Izzy for VP ;)

I am in a constant battle between myself and my own doubt.

I think everyone is smarter than me, so if someone ever tries to prove me wrong, I believe them.

I think everyone is better than me, so when I’m playing soccer and someone screams “ball,” “Izzy pass to me,” “mark her,” I freak out and automatically try to listen, because they obviously know what they’re doing and I just don’t.

I think everyone else knows what’s best, so I constantly ask for others’ opinions. This past week I had to make an NHS video as to why I would be a good vice president, and I ended up making SIX different videos based on what my peers’ opinions were, just to choose the first… the one that I wanted.

The thing is, every single time I have doubt and someone tries to prove me wrong, I’m actually the one that’s right. Or when someone tells me to “pass the ball” or whatever, I had something way better in mind that could have brought us a goal, but that split second of doubt caused me to rethink my actions.

This past week, a girl was sobbing on my soccer team; yet, no one else even noticed or bothered to care, and some of the girls were even talking trash about her. I stepped up, and even though I was supposed to be somewhere right after practice, I stayed to talk to her and tried to help deal with what she was going through, but what she said at the end is what made me truly realize that I would make a hella amazing vice president… when she said, “I would vote for you if I could, because I’ve never seen anyone that’s cared more.”  

This week has honestly been a struggle, as I’ve been trying to decide what to run for, how to make a video, how to campaign; but it has also taught me something: to listen to my OWN heart, my OWN mind, and whatever I THINK is best.

DON’T DOUBT YOURSELF. That’s the best advice I can give you. Go with what your heart is telling you…. listen to your gut, because if you don’t, you’ll constantly be fighting your mind.

Everyone has doubt, and it’s because we strive for perfection every single day, hoping to magically obtain this concept and dodge all mistakes; I hate to break it to ya, but that’s just impossible. So even if I lose this vp thing, yeah it would suck, but I will know that I tried my very best—it’s not me who would make a bad vp at all, everyone else is just going to have to deal with the unfortunate loss, because they will be missing out on an outstanding leader.

So it turns out that the “technologies that undo [our] capacities to think” are actually our fellow peers and the people who surround us--stop doubting yourself, there’s no need. Doubt will only bring you down in the world. It will mentally change your ability to think for yourself. Just do what you want to do, and I promise that you won’t regret it.

Call me Izzy

We all have a designated name assigned to ourselves right from when we were born. We had no choice as to what we would be called for the rest of our lives, we simply had to comply to whatever our parents desired to identify us with. I mean, I guess that’s what still happens, right? We listen to our parents’ commands because it’s just a natural, humanistic thing to do.

This is extremely similar to the whole “substitution of words” scenario. I honestly couldn’t tell you who came up with “words” in the first place, but what I can indeed say is that our ancestors didn’t just piece together random letters and BAM—words. There absolutely was significance to eat word, phrase, and sentence they conjured up.

So, my question is, why take away the true definition of each word? Even the slightest change to one can cause an immense effect toward its meaning. For instance, altering the word “stupid” to become “exceptional” would just be absurd (Kakutani 764). Take a look at how Google defines each:

Stupid- having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense

Exceptional- unusually good; outstanding

Ummmm WHATTT?! How could we possibly substitute these words when they have no correlation whatsoever to each other?!

Additionally, modifying “Santa Clause” to “Belfana” may satisfy women, but anger men or children who have always grown up to know the name, or even religious folks, since Santa Clause was created in the spirit of St. Nicholas (Kakutani 763).

So, revising words isn’t going to fix prejudice in the world or cease sexism, racism, etc. There are always going to be people that object, and we cannot satisfy everyone’s needs—that would simply be impossible.

 All that we are accomplishing here is taking away the true definition of words and what makes each unique, and when it comes to this extent, we’re destroying how “Plain English” came to be. We are killing our history, letter by letter, and sooner or later we’re gonna need to rewrite the dictionary.

And relating all this back to the whole parents thing—we must follow our ancestors’ creations, whether we like it or not. They provided us with the communication we have today and gave us what makes us different compared to other species. Even though we don’t get to choose our name or how words are defined, we still cannot mess with the nature of it. We must live our lives in the path destined for us, and sooner or later we will receive the reward of naming our own children; we will finally have the power to make our own rules, but until that day, we must comply and live how nature desires us to…. so just don’t mess with it.