Free Write Day 2

I have absolutely no idea what to write about. The english language? Something that happened to me recently, maybe?  Everyone around me is typing away, certainly not seeming to be encountering the same problem as me. I guess I’ll do both of them, the first ideas that came off the top of my head.

The english language is weird. People tell me all the time that english must be one of the hardest languages to learn. The exceptions and rules are always different that what one would expect. As for me, having spoken english all my life, it is the other way around. The other languages, such as French,  are the difficult ones to learn. Although, it probably helps having an english major as a mother too. You are never allowed to make mistakes on your grammar or spelling or anything. If I happen to miss a comma, it is almost like I’ve brought shame upon the family name. At least my college papers will be grammatically correct.

Something that happened to me recently. Hmmm….ok. The most recent, most exciting thing that happened to me is that I went to BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio for their ballet summer intensive camp. There are so many things that I could write down about this place, I don’t know where to start. Daily schedule. In the early morning hours, before the sun had even blessed the earth with her bright summer rays, we had to wake up. We all got ready and went to breakfast like a crowd of zombies and slowly began to get the energy back into our bodies so we could properly function during the long day. After breakfast, we all got together and walked the mile or so to the studios of Ballet Met. All together, there were around 58 dancers (only one guy) and 4 chaperones. One chaperone would always lead, one was in the middle of the pack, and one was at the end. The final chaperone would be driving the car with any injured dancers.

Walking down to BalletMet, we made quite a show. On an ideal day, there wouldn’t be any huge gaps between sections of dancers as we walked. Then, when we had to cross a street, we could all make it across before the lights would change. This never happened. We never had any ideal walking days. Our huge straggly line could be seen from quite a distance as we held up traffic and blocked pedestrians’ pathways. When the BalletMet students descended, the others around soon learned to avoid our walking route. However, this was not so easily done. The poor, unfortunate souls from our area of Columbus had to be on their feet every morning, prepared for the daily adventure. We changed our route every morning. Yes, occasionally there were repeat paths, as the weeks went by. But every consecutive day was never the same. Those in charge of us wanted to be sure that no one was stalking us, learning our path, or planning attacks on all the young dancers that had to make the trek every morning.

The people at BalletMet were, in my opinion, just a bit overly concerned with a little concept known as STRANGER DANGER. The first two days we were at the intensive, before we were split into the actual levels we would be in for the rest of the camp, we had classes called Street Smarts. The class was taught by 4 women. One lady talked and explained the material, two of them demonstrated, and one sat there taking pictures for some reason. Basically, the class educated all of us vulnerable, female, (for the most part) short, and shy dancers what to do if we were ever attacked while walking to the studios and back. We needed to know this information. How to use our leverage, how to get out of a choke hold, and how to use the hip thrust were all valuable components of this life-saving class.

Don’t get me wrong. This information was important. It’s just that the emphasis that they put on the class was overwhelming. Quite frankly, everyone doubted that we would ever be attacked while walking back and forth from the studios and the dorms. For one thing, we had 3 or 4 chaperones with us at all times, making sure that we stayed together. For another, we traveled in such a huge pack that we all highly doubted there was any chance of attack. The women who taught the class told us that if you travel with one other person, your chance of being attacked went down by about 75%. If you traveled in a group of three, the chance went down by 98%. So then, logically speaking, what was the chance that we would ever be attacked when we traveled with 57 other dancers, not to mention at least 3 chaperones? It made no sense. After everyone realized this, we didn’t feel as scared as I’m sure they wanted us to.

Hey, how’s it going?

It’s going good. I have officially decided that my genre will be Academic Writing. I believe I will get the most out of this and personally learn the most from choosing this genre. I have not started writing on the project yet but I will get started on brainstorming ideas tonight.

I had some difficulty today with the blog itself. I wanted to create another page and be able to post my free writes on one page, the drafts on another, etc. For some reason, the blog only let me post posts to the homepage and not to any other page. To me, having the different sorts of writing on different pages is what makes sense organizationally. Maybe it’s just this theme, and the other themes might let me do the separate pages. We’ll have to see.

We wrote editorials today and I wrote mine on the school lunch debate. I researched for a while and then I just wrote about what totally did not make sense to me personally. I was sure to cite the people who I quoted at the end as well, all those english teachers out there.

I got something to say! (my editorial)

No debate is one-sided. By definition, a debate is a discussion that involves opposing viewpoints. Also, for the debate to be a discussion, people need to sound off and chime in. Thus, when it comes to the debate of healthy school lunches, I got something to say. On their website, the National School Lunch Program says that more than half of all children in the United States of America consume school lunches. They believe that they need to provide healthier alternatives, even if the alternative is just making the pizza with a whole-grain crust or with a low-fat cheese. While providing “healthier” school lunches may help in some situations, I believe it is unlikely to succeed.

What exactly would success entail for this organization? Well, the organization aims to offer children healthier school lunches as well as teach all people involved with the school, such as the cafeteria workers and the faculty about healthy nutrition and well-being. Therefore, for them to succeed they need to be able to get the children to eat the healthier school lunches. The thing is…Americans enjoy their freedoms. As Michael Hardin points out in his article on Associated Content, Americans generally don’t like being told what they can and cannot eat. The children, happy and used to their old lunches will resist any changes as long as possible.

And how would they be able to resist, you might ask. The children are sent to school by their parents every day and when lunch comes around, they eat the lunch that is placed in front of them. But, my friends, there is still the option of bringing their lunch from home. If they don’t like the healthy lunch that is suddenly invading their school, what is stopping them from bringing their own? And what will be in that lunch? Most likely, the children will pack up, in more abundance than before, the exact same types of foods that were presented to them before.

In addition to this tidbit, the program would not affect most of the children in the least once they are out of school. Unless the kids have a sudden revelation and reform their dreadful eating habits because of the healthy school lunch program, their afterschool snacks, their dinners, and their desserts are going to be exactly the same. A healthier lifestyle, which the program also tries to promote, does not just include what food the children eat. Exercise is needed as well. There is nothing in the program that adds more physical activity classes. So overall, the program would not actually be very effective.

This program would also include changing some of the choices in the school’s vending machines, such as having less candy and more diet sodas. Having less candy might work well, although some snacks such as Chex Mix are still very high-calorie and probably not the healthiest choice around. As for diet sodas, when my school switched to them recently, there was a lot of controversy. Some people thought they tasted a lot worse, some people thought they were a rip-off, and others even posted signs about how they have been found to cause cancer and are certainly not any healthier than the regular sodas. Nowadays, people go over to a building next to the school during lunch and purchase their sodas and snacks from the unchanged vending machines.

The program can keep trying, and I personally wouldn’t protest if any healthier changes were made at my school. However, while providing these lunches may help in some situations, it does not solve all the problems with children’s health today.

Sources:

Hardin, Michael. “Weighing in on School Lunches.” Editorial. Associated Content. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5666308/school_lunch_debate.html?cat=25&gt;.

PCRM. National School Lunch Program. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. <http://www.healthyschoollunches.org/background/index.cfm&gt;.

“Senate Passes Healthy School Lunch Bill.” Tween Tribune. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. <http://www.tweentribune.com/content/senate-passes-healthy-school-lunch-bill&gt;.