Stress?

Many teenagers today are stressed out because of various factors. What do you think is a major cause of stress to teenagers? 

Before I start on the causes, stress is caused by stressors which are events that occur in your life. There are good and bad stressors. Identifying these good and bad stressors can help us to prioritize our life and help us figure out stress techniques before harm. What happens when we get stressed? Firstly, our neurotransmitters start to fail as the stress overloads. The neurotransmitters that control our body clock shut down. This causes you to experience sleeplessness and leads to insomnia in most cases. Next is our energy level will drop and we end up not wanting to get things done. Last but not least, the neurotransmitters in the pleasure part of the brain will malfunction. This leads to sadness and depression. Your body will end up shutting down and making it harder to combat stress.

The first major cause of stress is family problems. Family problems range from petty quarrels between siblings to huge scale divorce and extreme cases of abuse. From a small scale, the bickering within siblings can be stressful. Your siblings are the people you see at home and grew up with together. You tend to have strong emotional connection with them and you feel distressed when they are unhappy or sad or angry, it is even worse when that anger or unhappiness is caused by the disagreement between siblings. This leads to minor stress from family problems. On a larger scale, quarrels between parents and relative also lead to stress. You feel incapable of doing anything as a teen to deal with these adult matters. You get frustrated, sad and just plain angry at yourself and this contributes to the stress teens feel all the time. The underlying problems there lead to a divorce where could end cause the family to end up in smithereens. Physical and mental abuse of a parent on a child also causes stress on a teen which already faces self-esteem problems.

Next, there is stress that comes from trying your best to keep your grades up. Everyone has expectations and also pressure from others to achieve them. This is clear when we talk about teens. Teens are expected to be diligent, hardworking and have good grades. When it comes to the top students, they stress about getting those As and those above average aim for the As and Bs. No one wants to get bad results so they stress about getting better than they had before or at least equal. This stress motivates us to study but at times it can be overwhelming.

Thirdly, romantic relationships cause stress to teenagers. These days you see puppy love in the air and lots of people are in relationships. The ones which are single and overwhelmed with friends who are all lovey-dovey can be affected by peer pressure.  Everyone is in a relationship and I am still single? This causes stress because everyone wants to belong in their group of friends and not be the odd one out. The teenagers who just broke up from a relationship experience stress too. In the process of breaking up or starting one can be stressful for the teens involved. Most teens have not reached a level of maturity or stable emotional developed brain to handle strong emotions like romantic love or heart break. When these strong emotions come on, they tend to feel distraught in a break up or confused with feelings of another individual. The stress of thinking about it and contemplating all the possible factors are apparent. Other than that, those relationships are not always smooth sailing and teens experience rollercoaster-like emotions sometimes due to the connected feelings between two individuals. They feel sad because the one they care for is depressed about something. The long list of emotions goes on.

Fourthly, one’s financial state also brings about the worry and stress. As a teen, you have lots of expenses like school expenses, books, stationary, food and more. If the teen is poor and faces financial despair, this could cause worry that leads to stress. The worry of not being able to have money for the next meal they have is nagging at the back of their heads. They worry more on how to earn money or a part time job if they do have one instead of focusing on school work and activities. Financial state plays a big part because this world of ours runs on the pieces of printed paper we call money. 

Stress in our lives cannot go away forever. We have to learn how to combat it and deal with it before it gets out of hand. So take up those yoga classes, go for a run, play some games or have a laugh! Invest in a small teddy as a stress ball. That is what I did but the teddy was a gift. Release the stress you have by doing something you love. Sing a song and maybe watch a movie or just go and talk to someone about your problems. The internet is also a great place to express your feelings as an anonymous person. Get your life going and don’t let stress weight you down too much. Cheer, till next post!

PS, if you need it http://www.emotionalbaggagecheck.com .

Literature Camp 2015

"That is the end of the first national level Literature Camp 2015," said Miss Juliana. 

I spent a day almost 12 hours busying myself with this national level event which my friends and I worked hard to plan. The many visits to University Malaya, meetings and preparations for the book sharing, Literature Race were all a bunch of fun.

The day stated before the sun has awoken and the committee members, photographers, teachers dressed in our blue T-shirt, Red Crescent members in their white neat uniforms and the students of 5 Balau in casual clothing gathered in school. I remember being too excited to sleep the night before, no idea why. It was a big thing unlike anything that we've ever planned before. I rush out to school on my yellow bicycle after having a substantial breakfast. It was not enough of a breakfast later I realised. How nice it was to have my stomach grumbling for food after the race was over. We departed to our destination, the education faculty of University Malaya. When we arrived, we all climbed up to the administration block to meet our teachers bustling about giving out goodie bags and breakfast to the registered contestants.

Once we got our breakfast and got the green light from Madam Monica, our teacher-in-charge of the event, we headed out to set up our stations. The race lasted a really really long time (it felt like forever). Not only were the bugs and "invisible" mosquitoes unbearable but the humid weather made us sweaty and sticky. Gladly, once the day creeped closer to noon, the bugs and mosquitoes went away. During the race, my station was pretty boring truthfully. It was a more exciting interpretation to test the participants' knowledge on two of the many poems they were instructed to read - "There's Been A Death In The Opposite House" and "For My Old Amah". It made the play treasure hunt on some stairs with rails. Then classifying and figuring out the representation of the clues they found. Some of the groups were highly enthusiastic when they were searching for the clues. Sadly, many of them missed that one clue pasted behind the instructions that were on a pole. 

After the race, we had lunch. Before the next activity began, I got to know some interesting people. Some girls from Tunku Kurshiah College, Malay name Maktab Perempuan Melayu, is a premier boarding school located in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. I talked to Liyana, Shifaq and Asmah from that school. The girls were knowledgable and outspoken for 15 and 16 year olds. I half-expected them to be 17 like me but I then realised that not everyone is my age. Closer to home, I also met Nicholas and Calan from SMK USJ 12. How nice is was to find that they were frisbee fanatics like Xin Wei and I. Calan also knew my friend from Johor, Rachel Sia. How small this world is! My friend, Rebecca even had a friend that she reconnected with while most of us made some new buddies. It was a good way to get to know students from other schools through this event. I hoped for an activity where we could mingle but there was not much time for that.

After the short yet entertaining drama from the 5 Balau students, the event was then continued with the book sharing for the two books "Animal Farm" by George Orwell and "Inferno" by Dan Drown. The books were interesting books on different topics. One on how animals run their world and soon become what they sought to abolish but the animals do not know what is right or wrong anymore. They feel it is fair that their kind is leading them but do not realise they get less food than before the animals took over. Inferno about a debatable topic where a disease is released into the world to make a third(if not mistaken) of the population infertile that would contribute to stop the world from perishing due to the overpopulation of humans. The participants were sporting and shared their thoughts of the book combined with some recent topics. It was good to let them express but some of the participants were not so cooperative.

At the end of the event, many pictures and selfies were taken. Huge group photos of the participants and committee members taken separately. There was cake for the teachers and committee members courtesy of one of the teachers. The event was a success! We hope the schools that participated had a good time. I enjoyed myself with my friends. Even though it was just a one day event, it was really tiring. I crashed in bed really early that night and had a good night's sleep. Hopefully there are more events like this to come in the future. With that, I end my post for today. Cheers, till the next post!

Post Freedom Writers

Recently, we class got to watch the movie "The Freedom Writers". It was interesting and very moving. I felt it meant a lot to us because the story was about this class of students that were our age but on the other side of the spectrum. An integrated high school with students that were involved in gangs, drug trafficking and more. These kids fought for their lives every day. They just hoped to live another day from where they came from. It brought a new meaning to life for the students of 5 Batai.

Our dear teacher asked us to write about some of the topics in the movie. First is prejudices found in the movie. One clear example was the fact these different gangs, cliques and races had a problem with each other. The Blacks prejudice against the Latinos and other races. This was without a valid reason or knowledge. It was just because they thought they were here first and "they" were invading their land. Many prejudices are still present in the world today like racism and sexism. A prejudice where you have to protect your own kind that Eva had to follow was also mentioned in the movie. Eva was instructed to protect the people like her father by him. She had lie to protect Paco from the
court of Law but in the end Eva did what was right. She may have had lost her family of Latinos but her classmates who were once divided, came together and showed her that they are her family and that she will never be alone.

Secondly, there was stereotyping in the movie as well. The perfect stereotype seen was when Miss Gruwell's husband said "I can't be your wife." after she asked him to support her like wives do. The stereotype of husbands go to work and wives stay at home to support the husband is still present in society. However, the people have changed and women have become more independent to get their own jobs. In some cases, the women achieve more than men and earn more than them too. Truthfully, in my opinion, this stereotype should not be upheld because it is all down to the mutual agreement of a husband and wife that keeps them together. In the movie, I feel that the husband should have gave Miss Gruwell a chance and told her how he felt about her working so late and et cetera .

Next up is the topic of discrimination. The whole movie was filled with discrimination of many sorts. Firstly, there was the example of discrimination - harassment. Inappropriate jokes, insults, name-calling was seen clearly in the movie. They also displayed behaviour where the would fight with other races just because the school was in chaos. There was also a cartoon drawn by Tito in class of an inappropriate cartoon on Jamal with big fat lips "kissing up" to Miss Gruwell. When Miss Gruwell saw the drawing, how raged she was. She mentioned the Holocaust and drawings of the Jews with big fat noses in the papers. She talked about the greatest gang in history which took over countries that did all those stuff to get rid of their enemies. This was to prove to the class discrimination was bad.  Other examples of discrimination in real life is discrimination in hiring, housing, sex discrimination and wage discrimination.

Lastly there were examples of segregation presented in "The Freedom Writers" movie. This is clearly seen in Eva's monologue at the start of the movie. She states that there are the different type of cliques "latino's, china town, the ghetto, and a white kid" in school. There are also cliques in my school but I feel that we are pretty united due to the flexibility of the students and open mindedness of the our generation. Then again, it could just be my year. People who are new have to try to fit in to a clique to feel welcome. This brings us to the psychological factor of wanting to belong. The movie really shows the big contrast between the class when they first started out and after Miss Gruwell brought them together. At the start of the year, the students came in and sat in their cliques but Miss
Gruwell changes that when she moved the around. I felt it was a good first step for her. In the end, you can see the class worked together to raise fund to bring Miep Gies to their school and were all united on bringing Miss Gruwell back for their Junior and Senior year.

In our world today, you still see all these - prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination and segregation throughout the society. The different levels of them in the various places. Relating to another movie "The Duff" (it is PG13 in US but was not shown in Malaysia due to certain parts of the movie), we should all learn to love ourselves and ignore the labels on us as well as the cliques we are in. High school is a vicious environment. With that I end my post, till next post! Cheers.

How A Bad Day Is

I just want to share with you how a bad evening/night, in specific, occurs in my house. I do not know how you would feel in my shoes but you can try to see from my point of view.

Let us start with waking up in the morning. Eyelid flutter open and the feeling of the sunlight stream in from the window. I lie under the covers waiting for my alarm to go off but it does not. Too early again. I get up either by body clock or awoken by someone moving around in "my" room. I check my phone and it lies there beside me. I remember what I did last night. Must have forgot to put it on the table again.

I fall asleep again into light sleep. Being awoken the moment my mother tries to pry my phone from my hands. I must have dozed off again with it there. In the end, I get up and succumb to the every morning rituals of brushing my teeth, washing my face, brushing my hair, breakfast and just aimlessly walking around my house or room.

Back to my room after breakfast to finish up the homework which are due to my horrible habit of procrastination. It is bad indeed. Why don't I finish it during the weekdays? Hard habit to break. My family and I leave the house to obtain our meal of the day, lunch. Lunch then tuition for me but grocery shopping for my brother and mother. All sunny and no storm cloud in sight, for now.

The food churn in my digestive system and the drowsiness kicks in. This unbearable feeling of wanting to nap with the relaxing yet piercing cold air circulating the room makes tuition class slightly less appealing. My brain is on the verge of shutting off. Deja vu moment when I realise I have seen this in my dreams before. How quaint.

I am greeted with the breeze that tags along with the million of rain droplets pounding on the roofs, roads, cars and people as I exit the tuition centre. No softball due to the rain and thus I go home to do my several miscellaneous things.

The bad day starts when my mother calls me down to help her cook. For your information, she only cooks on some Sundays. This week she wants to teach my brother and I new things. I comply by walking downstairs and helping but my brother still has his butt glued to the chair in front of the computer. League of Legends again. I do not know why she flared up when I was just telling her about the computer.

She magically presumed I was complaining about the computer and my brother. She started shouting on top of her voice. You could feel the air around me shake and shiver in fear. You can hear her voice echo slightly. This continues to go on as she cooks. It is then I realise, my family members are quite temperamental. I think to myself "I should just keep quiet next time." Sometimes you just have to keep quiet and let everything swirl around you violently as you wait the storm out underneath that small piece palm leaf. Dangerous isn't it?

I had to use the computer to play these brain games from the Lumosity web page. Not so great when you have someone babbling and talking about other children of her friends along with their achievements and discipline. How they study by themselves even when their parents are away at work, not play computer games and like somebody she knows. How they are not involved in any relationships and their amazing jobs, scholarships.

The moment someone shouts at you something about you not thinking or using your brain. We all know people say stupid things that they do not really mean when they are angry. It just slip of the tongue or heat of the moment. Does it make you feel slightly dumber than you really are? Does it lower your self esteem? People expect so much higher than what you are but are never satisfied with what you do.

This is how life is sometimes. You look down on yourself and when they find out you do, they scold you. You just never have the words to explain to them that you are part of the cause. Sadly if you do they get angrier in most cases. You just pour oil into fire and end up burning yourself to a crisp.

I heard from someone that whenever I write, I always write in a very sad tone. I hold on to the bad past and I just cannot remember most of the memories. It gets jumbled up and becomes a messy blot of ink in my mind. No longer words or pictures but a blur of letters and colours. I am mad and sad? Perchance.