Well Thats A Wrap!

Well time goes by, I am sorry to tell you all but my blogging experience is coming to an end. I remember debating on what to write about, and how my bog should be formatted and now I am thinking about how much fun it was getting to know my readers and sharing all my interests and hobbies with them! Truth is, I was required to create a blog for honors english, and as the school year is coming to an end so is my blogging career. Personally, I think that my writing and voice have improved a lot, in the past I couldn't write any type of essay to save my life but with all this blogging I am starting to get the hang of it! By changed, not only has my voice and literal writing grown and improved, but I see the change in myself as a person. Remembering the thoughts dashing through my head when writing some of my old blog posts makes me giggle. Something that may have seamed like a life's crisis when I was writing in October is something I can now laugh about and reminisce on.

One of things I have improved on is my self confidence with writing, when I first started posting I would constantly doubt myself and delete the post then stress about writing another one. Now, I am able to just post and take a deep breath and know everything is going to be okay and you all wouldn't read my blog if it didn't have some sort of impact on you! My style of writhing has evolved, I have better grammar along with spelling and sentence fluency. Many of which I could never achieve before this.

I couldn't have done this blog without my readers, you guys are the real MVP's! It is always so exiting to discover new comments or page views! From my stats I am able to see who has viewed my blog, many of my readers come from different countries! It is quite extraordinary to think that I am making an impact on someone so far from me! So a huge THANK YOU to all my readers that have supported and gotten me through this year, without you I would literally be TOAST.  Again thank you all so much for the support, I am sad to tell you all that this blog has to end but hopefully you all can start one of your own! Good luck to you all XOXO.

Last, before I forget! This blog was for a honors english assignment, so it was a requirement! Every quarter we get a blog grade which often would leave me scrambling to write the final posts and make sure I meet the quota in order to receive a good grade! So far I have achieved an A every quarter... hoping I'll have a similar outcome this quarter! I guess I can't quite say goodbye yet because I know you all will be dying to know my final grade1 (Or not) But I thought I would leave it on a high note and make sure we don't end it on a cliff hanger!  So heres my last official goodbye and thanks you but there will be one last post telling you all my grade! Wish me luck XX

Photo: Google Images

And We Begin The Home Stretch...

So here we are.  Final weeks of school. Up to the moon in Homework. So as a high school student I am required to get good grades to get into good colleges! So that means working my but off to achieve the "perfect" GPA, I mean my average GPA is a 3.7 but some kids are able to hold a 4.0 every quarter... Kudos to them! So before I vanish into a world of homework I thought I would give you a few tips on how to study and pass a test!

1. Depending on what you are studying for... Create a study guide outlining what concepts you have to master and make sure to organize your information !

2.If you have the time and you're confused, ask questions... preferably the teacher who is giving you the final but if you have a friend or parent that knows the material really well I advise asking them many questions so you can be as confident as possible going into the test.

3. If the teacher offers a review session, MAKE SURE TO ATTEND, going back to #2... this would be the perfect time to clarify all your questions. Usually, the teacher will either do an in class review or even a before/after school review!

4. Don't cram in your studying, start early. Learn the material miles before the test so you have time to nail all the key concepts, eventually this will make it much easier to ace the final. DO NOT leave the studying till the night before at 11 pm, I have done it. It doesn't work. At all. So study early, maybe even weeks before!

5. If you have friends that enjoy studying together, organize  a group study session! That way you can have fun with friends, while drilling in the information into each others heads!

6. DO NOT study for a whole day straight, make sure to take breaks and give your poor brain a breather. Otherwise the constant studying will have no effect, breaks are necessary while studying! 

7. Split the material into bits, that way you gain a little more knowledge every day. Splitting the material into chucks you can actually achieve can be very beneficial. That way, you can keep track of what you’ve accomplished instead of looking at the big picture and getting overwhelmed.

8. Get a good nights sleep, don't stay up till the crack of dawn studying. Make sure to get a lot of sleep, and limit the late night cramming sessions! A full night's sleep will help you to stay much more focused during the test.

9. Keep an open mind, Some exams will be more difficult than others, some you may find easier to study for. Some may be worth more of your grade than others. Make sure to evaluate all of your exams to consider and determine all of the involved factors so you can study accordingly.

10. It’s easier to focus if you adapt to studying by quizzing yourself, creating acronyms or rewarding yourself for a job well done. Create a game plan – literally – that allows you to accomplish tasks and be rewarded for each.

For example, why not reward yourself with a piece of chocolate or a sip of your coffee after you’ve accomplished a new chapter or allow yourself five minutes of free time for every chunk of material you digest?

You can even add in fun factors like power-ups every time you learn a new definition and lose a life, which means you add another definition to your list, when you get an answer wrong!

Overall, you need to make sure you re staying healthy and don't stress too much over the tests, it won't be the end of you life if you bomb it. But if you follow the steps I just listed, you are guaranteed a better outcome!

Photos: Google Images

Priceless Places

I am obsessed with travel, there are so many places that I hope to visit during my lifetime. Heres some of the most beautiful and extraordinary destinations in the world!

#1 Maldives:

Picture this, a private villa stands over clear, crystal blue water... Ending your days with orange sunsets that make you hungry for local citrus juice. Only the best gourmet room service and a masseuse are on call to avoid any unnecessary trips from your porch and the only thing to make you want to leave is the breathtaking coral reef and underwater creatures that demand a scuba session for a proper introduction. 

Could you imagine? A beautiful villa to yourself, watching the sun rise and set while surrounded by ocean water and aquatic life.  This is only one, of many breath taking destinations in the world.

Photo: Google Images

#2: Cinque Terre, Rio Maggiore, Italy

The village, dating from the early thirteenth century, is known for its historic character and its wine, produced by the town's vineyards. Riomaggiore is in the Riviedi Levante region and has shoreline on the mediterraneans golf of Genoa, with a small beach and a wharf framed by tower houses. Riomaggiore's main street is Via Colombo, where numerous restaurants, bars and shops can be found.The Via dell'Amore is a path connecting Riomaggiore to its frazione Manarola, also part of the Cinque Terre.Riomaggiore is the most southern village of the five Cinque Terre, all connected by trails. The water and mountainside have been declared national parks.

I can't imagine a more beautiful town, with all the colors and simple houses it is simply irresistible! Someday I really hope to travel around the world to see all of the most beautiful sights.

Photo: Google Images

#3 Glass Beach, California 

Imagine, walking over thousands different shapes, colors, sizes of glass. In the early 20th century, Fort Bragg residents threw their household garbage over cliffs owned by the Union Lumber Company onto what is now Glass Beach, discarding glass, appliances, and even vehicles. Locals referred to it as "The Dumps." Fires were lit to reduce the size of the trash pile.The California State Water Resources Control Board and city leaders closed the area in 1967. Various cleanup programs were undertaken through the years to correct the damage. Over the next several decades the pounding waves cleaned the beach, by breaking down everything but glass and pottery and tumbling those into the small, smooth, colored pieces that cover Glass Beach.

I really hope to visit this beach, mostly because the beach is my sanctuary. I am obsessed with the sound of the waves crashing, the taste of salt water, and mostly the feeling of sand wedging itself between my toes. This beach would be absolutely amazing to visit, not only because of the glass but because it evolved from a dump sight into a tourist attraction!

Photo: Google Images

#4 Glow Worm Cave, New Zealand

Just picture, thousands of twinkling lights surrounding you and making the slightest noises. Boating through a cave of priceless lights and sounds of water dripping is amazing. The glow worm, Arachnocampa luminosa, is unique to New Zealand. Thousands of these tiny creatures radiate their unmistakable luminescent light as our expert guides provide informative commentary on the Caves' historical and geological significance.  Marvel at Mother Nature's light display as you glide silently through the starry wonderland of the Glowworm Grotto. Meander underground along the Waitomo River and gaze in silence at the myriad of glow worm lights that make up the Glowworm Grotto. As you enter this galaxy of tiny living lights, you'll immediately experience a serene ambience and be fascinated and intrigued by tiny glowworms that light your way.

Fortunalty, I have had the honor of visiting these amazing caves, my mother is from New Zealand so we go back every year and  once we went on a surpass drive down to the glow worm caves. The caves were absolutely mesmerizing, the entire time I was so busy focusing on the magical lights, so I couldn't quite take any photos.

Photo: Google Images

#5 Venice Italy:

This is both a cause and a consequence of depopulation: many small business, mom and pop stores, like handicraft stores, bakeries, small businesses, etc., are little by little closing down, swept away by big unpersonal chains established just for the huge tourism stream, or by stores filled with junk souvenirs or fake Venetian masks..

It is a catch 22, because due to high prices, most tourists prefer to sleep in Mestre, and even bring with them their box lunch when visiting Venice during daytime. It is undestandable, but that way Venice often ends up to get more drawbacks than benefits from tourism.

Venice, is a town that is currently drowning in its water, Venice is so unique and exiting! Hopefully, I can travel there when I'm a little older!

Photo: Google Images

There are many places in the world that I wish to visit, these are very few of the many I think are interesting and where I want to travel too!

Beautiful Brains

In biology we were required to read Beautiful Brains , otherwise known as an article on the teens brain. I enjoyed it so much I thought that I would share with you all the highlights of the article!

When people hear the word "teenager", they usually tend to think of someone that has reached the age of 13 or higher and is now sassy, reckless, and irresponsible. the truth is that their brains going through a very complicated process, that has some side effects... "For starters, the brain's axons—the long nerve fibers that neurons use to send signals to other neurons—become gradually more insulated with a fatty substance called myelin (the brain's white matter), eventually boosting the axons' transmission speed up to a hundred times. Meanwhile, dendrites, the branchlike extensions that neurons use to receive signals from nearby axons, grow twiggier, and the most heavily used synapses—the little chemical junctures across which axons and dendrites pass notes—grow richer and stronger. At the same time, synapses that see little use begin to wither. This synaptic pruning, as it is called, causes the brain's cortex—the outer layer of gray matter where we do much of our conscious and complicated thinking—to become thinner but more efficient." 

I know, a lot of really complicated words that are somehow supposed to convince us that we understand the process. Basically, they are saying that the brain is extremely busy during the ages of 12-25, the brain is maturing and becoming faster. In the mean time, the teens become very distracted, and learn to shut things out. For example a scientist decided to conduct an experiment, "Beatriz Luna, a University of Pittsburgh professor of psychiatry who uses neuroimaging to study the teen brain, used a simple test that illustrates this learning curve. Luna scanned the brains of children, teens, and twenty somethings while they performed an antisaccade task, a sort of eyes-only video game where you have to stop yourself from looking at a suddenly appearing light. You view a screen on which the red crosshairs at the center occasionally disappear just as a light flickers elsewhere on the screen. Your instructions are to not look at the light and instead to look in the opposite direction. A sensor detects any eye movement. It's a tough assignment, since flickering lights naturally draw our attention. To succeed, you must override both a normal impulse to attend to new information and curiosity about something forbidden. Brain geeks call this response inhibition."  As a result, the younger kids bombed the test, they just could keep their eyes off of the light. However, teens do much better. In fact, by age 15 they can score as well as adults if they have the motivation, they were resisting temptation about 70 to 80 percent of the time. What Luna found most interesting was not those scores but it was the brain scans she took while people took the test. When compared with adults, teens tended to make less use of brain regions that monitor performance, spot errors, plan, and stay focused. However these areas are the ones adults seemed to bring online automatically. "This let the adults use a variety of brain resources and better resist temptation, while the teens used those areas less often and more readily gave in to the impulse to look at the flickering light—just as they're more likely to look away from the road to read a text message."

Photo: Google images

I found this to be very interesting because majority of parents think it is just because their children have reached a reckless and hormone filled stage in their life, but actually their kids are developing their brains at a very fast rate. Teenagers have a reputation for getting into trouble, but we are just clueless and unaware of our surroundings. I was able to relate directly to the article, for instance I am always procrastinating and very distracted by my iPhone. My parents are always complaining because they miss the "old me" or the younger version... But I am 15, so approximately 10 years away till my brain has completely developed... I was able to share this article with them, my parents also found this very interesting and said that it explained much of my behavioral issues. Overall, I think it was very important for people to read, many who are confused by their reckless teens.