An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green response 10/19/14

          The young adult fiction novel "An Abundance of Katherines", by John Green, tells the story of a child prodigy named Colin who, after getting dumped by a girl named Katherine for the 19th time, decides to embark on a road trip with his friend Hassan. He ends up in a rural town in Tennessee named Gutshot, where he discovers new friends and a new life. It's a novel that teaches a lot about what life should be about, and I felt there were a lot of morals. And although many of the morals were very clichéd, they were truthful and meaningful.
          One of the clichéd morals was the biggest one, and this was that you don't have to be a genius or somebody famous to be important. Throughout the book, Colin repeatedly states that he wants to leave his mark on the world and be remembered by everybody. Colin says "“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”  (page 106, line 8) and this is shown as one of Colin's flaws over and over again. He thinks that solving an algorithm that would predict a relationship will help be remembered, and he spends his time trying to be remembered instead of actually living life. This starts to change once he develops a relationship with his new "family" he starts living with, mainly Lindsey and her mother, since he realizes that being who he is is important enough, and that he needs to start living life instead of trying to be a prodigy. An underlying moral in this main one was also to be who you are and not pretend to be someone else.
          Two characters display changes in behavior that represent this moral that being yourself is the only way you should act, instead of displaying a fake attitude and pretending to be someone else than who you really are. Lindsey and Colin both learn a valuable lesson from this, as Lindsey constantly changes what she acts like around different people because she thinks this will help everybody like her. She acts like a very Southern girl and puts on a thick accent around older people, acts bubbly around her boyfriend, and tries to act like a "nerd" around Colin and Hassan. When Lindsey says"I'm never myself. [...] I'm nothing. The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real. (page 203, line 12)", she has no real identity, but having a relationship with Colin helps her find one and become her own person. Colin, on the other hand, is his own person and has a unique personality, but he only realizes at the end of the novel that being himself is enough to be important and leave a mark on the world and the lives of others.
          These are just two examples of clichéd morals in the book, and there are many more. And though usually a prosaic moral is, well, boring, the ones in this novel are meaningful and really show how they can change a person's life. This book taught me many valuable lessons and altered the stereotype in my head that clichéd morals and lessons would be boring and repetitive, and that they can instead be important themes to the book that shape the plot and define the characters.

College Sports Argument Essay

            Have you ever watched a college football or basketball game, and seen the huge stadiums or arenas packed with thousands of fans? Each of those games generates hundreds of thousands of dollars, and almost none of it goes to the players who play the game itself. The NCAA has deemed them amateurs, and therefore they don’t receive any payment. These athletes base most of their time around the sport they play, especially the biggest sport football and basketball in which they play dozens of games, and aren’t rewarded financially. This is different then being on the swim team or another extracurricular sport, where there aren’t too many practices or meets/games, and the athletes can focus mainly on their academics. For the players, this is their focus and academics usually take a lower priority since less time is left for them. Since they don’t receive any of the money they generate in the first place, college athletes are, in a way, exploited by the NCAA and they should be paid at least a minimum wage and receive other benefits.

            In college, most students get a job outside of school to help cover expenses, and for college athletes in top sports this is almost the same thing, except for the fact that they aren’t paid for it. Athletes shouldn’t spend this much time doing the sport and not receive any compensation to pay for expenses. How could they possibly find the time to obtain money a different way between spending almost 60 hours per week practicing and playing the sport and focusing on academics? Some of the athletes’ basic needs aren’t covered as shown in this quote from Shabazz Napier, a star point guard for the University of Connecticut basketball team. “There are […] nights that I go to bed and I’m starving,” he said, the year he and his team won the hugely popular ‘March Madness’ college basketball tournament. In Upfront Magazine issue 15251292, it is stated that “the average full-scholarship athlete accumulates $3,200 in debt for each year they’re in school, because meal plans and other incidentals often aren’t fully covered. Even though athletes receive some benefits, they must receive the best benefits, such as top health insurance that covers almost all expenses, since they can succumb to serious injuries that can affect their careers and cost a fortune, even to the players who don’t plan on having a sports career. Colleges need to start taking responsibility for these athletes that dedicate so much time to them. They need to start being paid, and though the fact that a federal judge decided that college basketball and football players must be paid if they are shown on TV is a start, they need more. Their living expenses need to be covered, and they need to start earning something for the “job” they do. The ones profiting the most are the adults who don’t take part in the games, such as people of the NCAA and the coaches.

            The NCAA has been using the “amateur” status for decades, and it’s slowly developed into a way to exploit the athletes by not letting them profit from their own fame and success. The sports generate billions of dollars, “800 million alone from the ‘March Madness’ basketball tournament” (Upfront Magazine, Issue 15251292, Page 15). The NCAA forbids student athletes to profit

 from their own likenesses or names, showing how the amateur status is a cover for exploitation and a way for the NCAA to profit as much as possible from these sports without having to spend on the athletes themselves. According to www.indystar.com, “The highest-paid public employee in 40 states is a college football or basketball coach,” showing just how much money coaches and other NCAA and college executives are paid. The amateur label needs to be removed, and NCAA rules must be changed, as the only ones not profiting are the players, and the NCAA is exploiting them in every way possible.

            College sports are a very heated and debated topic right now, but there is clear evidence that the athletes aren’t profiting enough, and that coaches and NCAA executives are profiting too much. Evidence shows that the NCAA is using the players to obtain huge sums of money and preventing the players from profiting themselves from their own image. Although some changes are starting to be made, many reforms need to happen, starting with payment and benefits for the athletes. It’s important for change to be made so that a balance can be established in college sports, with all the people involved profiting fairly, and I think these reforms should be made because it’s unfair that students don’t profit from their job. Changes are happening, and college sports are being changed for good, and for the best.

Faithful Elephants Reading Response

          World War II was a very deadly and destructive war that killed millions and affected many more, from the wives of soldiers to innocent animals. "Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War", a short story by Yukio Tsuchiya, tells the story of a trio of zoo elephants that must be killed along with all the zoo's other animals. The army fears that is bombs fall on the zoo, the animals could escape, wreak havoc and harm humans. The story takes place in the Ueno Zoo, in Tokyo, Japan, and is told mostly as a story to the author by a zookeeper who was present during the story. It's a heartbreaking story in which the zookeepers must starve their own elephants, their own friends. I think this story really shows how war is unfair requires innocent sacrifices, and how these sacrifices hurt everybody around them.
          In a time of war, innocence is rare. Even children realize how serious and horrible the situation is. "(Page 2, lines 18-21) Squeezing out what little strength they had left, Tonky and Wanly made their appeal. [...] they did their banzai trick. Surely their friend would reward them with food and water as he used to do." The war takes away the elephant's innocence as demonstrated in this quote, which shows how the elephants are confused about why their trainers are starving them and how they are being killed without doing anything wrong. The elephants and other zoo animals are being sacrificed to protect others, but it's really unjust. The story demonstrates how war isn't fair: in a time of war uninvolved people are killed for no reason. The death of these elephants represents the death of the millions of rather insignificant people and animals that wars cause. War has an effect on everybody, even the most innocent of uninvolved people.
          As said in the previous paragraph, war has an effect on practically every single person even just barely involved in it, even those who just live in a place where it takes place. It also hurts everybody, emotionally or physically, and usually both. The war and death of the elephants deeply emotionally hurts the zookeepers, because they were so close to these animals. "(Page 3, lines Still clinging to the elephants, the zookeepers raised their fists to the sky and implored, 'Stop the war! Stop the war! Stop all wars!' " This quote shows how much the death of the elephants hurt the zookeepers who had to starve them themselves against their will. In the quote, the trainers are clinging on to the elephants as if they were their lifeline, and in some ways they were, because they symbolized hope that the war would end. They yell at the enemy planes because they are furious that this foolish war cost them their friends. The elephants meant so much more to the trainers than just animals: they were like children to them. Even decades later, the trainer is still nostalgic and still remembers the death of these elephants who were such a big part of his life, because their death left a big scar in him and all the trainers. The death of someone/something you love stays with you your whole life. Wars destroy everything in their path, from people to animals to friendships.
         Wars are started for a reason, sometimes a good one, sometimes not, but they affect so many people that the deaths of innocents outshadows the fight for justice that a war usually is. War is unfair  and requires innocent sacrifices which hurt everybody around them, but are some of these sacrifices really worth it? What are the chances that the animals escaped and harmed humans? If the roles were switched and it was humans that could escape and harm the animals, would the innocent humans be put to death? Wars are like a disease: they burst into your life and spread to everyone around you, scarring them for the rest of their lives.