Getting Your Priorities Straight

How cute is this little girl?  Knowing exactly what she wants, and who she wants to be.

I have to admit, though, I'm actually kind of really jealous.  With me being in grade 12, it was due time to make a decision:  Which university should I go to? What should I study?  I've always wanted to know about the future - what my career will be, what I will be like, who I'm still going to know, and just in general - and envied the people who knew who they wanted to be since the age of 5, like this young girl.

In my school board, it is mandatory to take a careers course in grade 10.  It is supposed to help students prepare for their senior years of high school, and to make sure they take the courses necessary to get into their program of choice at their post-secondary institution of choice.  For me, this class was just an everyday reminder that my future was a huge secret, even to me.  I spent my time trying to figure out what I wanted to study, and every questionnaire I did gave me different answers, or random answers like "magician."  Now don't get me wrong, magicians are cool, but I would rather watch one than be one.

I also happened to be scheduled to take this course after I had already chosen my courses for the next year.  Everyone in my class and taking the course the same time as me suffered from this ill-planned timing.  How is this course supposed to help us choose courses for next year when we've already chosen them?

My one chance at planning my life out like this little girl, ripped away.

Vision Problems

What do you think when you first see this photograph?

Photo from http://www.guy-sports.com/index.htm 

 You can probably tell that the two photos are of the same object - the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  However, only one of them actually looks to be leaning, doesn't it?  In actuality, the two photos are identical (the buildings are parallel).

This optical illusion plays tricks on how humans visualize objects.  Because we are used to seeing tall buildings angled towards each other at the top, our brain does not know what to tell our eyes to see when we see images like these.  So, our mind thinks that the buildings must be raising at different angles to each other, and therefore we see one building raising on a slant, and the other raising straight.

(For more information and other photos like this, visit this site)

Photos like these show exactly how much animals (and us, as humans) depend on our sight, and how easily it can be deceived.  So much of our lives depend on what we see, especially in this time period, when so much depends on our looks.  Normal people like me, and probably you, see celebrities in magazines and in other media looking beautiful, thin, and seemingly perfect.  Alot of the celebs' fame comes from the way they appear in front of others, and media causes a big hype when they catch a famous star without their make-up, or when they've gained a few pounds.  Closer to home, many young people starve themselves in the struggle to become and/or stay looking "hot."  Some develop eating disorders and die because of lack of nourishment.  All of this because of the strive to appear appealing to others.

However, hopefully you all know that appearances are not everything.  Sure, it may be the start, or the first thing a person notices (again, because of our dependency on vision), but what's on the inside is what keeps us somewhere.  There never appears to be a day when some magazine or newspaper is advertising the downfall of some celebrity.  Obviously, just because something looks pretty, is may not be pretty "inside."  Our vision deceives us, tricks us, and makes us think something that is not true very easily, because the first thing we "see" in a person is usually never who they really are.