Qualified for Conference

On Saturday, I ran at the Brutus Hamilton Invitational at UC Berkeley. In high school, at the end of each season, I competed at Cal for the league finals called the Meet of Champions, and Cal has never let me down. Every year for four years, I would get a personal record in every event that I ran, so I was ready to run a good time at this meet – well, almost. Now running for Davis, it’s been a while since I’ve actually ran in a real invitational, so I was surprised at my time in the 100 hurdles – a 15.08. I was so excited to run close to a sub-15 time, that I completely forgot about my other race, the open 100 that was right after the hurdles. I was not used to having back-to-back races, and I think my mind was on the time that I got in the 100 hurdles.

 

The time of 15.08 makes me eligible to run in the Big West Conference meet on May 15 at UC Irvine. The “qualifying time for the 100 hurdles is 15.2” (bigwest.org), so I’m excited that I qualified – but my personal record is actually 14.69 – and that’s from high school. I have not been able to run a sub-15 since running for Davis, and it’s really frustrating because I feel that I have gotten faster since high school. I can’t decide my actual emotion for getting the 15.08 because although it’s my personal record for the season and for being on a college team, and it qualifies me to go to conference, I know that I can do better and get closer to my overall personal record.

 

But I’m not in the clear yet; my time of 15.08 only qualifies me to race – now I have to be one of 32 people from the track team that actually gets to go to the meet. The team can only afford a certain number of athletes to fly down to Irvine, so we’ll have to see what the coaches decide…

Babies: The New Pink

Bristol Palin, Jaime-Lynn Spears: just two examples of women who contribute to the “nearly 40% of babies born in the US in 2007 delivered to single unwed mothers” (Ravitz) number. I’m sure you’ve noticed in the pop culture media that there is an alarming increase in the number of women who are having unplanned pregnancies at a very early age. I’m not saying that what these women are doing is wrong – but I am worried at how carefree these women have babies like it’s no big deal. Where is all their common sense?

It’s annoying that the celebrities don’t realize that (unfortunately) we have to hear about their lives in magazines and on TV. The public – and young girls – see and often emulate these celebrities – and now because there is a new “baby boom” in Hollywood, many teen girls and early-twenties women think it’s okay to have a baby if, “Angelina” or “Octomom” are doing it. The problem is that the magazines and TV shows only reveal the jovial, relaxed, easy times these celebrities are having with their newborns – what about the cost, time, effort, responsibility it takes to raise, um, America’s future citizens?

Recently, teens and “about 50,000 women delivering babies each year are single moms by choice” (Ravitz) and that it seems (increasingly) like the normative for American women. So I’m 19, I’m getting an education, and I don’t have a baby – is my lifestyle obsolete?

I would be mortified if I had a baby “in the near future” – but just imagine what our parents think and how much they worry about their daughters watching celebs having babies like it’s noting (because they have the money) and will think it’s okay because it’s what the celebs are doing.

 

 

 

 

Ravitz, Jessica. “Out-of-Wedlock Births Hit Record High.” CNN News. 8 April 2009.

<http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/08/out.of.wedlock.births/index.html>

 

Boyfriend vs. Bird

I read a biology article online about an experiment that came to the conclusion that jackdaws, a relative to crows and ravens, “seem to recognize the eye’s role in visual perception, or extremely sensitive to the way human eyes are oriented” (Bird Can "Read" Human Gaze). But you’re probably wondering: so what? As I was reading this article, I started to compare the success of the jackdaw “reading” a human’s gaze to that of my boyfriend’s attempts of understanding me - and how he ranks to this attentive bird.

 

The jackdaws reside mostly in Europe, they mate for life, and “unlike most birds, jackdaws’ eyes have a dark pupil surrounded by a silvery white iris” (Bird Can "Read" Human Gaze) making it similar to humans’ eyes. One experiment showed that the jackdaw “hesitated with taking presented food if the human was looking at the food; but if the human was looking a different direction, took little time to take the food” (Bird Can "Read" Human Gaze). Also, they could “interpret human communicative gestures, such as gaze alternation and pointing to help them find hidden food, which they then found” (Bird Can "Read" Human Gaze). So is this bird, which relies on the simple sense of vision for interaction, more conscientious of a human’s gaze or intention more so than my boyfriend?

 

My boyfriend and I have been together for more than a year, and like all other relationships, we work on strengthening the communication between us. There were a few rough patches where I would tell him exactly how I felt and what was bothering me – but it seemed like I was talking to a brick wall. Now, I’m not saying my boyfriend is clueless, but I was intrigued at how this simple bird could “read” a human’s gaze so effectively and clearly without a common language.

 

Obviously my boyfriend is smarter than a bird, but it seems that the jackdaw pays attention to a human’s body language through observing the human’s eyes. In contrast, humans – including my boyfriend – rely on verbal conversation. I learned that maybe I too could better my relationship with my boyfriend by simply using eyesight to watch and observe body language, emotion, and eye expression first because actions speak louder than words.

 

Suzanne Howard

 

 

 

"Bird Can "Read" Human Gaze." Biology News Net. 2 April 2009. 5 Apr 2009

<http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2009/04/02/bird_can_read_human_gaze.html>