hipincognito

• Alvin
• Caroline
• Cindy
• Jen
• Kayla
• Locyan
• Mandy
• Michelle J.
• Michelle S.
• Minh
• Monica
• Rowena
• Serena
• Sharon

let me first say that i do not think that Miley Cyrus is going to turn into Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears because of a few pictures.

i think it was a mistake. she shouldn’t have taken those pictures. but come on. it’s frakkin Annie Leibowitz here! the amazing photographer who’s famous for taking pictures of semi-nude celebrities. Miley Cyrus thought they’d be artsy. she wasn’t trying to be a bad girl and rebel against anything. i think the media are blowing things way out of proportion.

and as for the argument that she’s fifteen and shouldn’t be taking those pictures. well, if she’s fifteen, why don’t you treat her like a fifteen-year-old and forgive her for one goddamn mistake. she can’t always be the squeaky clean Daddy’s little girl that Disney makes her out to be.

i was talking about this with my dad. i told him that, you know, Americans expect their celebrities to be perfect. they put them on this high pedestal and then crush them once they make one mistake. and he said it’s the same for politicians. who gives a fuck whether the president had an affair? noo, the American people have to have their pristine politicians. and we’re all shocked when they make a mistake…

she’s goddamn fifteen. ever made a mistake when you were fifteen? yeah? well, imagine if it were magnified 10,000 times for the whole world to see. then think about how you would feel.

so when i asked Emily what i should write about, she said “the school’s constant bribes for the students in exchange for higher test scores equating to a higher API.” that reminded me of something related: intrinsic motivation.

“ahh!” say the Psychology students, right? that was a vocab word from a few chapters ago but i think it’s in the same field as Emily’s topic.

to be successful in school, i honestly don’t think you need intrinsic motivation, the drive to do things for the sake of it, and not for some external thing like money or prizes and whatnot. in high school, you can do what you have to to get the good grades that will go on your college application. i’m sure that’s what most students do. memorize the information for the test and then forget it. join a club because it will look good on your application. i’ve done it.

but what i’ve been learning this year is that high school is so much more fun when you are intrinsically motivated, when you want to learn for the sake of it. you don’t need those prizes that the administration boasts you’ll get. that’s not the point. the point is to push yourself, to have the drive to make yourself study every day for a test that you’ll take in two weeks, or make yourself work extra hard on that presentation in a class you don’t like.

but for most, that’s just too goddamn hard. so the administration needs to motivate them somehow. is it working? who knows?