Outside reading

For this outside reading I want to do a summary on the book Someone Like You by Sara Dessen. Someone Like You is about two very different best friends Halley and Scarlettet. Scarlette is the more bold, daring and out going one while Halley is more shy and keeps to herself. But these girls seem to have a friendship that is stronger and more meaningful than most. When Scarlettes love ,Michael Sheerwood, is killed in a motorcycle accident and she finds out she is carrying his baby their friendship only grows stronger. Scarlettes mother was a teen mom too but she doesn't want the same life for her daughter so she kind of stays out of it. Halley had to learn how to go out of her confort zone to help Scarlette go through all the rough patches in her life. It seemed like it was very difficult for her but she did it cause of the love for her best friend. There is a quote on the back of the book that says " Life is an ugly, awful place not to have a best friend." Someone Like You does a good job displaying he meaning of that quote beacause Scarlettes life would have been twenty times harder if she didn't have a shoulder to cry on or someone to put a smile on her face. I believe that with friends by your side anything is possible and this book shows you just how true that is.

Outside reading

For this outside reading a read a book called Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard. This book is about four girls who have tons of secrets to hide and suddenly it seems like all of their secrets - big and small are spilling out. Spencer , Aria , Emily and hanna are all gorgeous girls with ugly problems. Spencer has a cruch on her sisters boyfriend and steals one of the papers her sister wrote and turns it in as her own, Aria is fooling around with a teacher, Emily likes the new girl who just moved to their school and hanna is doing weird things to stay pretty. These girls try to do everything they can to keep their dirty little secret hidden until an anonymous person who calls themself "A" is blackmailing them and revealing all of their secrets. The girls don't know who the person is but they have a good idea. They think it could be the beauty queen Alison that disappeard a few years back. Spencer Aria Emily and Hanna do what they can to find out who "A" is and sometimes it ends up putting them in bad situations. With all these secrets surfacing the girls have to relive their pasts to figure out why its happenning. This book is full of excitment and thrills but you will have to read the book to find out what happens next!

Outside reading

Since it’s the New Year I decided to blog about the top ten new years resolutions for 2009.
-Make more time for family and friends
-Quit smoking
-Start exercising
-Go back to school / take a class
-Get out of debt
-Advance in career, make more money
-Get into philanthropy and community involvement
-Quit drinking
-Lose weight
-Get out of a bad relationship / find true love

Most people make new years resolutions and only follow them for about a week or so but a resolution won't work unless it comes from the heart and its something that you actually want to do. Picking a resolution from the top ten list might not work for you because it's just the most popular one not the one that works for everyone. Also a lot of these resolutions aren't something you can just say you want to do without putting time and effort into doing. You have to really want to make a difference in your life for you, not for others. Thats when things start to go bad and resolutions fall through. One of the resolutions i have is to be a better person. I'm not trying to be a better person to please others but rather for myself. A new year is a time to make changes for yourself and to reflect on changes you can make to become a better you.

Outside reading

I recently watched the Christmas Shoes which is a story about a little boy that wants to buy a pair of shoes for his dying mom, Maggie Andrews and about a lawyer , Robert Layton, who is a workaholic trying to repair his marriage. Its really about two separate stories until the end when the families get meshed together by fate. The Christmas shoes does a good job telling the magic of Christmas and whats its really about. Christmas isn't about what you get and how much of it you get but that its about what you give and spending time with the ones you love. I think this movie has a really good message because the lawyer,Robert, took everything he had for granted until he saw the little boy try to buy the shoes for his mom but didn't have enough money so Robert gave him enough money to get the shoes. This good deed taught Robert that the littlest of things can make a big difference in someones life. It also taught him that the holidays are about spending time with loved ones and not about making tons of money. After fate brought this little boy into his life to teach him a lesson, Robert made changes in his life to become a better person and be with his family more. I think this movie is a great holiday movie with a good moral and also a great life lesson in general.

Outside reading

"Dogs are miracles with paws."Susan Kennedy. I have grown up with dogs my whole life and they really can do wonderful things. One of my dogs ,chance,that I have had since I was six is close to passing away and this quote had made me realize how much he is a part of my life and how much I love him. Chance is a black lab with a white star on his chest. My whole family believes that the star is there because he loves to be in the spot light. If you are petting another dog or doing something near him he will bark and bark until you pay attention to him. One of his favorite things is cake at birthday parites, when we sing the birthday song he will bark along to it. He does such a great job barking along that we reward him with a slice of cake afterwards. Dogs may not be able to talk or help around the house but they are such great companions that those things really dont matter, what matters is having them in your life. I believe that everyone deserves to have an animal in their life because they honestly are miracles with paws.

Outside reading

I recently read an article intitled "Facebook Users With Lots of Friends More Likely To Be Narcissists " where researchers looked at how the amount of friends a Facebook user has is coorilated with there sense of self importance. The researchers had hypothesized that users with a large amount of Facebook friends, usually over 1,000 would have a much higher degree of self importance and an inflated self image, compared to users that did not have as many Facebook friends. The researchers were right; those with a higher amount of Facebook friends were a lot more likely to be narcissistic than those with less Facebook friends. They interviewed there test subjects and studied there Facebook pages to come to this conclusion. I also have a facebook but i would not consider myself a narcissists because i feel facebook is a place to connect with friends not a place to boast about popularity. People blur the line between reality and the virtual world on facebook. There is no way you could look at someones profile and know what is really going on in their life because facebook allows poeple to candy coat the truth and make their lives look great by posting picture and videos that reflect that. I disagree that you should be considered a narcissist by what your profile reflects, it should be judged on your real life actions not virtual actions.

Outside reading

The article that I read is called The Myth of the Scholarship from the Star Tribune today, Sunday December 14. It is the first article in a three part series. I thought this article was very interesting because people are always talking about kids getting scholarships for athletics to college, but few people know the real story behind these scholarships. And, the real story is that most of these athletes just get a little money not a entire college scholarship. I thought that was interesting because in the article it says that many people believe that if a college is interested in you coming to play a sport for them that they pay your entire college costs. This article goes on to explain that this is just not true. The article highlights the reality of college sports scholarships and the exact number of how many are available and says that over 60 percent of college NCAA players do not receive any scholarship money at all. I thought the article was very interesting because whenever you hear about someone playing a sport in college then you assume that their entire tution is being covered by an athletic scholarship. I think it is good for parents and students to know that this is just not true with some of the less popular sports like baseball. The article said that talking about scholarships is similar to people talking about their salaries so that people never really get to know what other people are getting.