Literature Deep Dive

As I’m sure many of you already know due to Dr. Radnitzers recent email, a new law has been put in place that students are able to take up to five mental health days. First of all; what exactly is a mental health day? A mental health day is essentially a “sick day,” but used for taking care of your mental health when you feel particularly stressed, anxious, depressed, etc. This new law brought up a question; is it a good thing that mental health days are being given to students? Especially in these times, with the ongoing pandemic, I believe mental health days will prove to be very beneficial. With the state of our current school year, there are several challenges that students are facing. Some are struggling with the new transition to in-person learning, and school may be a major trigger for anxious feelings towards academics overall. Along with the pressure of in-person learning, some students might just be overwhelmed with work. Being in sports or other extracurriculars means they ...

     I'm sure you've all heard of the saying, 'You only live once.' And I'm also sure you've heard that time seems to go faster as you get older. Well, these are both, at least in some way, true. Time, or at least our subjective perception of it does seem to go faster. Not due to lightspeed time dilation or anything fancy, but simply because the older we get, the fewer new experiences we have. If you think back through your memories, I'm sure you'll find that many more seem to fall from when you were younger, experiencing so many new things. But, the older we get, the more stable things become and the more the days start to blend together. I'm sure that especially during covid, you felt everything meld together into some amalgamate memory. Well, how can we stop dying so fast?      The answer is simple: Do more. You only get one life, and you shouldn't spend it obsessing over grades and higher-paying jobs. Find a balance that works for you. Be wil...

  *DISCLAIMER* I mention abuse and stalking in the fourth paragraph Do child stars have it rough? I’m not sure. I’m fascinated by the question, though, so when I saw it was a prompt I was excited to do it. You have tons of examples of child stars talking about their bad experiences––Alyson Stoner, who played Isabella on Phineas and Ferb , Britney (who I’ll talk about more later), the Glee kids––I couldn’t name all of the cases if I tried, so I’ll stop there. Thinking about it, and what they’ve said about their mistreatment, they definitely did have it rough. I suppose I already have an answer, then. Because of this, I’m going to switch the question a bit so that I can talk more about it.  Do we pity the child stars? We’ve already established that they have it rough, so do we pity them? Keeping in mind that I have no idea what child stardom is like, I feel like when they’re past a certain age when they start, we don’t have to pity them. On Nirvana’s Nevermind , there’s a pic...

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach      I started reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach today (10/4) after deciding to take a rare dive into the nonfiction section of the library. I’m only about one chapter into the book, butI still feel like there’s enough for me to discuss in a short blog post. *Spoilers for first chapter* Basically, the first chapter is set in a surgical lab, where there are rows of heads for practicing face lifts. Roach discusses how she was brought in as a guest to observe, and tells about her experience meeting some of the surgeons. She also explains how there has to be a separation in someone’s mind between a person and a cadaver. Roach says that a cadaver is just a dead body, and whoever inhabited said body is not there anymore. I’ve wondered for a while how people who work with dead bodies are able to continue focusing on their job despite the fact that there are, well, dead bodies. Roach expre...

      "Stop signs had always been blue, and I was crazy for thinking otherwise."      This line was what got me hooked on Neal Shusterman's latest work, Game Changer. An abridged version of the plot (no spoilers!) is that the main character, Ash, has the universe literally revolving around him. This means that when he takes a massive hit during a football game, the universe begins to shift and spin around him. So, when he wakes up, everything seems... The same, and yet different. Stop signs are blue. He's part of a wealthy family, and drives a BMW. But not everything is good...     Neal Shusterman is one of my favorite authors. In fact, there has never been a book of his that I didn't enjoy thoroughly. So, when I saw this on the new shelf at the library, I was very excited. I read most of it in just one day, and couldn't put it down. From every new turn as he tried to get his reality back to what it was, and avoid problems in his new reality....

*MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME* Over the past few weeks, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. I quite liked the book, as I hadn’t read a good mystery in a while. Also, it was pretty short, and my attention span for reading isn’t long at all, so the length was good for me. The book follows Christopher, a 16 year old boy who lives in England as he tries to solve a neighborhood mystery that’s been haunting his mind. In Curious Incident , on page 20, Christopher tells us that his mother died, and we assume that’s true for quite a while–life and death are two of the most plainly real aspects of the world, and no one can doubt them. I’ll get back to this in a bit. The first sentence of the fourth chapter is “This is a murder mystery novel,” and we’ve figured that the murder it’s referring to is the murder of Wellington, one of Christopher’s neighbor’s dogs. After reading the book, I know that this is true. However, as we g...