Meta Post!

After a full year of blogging, I am happy to report that my blog post, "Old Money... New Money?", is not only my favorite blog post of fourth quarter, but also of the year. While many of my other blog posts were just about random topics I found interesting, in "Old Money... New Money?" I actually drew connections between The Great Gatsby and my personal life. This post is my strongest because of how well I analyzed a theme in piece of literature, related it to modern America,and took specific examples from my own life.

In this post, I analyzed a quote from The Great Gatsby and concluded that one reason Nick Carraway felt resentment towards Jay Gatsby was because Jay was considered new money, unlike Nick. I then dove deeper into the difference between "new" and "old" money, the main difference being how someone earned their money and the number of connections they have in the upper class. I started analyzing how my community and my family fit the definition of "old money".

In my post, I say, "My father, like many New Trier parents, grew up in this district". The fact that my father grew up on the north shore and then returned is just one indicator that Winnetka has "old money". This continues the "old money" cycle. I then used that personal connection to my father to explore how money and connections makes the class system in America more rigid. It is hard to move up with out connections so "old money" communities keep their connections strong.
I have loved blogging this year and I can see how much stronger of blogger I have become. I see the world in a new way and continue to ask myself:"Why do Americans do this?" "Has it always been that way?" and "Will it ever change?"

Citizen Kane Transcript!

Some people mentioned in class today that the movie transcript to Citizen Kane may be of use to them so I thought I'd post it here for anyone who wants to use it!

The full Citizen Kane transcript can be found here.
Happy writing!

Hush Hush

If there is one thing that fascinates me, it is how sex and sexuality is treated in the United States today. So how 'bout it? Let us talk about sex.

Hush Hush Playbill

What really sparked this post was Hush Hush, a short played performed by a class of senior New Trier theatre students during the Spring Plays Festival on Saturday, May 19th. Hush Hush is an original devised work, a "documentary-style" type of theatre, and is a compilation of stories and interviews all concerning sex and sexuality; the underlying question being: What does sex mean to you? 

Although this production contained powerful stories about first love, homosexuality, virginity, and even sexual assault, I found the title of the play the most interesting. "Hush Hush" connotes an unspoken quality about sex, and suggests that the action is too vulgar to openly address. In reality, sex is one of the most natural and instinctual things humans do, but for some reason, our society has seemingly pegged it as something inappropriate and indecent. The image presented on the poster and the playbill (right) depicts a woman with a finger over her mouth and, again, suggests the shushed attitude toward sex.
So why is sex almost always hushed? Why do we, as Americans, feel compelled to keep it secretive?

Some might argue sex is quieted because it is a private, personal, and intimate action done between two people, and although I agree with all of those things, talking about sex is still avoided even in necessary situations because it is so often thought of as "naughty".
In one of the stories incorporated in Hush Hush, a girl shared her story about sexual assault, but confessed that she did not tell anyone about the incident because she did not want to be labeled a "slut". She kept it a secret because she feared others would find her indecent, and silenced her pain because sex is something a young girl does not talk about, nonetheless do,  openly.

So when does it become okay to talk about sex? Why is it censored in the first place?

Butch or Beautiful

Picture taken from The Great Gatsby, the film

"At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower" (111), says Nick Carraway in F. Scoot Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Nick describes Daisy's behavior as Jay Gatsby romantically kisses her one cool autumn night, and describes her dainty actions as being "like a flower". Upper class women of this era (1920s), such as Daisy Buchanan, were often expected to be proper, pretty, and lady-like nearly 100% of the time, and these established gender roles are often referenced throughout the novel. Though the expectations for women seem to be very different today, gender roles have by no means vanished in today's world.

Believe it or not, the idea for this post came to me after reading blog post by fellow American Studies student, Nate Goss. Goss wrote an interesting post about women athletes competing on men's sports teams and questioned whether or not that practice should be allowed. Although I could delve into that argument, I am more interested in the gender roles female athletes face today.
As a female athlete myself, I receive a lot of comments about how I look or act because I am athletic. To give you some more context, I play softball, and any softball player knows (and probably most of you), we often get associated with words like "butch" or "buff" because surprise, surprise-- softball players have muscles (gasp!).
Despite the fact that it is extremely common for girls to compete in sports in today's society, we still get ridiculed for being strong or muscular--  as if those things make us less womanly. Are gender roles more embedded into our society than we previously thought? Or is possible to be a beautiful flower and a buff softball player?

$ Old Money...New Money? $

"I disapproved of him from beginning to end" (154), says Nick Carraway about Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzergald's The Great Gatsby. In class, we discussed the possible reasons why Nick "disapproved" of Gatsby for the duration of their relationship and we found that one reason was because Gatsby was considered "new money".

Gatsby did not come from a wealthy family, unlike Nick. According to Nick, the Carraway family has been "prominent, well-to-do people... for three generations" (3), and the fact that Gatsby did not come from a "well-to-do" family, like his own, suggests that Nick disapproves of Gatsby for his non-traditional, showy, and luxurious lifestyle.

Though this story takes place in the "roaring twenties", a time where social classes were rigidly separated, the idea of new money vs. old money is still apparent in today's society. For example, the Village of Winnetka's roots trace back to the mid 1800s and has since become one of those most affluent towns in the United States. I am very thankful to live in such a comfortable community, but I am even more thankful for the connections that an "old money"(esque) community offers. Not only have I gone to fantastic schools, but my family and friends know people who can help me get into certain colleges, land certain internships, and eventually, get certain jobs. Conversations about how "so-and-so" is an alum of that prestigious school out east, and how "what's-her-face" is the vice president of that big company you'd love to work for, are frequent in my household.

As evidenced by my own family, many members of this community have lasting ties to the community and the New Trier district school system. My father, like many New Trier parents, grew up in this district, got an outstanding education in college and graduate school, became successful, and then decided to raise his children in the same environment.
This cycle is not uncommon in this community by any means. It makes sense, right? Any man would want to raise a family in the same place he found success. But does this cycle make it harder for people of lower class to rise up? Moving up in society is often about who you know and what connections you have, so if you have no connections in the upper class, how does that effect the odds of moving up?

Ace that Test?

Does acing a test mean you know or understand the subject matter? You might be able to fool a teacher into thinking so (I use"might" loosely), but as a student I will admit to acing tests I hardly understand; I crammed for the test, spat back all the information, got the A, and forgot it all.


The idea that testing is an effective form of assessment puzzles me. This is, in part, the reason I chose to write my junior theme on the SAT because I question if the test actually measures anything important- other than the student's ability to take the test with out necessarily understanding how to apply the material.

This theme is mirrored in Don Delillo's White Noise as the main character Jack Gladney, head of the "Hitler Studies" deapartment at "The College on the Hill", struggles to learn to speak German. Although Jack "did wonderfully well with vocabulary and rules of grammar" and  "could have passed a written test easily, made top grades" he "continued to have trouble pronouncing the words" (165). In this passage, DeLillo comments on how someone could make "top grades", but still not be able to apply the material. In Jack's case, he's able to memorize vocabulary and grammar, but knowing that information is all in vain if he still can't speak German. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure language is meant to be spoken.

I'm not trying to say that all tests are pointless, we obviously need a way to assess academic achievment, but is testing the best method?

Rewarded for Your Genes

As some of you may know, I've decided to write my junior theme on why standardized tests are used in the college admission process- specifically the SAT. The SAT faces a lot of criticism becasue many believe it to be biased towards certain racial and ethnic groups. It's no mystery that there have been consistant scoring gaps between races and ethnic groups, but that's not the only criticism it faces (Zwick). Many now wonder what the SAT actually measures or rather what it should measure.
The SAT originally stood for "Standardized Aptitude Test", but was later changed to "Standardized Assessment Test" until College Board finally dropped the name all together and is now just the "SAT".
This is where the problem lies. The College Board, owner of the SAT, claims that the test "is a relatively good predictor of how students will do in their first year of college" rather than an IQ test of sorts, but if the test was originally designed to measure "aptitude" or innate intelligence, how are we sure it still doesn't just reward good genes today?
Just from personal experience, I know plenty of people who did extraordinarily well on the ACT or SAT, but have a very low GPA considering. These are people I know are exeptionally bright students, but just don't follow through on school work. So does the SAT/ACT reward them for their genetic brilliance? 
I will admit to being a hardworker with average test scores and I'll also admit that standardized tests have always frustrated me for that reason. But innate capabilites are rewarded all the time so why no the SAT too? A prime example of this would be sports. Some people are natural athletes with incredible physical capabilities, and therefore benefit from their athletic genes. The same goes for high scoring test takers. They were born with great genes and benefit from the academic system greatly because of it.
So... is that wrong? Or is just "playing the system"?
Perhaps the real question we should be asking is whether or not college admission directors use test scores in their admission process. Should they be looking for hard workers? Or simply naturally brilliant minds?

Calling all Colleges

This year, I spent spring break on the road visiting colleges, and after visiting 7 schools I am thoroughly exhausted and even more confused. While all these schools look for slightly different things on a potential student's application, they all claimed that the transcript was the most important component. That seems fair, right? Colleges should be looking for students who work hard and take rigorous courses.

But just when I thought I was in the clear, they uttered the words I hate hearing: "...oh but we also require either the SAT or the ACT as well". 

This frustrates me on a couple of levels and intrigues me at the same time. I'm so interested in the idea of standardized testing that I've actually decided to write my junior theme on it. The reason I find this debate so interesting is because I don't know why so many colleges require some form of testing on their applications. Do they think it's a fair way of determining or gauging intelligence? I have consistently heard from college admission boards that they are more interested in the hard working, driven student, than the kid with the photographic memory. But if college admissions are truly interested in the hard working student then why include testing scores at all?

According to iSeek Education, most 4-year universities "rely on standardized tests to determine your readiness for college–level study"  

Why do test scores determine one's "readiness"? I've always been told that working hard in high school is what prepares a student for college. Do you think a student with a 36 ACT score means he's ready for college?

The Biased SAT Test

I've decided to explore the topic of standardized tests as my junior theme topic, and I now find myself asking a lot of questions after researching this topic for the past few days. I want to direct my topic towards the SAT and why college admission officers use the scores from this test as a measure of intelligence when applying to colleges.

Many critics claim that that SAT is a biased test, and that the test specifically "appear[s] to be biased against the African American minority group". Due to the fact that higher SAT scores give access to higher education and subsequent job placement, African American SAT test takers are less likely to further their education or receive a higher income job. In other words, the SAT is drawing social class lines.  
Further in this article, the College Board claims that "the large gaps reflect the inequities in American society -- since black students are less likely than white students to attend well-financed, generously-staffed elementary and secondary schools, their scores lag."- Again, in other words, America is the unfair, not the test. 
Race biases are hugely debated in America, but where do you think the problem lies?
Do you find America and our education system to be unfair and account for these differences or do the test deficiencies account for this?

Let's Party: Project X

This past weekend I went out with a few of my friends to see Project X, a new movie about how a "small get together" turns into one of the craziest parties in history.
This movie is rated R for "crude and sexual content throughout, nudity, drugs, drinking, pervasive language, reckless behavior and mayhem- all involving teens", and I can tell you that all of that and more was present in this flim. Although I like to think that I rarely engage in "reckless behavior", this movie did a very good job of persuading the average viewer that this insanely unsafe and wild party was actually fun.

As seen in the trailer, this movie appeals to a younger crowd; attractive actors, loud music, illegal substances, and sexual content tells the audience to envy this careless and out of control lifestyle. Just as mentioned in the rating, almost everything about this movie is "crude" because crude humor is funny. Although the party thrower, Thomas Kub, ends up destorying his nieghborhood with multiple arrests, I left the movie wishing I was at that party.
The question I'm wondering is why? Why do Americans find crude humor funny? And why do we love to party, drink, have sex, and engage in "reckless behavior"?

Movies, music, books, magazines, and TV have all glorified getting drunk and having a crazy night at one point or another. Now don't think I'm trying to ban partying becasue I'd be lying if I said it didn't look fun, but why have we taught the upcoming generation that this is what fun looks like? What things have influenced me to make me envy (to some extent) this behavior?

Run of the Mill

My American Studies class is reading a book by Don Delillo, White Noise, a novel following the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of "Hitler Studies". In the first section of the book, "Waves and Radiation", Delillo addresses many themes regarding American life such as our culture's obsession with death and sex.

However, Delillo also addresses America's obsession with supplements when describing a conversation made between Jack and his step daughter Denise. After Denise asks Jack what daily supplements he uses, he tells her that he takes "blood pressure pills, stress pills, allergy pills, eye drops, aspirin. Run of the mill" (62). What initially struck me about this passage was not only that Jack takes so many pills, but that he finds his regiment  normal, or rather "Run of the mill".
I don't usually think about how many pills I take, but it's really shocking how many daily, or "normal", pills Americans have access to.
Using my household as an example, I can think of hundreds of pills, prescribed and over-the-counter, that fill our medicine cabinets. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, "at least half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug, with one in six taking three or more medications" (SOURCE).  If half of Americans take at least 1 prescription drug, how many of us take over-the-counter medication daily? With pain relievers, vitamins, and every pill imaginable on the market, I would say it's a lot higher than 50%.
So why does America seem to be the most medicated nation? In a nation with clean water, food, and basic needs easily accessible, I doubt it's because we need the most medication. Delillo constantly mentions the influences of the media scattered throughout daily life, and perhaps this is just another example of media influence.
Do we take pills because we need them, or because we're told we need them?

Look at how diverse we are!

Today in class we started discussing about "TV Tokenism" which, for those of you who don't know, is the unofficial requirement to have an equally diverse cast of actors on any given TV show. But tokenism doesn't just appear in TV. I've noticed more "diverse" ads, magazines, and health pamphlets just with in the past 12 hours.

I decided to do some digging on the Internet to uncover more examples of clearly forced portrayals of diversity, and came across a 2001 undergraduate application for the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

The picture on the right is the original picture taken at a university football game, but the picture on the left features an African American student (far left) that was not featured in the original photograph. 

I didn't think an acclaimed university would actually alter a photograph solely to appear more diverse to perspective students, but apparently, I was wrong! According to Snopes.com, the urban myth busting website, this rumor is TRUE. The African American student shown in the university application was photo shopped in after the picture was taken. 

I'm not naive. I understand that tons of institutions stage photos to appear diverse, but why have we made the jump from being truthful about our lack of diversity to staging fake diversity? I'm sure there are students of color at the University of Wisconsin, but why go the extra mile to appear more diverse then they actually are? Now I may be over thinking this, but doesn't it seem more racist to consciously insert a minority figure than it is to just use the original photo for what it is?

Life's short. Stay awake for it.

I love coffee, tea, chocolate, cola- anything that will get me up in the morning and out the door to early bird. Many of my friends and I are huge fans of Caribou Coffee, and after drinking there for years, I just started thinking about their slogan: "Life's short. Stay awake for it."

At first read, this slogan is effective and charming by implying that because life is short, you shouldn't waste time being tired, and that Caribou Coffee will help keep you from the richness of life. Besides being a very good marketing campaign, this slogan addresses America's addiction to caffeine and fast-paced lives.
I know that I, as well as many other American Studies students, have addressed this topic before, but I'd like to give a new hypothesis as to why we consume so much caffeine.
In addition to drinking coffee as a means of staying awake, coffee drinkers have also started using their coffee cup as a status symbol; it is now a way of saying "Look at me, I have coffee in my hand because I have important things to do, and I need to stay awake for them."
According to Ronald Troyer and Gerald Markle of Drake and Western Michigan University, "coffee confers adult status, since children are not allowed to drink it" (Coffee Drinking: An Emerging Social Problem?) These two professors suggest that coffee drinkers not only drink it for a boost of energy, but also as a way to distinguish themselves between adolescent and adult.
I have to agree with this hypothesis. More and more high schoolers drink coffee, and if you ask us why, almost all of us will say it's because we're tired; we're tired because we didn't get enough sleep, and we didn't get enough sleep because of our jam-packed schedules, and tremendous amount of school work.
Don't get me wrong, I know that many highschoolers are constantly short on sleep because of our work and activities, but is it possible that we use coffee as way of not only staying awake, but also as a way of reminding the world of how we work?

Quick Fixes

Are your jeans fitting tighter? Mine are too. Like many people, I put on a few extra pounds this winter due to my laziness and addiction to Christmas cookies, and now that spring is approaching, those pounds have to got to go! But nobody likes dieting, and as millions of Americans grow fatter, we're looking for the quick fix.

Even though we've all heard from our doctors that diet and exercise is the healthiest way to lose weight, we also know how impatient Americans can be. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Americans spend $40 billion a year on weight loss products, and these products range from books and exercise equipment, to food plans, diet foods and of course- weight loss pills/ supplements.

Although so many weight loss products don't work, we still can't stand waiting, and we look for the miracle fix. 

America's impatience didn't start with weight loss. As we finish up our Southern Reconstruction unit, I couldn't help but notice that America has had an obsession with "quick fixes" long before Jenny Craig. After the South lost the Civil War, radical reconstruction started to ensue. As explained in Foner's Give Me Liberty!, Africans Americans were give full rights, Confederate leaders were barred from office and the ballot box for life, and coalitions ruled the South. All of this occurred in a matter of 10-12 years after the Civil War, and when political and power roles quickly reversed, massive segregation started to emerge.

Although the ideals of Southern Reconstruction were with good intentions, the non-gradual plan ultimately did more harm than good. Americans wanted a quick solution to the problems that had been forming for decades, but refused to wait any longer. Yes, radical change was needed, but soon so fast?

Media Will Make a MAN Out of You

Today in class we talked about how the media constructs and sways the opinions the public. With the super bowl just passing, I thought about all the commercials that send subliminal messages to TV watchers.

What I came to realize was that commercials, as well as media in general, inadvertently send a lot of gender stereotype messages through their advertisements. For example, the Old Spice commercials are very popular commercials that specifically outline what it takes to be a man.

In the Old Spice Body Wash commercials, the "Old Spice Man" is half- clothed, very muscular, and has a deep seductive voice. He then lists all the things a man could smell like if he used Old Spice Body Wash. For example, Old Spice Man addresses the "ladies" and says, "Do you want a man who smells like he can bake you a gourmet cake in the dream kitchen he built you with his own hands?"

Even though this commercial is funny, it implies that only manly men do things like build kitchens with their "own hands" and smell like "adventure" (<- later mentioned in the commercial). Whether this advertisement means to or not, it sends a message to its viewer about the ideal man. Boys across America look at this commercial and assume they have to fit this rugged outline. But we all know the media goes well beyond commercials. Action movies, models, TV shows, and other advertisements all spend millions of dollars enforcing this manly mold.

So is this what a "man" is? Or is it what Americans want men to be?

Until It Hurts: Athletic Injuries in Youth

I play softball, and like many sports, I have to weight lift and condition to be in shape for season. Lifting sessions just started up again, and as my body aches, I wonder about the toll my sport takes on my body. Adolecents, like myself, have always played sports, but the increase in sport-related youth injuries is getting to alarming rates.

I found a two-year old article from Sports Illustrated that explained the sports injuries epidemic among today's youth. According to the article, more than "3.5 million children under age 15 suffered a sports injury that required medical treatment" in 2003 alone. These injuries are much more than a twisted ankle; youth althetes have been treated for serious injuries such as stress fractors, torn ACLs, and pinched nerves/ nerve damage. So what's causing these injuries? The answer is overuse.

Lyle Micheli, the youth sports medicine pioneer, estimates that of the 70 young patients who file into his clinic each Thursday at Children's Hospital Boston, 75% are victims of overuse injuries! Back in the early 1990s the figure was at about 20%.

These figures are astrounding, but are these numbers casued from kids pushing themselves too hard? Not according to Dr. John DiFiori, chief of sports medicine at UCLA's Comprehensive Sports Medicine Center. He claims that adults are the great enablers of overuse injuries, and that serious sports injuries didn't start emerging until parents started pushing their kids to limit.

So why do parents push their kids so hard? Perhaps their kid needs an athletic scholorship to go to college, or perhaps it's just for parent bragging rights, but either way, kids are pushed by their coaches and parents to win big and beat records. Every year sports records are set, and every year someone trys to break them. And everyone knows breaking a record means working harder than the guy who set it. I know Americans have a habit of wanting to be "the best", but I didn't know that being the best was worth the health of a child.

Blogging about blogging. META POST!

I find it hard to analyze my own writing because I always focus on all the little things I could improve upon, rather than what my piece is lacking as whole. In reviewing my works, there were many things I noticed about my writing, and more importantly, the evolution of my writing.

One of the first things I noticed after re-reading my posts was my lack of specific evidence, and how that detracted from the overall quality of my post. For example, in my very first blog post, "The Success Meter", I contemplate the different measures of success and compare an unknown rap artist/slam poet, George Watsky, to big time rap artists like Lil' Wayne or Big Sean. As I compare them, I mention that George Watsky's "songs are carefully crafted, and are real pieces of poetry", but offered no evidence to prove they were "carefully crafted" whatsoever. I easily could have included an excerpt from one of his poems, and analyzed it to prove the depth of his writing, but instead left it up to the reader to take my word for it. 


As my posts progressed, I started to include evidence, but I still lacked the necessary analysis of the evidence. It's just not enough to include it, but to explain it to the reader, and I clearly forgot that in my blog post titled: "Where did Lazy Sundays Go?" In this post, I talk about the  song "Mayberry" by Rascal Flatts, and discuss how American society has become so fast paced, and jam packed. In the post I pull out a line from the song that says: "Sunday was a day of rest, but now it's just one more day for progress". Although this is an improvement from my early blog posts, I still didn't analyze the actual words. I left the reader to assume the lines meaning, and although the line is fairly straight forward, everyone knows to show- not tell. I think this is a prime example of where a student thought she was analyzing a phrase by isolating it, but didn't actually discuss the meaning. 


Thankfully, this post is not all bad news. One aspect of my writing I've noticed is that I supported my argument, and wrote with better clarity when the post concerned a topic I wanted to write about. For example, one my strongest posts, "Above the Belt", was written right after I got home from a slam poetry reading, and I was so inspired by the poet, that I came home and blogged about it. In this post, I discuss a poem by Andrea Gibson entitled "Swing Set", and discuss gender labels in todays society. I took out one of Gibson's lines, and proceeded to analyze the word "self" as mentioned in the poem by saying: "Andrea suggests she is the truest definition of "self" when she claims to be the best example" and that "she doesn't feel she is either [a boy or a girl], and that's why she feels so rawly herSELF" I felt this post was not only strong because I liked writing it, but also because I took words out of her poem, analyzed them, and expanding on my point through my analysis.


After this analyzation of my writing, I feel the best way to improve it in the future is to just write about things that interest me. Although I try to avoid being a "hoop-jumper" type of student (i.e one that does all the work, but just for the sake of the grade), I don't plan on writing any more blog posts just to fill the weekly requirement. Clearly, I put more effort into supporting my claim when I care about the topic so why not pick something that actually sparks my interest? Although I know I will not have the luxury of writing about interesting topics all the time, I have the luxury here. So I shall blog away. 

Casey Anthony: Radioactive

Tonight, I started searching ABC news clips because although I should have been studying for my finals, and I found not only a way to avoid them, but also the latest video on Casey Anthony.

For those of you who are not familiar, Casey Anthony is a 22 year old woman who was accused of murdering her three year old daughter, Caylee in 2008, but despite the evidence proving her guilty, the Florida jury found her not guilty, and the case caused public outrage. 

However, she has been on probation for a few misdemeanors for several months, and has been serving those months in an undisclosed location. Casey has also been making "video diaries" on her computer, and the alleged "personal diaries were recently leaked. 

Although the leaked video of Casey Anthony was interesting in and of itself, what really struck me was the way ABC news framed the story. In the ABC news video, legal analyst Dan Abrams describes Casey Anthony as "radioactive". In saying this, Dan suggests Casey is unstable and dangerous. Although I do agree with what the analysts had to say about Casey, it seems as though every news story choose to frame her as a self absorbed, malicious human being. 

Maybe Casey is a crazy psychopath, but that's not the fact I'm interested in. The real question I have is if the media should be able to construct a news story with a bias. This is similar to how some history teachers feel history should be through cold hard facts whereas others believe analyzing history helps to better understand it. Does the presentation of media cause the same controversy? 

Why NOT Free the Green?

The legalization of recreational marijuana in the United States has yet to happen, but I find this controversy fascinating.

The reason I'm so interested in this topic is not because I want to use copious amounts of marijuana, but because there are so many reasons why legalization makes sense, but yet so many U.S citizens refuse to allow it. After seeing countless videos in middle school health class about 'saying NO to drugs', I was totally against legalizing this drug. "Why would I want a bunch of high teenagers around?"- I'd ask myself. It was not until my sister showed me an article published by TIME magazine in spring of '09 that explained the numerous and obvious benefits to legalizing marijuana.

For example, legalizing marijuana would save the U.S a ton of money. Not only could tax on marijuana like crazy, but according the TIME magazine article, the US spends "$68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes". And of all the drug related arrests, 47.5% of them are marijuana related! We put so much money into our correction facilities when we could save millions (if not billions) of dollars just by legalizing one of the most popular reasons for arrest in the United States. 


Like any drug or medicine, marijuana does have health risks.  As promoted by the Above the Influence organizationn, using marijuana at a young age can result in structural and functional deficits of the brain. Marijuana may not be perfectly safe, but there are countless health risks associated with other legal drugs, many of which are harsher than marijuana. Alcohol for example does damage to the brain, stomach, liver, kidneys, and muscles- especially in teenagers.  (Above the Influence) It is a choice to use either drug, (or any other for that matter) so why not make it legal, and help out our terrible economy in the mean time? 


This is the part I find fascinating. WHY do people ignore the fact that marijuana is just as, if not better for one's health as alcohol, but yet remains illegal? Is it because we've taught our kids to "make the right choices"? What image do you think many Americans want to avoid?