the thin line between optimism and delusion…

Study Links Drop in Test Scores to a Decline in Time Spent Reading. 

from the article –

The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.

As I child, I was a nerd.  I spent a lot of time in my room by myself reading books.  I spent a lot of time in public reading books. I was also terribly hyperactive.  Basically, if I was sitting still, my nose was probably in a book.  I’m not sure how it works for a hyperactive attention deficit child to be a compulsive reader, but it just happened to be the only time I was able to focus.  I think it had to do with my overactive imagination and the fact that I was (and still am) captivated by stories.  Books were my escape from my everyday life of losing things, breaking stuff, and being reprimanded by adults. 

I think I was made fun of for reading so much.  I don’t really remember, because I was a pretty unaffected child, and probably didn’t really care.  My love for reading far outweighed any sort of social stigma I might have experienced. 

The first time I because cognizant that my reading habits had been the subject of ridicule was in high school.  Because in high school we started taking standardized tests like the SAT.  And I was good at these tests.  And friends started saying things like, "Well, I guess we shouldn’t have made fun of you for reading so much when we were little."  Even parents would say things like, "You sure showed us, even though we used to pick on you for reading all the time, you have the last laugh with your SAT score."  And honestly my score wasn’t anything for the record books, but I did well early in high school, it never got a lot better, but I took the tests early which for some reason seemed to make them more impressive than they actually were. 

But my first thought with these comments was – "Huh? Y’all were making fun of me?  I don’t remember that."  And "I wonder if reading really is the way to do well on standardized tests."  And I’ve sort of been wondering about that ever since. 

And so I thought this article was really interesting.  Obviously, if reading doesn’t bring you pleasure, you aren’t going to read for pleasure.  So it isn’t really fair to say that if you want to do well you should read.  Because, well, the advantage is probably in the margin of people who actually read ALL THE TIME for YEARS.  So, I think you really need the love.  But, anyway, thought it was an interesting article. 

Also wanted to talk about this article on Denial – but don’t have time.  Love the topic of denial.  Think it is really fascinating. 

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The shootings at Va. Tech yesterday were shocking and upsetting.  Writing about shocking and upsetting events sometimes helps me sort through my feelings.  It won’t necessarily make me feel better, but it might keep me from dwelling too much. 

Yesterday morning Heather stuck her head in my office and said – "Did you hear about the shooting at Va. Tech?  Twenty people have been killed."

I said – "No!" and immediately pulled it up on line.  The news feed I picked up said that one person had been killed and twenty injured.  So I reported that back to Heather.  And we both started trying to figure out the truth to the numbers.  As the numbers rose, the broken story started to come together. 

I went home and ate lunch with my mom.  At first we sat outside in the pretty breezy sunshine and let the dogs lay on our feet.  Then we started to discuss the shootings.  Mama commented that it was snowing in Blacksburg this morning.  The nice day lost some of it’s warmth and Mama and I went inside to watch MSN, FoxNews and CNN.  We discussed what we would do if someone in our family went to Va. Tech and we hadn’t spoken with them.  We decided we would get into the car and start driving, simply to have something to do with ourselves.  Mama recalled that when September 11th happened and my dad was in on a transatlantic flight from Vienna to Dulles, she got in the car and drove to Athens to be with Travers and me. 

The people on tv kept talking about the school’s response.  I obviously have nothing to compare such a tragedy to, except September 11th – and that happened thousands of miles away from my campus.  I started thinking about how when the first plane struck the world trade center I was walking out of Theta on my way to my 9:30 class.  Emily was with me, and I was, as usual, running late. I’m fairly certain I had some sort of bagel or toast in my mouth and a coke in my pocket for breakfast.   Mama called me to tell me what happened, and as I was talking to her the second plane crashed.  Mama told me I needed to find a television.  Emily told me we were going to miss the bus.  I wasn’t even sure I knew what the world trade center was.  I hung up the phone,  locked the front door of the house, and hurried off to class.  The class was organic chemistry and my teacher was losing patience with me. 

The class was an hour and a half long. Apparently I was the only one in attendance to have been running late enough to have heard what was happened in new york.  As I sat in class, my mind began to process what my mom was describing to me in real time on the phone.  I spent the last 45 minutes of the class having a mental battle as to whether or not I would raise my hand and ask the teacher if he was aware of what happened.  Because something inside me realized that this would be something we remembered, something that would change things.  And anyone who has ever had a class with me knows that I have no problem talking out of turn or interrupting anyone.  But I didn’t say anything.  I just sat there.  And when we were finally let out of class, we walked out into absolute chaos. 

I can imagine that the Va. Tech campus was like that, only a million times worse.

While I was fixing my lunch yesterday, it occurred to me that I had been sitting in this exact place when Columbine happened 8 years ago.  I was a senior in high school, and with the time change between georgia and colorado, I was already home from school when the serious coverage started.  I remember watching the images of the high school students being rushed to safety with their arms over their heads by the swat team on the little TV in my parent s kitchen.  And I remember it being all very surreal, because I had been in my own high school building minutes before.  My own high school, where fights were common and guns were definite possibilities.  But I’d always felt safe. 

And I always felt safe at UGA.  I don’t know what precautions could have been taken, even though obviously very few were taken.  I’m not sure that some email, even if I received it before I left in the morning, would have kept me from going to a class I needed to go to.  Not that I didn’t ever skip class, but I skipped class for my own personal interest – because I wanted to sleep, or go out of town.  If I was already dressed and ready, and it was an important day, and the reports were sketchy and across campus, I can’t say I would have ever imagined that something so horrific could take place. 

But now it isn’t something to imagine, it is something that has happened.  In the same way that if my mom ever called me in the morning and told me a plane had crashed into a building and I needed to find a television that I would drop what I was doing and find a television, I’m sure college alert systems and caution emails will now be considered in a different light. 

Although, in my humble opinion, if someone wants to kill a bunch of people at apparent random, there is going to be little anyone can do to stop him or her.  The lack of control, is the truly scary part. 

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Naked Man Saved From 12 Foot Alligator in Florida.  (not smart, but this sort of thing is my favorite thing about the state of florida.  Environmentally, the place is nuts.  Lightening strikes florida more than anywhere else in the world.  Cool.)

Secret Santa Faces Cancer. (This one is a few weeks old, but still touching.) 

11 Year Old Boy Tasered at School.  (Sounds like this kid deserved it.  The most amazing part is that after being tasered once, he attacked the girl again and had to be tasered a second time.  Wow.)

5 Year Old Boy Listed on Craigslist as "Free To A Good Home."  (Wow.  That is all I have.)

We All Need To Start Looking Into Real Estate On Other Planets – According to Hawkings.  (I think I’d rather be extinct than live in a space station where I couldn’t go outside.)

Drunk Driver Bites Cop.  (Awesome.)

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President Bush is in Indonesia today, according to a tv news broadcast I heard through a wall.  So I started thinking about Indonesia, and about how far away it is from Georgia, and how you don’t normally meet people around here from Indonesia or even people who have visited Indonesia.  And then I remembered a story from my childhood.

When I was in the fifth grade there was a kid in my class who we will call R.  I went to a small private elementary school.  Most of my classmates had been in my class since we were 4.  We had very few new kids and very few kids moved away or left.  Well, R had been there a few years – and everyone liked him.  His mom was from south Africa and would sing us African songs on field trips.  This was very exotic for Georgia.  R also had bleach blond hair. 

One day R shows up to school and tells us that he isn’t going to be around much longer because he is moving to Indonesia.  We all laughed.  He might as well have told us he was moving to the moon or to mars.  Like the aliens were coming for him on Friday night to take him to Jupiter.  No one believed him.  He was very adamant that he was telling the truth, and that we would see when he didn’t come back that he really was moving to Indonesia.  We looked up Indonesia on the globe.  We laughed again.  We didn’t believe him.  Our teacher didn’t believe him. 

Finally, R’s parents wrote a letter to the school explaining that they really WERE in fact, moving to Indonesia.  We were shocked.  R  really was leaving.  No one ever really left – and if they did they sure didn’t move around the globe to somewhere no one had ever heard of like Indonesia.  And just like that – R was gone.  A few months after R and his family relocated to Indonesia his nice mother sent a letter to our class telling us how happy they were in Indonesia and how R got to surf all the time but that he missed us.  We felt bad for not believing him – and we felt slightly jealous for his adventure. 

So last night I looked R up on myspace to see if he still exists.  He does.  We are friends once again.  Yay.  That is all the personal knowledge I possess about Indonesia.

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