Have a Speech

[So I haven't posted anything in ages, and pretty much haven't got anything witty to say or comment on, so I figure I'll just post an example speech that I wrote the other day. Needless to say it doesn't read as well as usual because It's supposed to be spoken. It's also not competition standard, so take it as you will!]

A Sweeter Dream. 

Monday mornings; universally hated by generation after generation of sleepy-eyed schoolchildren, having to drag themselves out of their warm beds in the early hours of the morning. The 6 O’clock wake-up call is hell, usually made worse by adults and the media endlessly slating teenagers for their tiredness – or laziness as it’s so often branded.  It’s usually half-heartedly chalked up to changing hormones and the collective bad attitude of the generation.  However, scientists are beginning to discover that there may be a real reason for teenagers hating the early get ups for school that doesn't – surprisingly - blame laziness.

Sleep scientists have discovered that teenagers’ body clocks run differently to those of adults. Your body clock is a kind of biological timer, telling us when to wake up or go to sleep. It’s why we get jet lag after changing time zones, or, importantly, why we hate getting up earlier than we’re supposed to. It turns out that adults’ circadian rhythms (the mechanism that drives our body clock) are different to teenagers’ by around 2 hours.  During puberty, teenagers’ body clocks change so that they’re naturally more alert during the evenings, making it very difficult to fall asleep before 11pm at night. Because most teenagers have early starts for school, it’s practically impossible for them to get the minimum of 8 and a half hours sleep that they need a night. So the sleep deprivation felt universally by teens is less to do with us being lazy, and more to do with science.

So if teens are sleep deprived because of biology, regardless of what time they go to bed in the evenings, it would seem pretty clear that the only solution to this problem is to start schools later. I mean, it’s not like we can physically change our body clocks. Let me give you an example: I go to bed at around 11 each night, and wake up at 6 in the morning. That gives me an average of 7 hours sleep per night, but only if I’m sleeping exactly between these times. What’s more likely is that I’ll get around 6 1’2 hours sleep, 2 hours less that the minimum required amount. This isn’t just me either – the majority of people my age get this amount of sleep – or less, when you take into account the time needed to do homework, exercise and take part in any extra-curricular activities. However, if schools started at around 10 o’clock rather than 8 or 9, the increased amount of sleep would benefit us massively. I’d get the necessary amount of sleep, without sacrificing any of the time I need to complete schoolwork.

More sleep can also lead to a variety of benefits to learning – so it’s actually in schools’ interests to let us stay in bed for longer.  Increased sleep can improve our memory, and help us to remember new information more easily. This is because we consolidate new information while sleeping, so the more we sleep, the more we’ll remember the things that we’ve learned in school. This can obviously lead to better performance on tests and exams. More sleep has been linked to getting better grades, something I’m sure no-one would grumble at.  

And the University of Oxford have also found this. In a recent experiment, researches have proven that forcing teenagers to wake up at 7:00 is the same as asking adults to wake up at 5:00 every day. This study is starting to spur some changes in the education system too. Next year, a large scale experiment will follow around 32,000 pupils in years 10 and 11 who will start school at 10 o’clock instead of 9 to see if their GCSE results are boosted by the extra sleep. Personally, I think it’s a brilliant idea that could change the media’s perception of teenagers.

Some people however, are somewhat more sceptical. They don’t think that a change in school starting times will make any difference, possibly only leading to teenagers staying up even later because they don’t have to be up as early. If I’m perfectly honest, I can kind of see where they’re coming from. Furthermore, decreasing the amount of time spent in school per day could actually be detrimental to learning, regardless of the amount of sleep that the students have.

All in all, no-one’s entirely sure whether starting schools later will boost grades, but it is clear that teenagers aren’t responsible for being tired during school. The biological facts are impossible to ignore, and so it does make sense that investigations are being done into the possibility of starting school later. I for one, hope that the experiment succeeds, I mean, who wouldn’t love an extra few hours in bed? So next time your parents or your teachers tell you go to bed earlier so you won’t be tired in the mornings, tell them to try waking up at 5. They might just find that it’s not as easy as they think it is.

Penny Dreadfuls and 'Take a Break'

So I was watching Dave Gorman's show the other day, and on it he mentioned the paradox of magazines such as 'Take a Break' - you know, the ones that are all bright and cheery on the front, but then hold fantastical stories that are as unbelievable as they are horrifying. The headlines are usually bizzare and gruesome in equal measures, and they're stereotypically brought by women as a break from the real world. These sorts of things:


Just in case you can't read some of the taglines, we've got things like
"Mum's Terror: Had devil dog killed my baby?"
"Stepdad got me pregnant at 13"
"Am I crazy? I still love my conman"
"Tragedy of my 5 hour bride dead on her wedding night"
"My fella gave his lover my clothes" 
"Starved by my evil friend"
"Proposal from hell: 'marry me, I'm a rapist'" 
"This pizza saved my life" 

I'm pretty sure you get the picture. Now I hardly ever read these sorts of magazines, or really any magazines for that matter, but if I've been especially bored on school trips abroad I've borrowed one or two from my friends to read. It's pretty clear that the stories are pretty sensationalised, and while I'm not inclined to believe everything that these magazines say, I figure that there must at least be a smaller, plainer story behind all of these tales.

But then I got thinking, which knowing me is never really a good idea. People always seem to be entertained by wild stories, especially ones with unpleasant edges. It made me think of Penny Dreadfuls, which were basically these pamphlets that used to be published just after the commodification of the printing press in the Victorian Age. They detailed horrific crimes, usually murders, that had been committed, and people from all social standings would buy them, despite the pamphlets being marketed more towards the lower classes since they only cost a penny. They looked something like this:
 

The first cover is from a pamphlet circulated by the 'Boys Weekly Reader', entitled 'Risen from the Dead or, the medical student'. The second, 'Spring heeled Jack, the terror of London' is from 'The Boys Standard'

Now I realise that the nature of these headlines are rather different from one another, with the modern magazines focussing more on social dramas rather than murder, as in Penny Dreadfuls, but considering the climate of today's society, I can't help but think that they serve the same purpose.
Today, we see too much bloody murder on the news to find sensationalised stories about it entertaining, so our media reflects this, giving us the drama that humans inherently seem to feed off in a slightly different way, instead revolving around social taboos and dilemmas. Both of these sorts of publications are designed to entertain through shock or surprise, and also to distract from our own everyday lives by telling us that things 'could be worse'.

All in all, I can't help but think that while Penny Dreadfuls may have died out, the idea behind them and the market for them certainly has not.

Magical Otters (I lost a bet)

So today's lesson is, essentially, don't make bets with people.

I bet my friend Jatin that I wouldn't get 90% across 3 of my AS subjects, feeling pretty confident that it was never going to happen. The consequences, we decided, would be that if I lost I'd have to write a blog post about magical otters. As you may have realised, I lost the bet. I think I'd probably be more upset about losing if it didn't mean that I'd actually done pretty well in my exams, but nevertheless I now have the joys of writing about magical otters, of all things.

But, I figure that we never really agreed on what constitutes a whole post about 'magical otters', so instead I'll just explain the fixation on otters, and a bit about last week, which I spent at Durham University.

The entire 'magical otters' thing stems from a lecture that we (the history students) had while at Durham. After spending the morning talking about youths in the Early Modern period, it was pretty safe to say that the collective consciousness of the group was only barely being held awake by copious amounts of coffee. However, this next lecture promised to be more interesting: a talk on the medieval period and how we look at sources as a whole. After learning that no source, ever, can actually be trusted, we were given a source by Bede (I think?) about St. Cuthbert, telling of one of the many miracles that he was said to have performed.

The story was that one night, St. Cuthbert walked out of the monestary he lived in, but was followed by a suspicious monk who wondered where Cuth went all night every night. The monk watched as Cuth went and stood praying in the sea for the entire night. After he was done, Cuth walked out of the water and as he was kneeling on the sand, two otters came and dried his feet with their fur, which is apparently a miracle (who knew?). The monk begged St Cuth for forgiveness, who told him that, basically, everything was fine, as long as no-one found out about the feat before Cuth was dead. Apparently after this, the monk kept the secret until after Cuth's death, whereupon he told everyone.

The debate now turned to whether we thought that this actually happened or not. It all started off pretty normally, but then for around half an hour we all ended up arguing about the otters - were they magical otters? Were there actually otters at all? Are we sure they weren't just rocks? Or, was St Cuth actually just an otter tamer? Personally, I'm rooting for the last one.

Needless to say it was pretty hilarious, and a great way of livening us all up after a rather dull morning. And so, that's where the magical otters come from!

(Hopefully that's enough about the otters to have my obligations filled?)

But all in all, the week at Durham was one of the best weeks of my life. I met so many amazing people, both in my mentor group (the victorious John Snow) and in the history group. From swing dancing to assassins to the formal; every moment was amazing! I'm really going to miss everyone, and hope to see you all at Durham in just over a year!

With the summer school came a guaranteed offer from the university, which I'm incredibly happy about after finding out that I have the grades now to be able to get the offer, and even be in a position to attend! Durham would literally be a dream, so now I'm just going to work insanely hard next year to get the grades.

So in summary: I lost a bet, St Cuthbert was a magical otter trainer, and Durham is amazing!

Happy now Jatin?

Confidence is an illusion.

Last week, much to my surprise, someone told me that they wished they could be as confident as I was.

Needless to say, the statement made me stop and think. Confident would not be a word that I would use to describe myself. When I have to meet new people, you can guarantee that for days before I will be worrying that no-one will like me; that I will say something stupid or appear strange. Whenever I walk down the street and someone my age walks past, I automatically worry about my appearance. Is my hair completely messed up from the wind, making me look like some sort of startled bird? Are my thighs jiggling when I walk? Do I have food around my mouth?

That, to me, is not the definition of confidence.

But on the other hand,  I can stand in front of a room of people and make a speech without breaking a sweat. When I actually am thrust into social situations (ignoring the previous worrying), I smile and joke and act like I'm perfectly at ease. So in that respect, maybe I am what people could call confident.

But is confidence even real?
The dictionary definition of confidence is 'the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something';. So, in terms of personal confidence, we really just mean self-belief, as cheesy and new-age as that sounds.
I used to be a wreck in front of crowds. Even speaking out in front of my class left me stuttering and stumbling through every word. In those social situations that I still get nervous about, I used to stand in the corner and only speak to people that I already knew.
What changed? Absolutely nothing. Honestly, nothing has changed over the years to bolster my confidence apart from the fact that I started pretending to be confident.

When I had to make a speech, I threw on a persona. I pretended to be confident to hide my shaking knees and stuttering words. When I met new people, I pretended to have no fear; to be completely at ease. And I kept doing it. I kept pretending and pretending until I finally realised that somewhere along the line, I had stopped pretending to be confident and actually became it. Don't get me wrong, I still have issues. I still get nervous about meeting people, but I've become so much better at it.

That made me wonder if I was the only one who found 'confidence' this way. I definitely doubt it.

You cannot acquire something by pretending to have it, meaning that everyone is confident from the beginning; you just choose to deny it. This whole categorical system of the shy and the confident is nonsense, because there are so many different situations that bring out different emotions that one person cannot be shovelled into possessing or not possessing self -belief. A traditionally 'confident' person may be a social butterfly but hates answering questions in class for fear of getting the answers wrong. A 'shy' person may be terrified of trying to socialise with people they've never met, but might love passionately debating their favourite subject with certain individuals.

This could be written off as different types of confidence; separating 'social confidence' from 'academic confidence' or 'interpersonal confidence'. But you know what? Go further. Deny even the very existence of 'confidence' and instead know that while you may be nervous about doing some things; you may hate giving speeches or making phone calls or answering questions; you do not believe in yourself any less that a person who loves those things.

The idea of confidence is an illusion. Everyone has it in some situations, and needs it in others. We are all 'confident people'; we just need to find the confidence that suits ourselves and work with it. If you're scared of doing something, pretend that you enjoy it, and soon enough you'll realise that you liked it all along, you were just holding yourself back with doubts.

Remember that confident people won't always have been confident; everyone has to start from somewhere.

Writing Creatively

I.e. Something that I absolutely cannot do.

But seriously, I can't write creatively at all. I've tried - the ridiculous number of half-finished novels saved on my computer say that much, but the fact is, I'm a terrible writer.
Don't get me wrong, I can write essays with my eyes closed (and have to a lot of the time), write speeches, write this (whatever this actually is), but when it comes to stories I simply fail horrendously.

My writing always sounds far too... fake. It sounds false, dull, wrong, no matter what I'm trying to talk about. The language I use is far too cerebral, giving the whole thing a sense of flatness and lack of emotion, and the same goes for my dialogue, which never sounds anything vaguely like real speech. I don't know what it is, but I simply don't have the ability to write, which both frustrates me and doesn't surprise me.

I'm not surprised, mainly because of the fact that I can write essays and speeches. The type of writing has to be thought out and complicated, because that's the entire point, whereas novels are supposed to be more emotional, casual, free in terms of both the vocabulary and the structures. In essays complex structures are a necessity; in my writing they make me sound like a pretentious douchebag.
But nevertheless, it does frustrate me. Mainly because I have so many ideas for novels that I'd love to read, yet when I try to write them they just fall flat. More recently I thought of this brilliant idea for a book, the plot all there in all the necessary detail. And I can't write it.

It's not even the fact that I want to become an author - I don't and know that I can't. It's more the fact that I can't even write my ideas down fully, which because I'm so use to communicating easily in more formal types of writing, is extremely frustrating.

In other news, I'd be a great soundboard for novel ideas. I mean, it's not exactly like I can steal them, right?

And A Happy New Year

Tomorrow is new years eve, and to be fair, I'm pretty ambivalent about this.

It's vaguely sad, mainly because it's been such a good year - Starting 6th form, going sailing, meeting Johanna, my German Exchange partner. I met some awesome people, and somehow (although I'm still unsure where this actually came from) found a new sense of confidence. God, that sounds cheesy. And yet, I know that there is absolutely no point being sad about time passing. It's the most natural thing in the world; and as a personal history nut, I'm actually quite a fan of this whole time madness.

2014 though, is already seeming like it should be another brilliant year, with loads of things and events that I'm insanely excited about: A trip to Berlin and Poland with history, a debating competition (as strange as that might sound...) and finally the Dicey Conference, which I'm ridiculous nervous and excited about at the same time.
So to the new year - may the odds be ever in your favour!

Upon the subject of Teenagers

*RANT AHEAD* Sorry people.

I have always been fond of the BBC. I daily trawl through the BBC News page in search of any news story that I can read and devour, endeavouring to better my knowledge and understanding of the world. To me, the independent tries to take it’s broadsheet status and thrust it in your face with every technical sounding word than it can find, and the Sun is, frankly, only good for toilet paper. So the BBC is where I, an average teenager, read up on the latest news.

So you can imagine that I would be intrigued by the fairly innocuous yet intriguing headline of ‘Is there an 'angst canon' of books that teenagers read?’ while scrolling through the other articles, being myself a teenager who, surprisingly enough, reads.  However, I was outraged by what I found. The article was mainly about how there are a certain list of books that teenagers supposedly read to ‘[attempt] to look, well, a bit cool. The books are like a badge of honour.’.  According to the article, books – classics – such as  ‘1984’, ‘The Bell Jar’, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, ‘Catch 22’, ‘The Outsider’ and even more modern books such as ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and some books by John Green, are read by teenagers simply  to display their, well, their ‘Inner Angst’.

These are all genuine quotes from the article:

-          ‘The book itself might be placed conspicuously on show, with the titles poking out of school blazer pockets and tops of satchels. "[They're] what you might call 'accessory books'’

-          ‘Any teenager seen reading the book on public transport is sending out a message."You know that if you sit on the Tube reading that [type of book], people will know you're an angst-ridden teenager," says historian Lisa Jardine, who has researched the reading preferences of men and women.’

-          ‘Some may even detect a note of pretentiousness’

That last one really gets me. It makes me angry just to read it. Here, today when I can look at the same website and see half a dozen articles about the fact that teenagers don’t read enough today I cannot help but feel that something is drastically wrong with today’s media. Teenagers are frowned upon for not reading, or reading books that are perceived to be below their reading level, but when we try to better ourselves, to read something that may be intentionally challenging to give us a better understanding of how the world works, and indeed literature as a whole, we are deemed pretentious. So what is it that we are expected to do? Do we just give up? Being ridiculed for not reading but slated when we do what the ‘adults’ of the world tell us we should be doing?

Teenagers are called pretentious for reading books that include ‘Angst’ as a theme. Maybe some people are trying to look cool by reading these books. And you know what? Good for them. Good for the people who may not necessarily be interested in reading, but want to try out a topically challenging work. Why does that make us pretentious? And as for using the fact that we have read these books as a badge of honour, I say why not? Why shouldn’t I be proud of the fact that I finished Orwell’s 1984 – a notoriously slow book I will admit, but one packed with culturally and socially relevant meanings? I for one still inwardly use books that I’ve read as badges of honour. I unashamedly do this every day. Even writing this I remember how proud I am of myself that I have read Homer’s Iliad. I am proud of the fact that I read just one chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, because anyone who has tried it will know that it is notoriously difficult. Does that make me pretentious? Maybe. But who cares?

I wonder now, why the person who wrote this article thinks that teenagers are drawn to these books. Because they contain themes of not belonging to society? Maybe. Or maybe it’s because these books are difficult. They are designed to make us think about the world we live in today. Maybe people read them because they want to better themselves and give themselves a challenge.

When I finally get round to reading Camus’ ‘The Outsider’, I will have read it because we discussed the book in depth in my Debating club, discussing the themes of Existentialism within literature alongside Determinist points of view. I was twelve when I read 1984 for the first time. I read Homer’s Iliad in five days, and when I was eleven I had a tested reading age of twenty.  However arrogant you think I am for mentioning these points, think about this. If any adults knew all of this about me, would they expect me to be reading trashy airport chick-lit (which I have nothing against, by the way)? Would I get told that I should be reading things more on my level? Probably. I would be judged and looked down on, called lazy for not reading something more difficult. So why is it that these same people, if they did not know my story, would call me pretentious for reading the books that are suitable?

Adults today don’t give teenagers enough credit. Maybe instead of making judgements about a social group as a whole, disparaging ones I might add, because we happen to read books with a certain ‘theme’, just applaud us, because we have taken the time to read recreationally – whatever the book may be. Be happy that we are doing something useful. Because I’m sure that adults would rather see teenagers reading ‘pretentious’ books than spray-painting walls and engaging in anti-social behaviour.

It seems though, we just can’t have it both ways.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24833198   - The article in full