Justin's Blaughh

Oprah Winfrey

Justin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:39:06 +0000

Born in rural Missippi in extreme poverty, Oprah grew to become one of the world’s most famous people, as well as one of the most influential. She overcame a dysfunctional household through the persistence of her father to excel in academics, as well as oratory skills such as speech and communication. As an adult, she became both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at WLAC-TV, a tv station in Nashville. In 1983, she moved to Chicago to take over the small, morning talk show AM Chicago. Within a few months, her show became the highest rated talk show in Chicago, and was soon aired nationally under the name of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her empathy and ability to connect with viewers were what made her show popular. Her show is scheduled to run through the 2010 -2011 season, which would make her talk show 25 years old. She also has written books and acted in films. Her net worth is several billion dollars, which is astounding.

Oprah created Oprah’s Angel Network, which has raised more than $51 million to help those who are underpriviledged. She manages donations herself, ensuring that all of the money goes to beneficial causes. She has also donated millions of dollars herself, which earned her countless praises from all over the USA.

Even more impressive is the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy For Girls in South Africa. She has opened her doors to the underpriviledged girls in South Africa who are academically talented and have leadership skills. What is great about this academy is the thought behind it. Oprah came from poverty to becoming one of the most famous people in the world, and wanted to give the opportunity to do so to those who probably would have had the chance without her. There are many charity organizations that donate food and water to Africa, but Oprah has stepped it up in terms of compassion.

Grades!

Justin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:19:46 +0000

Junior year is arguably the hardest year of high school. Many students pile on workloads through AP classes in an effort to boost their GPAs. Grades are received at the end of these classes, which either help or hurt GPAs. Grades are intended to be a measurement of student achievement based upon the letter grade system. A grade of C denotes an average understanding of the subject at hand: most of the material is learned. A grade of A denotes full understanding of the subject at hand. These grades should reflect the level of understanding that the student has achieved in each class. A student who does well in class, and can answer most questions on test correctly deserves an A. A student who doesn’t try in class, and spends most of his or her time chatting does not deserve an A. To go more in depth, each teacher needs to take time to analyze each student through a small and separate analysis. These reports would be much better indicators than the simple letter grades. However, I think that this would take a lot of time for teachers, who are busy enough already. They wouldn’t want to do a report for each student. Also, the private school I attended had a system like this. Because there were 15 students in each class at maximum, each teacher could get to know each student much better than in a public school. This made classes harder for me, because I couldn’t slack off and hope to receive an A as easily as in public school. Teachers knew if I wasn’t doing my work, because I couldn’t hide anything from them. This is why I had a 3.2 GPA for my freshman year. At the end of each semester, I received my grade report, as well as a separate account of teacher reports. It included my strengths and weaknesses in class, which varied somewhat for different classes.

Today, grades not only represent your level of intelligence, but serve as measures to compare to other students, which are used in college applications. The amount of pressure numerous students feel to earn good grades is enourmous. It gets to a point that students cram ruthlessly for every test, and stress out about things in class. This isn’t what grades are for. Grades should simply show what each student knows.

Government Bailout

Justin — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:48:55 +0000

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/23/news/economy/bailout_101/

The government’s recent decisions to buy bad assets of banks and financial institutions are a move in the right direction to helping our economy. I believe the government bailout will have the greatest impact on our economy. Once our banks are back up and running, loans will be given again to businesses, which will help our economy grow further. However much the government does, we citizens can also help the economy. A big way we hurt the economy is through bad credit and mortgages. I believe a big reason why people end up with bad credit is because of bad choices. Sometimes, we don’t have to buy that new car or the new 50″ TV. If we can restrain ourselves from buying uneccesary things, we’ll save money in the long run. We also won’t have to deal with credit card bill as frequently. However, once you save enough money to ensure that you can pay for the purchase completely, it’s fine to buy it. All we need to do is become smarter consumers.

Response to “Meanest Mom”

Justin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:17:07 +0000

This mother from Iowa had the right intentions behind selling the car, but executed the sale in a overboard way. However, she was right in finding a suitable punishment for her son. The leading cause of death for teens is driving, and alcohol makes driving even more risky. Driving a car is a privilege (until you’re on your own), and the car should be taken away if any rules are broken or if the kid is irresponsible. Most teens don’t take the risks of driving seriously, because they think that they will never get into a wreck. This youthful foolishness is what leads to accidents.

The mom shouldn’t have taken the situation all the way to TV. She claimed she wasn’t looking for publicity, but agreed to get on TV with her son. He already learned his lesson and was probably humiliated enough by the ad. By bringing him on TV and telling the United States about him, the mom humiliated him even more. She shouldn’t have done that, because her job of parenting was already done. Once the kid learns the lesson, you should be done. There’s no need to go further, because it’s unnecessary.

My goal for this year!

Justin — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 02:41:40 +0000

My goal for this year is to have a 4.0 GPA or higher. Everyone wants to get good grades, but I really feel pressured to do well this year. I spent my freshman year at a private school, which was extremely costly both for school and finances. The classes were very tough, because there were at most 15 students in one class. You couldn’t be a lackadaisical student and get by with A’s, because the teachers knew you personally. My problem was being too lazy and not trying hard enough during study time. I ended up receiving a 3.1 GPA at the end of the year.

Last year, I remained a lazy student. I ended up with a 3.8 GPA, which is not what I wanted. I know this year I can get at least a 4.00 GPA. If I do well on the AP exam, then it’ll be even better.
Another goal is to stay in shape over the winter, because most of us tend to get a little lazy during that time. I also want to grow at least one inch this year. Just one. I haven’t grown for a year a half I think. I’ve only gained a little weight but no height.

A final goal is to do well this year in golf and make it to state. One of my ambitions is to win state, which is a very lofty goal. However, it is one of my biggest goals, and I want to try my hardest this year.

Nevermind

Justin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 03:18:39 +0000

Just kidding, I was complaining over nothing. I overlooked the fact that you can assign the links to a category..

Links are messing with me.

Justin — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:49:51 +0000

The first blog of my life… happens to be a complaint against wordpress.

Somehow these link categories are amazingly difficult to use. Apparently I made a category called 1356 and put half of the links in it.

EDIT

now that I deleted the category 1356, the links are gone. Now I’ve got to go back and add them again..