Class 9/29, Complaining and Manhattan Island

Today's class was not as painful as yesterday's but none the less, it was still painful. Mr. Schick lectured us for the amount of complaining that took place today and in class. Personally, I think we had the right to complain. The power just randomly went out and classes were interrupted. People were trapped in the elevators and hallways because of the fire doors. People were screaming they couldn't see and were getting injured going up and down the stairs. Absolute chaos. Also the internet was down for even longer than the power was out so no one could access anything online for their classes. But in class we talked about the expansion of Manhattan Island. Manhattan Island is twice the size today than it was in the 1600s. They used trash and put it in the water along with another mixture to make fake land essentially. This changed the site of Manhattan. This was beneficial to Manhattan economically but no so much for the environment.

Class 9/28, Pop Quiz and Crabs

Will I ever recover from the pain and anxiety I experienced when it was announced that we were having a pop quiz? No, I do not think I will. The whole thing was a truly traumatic event and it still pains me to think of it. After I failed my pop quiz and turned it we started to review sites and situations from the previous class. We discussed the elements of a site which include climate, water sources, topography, soil, vegetation, latitude, and elevation. This conversation lead to a very interesting discussion of crabs. The topic of conversation was how Mr. Schick thought it was rather vulgar how us Marylanders eat crabs as he came here from Chicago. This then proceeded into how different foods eaten across the worlds and different regions, states, and countries may seem gross to us but it is part of their culture. Also how foods that we eat in the United States may be offensive to other countries. For example, how we eat cows while in India they are sacred. The most important part of this discussion was when Jamie stated that is ok to eat crabs because they're not cute unlike dogs. This point is extremely important.

Class 9/26, Sub and Site and Situation

Today in class we had Mrs. Ferry as a sub and we went through the powerpoint slides and notes that Mr. Schick left for us on his blog.
Notes:

• Another way for geographers to describe location is site
• Site- the physical characteristics of a place, including climate, water sources, topography, soil, vegetation, latitude, and elevation, etc.
• These physical characteristics give each place a distinctive character
• Site factors are essential for selecting places of settlement even though many disagree that they are
• Example: "Some have preferred a hilltop site for easy defense from attack. Others located settlements near convenient river-crossing points to facilitate communication with people in other places. Humans have the ability to modify the characteristics of a site"
• The way people use and change the land also effects the way it is viewed as site and the desire for people to move there
• Situation- the location of a place in relation to other places
• Situation is important for two reasons: helps us find an unfamiliar place by comparing its location with a familiar one, helps us  give directions to people by referring to the situation of a place
• Example: “It’s down past the courthouse, on Locust Street, after the third traffic light, beside the yellow-brick bank.” 
• Also helps us understand the importance of a location
• Example: " Many locations are important because they are accessible to other places. For example, because of its situation, Singapore has become a center for the trading and distribution of goods for much of Southeast Asia. Singapore is situated near the Strait of Malacca, which is the major passageway for ships traveling between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Some 50,000 vessels, one fourth of the world’s maritime trade, pass through the strait each year."

Class 9/25, Review Blogs and Map WS

Today's class we reviewed how our blogs should be set up. Mr. Schick reminded us that our titles should not just include the date of the class as he can already see that. We should include something we went over in class so that when we are looking for a certain bog containing information we need, it is easier to locate. He also suggested that we didn't ramble about what is happening outside of class and more about what did in class. This way if we have a test or quiz in which we can use our blogs we can go back and look at them and actually find useful information. Also that the format of our blog should be easy to read and access. The information should not be hard to find and the font should not effect the ability to read. Adding pictures and graphs to our blogs are also good ideas for reference. After we all went through our blogs, we went the answers to the two maps pertaining regions and continents.

Class 9/21, Unique Points on the Earth

We started off class today by watching a video made by the students here on the recent fire drill we had. I don't really understand why we had to watch that video. I also didn't understand what it was trying to explain. But we took notes on how each point on the Earth is unique.

• Place: unique location of a feature 
• Region: areas of unique characteristics 
• Spatial association 

Each place on Earth in some respects unique and in other ways similar to other places. The interplay between the uniqueness of each place and the similarities among places lies at the heart of geographic questioning about why things are found where they are. Two basic concepts help geographers to explain why every point on Earth is unique- place and region. The difference between the two concepts is party a matter of scale: a place is a point, whereas a region is an area. 

Class 9/19, Mental Map and Soccer Game

Today, I was only class for 10 minutes. I had to leave early for my game that was at NDP ( Notre Dame Prepatory). I went to class, got the notes I needed for the day, conversed with the class a little, and then. I then went to locker room to change and get all my stuff together for the game. I went from there to the bus. The bus ride there was rather uneventful. I just talked to Lily and eat goldfish with her.  We didn't hit traffic on the way to our game surprisingly. The bus was hot though, even with the windows down. Plus all I wanted was some water and my bottle was empty. It was rather tragic honestly. When we arrived at NDP, we had to walk for like forever to get the field. It was really far away from the school on this long path. Sadly, we lost our game. It was close though, which is good.

Class 9/18, Free Class

Today's class was great. Mr. Schick was behind on his grading so he let us have the period to catch up on homework. I was extremely grateful for this.  I decided to work on my biology homework. I had to make a paper with poems on ecology and the observations I made while we were outside for class. It was rather boring to be honest. I hate poetry. Mr. Schick was diligently grading papers at his desk while I was thinking of a creative way to make my poetry look pretty. I struggled with this concept a lot. I was also listening to some pretty good jams. I had to listen to them on youtube though because the school's wifi blocks Spotify and Apple Music. I think that is absurd. I just wanted to listen to some music and I had to great lengths to do that. I did finish my poetry paper, I just have to color it which is very nice.

Class 9/15, Peters and Mercator Map

To start off my blog today I would like to address the fact that it was terribly hot in Mr. Schick's room. It was semi-unbearable in all honesty. I seriously thought that I was going to faint. Then, to make matters worse, a rather large bee flew into the classroom through the window and landed on my desk. Mr. Schick then swatted it out of the room with my notebook. Moving on from those travesties that took place, we discussed maps and how they can distort our perspective on the world. We talked about two different types of maps, the Peters World Map and the Mercator World Map. The Mercator Map is the one that most people are most familiar with even though it is in reality incorrect. Due to the way is was constructed, it distorted the size of continents and many countries. The reasoning for this is that the latitude and longitude lines do not meet at 90 degree angles on the map. On the Peters World Map they do which displays the correct size of the countries and continents. The size distortion may also play a role in how we view countries as we often associate size with importance.

Class 9/13, New Unit Main Points

Today in class we started our new unit. It is called "Thinking Geographically". The key questions for this units are the following:

• How do geographers describe where they are?
• Why is each point on earth unique?
• Why are different places similar?
• Why are some actions unsustainable?

The main points that Mr. Schick had us copy down were:
Regions are a highly contested yet important concept in the human geography and can be studied as they relate to space, place, and location. Regions allow us to generalize about a common characteristic so we can better group them.
A formal region is an area with a high level of consistency in a certain cultural or physical attribute. Formal regions are uniform or homogeneous areas where everyone in that region shares common attributes or traits like language, climate or political system. Formal regions are primarily used to determine and outline political, cultural and economic regions.
We also completed a map that we labeled the regions using a work bank.

Class 9/12, Test

In today's class we took our first assessment of the year. The topic of the test was Excellence and was based of the notes we took in class. I thought that the test was not too bad. Almost all the questions were worded almost identically to my notes. The vocabulary portion was easy. The part I struggled with the most is the written responses. The one asking about what took place at the agora was hardest question for me.  I wasn't exactly sure if I was on the right track with talking about the voting process in ancient Greece. I was really scared I was not going to finish in time because I am a really, really slow writer. I was finishing my last written response when Mr. Schick said that there was five minutes left in class. I no longer had the time to care about how nice my hand writing looked (this is very evident on my paper) and I basically began scribbling half print half cursive.

Class 9/11, Discussion

In today's class we discussed the events of September 11th, 2001 and reviewed all our notes for the test. Mr. Schick described to us his day when the events of September 11 took place. He described a beautiful, almost perfect early fall day, not a cloud in the sky. He said how he was in the hallway on his way to mass when Mrs. Fisher (an English at the time) approached him asking if he heard about what happened in New York. She told him that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Mr. Schick figured that it was just a small plane that somehow got terribly off track. It wasn't the principal  at the time told the school at the end of mass that another jet had struck the second Twin Tower. He said that the United States was most likely under attack. Mr. Schick said the room was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. He said he went back to his classroom and watched the footage of what was going on in New York on the TV in his classroom. Then parents started pulling their kids out of school left and right. John Carroll was dismissed early that day. Mr. Schick said the country was almost eerie as everything had come to such an abrupt stop.

Class 9/7, North Korea Discussion and Socrates

In class today we continued our notes on Excellence and then we had a discussion on how to deal with North Korea using the Socratic Method. My notes from today were added to some of my previous notes from the prior two classes.

• Socrates cont. - as a young man he worked as a stone man, he fought heroically in the Peloponnesian War, his working class background and battlefield experiences may have influenced the way he viewed the world. 
• Socrates as a teacher- he met with young students just outside the agora using his method, the Socratic Method, this method later helped the scientific method. 
• Socrates the Controversy- Athens was a great city which attracted brilliant thinkers, visitors from all over the world shared their knowledge, medicine, meteorology, literature, philosophy, and all things scientific, this was often at odds with traditional teachings which centered around the Greek gods, which got young people thinking and questioning. 
• Socrates the Trial- Socrates was charged with two crimes, corruption of Athen's youth and impiety (not believing in the gods), he defended himself with that he was challenging people to actually think and that he should be rewarded with free dinners for life because of it. 
• Socrates, how did that work out for you?- a jury of 500 male citizens found him guilty (279-221), sentenced to death by drinking hemlock poison, he had the opportunity to escape, but he refused, being loyal to the Athenian democracy. 
• Idiot in ancient Greece- an idiot in the Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private- as opposed to public- affairs, declining to take part in public life was, such as democratic government of the polis was considered dishonorable. 

Socratic Discussion Point:

If we were to bomb North Korea first and China were to side with North Korea, we would be losing one out most important allies to the United States. Not only would they now be against us, but with time our economy would begin to decline. A majority of all trading and manufacturing that the U.S. is involved in, takes place in China. They are an enormous part of our economy that we need. 

Class 9/6, Vocabulary from Excellence

In today's class we continued to add onto our notes from yesterday on Excellence. We also reviewed the notes we took as class. We focused heavily on the impact and significance of Socrates in Ancient Greece. Also we looked at how Socrates' methods still shape today's learning.

• I added to my definition agora that it was the center of spiritual, political, and athletic activities. Also that Athens was the best example of an agora. 
• I expanded my definition of polis in that it was ruled by their bodies of citizens
• I also added to the importance of 508 BC is that it was the first time in recorded history that people had revolted against their rulers ever and started a revolution. 
• I learned about Socrates today and the enormous influence he had on the western philosophy 
• Socrates was put on trial, found guilty, and then sentenced to the death penalty, "forced suicide", hemlock poisoning was how he died because he didn't denounce his beliefs. 
•  Socrates created the Socratic Method which is a method of instruction by question and answer used by Socrates in order to obtain from his pupils truths he considered to by all rational beings. 
• Socrates philosophies are the foundation of logic in the western civilization today

Class 9/4, A Message to Garcia Notes

These are my notes from today's class on Excellence relating to Elbert Hubbard's "A Message to Garcia" :

The Publication-

• published as an inspirational essay in March 1899
• due to popularity, it became a pamphlet and book 
• sold over 40 million copies and translated in 37 different languages
• made into a movie twice, 1916 and 1936
• "Take a message to Garcia" became popular slang for taking initiative, it is still used today in the military

The Backstory-

• Setting: the Spanish-American War 
• Garcia: a revolutionary seeking Cuban independence from Spain (general)
• Rowan: an Army officer (West Point, class of 1881)
• McKinley: President William McKinley, 25th president (1887-1901), assassinated six months into his second term by an anarchist
• tallest mountain in North America was (re)named for him (until 2015)

The Odd Vocabulary-

• perihelion: the point at which a planet is closest to the sun, and therefore is at its brightest
• slipshod: careless, lackadaisical, remiss
• imbecility: incapability, stupidity
• stenographer: a person who takes diction in shorthand
• missive: a letter, especially a long and an official one

The Message- 

• "The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, but for one thing. And that is Initiative. What is initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told." - Elbert Hubbard
• The ancient Greek had a word for excellence in everything you do called areté.
• Areté definition: excellence of any kind, moral virtue, fulfillment of purpose or function, and the act of living up to one's full potential 
• Areté: some philosophical background- involves all of the abilities and potentialities