It's here: SNOWMAGEDDON!
Haiku:
It has huge ice claws
and frigid hurricane breath
all hail the snow beast
What I'm doing: Watching the Syracuse (4) vs. Villanova (8) basketball game.
212:
I first heard this phrase when I was a swimmer in high school. Before States, my coach played a video about the small difference that creates change in water- that one degree that invigorates its usual calm into a powerful bubble.
This is an inspiration similar to the coffee story. The coffee story states that when boiled, water makes a hard carrot soft and a fragile egg tough. But only coffee changes water into something else. The carrot and egg are affected by the pressure. However, the coffee reacts and fights back.
Both of these shorts resemble the nucleus of inspiration: that any person can make a difference if they up their game, and fight for what they believe in.
The reason I bring this up is because this is my core as well. I think that anyone can battle for their passions. Some may think this is corny, not real in the mass-society that we live in today. But it is. To make change, one has to personify it.
Before I moved to Philadelphia, I considered myself mature. I considered myself smart through sentences and paragraphs, knowledgeable through conversations about histories I never experienced. But deep down inside me, I knew that I was still so naive. So when it came time to graduate, I didn't want to go straight to college and follow the beaten trail. I wanted to trek across Antarctica and scale Mt. Rushmore with nothing more than my bare hands. I wanted to see the grit, see the reality. Not just the sheltered suburbia of Gilbert, Arizona. (No offense, Gilbert- you're a great place.)
Since I've been here, its been a mind-numbing, brain-melting, some-type-of-way life. I work for a non-profit called City Year, and my daily routine follows a 7:35am - 5:20am schedule at an inner-city high school in West Philadelphia. My job rotates around three classes, soon to be a fourth. They are freshmen (9th) Algebra 1, freshmen (9th) World History, and senior (12th) Physics [the fourth will be a freshmen (9th) Physical Science]. The issues that I bring up in the future will likely draw from these three/four classrooms. Besides these classes, I also run a writing program, and co-run a hip-hop/rap program with my teammate, Law. Many of my weekly highlights draw from these programs, especially from writing.
Note: For sake of privacy, all students/teachers names that I mention will be improvised (example: my student George, from Algebra). If I mention my teammates, I will only use their first names, also for sake of their privacy.
What I do on a daily basis obviously varies, but what is stated above is my basic routine. It's posted here for familiarity and reference.
It's funny- before I moved here I had rarely seen snow. But this has been Philadelphia's wildest winter. It's carried the myths of Snowmageddon, Snow Thunder, Snow Hurricanes, and even the Snow Beast. We've had over 80 inches by now, and supposedly, we'll have more next week.
V, in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta said, "Ideas are bulletproof." Let us think, ponder, wonder, gasp, and criticize the world's problems. Let us offer up, write up, and sculpt solutions as ideas- for they really are bulletproof. Some may say an idea is dangerous. But problems are never solved if they aren't discussed. And discussion always starts with an idea.
In my next posts, I will present both scenarios and problems that I see with my eyes.
-TWO-12
