole school/summer-school system.

What really gets me is the attitude displayed towards my friend. It seems that far from being accomodating, or attempting to be sympathetic, to the school system, a failing student is someone to be looked down apon and punished rather than helped out. After visiting guidance in an attempt to open up some dialogue between the school system and the summer school system, my friend was met with contempt and told bulshit such as “You know, summer school really isn’t good for your academic career.” Really. And I suppose repeating a course is.

A guidance program, in my opinion, should be for three things. First of all they have to do the basics, and make sure courses that students take allow them to have a working schedule. Secondly, they need to advise kids on their careers and futures beyond school, and, lastly they need to help those having real difficulties at school. So far, I only see evidence of the first. For universities, guidance seems to have established this method of advising where they refer students to a website/book without knowing anything themselves. For students struggling, the bare minimum is done.

Unfortunately, in the schooling system, those that need the most help get the least. If a student is struggling, or failing a course, it is vaguely seen that this student is a bad student/lazy/not worth spending time on… generally someone to treat with contempt. If a pupil has a learning disability, difficulty grasping a subject, or for some reason or other is falling behind in their work, accomidations are as few as the effort made to reach out to them.

True, there are students that are generally lazy and don’t care about their progress. Another one of my friends played video games in the back of the math classroom the entire year. What I am saying is that it is unfair to assume that all failing students are like this.

Linking this back to my friend, had the schools had a different opinion of her, they would have believed that her guidance counselor told her the wrong date, or would have attempted to make some sort of accomidation. As it is, guidance was rude to her and proceded to further screw her over.

Now, perhaps this is all just a misunderstanding. After all, both the guidance programme and the summer school principal did not break any rules, go against the constitution, or anything like that. But wouldn’t it be nice if guidance counselors actually pretended to care for the students that need them the most?