Twenty-five Things to Know on Becoming a Teenager

A family I know has a tradition of making a book when their children hit 13. Everyone writes a memory, or a piece of advice. I set down to write a list of 25 things that are *actually* true. Is there anything wrong here? Is there anything I'm missing?

1. You are somewhat better looking that you think you are.

2. You are somewhat more popular that you think you are.

3. Your parents are somewhat more cool than you think they are. They are somewhat less cool than they think they are.

4. Your parents are sometimes wrong. You are wrong more often.

5. For any given "grown up" activity, somewhat fewer people are doing it than you think.

6. For any given "grown up" activity, somewhat fewer people are doing it than say they are doing it.

7. People are not thinking about you. They are thinking about what you're thinking about them.

8. You are entering a period of chronic, low-level insanity. You will look back on your teen age years and realize this. All teenage girls are insane.

9. Teenage boys are worse. They are stark, raving, often droolingly insane, and generally remain so well into their twenties. 

10. There is nothing wrong with your breath. 

11. Your body smells just fine.

12. Noses never hit. Braces do not lock. Teeth sometimes hit. Lips chap, but it take a long, long time. You now know absolutely everything about the dangers of kissing.

13. Oh, I forgot. It's much easier than you think to get a hickie. If you get one, you will try hard to hide it. Your parents and teachers will try equally hard to pretend they don't see it, or don't know what it is. 

14. The coolest kids in my class are failures now. This is a simple fact. If I had known it at the time I would have thought it a very fun fact. Now I realize it's kind of sad.

15. The nerdiest kid in my mother's class went on to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. (He is, however, still a major nerd.)

16. No teacher ever hates you. They just don't think that way. The good ones will love you a little or a lot. The bad ones will have the same emotion toward you that a factory worker has toward objects flying past on an assembly line.

17. Your parents don't hate you. Your parents love you more than you can even understand now. 

18. If something is illegal, there is probably a good reason.

19. The things that you think will get you into trouble probably won't get you into as much trouble as you think, but will still get you into trouble.

20. The things you think might be dangerous are probably more dangerous than you think. 

21. Tattoos last an extremely long time. Studies have shown that only 1% of teenagers who get a tattoo like them ten years later.

22. Nose rings and tongue studs last only as long as you want them, but bother parents just as much.

23. You're not stuck. It will end. But it's going to take a long, long time.

24. When you enter a room and everyone is laughing, it isn't about you.

25. When you enter a room and everyone is laughing, and you recently blew your nose, and they're all pointing at you, and there's something green swinging in the corner of your vision, considering revising rule 24.

Source: www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=20999

How to be Efficient and Effective in Your Study Habits

Concentrating and Reading

It is often difficult to concentrate during your studies. Here are some techniques that many students have found helpful.

• Asking Yourself Questions
• Getting the Most from Your Reading
• Read the Ideas
• Avoid Contacts

Asking Yourself Questions

The key to maintaining focus is to stop periodically and ask yourself questions, such as

• How does this relate to what I already know?
• If this is true, what else follows?
• What else could these facts mean?
• What assumptions are being made?
• What's the evidence for this?
• Can I think of a good example of this?
• What are the unique points of this?

Getting the Most from Your Reading

• Check off (with a light pencil mark) each paragraph that you completely understand. If you start to get lost in the reading, you will know exactly where: just after the last check!
• If a section is too difficult for you, try reading in a whisper. Hearing what we read is like reading it a second time.
• Similarly, it is good to stop regularly and summarize out loud what you have just read.
• Try to link new information with the information you already know. Ask yourself, ``How do I already know this?'' You can also ask yourself questions such as the focus questions above. Active linking creates powerful memories.
• Take a few seconds to visualize what you have just read.
• Don't forget to jot down key words and concepts. If you read, `rite, and recite (``3R''), you've got a better chance of retaining crucial information.
• After taking a short break from studying, and before you start up again, take a few minutes to review the information you have just learned. This will give you a sense of progress and motivate you to continue on.

Read the Ideas

When you are reading

• Stop at the end of each
  • Paragraph
  • Page
  • Main Section
• Close your book
• Recall the ideas from memory
• Recite the ideas out loud in your own words

Avoid Contacts

When you avoid communicating to your friends, relatives and other people, it helps you to be more productive in your study habits by providing you the enough space, privacy, and work space. It gives you a coherent environment wherein you got to question yourself on what you have learned. And besides, your goal is to study not to talk, therefore you must consider the fact that "group study" is not an effective study habit because it would probably turn out to be not a "study" session but rather a conversation: laughing, talking, and more laughing and talking. Here are some ways to consider:

• Reject the contact
• Cut the contact
• Refuse the contact

Source: www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/study/focus.html/

Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

 Plato:
         For the greater good.

 Karl Marx:
         It was a historical inevitability.

 Machiavelli:
         So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken
         which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but
         also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend
         with such a paragon of avian virtue?  In such a manner is the
         princely chicken's dominion maintained.

 Hippocrates:
         Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

 Jacques Derrida:
         Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the
         act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is
         equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned,
         because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

 Thomas de Torquemada:
         Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

 Timothy Leary:
         Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would
         let it take.

 Douglas Adams:
         Forty-two.

 Nietzsche:
         Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes
         also across you.

 Oliver North:
         National Security was at stake.

 B.F. Skinner:
         Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium
         from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it
         would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to
         be of its own free will.

 Carl Jung:
         The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that
         individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and
         therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

 Jean-Paul Sartre:
         In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
         chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

 Ludwig Wittgenstein:
         The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects
         "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which
         caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

 Albert Einstein:
         Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the
         chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

 Aristotle:
         To actualize its potential.

 Samuel Beckett:
         It got tired of waiting.

 Buddha:
         If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

 Albert Camus:
  The gods had commanded it to cross and recross the road.

 Winston Churchill:
  It was moving into broad sunlit uplands...

 Howard Cosell:
         It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to
         grace the annals of history.  An historic, unprecedented avian
         biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement
         formerly relegated to homo sapiens pedestrians is truly a
         remarkable occurence.

 Salvador Dali:
         The Fish.

 Darwin:
         It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

 Emily Dickinson:
         Because it could not stop for death.

 Conan Doyle:
  It is quite a three-pipe problem, Watson.

 T. S. Eliot:
  To examine the wasteland for worms.

 Epicurus:
         For fun.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson:
         It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

 Richard Feynman:
  Surely it was joking.

 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
         The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

 Ernest Hemingway:
         To die.  In the rain.

 Werner Heisenberg:
         We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it
         was moving very fast.

 David Hume:
         Out of custom and habit.

 Saddam Hussein:
         This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite
         justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

 George Mallory:
  Because it was there.

 Jack Nicholson:
         'Cause it (censored) wanted to.  That's the (censored) reason.

 Pyrrho the Skeptic:
         What road?

 Ronald Reagan:
         I forget.

 John Sununu:
         The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation,
         so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the
         opportunity.

 The Sphinx:
         You tell me.

 Mr. T:
         If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

 Henry David Thoreau:
         To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

 Mark Twain:
         The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

 Molly Yard:
         It was a hen!

 Zeno of Elea:
         To prove it could never reach the other side.

 Beatles:
  It was a long and winding road...

 Pennsylvania/NJ travel guide:
  When travelling along the Road, visit the beautiful town of Chicken 
  Crossing.

 George Bush:
  Read my lips: no more chicken crossing roads.

 O. J. Simpson:
  His wife lived across the road. 

 Umberto Eco:
  It was a part of the Plan. 

 ???
  He was solving the cross-road puzzle.

 A palusible Russian explanation:
  They ran out of vodka, and he wanted to get to the liquor store 
  three miles down the road.

 Elmer Fudd:
  He cwossed the woad to kill the wabbit.  

 Charles Dickens:
  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, chicken were 
  crossing roads, chicken were staying behind...

 Orwell:
  All roads are crossable by all chicken, but some roads are more 
  crossable than others. 

 Dostoyevsky:
  After having killed an old hen, the chicken was wandering deliriously 
  along the empty night streets of St. Petersburg and waiting for the 
  darkness that never came; he crossed Nevsky and after a while found 
  himself in an unfamiliar part of the city. 

 ???
  To prove that he was no chicken.

 ???
  Because for every road you cross, there are ten more roads yet 
  uncrossed.
 
 Ecclesiast:
  There are times for the chicken to cross roads and there are times 
  to stay at the roadside.

 Hamlet: 
 For 'tis better to suffer in the mind the slings and arrows 
 of outrageous road maintenance than to take arms against a 
 sea of oncoming vehicles...

 Sappho: 
 For the touch of your skin, the sweetness of your lips...

 J. R. R. Tolkein: 
 The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-
 white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt 
 road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black 
 eyes.  Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding 
 focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which count-
 less tires had worked their relentless tread through the 
 ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the
  lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where 
 the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black 
 asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the 
 sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes 
 of the great highway too numerous to give name.  And then it 
 crossed it.

 Dorothy Parker: 
 Travel, trouble, music, art / A kiss, a frock, a rhyme /
 The chicken never said they fed its heart / But still they 
 pass its time.

 Darth Vader: 
 (Whshhhhhhhhsh) Because it could not resist the power of the 
 Dark Side.


     [_Princess Bride_ section]

 Wesley: 
 It's terribly fashionable, I think everyone will be doing 
 it in the future.

 Fezzik: 
 Because if it did not it would be like a toad!

 Inigo: 
 Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You crossed my father's 
 road.  Prepare to die.
      ______________

 George Bush: 
 To face a kinder, gentler thousand points of headlights.

 Julius Caesar: 
 Because Pompey threw the die.

 Moses: 
 Know ye that it is unclean to eat the chicken that has 
 crossed the road, and that the chicken that crosseth the
 road doth so for its own preservation.

 Bob Dylan: 
 How many roads must one chicken cross?

 T. S. Eliot: 
 Weialala leia / Wallala leialala.

 T. S. Eliot (revisited): 
 Do I dare, do I dare, do I dare cross the road?

 Paul Erdos: 
 It was forced to do so by the chicken-hole principle.

 Zsa Zsa Gabor: 
 It probably crossed to get a better look at my legs, which,
 thank goodness, are good, dahling.

 Martin Luther King: 
 It had a dream.

 James Tiberius Kirk: 
 To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

 Groucho Marx: 
 Chicken?  What's all this talk about chicken?  Why, I had an
 uncle who thought he was a chicken.  My aunt almost divorced 
 him, but we needed the eggs.

 John Milton: 
 To justify the ways of Chicken to men.

 Sir Isaac Newton: 
 Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest.  Chickens in motion 
 tend to cross the road.

 Wolfgang Pauli: 
 There already was a chicken on the other side of the road.

 Wolfgang Pauli (bis):
 NEIN, NEIN, NEIN, YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG!!
  ... Chicken what?

 Margaret Thatcher: 
 There was no alternative.

 Joe Premed:
 It was a requirement.

 Edgar Allan Poe
 Never More.

Chief Dan George
 It was a good day to Die.

???
 He was daft.

14 Ways to Make Yourself Better Right Now (esquire.com)

...Be More Interesting

It's all in your conversation.

1. Listen more than you talk.

2. If you notice yourself getting bored with what you're saying, stop talking. Acknowledge the situation. Smile. Move on.

3. Know a few historical anecdotes. Like this one: To enhance creativity, surrealist painter Salvador Dalí recommended afternoon naps lasting less than a second. He would lie in his chair, arms outstretched, holding a metal key in his left hand. As he drifted off to sleep, his grip would relax and the key would fall, clanging onto a plate he'd set beneath it and waking him up.

4. But realize that no one likes the guy who knows something about everything.

5. Let people talk over you. Don't think of it as being rude; think of it as an assist.

6. If someone does interrupt you, wait to be prompted before continuing your story. It's a good sign that someone cared in the first place.

7. Drawn-out pauses are the best time for personal non sequiturs. People would rather listen to you talk about yourself than nothing.

8. With people you don't know, limit stories to the last five minutes of your life — the turnout, the Scotch selection, the homeless man you mistakenly took for a valet.

9. Never mention your blog.

Photo Credit: Shepard Sherbell/Corbis

Read more: Conversation Starters - Best Conversation Starters for Men - Esquire 
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Psychology 101: Kokology Test

Read the following questions, imagining the scenes in your mind, and write down the FIRST thing that you visualize. Do not think about the questions excessively.

1. You are walking in the woods. Who are you walking with?

2. You are walking in the woods. You see an animal. What kind of animal is it?

3. What interaction takes place between you and the animal?

4. You walk deeper into the woods. You enter a clearing and before you is your dream house. Describe its size.

5. Is your dream house open, or surrounded by a fence?

6. You enter the house. You walk to the dining area and see the dining room table. Describe what you see on and around the table.

7. You exit the house through the back door. Lying in the grass is a cup. What material is the cup made of (ceramic, glass, paper, etc.)?

8. What do you do with the cup?

9. You walk to the edge of the property, where you find yourself standing at the edge of a body of water. What type of body of water is it ?

10. How will you cross the water?

This has been a relational psychology test. The answers given to the questions have been shown to have a relevance to values and ideals that we hold in our personal lives. The analysis follows.

1. The person who you are walking with is the most important person in your life.

2. The size of the animal is representative of your perception of the size of your problems.

3. The severity of the interaction you have with the animal is representative of how you deal with your problems (passive, aggressive).

4. The size of your dream home is representative of the size of your ambition to resolve your problems.

5. No fence is indicative of an open personality. People are welcome at all times. The presence of a fence is more indicative of a closed personality. You'd prefer people to not drop by unannounced.

6. If your answer did not include food, people, or flowers then you are generally unhappy.

7. The durability of the material with which the cup is made is representative of the perceived durability of your relationship with the person from number 1. For example, Styrofoam, plastic, and paper are disposable; Styrofoam, paper, and glass (ceramics) are not durable; and metal and plastic are durable.

8. Your disposition of the cup is representative of your attitude toward the person in number 1.

9. The size of the body of water is representative of the size of your sexual desire.

10. How wet you get in crossing the water is indicative of the relative importance of your sex life.

Philosophy 101: Meeting God

Meeting God





---





You were on your way home when you died.


It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.


And that's when you met me.


"What... what happened?" You asked. "Where am I?"


"You died," I said, matter-of-factly. No point mincing words.


"There was a... a truck and it was skidding..."


"Yup." I said.


"I... I died?"


"Yup. But don't feel bad about it. Everyone dies." I said.


You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. "What is this place?" You asked. "Is this the afterlife?"


"More or less," I said.


"Are you god?" You asked.


"Yup." I replied. "I'm God."


"My kids... my wife," you said.


"What about them?"


"Will they be alright?"


"That's what I like to see," I said. "You just died and your main concern is your family. That's good stuff right there."


You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn't look like God. I just looked like some man. Some vague authority figure. More of a a grammar school teacher than the almighty.


"Don't worry," I said. "They'll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn't have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved." "To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it's any consolation, she'll feel very guilty for feeling relieved."


"Oh," you said. "So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?"


"Neither," I said. "You'll be reincarnated."


"Ah," you said. "So the Hindus were right."


"All the religions are right in their own way," I said. "Walk with me."


You followed along as we strolled in the void. "Where are we going?"


"Nowhere in particular," I said. "It's just nice to walk while we talk."


"So what's the point, then?" You asked. "When I get reborn, I'll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won't matter?"


"Not so!" I said. "You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don't remember them right now."


I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. "Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It's like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it's hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you've gained all the experiences it had."


"You've been a human for the last 34 years, so you haven't stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for longer, you'd start remembering everything. But there's no point doing that between each life."


"How many times have I been reincarnated then?"


"Oh, lots. Lots and lots. And into lots of different lives." I said. "This time around you'll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 A.D."


"Wait, what?" You stammered. "You're sending me back in time?"


"Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from."


"Where you come from?" You pondered.


"Oh, sure!" I explained. "I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there's others like me. I know you'll want to know what it's like there but you honestly won't understand."


"Oh." You said, a little let down. "But wait, if I get reincarnated to other places in time, could I have interacted with myself at some point?"


"Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own timespan, you don't even know its happening."


"So what's the point of it all?"


"Seriously?" I asked. "Seriously? You're asking me for the meaning of life? Isn't that a little stereotypical?"


"Well, it's a reasonable question." You persisted.


I looked in your eye. "The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature."


"You mean mankind? You want us to mature?"


"No. Just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature, and become a larger and greater intellect."


"Just me? What about everyone else?"


"There is no one else," I said. "In this universe, there's just you, and me."


You stared blankly at me. "But all the people on Earth..."


"All you. Different incarnations of you."


"Wait. I'm everyone!?"


"Now you're getting it." I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.


"I'm every human who ever lived?"


"Or who will ever live, yes."


"I'm Abraham Lincoln?"


"And you're John Wilkes Booth." I added.


"I'm Hitler?" You said, appalled.


"And you're the millions he killed."


"I'm Jesus?"


"And you're everyone who followed him."


You fell silent.


"Every time you victimized someone," I said, "You were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you've done, you've done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you."


"Why?" You asked me. "Why do all this?"


"Because someday, you will become like me. Because that's what you are. You're one of my kind. You're my child."


"Whoa." You said, incredulous. "You mean I'm a god?"


"No. Not yet. You're a fetus You're still growing. Once you've lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born." 


"So the whole universe," you said. "It's just..."


"An egg of sorts." I answered. "Now it's time for you to move on to your next life."


And I sent you on your way.


---




By Anonymous. Transcribed by Mac Davis for Philosophy Circle's reading catalogue.

Source: philosophy.thecastsite.com/readings/anonymous1.html/

Poetry 101: Time Goes By So Slowly

"Time goes by so Slowly"

Childhood was five years old back then
And now ain't certain when was then
Mama used to kiss love on me
Now mama left me now and then

Oh! What time goes by so slowly
T'was yesterday in harmony
And now I am in agony
I wish that God would kill me now

What is the purpose of living?
When time just goes ahead and slow
How fast the minute fly and go
Life can be just counted in row!

As time goes by and time flies out
Oh, how I wished it will not
Mem'ries: regrets and mistakes but,
I will stand and turn my way south

"Time goes by so fast, people go i and out of your life. Never miss an opportunity to tell people how much they mean to you". —Isak Dinesen 

Proof that time can do so much: www.shambles.net/worldclock/worldclock.swf/

Poetry 101: Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

"Do not Stand at My Grave and Weep"

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

Photo from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_stand_at_my_grave_and_weep/

How Strange

How strange this feeling that my life's begun at last
This change cab people really fall in love so fast?

In my life, there are so many questions and answers that somewhat seemed wrong
In my life, there are time when I catch in the silence the sight of a faraway song.

Just for Laughs