Cringe. By Owen Welsh

Even my captions were awful

If you've ever written something before, (which I'm sure at least a few of you have) you know that after a period of time, say six months or so, if you look back at it you'll think "Wow what was I thinking, god this is awful.". This happens without fail to most things we do, as soon as a hobby becomes uninteresting we quickly grow detached and repulsed by the idea of ever being a part of that community. Yet even if we recognize this vicious cycle of love to hatred, we still repeat it day after day and year after year until suddenly you're in your mid-fifties with your kids moving out and you realize that you pushed away every friend you did have just to satisfy the wants of other people.

But I can't just let you sit through the ramblings of 15 year-old High Schooler without some sort of anecdotal evidence to back up my claim. If you took a cursory glance at this blog back around October of 2016, you would have noticed a post entitled, "Desks are important too!" It even included an exclamation mark in the title to show my faux enthusiasm for the topic of desks. Reading through it now, I can tell you that the content is mediocre at best, the post just states lists and the reasons why I selected a particular part of each list, not quite the next Tolstoy. Though at the time I felt as though Shakespeare had risen out of his grave and possessed my pale and dainty hands as I wrote the ballad of desks in an English classroom. Looking back at my sonnet now, however, tells me how I'd be insulting any famous writer by even thinking about comparing my work to theirs.

Yet I still fall into the same trap as before, I still look at my work now as if it is the best thing I'll ever write in my time on this pale blue dot, even as I know that by the time the school starts up again I'll forget about my current feelings and look upon this very blog post with disgust and disdain. The frustration this realization causes is unimaginable, the fact that your best work will never actually be your best work kills all motivation to continue, and is the basis of the philosophy of Nihilism. Nihilism states that if you aren't furthering anything with your actions, you shouldn't do it, yet by pursuing these futile attempts at writing, I'm furthering myself to become a better writer and thus eclipse my previous ideas. So I resign myself to this infinite cycle of progression and disdain towards my erroneous ways, as the only thing a person can do is to endeavor to try.

Desks are important too! By Owen Welsh

      Desks, everyone uses them, and if you're like me, then you want the best desk possible, preferably one next to a heater or with some sort of beautiful view of nature, you get the picture. So naturally both my curiosity and interest were piqued when Mrs. Kopp mentioned new desks were arriving, my mind dared to hope for one of the new whiteboard desks. Acquiring one of these new desks was merely step one to achieving ultimate comfort while in my English class. Three more factors had to be considered; people, location, and view, allow me to elaborate on each of these. First we have people, which mainly boils down to who will be with you at your desk or in close proximity, I would want to stay near to the people I started out sitting with, as they don't smell badly and I can't confirm that for any of the other students. Moving onto location, this is simply where the desk will be placed, there are three good locations for a desk; by the door, by a window, and by a heater. Each of these three locations offer their own individual services for your pleasure, being by the door means being the first one out when the bell rings, usually a very critical thing to have, however I don't have to travel far for my next class so it doesn't really matter. Next on the list is having your next located near a window, it seems like a no brainer to have that beautiful view of the Sparta High School parking lot,    but I maintain that it would be a distraction in the long run, so being by a heater is my preferred option for those cold winter days. Finally the last factor is view, so what constitutes a good view of the teacher, and the board at large? Well there is a few things to consider, such as distance and the height of people in front of you, ideally I would be at the centre back, not too close to be constantly called upon, not too far to able to properly see. After considering all these factors, I realized that the perfect location was to the west as I walked into the room, now this desk already had inhabitants and the new desks had already been placed elsewhere, so I'll have to settle with taking the best chair in the room and sitting at my normal, whiteboard-less desk.

 A picture of a beautiful, whiteboard-less desk.