Monday, October 4, 2010

College Student Suicide

All right, so how to voice my irritation about this subject, without offending quite a few people? Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way but I will try to be circumspect.

Before hand I would like to make perfectly clear that I am not trying to be disrespectful, and I am most definitely not racist. I am however, extremely prejudice, but it is not ethnicity to which I am prejudice, nor any specific group for that matter, it is individual people and their individual behavior with which I have a problem. Personally I do not care what color, or sexuality, or age, or sex, or religious beliefs you have, it makes no difference to me. If you are an idiot, then even if you were green, you are still an idiot.

So a kid goes to college, is trying to better himself, is successful at what he does, and happens to be gay. Nobody cares. Nobody thinks anything of it. But then you add Dharun, who obviously is extremely insecure, has too much time on his hands, apparently likes to smoke pot regularly, which doesn't say much for the school, and feels the need to exploit said kid's PRIVATE life. And all of a sudden it becomes a big joke, and the poor kid can't deal with it anymore. Now, someone please explain to me why Molly and Dharun are NOT being charged with a hate crime, or better yet, involuntary manslaughter? If you hit a pedestrian on the street, you get nailed for that even if you had no other choice. If you sell a drug to someone, and they OD and die, you are guilty (if they can trace it back to you of course) of involuntary manslaughter. This kid taped it, relayed it over the Internet. Then does it AGAIN, and plans this one so he can have a bigger audience for the "event", they think it's so funny making the life of this poor kid hell, and they are getting videotaping and distribution?
Really?
That's the best they can do? No offense, but if the kid was black, there would be an uproar because he was black, and he was gay, and it was a hate crime, and the list goes on.
Now, again, I am not racist nor do I hold any particular dislike against any group as a whole. I also believe that people who treat others with such disrespect as to cross that privacy line so blatantly have waived any right they had to their privacy, and the opinion of others towards them. But let's be honest here. If Tyler had been videotaping Dharun, and claiming he was a terrorist, and doing all of this to Dharun just because it was "funny", who knows what the repercussions would have been for Tyler. A slap on the wrist? I doubt it.

That being said, I think it is being grossly downplayed by the school, and the fact that those kids are only being charged with videotaping and distribution is mind boggling. Makes me wonder what is happening in the United States anymore......

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Home School - First Week

SO, this week went pretty well. We were all so into it on Monday and Tuesday, it felt like it was going to be a breeze. But then the novelty started to wear off and we got a little burned out. LOL. I was EXHAUSTED by Wednesday. In my defense I have also been working quite a lot, so I have not had much of a break. But I pushed through, and we got through their work. They had a spelling pretest on Monday and by Friday they were SO MUCH BETTER! I had a great sense of accomplishment since they had improved. I felt like I did something right :)

Odie is crazy good. He is so smart it's scary sometimes. I can read a poem to him and he recites it back to me word for word like he already knew it, but he had never heard the poem before. I was surprised to find out that he did not know his ABC's all the way through, I thought he did. But he is much better now, already showing improvement on that. He smoked through his math, and has no problem with the work. He is funny in that he gets frustrated when he has to copy letters down. He doesn't understand that the repetitious writing is to help him learn HOW to write them as well as just learning the letter. But if I give him tons of encouragement he will continue doing it just to hear about how well he's doing. LOL.

Oz is getting hammered. TONS of reading, she gets fried way before the boys do. Which is kind of funny because Jaron has the most reading stuff, reading science, phonics, reading in general, spelling, reading history, reading, reading, reading. She has mostly reading too but it's different because her books are geared more towards older students, with more difficult vocabulary and more in depth explanations. She has a harder time getting through the day than the boys. She is doing very well though.

Bubba is just Bubba. He is eight, and bored with it. School is just school to him. He has improved in his understanding of the subjects, and is starting to associate some of his learning with the rest of the world, which is really cool. But when it comes to doing the work, no matter how small the task, "Oh, not that." he says. LOL. But he does it, then feels very proud of himself, and then we move on. It's funny how different all of them are in their learning.

The baby tries to get in on it sometimes. But when he wants to do school and I try to teach him a letter, I usually end up with a drawing of some monster. LOL. He has more fun doodling, so I let him for now. He does the poems with us and he has fun with that.

Jaron got his poem he wrote last year published in a real poem book! I ordered them yesterday morning, and we won't get them until April sometime. BUT, he wrote it in second grade, and it is really being published, in a real honest to God book of poems. We are all very proud of him, and so is he. He is very excited that he got to do that, and he takes a much more positive approach to the poem work we are doing in his schooling this year than any other subject. He seems to have taken a liking to science, hopefully that will continue.