Tales of Tenth Grade

Negativity is overwhelming our lives. And we need to stop letting it. A person’s pessimistic streak is highlighted when they become a teenager. Everything feels like the end of the world, and we allow minor inconveniences to plague our existence. In my opinion, this causes us to focus obsessively on the negative aspects of our life rather than the positive ones. Our generation is one wrought with defeatist attitudes and nihilistic humor.  We also have a tendency to complain about small things - a lot .  Sometimes it seems like our first reaction to anything is automatically to criticize it rather than attempt to see the good in it. One example I can think of is school assemblies. Instead of just groaning about the waste of class time and utter pointlessness of having an assembly(which are admittedly both good points), we should also try to appreciate the shortened class periods and the break at the end of the school day. When people work to find the smallest issue in s...

Many kids, including teens, often second guess themselves either in school or on the sports field.  But what good comes out of that?  Recent studies prove that when people have a positive mental attitude toward a topic, it will increase the effectiveness of the brain and probability of success. In 2018, Stanford School of Medicine conducted a study with 240 students ages seven to ten.  47 students were analyzed using an MRI while doing basic math.  The results were outstanding!  Students who had a positive attitude toward the subject of Math were found to have a more active hippocampus.  The hippocampus is a part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.  Lang Chen, leading author of the study stated, "...the unique contribution of positive attitude to math achievement is as large as the contribution from IQ."  This reveals that when students are have a positive attitude toward a subject in school, they are more likely to retain informat...