Corey Hargrove

Essay 2

10-12-06

Why Diversity Matters

Diversity is usually thought of as a multitude or variety of things in one place or time, but how would one define diversity within a student body of a college? Most would say it is having a large number of nonwhite students that interact with white students, but is this assumption necessarily accurate? According to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, diversity is defined as providing opportunities for all students to interact with students from different racial groups to expand their cultural beliefs. This idea of diversity is a much more constructive way to measure diversity compared to the previous idea of the more nonwhite students a school has, the more diverse its student body is. Recent studies suggest that students from all racial backgrounds benefit from diversity in the classrooms of major colleges. The presence of less fortunate minorities in a mostly white school not only affects the quality of education received by all students, it helps develop character and end encourages multiracial interaction.

The institutes of higher learning today are usually comprised of white middle to upper class students, but not always. The problem of incorporating minorities into the student body does not lie in the area of finding qualified and willing students; it is finding a way for these students to pay for their education. One method used to solve this problem was using a type of affirmative action stance on the situation. For example, at the University of Texas Law School, some minorities were being awarded admission into the highly selective school over more academically qualified white students. This no doubt was an attempt to encourage diversity, but it did not settle well with many people. The white students affected by these circumstances went as far as the Supreme Court to right the wrongs that they felt had been done to them. In the case of Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School Cheryl Hopwood challenged the University’s use of affirmative action in selecting its students and ultimately won. This sent all of the schools practicing affirmative action scrambling to cover up their usage of it. While affirmative action may not be the best choice in increasing diversity in schools, at least an attempt was being made, and some good came from dismantling its use. Minorities are now more motivated to excel in school to earn their spot in a college outright. The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA recently conducted several studies to find if having a racially diverse population benefited the students at all. One of the studies provided proof that the more diverse a student body is, the greater chance of white students, specifically males, will socialize with someone of a different race and/or discuss racial issues. This may seem like common sense, but it is a very important idea to consider when one is looking at how to bust racial barriers. White men have historically been the root to racial problems, but if they are discussing racial issues and broadening their prospective, racism is slowly being erased. The study also concluded that integrated socialization adds to academic development and cultural awareness, not only among the students, but in the curriculum provided as well. Students who graduate from a racially diverse school are more likely to understand the world around them, from the community scale, to the global scale. Racially “enlightened” students are less likely to have feelings of hate for other races and will teach others to do the same. The final and most important finding provided by the study shows that students that attended a racially diverse school had a higher overall college satisfaction level and a higher GPA. I have seen the racial boundaries that exist within the walls of a college. Too often do students of different races not only not communicate with each other, they avoid each other. When students learn to work together, think of the number of friends that is made, the new outlets for study sessions and the number of opportunities to learn about different cultures there are. This higher social self confidence displayed among students from a racially diverse university not only helps students to interact with more people in school, it better prepares them to thrive in the business world, and good people skills are a crucial part of many jobs. The study conducted provides irrefutable evidence that racially diverse schools provide an all around better learning atmosphere.

Multiculturalism in schools will lead to multiculturalism in the “real world.” To break down the racial boundaries that have held strong since the founding of our country, we must take the necessary steps to expand peoples beliefs of other cultures. When asked who benefits the most from diversity in the classroom, I would answer society. The benefits are not seen in only one racial group, every race learns from and about the others it associates with in diverse colleges.

Clay Boulware
English 1002
October 11, 2006



Missing Teachers



Over the past few years, nearly half of all teachers quit within the first five years of the job. In the U.S. nearly 200,000 teachers are hired for the first day of school. 22,000 quit by the time the school year is over. And what’s even more staggering is that 45% of teachers quit after five years. How can we go about keeping qualified teachers in the classroom?
The most infamous problem with teaching is the low salary they receive each year. But the underlying problem is the outright stress of tutoring a classroom of students. More frequently than salary complaints is an all-around dissatisfaction with administration and working conditions.
Teachers like Claudia Traziano say they were promised help from other teachers and administrative figures. The problem is that other people might get to busy to help the new teacher. Traziano explains that neighboring teachers rarely shared materials or classroom tips.
Lately, serious support systems have been instilled to help new teachers get over the hump. The University of Chicago’s Center for Urban School Improvement gives first and second year teachers personalized mentoring and online assessments. The assessments provide anything from classroom management to curriculum.




INTIME(Integrating New Technologies into the Methods of Education) offer videos of successful teachers in their classroom. The clips give lessons in a variety of contexts, including multiage classrooms, alternative high schools, special education students, and gifted and talented programs.
The students are not going to change. They’re only going to get louder and more obnoxious. School boards should think about creating new behavioral programs. Laws and regulations have prevented teachers and administration from taking proper disciplinary actions. In-school suspensions could be a good idea if enough of them could get a student kicked out.
When I was in junior high, my principal still used the paddle. It sounds violent, but everyone respected the paddle. The kids that do not are the ones that shouldn’t be there in the first place. The law prevents school administration from taking these actions, which could be a major reason for classroom disruption. These disruptions lead to the lack of sufficient teaching numbers.
In the fight to keep teachers in the classroom, support is the magic word. We need support from parents, other teachers, and especially the administration. New teachers could make it if they felt like they were part of a team. The faculty and staff should feel responsible for the betterment of the entire student body. Instill confidence in new teachers and the classroom will surely follow.

Argumentative essay

The world today is a very different place than it was in the early 20^th century. The author of “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood” believes there have been various changes throughout the century that led to the outdating of high school. Since high school has lost the positive effect on students, Botstein, the author, believes the high school system should be abolished. I think the author’s acquisitions and his plans for change are unrealistic and unattainable.

In the article, Botstein makes reference to “Team sports of high school dominate more than student culture. A community’s loyalty to the high school system is often based on the extent to which varsity teams succeed.” I believe this is could be true in certain school systems as seen in the media and movies; however, this statement does not apply to all high schools. My high school football and basketball teams had very good athletes and even though sports were very important to the school, there was still time for true academics.

The author also states that, “Individuality and dissent are discouraged.” I believe that this statement is very ignorant especially since it is so broad. I know at my high school, students were always pushed to become individuals and not to always follow the crowd.

The author also thinks that students believe that high school is how the rest of their lives will be. He states, “The Littleton killers, above and beyond the psychological demons that drove them to violence, felt trapped and the artificiality of the high school world and believed it to be real.” The author basically said that high school creates killers, now how ridiculous does that sound? Just think about all the prisoners in the US and how many actually graduated from high school.

Botstein says, “Adults should face the fact that they don’t like adolescents and that they used high school to isolate the pubescent and hormonally active adolescent away from both the picture-book idealized innocence of childhood and the more accountable world of adulthood.” So basically the author says that high school is a big daycare for children that their parents don’t want around them.

The author also says that the main reason that high schools don’t work is because, “Young people mature substantially earlier in the late 20^th century than they did when high school was invented.” I believe that this is true on a physical stand point but not true on a mentality point-of-view.

The author’s plans for change are about as unrealistic as his acquisitions. He thinks, “Secondary education should be rethought, elementary schools should begin at the age of four or five and end with sixth grade.” He also thinks, “Middle school should be removed and beginning with seventh grade there should be four years of secondary education that we may call high school letting students graduate at the age of sixteen.” I think although the author’s plan may work, it is a very big change and would be very expensive.

As you can tell from the obscene quotes the author stated in the article, his thoughts are narrow-minded and ignorant. He has given little thought to the consequences of his plans for change in the school system. I believe he will have little to no support from the public to change a system that is educating thousands of young adults world wide.

The Tag Team

The Tag Team
Tim Davis

In recent decades, the male superiority in the classroom has diminished. Females have begun to excel in learning and in school, exceeding the results of the male race. There are a variety of reasons for this gradual change of events such as females work harder, males are lazy and do not care, Title IX, and the desire of female teachers to help the female students succeed. One logical reason is that the male’s brain is wired differently than that of the females, increasing the difficulty for males to learn. As males continue to fall behind females in school, something must be done to turn this situation around; be it increased attention towards males in class, same sex classrooms, or money geared towards helping the male race succeed.
It was not always the boys who were considered the second-rate gender in the classroom. In the early seventies, Title IX, law requiring schools to provide equal opportunities for the two genders, was created. Billions of dollars were spent helping girls succeed in the classroom. Although Title IX was getting positive results in trying to level the success rate, some female teachers took it upon themselves to continue to focus of female learning and as a result they neglected the males in the classroom.
Although females have been given every opportunity to succeed in the last few decades, one problem has been overlooked: the boy’s brain is wired differently than that of the females. What psychologists are calling the “boy brain” has limited male advancement as early as kindergarten. They come to school with better hand-eye coordination than that of the girls, but they have less developed reading capabilities and motor skills than the females. Males cannot sit patiently like girls can over extended periods of time. When being silent and speaking when called upon is the way to be praised and respected by your teacher “girls behavior is the gold standard, and boys are treated like defective girls,” says Michael Thompson.
Scientists are now explaining the difference in the gender’s brains by explaining that the male fetus bathes it’s brain in testosterone in the first trimester. The scientists are not completely sure what this affects, but when males were given female hormones instead of testosterone, their verbal skills increased and their spatial skills decreased. Not only does the testosterone affect the brain, but the male brain already matures at a slower rate than that of the females. The prefrontal cortex helps organize thoughts and analyze behavior, also matures slower in the males brain than the females. Experiments have shown that females use their prefrontal cortex more efficiently than males until the age of 18 when the two begin to even out. The fact that females mature sexually quicker than males also has its disadvantages psychologically.
Psychologists have begun to compare the young male to chimpanzees. Chimps are always battling for food, females, and rank. They try to show strength, which is just how the males in today’s society act. This makes it difficult for the males to accept help with work.
One way to help the boys from feeling inferior to the girls is to separate them. In one 6th grade class in America, there are three groups: one class of females, one class of males, and one coed class. The teacher has stated that the shy boys are now participating more in the male class, and that the grades are improving as well. As far as grades go, the female class was ranked first, followed by the all male class, and lastly the coed class.
Some steps are being taken to increase the male’s productivity in the classroom around the nation, but it needs to become more unified. Just like Title IX was created in support of the female gender, something must be done to help the males. The Gurian Institute has made helping boys a top priority in their work. They have given away near a billion dollars, which a lot has been geared towards the males. The males need increased attention from the teachers, or maybe we should take a closer look at the decision of making same sex classrooms. It seems to be working well for the one 6th grade class so far. Whatever is decided, it must be done quickly before the males fall even farther behind the females in the classroom.

The Tag Team

The Tag Team
Clay Boulware
English 1002
September 27, 2005



Country Day



School usually came easy to me as a child. I was never into the discipline aspect, but the work itself was a breeze. That is until my parents enrolled me into a private school called Alexandria Country Day School, possibly the most difficult prep school in the state.
When I first decided to transfer, I figured I could handle the transition with nothing but an open mind. I have never been so wrong in my life! I was in the fifth grade when I made up my mind to venture the uncharted waters of what was sure to be the winter of my discontent. My old school, Mary Goff Elementary, was turning into a joke with its basic courses. There was no discipline and it became obvious to my parents. Therefore, a change was in store.
I will never forget how nervous I was on the way to my new school. I wanted to make the change, but it’s always so difficult to adjust. My mom had to calm me down and assured me that things would be okay. “It could not possibly be as bad as you’re anticipating,” she remarked from the front seat. She was wrong, it was worse than I expected.
I walked into my first class and was greeted with an assignment. Mrs. Gordon was the teacher and she was all about her business. I’ll never forget how much homework I was assigned my first night. I worked on every subject from the time I got home until it was time for bed. This was the general protocol every day of the week. My English and reading teacher, Mrs. Zabasky, was no walk in the park either. We had these dictionary and thesaurus assignments due every Tuesday. The work consisted of 50 definitions and 50 synonyms for that week’s vocabulary test.
The factor in helping me keep my head above water was the friends that I made. In fact, my college roommate is a person I met that year. All the guys in my grade grew up together and are still close friends. We competed in the classroom, which helped me to do better in my studies. However, none of us were prepared for what would come next.
The seventh grade at Country Day was considered more difficult than upper-class high school courses. The teachers were legends with their scolding faces and menacing demeanors. They were retired professors and high school teachers, and all of them were men.
There was Mr. Kees, the deranged Algebra teacher with a chip on his shoulder. This man never looked happy, especially if an assignment wasn’t completed. He walked around and told everyone how bad his or her math skills were. I think this man enjoyed seeing us confused. He is the prime reason I do not enjoy math, but the only reason I passed in high school. He would say, “If ya can’t get this problem on the second try, you’re probably not smart enough to get it on the third.” He was such a smart mouth.
Mr. Brown headed the science department. He was an old, monotone man with a permanent smile on his face. This class taught me how to make study notes. He lectured for an hour, just like a college professor, as I would struggle to keep up. It helped me to bone up on my study skills. I never made a good grade on his tests, but I learned a good bit about studying.
Then there was Mr. White’s English class. By far the hardest course, I’ve ever taken. Every assignment was harder than the next. Even the smartest kids made C’s and D’s in his class. The course was honestly ridiculous. The things we had to do in that class were physically impossible. I would come home and have six hours of homework for his class. He taught me how to use my time wisely and not mess around.
As hard as things got, I still had basketball. Our team at Country Day was one of the best in the city. I was back to back MVP on that team. It was my outlet from everything going on in school. When I got the basketball in my hands, every problem in my life was erased for four quarters. All my best friends played on the team and everyone was good. The teachers would come watch the big games. Basketball brought me closer to the teachers. For a while, they could relive their past through us. They could learn a thing or two from the kids they taught every day.
I learned to use basketball as my outlet all through high school. When school got tough, I would just take it out on the court. Remembering the old days as I would shoot for hours at a time. All through high school, teachers awarded me leniency for playing. I probably would not have played if it weren’t for my accolades at County Day.
When I left Country Day, I was totally prepared for high school. All my classes were a breeze. When everyone else was struggling, I was messing around in class. I paid my dues for four years before that. All the teachers suggested for me to join advanced classes. My study habits were so far ahead of everyone else’s. I never had a high school class half as hard as my junior high classes. Making the trip to Country Day that nerve-racking morning with my mom was the best academic decision I’ve ever made.

PEER RESPONSE GUIDE

Your job, between now and the time we come to class on Tuesday, is to thoughtfully read and respond to the peers in your group, helping them to see how they can improve their essays.

How you’ll go about that:
1. Post your draft to your group’s blog (IF YOU DON'T SEE YOUR DRAFT HERE, YOU NEED TO REMEDY THAT IMMEDIATELY!)
2. Read through the drafts your group members have posted, and post comments for each draft.
3. Read the drafts of the members of the Favorites' group, pay particular attention to the ones you've been assigned.

Guide to Responding
Use these questions to guide the comments you make (you don’t have to answer them question by question; just use them as you write to each writer):

• What do you think the specific focus is that the writer is trying to communicate? What suggestions can you make to help the writer sharpen that focus or make it clearer? Are there ideas that don’t fit into that focus?
• Do the events of the essay come to life for you? Point out places where you’d like more details. Do you want to know what the teacher looks like? What the smells, sounds, sights are in any particular part? Etc.
• Do you understand the “so what” part of the essay? Is the writer drawing you to understand the significance of these events on who they are? Where does the significance need to be clarified?
• Does the organization make sense to you? Are there places you could suggest to have stronger transitions or a more logical order of ideas?
• Finally, you don’t need to focus on grammar and style, but if there are common mistakes you see (the writer is consistently misspelling a word, for instance), feel free to point them out.
• Make some final suggestions for the writer about your overall impressions.

DUE: Your responses are to be posted by the time you come to class on Tuesday, September 26. Don’t put this off until the last minute: these responses are your primary responsibility this week. Half-hearted attempts won’t be helpful to your group (and consequently, won’t earn you the points for participating either). If it's useful to you to think of the comments you and the other members of your group are making as a conversation, feel free to refer to the comments others have made, agreeing or disagreeing (of course, "I agree with everything she said" and nothing more won't be helpful, but "I agree with this point, but I wonder if maybe you need more details instead of..." might be a useful way to dialogue). The point is to help the writer see her or his essay in a new way.

education first draft

My Dad always told me that my education was the most important thing. He told me that it is the only thing you can never lose. I believe that your education shapes who you are for the rest of your life. Ocean Springs School District is the best in the school district in the state of Mississippi, and that was the main reason my parents chose Ocean Springs over Biloxi and Gulfport.

. I moved to Mississippi in second grade. I was enrolled at Oak Park Elementary in Mrs. Lemon’s Class. She was by far my favorite teacher through all of my education. She really made the move easy on me; she was always nice to me.

My third grade teacher is one of my best friend’s mom, Mrs. Hode. She always got onto me for my handwriting; she called it “chicken scratch.” Third grade is when school work really began to get more difficult. We started doing more math problems. We began reading more complicated books, and learned definitions.

The summer of my third grade year I moved into a different home, and I changed to Magnolia Park Elementary. I was in Mrs. Waller’s class. This is when we started getting into a lot of science. We dissected a frog, which was a big deal to a 4^th grader. We also designed and made rockets through out the whole year, and finally launched them on the last week of school, which was the most fun I had ever had.

Fifth grade was the transition into middle school. This is where I met a lot of the friends I have today. All of the elementary schools in Ocean Springs all combined for fifth grade at Taconi Elementary. This is when we began the block schedule and had different teachers for each subject, but stayed with the same group of students.

Middle School was a lot of fun. I met a lot of people and learned a lot. The course material in 7^th and 8^th grade was actually very challenging. We learned about the renaissance age, biology, algebra, computers, and many other classes. We had a class called career discovery, which is when I really decided that I wanted to become a doctor when I grew up. We researched all of the different jobs. In 7^th grade we had a renaissance fair; it was a lot of fun. We dressed up in renaissance costumes and made all kinds of different things and sold them. In 8^th grade a selected group of students went on a Washington D.C./ New York trip for spring break. It was awesome; it was almost everyone’s first time away from home without their parents. We learned so much about the history of the country. We visited the World Trade Center, which was actually really special to all of us.

High School by far was the most fun. It seemed like the years became shorter and easier every year. My parents made me take all the advanced courses that were offered. I made a lot of friends throughout high school. This is when I really had to decide on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My junior year is when I decided I really wanted to go to LSU, so I had to start preparing myself. Luckily enough my good education prepared me for the ACT, which allowed me to get into LSU. I was admitted into LSU by the end of the first semester of my senior year. My spring semester was great; I had double early release every day, so I got out at 11 in the morning.

My first year at LSU really changed me a lot. I stopped being so lazy and started taking school really seriously. I learned that you couldn’t put things off until the last minute or else you would get yourself into a bad situation. College has made me become a much more responsible person. I have to take care of myself because I am away from my family. Nobody has to tell me that I need to study; I just have to be responsible and do it on my own. As I have matured I have learned that my education actually is a really important.

Educational Essay First Draft

I am sure if someone asked around they would find two very different opinions about my education. They would find how I see my education, which you will soon find out. Also, they would hear a very different opinion from those who did the education. I see my self as an intelligent free-thinker, while my teachers would more likely call me a wise-ass slacker. Which ever is more accurate, I’ll probably never know. Either way, here I am enrolled in respected state college, so we must have done something right.
Even since I was young I loved to read and learn. I had a passion for learning about wild life and spent most of my free time reading animal books or watching a special on the Discovery Channel. I was good at all my subjects and was tested and enrolled in a magnet elementary school for gifted students. However, school was always tortuously boring. Well you can imagine I was not the type to sit idly by, and was in trouble quite often. The first time I remember having my mother called from an angry teacher was in first grade. I am sure I was spaced out as usual when I heard the teacher mention a bear’s hibernation. I knew with out doubt that only reptiles and amphibians truly hibernate; bears just take a long winter sleep. I wasn’t about to keep this information to myself and promptly stood up and corrected my teacher. She was not about to have a first grade student telling the rest pf the class their teacher is wrong and told me something along the lines of “Sit down, and shut up”. This only frustrated me and urged me to continue the argument. Well, before I knew it we were marching down to the office to call my mother. I watched in worry as Mrs. Parker explained the whole situation to my mother, after a short pause for my mother’s response I heard her say “Is that so, well, so sorry to bother you Mrs. Wilson, goodbye”. I was shocked what could my mother have said to get me of the hook. Mrs. Parker looked at me and said “Your mother seems to agree with you; bears don’t hibernate”. I doubt she ever admitted it but we both knew I was right. When we were back in class, we moved right on to spelling and she never brought the subject up again. This little incident may have been the base for the lack of respect I gave my teachers for the rest of my education. I never paid attention in class and skipped many homework assignments, but I still managed to get good test grades. My sixth grade teacher was convinced I was cheating, and frustrated her trying unsuccessfully to prove it.
As I progressed through school this way I developed my own way of learning outside the classroom. I would day dream through the lecture and doodle on my worksheets. Just before the test, I would read through the material, making notes and memory tricks in my mind. This is the method I stuck with for the rest of my school days. The best example of this behavior came in eighth grade French Class. French was exactly the king of class I couldn’t stand. Every week the same thing: four days of busy work and a quiz on Friday. I kept myself entertained trying to get Mr. Schmitz to talk in his funny accent. One of my favorite tricks was to get to class early and slightly loosen the cable connection to the TV. Then I would sit back and laugh hysterically as he tried to get the TV back in “Fuccus”. On days when I was particularly disturbing he would send me out of class. One day he was fed up and asked me to stay after class. He told me “I don’t ever want to see you classroom again.” I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. So I struck a quick bargain and agreed steer clear of his class all week as long as I could take the quiz on Friday. To my surprise he agreed, I would take the quiz after school on Fridays. I could tell he didn’t expect me to show up. He even gave me a hall pass so I could cruise the halls unbothered every fifth hour. I made an A on every quiz.
I carried that mentality all through high school. High school was never very challenging for me; I kept my grades up and stayed out of trouble for the most part. However, there always seemed to be one teacher who was determined to change me. Mrs. Couv was that teacher. It was a geography class and she kept us busy coloring maps with markers. She gave me extra assignments if I didn’t get class work done, and my grade was suffering from zeros. By the end of the year I was fighting for a B. Our final project was to go out in the community and photograph architecture that resembled that of the Greeks and Romans. While other students went all over the city looking for the perfect structures, I find all of mine on one grandeur house down the street. I did my research thoroughly and made sure the structures were legitimately Greek or Roman. I wrote passages explaining each photograph and presented it nicely. I was genuinely satisfied with my work. She said it lacked effort and I received D. I was furious. I went to see her at lunch to have her take another look. A colleague of hers was in the room with her, and I asked if he would look at it. He said he thought it was an A project and Mrs. Couv changed my grade. That was senior year. I still had a lot of education ahead of me, but I think that taught me my final lesson. Stick with what works for you.
Now I am in the final chapter of my education and I haven’t changed how I learn much. Classes continue to get more difficult, but I think I’ll be able to handle whatever they throw at me. On the other hand, I do have my doubts. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision through school. I feel like I missed out on structure and it will comeback to haunt me later in life. But then I think, “Ahh, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it; I’ll get by.”

Working for the Weekend

Tim Davis
Working for the Weekend
A sacrifice is the surrender of something prized or valued for the sake of something more important or pressing. Life is all about making sacrifices. Whether it’s not watching your favorite television show one night so you can study, not eating sweets in order to lose weight, or even missing a day on the lake to practice your sport if choice, life is about making sacrifices. But when you are in kindergarten the act of making a sacrifice is not one easily understood. When I was that young I was used to getting pretty much everything I wanted. I was the third child and second boy of the family. I was the little baby of the family that could whine and cry and end up getting out of trouble or even rewarded. That is why it came to me as such a surprise when I had to make the biggest sacrifice of my life at that point the very day I entered kindergarten.
Television was a large part of my life when I was little. My mother would work around the house all day, and I would watch cartoons. My brother and sister would be off at school, and I would be sitting around bored. I went to pre-school, but that was not a long, strenuous day. I would be back at the house in no time. I loved to watch Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers and Tom and Jerry, but I was also into some odd television shows as a youngster. MacGyver and Rin Tin Tin K-9 Cop were two of my favorites, and I also picked up another odd show from my mother: Murder, She Wrote. My pre-school days wound down; little did I know my television watching days were counting down as well.
I finally reached kindergarten, which was both exciting and disappointing at the same time. I lost all of my mid-day cartoon friends, but I was able to meet so many new people and make friends. My first day was a very nerve-racking experience. My sister and brother had both been students of my new teacher, Mrs. Schucmann, and they had told me all they terrible stories from her class. All the stories turned out to be true, and when I returned home after my first day I was exhausted. I ran straight to the coach, where my father met me, who was off work that day.
As I reached for the remote, my father exclaimed, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
“What?” I innocently asked.
“You know the rules. No T.V. on a school night. Elizabeth has been following this rule for four years now, and Charlie has been following it for two years. Now it’s your turn to join them upstairs doing homework with no television,” said my father. “Now that you are a big boy, you have to act like a big boy and take responsibility for your decisions. For you to make good grades, you have to give up watching television during the week until Friday”.
My whole 5-year-old life had been turned upside down in one day. I entered the realm of real school, and now I couldn’t even watch one television show a night. I didn’t understand why I could not watch T.V. I was in kindergarten. The most homework I had to do was color a picture or to figure out what I was going to bring in for show and tell. I had lost all of my closest friends in the span of a day. No longer could I visit Chip, Dale, the rest of the rescue rangers, Tom or Jerry, Rin Tin Tin, or even MacGyver. I had to visit Mrs. Schucmann instead. That mean, old lady that taught me to color inside of the lines.
After a week of crying, whining, and moaning I finally had come to the decision that I had to accept my father’s new rule. After all, this was the first time that I had cried and not been awarded some kind of treat, or gotten my parents to scold my brother. This was something new, something big. I had to embrace this because there was no other way to live. So, I began to come home and finish my homework immediately. I would go outside and play with my two basset hounds or Charlie. Always, though, in the back of my mind was the thought that maybe, just maybe I would be able to watch television. I began to watch the evening news some nights with my father just to get some sort of fix.
Gradually throughout the years, I was finally at peace with this decision of my parent’s to not allow television (or video games) on a school night (excluding Sundays). As the year’s had passed by the amount of school work had increased and the need for television had decreased. I was always involved in some sort of sport, so I rarely had time to do anything besides practice and study. Every now and then there would be a big sporting event on television that I would be allowed to watch. Life without T.V. was getting easier, but if I had no sports to watch every once in a while, I would have cracked. But I didn’t.
I made it through elementary school, middle school, and high school unscathed. The no television rule did not kill me, surprisingly. It helped me more than anything. I learned how to manage my time, and sacrifice something that I do not necessarily need. I learned great study habits, which helped me out in high school a great deal. I am still searching for those study habits as I have lost them since I came down to school, but I keep managing to get by with exceptional grades. My father knows that I am watching T.V. down here during the school week, but he also knows that I have learned the lesson that he intended to teach. I know what is important to my life right now. My grades and studying overrule watching the new Flavor of Love episodes on Sunday nights, and tests are more important than seeing who is at Bogie’s on a Tuesday night. I know that for me to excel and succeed in school and in life, I have to make simple sacrifices. I need to do what is asked of me and what is expected of me. Watching Monday Night Football is a luxury, not a necessity. If I have to give that up occasionally to make my grades and make my father proud, then that is what I will do.

Multiplication and Work Ethic

Corey Hargrove
Multiplication and Work Ethic
I am the son of two non-college educated parents that truly know the value of a strong work ethic. They went on to have fruitful careers that enable me to enjoy the life I have, and to be the first of our family to attend college. I have tried to adopt this sense of independence ever since I was old enough to recognize it. Work ethic is more than the interest one shows in their occupation, it is the effort one puts into anything he or she does. Education is the first place in one’s life that puts their work ethic to test, and I learned the value of it first in the fourth grade. As I grew and continued in my schooling, I tried to apply what I learned in the fourth grade throughout my four years of high school and into my college career.
Making grades was never a hard thing for me to do from first through third grade, probably because the curriculum is not exactly what one would call challenging. I was accustom to earning A’s and receiving praise from my entire family. I remember my mom always reading my report card and saying, “Well, he didn’t get that brain from my side of the family”, that is until I reached the fourth grade. The school year started as they always did, locating your cubby, finding a desk that had a large name tag stuck across the front of it with your name on it and hoping that your best friends were in the same room as you. After a month or two’s progress into the school year, I noticed that my math quizzes and tests contained a substantially higher amount of red ink on them. Although my grades were not high, I did not study, mainly because I didn’t know how to. The last thing I was going to do was tell my parents, and let them know that their straight A student was struggling. I loved the attention I was given for my grades, and I was often rewarded. I felt that as time went by, I would start doing better and my assignments would start coming back to me with 100’s at the top and a big smiley-face drawn next to my name again. It was at this point in time that Mrs. Harris, my math teacher, decided to spring multiplication on me. It looked like another language. Most of my classmates had a strong grasp on the material and seemed to breeze through the timed tests, but not me. I never scored above a C plus on any of the examinations. The end of the quarter came around, and report cards were handed out at the end of class. I cautiously opened the envelope and peeked at the grades. My school subjects were listed down the left hand side of the page and the grade earned was listed down the right hand side of the page. Reading was the first subject listed, and a wave of excitement fell across my body as I looked at the A plus next to it. Next was Social Studies, A minus. Not an A plus, but still an A. P.E. had the usual “S” that stood for satisfactory, because I don’t think it is possible to fail kickball. Next was Science, where I scored another A minus. Every grade had been read but one, the dreaded Math grade. I can only imagine the terror that swept my face when I read the grade. It was a C minus. A C minus is just points away from failing, because at my elementary school, we did not have D’s, it was A, B, C or F. I stared in disbelief. All I could think about was the disappointment in my mother’s face, and the wrath I was about to receive from my father. So, I did what any eight year old would do in my position, I cried. I cried until my head hurt. I replaced the grade sheet in the envelope and went to the bathroom, where I recovered my senses and waited for my eyes to lose some of the redness caused by my tears.
The walk to carpool was a slow one, one filled with self pity and fear. I got into my mom’s car and did not say a word. Of course my mom knew I was troubled before she even saw my face, because that kind of thing comes with being a mother. She asked what was wrong, and bravely I told her report cards came out today. My mom got excited as she usually did because she thought this would be another chance for her to brag about me to her friends, but not this time. She asked how the grades were and I responded with tears. I told her about math and about how I hid my difficulty with it because I thought it would embarrass her. She frowned, turned at me and said, “I’m disappointed in you Corey, but not at your grades. I’m disappointed that you didn’t tell me and dad so we could help you study.” This made me feel much better, but I still had to deal with my dad. As soon as he read the report card, he went ballistic. He started ranting on about the work that had to be put into life to be rewarded by it, and this is the first time I heard about the phrase “work ethic.”
I returned to school with a new attitude. I learned my multiplication tables, and always kept my parents abreast with what was going on in school. I was not allowed to play on Saturday until two hours were devoted to studying, and that is a major incentive to study when one is in elementary school. My study habits continued to develop, and school was never too much for me to handle. But it was work ethic that drove me to do well in school. In my freshman year of high school, I remembered looking back on that day in fourth grade and what all my father had said to me. I remember him saying that work had to be put into life to reap its rewards. I do not know why it clicked then and not sooner, but I started to get highly involved with school activities and found a job. I maintained a high G.P.A. and even was elected as senior class president, and again, it was work ethic that drove me to do all of it. I have worked every summer and part time during the school year since the ninth grade, so the “real world” will not come as such of a shock when it is time for me to leave college. The curriculum learned in school is important to one’s success and a vital part of joining the work force, but it is the lessons that are not taught in any books that define who we are and who we will become. Little did I know how big of an impact a C minus in the fourth grade would have on the rest of my life.

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