Test Day

Hip Hip Hooray, today is test day. The test today was decently eas. I think I did very well with the matching part but the multiple choice is the one part I may have a couple wrong. I wasn't sure which country migrated to Germany so I guessed Turkey. I also forgot the difference between emigration and migration or when the U.S.A. passed new migration laws but I believe I will get all of those right because my guessing skills are just amazing. And now I'm in class writing this blog and Mr. Schick is talking about how bad he was in middle school and lost his permanent records. Then he's talking about how he broke the toilets in the school and at Perry Hall, a kid stripped naked in the classroom.

Why they Immigrate

Today we had Mr. Schick first thing in the morning so I got to class pretty tired and everyone noticed my beautiful hair cut even Mr. Schick. It was also Belles birthday so happy birthday to her. We talked about some reasons people come into the country from Mexico. The biggest reason is because of jobs. U.S.A. has a lot more job openings than Mexico does and there is more money paying jobs here. Also we have more freedom because of the Bill of Rights. The problem is that we can't let everyone in because the there would be overpopulation. Next we talked about a few things like the idea of a wall because the things on the power point were outdated. I like the idea of a wall but it would cost a lot to make. Then it would get rid of illegal immigrants entering.

Highlighting notes

Today in class Mr. Schick passed out a packet that we needed to highlight the most important things to study for the exam. I did most of it in class but some of it, I still need to do some of it tonight. For the exams on December 19th, I'm going to have to do a bit of studying because I don't know it all. I got good scores on some of my tests but on a couple I got 80 which isn't good enough for me. To study I will look over the tests and the packets handed out to us. Also we need to do an exam before the midterm. It will be done at home. I hope the exam is on something like countries arounf=d the world and population pyramids because I am good with those.

Migration Notes

Today in Human Geo, Mr. Schick was not there so Mr. Blair subbed for us. We got the assignment to write a blog about pages 84-85 in the migration packet. I'm just going to record basic notes.

Since 1820, 80 million people have migrated to the United States. The 3 main ares of immigration are from colonial settlement, Europe, and Asia. A lot of people migrated to the United States as slaves. From 1820-1920, 90% of people that immigrated were from Europe. The country with the most people to migrate was Germany. Although in 2006, Mexico surpassed Germany.

Asylum Debate

Today in class we had a debate about Trump and the idea of asylum. I did not say anything in the debate because I personally try to stay away from politics. It will still good to have a debate though even if it was something I did not know much about. There were 2 sides to the debate. One side agreed with Trump's asylum policy and the other disagreed with it. I was neutral in the debate. During this debate we listened to a podcast and commented on certain things that happened during it. We talked about what would happen if someone threw a rock or which immigrants should and should not be able to enter the country. I liked the idea of having a debate but i did not like the topic it was on. I also believe that the podcast was biased. Many of the things they said went against what Trumps policies were which would make you lean in the other direction. I think it was difficult for everyone to speak everything they wanted because you had to call on someone to speak. I like debates where people speak when they want. this meant that some people like Trent didn't get a chance to speak when they really had something good to say. I would say which side i am on but i really want to stay away from politics because they don't affect my everyday life and it causes too many arguments.

Immigration Debate

Today in human geo class we discussed having a debate tommorow on immigration. I've never really had an opinion on immigration being illegal or people crossing the border illegally. It doesn't affect my everyday life so I've never thought too much or looked into it deeply. Tommorow though we will have a debate which may result in Trent going crazy in the middle of class. I probably won't talk too much on this one for once. I do like the idea of having a debate though that is not teacher led. It's a fun way to argue about issues or disagreements.

Migration

Today we got into class and we got handed a packet. I was thinking oh my gosh why are we getting a packet this stinks. But it didn't turn out to be terrible. We took turns reading paragraph by paragraph and talked about each one. A few were about going over things we previously talked about. Then a few were going against what the power point said so we looked on a few websites on our computers. On the power point it said that 9 percent of the population are immigrants. In everything else we looked at it said 3 percent. I don't get why the power point was wrong because it was by the same people who made the book we use.

New Unit!!

We are starting a new unit on migration. I knew a little bit about migration before. I knew that migrating is to move from one place to another. Today Mr. Schick told us that migration is a permanent movement which I did not know. I also know that some animals migrate like birds and butterflies. That confuses me though because migration is a permanent movement but we call birds and butterflies going South migration even though they return after winter. We also got a test, a quiz, and a worksheet back today. On the test I got a 97, on the quiz I got a 100, and on the worksheet I got an 80 which isn't too terrible. I'm pretty satisfied with my grade right now and I hope to keep it up.

Mr. Schick is Awesome

Today in class we got there and just had a good old time, well at least for the first 20 minutes when I am typing this. We got to class and checked over our worksheets that we did during the video yesterday. It was a 10 point completion grade so easy points. Then we had a 20 point quiz on the same questions so again easy points. Now we're about to get them back and I bet I got a 90. Just a prediction. We took a class selfie and I look like a snack. I got a 100!! LETS GO!! Thats higher than the average obviously. Not much else to say. 3 people got a B or lower. I dont know how.

Video about developing countries

Today in class, we watched a video on how countries developed over a 200 year time period. Countries began this time period in 1810 where the average income for good countries was around 4,000. Also, the life expectancy wasn't over 40 for a single country. This isn't necessarily that people were dying at 40. Actually many people lived to be 80 but there was so a high infant mortality rate that the life expectancy dropped. Over time both the income and life expectancy raised for all countries and particularly Europe had a huge increase. Also during big wars you could see how much the life expectancy dropped. Now many countries have life expectancies of 80. Sadly though Africa still has very low expectancy because it is not very advanced and is poor. 

Demographic Transitions

While everyone that was either not here or was in the play over this week was taking the test that they missed, we got to have lots of fun looking up demographic transition. Demographic transition is when a country has a high rate of natural increase and as the country develops it suddenly drops and becomes a low rate of natural increase. An example of when this happened is in the U.S.A. When the U.S. was a developing country, it had babies at an incredible rate. About 4 per woman and then we developed and our population was very large so people started having fewer babies. Now we're still increasing but barely. We have a rate of 2.42 babies per woman.

Normal Class with Sad Stuff

Today we got into class and took a giant selfie and Sydney Walsh's face looked like Sid the Sloth. Don't worry she had one of those twisty filters on. Anyway we started the actual class by talking about total fertility rate and this is where things got sad. While talking about the total fertility rate we got into infant mortality. In the U.S. it's only 1 in 200 infants which in my opinion isn't bad. But then in other places where it is very poor the infants have a 1 in 12.5 chance in surviving until the age of 1. That's crazy. Take the freshman class at JC. We have about 150 kids just estimating. If we had that high of an infant mortality rate then we would not have 11 of those kids. That's so many and you dont really think about it because of how uncommon it is here.  Then we took another selfie to end the class.

Test day!!

Super exciting day again today as we had a test. YES!! It was pretty easy in my opinion and I think I did well. The first part was just on the CIA World Factbook and we had to find stuff on there in a limit of 15 minutes. I wasn't stressing it until my computer died!! Stupid computer and at the worst time too. I had to run to my locker to get my charger and then still finished with about 2 minutes left on the timer. I don't want to say any test questions because people from another class might read this but I'll still talk about it. There was a section on the vocab we used like birth rate and fertility rate. Then we had to answer questions by looking at a population pyramid. Pretty easy all together and then afterwards we got to make cartoons. Mine were terrible XD.

Population Pyramids #2

Today in class we looked at the population pyramids of certain cities that may have been a bit odd or different from normal. We looked at places like Ann Arbor which had many 18-22 year olds because of Michigan college. We looked at Ft. Bragg which had lots of 20-30 year old men because it is a military base. Also Punto Gusto has a lot of beach houses and condos so there were a lot of older men and women that are retired.Then we looked at countries like the United States and Nigeria to see how their population has changed over time and will change in the future. Finally we have a test on Wednesday so im really looking forward to that.

Population Pyramids

Today in class Mr. Schick didn't sing the its thursday song even though it was thursday. I was looking forward to having a class its thursday song day. But anyway I've moved on and I'll survive. Today we learned about population pyramids which are basically pyramids that show the population at each age for a certain area. There are different shapes that a population pyramid could take up. The 1st is a Christmas tree which would mean lots of children compared to adults and oldies. This means that the population is growing fast and is a developing country. The second shape is a box in which the population is remaining about the same or has slow growth. This is a developed country like the USA. Finally a cup shape would mean there are a lot more adults and oldies than kids and would be a country with a declining population like Japan or Italy.

Using the World Factbook

Today in class we used the world fact book website to find different information about countries that Mr. Schick would ask us. I was pretty much godly at it and got one of them in 9 seconds. We would find things like what is the GDP rate in Switzerland and how many airports are in Papua New Guinea. Just random things like that to help us get used to using the website. Then, we talked about the things that we answered for basically the rest of class. Also, we found Mr. Schick's you tube channel in which he sings the Its Thursday song to his horses and has a rap song about Rome. Pretty legendary.

1st quarter Grades

So, we have no more grades in the 1st quarter of Human Geo. I got a 87 in the class because I didn't do great on the first test. I should've studied a lot more than I did which was minimal. So, I'ts okay, I know better and will improve on that in the second quarter. Today in class we just looked over grades and talked about some interesting facts we put in our blogs on Friday/Saturday. A few facts were that someone did the math to find out that the roads in the U.S. could circle the Earth 168 times. We have a lot of roads and transportation. Also there are a lot of underweight babies in India. About 4% of people which is over a million out of the huge amount of peoplethey have were underweight as a baby.

5 Interesting Facts

1. The United States has the most amount of obese people in the world
2. The United States has the most amount of airports, railways, and roadways in the world
3. Russia is actually 3 million sq. miles larger than Antarctica
4.  Our favorite county Monaco, is 2 square miles
5. More people in China use the Internet than the entire European continent.

Children per Women

Today in human geo we talked about birth rates, death rates, and children per women which is something like the fertility rate. Anyway the number of children per women to stay consistent with the population is 2.1!! Apparently that is very important because it was in big red letters. Right now the world is at a rate of 2.42 children per woman. That means we are still rising in population although this rate is gradually going down. The U.S.A. has a rate of 2.01 which would normally mean that the population is going down but since we have so many immigrators in this country, we are still rising. Also countries like Japan have a 1.4 rate because of how aged and developed they are. Nigeria though has 6.89 since they are developing.

Rates of incoming People

Today in class, we talked about birth and death rates which are basically the amount of people born per 1000 people and the amount of people that died per 1000 people. United States has a positive birth rate while other countries like Japan have a negative birth rate. Next we talked a lot about life expectancy and how Monaco has an insane life expectancy of 89 years while the U.S. has about 80 years on average. Also sadly Chad only has a life expectancy of 49 years. Finally we talked about migration rates and the U.S. does have a very good migration rate although Syria has the worst in the world since many people are leaving.

Population unit

New unit!!! Hooray, I got an A on the test so I'm pretty happy even though I wont be able to get an A in this class since I have an 87.2%. The new unit on population does look interesting nevertheless. We have 7.5 billion people in this world which is crazy to think about because we gain 2.5 people every second. That is just absurd. Also now about every 12 years we gain a billion people meaning by around 2023 we will hit 8 billion people on planet Earth. Other crazy statistics are in the U.S. one person is born every 8 seconds. One person dies every 12 seconds. And one person enters the country every 29 seconds so we have about 1 more person every 13 seconds.

TEST DAY!!

Came into class today super unexcited about the test because to be honest I didn't study all that much and was worried about my grade because I needed an A on this test. So, what really cooled me down is when we started singing the iCarly theme song at perfect tune (or at least I was amazing). Then the tests came out and it was actually pretty easy and I was surprised because i thought it would be difficult. The only one I didn't know was the El Paso one. I may have gotten it right though; I'm not sure. Then we had a chance to do my blog which I started on but didn't ger very far and Sean got caught playing a game and got a detention.

Time Zones

Today in class we got out a time zones map from about a month ago to prepare for the test. With this Mr. Schick said that if it was 7Am in Bel Air then what time would it be in Chicago or Bejing or South Korea. So, we had to count the timezones over to that place and figure out if it was that many hours earlier or later. I was incredible at it. Then he ended class with what time is it now at the South Pole. My mind was doing all sorts of flip-flops because to be honest I had no idea. Sean eventually said that there was no specific time that was correct that makes sense. Also, we have a test tommorow and I think I am ready but I defenitely need an A on this one.

Religious Differences

We got into class today and we had a shadow named Bella. We started the class by asking her about a difference in culture. She mentioned how Catholics have some different traditions than people of other forms of Christianity for example mass and confession. Mass is something that only Catholics celebrate where you go to every Sunday and there are songs and a priest. I don't know much about it because I'm methodist. Also only Catholics have something called confession where you apparently sit in a private room (dark or light) with a priest and confess all the sins you have done. Then the priest will tell you to do a certain number of hail marys and our fathers. Seems weird to me but thats because I've never done any of those things. Just like how in Saudi Arabia we think that women are treated horribly but they probably think that women are abusing their freedom.

Olivia the Teacher

Today in class Olivia taught us about globalization and how many different places can be similar because of what different cultures brought into the area. So, an example of this would be McDonald's because back in Chicago, it was made and was thought just to be a simple restaurant but then people started making more and more McDonald's. This eventually led to many fast food restaurant chains opening up and changing the way we live today. Also, there is a test coming up next week which I am not excited for and also need to get a good grade on. Finally, just a reminder that Sean is from Georgia and puts ranch on his peaches.

Review of all we have done

Today in class, we began by reviewing all the notes we have taken since the maps unit has started. We started with going over the key issues, went to the Mercator and Peters maps. Next, we went to the very first map was made by Erathosthenes. Try saying that 5 times fast.  Then we went into longitude and latitude and location of places. Finally we went into tracking devices and GPS which we briefly went into but got deep into today. The argument of why people like tracking devices are because they will always know where their kids are if they get kidnapped or if someone commits a crime, someone can figure it out easier. But, many people are against tracking devices because anyone can track you at anytime and it may not be the greatest person. Personally I don't have a huge problem with them but that's just my opinion.

Pop Quiz Day!!

So, we entered school today after homecoming crying on the insides because we had a normal week of school with PSATs added into that. This meant that Mr. Schick was very excited to give us a pop quiz on what we learned about maps and I mixed up latitude and longitude so I got an 8 out of 10. That was a fun one. Next, we went right into the lesson where we talked about what Patrick talked about in a better way. So a toponym is actually a place by religion or the ideal location. For example St. Louis or San Fransisco. I think Mr. Schick is slightly better than Patrick. Also, I'm gonna tell you about my homecoming expierience here since I didn't get to in class. It was very loud and I lost my hearing and voice and then afterwards I went to IHOP with a few friends including Trent, Sean and Caitlin. So there you go.

Patrick the Teacher

We got to class today and Mr. Schick said that someone else could teach the class for a day so of course Patrick raised his hand. So, he went to teach and he tried to teach us what a toponym is by using 13 different examples including Baltimore and St. Petersburg. Next he told us about how important the location and situation was to a place because of transportation access and the amount of coal for fuel. For example Chicago was a great place because you can access it from the ocean even though it's mid-country because of the Great Lakes. And then Patrick tried to describe Russias location while using a globe. It did not work well because no one could see the globe so Austin threw an airplane at him. It said OOF. Then we got a bit to crazy and class ended so we could go to the powder puff football game.

THE WORLD IS STALKING ME

So we got into class and we were told how creepy GPS is and that everything that we have is stalking us. Things like Alexa that hear everything that we are saying and record it. This is just super scary because random people could know what you are talking about at all times. Also, on ancestory.com, you log in and give them a DNA sample to find your history. They could find out everything about you just by a DNA sample. If you have a higher chance of getting cancer then that could mean that you don't get a certain job for something that isn't your fault and all because people are disrespecting your right to privacy.

Tests Back Today

We walked into class today and Mr. Schick said that we were getting our tests back today. I already saw my score on Veracross so I knew I only got an 80% but that just means that next time I need to study harder. No biggie there. Most people got the bell rung since they got an A but one person even got a 100 which was good enough for two bell rings. At the end of the class we got maps and had to mark locations of important cities around the world. I knew where most of them were except for Seoul. I didn't even know that that was a city. And then the bell rang for me to go to math class.

Friday in Class

We didn't do much today in class. We got in class and tried to claim that Mr. Schick was a murderer  but he claimed that that was not true and I believe him for the most part. So most people did their blogs in class but somehow I forgot to. So I'm doing it on Saturday afternoon and I'm going to write about maps. More specifically the evolution of the Mercator to the Gall-Peters map. The Mercator projection map was made in the late 1500's. While the map had many good things about it and showed people a diagram of the Earth, there were still many errors about it. Many places were too big like Greenland and many places were in the wrong spot like Europe. So, the Gall-Peters map fixed many of those errors and made a much better map.

Map Labeling

Today was Thursday so as always Mr. Schick was singing the Its Thursday song in the morning. I then got to class and we talked about time zones. Each time zone is 15 degrees and there are 24 total time zones. Then we got to labeling things on maps like oceans, continents, and the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. then Olivia said that she made the Earth on an orange and that is genius. we should defenitely have an Earth on an Orange party. We also looked at how oddly shaped the International Date Line is. It isn't like a normal time zone line and instead has a lot of slants and boxes.

The history of Maps

In social studies today we learned that the first map was made by Eratosthenes about 200 years before Christ was born. The map was very inaccurate and put places like Libya huge and there was no New World or North and South America as we now call them. About 300 years later improvements were made to the world map by Ptolemy. It looked a little bit better but was still super inaccurate. Next we learned what contemperary mapping is. Contemperary mapping is a tool that was used by geographers to communicate complex geographical phenomonons. Finally we learned that it is nearly impossible to put the world on a flat square/rectangular map because or projection and distortion. The map will appear slightly off in size or shape no matter what you do to it.

Mercator vs Peters

Mr. Schick was not in class today so we were given the assignment to say if the cartographers made valid points in the episode of the West Wing and I think that they did. The first point they made was the relative size of many countries was incorrect. The bigger a country is shown, the more power people will give it. So Greenland was seen as a huge country when in reality it is actually very small. Also Europe was twice the size that it should be. Europe is actually much smaller than South America. The second point was that some countries were in the wrong location like Germany. This could throw many people off from what they believed the world had actually looked like. Finally, they pointed out that many people take the Northern hemisphere as greater because it is on the top. So, if you flip the map upside down then it will serve you the same purpose.

Human Geo

Today we talked about the key ideas we will be focusing on in social studies. We also focused on what geography is. Geography is the study of the Earth so in this class we will be looking at a lot of maps. We also learned that cartography is the art of drawing maps. Because we will need to know a lot about maps in this class we learned about latitude and longitude. We learned that latitude is the lines that look like a ladder and longitude are the vertical lines. Finally we figured out how Mr. Schick got a gun drawn on him by a cop because he set off the John Carroll alarms while planning for a class.

The Map of The World

In 1569, a rectangular world map was created to represent the different size of the countries. This was used all over the world to find the way around the country and was also used to teach the upcoming generation about where places were and how big they were compared to other places around the planet. But, many things on the map turned out to be incorrect or not proportional. So, in 1855 somebody came out with the Peters map and it was much more accurate. Many places like Greenland and Alaska were smaller and places like Germany were in different locations. It is crazy how we do not use these in school.

Great Day in Class

We got to class today and Mr. Schick told us that we had an oral report to do. I thought it was something we had to plan for and i got very scared. It was okay though because no one knew what to do. Meanwhile Mr. Schick was working with Google and it just was not cooperating. We worked for 15 minutes to get good old Google to work. It never did. So we briefly went over what we learned because we have a test on Monday on Elbert Hubbard and Socrates. After all that we had about 15 minutes to do our blog because there was really nothing else to do. So this may be the only time I am writing my blog in class. I can see everyone while I am doing this blog. This was a great day of learning in Human Geography.

Socrates' Trial

Socrates was charged with two crimes. The first was corrupting the youth of Athens. The second was not believing in the gods of the state. Both of these crimes should result in death. He went to his trial and said two things to defend himself.  The first was that he was only doing his job and the second was that they should be rewarding him instead of killing him. The jury of course found him guilty at a 279-221 difference. I agree with this decision because he committed two crimes that he should be dead for and his defense was that he was supposed to be doing what he did. Socrates was then killed 1-2 days later.

Socrates

Synergy is a type of balance.  For example the balance of democracy and excellence is synergy. Next an agora is a gathering place or the center of all life. Also a polis is another word for city-state. In 508 BCE a democracy was formed. Socrates was a philosipher. When he was younger he worked as a stone mason and fought in the Polynesian war. The socratic method is to ask questions instead of saying if they were right or wrong. The controversy behind this was that Athens was a brilliant city where people from around the world sharing ideas. So many thought that Socrates stole others ideas.

Elbert Hubbard

My interpretation of A Message To Garcia is that people don't do what they are told without asking people questions to figure out if they should really do it. An example of what you should do in the text is when, it described a man who went to Cuba and walked on foot for 3 weeks to find a man named Garcia. He was given this task and did not ask a single question but instead immediately got to work. Although there was a big war going on at the time and the message needed to be delivered, he did not ask for someone else to complete the task or why should I do this. He simply agreed to do it. this is something that would be a great quality to have and we need more of those people in the world today. This speaks to me because I am just starting my high school experience. During this time I am about to drive and get a part time job. While doing these things I will need to learn to just do what my instructors tell me to do without asking questions.

First Day at John Carroll

I got to school this morning at 7:15 thinking that I would be able to get my locker ready and still have time to talk to my friends and get to my Spanish class pretty early. It turned out that I couldn't enter the academic wing for another 30 minutes. So, my first 30 minutes of high school were spent sitting on my phone waiting for other people I knew to arrive. Finally my first period with Sr. Canter went by pretty fast while learning proper Spanish greetings and conversation starters. Next I had my STEAM class and we found patterns on a very fun computer program and talked about the benefits and drawbacks of keeping a scientific notebook. Next I went to Mr. Maynard's advisory in the cafeteria where I saw my HarCo picture and it didn't turn out awful. There wasn't much to talk about so I mainly played games on my computer. Next I went to Human Geography. We got there and went almost immediately down to the gymnasium to take pictures after finding out that we were in lock down mode. Apparently somebody robbed a bank in Bel Air with a "big gun". Then we had our lunch which all students always love. I found a table with my friends very quickly and the chicken salad sandwich I had was delicious. Next I had biology where we had to fit a gummy worm into a life saver using 3 paper clips. My partner and I eventually managed to get it but it was very difficult. Then I had religion where we listened to a video by Mother Teresa talking about Jesus' love for us. It was very interesting. Finally I had English where the entire time we went over about the 5th syllabus. So, it was a lot of syllabus to go over and some fun activities too.