9/28/12

On 9/28/12 in Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class, we started late because Mr. Schick was not back from his field trip yet so we had to wait for Mr. Schick to return. Once he arrived and fetched the movie, we continued to watch “God Grew Tired of Us.”  In what we watched today, we learned what job’s they got. They would start work at a factory at 7:00 AM and get dropped off for work at 5:00 AM, two hours before they even started. Even though there are four of them in the apartment, the lost boys also feel lonely without the rest of their family. However, as they stay they learn that Americans are not as friendly as people in Sudan. For example, when the lost boys walk into a 7-11, a clerk behind the counter calls the cops saying that a group of tall African Americans just walked into my store. In Sudan, if someone saw you walking around looking like you are lost, someone would ask if you are lost and point you in the right direction.

"God Grew Tired of Us"

In the 9/27/12 edition of Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class, we were watching more of the documentary “God Grew Tired of Us.” However, it was a bit more exciting in today’s class. That is because at the beginning of class Mr. Schick was trying to use all of our unit two vocabulary words in sentences relating to “God Grew Tired of Us.” For example, one of these sentences was “We will scrutinize this more as we continue watching.” Also, where we are in the movie right now, some of the Sudanese were chosen to be resettled in America. However, moving to the United States did not get rid of all of their problems. This is because, even though their troubles aren’t as severe as they were in Kenya, they have other issues which come in the form of adapting to their new environment and learning an entirely different culture and for that matter a different lifestyle. For example, the chosen refugees to move to America did not even know what a shower was or most other things that we have as a developed nation (i.e. electricity, running water, or even a grocery store).  

9/26/12

Today was not that exciting or informative as other classes have been, especially for me. The reason for this would be because we went over the correct answers for Monday’s test. I did not really see why I needed to pay any particular attention to this part of class because I was one of two people to get a one-hundred three percent on the test. To make things a bit more exciting or different, we had a visitor (also known as a shadow). The shadow’s name was Taylor, who was shadowing Alice today from Saint Margaret’s School (the middle school that I graduated from). However, we did not only discuss the answers for the test. After, reviewing the test, we continued to watch the film that we started called “God Grew Tired of Us.” We started watching from where we left off on Monday where the refugees have crossed Sudan’s borders, passed through Ethiopia, and they are now arriving in a camp in Kenya.

Test Day

Today, in another exciting edition of Mr. Schick’s Human Geography Class, we were given our first test! The test covered everything that we discussed in class even the Did You Know 3.0 video that we watched one night for our BLOG. However, we were not tested on Illinois and note taking, and they were what I studied the MOST, not really. Well in any case, I found the test to be fairly easy… I mean extremely difficult. Now, some may have been even more stumped, in the case of not having studied. It’s not like I would actually neglect to study for the first test of the year or anything, because I am a very studious student and work very hard. Mr. Schick was generous enough to give us an extra credit question, so we could at least have some chance of actually managing to pass today’s examination. After everyone finished the test, Mr. Schick showed us a video about the civil war in Sudan. The video detailed how the natives fled their country so that they were not killed by the native Muslims trying to take control of the country.

test review

Yesterday, in Human Geography class, the remaining groups that were yet to present after Thursday, presented their presentations, which did include my group’s presentation on America. I think that my group’s was the best because a) I’m being biased, b) we got our American statistics right unlike other groups, and c) there is no “c.” After we finished our very educational presentation on America (we were the last to present), Mr. Schick so generously reviewed the material that will be tested on Monday. For this test, Mr. Schick is requiring us to actually MEMORIZE what we learned since the beginning of the school year. I mean really, he expects us to remember who Socrates was and all of those useful terms that we used to analyze countries with the CIA World Fact Book such as the Total Fertility Rate and Gross Domestic Product! Well, fine then, I guess I’ll just have to study the notes of which I took so expertly after Mr. Schick’s lesson on note taking and see if his lesson really was for nothing.

Presentation Day

Today in Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class, we started our presentations that we made yesterday about the country that we were assigned. Today’s presentations were about Germany, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. I thought that these presentations were very useful because we not only heard the statistics for each country, but we also discussed exactly what each statistic, such as net migration rate, meant and how it relates to figuring out how developed a country is and how much their economy is thriving. For example, the group that had Germany added in obesity in addition to the list of stats that Mr. Schick gave us to include. When this came up in the Germany presentation, Mr. Schick told us how when he went to France for a John Carroll trip he did not see any fat people and that basically every French person was somewhat trimmed. As he was recounting this story to us, I looked up the U.S’s rank in the world for obesity. In my searching, I found that our country is number six in the world for number of fat people. I also found it interesting that, in the time that I have spent analyzing the World Fact Book, I noticed that the CIA left out the crime rate for nations.

9/19/12

Today in Human Geography, Mr. Schick gave us our first project, yay. For this project, we were assigned a group to work with, and then our group was assigned a country. Once we got our country, each group had to talk about various statistics such as life expectancy and the rate of natural increase. My group consisted of Alice, Darian, and Austin and the country we were assigned was the U.S.A.  

9/17/12

Today’s Human Geography class was not as exciting as previous classes where we talked about nukes and Mr. Schick being the Messiah. One of the primary reasons for this was because Mr. Schick tried to make today’s class as boring as possible. Another reason for this was we actually took notes on something for a test. Mr. Schick told us that this test, our first test of the year, will probably be on Thursday. A majority of these notes were terms, though we did take notes on other things as well. Some of the terms that we learned today were crude birth rate, which is the number of births per year per thousand, and the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which is the average number of births per woman. We also learned that the world’s population increases by 77,000,000 per year, 208,000 per day, 14,000 per hour, 145 per minute, and about 2 per second.

Did You Know? discussion

Yesterday, in another exciting edition of Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class, we discussed the previous night’s BLOG and also we added comments to these ideas so we could understand exactly what the fact meant. For example, with the facts talking about twitter, texting, Facebook, and other forms of today’s technology, we discussed how much technology has spread to become a large part of our lives in just a handful of years. We also talked about how the fact that says that India has more honors kids than America has kids gives a vivid description of just how large their population is. Also while we were on the topic of technology, we told Mr. Schick about “A Day Made of Glass.” We told him how students would go to a state park and hold up a glass panel like a transparent I-Pad and it would show a live image of a dinosaur in the forest through the glass. After telling Mr. Schick about it, he asked us to send him the URL for it so he could watch it. Therefore, here you go Mr. Schick, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+day+made+of+glass&oq=a+day+made&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l10.3575.7492.0.9451.10.7.0.3.3.0.79.404.7.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.gouxU-0M9No

Did You Know?

I enjoyed the entire video since I enjoy learning useless information, like the information in this video. However, if I had to pick the most fascinating facts, it would be the one that tells you the number of word in the English language and the one about texting and Social Networking sites. I found these to be most fascinating because, it seems cool to know how many English words exist and this shows you just how much this country, or planet for that matter, depends upon technology. Honestly, if it weren’t for school, I think that it would be completely possible for the world to forget how to write. I mean come on, how often is it that you see a hand-written invitation for a birthday party? Next to never!  Most people just send an e-mail or text message. Plus, in some schools, students take notes on their computers. Then when a research paper comes up, the teacher expects it to be typed. Just think where the human race could be in another century or so? Computers that take voice commands? Robot servants, like in movies?

U.S. threatened by Iranian Nukes

Is the U.S. threatened by Iranian nuclear weapons? Absolutely Not! Even if the Iranians wanted to nuke us they couldn’t. The reason for this is because the Iranian air force is not developed enough to make it all the way to the other side of the globe across the ocean carrying a nuclear weapon undetected, especially when there are satellites monitoring every inch of our nation. On the other hand, If we were to land a nuclear hit on Iran we would not only arouse Iran but there are probably a lot of Middle Eastern countries that would side with Iran. Thus, neither of us is likely to even contemplate launching a nuclear attack. Moving to a cheerier topic, we learned that Russia is one of the lower ranking in population. This is because most of its citizens live in the more southern and European parts since the rest is tundra, therefore rendering it inhabitable.

CIA Factbook Questions

 

1. What is the population of the United States?

The United States has 313,847,465 people as of July 2012.

2.            What are the five largest countries in the world, by population?

China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil

3.            What is the population of Pakistan?

190, 291, 129

4.            What kind of government does the United States have?

Constitution-based federal republic, strong Democratic tradition

5.            What is the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe?

Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate is 95%

6.            What is the largest country in the world by area?

The largest country in the world is Russia.

7.            What country has the third greatest number of airports?

               Mexico

8.            What country has the greatest number of exports? China

9. What country exports more oil than any other? Saudi Arabia

10. What country imports more oil than any other? United States

11. What country consumes more oil than any other? United States

12. Can women serve in combat roles in China’s military? Yes

13. What is GDP? Gross Domestic Product

14. What country has the highest GDP per capita in the world, and how much is it? Liechtenstein, $141,100

15. Is the US in the top ten for GDP per capita? No

16. Most of the countries with the highest birth rates can be found in what continent? Africa

17. 11 of the top 12 countries with the highest number of deaths from HIV/AIDS can be found in which continent? Africa

18. What other country is in the top ten? India

19. Where does the US rank in HIV/AIDS deaths? 18^th

20. Is the US #1 in number of cellular phones? No

21. What percentage of the US is Roman Catholic? 23.9%

22. What percentage of Mexico is Roman Catholic? 76.5%

23. What is Net Migration Rate? The total rate of immigration

24. Does the US have the highest Net Migration Rate in the world? No

25. What is the current population of the entire planet? 7,038,545,610

The two most important questions to me as an American are the one that asks about the Roman Catholic percentage in the nation since I follow this religion and the one that asks if we are in the top 10 for GDP because it gives you a rough estimate of where we are economically compared to other nations.

Mr. Schick, Human Geo teacher and...Messiah?

Today in Human Geography, we took notes on perhaps the most ironic thing ever… taking notes. When taking notes it’s a good idea to not write with complete sentences or even use correct spelling or grammar. We also heard a paragraph about the state of Illinois. The passage told us that Illinois (the prairie state) is the fifth most populated city in nation and the most populated city in the Mid-West. Illinois is also one of the leading industrial cities in the nation. On top of this, Mr. Schick recounted his illusions of being the messiah. He has these illusions because he was born in Chicago in December with sub-zero temperatures, there doctor was unavailable and there was no other hospital with room in it since everybody was being treated with frostbite. As a result of this factor Mr. Schick’s mother had to give birth without a doctor in a hospital that was not one of the major commercial hospitals that everyone knew about. 

Gadgets, Political Rants, Wikipedia, Oh My!

Today, in the September 5, 2012 edition of Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class, we certainly learned a bunch of handy information when researching for a paper and how to make our BLOG more exciting. The first thing that we learned today in class was how to add links to our BLOG pages. You do this by going to your dashboard, then click layout on the side, then you just add a gadget and voila. After showing us this process Mr. Schick then rambled on about his undying love for Wikipedia and how he sends it Valentine’s cards while jumping up and down very excitedly. Last but not least, Mr. Schick showed us how to determine whether or not a website is legit or not. While going through some examples, we found one that could have been deleted and tossed in the internet garbage similar to what one might do with a messed up drawing of which you wish to do again. You could tell that it was just some dude making up some rant or another by the fact that the site was not very visually appealing and that they had not capitalized the first letter of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the article. However, we were informed of one source with very reliable information, which is the CIA’s website “World Fact Book.”

Essay 3

Over the next four years, I plan to demonstrate excellence in my school career at John Carroll with the following actions.

·         I will demonstrate honesty and integrity with my assignments by not cheating or plagiarizing.

·         I will always put my school work first before doing anything else.

·         I will always put my best effort into all my school assignments.

·         I will always respect school property and staff.

·         I will not doze off in class or let my other classmates distract me.

Essay 2

One day after school, it was a wonderfully sunshiny day, I was walking along and I noticed someone different walking toward me in the opposite direction. As I drew nearer, I noticed that the stranger held a striking resemblance to Socrates. As we come within speaking distance I say to him “You know you remind me of someone.” The man replied “Really, who?” I answered him with “I suppose you have probably heard of Socrates from ancient Greece, that’s who.” Then I received an answer that I never expected. “Well, that would most likely be because I am Socrates.” I decided to ask him “What do you think of today’s society?” Socrates answered “Well, that would be a rather difficult question considering the fact that I just arrived here.” I replied “Well, then in that case you want to stay at my house for a bit so you can have a taste of what American society is like in 2012 A.D.” Socrates said “That sounds good to me especially since I won’t have a place to stay tonight, as long as your parents are alright with that.” It was decided that Socrates would stay for a few days before getting him on his way. During his stay at my home, Socrates found that he liked things such as that democracy was being used in other nations even in the far future. He also found that he was not in agreement with other aspects of American society such as the fact that people were influenced a lot by the media.

Then a few days after the departure of Socrates, I discovered that Elbert Hubbard had also visited the present via the time vortex. I figured that this would be a perfect opportunity to get the rest of my second essay for Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class complete. After going through a similar dialogue that I went through with Socrates, Elbert found himself wishing to broadcast his “A Message to Garcia” to the nation since he discovered that today’s society has become incredibly lazy due to technology.

essay 1

Arête is living up to one’s full potential in every aspect of life. For example, a person who shows real arête would not only be an excellent person but a person of morality. This was shown by the ancient Greeks by their public way of life they frowned upon those who lived their life in private because they believed that everyone should at least come to the agora to see what people have to say as well as vote on politics. Socrates was a figure of great arête because he was a believer in democracy and he pushed critical thinking to get people to have opinions. But what really showed Socrates’s arête was after he was sentenced to death, he accepted his fate even when people offered to get out of there so he could continue with his life.