Having Pride in One's Work

Pride is often seen as a negative trait to have. It makes a person seem cocky and stubborn and often makes them believe they don’t need anyone else’s help or advice. However, having pride in one’s own work is extremely important. As a person, you are the only one you should be trying to impress. No one else’s opinion should matter but your own. Let’s face it, despite the fact that friends and family say they will always be there for you, ultimately only you will be there for yourself when it truly matters. Thus, don’t you think you should do work that you would be proud of? If you poured your heart and soul into a piece of work and took the time to actually do it, it deserves to have your approval. You need to be proud of your work because perhaps no one else will. You can never please everyone and sometimes you won’t please anyone. Therefore, you should only please yourself. It is perfectly ok to be humble sometimes; in fact, humbleness is a virtue. However, pride is a virtue as well. It shows you acknowledge that you took the responsibility to take on a task and you executed that task with as much precision as you could. It is ok to give thanks to those that helped you accomplish your task; however you must remember that they did not complete the task. You did. This is why it is important to have pride in your work, so that you may be proud of yourself.

Diversity

Diversity can be a plethora of things. It can be a catchphrase used by colleges and universities to entice students of color to apply or a bragging right of a notoriously monorace job hoping to attract other applicants to apply. However, to me diversity is evident in environments where diversity really isn’t advertised. Diversity can be found on the streets, in the malls, and yes even in schools. It is being able to sit back and see the different types of people and all the characteristics that differentiate them from each other; the way they dress, their hair color, the way the talk, their accent, their sex, their sexual orientation, the way they carry themselves, their food preference, their book preference, their unique experiences, their ideas, and finally their race and ethnicity. It makes everything so much more interesting than being a pool full of cookie cutter type people. Diversity really is the spice of life. If we were to look at our everyday lives, we would notice we all value diversity more than we think. There is a reason why our friends each have their own personality and why we seek certain people on certain days. It is because we all know each person is special and we want the diversity of having all of them around us. Diversity to me is not simply about where a person is from or what their skin color is. It also about their talents, their preferences, their skills, and their personality that makes each person different and makes out world diverse.

Cooperation

Webster’s Dictionary defines cooperation as “the association of persons for a common benefit”. In simpler words, when we cooperate, we are working together towards a goal that will benefit all of us. This is also what cooperation means to me. Cooperation is working with people that perhaps you do not socialize with, yet you are all in agreement that what you are doing will be beneficial to all of us. This in turn teaches us to be tolerant of others. In a world as diverse as ours, we need to learn how to work together for our own means. This may seem selfish, but a world where people don’t cooperate isn’t a functioning society. When we cooperate, we can actually help fix a common problem. Take the problem with global warming for example. If just one person recycles and conserves water and electricity, then it won’t make much of an impact. Yet, if we all work together and cooperate, we can make a significant impact on our reduction of pollution. What’s more, we all benefit from the stopping global warming because we all inhabit the same planet; where would we go if this planet was too depleted and trashed to be habitable. Therefore, cooperation is more than simply agreeing to work with another; it is agreeing to work with another knowing that whatever happens, good or bad, we’d all be in this together. Cooperation is not always pleasant and enjoyable, especially if you’re working with people you don’t particularly like. However, the end result will always make up for it.

Communication in the 21st Century

Without a doubt, communication has changed drastically in the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to have a conversation with someone that lived in a different state, then you’d have to dial the number on a phone and see if the person would pick up. Or, you could also go and talk to your neighbor or someone who lived in close proximities to you. Now however, computers and cell phones have revolutionized communication. With social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, we no longer have to call people if we want to talk to them. We merely have to send them a “Tweet” or write on their wall. We also don’t need any sort of face to face interaction either since the Internet provides us with all we need to know about a person. Cell phones have also given us the liberty of texting. Instead of calling someone and wasting our precious vocal chords, we just need to type our message, send it, and we can be assured that the person will receive it. Communication has gone viral, for the most part. Technology does all our thinking and talking for us. It has even created its own language. Teachers are far too aware of the notorious texting language that includes such phrases such as “lol” (laughing out loud) and “ily” (I love you). What does all this mean for us? It means that our communication is becoming less and less personal with the more new antics we discover we can use. We know there is a problem when we are chatting on Facebook with someone who is in the same room as us.

Teachers need to Provide More AP and Honors classes

Today’s hiring managers are more often  looking for a college degree from their applicants; Advanced and Honors classes are vital to a student’s success as they make their way through high school and apply to colleges. An AP course prepares students to take the AP for the subject and if the student receives a passing grade, then they receive a certain amount of college credit as regulated by each individual college; whether or not they pass the test, however, the students are still enrolled a class that greatly mirrors a college course. An article in USA Today states, “State-based studies by the National Center for Educational Accountability in Texas and the University of California-Berkeley, to name two, show that students who pass AP exams are more likely to earn a bachelor's degree than those who don't pass” (Marklain). Therefore, AP students are more prepared for college than their regular classes counterparts. Honors classes are obviously more advanced than regular classes yet less strenuous than AP classes. Daniel de Vise of the Washington Post describes honors classes as being able to read two Charles Dickens books in the same time their counterparts read one and may also assign more elaborate writing assignments to delve deeper into the material (de Vise). Thus honors classes can be implemented as a sedge way into AP classes. College courses are seen by school officials as an alternative that students are at liberty take if the school doesn’t offer the advanced classes. However, a study conducted by University of Texas at Austin researchers Linda Hargrove and Barbara Dodd and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board researcher Donn Godin have found “AP students do better in college than similar students who have taken college courses in high school. This finding confirms the view of several selective college admissions deans that the local college offerings, called dual enrollment courses, are often not as challenging as AP” and likewise “students with similar SAT or ACT scores and economic backgrounds do better in college if they have taken the AP courses and exams” (Mathews). School officials and administrators make a living teaching our children and giving them the tools they need to be successful in college and in their overall lives; if they have the resources to give our children the edge and the knowledge the need, would it not be negligent to withhold resources and materials that might very well be the difference between going to college prepared and going to college unprepared, to struggle, and possibly drop out?

Conveniences

As humans, we are always looking for things that make our lives easier and once we find them, we find it hard to let them go. Decades ago, people didn’t have calculators to solve their math problems. They actually had to do all the equations and work by hand, as unbelievable as it sounds. A decade ago, people didn’t have Iphones. Imagine a life without smart phones? Conveniences such as these make our lives much easier. As stated before, calculators have simplified the way we do math and have reduced the headaches students get in math class. Computers now account for everything that we do. They tally what stores sell on a daily basis, they allow us to shop from the comfort of our own home, and they allow us to stay connected with people who live away from us or reconnect with those we haven’t seen in awhile. Facebook and Twitter have truly revolutionized the way we communicate with each other because they allow us to do this. Smart phones have now combined the convenience of computers with that of phones. We can now carry our computers in our pockets and take care of any sort of business that we need to without having to find a local computer. Although these conveniences are great, we are becoming too depended on them. How many of you have freaked out when you realized you didn’t have your phone or that it was uncharged? Or how many times have you thought you could get absolutely nothing done when you didn’t have Internet on your computer? We can do so much more than we give ourselves credit for. We need to remember how productive and ingenious we were before these conveniences took over our lives.

Fame and Fortune

There are many ways a person can achieve fame and fortune. The most popular way is by breaking into the entertainment industry. Many people aspire to become famous actresses, musicians, singers, dancers, models, and television personalities. They believe breaking into the business and getting fame is as easy as walking into a casting call. However, they are unaware of all the hard work that goes into it. The best actors and actresses have studied their craft for years at prestigious schools and academies and have taken on numerous small roles before they finally made it big. It is very rare that a new comer will just star in one role that skyrockets them to fame. Singers have to have been born with a talent to sing and even then they practice their whole lives to have everything perfect. They must also choose the appropriate songs that will make them appealing to the public so they will buy the CDs and download their music. Models also have to have been born with a unique look and a thin physique that will make them desirable on a runway. Nevertheless, once people achieve fame and fortune, they are thrust into a fragile and complicated world that can easily be taken away from them. Their every move is constantly followed and documented and they have almost no privacy. They do receive amazing perks, but they can also trade their dignity and self-respect for it. And for what? For a minute of a fame that can easily slip away? A bad song can make a singer be dropped from their record label and from the public’s eye. A bad movie role could make an actor lose his popularity. And any wrong move caught by the paparazzi could make any celebrity lose their status and then their fame.