I wrote and article about our Ceilidh (traditional Scottish dance) for my school's website.
They have started putting up little blog posts by different students.
Most of them are basically about the author's day (so that prospective students know what to expect), but because I have been sick my days have been rather boring and so I opted to write about the last big event we had:
http://www.atlanticcollege.org/student-diary-blogs/
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Weekend Part 2
This update is terrible late. sorry!
But in my defense I have been quite ill for the past week and so I haven't had much access to the Internet.
Anyways, this is the second half of my weekend (which is now from two weeks ago) and is about the Peace and Conflict Conference that we had:
The second part of my weekend was even better than the first because on Monday and Tuesday we had no classes, but instead we had a Peace and Conflicts conference.
It was a great success.
I think it went so well because it was a good mix between student and staff organization. My peace and Conflicts teacher, along with some other teachers and my vise principal, was very involved, but students also had a large role in the organization and execution of the conference.
I think it was good for the students to have a say, but I think that the teacher involvement allowed it to be more professional, and we were able to have some amazing speakers come.
Monday focused on global issues and was a mixture of lectures and workshops.
In the morning we had a man names Ray McGrath (who won a Noble Peace Prize for his involvement in the banning of land mines) give a lecture. He talked about war laws and the ways in which governments and the public view war. I found one quote that he had very interesting: “So long as weapons are not prohibited, states can use the weapons that are available to them” (British government). It was a very interesting beginning to the conference and I think it really made people think about the absurdities of war.
For the rest of the morning and for the afternoon, there were a bunch of different workshops. Students ran some of them and the speakers (such as Ray McGrath) ran other ones.
I was running one of the workshops. I did my ee on child soldiers and so I was asked to run a workshop in the topic of child soldiers, which I was very pleased to do, with the help of a 1st year in my house: Vincent (Kenya). I was bit nervous about how it would go, but in the end I think it was very successful. The workshop was completely full, which was awesome and extra people came to a few of them. The workshop was a mixture of videos, discussions and me talking. I gave a fair amount of information on what child soldiers are, where they are why they are used, and what is being done etc. I then showed a clip from the film War Dance of a boy recounting his experience as a child soldier in Uganda. Then at the end, I raised some questions about the topic such as: when is a child a child and when are they a soldier? And what should be done when a conflict is over?
It was really interesting to see what people thought and some of the discussions were quite good.
I was lucky enough to also be able to go to two different workshops, just to listen.
1) I went to one of Ray McGrath’s workshops and we talked about disproportionate retaliation and how to change public opinion on the way that governments fight their wars.
2) I went to a talk that was done by an Israeli and a Palestinian student about the conflict. It was really interesting to listen to them talk about the conflict from the two different points of view.
The second day of the conference was more focused on conflicts within the college. In the morning, we ate breakfast in our houses and had discussions about some of the broader issues at our school (such as: cultural differences, and communication issues). The day was ended with a peace flame that we lit.
So, overall it was a very successful and enjoyable conference.
I feel like I left satisfied with what I had done and with what I had learned. I was given new ideas about how to overcome difficulties on both global and personal levels. Although I did sometimes wonder if some of the simplifications of conflicts was accurate, I loved it.
But in my defense I have been quite ill for the past week and so I haven't had much access to the Internet.
Anyways, this is the second half of my weekend (which is now from two weeks ago) and is about the Peace and Conflict Conference that we had:
The second part of my weekend was even better than the first because on Monday and Tuesday we had no classes, but instead we had a Peace and Conflicts conference.
It was a great success.
I think it went so well because it was a good mix between student and staff organization. My peace and Conflicts teacher, along with some other teachers and my vise principal, was very involved, but students also had a large role in the organization and execution of the conference.
I think it was good for the students to have a say, but I think that the teacher involvement allowed it to be more professional, and we were able to have some amazing speakers come.
Monday focused on global issues and was a mixture of lectures and workshops.
In the morning we had a man names Ray McGrath (who won a Noble Peace Prize for his involvement in the banning of land mines) give a lecture. He talked about war laws and the ways in which governments and the public view war. I found one quote that he had very interesting: “So long as weapons are not prohibited, states can use the weapons that are available to them” (British government). It was a very interesting beginning to the conference and I think it really made people think about the absurdities of war.
For the rest of the morning and for the afternoon, there were a bunch of different workshops. Students ran some of them and the speakers (such as Ray McGrath) ran other ones.
I was running one of the workshops. I did my ee on child soldiers and so I was asked to run a workshop in the topic of child soldiers, which I was very pleased to do, with the help of a 1st year in my house: Vincent (Kenya). I was bit nervous about how it would go, but in the end I think it was very successful. The workshop was completely full, which was awesome and extra people came to a few of them. The workshop was a mixture of videos, discussions and me talking. I gave a fair amount of information on what child soldiers are, where they are why they are used, and what is being done etc. I then showed a clip from the film War Dance of a boy recounting his experience as a child soldier in Uganda. Then at the end, I raised some questions about the topic such as: when is a child a child and when are they a soldier? And what should be done when a conflict is over?
It was really interesting to see what people thought and some of the discussions were quite good.
I was lucky enough to also be able to go to two different workshops, just to listen.
1) I went to one of Ray McGrath’s workshops and we talked about disproportionate retaliation and how to change public opinion on the way that governments fight their wars.
2) I went to a talk that was done by an Israeli and a Palestinian student about the conflict. It was really interesting to listen to them talk about the conflict from the two different points of view.
The second day of the conference was more focused on conflicts within the college. In the morning, we ate breakfast in our houses and had discussions about some of the broader issues at our school (such as: cultural differences, and communication issues). The day was ended with a peace flame that we lit.
So, overall it was a very successful and enjoyable conference.
I feel like I left satisfied with what I had done and with what I had learned. I was given new ideas about how to overcome difficulties on both global and personal levels. Although I did sometimes wonder if some of the simplifications of conflicts was accurate, I loved it.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Weekend 1.5
I wrote an article for the School's MUN newspaper from when I was the Admin for the General Assembly (see blog post below for explanation):
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The very serious and focused debate of the African delegates in the General Assemble stopped as everyone stopped and looked up at the window.
“Let me in!” mouthed a frantic and slightly wild-eyed student (who’s name shall not be disclosed for security reasons) from outside the classroom. He banged on the window again and one of the admins, who was sitting beside the window, swung it open wide. The next second the student had propelled himself through the window and landed on the desk. Unfortunately for him, he landed on a piece of paper, slide across the desk, and hit the floor, with a rather loud thud.
For a spilt second the room was silent – unsure of how to react to this completely barbaric intrusion of their civilized discussions.
But the silence was quickly filled with more yelling:
“I’ve got him” yelled one of the (slightly overzealous) members of the security.
The room barely had time to glance back at the window when a second person had flung themselves through the window and landed on the desk, barely missing the head of the Somali delegate. He, too, slid across the desk and practically landed on the un-named student. The security guard had grabbed the student and hauled him out of the room before anyone had drawn a breath.
There was another second of silence and then the debating begun where it had left off. It was just another day in AC, where nothing ridiculous ever happens.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The very serious and focused debate of the African delegates in the General Assemble stopped as everyone stopped and looked up at the window.
“Let me in!” mouthed a frantic and slightly wild-eyed student (who’s name shall not be disclosed for security reasons) from outside the classroom. He banged on the window again and one of the admins, who was sitting beside the window, swung it open wide. The next second the student had propelled himself through the window and landed on the desk. Unfortunately for him, he landed on a piece of paper, slide across the desk, and hit the floor, with a rather loud thud.
For a spilt second the room was silent – unsure of how to react to this completely barbaric intrusion of their civilized discussions.
But the silence was quickly filled with more yelling:
“I’ve got him” yelled one of the (slightly overzealous) members of the security.
The room barely had time to glance back at the window when a second person had flung themselves through the window and landed on the desk, barely missing the head of the Somali delegate. He, too, slid across the desk and practically landed on the un-named student. The security guard had grabbed the student and hauled him out of the room before anyone had drawn a breath.
There was another second of silence and then the debating begun where it had left off. It was just another day in AC, where nothing ridiculous ever happens.
Weekend Part 1
On Friday and Saturday (and part of Sunday) we had our annual Model United Nations conference.
This year was especially exciting because we had students from nearby schools come and participate in the conference.
Due to the fact that I had a lot of work to do for Monday (wait for part 2 to hear more about that), I didn’t plan on going to both days of the conference. Therefore I planned to be the ‘admin’ in one of the committees (this means that I would pass notes and communicate between the chair of the conference and the chairs of the committee etc.). However, my day did not go exactly as planned. I started out in the general assembly, but after one of the delegates was forcibly removed by some of the overzealous ‘security’, the chair of my committee requested that I go get him back. After finding him, I found out that the delegate of the United Kingdom for the Security Council hadn’t shown up and so they had taken our delegate to replace the missing one.
In the end I volunteered to become the delegate of the United Kingdom.
In the end, I had a fairly pleasant day. Unfortunately I hadn’t done any research and so I made up a lot of stuff, but as it turned out the topic was ‘cyber-terrorism’ and so lots of delegates had been unable to find their countries stance on the issue and were making it as they went too.
By the end of the day a few working papers had been written and were ready to be presented the next morning. However, just as we were about to leave, we were visited by the terrorists (who eluded capture by the security all weekend). They locked us in our room and refused to let us out until we passed a resolution meeting all of their demands. Although I thought it was funny, their demands were a bit on the impractical side instead of the amusing side (i.e. allow anyone to attend the Security council meetings, and for all governments to give up all of their government secrets), and so there wasn’t really any point in even pretending to write a resolution. In the end we sat around and told them that this was ridiculous while they sprayed us with water guns, and they eventually let us go to dinner.
Although I didn’t participate the second day (although I did attend a meeting with some of the terrorists and helped do a small amount of spying for them), I am glad that I was able to a little bit on the Friday.
Then on Saturday night we had a masquerade ball. I made a butterfly mask and borrowed some wings and danced the night away.
It was a great beginning of the weekend
This year was especially exciting because we had students from nearby schools come and participate in the conference.
Due to the fact that I had a lot of work to do for Monday (wait for part 2 to hear more about that), I didn’t plan on going to both days of the conference. Therefore I planned to be the ‘admin’ in one of the committees (this means that I would pass notes and communicate between the chair of the conference and the chairs of the committee etc.). However, my day did not go exactly as planned. I started out in the general assembly, but after one of the delegates was forcibly removed by some of the overzealous ‘security’, the chair of my committee requested that I go get him back. After finding him, I found out that the delegate of the United Kingdom for the Security Council hadn’t shown up and so they had taken our delegate to replace the missing one.
In the end I volunteered to become the delegate of the United Kingdom.
In the end, I had a fairly pleasant day. Unfortunately I hadn’t done any research and so I made up a lot of stuff, but as it turned out the topic was ‘cyber-terrorism’ and so lots of delegates had been unable to find their countries stance on the issue and were making it as they went too.
By the end of the day a few working papers had been written and were ready to be presented the next morning. However, just as we were about to leave, we were visited by the terrorists (who eluded capture by the security all weekend). They locked us in our room and refused to let us out until we passed a resolution meeting all of their demands. Although I thought it was funny, their demands were a bit on the impractical side instead of the amusing side (i.e. allow anyone to attend the Security council meetings, and for all governments to give up all of their government secrets), and so there wasn’t really any point in even pretending to write a resolution. In the end we sat around and told them that this was ridiculous while they sprayed us with water guns, and they eventually let us go to dinner.
Although I didn’t participate the second day (although I did attend a meeting with some of the terrorists and helped do a small amount of spying for them), I am glad that I was able to a little bit on the Friday.
Then on Saturday night we had a masquerade ball. I made a butterfly mask and borrowed some wings and danced the night away.
It was a great beginning of the weekend
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Surprise!
You know you have good friends when:
They surprise you with a birthday showering on your half birthday!
This past Thursday was my half-birthday, which is not something that I would normally celebrate or notice. However, because my birthday is in the summer, I have never celebrated it at school (I have never brought cupcakes for the class, or has the whole class sing for me, or {as is tradition at AC} been thrown ceremoniously into the shower)
However, I have some pretty amazing friends, and they didn't want me to miss out on this fabulous part of AC life.
And so, they began to scheme.
On Wednesday night (because it is a weird tradition to have the showering the day before some one's birthday... long story) I was sitting in Hannah's room chatting when her phone rang. She picked it up and then looked me and said "apparently Nora {who is my roommate} is having a mental breakdown". So I ran back to my house to see if she was okay.
When I arrived at my house I saw that Nora was sitting in the dayroom surrounded my a group of my friends. I ran inside and gave her a biiiig hug. She seemed to be fine.
I then looked around the room and realised that there were waaay more people than usual, which I though was strange. I began to think that it was someone's showering and started to rack my brains to remember who in my house had a birthday the next day.
Suddenly, people began to sing. I looked around trying to see who they were singing for, when I felt myself being picked up.
WHAT?!?
Turns out they were singing for me!!
They then carried me into the bathroom stuck me under the shower, and threw buckets of water on me (I would like to thank them for throwing water water and soap... not cold water and flour).
I have always wanted a surprise party and this was probably the best one I could have ever thought of. Despite the fact that I was freezing and soapy, I hugged everyone and stood beaming in the middle of my dayroom like an idiot.
I am so lucky to have such amazing (and stealthy) friends!
They surprise you with a birthday showering on your half birthday!
This past Thursday was my half-birthday, which is not something that I would normally celebrate or notice. However, because my birthday is in the summer, I have never celebrated it at school (I have never brought cupcakes for the class, or has the whole class sing for me, or {as is tradition at AC} been thrown ceremoniously into the shower)
However, I have some pretty amazing friends, and they didn't want me to miss out on this fabulous part of AC life.
And so, they began to scheme.
On Wednesday night (because it is a weird tradition to have the showering the day before some one's birthday... long story) I was sitting in Hannah's room chatting when her phone rang. She picked it up and then looked me and said "apparently Nora {who is my roommate} is having a mental breakdown". So I ran back to my house to see if she was okay.
When I arrived at my house I saw that Nora was sitting in the dayroom surrounded my a group of my friends. I ran inside and gave her a biiiig hug. She seemed to be fine.
I then looked around the room and realised that there were waaay more people than usual, which I though was strange. I began to think that it was someone's showering and started to rack my brains to remember who in my house had a birthday the next day.
Suddenly, people began to sing. I looked around trying to see who they were singing for, when I felt myself being picked up.
WHAT?!?
Turns out they were singing for me!!
They then carried me into the bathroom stuck me under the shower, and threw buckets of water on me (I would like to thank them for throwing water water and soap... not cold water and flour).
I have always wanted a surprise party and this was probably the best one I could have ever thought of. Despite the fact that I was freezing and soapy, I hugged everyone and stood beaming in the middle of my dayroom like an idiot.
I am so lucky to have such amazing (and stealthy) friends!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
UBC
This time of year universities are a particularly hot topic.
People who applied early to the US have already heard
And people in the UK are beginning to hear sporadically:
some are getting offers (grades they must meet in their exams to be accepted)
and
some are getting rejected.
I think all of the second years are a bit sick of the topic
and some people are getting very nervous because they haven't heard anything yet
but still
we still talk about it.
I, too, have been waiting.
I check my university accounts to see if anything has changed so often that it is a bit like a nervous tick.
I know I should probably chill out a little bit, but I am nervous that I have accidentally filled something out wrong and I am worried that my transcripts won't get there in time (which is actually justified because my transcripts for mcgill are due on the 21st and they should have arrived about 3 weeks ago... but they aren't there yet).
And yet, despite all of the chaos:
I got into UBC!!
and I quote:
"You were offered admission on January 12, 2011. A letter advising you of this decision, which includes registration information, has been mailed to you."
woooot!
to be perfectly honest, it is not my top choice (or even my second choice), but it feels good to know that I have gotten in somewhere (although I would like to know what I need in my final grades to stay accepted... or to know if it is an unconditional offer...)
University Here I Come!
People who applied early to the US have already heard
And people in the UK are beginning to hear sporadically:
some are getting offers (grades they must meet in their exams to be accepted)
and
some are getting rejected.
I think all of the second years are a bit sick of the topic
and some people are getting very nervous because they haven't heard anything yet
but still
we still talk about it.
I, too, have been waiting.
I check my university accounts to see if anything has changed so often that it is a bit like a nervous tick.
I know I should probably chill out a little bit, but I am nervous that I have accidentally filled something out wrong and I am worried that my transcripts won't get there in time (which is actually justified because my transcripts for mcgill are due on the 21st and they should have arrived about 3 weeks ago... but they aren't there yet).
And yet, despite all of the chaos:
I got into UBC!!
and I quote:
"You were offered admission on January 12, 2011. A letter advising you of this decision, which includes registration information, has been mailed to you."
woooot!
to be perfectly honest, it is not my top choice (or even my second choice), but it feels good to know that I have gotten in somewhere (although I would like to know what I need in my final grades to stay accepted... or to know if it is an unconditional offer...)
University Here I Come!
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