3 Stars is Good

About a week ago I was reading a lot of book reviews on Goodreads. I was trying to find out if some free books I had were decent, or not worth my time. They have a 5 star rating system. My sister had already warned me not to look at the 5 star reviews. They tend to be worthless, all they do is talk about how this was the best book ever, and the author is amazing and the plot was new and fantastic and the characters are well developed and awesome. Some of the 4 star reviews are like that too. With everything they say, they say nothing at all except that the reviewer liked it.
It was kind of interesting though, because I found the 1 star reviews to be much the same (not quite as useless as 5 stars but close). They just rave about how pointless this book was, how they hated it and didn't finish it. How the plot was predictable and stupid and the characters were flat. Pretty much just the opposite of the 5s.
Overall it seemed like 2 and 3 star reviews (and the occasional 4 star) were far more helpful. They didn't rave or rant, they were more even minded. Some explained the plot, others listed things they did or did not like. Their reviews were not punctuated by profanity or exclamation points, and overall they seemed more likely to explain actual details of the plot, characters, and writing.
I guess it shouldn't be a surprise to find that someone who is not quite as emotionally  involved actually makes a better argument.  It's just a good reminder that the next time someone comes to you raving or ranting about how good or bad someone treated them... their story might not be entirely just.

Teachers are People Too

"I like trains."

That phrase as a terrible connotation for me. In High School my senior year (I think) I had a young physics teacher. She was the gymnastics coach, short, and wasn't good at classroom management. Some kids in my class found it funny to say the above statement over and over again in funny accents, during the middle of class. At the end of the year she thanked me for being nice. I don't think I even did anything out of the ordinary. I just wasn't a jerk. 

I can list several other teachers with similar situations: 9th grade Biology, 11th grade Math, 12 yr old Sunday School Teacher...

Since High School I really haven't seen it much though, which is much appreciated. I certainly don't miss it. But for some reason I was thinking about it today. Just because someone is a teacher doesn't mean they aren't a person and you shouldn't treat them with common courtesy.

Needing Leadership

The whistle blew and I hopped the log fence to join the end of the line of girls of my second grade class. We were coming in from recess. Then, instead of leading us back into the building, one of the teachers stopped. "This field is a mess." As she spoke we looked back over our shoulders, and I acknowledged that only moments before I had noticed the Cheetos bags stuffed into crevices in the log fence, and smashed juice boxes and plastic straws were scattered over the grass.
"No one is allowed inside until we clean up this mess."
No one moved. Everyone shuffled their feet and stared at the ground hoping the angry teacher wasn't looking at them.  Well it's not my problem, I thought, feeling my own sandwich bags from my snack tucked into my pockets. To move would be to accept guilt.
The seconds stretched into minutes and still no one moved.
This is dumb, I thought, and broke ranks, blushing hard because everyone was staring. As I picked up a lollipop stick, the neat rows of my classmates disintegrated. I grabbed a fruit by the foot paper and carried my trash to the garbage, as the other kids darted around me from the trash barrel and then back to our neat lines.

I don't remember if the teacher even said anything else before she brought us back inside.
I find leadership interesting. Who is good at it and who is not? What makes good leaders or bad leaders? One of the main characters in the book I wrote has some issues directly related to leadership. Maybe I find it interesting, because I'm not much of a leader (except of course when I am).
This week I was at a very informal church activity. We were supposed to bring some cookies to some people but everyone just kept milling about asking who should go with who, and where we should leave our cars. Nothing was getting done. I called out, told everyone a plan, and people listened. One girl asked if I was sure, I said honestly "I don't care, I'm just making this up." But everyone promptly did what I had said. It was kind of funny in my opinion because I wasn't in charge, and I really didn't care much which plan we followed. But sometimes people just need a leader, like the first experience I shared, and it doesn't really seem to matter who it is, just as long as someone takes charge.
On occasion I've heard people talk about how leadership really isn't important or how you don't need to do what other people tell you to do.... but honestly, it seems to me that people, that society, needs leadership. It can be informal or formal but we need leaders, sometimes for even the most simple of endeavors.

Of Pencils and Responsibility

I lost my pencil this morning.
But it will hopefully still turn up.
In school I remember quite often letting people borrow a pencil or pen, but I almost never let them actually use the pen or pencil that I always used. I kept backup ones, and those are the ones I lent out.
I have had the pencil I lost this morning since my junior year of college (I think). I lost my previous pencil down a crevice between a bolted in couch and a wall outside my History of Clothing class. I was very sad when I lost that pencil because it was one I had used every day on my mission.
The point, I suppose, is that some people see things like pencils or folders as completely dispensable. I am a little bit more possessive about such things.
Speaking of folders, I got really upset in my sophmore year of high school when an acquaintance stabbed my English folder with his pencil and left a hole in it. But don't worry I was still using it my senior year of college.
Both the pencils in question happen to be mechanical, and the folder was plastic, so they are pretty good quality. I still think my protection of them has more to do with using them up until they aren't useful anymore than actual any sentimental value. Plus, I personally see it as responsible not to be losing your pencil all the time.
So is that enough about pencils?

My high school and college folders. Typically green was science, blue english (yes the one mentioned), and purple was miscellaneous.

I didn't do a picture of my pencil... because it's lost.

Summaries

I think it was in one of the Alcatraz books by Brandon Sanderson. There is a comment about how any story sounds lame when it is summed up in a sentence or two. Try it, it's true. Before I read Lord of the Rings I was told it was a story about a short man who travels for three books to a volcano to destroy an evil ring, and then fails so someone bites his finger off. The end. Stupid right?
In high school we had summer reading we had to do, and there was the same 10 or so questions we had to answer for every book. The first section was to write a summary of the plot no more than 50 words. I would religiously count the words to make sure I was under, it was difficult. When I read the Hobbit I mentioned the ring but it was too long, and my brother advised me to take that part out because the ring really isn't that important in the Hobbit (just in it's sequels). So I did, and my teacher wrote on it and passed it back with the question: "What about the ring?" I was annoyed.
This week I have been working on writing a one page summary of my almost 200 page book. In some ways I think the 50 word summary would be easier. . . It has actually been kind of fascinating though. Out of over 60 named characters I have named only 7 characters in the summary. I have looked at several chapters and decided that nothing in the whole chapter needs to even be mentioned in the summary. Some of the more interesting scenes (in my opinion) are ignored.
So it seems to me that if you take a story down to:

• a page => you lose the emotion
• 50 words => you lose the flow
• a sentence => you lose everything. It just sounds dumb.

And that is not to say there are no reason for summaries... they just should be used with care.

A Binary Continuum ('cause that makes sense)

So as you may have noticed after reading some of my other posts (here, and here) I find dichotomies/opposites fascinating or at least compelling. But this week I thought of them a little differently.
Here is what I was thinking. I am a very liberal person. . . until I'm conservative. I am self-confident... until I'm not. I'm reserved... until I'm loud. I'm an introvert... until I act extroverted.
Instead of a continuum it seems more like binary. It is either 0 or 1. Nothing in between.
But perhaps instead of thinking it has to be a continuum OR binary maybe it can be both. Perhaps we are all composites. Instead of either being an introvert or an extrovert, a liberal or a conservative we are generally at point A on a continuum between those two points. We are there at point A for situations one through four, but for situations five through six we are at point B on that same continuum. Even if point A and point B are not even all that close.

And I think that is ok, good even. Different situations require different reactions. After all "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."    -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just so you know. I'm not a quote person... until I am.

Childhood Pictures

I was looking at some old pictures. Mostly kindergarten through third grade.
Here are some thoughts on them.

• As as adult I looked at some of the kids in my class a little differently. I befriended some kids that at the time I saw as not as smart as I was. One was the only hispanic kid in the class, permanently set apart culturally. And I don't think his home life was very good. Another picture was taken at a recital thing. the whole grade had learned the recorder and then were supposed to perform for their parents. Everyone was wearing white shirts except one kid on the front row. If I remember correctly I helped him out a lot in fourth grade with stuff. That non-white shirt though, told me today that his home life probably wasn't very good either. Not enough parental involvement.
• Looking at the kids in my classes, some that were only in elementary with me and others who I remember all the way through senior year kind of makes me want to know what happened to them. (But probably not enough to do anything about it).
• I was still me. There are pictures of me playing in the dirt and reading and standing next to my art pieces hanging on the wall.