Who Am I?

Simon Trask        9/11/11

Who am I?  I am a 16 year old human being; going to Groves High School and taking a rigorous course set, including 3 APs and a course in Philosophy and Science Fiction.  I am a very aggressive person when it comes to getting things done, hence the slightly less enjoyable course load.  I pride myself in striving for the better outcome in manual labor and academic work.  I am the second youngest out of six, though my two older brothers and sisters are all half-brother and half-sisters.  I enjoy tinkering and problem solving, which makes my desired college major engineering.  In my sophomore and junior year I was on the wrestling team, my junior year season was cut short by a tragic season ending injury that would have still sidelined me into my senior year if I had continued.

I have always enjoyed Philosophy, even if my own attempts usually end up in a Philosophical argument.  The idea of thinking differently and mussing over the few questions that life inevitably comes back to (such as, ‘who am I?’, ‘where did the world come from?’, and ‘what is reality?’) has intrigued me for some time, I often wonder how to justify an answer to these questions and if it will ever even be possible to do so.

The political system around which our Country revolves has been misguided.  There has been a series of poor choices made by our representatives and leaders that have caused a serious down turn in not only the American society, but also in a large amount of peoples’ trust in the government.  With the rapid succession of wars there hasn’t been much time for peaceful rejuvenation of our American society.  The ridiculous frequency of filibusters and the support of corporate agenda and priority over the American populous have caused our very representative that we elect in good faith, to look like incompetent children who have too much power to responsibly deal with.

Religion has benefits and repercussions; often religion offers a good basis for moral beliefs and can be a cause for peace, at other moments religion can be a cause for hatred, prejudice, and even genocide.  Religion can be good; it can give people hope and joy as well as a special connection.  But there is unfortunately also a lack of acceptance towards change and tolerance of differing beliefs.  This unfortunate rejection has cause fringe extremists to commit mass genocide and horrific acts of terrorism; this shows that religion has an immense power to create enormous destruction, devastation, and demise of everything that we hold dear.  Therefore religion can only be helpful and beneficial if acceptance is an openly supported foundation of every decision.

Education has taken hit after hit and really has grown into a stunted, malformed, repressed, pitiful thing compared to where learning should be.  There are students across the country who are denied a proper education due to the fact that they either struggle to cope with the form of teaching available or proper support is withheld due to the less fortunate area in which they reside.  In order to get an exceptional education some students in some parts of New York City are force to travel very far to private schools or special public schools that give a great education to the few that they can manage to teach, leaving hundreds (in some cases more than one thousand) with nowhere to go except poorly supported public schools where the worst students force rules to be made that restrict everyone else’s growth and expansion. 

Education really does need reform; education should give the lowest scoring an exceptional education and the geniuses something that is more exceptional than an education that we can dream of right now.  Unfortunately everything needs reform, whether it is sweeping up a few crumbs or rebuilding the entire house.

The Japanese proverb “案ずるより産むが易し” (Anzuru yori umu ga yasashi) is an old saying used to inspire and teach those who are unwise in Japan; the proverb translates to something that used to be an American motto, remember: “attempt is sometimes easier than expected”