Chapter 12: New Year Blues.

Hey folks,


Whilst browsing, watching and reading the pieces of information that we have filling our newspapers, airwaves and internet(s) I have seen a lot of pieces about young people and articles that discuss the varying levels of stress that we are experiencing.

The first article that caught my eye was on the cover of the i. Another copy of this article can be found here.
The fear of failure that young people have is ingrained in them by the educational establishment. The secondary school that I attended had an unevenly imposed policy that was controlled by individual teachers but the policy involved refusing to place students in exams if they thought that the student would not get a decent grade. There was also a complete reluctance by some departments to effectively deliver the educational support/requirements that some of their students required. I know of this for my own brother was not given support in a specific class room and the teacher was repeatedly giving him detention. I informed the teacher that an autistic child is meant to have a T.A with him at all times. The teacher was shocked by this and I was infuriated at the lack of communication taking place.

The real frustration for me was that I was witnessing numerous students being left to fall through the gaps. When a student falls through the gaps:

1. They might feel overburdened by their work.
2. Become too scared to ask for help.
3. Feel isolated because they can not understand the work.
4. Lose faith in the whole education system.
5. Fail exams.

Our culture holds up our educational system as the means to all ends.
We actively maintain a culture within our schools that pushes students to apply for university.
Headteachers will and have held assembly that last for over 30 minutes in which they will lay out the benefits of a university education to students. (A 30 minute pitch to sell a product that may not even work). Often the head would discuss the differences between a graduates salary and a non-graduates salary.

Students that are underachieving at school are not afraid of failure however because as far as our educational system is concerned...they have already failed.

I knew of one teacher that joked about how students that refuse to study should learn the following words "Do you want fries with that? Do you want fries with that?".

 Please note that  I have never met a teacher that saw a student as a failure. Every teacher wants their student(s) to succeed. This blog is my personal reflections upon the relationship that our culture has with our educational establishment . Our culture and our educational system refuse to actively engage with career planning, alternative routes and financial management. We discuss them but the greatest light is shone upon the university path and our educational establishments are inherently incapable of advising students about alternative routes as the advisers have walked down the university path...they know

500 words and I have not even mentioned bullying. To save us both a lot of time please do the following.

1. Draw something on a piece of paper.
2. Scrunch up that paper, mash it around. Create an origami swan if you have the skill.
3. Did you do that?
4. Scroll down.











5. Try to make that picture flat again. Try to make the paper as smooth and uncreased as possible.
6. Did it work?

That picture is probably wrecked and the paper is no doubt looking a mess.
With all the stress caused by our educational system and bullying thrown in as well you often end up with a lot of damaged folks walking out of school. Regardless of grades I know people from across the board that are still haunted by some of their experiences.

All this and we have not even looked at the hostile job market, the hostility that the elder generations have towards those in their 20s & 30s and a whole myriad of inter-tangled issues that would take an age to dissect. Thankfully we have something that no other generation has...we have the internet and the ability to communicate across vast distances and share our reflections about the age we live in.

I think that the stress that young people face will continue to get worse whilst we refuse to create an infrastructure built around providing jobs. I feel that our society has lost a spiritual focal point and that without a grand dream to unify us we will continual to bicker amongst ourselves and the world will be robbed from beneath us by the generations that came before us..

One of my dreams involves helping my family move forward. My new found income enables me to sweep away any potential issues with ease and that ability...is something we should all have. Freedom from the fear of being crushed by basic requirements is something we should all have. I know many that look at freedom of movement, freedom of security and the freedom from basic wants as a dream and to think that the human race has been around for so long and that such basic things are still dreams disturbs me. To think that half a year ago those were my dreams as well terrifies me.

Right now I am working on a dozen things and this blog was meant to be short.
I hope you are all doing well and if things seem dark then look up at the sky as it means the stars might be out. It is better to become lost in thoughts whilst staring at something beautiful than to become stuck in thoughts that creep in from the darkness that is behind us.

Have a great week,
Take care and speak soon,

The Common Sense Eccentric

Chapter 11: The Great Thing about Blogging.

Good morning everyone,

Today's blog focuses upon one question: Why Bother Blogging?

The internet is awash with information and you would probably need Moses to help you walk a straight line without getting swept away by the sheer volume of content that exists on here. This issue of content overload caused me to think twice before creating a blog when I was teenager because I asked myself:


1. Would anyone hear me?
2. What would I talk about?
3. Where do I start?

The first two questions are the easiest to answer:

1. Yes. If you post links to your blog upon social networking sites.
    Yes. Even if you do not post links there is a chance that people may stumble upon your blog.
2. A blog represents your own space and therefore you are free to talk about whatever issues, people or places are presently pushing you to ponder at length. As a graduate of International Relations and someone that works within the educational sector I often find myself thinking about politics and the future.

My blogs represent how I am currently perceiving the world around me. My blog is just about seeing whether other folks can offer me other ways of looking at the world and I like to hope that I am able to help folks see things in a different light as well.

There are other blogs out there that range from movie reviews, fan fiction about other works of fiction, knitting, dancing, fashion, fishing, philanthropy, travel, cooking and this list could go on forever. There are even blogs about lists!

Blogging is a way for you to express yourself and do not fear about any backlash/criticism.
Partly because that is a risk we take by existing anyway. Secondly this blog has over 1,000 views and the majority of comments I have received are pretty supportive or concern issues that I have overlooked. A previous blog that I used to write had over 10k views, a few hundred comments and the only negative response I ever had was from someone that disliked my long hair as opposed to whatever it was I had written.

Blogging is a great way to express yourself. Vlogging works well too if you have the time/energy to invest in a camera and feel confident enough to do that sort of thing. I currently lack the time for vlogging and feel that I would need more structure to vlog because half the time these blogs are just my thoughts meandering across the page. I doubt my style would carry across as well into a video format.

Whatever you choose to do with your time on the net make sure to give blogging a go.

This was Bailey

Thank you for reading,
Have a great week/week end.

P.S This is a published by unedited blog. If you are reading this it is because I lazy and just hit the publish button before I had a chance to proofread. There is a save to draft option but meh.

Chapter 10:Why I walked away from online gaming.

Hey folks,

I recently decided to quit online gaming. Those that know me might be thinking;

"Bailey? Seriously? But why...what else do you do?"

Well I do...do other things but it is true that I wasted my time on games when I could have been do something more constructive. A dear friend once said that they like to wake up early so half the day is not wasted/gone. The problem with games like League of Legends (Average game between players can take anything from 20 minutes to 1 hour!) Is that if you play one or two games you  can find so much you day wasted.

I think that if I refrained from gaming whilst hunting for work and took up something like reading or writing or painting than I may not have been so miserable or felt so unproductive. Some online games have you grind repetitive tasks in an attempt to get something cool within the game. Usually whatever you unlock would make the game more fun or give you abilities that other players lack. Some games take this "grind" to an extreme level. There are the horror stories of students  dying from dehydration due to overplaying a game but they are probably suffering from psychological addiction. I have seen folks like that, not dying but in pretty bad states. 0___o

One game I quit a while ago (last year) I referred to as "my stupid little card game". That card game is on Kongregate and if it was a game of Chess then half the pieces would be Queens and both players would want to smash the board. I won tournaments but I do not feel that my life has been enriched by playing games such as League of Legends or Tyrant (the card game).

I played because these games have a hook. Just for logging in each day you tend to receive something that helps you out with something you are already doing within that game. In League of Legends you are given tokens that help you unlock Champs that would normally takes a dozen games (480 minutes) to unlock.

I sat down the other day and read through some more of The Count of Monte Cristo. I read Chapter 38 of Volume 2 in about the same length of time that a league game would have taken. Within those pages I visited some Coliseum, an old yet remarkable beautiful hotel, I witnessed bandits kidnap a man and within that same chapter the same man was rescued by the main character! Within those pages I saw gentleman, damsels and cultural references that I did not quite comprehend. A book gave me more within a few pages than what League of Legends...or card games have given me in years.

Within that same length of time on League of Legends I would have been screamed at by other players...or witnessed other players shouting at other players. I would have done something repetitive and eventually have gotten nowhere because the whole game is about repeating the same process.

I am certain that if I spent  the same amount of time on other things as I have done on gaming I could probably accomplish some neat things. When I was teaching I took my students on adventures through snake infested islands, practised some theatre, sang Lady Gaga songs (not my  cup of tea but you have to meet the kids half way sometimes) and I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

When I see "Achievement Unlocked" after doing something on a game I now wonder to myself:

"What else could I be doing with my time?"

I could have been talking to someone close, I could have been talking  with my mother about the family and her dissertation, I could  researching eating disorders and assisting my mother in getting my brother to eat properly. (So far I just keep bringing him sammiches but there must be some literature regarding Autism and Eating issues).

I guess I played games because it was easier to sit there and effectively do nothing than get up and try something even though I might fail. At school I did not feel confident in my abilities as a student and so I used video games as an escape because within that fantasy world one's own perceived faults do not exist and you are an entirely different person. I think with each day I spent interacting with ones and zeros though I lost sight of the real people I ought to be interacting with.

Games come and go but so do human beings and I know which of those two I would rather hold onto.
It kind of stings that it took me a while to realise this but I recently received a shock that brought this epiphany about. I am also working on other things besides simply quitting gaming but I will save my constructive ideas for another blog.

Thank you for reading,
Have a great weekend,

Michael

p.s

Naturally I have a lot of friends that are gamers and so I understand if there is a backlash . This is purely my own personal experiences unfolding and what you have read dear reader are my reflections.