You can probably tell from the lack of blog posts yesterday and the day before that I’ve come down with a case of uninspired-itis again. Here are some things that interested me today:

Preggers.

Disturbing: A pact between teenage girls at Gloucester High School to get pregnant was at least partly behind a rise in the number of pregnancies there, according to the AP.

The school’s principal told Time magazine that several girls confessed to making the pact. The school started to worry when 17 girls, none over 16, became pregnant. The school average is four pregnancies per year.

The principal told Time, according to the AP, that “[s]ome of the girls reacted to the news they were pregnant with high fives and plans for baby showers.”

I wish teenagers would stick to trends like black nail polish or Hello Kitty pencil cases — things that can be rubbed off or thrown away or outgrown … not like a baby.

In other news…

Seventeen year-old Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl on Thursday. Hm.

Attack of the Clones (in a good way).

The Guardian reports that a man whose skin cancer had spread to his lung and groin was cleared of all traces of the disease after doctors injected him with five billion of his own immune cells.

Cloning was used to create billions of the man’s own cells, which, when they were put back into his body, starting attacking the cancer. Tests showed that tumors in the patient’s body disappeared within two months of the treatment and had not reappeared two years later.

Doctors believe that the treatment could work in about a quarter of people with skin cancer whose immune systems are already primed to attack the cancer, the article said.

Hat tip to juh for the link.

Aloha, Azerbaijan!

Hawaii state House Rep. Gene Ward’s Thursday op-ed in the Advertiser about a recent women’s rights conference in Azerbaijan got a mention in APA, which covers news in that Eurasian country. Amusingly, the news service labeled Ward a “Congressman,” and included beside the article what I think is a photo of the U.S. House? Senate?

Congress, legislature, it’s all the same. Oh well.

Props to Ward for looking beyond Hawaii and offering his perspective on an important international issue.

What’s a Blog For?

There’s a 6-comment discussion going on over at Poinography regarding the Advertiser blogs, in response to Doug White’s recent post about Editor Mark Platte’s June 15 column about blogging. For the most part, the comments (all besides mine) are pretty critical of the approach to blogging the Advertiser has taken.

This underscores an interesting and current debate about the purpose of a blog. When I first got to blogging back in high school, blogs were online diaries where you’d post your thoughts, feelings, angry poetry, song lyrics and other gibberish. Flash forward 10 years later and blogs are transforming the media landscape with insider analysis or information posted minutes or seconds after news breaks.

A lot of the Advertiser blogs more closely resemble the online diary model than the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan), Instapundit, Boing Boing or Talking Points Memo models. Which is great, if you’re just looking to offer your two cents about cell phones, but annoying if you’re looking for something with more, well, substance, or insider info that all of us reporters are supposedly toting around in our pockets. Believe me, if it were THAT interesting, we’d have written about it by now.

Some of the government/politics and business-oriented blogs don’t so much follow the diary model as they’re written by reporters who know their blog subject intimately. That goes for the sports bloggers, as well. Of course the Advertiser would like to supply readers with more blogs about things they’re interested in. But it seems just from the numbers that what readers want isn’t always what’s most pressing or significant in the grand scheme of things. I’ll admit it — it’s puzzling to me when a post I write about slippers gets 10 times as many comments as one Jerry Burris writes about important rumblings in state government.

Let me follow that by saying that I do not begrudge anyone their blog posts about slippers, as reading about Hawaii politics can get depressing.

I suppose Quarterlife Cafe would probably fall into the category of “meaningless fluff” designed to entice the twenty-something crowd into reading the newspaper. But, hey, if I can get just one more apathetic twenty-something to read just one more article and learn just one more important aspect of some Hawaii issue, then I’ll write all the meaningless fluff I can muster.

Happy Aloha Friday!

When I first started taking Chinese in seventh grade, I absolutely hated it. I remember sinking into my chair as my laoshi (teacher), Mr. Chao, scrawled a tidal wave of characters across the chalk board. The yellow chalk squeaked as he put the final dramatic stroke on the last character — then he turned to us.

“Bu ru hu xue, yan de hu zi!” he said, grinning, as if secretly entertained by the terrified looks on our faces. “If you never enter the tiger’s den, how can you catch any cubs?”

After more than 10 years of Chinese in the classroom, half a year in Beijing and countless Saturday sessions with my Chinese tutor, I am still astounded that my experience with Chinese lasted longer than that first challenging week of class in seventh grade. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I have Mr. Chao to thank for that. He took an incredibly difficult subject and inspired me to stick with it 12 years later.

Wednesday was Teacher Appreciation Day 2008, and tomorrow marks the end of Teacher Appreciation Week. Founded in 1984 by the National Parent Teacher Association, Teacher Appreciation Week is an opportunity to celebrate and thank educators across the United States.

There’s no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my teachers. I had the good fortune to learn from quite a few truly outstanding ones in elementary school, high school and college. They gave me a deep appreciation for Shakespeare, Asian history, sociology and international relations (to name a few) with attentiveness, humor, enthusiasm and passion.

I consider teaching to be one of the most challenging professions out there. For many teachers, the rewards come slowly, and the financial compensation can be low considering the amount of work put in. My dad, who happens to be quite a good teacher, has taught students in the Philippines and Samoa. He often says the job is as much about being an entertainer as anything else.

I’ve had several opportunities in the last year to “teach,” that is, speak to classes of students about my job, even though I’m quite new to the biz. A few weeks ago, I spoke to three separate classes of students at Ilima Intermediate for the school’s Career Day. After several hours of trying to keep their attention with relevant issues about while not losing my voice in the process, I came away with a new respect for their teacher and what she does in the classroom every day.

I constantly marvel at the patience and drive of my friends who are young teachers in their first or second years of instruction. They are working hard to make kids’ lives better at schools around the world — from New York to California to Japan, even here in Hawaii public schools. They work with a variety of students from ultra-hyper, easily-distracted elementary schoolers to more attentive but sometimes more unruly high schoolers; students who come from a range of income levels and ethnic backgrounds.

If there is someone who inspired you when you were in school, or who still inspires you to this day, take some time to look them up and send them a note. Or share your story about them here.

You may not recall exactly how to dissect a frog, label all the countries in Eastern Europe or conjugate a Latin verb, but hopefully there are other life lessons you still remember. I know I personally owe a whole heap of thanks to all the teachers in my life.

They’re the ones who taught me to catch tiger cubs.

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More on Teacher Appreciation Week:

Teacher Thank-You Card Project
Teacher Appreciation News
Teacher Appreciation Blog

I went back to the ol’ high school alma mater last night as part of the annual “Life Ater ‘Iolani” event. We divided into groups according to the regions where the seniors were headed to school, so I represented the East Coast with three other alums, who had attended MIT, Boston University and Cornell University. There were about 30 students in our classroom, which I consider a good number.

The 2-hour event gives students an opportunity to be in a room sans parents, teachers and other adults, with just their peers and some young(er) alumni. So, students can ask questions that might not have been asked in the presence of adults, for example, about drugs, alcohol and “hook-ups.” And alumni can give honest answers.

I was glad that in addition to the usual questions about how to stay in touch with friends and how often to call parents, we also had practical questions — how to purchase a good winter coat without breaking the bank, how to find a job during school to help with costs, how to sneak a rice cooker into the dorm without campus security or your RA catching you.

This is the second college info night I’ve participated in. Every year I leave feeling optimistic that I’ve offered at least some semi-useful advice to seniors about the challenges they will face getting on a plane, traveling 13 hours away from family and friends and familiar surroundings, and stepping into an environment that in many cases will be new and foreign in almost every way.

I also think: there is no way that I or anyone else can prepare a Hawaii high school senior fully for when he or she finally embarks on that experience.

Before I left for Massachusetts in August 2002, I talked to a lot of people. But I think there are some things that people tell you that you can never understand or appreciate until you get there; things you just have to learn for yourself.

For example: how can you begin to fathom what 20-below-zero feels like when you’ve enjoyed sunny 80-degree weather for your entire life?

Or, take long-distance relationships. Both years, alumni addressed the topic, basically saying that there is a 95 percent chance that long-distance relationships that carry over from high school to college are doomed. There’s always a nervous twitter among the seniors, many expressing confidence that “there’s still 5 percent.”

I guess it’s just something you have to learn for yourself.

Entering into an entirely different environment, an entirely different life, even, is what going from high school to college is all about. Whether it’s going up the street to the University of Hawaii or HPU or leaving for a rural town in upstate New York, college should be, at times, uncomfortable. It should jar you a bit. Who knows — it might change you from who you were in high school. It may change your friendships with people you thought you would be able to talk to forever. But that’s not always a bad thing.

I guess my advice to seniors would be: yes, ask questions, take some time to prepare yourself for school, for leaving Hawaii and your friends and family. But don’t be afraid to venture off without knowing everything. Don’t be afraid to embrace the unknown.

Teachers might want you to think otherwise, but college isn’t just about school — it’s 60 percent academic learning and 40 percent everything else.

I wish someone had told me that before I left for college.

photo: College graduation, June 2006.

I like watching The Hills, but sometimes I find aspects of the MTV reality show difficult to relate to: the Hollywood lifestyle, the high fashion, the excess of blonde…

That’s why I was excited to watch MTV’s newest reality series, The Paper, about the student staff of The Circuit, the award-winning student newspaper of Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla. It’s got just the right combination of drama, comedy, touching moments and dorkiness.

The first episode opens with: “Journalists are the most important part of world. They really are,” a surely indisputable truth spoken by the show’s best character, a power-tripping egomaniac named Amanda who also happens to be editor-in-chief. Naturally, just about everyone on her staff wants to do her in. They exclude her from all social activities, gossip about her behind her back and plot at every chance they get to undermine her power.

Fittingly, Amanda has been afforded space to write on The Paper’s web site. To give a taste of her character, here’s what she wrote after watching Episode 2, where she has just won the editor-in-chief position and her staff is still stewing about it:

After watching the episode, I noticed a glaring familiarity between the situation between my peers and me and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the most recent democratic debate. I watched the screen and noticed the consuming glimmer of passion that seized our eyes, the exchange of heated glances, and the putrid stink of unrelenting competition.

It’s this air of self-importance — every reporter has it — added to the deliciousness of high school drama that make the show worth watching.

The Paper airs on Mondays at 10:30 p.m. HST. I’d say it’s the best thing to hit MTV in a long time — but I guess I might be a little biased.

photo: www.mtv.com

I was excited tonight to watch one of the greatest high school reunion flicks of all time: Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

OK. I admit it. I love this movie. Strange, because it came out when I was in seventh grade. It’s about two best friends who, ashamed to go to their 10-year high school reunion without a success story, concoct one to go with a flashy car, elaborate up-dos and business suits.

The story? They invented Post-its.

Facing my own 5-year high school reunion around Christmas was … surreal. Thankfully, I didn’t have one of those high school experiences where I placed myself in a certain category: popular, jock, cheerleader, nerd. Unlike Romy and Michele, I didn’t have a chip on my shoulder from being bullied in high school, I didn’t go to woo an old crush or confront an enemy. I was actually looking forward to seeing old friends.

But getting ready for the event, I felt a pang of nervousness in my stomach.

At this point in my life, I have not yet figured out how to define “success.” At a high school reunion, where everyone is trying to be their best, it’s easy to spot how some of my classmates have come to see that term. For some, it’s having a rock on your finger and a handsome stud by your side. For others, it’s wearing the latest fashions, having an expensive bag or designer shoes. For some others, it’s having a gaggle of outgoing friends, or a family, even a baby.

In the absence of most of these things in my own life, I’ve come to define success — and in turn, my own self-worth — by my education and my career. And I’m not always 100 percent sure that that’s the right way to go.

Whether high school was a nightmare you’d rather erase from memory or the best years of your life, there is a painful transformation that takes place during that time that I think everyone goes through. Those years are when we lose something, we cease being uninhibited and unashamed, we forget the ease of childhood. Maybe it’s the first time we start truly caring about what others think. For the first time, real or imagined, we have something to prove about ourselves.

My reunion hit me with a rush of those feelings because, suddenly, I stepped into a room full of the first people to whom I felt like I had to prove something about myself. And I forget exactly what that was in high school — probably that I was “cool,” or different, or smart, or good at sports. It triggered something in my head that put me on “Meet-and-Impress” Mode. Suddenly, I felt like I had to put my successes out there for everyone to see.

When Romy and Michele’s Post-it story backfires and they are laughed out of the room, they return a few minutes later sans business suits, wearing their normal flashy attire and being, well, just themselves. The moral of the story is: there will always be nerds and jocks and popular kids, there will always be bullies and people who take pleasure in putting you down. Just be yourself.

Once you start working, you find that life is — in many ways — just like high school. But if you can shed the attitude that you are only as good as others think you are, then you’ll go a long way. In the end, I guess that’s more and more becoming my definition of “success.”

We’ll see how I fare at the 10-year mark.

photo: tvnz.co.nz