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4/19 Today some of my friends and I decided we should do yoga outside. My friend, Hannah, has a park she really likes in the Skokie Lagoons, so we decided to go there. One thing you should know about Hannah is that she always has her phone on do not disturb and she is always late to everything. None of us knew where the park was and Hannah gave us really bad directions and then she didn’t respond after that. My friend Claire, who was also coming, thought she knew where Hannah was talking about, so my friend, Emilia, and I met her at a baseball field and followed her. After weaving our way through the entire Skokie Lagoons, Claire found out she didn’t know where the park was. We turned around and decided we would just do it at the park on the opposite side of the lagoons (where we started) because Hannah wasn’t responding and we were confused. All of the driving wasn’t that bad because the scenery is beautiful and I could roll down the windows. The only reason all the driving was

4/13 Yesterday was Easter! My family usually celebrates Easter by going to church, doing an egg hunt, and then eating ham for dinner. This Easter was obviously different, but we still kept tradition as similar as we could. Our church did a stream so we watched that. My family isn’t really religious but we go to church on holidays. My mom knows more church things than me and my brother, so it was really awkward during the responses when we mumbled it or responded a second later. Next up we did an Easter egg hunt. The day before we dyed eggs. My mom broke some eggs while trying to hard boil them, so I only ended up dying three. The Easter hunt was the same as every year before: my brother and I hunted while my parents hid the eggs (I lost), then we hid them while they found the eggs. However, at the end of the Easter egg hunt we didn’t get a basket of jellybeans and a chocolate bunny, so that was sad. The rest of the day we called various family members and relaxed. For dinner we had

4/5 With nothing else to do, my family wants to watch movies together every night, but the problem is we all have such different tastes. At the start of quarantine we took an hour each night just deciding on a movie, which usually ended up being a mediocre movie at best. However, now we have this complicated system that only my family would do to decide what to watch. First we made a group list with movie suggestions from all of us on there. Then, each night, we each choose three from the master list and make a new list for the night. From there we all have two vetoes and we go around in a circle vetoing others movies. After the vetoing there are four left and we take the matter to a vote.   Our master list of movies After some complaints, mostly by me, we have refined the system even more. Two new rules were set in place: everyday we rotate who starts the vetoing and voting, and we capped the master list, so it wouldn’t get flooded with new things and we would never get to m

Sexual assault is a major problem: it happens to 1 in 5 women, but because sexual assault victims don’t report, it seems to happen less. Victims don’t report because they feel silenced, but why are victims of sexual assault silenced in out society? They feel silenced by society because of our problematic justice system, which inadequately collects evidence and questions traumatized victims intensively, our societal distrust, formed by influential figures and the exaggeration of false reports, and our negative viewpoint of victims, causing victims to feel blamed four being sexually assaulted and judged for not having a “normal” sexual assault. I have pondered the question of why sexual assault victims feel silenced by society a lot in the past few weeks and I have been shocked by most of the statistics I have found. I was unaware of the severity of how victims feel silenced. The most shocking fact is that only 37% of victims report to the police. How can our society silence so man

The result of the naming of two distinct racial groups is forcibly segregating people into permanent classes. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes on page 7 of his book,  Between the World and Me,  “race is the son of racism”. By saying this Coates is conveying racism came before the concept of race, meaning that society felt the need to segregate people and make social classes. To do this they came up with race as an excuse to justify separating groups of people and calling these groups upper and lower classes.  While the people assigned, by society, the lower class, black people, struggle to overcome their designated obstacles, the people assigned to the upper class, white people, choose to ignore this injustice, resulting in the lower class being demolished by these obstacles. The society I refer to is  made up of the privileged group, which Coates talks about as “the people who believe themselves to be white,” (7). “Believe” is when someone thinks something is true. Coates saying this word

I love rap music. However, whenever I'm playing music with my mom I can't play rap. By my mom not being used to typical rap lyrics, she is shocked by the misogyny and demands me to stop playing the song at once. My typical response to this is just a small shrug accompanied by a laugh because, like all rap fans, I am accustomed to it. Many rap fans will say that the rappers misogynist lyrics aren't why the songs are popular. However, if you carefully listen to the lyrics of the most popular rap songs every verse  there will most likely  be at least one time a woman is called a derogatory name. Take one of my personal favorites, Kanye.  I love him for his amazing producing, making unique beats, and the creative sampling he scatters through his songs. However, the song I Love It  does not have any good rap verses, does not have a unique producing, or, to me, any redeemable qualities . This song is basically one lyric repeated over and over to show Kanye and Lil Pum