What Teenagers DON'T Deserve

“What if the kid you bullied at school, grew up, and turned out to be the only surgeon who could save your life?”  - Lynette Mather. Bullying is a problem to teenagers all around the world. It is a fact that 160,000 students stay home on any day given because of the fear of being bullied (FJHS Bullying Program). Over time, the access to bullying has increased due to the rise of internet usage and therefore, more teens are being bullied. This is leading more teenagers to depression and changes in personality, self harm, and even suicide. It happens to some of the most innocent teenagers in the world. Most people feel the need to bully others because of their differences; nationality, religion, and appearance. Others bully because of jealousy or to maintain their reputation and look ‘tough’. With that being the case, situations of bullying need to be decreased around the world and it is definitely something needed to be fought for because these reasons are no reasons at all to lead people to harm themselves, be depressed, change their personality or to kill themselves.

Depression can lead to many harmful results, and one result of bullying is depression or a change in your personality. Schools, children, and adults used to think that bullying had only an emotional impact on you, but after researching more about bullying effects, they soon discovered that it actually had an impact on your brain. Bullying messes with adolescent hormones and it also damages the growth of new neurons or nerve cells. (Inside The Bullied Brain). Messing with your adolescent hormones means it makes your behaviour unstable. You’ll start acting differently on different occassions and you won’t be able to control your behaviour. Damaging your nerve cells is a detrimental effect because it meant you’d have trouble transmitting information through your body. So you wouldn’t react naturally and you wouldn’t be able to proccess information as well. This side effect of bullying would mean that you wouldn’t do so good in school either. Relating to changes in personality, changes in your brain also make you feel emotionally unstable and it will mess with your feelings. Bullies can make victims feel emotionally unstable, with a result of the victims having problems with their family or maybe something more serious, like an eating disorder. When you get bullied, your whole brain doesn’t work normally. You start looking down on yourself and feel like you need to do better. This may lead you to taking risks and doing what’s abnormal and unnatural to you. When you get bullied, nothing really matters anymore so you don’t see the risk in anything. This causes you to take drugs, get into fights and even carry around weapons. Your brain doesn’t function properly, so you can’t see the dangers in things because you’re common knowledge isn’t there. So a victim of a bully wouldn’t think that taking drugs was going to do much harm. They wouldn’t know that getting into fights was dangerous and that it would cause trouble for you. And they wouldn’t think that weapons could harm you terribly. Following a change in personality and depression, it could lead you to worse things, such as self-harm.

After teens feel hurt from being bullied, they need to feel more pain so that the bullying doesn’t feel so bad, so they self-harm. Self-harming is when somebody physically hurts themselves, such as cutting themselves. Self-harming is when somebody physically hurts themselves, such as cutting themselves. Most people self harm because they are dealing with emotions that are difficult to manage. Bullying would be included in this category. When you’re being bullied, you feel like nobody likes you and your emotions are hard to cope with. After a while, you just don’t know what to do anymore so you think the only option left is to hurt yourself. Some people hurt themselves to make them stronger, but some people do it to hide the pain from being bullied. Either way, you’re still hurting yourself and hurting yourself has dangers. The dangers include becoming addicted, accidental death, accidentally cutting important vains, or lots of bleeding. There are numerous cases and stories of self-harming with teenagers. A personal story would would be able characterize the effects of self-harming better. (Self Harm | My Story) This story is a personal story about a 15 year old girl who had experiences of self-harming. When this girl was in the 4th grade, she had just figured out what self-harming was. She had never thought of anything like it before, and she said, ‘I thought I was the last person who’d ever do it.’ Despite that fact, she soon did begin to self-harm for the reason being, her friends were doing it and that was putting her in a rough situation. Once she tried it, she loved it. She said, ‘the weird thing was that afterwards, I felt so much better.’ She got addicted because it made her feel relieved and ‘like she’d let all her bottled up feelings out’. She also said it was ‘unbelievably hard’ to give up cutting herself. This meaning, it was addicting and as much as she tried to stop, she couldn’t. Overall, self-harming was dangerous and could lead to terrible actions. It could lead to another form of self-harming, but with a more permanent effect- suicide.

People around the world have lost friends and family to the dreaful commitment, that is suicide. Suicide is when somebody intentionally kills themself. Every 13.7 minutes someone in the United States dies by suicide. Not all cases of suicide are from bullying, but most cases involving teens are. Lots of cases of suicide are from cyber bullying as well. Cyber bullying is when you bully through cyber space, such as text messages or social networking sites. Cyber bullying is an easier way for people to bully because they say things they’re too afraid to say in real life. Also when you’re being cyberbullied online, teachers and families are more unaware of what’s happening and so they’d never expect anything, which would make it easier to commit suicide.  There are also different ways of commiting suicide easier. Different ways of committing suicide would include hanging yourself, drug overdosing, jumping off heights, carbon monoxide poisoning (from cars), and many more. Drug overdosing is one of the most common ways of killing yourself, due to availability of the substances. A poll has shown that 89% of people would prefer to take a pill rather than suffocate themself. With the use of a gun, it is most common to point the gun at the head and shoot. About 53.7% of the suicide cases in the US are from firearms. Committing suicide not only kills you, but leaves your friends and family in a state that isn’t managable, and this is all caused by bullying.

The harms and effects of bullying are definitely inconceivable. Teenagers around the world shouldn’t be experiencing depression, or hurting themselves, or even killing themselves. We need to work together so that 30% of grade six students that are bullied decrease to 0%. This is why you should donate money to help prevent bullying: Beat Bullying.

The Actions of an Honorable Boy

‘I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.’ - Denis Waitley. People who live under a roof often complain about their lives. They don’t recognize the privileges and luxuries they have. Though, around the world, tens of millions of children live or work on the streets and the number keeps growing. In the year 2000, there were 246,011 children living on the streets in the Philippines. Kesz was one of these children. Kesz, a 13 year old boy, ran away from home and grew up in the dumpsites of the Philippines. He lived a dangerous life filled with no hope of being saved. He suffered through lots of pain, despite that, he finally did get saved and he knew he had to do something about the other children still living in the dumpsites. The children weren’t aware of the hazard of living on the streets. They were uneducated and living a terrible life. They had no hope of escaping. Kesz received the International Children’s Peace Prize, as his experience was a bad one so he wanted to help the other children by giving them hope about being saved and educating them about health.

As Kesz was lucky to be saved from the dumpsite, he wanted to give hope to other children. He made sure that they never stopped believing that they would eventually start living better. As a result of his success and power, he could help them. Fortunately, Kesz’s wish to be saved from the dumpsite was a success, therefore, he knew it was possible for anybody to eventually be saved. Kesz says, ‘I am young, but I have a firm purpose to help make things better for generations to come.’ (Street Children Have Rights Too! Page 3). For his seventh birthday, instead of receiving presents for himself, he chose to get presents for the children on the streets.  He couldn’t let the children lose hope so he made them feel happy. He was determined to keep their hopes high. Kesz suffered through pain and anger, but he still continued to make children happy. ‘Looking back, the fire that burned my skin and flesh is the same fire that started a flame in my soul.’ (Street Children Have Rights Too! Page 3). Kesz grew up in the dumpsites and he had gone through so much and through all of his experiences he’d probably lose hope on being saved, but it happened. He eventually did get saved by Mr. Harmin, ‘the father he looks up to’. As being saved was something unexpected for Kesz he knew that hope was important and that everybody that lived like the street children had to feel hope. The other children in the dumpsites go through the same thing as Kesz everyday. Kesz knows that since he was saved all the other children will eventually be saved. His success has given the other children hope. Not only does he help with giving them hope, he has also provided them with information on living healthier.

Kesz knew living in a dumpsite was unhealthy, so he had to provide these children with information on living a healthier life. He experienced many unhealthy situations, not knowing they were unhealthy.  ‘Allowing flies to feast on my open wounds was normal to me and my friends.’ (Street Children Have Rights Too! Page 3). Kesz wasn’t aware of how dangerous the dumpsites were, health-wise. Dumpsites were filled with flies, trash and germs everywhere. Nobody ever cleaned them. So once he found out, he needed to help the other children because they were oblivious to the fact that where they lived was dangerous. ‘This is why I started and continue to lead street children to better health by teaching, demonstrating and spreading basic hygiene practice.’ (Street Children Have Rights Too! Page 3) Kesz encountered many unhealthy experiences, not knowing they were harmful at the time, but he soon learned the effect they had and he wanted to inform children who would pass it on to other children still living in the dumpsites, before it was too late. Šƒ’‹‘‹‰‘—‹–›Š‹Ž†”‡Šƒ’‹‘‹‰‘—‹–›Š‹Ž†”‡

Kesz’s exposure to the outcomes of the dumpsites has brought him forward into guiding the children who live in the dumpsites. He’s instructed them into a healthier lifestyle and given them hope. As he continues to do that today, he represents an honorable 13 year old boy, deserving the prize he received. He’s even taken it further by getting children to teach other children about hygiene. With his help he has succeeded in having 10,000 children aware of the importance of hygiene, just in his area. Kesz has the qualities of an inspiration to children all over the world. He has achieved so much at an early age and has given hope to people around the world that it’s not too late to start making a change now.

What Makes Me

I am from Phineas and Ferb I am from Dora the Explorer and the screaming ‘Swiper no swiping!’ I am from Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries Big Time Rush and The Jonas Brothers I am from the dribbling in basketball and the serving in volleyball I am from the crowded city and the heavy traffic From the loud shouts and car honks and motorbikes riding in the middle of the lanes I am from the hot weather and the tropical rainforests. I am from Sharifah and Faiz The “Go take a shower!”s and “Go do your homework!”s I am from Abhi and Nadia, Micah and Caoimhe and Lily and Alexandra, Sol and Daisy The “Did you hear about him and her?”s and the “Please tell me, I won’t tell anybody”s I am from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Tasting The Rainbow I am from Pizzas and Pastas Quesadillas and Tacos I am from Nasi Lemak and Roti I am from scholarships to Princeton and Duke

   I am from doctors

I am from engineers and Exxon Mobils. On my walls and in my desk drawers are the memories that build me up and make me who I am. The pictures that make me look back and now realize why I am who I am. The scribbles in my notebook that make me. All these things result in who I am today.

My Black Messiah by Sonia Weitz

Of the three poems, the one that appealed to me the most was My Black Messiah by Sonia Weitz. For this poem to actually interest you, I think you would have to know the background information about Sonia and about everything that she has been through; such as surviving 5 concentration camps, being 1 of the 2 survivors in her 84-membered family and so on. After listening to her story about her experiences during the time of the Holocaust, I'm sure that being released and just set free would have been a huge deal for her!

I think in this poem she was just writing about how great it felt to finally be free! She wanted to express all the emotions she felt during this time. There were a few lines in the poem that made me think this. Such as 'And on we went our seperate ways.' She was talking about how the black Messiah had come and she had finally been released and her and the black Messiah were going their seperate ways and she could have gone anywhere she wanted to now. Another line in the poem was 'But there's a special bond we share.' I think she means a connection after everything she has experienced and that this could probably have been the best day of her life! And the last line was '...grown strong because we dare to live, to hope, to smile...' It has grown strong because now she is free and can live life to the fullest without having to worry about anything.

I was pretty clear with what this whole poem was about, but it did raise 1 or 2 questions for me. On the very first line when she says 'A black GI stood by the door', did she actually know what he was there for? She must have been really young at the time and not have known who this guy was, but did she have any clue at all? And another question I had was in the line that said 'He stared with eyes that didn't see', what did he mean by that? All I could think of was maybe he was ignorant and was aware of what was going on around him, but didn't do anything about it, but then why was he even there?

Being A Victim

'Some people say that what makes a person a victim is they have limited or NO options about how to act.'

In some cases, I do agree with this, but I also don't agree. I wouldn't agree because, for example, when somebody is being bullied, they do have lots of choices, but I think it's being under pressure that influences the choices people make. You could tell a teacher, but you're too scared to. You could stand up for yourself, but that's even scarier. Those are still options, though, but you just choose not to go with those options because you're afraid of what might happen. However, with the Jews it was different. After the government started not letting emigration, the Jews really didn't have any more choices. There was nothing else they could do to end what the Nazis were doing to them. They just had to put up with what was happening. So my choice goes more towards disagreeing with this statement.

The Eternal Jew

At my first glance at The Eternal Jew I immediately was confused. I had no idea what this image could possibly mean. That was my first glance, though. So after actually looking at it and observing all the little details, lots of it started to make more sense to me. Some general things that I noticed were that there were German words on it, which, as mentioned in the title, meant The Eternal Jew. Something a bit deeper into the image that I noticed was that he looked like he was holding coins. I thought this was because the Nazis wanted to show the people with 'German blood' that the Jews wanted to take all the money and that they just wanted to take over Germany. Another observation that I made was that the background was really bright and the Jew was wearing really dark clothing. This could maybe mean that the Jews didn't mean anything when they were in a background of Nazis.

I think this is supposed to be a poster created by the Nazi Party. And I think it was made when the Nazis had a lot more followers than they did in the beginning. The intended audience would probably be the people with 'German blood'. The Nazi Party wanted to show that the Jews were trying to take over Germany and take all the money. They wanted to show to the 'Pure Germans' that the Jews weren't good people and that they were greedy and taking everything they could. And that if the Jews ruled Germany, they would just take all the money and that Germany would be better if the Nazis were ruling.

Some misleading information would be that this Jew looked like he wasn't enjoying anything. I think the Nazi Party exaggerated this picture a bit because even though the Jews were living a tough life that nobody wanted to live in, it wasn't an extremely horrible one. It was only horrible because the Nazis made it horrible. The Nazi Party made it seem as if this person looked horrible because they were a Jew, but it was really because the Nazis were the ones giving the Jews a hard time.