What is Love? (reference completely intended)

Emotions are fickle. This is what everyone will tell you in some way, shape, or form if you ask them why you feel a certain way about something when you legitimately don't know. Sometimes you might feel hatred toward someone you just met for no apparent reason, or you might feel really happy at seeing the color magenta and you don't know why. While all of these emotional responses are seemingly random, there is one emotion that is most definitely not random that we also still don't have a definite answer as to why we feel it: Love.
When it comes to the emotion of love, science gives us the basic reason: we have it because it is our natural instinct as humans to want to reproduce so we can continue to exist on Earth. However, this doesn't really solve the question of why love exists, since you didn't have to love someone to reproduce back in the stone age. With science and informal literature practically out of the question because of this, we can really only turn to friends and family to find out what love truly is besides just an emotion. Interviewing people, however, gives varied responses. Some people will say love is a beautiful emotion of attraction which helps a person find their true companion that everyone needs to have in order to survive and stay sane. This point of view is reflected by many people in the United States and is relatively custom to be followed by a marriage of some sort once the pairing has happened. However, several other people speculate the love is nothing more than a chemical reaction that is worthless in the long run since all it does is lead to great pain and suffering when a person that one loves leaves their life forever, either through normal departure or death.
In all, the concept of love is entirely up to personal speculation, which can make it really hard for logic-minded people who are lacking in social skills. My personal advice to them is to have them do their research on sociability and find what kind of people best fit their interests. then they can find someone who they can truly enjoy and, quite possibly, fall in love with.  

Pompous Public Media ( and how it's incorrect)

North Korea, a country everybody knows about and quite frankly could care less about with it's small geographical size and censoring of any inside and outside media. However, recent events have unfolded where North Korea has been trying to "prove itself to the world" by sending threats to other countries and even going so far as to try and launch a ballistic missile at the United States (emphasis on the 'try'). Now, as anyone can imagine the media has been all over this whole scenario. Going over talks between members of the United Nations such as Russia and China, the old allies of North Korea during the Korean War, and the United States and South Korea (the other side of the Korean War). This, so far, has all been O.K. for the modern world, Russia and China have no plans to help North Korea in these endeavors and everyone's planning to basically do whatever they can to completely defuse the situation without violence but are prepared to solve it with violence if necessary (thanks Cold War arms race). The only problem in all of this is the media. The media on the subject so far has been making rapid and disproportionate claims that "This is the Next Cuban Missile Crisis except with North Korea!" and that "Trump's taking on both Kim Jong Un and Putin it's basically the same thing!!!!!!!!!!" As a rather well informed history buff on the Cuban Missile Crisis I can tell you this 'incident' is nothing like it. First of all, Putin and Russia are AGAINST North Korea and on our side (for now) so that's the alliance similarities out the window. Second is the fact that Cuba actually posed a threat and was avidly supplied by its allies. North Korea has absolutely NO ONE on their side and can't even pose a significant nuclear war scare like the Cuban Missile Crisis did since they don't and won't have nuclear missiles until at least a year from now andcan't even launch their ballistic missiles (the one they tried shooting at the U.S. crashed in the Japanese Sea). Now, that's not to say North Korea poses no threat to anyone, but they definitely don't pose a threat to the United States like Cuba did during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Wavering Certainty

Ever since I realized what a job was, I've always wanted to be an engineer. With my natural want to build things out of my toys as a kid coupled with my fascination for the structures and vehicles in the modern world, specifically airplanes, it seemed like a very effective fit for me (also my massive amount of sarcasm, but that's a different story). However, recently I've been experiencing a certain expansion of my interests. Several of my friends have started telling me I wouldn't just be a good engineer but also a good psychologist, data analyst, public relations worker, public speaker, and even short story writer. While I think I still want to be an aerospace engineer, I can't help but agree with my friends when they tell me these things. I know I'm good with talking to a group of people on a podium without becoming a river, talk constantly about the abstracts of the human mind, love helping my friends with the problems they feel emotionally and mentally, and can explain a random jumble of numbers that no-one bats an eye to and give it meaning so that everyone looks at them. I also know that in each of these jobs I could benefit the human race just as much as I would be able to as an aerospace engineer, if not greater. This then has begun to pose a question that I've only just recently begun to ponder in my spare time: should I change my career plans and study something else in college? Currently, I think I'd be a better aerospace engineer than anything else. However, this doesn't mean my interest in the other fields is completely destroyed. I'm still going to keep getting up in front of crowds and talking my head off, discussing emotional and mental problems while theorizing about the brain's complex functions with my friends, and looking over and giving a meaning to statistics that I find in news articles. I would love it if I could find a way to explore all of these career options at once but, unfortunately, I would probably be overworked in the end, and then nothing would get done.

Transitioning Conundrum

There are many things in life that cannot be fully taught and have to be experienced by a person to know everything about them. This is true with things like having friends abandon a person, dealing with a divorce, and having to run suicide sprints at a soccer practice. Sure, you can learn things about these subjects and gain a base knowledge of what typically happens, but until a person experiences them all they will have is just that base knowledge and nothing of the true feelings that come forth in those situations when they are experienced. One experience, however, is the one that every high school senior dreads: the great transition from grade school into their early adult lives.

The reason for the concern is actually quite simple: the majority have no idea what’s next for them. Sure, there’s college, but college is the equivalent of another world for a group of people who have been together since high school. While moving up the ranks in grade school, it’s not nearly as daunting as it could be since a person has the knowledge that they’ll be in the (relative) same place, not be far from their childhood home, and have confirmed friends on the first day. The transition to college, however, completely dumps all of these out the window. Friends are more than likely going to different colleges in different areas of the nation and even the world that will most likely be miles away from their parent’s home.

This is why the transition to college is daunting, but if a person were to choose not to go to college I can only imagine how daunting it is for them. Without a higher education than a high school diploma, how will they provide for themselves and get what they’ve always wanted without having to work at a job they don’t like? Are they really confident they don’t want to deal with a couple years more of school and have a confirmed relatively well-paying job?

While both of these lists go on, the overall reason it’s so daunting transitioning from one chapter of life to the other is because of the drastic change that can be unpredictable to some and only overpredicted to others. All I wish is that, no matter what path we all choose, we all have fun and enjoy life no matter what, even if we have more research assignments or more checks to balance.

Another Psychological Conundrum

There was a recent article given to me by my professor about how friendships between adolescent boys can be more powerful and have more of an impact on those involved than what was originally thought possible. The article talked about how teenage boys use their friendships with others of their kind to not only socialize but to also share their securities and insecurities with in order to mutually boost their mental state. However, the article goes on to show that this can lead to disastrous mental consequences for both parties involved if the relationship is either destroyed entirely or is seen by some on the outside as something to make fun of and take advantage of in their pestering of any involved parties of the relationship. In the end, those involved are left with an “open hole” that shows their insecurities (and we all know how males handle signs of weakness, unfortunately). Quite frankly this article really resonated with me not just because my general demographic is concerned in it, but because I’ve found this to be true throughout my life. People in my demographic often have friends in order to share insecurities and talk about them in a way that boosts their overall happiness and, when that connection goes away they begin to feel all different types of psychological effects that can hurt them for a little while or (more often) permanently damage their abilities to socialize and carry on with life. This article also resonates with me because I’ve been there and done that before to the point where I sorta have it in my moral code as the number one thing not to do to someone, male or female (unless it’s not mutual like the article discussed, of course). In short the article is right in saying that it’s an issue when people break off their friendships or are made fun of for having them and should be addressed appropriately. 

Contemplating College

There was a recent article posted to a news website that would catch most of any high school student’s eye. The article was about whether or not college is worth going to anymore in this day in age. This question has been proposed throughout the school community for decades. With all the talk of parents and relative having massive student debt and just barely being able to scrape by despite having a college degree under their belt, it doesn’t seem at first like college is a very economical option. However, the article that I found begs to differ from this point of view. In fact, it even goes on to state how the US needs more college graduates now in order to fix the economic standpoint of most high schoolers. The reason most people see college as uneconomical is because a degree doesn’t always mean a person will succeed in life, but it does go lengths to closing the wage gap there is between college graduates with a degree and high school graduates without a degree. The reason this happens is because there are not enough college graduates to fill all of the roles open in the economy of America and thus a gap in pay is present. Another point the article made was that if someone were to get a degree in college, of any level, that the cost of that degree in the long run would balance out to be negative 500,00 dollars (meaning that a person would  get more money out of a college degree than what they paid for in the beginning). Personally, I’ve always wanted to go to college no matter the cost, but this article has even further reaffirmed my views on going to college in these times of great uncertainty amongst myself and my peers.  

Chilly Concerns

I was recently given an article involving how certain school districts close more often for certain amounts of snow and just how diversified across the nation this was for all school districts. The results told in the article were surprising to me, since it turns out that school districts in heavily-snowed areas actually close LESS OFTEN than schools in either moderate or lightly-snowed areas of the United States. Although, to a degree, this is understandable. If people live in a climate that has a particular set of weather patterns they will more than likely be better prepared to deal with those patterns than an area with less of that climate’s weather patterns. For instance, the nordic scandinavians have been dealing with an intensely snowy and blizzard-like climate since practically the beginning of time. Since those who could not survive the harsh winters died, the majority of scandinavians in the past were usually hearty and used to the cold to the point where it hardly bothered them anymore. Just like in early scandinavia, certain states are better equipped to deal with heavy snowstorms. Some have altered snowplows to make them more efficient or quicker, have developed new methods of controlling ice on the roads, and have alternate ways of getting from place to place that isn’t hampered by snow (underground metro trains, etc.). In other words, they have adapted to deal with freak snowstorms more often since that’s the climate they live in while states that live in a warmer climate will be easily hampered by snow since they aren’t use to having to constantly deal with it. This would explain why school districts in heavily-snowed areas close for the snow less often than school districts in lightly or moderately snowed areas; those in lightly snowed areas simply aren’t used to that kind of climate.