In the article “California Becomes First State in the Country to Pass Back School Start Times”, Taryn Luna writes about how beneficial starting school later in the day can be for students. It can be beneficial both physically and mentally for students, making them perform better academically. Although some opponents to this argument argue that a later start time can prove to cause problems for parents that drop their kids off before work, the overall benefits of starting school later are extremely larger. For example, gov. Newsom in California has fought for school times to start earliest at 8:30am. 

      My reaction to this is that with my personal experience as a high school student, high school should start later because the school I go to, Glenbard West High School, starts at 7:35 am and because that start time is so early students are suffering majorly from being sleep deprived. Being sleep deprived causes students like myself to perform worse in school academically and can even cause students to fall asleep during class. If my school in Illinois followed the path that Newsom ha laid out in front of us, students can perform noticeably better academically.

This topic fascinates me because even in current day America, there are so many humans that not everyone is as fortunate as the rest. What I mean by this is that there’s not enough food, money, water, land, and many more materialistic needs to go around and some people get stuck at the bottom of the chain being homeless and hungry. If the Earth as a whole continues at the rate it is expanding right now, we will surely run out of non renewable goods and many people will suffer from it. That’s why I’m curious if we’ll be able to survive as a species with so many of us, or if there has to be limits of how many humans there can be without ruining the Earth and our current society. I further went to research this by visiting the website nationalinterest.org who had to say that “the premise that ‘overpopulation’ is a problem at all is incorrect. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. New research shows that population growth goes hand-in-hand with more abundant resources.” What this means is that despite what some people may fear, people like me who are scared that the world won’t be able to support so many humans, the world is actually doing just fine with the amount of people it has right now and will continue to be fine no matter how many humans are born and live on it. This is because with new humans comes new technology and other new developments in our societies that will make it possible for everyone to live on Earth without consequence because new resources will be invented to sustain everyone. 

This topic fascinates me because it is becoming a very big topic revolving majorly around the food we eat. This seems important to me because I want to know what I’m eating and why certain people choose to be GMO free. I further went to research this by visiting the website nature.com and what they had to say about GMO’s. They described GMO’s as being able to “incorporate new genes from one species into a completely unrelated species through genetic engineering, optimizing agricultural performance”. They went on describing how GMO’s are species that have been artificially genetically altered, which freak out some people and is why they choose to stay away from GMO’s because they want an original unaltered plant, to increase their performance. This information has taught me that GMO’s are a good thing and should be supported by people, not rejected from society, because by using GMO’s we can fully enhance the performance of our crops to benefit everyone.

This topic fascinates me because I don’t understand why the body needs sleep or how it helps us operate as human beings. This also majorly affects me as a student because I’m always being told how important sleep is for me, but no one ever describes why it’s so important. That is why I searched the web for answers and I came across the website sleepfoundation.org which states that “sleep is an active period in which a lot of important processing, restoration, and strengthening occurs.” The website further describes how sleep is important for the body to ‘reset’ itself and restore all the functions of the body, and is extremely important for students who are learning. What is extremely fascinating to me is that even for scientists, exactly why the body becomes sleepy and requires sleep is still a mystery. However, scientists do know that getting enough sleep is one of the most important things you can do for both your physical and mental health.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
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The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
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You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

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