Fast Times at Delta High

    Only in my small High School would it be acceptable for a teacher to wrestle a student to the floor as proper punishment. I remember the first day I went to school down here in good old Delta High, that was the day I learned that our school is based off of Wrestling. Mostly because we'd taken state almost every year since 1993. As I walked into English I sat in the back avoiding contact with people as if they were aliens. It was there that a freshman guy challenged our teacher. And right at the front of the class room is where my teacher wrestled him to the ground and sat on him.

    Now to my Junior year, this year there was a teacher, my math teacher (who ironically is brothers with the English teacher that wrestled this kid), who told me there isn't much a teacher can do now days to get fired. Really only three things actually.

-Steal money from the school.

-Kill a kid.
-Or get one pregnant.

    Yep, this is my High School. Not to mention that our school was built based on plans for a California school. We built a school designed for California in Utah. Hello. I want to know who on earth thought that was smart.

    Welcome to the fast times at Delta High.

5 Good Reporting Strategies

Over the past few weeks I have learned many things that helps to be a reporter, and since this blog was inspired by my Journalism I might as well write them.

#1. Don't ever be late for an interview.
              Luckily I didn't learn this the hard way. I am never late for appointments that I have set up. But I learned this little fun fact because as I was waiting in an office for an appointment I set up I was listening to someone being chewed out for being late. Glad that wasn't me.

#2. Be smarter than the person your interviewing.
             Often people will try to hide information or dirty facts from you if your digging at a good story. Its your right to know these things. The peoples right. Go in with information. Protect your right to know.

#3. Don't trust everything your told.
             Check up on what people tell you. Being a reporter people tend to automatically not like you. So they'll withhold information, or make a story into something its not.

#4. Go into an appointment with questions prepared.
              It makes you feel stupid if you have to admit your not quite sure what to ask.

#5. Record everything you can.
              People will often deny something they said and blame you for writing. Make sure you have proof that they said what they said.

Until next time my faithful readers!

Some quotes to live by :)

I'm kind of a quote Junkie. I'll sit and look up quotes on the Internet for hours. A absolutely love quotes. I have a big quote book that I read all the time. Its one of my favorite books. These are the ones in my journal. Enjoy!

Key to Happiness: Eliminate the things that make you unhappy.

Remember at any given moment, there are a thousand things you can love.

"If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me, and just forget the world?"

Whats meant to be will always find a way.

Live out Loud.

Nobody really cares if your miserable, so you might as well be happy.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

Remember: a team of professionals built the Titanic. But a lone armature built the Ark.

Scars are tattoos with better stories.

From the Book:
The World According to Seamus Harper
Ch. 12, para. 8, verse 3
"The Universe hates you, deal with it."

Stand for something or you'll fall for anything.

Always do the things that scares you.

Those who say it can't be done, should get out of the way of those who are already doing it.

Never grow a wishbone daughter where your backbone outta be.

Be the best of whatever you are.

The courses of true love never did run smooth.

Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.

"Don't be stupid." -Oaks

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

They might not need me, but they might;
I'll let my head be just in sight;
A smile as small as mine might be
precisely their necessity.
     -Emily Dickinson

A woman's heart is a deep sea of secrets.

The more freedom you give someone, the more they come back to you. When the rich wage war its the poor who die.

Just material things.

Its not the weight of the world that matters, its how you carry it.

Duck, Duck, DUCK!

When I was younger, my parents got ducks.

See, as a kid, my dad grew up with a duck and a cat. The duck and cat grew up together, so they wouldn't hurt each other. They'd sleep together and protect each other. So my dad wanted a duck for me. Because if you only get one duck, then it attaches itself to a human, and thinks itself to be human.

Our first duck was brilliant, it would lay in your arms, come to you, play with you, you could even watch T.V. with it! Then we moved, and the people who bought our house wanted to keep our duck. Which we agreed to seeing as we didn't exactly have a place to keep him at our new house yet.

So a year went by and we got a new duck. One of those white ones that looks like that Aflac duck. And this one carries none of the brilliance our other duck had.

This thing just never learns, and lucky me its decided to attach itself it my side. See, a duck is like most birds, it will attach to one person and one person only. Our last duck picked my dad, but for some reason this time, I'm the lucky winner.

This stupid duck will walk right in between your feet and try to bite at your feet and legs. And you can't walk normally because you don't want to step in the dumb thing so your all trying to be considerate and it gets in your way even more. So now my whole family is used to just running to where we need to go in the yard because then it can't keep up with us and get under our feet.

Unless it is really in a mood that day.

See, one day, I thought I'd be smart and run away from the porch to the garden and run past the duck, then it wouldn't touch me. Oh no, that didn't work, that thing was determined to get me. As I'm running that crazy duck starts flapping its wings so it can run faster to catch me and it lands on the back of my legs tripping me, and taking us both down with the dumb thing on top of me! I swear next thanksgiving I'm going to replace that Turkey with duck...

My Experience in the Court Room

Now those that know me were probably chuckling to themselves and thinking, what did she do this time, well I'm happy to inform you that I was not in that court room because of something I had done. I was just there with my boss Shellie, and another newly hired girl named Ashley, reporting on the happenings of District Court.

Court was quite intriguing. Though I can't disclose what happened exactly I can tell you that I defiantly learned a lot while I was there.

But there was one really odd thing that I can tell you about. Here I am, sitting in court, my boss on one side of me and my co worker on the other, all three of us taking notes, and the door opens. In walks in my three guy friends, Kohl, Jarom, and Joseph. They just come struttin in and sit down in the crowd of the cour room. (keep in mind this is public court, anyone can come)

When the Judge called for a break I went over to them and asked what on earth they were doing here. You see, my bishop works in the court house. I'd been working with him all day. And when we took a lunch break my bishop went to a Chinese restaurant, to which the guys had traveled all the way to Fillmore to eat at, and bishop told them they should stop by. And well, being the boys they are of course they did.

Anyways, so we're on break, and a friend of Shellie's asked if we wanted a tour of the jail. (We meaning me Shellie and Ashley) Of course we said yes, then this guy asked if the guys wanted to come along.

So all in all it was a good day, I learned about court, got to see my friends, went on a tour with them and my boss and co worker (who are both completely awesome by the way), and came home to meet my Mentor, Jane Beckwith. Who is teaching me about Journalism and is also teaching my partner in crime K.P. about photography. Yep, that's a good day to me.

Welcome to the War

The Lion watches out for his pride.

That's what a very dear friend once told me.

I was reading in a book, called The Passage, by Justin Cronin. A paragraph stands out to me that I don't think I will ever forget. It goes something like this in Chapter five, page 84:

The war - the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand more - the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are - would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn't notice and couldn't remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves...

Later, in the same paragraph it says:

-all the subjects hadn't changed, they never would, all coming down, after you'd boiled away the bullshit, to some body's quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where - but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million manic cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

I've got to give it to Cronin, those are some true, and deep words. Its amazing what the public doesn't know. What we, as uninformed people let slip past us as myth and half truths. When really the truth is right in front of us.

There is a War going on right beneath our noses. Wither you see it or not. Well, that's your decision.

Welcome to the War, Americas war, be it poverty, gangs, domestic violence, or whatever cause you stand for. There is always a war for it.

So welcome to it America.