Civic Mirror Advice

This past year in school, my class ran through a simulation called Civic Mirror. It was one of my favorite school experiences and I got pretty involved.

Each student is randomly assigned a Hidden Agenda. In the US they are Liberal, Conservative, Fascist, Capitalist, Socialist, and Environmentalist. The Hidden Agendas represent motives/mindsets of real world people with a set of goals that you try to reach. For example I was Liberal. My goals were to keep income and property taxes above 0%, make sure the government owned from 20-40% of the hexes that produced units/ living places, make sure the government owned all the hexes that produced units people would die without (or that everyone in the country got the units they needed to stay alive), and that an election had occurred in the last year. So as a liberal I was protecting taxes, maintaining a healthy balance in government vs private owned businesses, making sure everyone fulfilled their essential needs, and ensured democracy was protected.

I am a bit of a geek, nerd, dork, so it wasn't hard for me to get involved in CM. I would wake up looking forward to it. Honest. Being so enthusiastic helped me succeed, I think. I participated and spent time outside of class with it. If you aren't enthusiastic, here's some advice:

1. Participate- the easiest way is by being elected or appointed to a public position, but you can also start a charity, bank, or news service, etc.
      I was elected to the government and it kept me busy. I put a lot of time into the position and that in turn gave me a lot of power. If you do become part of the government and you know you'll be able to do more than two- four years you should start small. Rising from House Rep, to Senate, to Pres. is more impressive than Pres. to private citizen/ a less dominant position in the government (obviously all branches should be equal, but President can be more prestigious than Justice or Senate President, especially in a middle school- high school classroom).  The government positions should be paid, so just voting on legislation will 1) earn money, 2) score you HA points, and 3) earn you participation points for your actual grade.
2. Read your manual and Constitution. Knowing what's up and what you can and can't do on your own, without waiting for the teacher or other students to reprimand you, gives you a headstart.
      Because I read the simplified version of the US Constitution, I also learned a lot about the rights in the US and the powers of each branch. For example, (I didn't end up using it in the game) but if laws regarding taxes were brought up in the Senate and you don't like the law, you can try to overturn it in Court because it was passed unconstitutionally- only the House can initiate bills regarding revenue. I had a lot of fun overturning/ repealing laws in my first year because they weren't Constitutionally passed. When I started as Senate President the next year I was more prepared and able to pass some great bills (for me and my HA, but also to improve the overall well being of my society/ country in the game).

If you are enthusiastic:
I crunched the numbers and came up with some cold statistics to present in my debates. It helps to know how many units are available in each type, total, so you can calculate how to help the most people. For example, our class needed x Education units, y Health, and z Food. Because you start with <x Edu., >y Heath, and =z Food, the least fortunate (in connections or money) would not be able to get Education units. I brought this to my classmates attention and passed a law limiting the amount of money you pay for a unit and making distribution more equal. Another issue is the environment. If you develop too many Wilderness Hexes (look like trees) people will start to die. But if our class didn't develop an Education hex eventually, people would suffer from not being able to get units. So I crunched some more numbers, and found that our community could spare a few houses, so we developed the houses into other hexes.

Ambitious Summer Reading List

If you are looking for an ambitious reading list to fill your summer, here are 23+ works. Credit to  China Rich Girlfriend  for the highlighted books... you can find all the CRA recommended reads here: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/06/crazy-rich-girlfriend-kevin-kwan-excerpt or with the search "China Rich Girlfriend reading list".

(Crossing my fingers I'll finish it. I pledge to finish at least half the books on this list.)



Dune by Frank Herbert
Midnight Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
Little Manila is in the Heart by Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan
Snobs by Julian Fellowes 
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee
People Like Us by Dominick Dunne
The Power of Style by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins (this is out of print)
Pride and Avarice by Nicholas Coleridge
D.V. by Diana Vreeland
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur by Gayatri Devi
Jane Austen—complete works beginning with Pride and Prejudice
Edith Wharton—The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers, The House of Mirth
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Anthony Trollope—all the books in the Palliser series, beginning with Can You Forgive Her? 
In Search of Lost Time- Proust
The Heavens- Sandra Newman
“Calligrammes”- Apollinaire
“Les Fluers de Mal”- Charles Baudelaire
Le Pere Goriot- Honore de Balzac
The Phantom Tollbooth- Norton Juster
To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee
America is not the heart- Elaine Castillo
Hollywood Costume: Glamour! Glitter! Romance!- Diana Vreeland
Social Creature- Tara Isabella Burton
Among Others- Jo Walton
Les Miserables- Victor Hugo

For Spanish learners:
(Crossing my toes I read these in Spanish:)

La Vida Imaginaria- Mara Torres
La Casa de los Espiritus- Isabel Allende
Como Para Agua Chocolate- Laura Esquivel


Any more suggestions?

Civic Mirror:

Better than Chocolate Ice Cream, maybe not as good as Night Swimming, but one of my Favorite Experiences

This past school year, my Social Studies class ran through a simulation called Civic Mirror. Being me, a bit of a dork, geek, nerd, teacher's pet, etc., I became obsessed. I learned a lot about the US, fellow students, and making choices, and I thought a lot about political and moral questions raised from those decisions. I put a lot of time into this 'game' and would wake up looking forward to the class. In order to keep myself off my phone and away from the TV this summer, I am going to write about my Civic Mirror experience for future Civic Mirror participants. I wish this game was part of the National Standards:)

What it is in a nutshell:

Civic Mirror is this "game" that tries to imitate the students' real country in the Constitution and structure of the government. The physical world is represented by hexes (the land/ buildings) and units (products) that are produced by the hexes (like how factories produce goods). We got to buy or trade units with simulated money, create laws, and sue each other.

There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom

     I recently received this book as a Christmas gift, and I wanted to share it with you. Even though it's below my reading level, it was very sweet, like a rom-com, but for littler kids. Louis Sachar is my favorite author (really the only author of multiple books I've enjoyed), and the story is the cutest, heart-warming. Bradley Chalkers, the main character, is misunderstood and disliked by his class, but with the help of a forward thinking, compassionate counselor, he is able to share himself and his ideas with others, and make friends. The writing isn't distracting even though it's targeted towards younger ages, and the fictional story Bradley Chalkers reads from Carla is complete and fun in of itself.
     Sexist themes and ideas are woven through, and this made me like Sachar a little less, I'll admit. I couldn't help but notice that the female characters didn't have any conversations or ideas of their own- they were props, paper compared to Bradley's fleshed out profile. Some of the attitudes of the characters- for example a mother splitting up boys on teams, as if they are inherently better than girls at all games- were disappointing, but overall I enjoyed the book. Said attitudes weren't necessarily written as good, but they seemed natural from the writer's pen, so I don't know how that looks against Sachar. Anyways, on plot, I think it is interesting to see how Bradley tries to become a nicer, better person. It's simplified, a fairytale, in that it all ties up neatly, happily, and unrealistically, but it made me smile anyways.
   I would recommend this book despite age, and I invite anyone who has read it to tell me what they think. Have a great 2019!

the most gratifying experience I remember

Today it rained, which is kind of a big deal in California. And I was driving home in the rain, beautiful blue lightning flashing around, when I got a text from my friend saying she couldn't turn "it" in, it wasn't letting her. At first I wondered what she was talking about, then it hit me. My English assignment! I had a poetry assignment due that night at 10:00pm, and I had forgotten to turn it in before I left home; it was already 9:48. And of course, even though I had typed everything out, I couldn't access Google Drive to turn it in. So I text asked my friends to turn it in for me. I know, it's ethically dubious, giving out your passwords, and having someone else turn it in, but I was desperate, and they were my words at least. Thank (potentially the) god(s) my friends check their devices half the minutes in the day and are kind generous souls. The friend who originally texted me agreed to help me out and kept updating me, which was stressful and exhilarating. I felt so grateful that I had a friend who would take time to help me fix my mistake and rush through such a process with me. As I rode home and took in my first lightning strike/ thunderstorm, feeling the adrenaline coursing through me (don't judge me), I loved my friends so much. Sometimes this friend makes me really annoyed or hurts my feelings, but she is really the best. Whenever I feel offended or sore, I will try to keep it in perspective. It's too easy to forget how amazing someone is, but hopefully this experience will remind me from time to time.

Also- cool! Blue lightning! It was really pretty that night, and I am grateful to California's mostly perfect weather.

September First

     Happy...

Bacon Day

Emma m Nutt Day

No Rhyme or Reason Day

Saturn’s Day

!

     I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project lately, and one of the things she talks about is how she started emailing her husband small interesting things about her day to satisfy her resolution to "give proofs of love". Although I don't really have opportunities for emailing to give "proofs of love" ( since the people I love are always either in person with me or unreachable), I realized I do have the opportunity to loosely apply the idea to my own relationships.
     Even though I have a phone now, the friends I made over the summer have started drifting from my mind. In order to keep in touch, I decided to send each of my friends a Happy - insert holiday here - text to check in. And it worked! Almost all of my friends replied, reigniting text chains gone dormant for up to 17 days ( not much, for some people, but for me, 17 days snowballs into months). I’ve “resolved” to check in once a week with a new interesting holiday.

If you were wondering:
My limited knowledge on:

Bacon Day:
Always the Saturday before Labor Day (and there is another Bacon Day on December 30th), this holiday was started by college students Alexa Haflord, Seth Rittenhouse and Evan Salim from Bedford, Massachusetts, and first celebrated in 2000.

Thanks to:
https://anydayguide.com/calendar/3170

Emma m Nutt Day:
Commemorating Emma M. Nutt, the first female telephone operator. Her first day at work was September 1st, and her sister actually became the second female telephone operator ever.

Thanks to:
https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/emma-m-nutt-day/

No Rhyme or Reason Day:
Celebrated on September 1st, this holiday is dedicated to refractory rhymes (words that are hard to rhyme, like Orange, Purple, Plankton, and Arugula). 

Thanks to:
https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/fun/no-rhyme-or-reason-day

Saturn's Day:
We get Saturday from the Roman's Saturn (approximate counterpart of the Greek's Cronus who was the youngest Titan and killed his father to rule the Earth {only to have the exact same thing happen to him by his son, Zeus}- I know, mythology is complicated). As tidbits of language came together to form English, the Germanic peoples- then speakers of English's descendant- couldn't find a Norse god equal to Saturn (unlike Tuesday/Tyr's Day, or Friday/Freya's Day). Another, less popular theory is that Saturday is named after Loki, (Saeter loosely meaning "the one who waits in ambush", following with Loki's theme and Anglo-Saxon and Norse sources) but this theory is convoluted and a bit questionable, in that Loki was not an official god.

Thanks to:
https://www.norsemyth.org/2010/04/gods-goddesses-part-five.html
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/saturday.html

To find September 1st holidays, I used checkiday.com.

But what about you? Have you read The Happiness Project? Are you also interested in strengthening casual long-distance relationships? Do you, too, have trouble keeping in touch through the busy school year? Or am I alone and everyone already has texting and all that down?

The Best Week of My Life: Tech Trek UCSB

The Best Week of My Life

     I just got back from Tech Trek, a science camp for 7th grade girls. It was AMAZING! Sleeping away with strangers for the first time was not stressful, as I was surrounded by a bunch of new and cool people. I learned to surf, and all about marine life. On the last night of camp our dorm broke the rules and had a party after curfew. Very fun. I had my nails painted with glitter, but my nails already had polish chipping off on them, so I got a very... unique result:) If anyone (especially introverts or ambiverts) reading this is afraid of going away from home, I would tell you that it can be amazing if you get lucky and find people like you, and still fun if you find away to connect with people different from you. I would tell you to be yourself, and trust that everyone else is nervous and wants to make friends, too.

My weird family:

     I am an only child, very close with my parents. Way closer than most families. We know everything about each other, and are a perfect mix of introvert, extrovert, ambivert, trying new things, going outside, and staying at home to watch Netflix. We always say "I love you" whenever we part, even if we are going to see each other in a couple hours. The first two days of Tech Trek, I felt homesick. I naturally drift to the edges of any group, so it being the first couple of days, I hadn't developed any close friendships yet. I was sad. "Is this what college will be like?" I  wondered gloomily.
     When my parents came to pick me up, I was sad. I wanted to stay for another week! I hugged my parents, but then pushed them away to keep hanging out with my friends, singing and dancing together for possibly the last time. I thought my parents might feel bad, so I was worried when we drove home, but they were actually happy that I pushed them away. Is it common for parents to be happy their one and only baby girl is growing up? I think not. I could be wrong, but I think not. Even if I am wrong though, I still think my family is weird (in a good way).

I am always last.

     Here is the perfect opportunity to explain the title of my blog. Of 84 girls at camp, I was number 84.  My last name starts with a Z, hence, I am always last. One other girl had a surname starting with Z, and we were next to each other in line. But her second letter was before mine and I was still last.

Has anyone else had any similar (or contrasting) camp experiences? I'd love to hear/read about them!