What is the Deal with Snow on the last day of Spring Break?

So I woke up this morning around 11 and looked out the window. What I saw seriously annoyed me, snow. What is the deal here? Snow on the last day of spring break. Does the weather not realize its supposed to be warm and sunny? Snow is supposed to fall in winter, not spring. We can't even get excited about the snow here like you can in other places, snow is just annoying in Chicago, everywhere else it gets you out of school. There were a couple days this break where the weather was warm and the sun was out, but some of the days weren't what I would call spring. I wish the weather could just get out track because if its still cold when May rolls around I'm going to be seriously depressed, I can only take so much cold.  

Should we play the best or the hardest working?

The other day in SALT (student athletic leadership training) we were asked if we had any problems we wanted to talk about on our teams. I brought up the problem of who should be allowed to run (I run track) the kids who are naturally fast, or the harder workers? Sometimes, those kids are the same kids, which makes the decision easy, but sometimes they are not. For example, we have conference coming up and some of our fastest guys on our team have been slacking off and some of the kids who are not top two for the open events and top four for the relays have been working really hard because they want to race.  This leaves us with an ethical dilemma because even though these kids are working really hard, the probably won't be as fast as the fast slackers by conference. So who do you allow to race? The fast slackers or the kids who work hard, but aren't as fast? I wish I could simply say the harder workers, but that would probably mean forfeiting a lot of points at the meet, which we don't want to do. This problem applies to all sports. Do you let the kid you cannot win without play if he is slacking off? If you punish the slacker, you end up punishing the whole team. It seems like this is an ethical dilemma with no right answer. 

March Madness

So the other day in business management we were talking about March Madness. My teacher was explaining that the United States of America looses huge amounts of money due to the NCAA tournament. There is a huge lost of productivity due to people making brackets and watching the games. We debated whether we should make the first friday of March Madness a holiday and make people work harder the next monday to make up for losses. This way, people are more open about what they are doing instead of sneaking and making brackets behind their boss' back. I heard that in Brazil they take a week off during the World Cup. One thing my dad's company did last year was called everyone into the conference rooms pretending they had some annoying meeting and instead put up TVs and let everyone watch the games for a little while. They had an understanding with the employees that afterwards they couldn't fool around and had to work hard for the rest of day/week. I think that is not that bad of an idea. However, if you allow one sport holiday people might call for the monday after the Superbowl to be a day off and then things might get out of hand. 

Symbols

 

Yesterday in American Studies we discussed the picture above. A lot of people had trouble believing that not only there were no symbols in this photo, because it happened in real life, but that there are no symbols in real life what so ever. I disagree with those who think that. I think there are many symbols in this photo and in real life. For one, obviously the flag is a symbol. The young man is using it as a weapon to attack a defenseless African American Lawyer. I think this is another symbol, the fact that the African American is a Lawyer, who is supposed to help serve justice is being beaten up by a teenager with an American flag. Just because all this happened in real life doesn't mean that they are not symbols. For example, in class we discussed the different symbols that identify teachers and students. The teacher sits behind a desk in the center of the room, this is a clear symbol to the students that this guy is in charge. Students carry heavy backpacks, while the teachers do not. A car or house can symbolize how successful someone is. Symbols exist all around us.