Elleana's blog

On tuesdays I go to an inner city school and am a Big Sister (www.bbbs.org).  My little is in first grade and she's super cute, but it is a little weird going there and seeing all the differences between that school and the one I went to (I grew up in the suburbs.)  For one thing, I remember going to the after school program at my school once or twice and maybe a dozen kids would be there.  At my little's school almost every kid is in the after school program.  The other big thing I've noticed is that it seems like there's less of everything, fewer teachers, fewer books, even fewer pencil sharpeners.  I can also compeletly see how kids in inner city schools might "slip through the cracks" and not recieve as good of an education as they deserve.  My little reads well, but one of her friends has some problems, and becuase there are so many kids the teacher never really has much time to help her.  I try to help her out when I'm there, but I'm only there for an hour and a half in the week, and they usually only read for about the first fourty-five minutes I'm there.  I have no idea how to fix the education system so that everyone gets a fair shake, but I really wish there was a way.  Read More »

I was in my calculus class today when I noticed that the girl sitting in front of me was playing the helecopter game on her computer, and thought "Wow, that's a gaigantic waste of time."  That got me thinking, considering how much it costs to go to college, why would anyone skip classes?  Sure there boring sometimes, but it's really expensive to attend college, and if one just spends there time doing other things it may effect their future more then one would realize at the time.  It's like going to get a medical test and then deciding later to just not go, it's throughing money away.  Read More »

I don't really know how to explain this.  It's a short story, fiction, kind of a philisophical piece I guess, and I'm having problems ending it.

"           Once there existed a man and his wife that lived not so happily ever after.  Despite disagreements and dishonesty they produced a son onto whom they passed what happiness they had, for a time.  While the child was new and interesting they loved him.  They gave him gifts and attention, and they taught him what they knew about the world.

However, the child noticed something odd about the parents.  Rather then build a shelter that all could share; they created small ones only for themselves.  When he was very small, he had lived within his mothers, but as time progressed, she came to fear him and told him he must leave."  Read More »

In the recent United States mid-term elections the Democrates took over the House of Representatives and appear to be taking control of the Senate as well. Probably as a result,  Donald Rumsfeld resigned from his position as Secretary of Defense, and he's going to be replaced by Robert Gates, a former head of the CIA and a friend of the first President Bush.  Of course, unless you live under a rock, you probably already knew that.  Read More »