Get Organized: A Tribute to Aristotle

After months (maybe even years...) of staring at the messy closet I share with my sister, I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to get organized. Our closet is relatively small for two teenage girls to share, but somehow we manage to fit a lot of clothing and other miscellaneous objects in it. The top rack is mine and the bottom rack is my sister’s. I started by taking everything out—so the closet was completely empty. I sorted through the clothing and made a pile of clothes that we could donate (with my sister’s approval of course) and clothes that we wanted to keep. After hanging the “keep” pile back up, I refolded all of the clothing that sits in the mini dresser that also somehow fits in the closet. I vacuumed the floor of the closet and was surprised to find that it looked a LOT better—completely worth the 50 minutes that it took!

Before I started the daunting task of organizing our closet, I was pretty unmotivated. I expected it to take a long time and I also expected to give up after approximately half an hour. I usually only clean when I’m stressed out or frustrated (I still haven’t decided if this is a good habit or a bad one...) but this time I was cleaning without the stress. I got pretty caught up in it and time passed much faster than I thought it did. I didn’t even look at the clock once, surprisingly. This project makes me wonder how organized I could potentially be if I just forced myself to start. If my whole life could be as organized as my closet now is...that would be pretty great. And also hard to maintain. In hindsight, this project could have been done much earlier, instead of ignoring it for all this time. It reminded me of how important it is and how good it feels to be organized, whether it is my room or all of the papers we get in school. 

iMedia: Big White Room

When I first heard "Big White Room" by Jessie J, the lyrics immediately pulled me in, mainly because I didn't understand them.

At first I took it literally-she was trapped in a room by herself and the walls were white...but I realized that it most probably had a deeper meaning than that. The white room must be a metaphor for something more.

I looked up the background of the song, and I found out that this is a song about feeling trapped-"I don't wanna be here anymore, I wanna be somewhere else/ normal and free, like I used to be..."

She had written it about her experience in a  hospital. Some sources said that she had a heart condition-"my heart's beating, b-b-b-beating, beating, out of control..." She wrote the song after watching a boy pass away, even after praying that he wanted to live.

I love this song because it isn't your typical happy, passionate love song, and it's not a typical sad song either. Pop culture is brimming with music that is relatable and appealing to a large audience, and this song breaks that mold.

But music like this makes us think. It makes us have to try to relate and to understand what the singer is expressing. It forces people to step out of their shoes and into someone else's for a change, and I think that being able to do this is extremely important.

Best of Week: Technology

Something that really intrigued me in class this week was our discussion about humans and technology. We talked about the possibility of having the ability to download information into our brains and the ethics of doing so.

While it would be insanely cool to be able to do that, I also think that it’s not natural. It feels like cheating. What would we be working towards if we could have everything we needed programmed into our brains already? If everyone is special then no one is special. If everyone is beautiful then no one’s beautiful. Then would the same goes for this? If everyone is at the highest intelligence then no one’s at the highest intelligence.