Tokenism in Real Life

     So after our class discussion on tokenism on tv, I started to think about tokenism in my everyday life. The first thing that came to mind is kind of random, but it works: My mom's office. She is a lawyer and most of her co-workers are white. And as far as gender goes, I don't know the exact count, but I would say it is split pretty evenly between men and women. But the main lawyers she works with are white. However, her paralegal, which is basically just her assistant, is an African American woman and the secretary at the front desk is also an African American woman. To me, this is a perfect example of tokenism in real life. The African American women do not have the highest paid job in the office by any means. They are there to simply assist the white lawyers who dominate the office. They are the token black workers, so the firm can say that they are diverse.
     There is also tokenism at New Trier. There are not many African American teachers or faculty. I honestly cannot think of one teacher who is African American. But there are several African Americans who work on the PPS staff. And that is definitely tokenism. They are not teachers, so not in the spotlight, and they do not have the highest paid jobs, but they are there. So who could argue against New Trier that the staff is not diverse? We're diverse. Sort of. If you can call African American janitors diverse.
     So those are some of the real life examples that I could think of. I had never really noticed tokenism before Mr. Bolos' discussion. But now that I'm aware of it, it's amazing how often I see it. Everyone thinks America has come so far, but how far have we've really come?

Data Driven Society To The Max

     Yesterday in class we talked about how society is becoming increasingly more data driven. But I want to specifically elaborate on our discussion of the ACT and how it affects college admissions. Today, as most New Trier juniors know, the ACT scores from the required April test came out. I am now in the computer lab where everyone is chekcing their scores with a furious passion. Even though I was one of those students just seconds before, I realized that this is completely ridiculous. No one was happy with their scores. I hear sighs of regret in the background. New Trier is completely obsessed with data and it consumes our lives every day. But how accurate is this data?
     I have a very strong opinion when it comes to the ACT. I feel that the ACT is not a good indicator of someone's abilities and knowledge, and all it measures is how much money you have. People with tutors pretty much buy their ACT score. The first time I took the ACT, I took it without any tutoring; cold-turkey as they say, and I did okay. Not spectacular, probably the average score for New Trier students. After that I got a tutor and raised my score four points. But I didn't do anything special. Sure, I took about 100 practice tests. But anyone could do that. My higher score does not show that I am magically more intelligent than I was before, it simply shows that my parents could afford to hire an ACT tutor for me. My dad and I got into a pretty heated debate about this once, and let's just say he would kindly disagree with me. He thinks that if you have the money to afford a tutor, then everything is fair game. Although I disagree with him, I understand where he's coming from. He's worked really hard his whole life in order to give his family the best. And being able to afford an ACT tutor for his teenage daughter is just the pay off for all of his hard work. But it puts everyone else who can't afford a tutor at a disadvantage. And in the words of my dad, "That's life".

Junior Theme=Life

     I literally spent my entire weekend writing my junior theme. I ate, slept, read, and lived junior theme. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would; I figured out I tend to write in infrequent spurts of inspiration, but at least I have a rough draft completely done. It still needs to be edited majorly, though, so I thought I would save the week to do that. I also finished my annotated bibliography which I think is pretty good. The librarians' comments have been super helpful, so thank you!
     Last night I transcribed my interview with Dr. Easton, which only took me like two hours, so that was a whole lot of fun. But again, at least it's done. I decided to just get that all over with last night, instead of working on it the entire week like I thought I would do.
     But I think that's about it. I got my rough draft done. I typed out my interview. I finished my annotated bib. Oh yes, I knew I was forgetting something. I still have to talk with some people for the peer to peer requirement so I can add some little tid bits into my paper, but other than that (for reals now) I don't think there's a whole lot to be done. Just editing. Hopefully no all nighters this week.
TO DO LIST:   1) Talk with people for the peer to peer requirement
                          2) Edit!
                          3) Turn in paper and get an A++!