Friday, April 3, 2009

Newsletter #00021

Alright. So I think I owe an explanation from my newsletter absence last week, only because there is a legit reason.

So I was going to write a newsletter on Friday, as I normally do. Well that was a fail. I made plans (*gasp*) and didn't get around to doing it. Then Saturday comes around and well, Saturday goes around and here it is at 11 at night, still no newsletter. So (I'm starting an awful lot of sentences with the word so) I come onto facebook and begin writing my newsletter. About halfway through, a stray letter befouls my page. I reach for the handy dandy backspace key and what do you know? FAIL!

Yes, slightly dramatic I know, but it really was a fail. I hit backspace and instead of erasing the letter, the stupid key decides to take me back a page, causing me to lose everything I've written. Needless to say, I was definitely not doing that again.

But anyways, its a new week and my backspace key seems to be functioning so far. Let's just hope it stays that way.

Okay, so lately I've been thinking an awful lot about memories. If you've ever read The Giver (which is my favorite book ever FYI), you will know that Jonas receives the job of being the next receiver, who is entrusted with all the memories of the community before it went to Sameness (or basically, before all feelings and choices were eliminated)

I was also looking through one of my old Muse magazines and read an article about memories and childhood amnesia. Scientists once thought that you didn't form memories before the age of 2 or 3, but this was proven to be untrue. As you grow older you just forget everything before that point.

Thinking about this has just made me realize how strange memories truly are. Another thing that's really interesting is when you try and recall memories. I've realized over the years that there are certain memories of mine, nothing particularly memorable about them, but particular memories that I remember from my childhood and even middle school years and really nothing else. If I were to watch a movie of my life, not only would I be incredibly bored, but I think I would realize that up until seeing these things happening to me for a second time, I didn't actually remember they existed. Another example is how sometimes when I think about a certain friend and I try and remember how we met and I can't. I can't remember exactly how or where we met, or why we became friends, or even most memories I had with them when we were a lot younger, and yet they are still my friends. It's like even though I can't remember this stuff, it's all still there being used. If it wasn't, I would have no reason to consider my friends as close as I do, since for many of them I don't even remember how things were when we first became friends. If that makes any sense at all.

I think one of the coolest things ever would be to have a Pensieve like in Harry Potter (I believe that's how you spell it) In case you've forgotten, or just never read the books/ saw the movies, a pensieve is something that you put your memories into and you can revisit them whenever you want. It would be really neat if scientists could create something similar someday, like something that could extract memories from you brain or something. That would be really neat.

Wow, writing these newsletters always gets me really distracted. I start looking up stuff online to put in here and then about an hour later I remember what I was supposed to be doing. Must get better at that.

Anyways, I'm going to talk about one of the things I was writing about in last week's unpublished newsletter and that is sleep. Well, more correctly sleep as it applies to teenagers. I was scrounging my Muse magazines for other topics, only to realize that it has been another 20 or so minutes since my last paragraph about getting distracted and I'm supposed to leave the house in 20 more minutes.

Okay, so the topic of sleep is very relevant, at least in my life. Not only do I never get enough of it, I always want to be doing it. I'm forcing myself right now to sit in a chair as I write this so that I'm not as tempted to fall asleep.

One of the things I was reading last week was that teenagers are supposed to get more sleep than children slightly younger than us. Yes, more sleep. Even though most of us stay up on school nights till 11:00 or later, have to wake up earlier to go to school and have more to do which prevents us from napping. All this and we are actually supposed to be sleeping between 8 1/2- 9 1/2 hours per night. I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who comes even close to this. I get about 5 or 5 1/2 hours of sleep on school nights.

Another thing is that teenagers bodies and biological clocks don't want us to fall asleep until 11:00 or later. So its not our faults we can't go to sleep some nights. When we were talking in Mr Gardella's class last week about how we could improve schools, this is one of the ways. Teenagers need to be starting later than we do. Later even than the little kids who need less sleep than us and go to bed earlier. It's been shown that if we don't sleep until the end of our last REM cycle (somewhere usually around 7:00 AM) people get really tired during the day.

I also read this study online where children were sent to this summer camp every year through when they were teenagers. They gave them specific times they had to sleep and then during the day studied how long it took for the children or teenagers to fall back asleep based off of how much sleep they were getting. I forget the exact results but it showed that because of a lack of sleep (the same lack of sleep most of us probably get every night), teens could fall fast asleep in like 5 minutes or less.

I just wish that the public education system would take all of this into account, especially when they are trying to improve students' performance in schools.

Okay, well that's all I've got for today since I have to leave the house soon. Hopefully next week I can write this without getting so distracted halfway through.

April 3-2009
-By Kasey

No comments:

Post a Comment