Never Enough Time

As I have become older, I feel as though I am always running out of time or there is never enough time. When I was younger, school was longer, five minute time outs were the death of me because they seemed like five years, and a week felt like a month.  I was able to spend time with my family and have play dates with my friends.  Maybe it felt that way because as a young child you do not necessarily have things to do or things you should be doing every minute of the day.  You have all this time to take naps and play outside because homework only took 30 minutes.  Time, there was always so much time.

Clockwork

Sophomore year of high school was when I realized that my social life had begun to shrink and the homework load had grown.  I tried my best to make time for my friends and family, but there was always something to be done even when I did not have homework or tests. Chores, babysitting, work, and school consumed all the hours of the week, so it seemed, and when I did have free time it was usually at night when all I wanted to do was watch Netflix and sleep. I am not the only person who feels this way because I can hear the people in my classes talk about the same thing.  I think it is important for teenagers to have fun with their friends and do things other than homework.  They need to have time to spend with their family so that family has more of an impact in their lives.  It is boring to do homework; to not do homework is death to your grade.  So  we do the homework and study for the tests and ignore the adventure.  I cannot speak for every high school student, but that is what I do.

It is now junior year and this year I decided to take on a heavy work load like most past AP students because colleges want that, right?  I have developed a schedule to which I follow almost religiously:  wake up, go to school, go to soccer, walk home, sit on the couch for an hour, make dinner/help with dinner, do homework, go to sleep. My friends that I have hung out with since freshmen year are having fun and going out almost three out of the seven days of the each week and I am almost always home working on something.  I attempted to do things outside of school with my friends like hiking and having lunch, but now there is only time for soccer team dinners.

Schedule

 

Working hard in school so that colleges will accept you and getting a job so that you meet your parents expectations is everything now.  As you become older, time becomes more relevant.  You begin to realize that it controls your life and starts to speed up, each day faster than the last.  Truthfully, I fear that I will not be able to do anything worth remembering before I die because death seems right around the corner even though I am only in high school.  Is it wrong to fear time?  Even today I was afraid that I would not have enough time to create this blog post by the deadline. Time is like money, everyone needs more of it, but there is never enough of it.

 

Sharing Stories

Why do people share stories?

Generations of people constantly pass down stories, each time changing small details so the story will be more interesting or so people can understand the moral of the story better.

“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future.” (O’Brien: The Things They Carried; pg 36)

In English class, I have been required to read a book called The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.  This book is filled with war stories from the soldiers in the Vietnam war and emphasizes the fact of how important sharing these war stories are to them.  Some soldiers really want the listeners to understand the moral of the story or to believe everything that is said, no matter how crazy the truth sounds.  It is said a couple times in the book that the stories you would expect from war are not always the truth, but the craziest stories are the ones that are the most truthful.

“Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are.” (O’Brien: The Things They Carried; pg 36)

Stories tell history. Mostly every fictional, non fictional, fairy tale, etc., has history behind it.  The book, The Forgotten Garden, has a character who loves to write fairy tales and she bases her fairy tales off of her life experiences.  History books are stories of the past and remind us what not to repeat in the future.  They carry morals too, such as not having a tyrant as a leader or what to expect when certain events happen like war.

“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” (O’Brien: The Things They Carried; pg 36)

Interesting Stories

When someone shares their story, we come to understand their point of view better, what hard ships they must have faced, or how lucky they were.  For example, the pod cast called Freakanomics had the President of Harvard as their guest and they asked her questions regarding her background and what troubled her growing up.  By the President of Harvard sharing her story of success through life, she could have also inspired others to work harder in life to reach their goals.  Stories inspire people, stories have morals, stories effect society.  

Your Story

Without stories, how would we know what went on in the past and what not to repeat. The world needs stories, just like the world needs water. 

I think sharing stories is important because it helps society grow and learn.  All stories benefit at least someone, whether it be a sad story, a happy one, or an inspirational one.  Everyone interprets stories differently, but the over all moral stays the same. The great thing about stories is that people are able to see the speakers vision.

“Yes, and I wanted him not just to tell stories, but to be a storyteller, one able to explain his vision in a way that allowed everyone who worked with him, from the boardroom to the mail room, to feel and live his vision.” (Clemson Turregona; leadingeffectively.com)