How To: Be a Good Person

        But maybe you've been meaning to join a service club and haven't gotten around to it all year. Maybe you don't have time after school because of play rehearsals, sports practice, or a part time job.
         The phrase 'community service' has been changing over the years, especially at New Trier. What used to mean doing nice things for your community now has evolved into doing stuff you don't want to do in order to beef up your college applications. (Of course the urban dictionary definition is a little different, but that's to be expected.)

        If you are one of the students at New Trier who has volunteered many a time for causes you don't know much about, you're not alone. New Trier prides itself on its number of social service clubs, and tries to make it as easy as possible for students to spend one day a week after school helping underprivileged kids learn how to play an instrument or sports (and obviously much more).
        If that's you, you have an opportunity to make up for your lack of 'community service', or a chance to relive your guilt about not giving back at all tomorrow! New Trier's Peer Helping club hosts two blood drives every year, one of which was in October, and the other is tomorrow (Friday, February 24). Giving blood is a great way to help your community in a more measurable way, and Peer Helping makes it incredibly convenient.
        I give blood every 56 days, it's something I have been passionate about since I organized and hosted a blood drive via LifeSource at my middle school in 2008. There's no down side, so if you're eligible to donate I urge you to do so.
        If you have any questions about the process, please feel free to ask me, I'd love to help you set up an appointment at a donation center outside of New Trier if donating tomorrow is too short of notice for you.
        Whether you donate blood tomorrow or go to a service club every week, giving back to our community is an important part of becoming an adult. If you don't know what you're interested in, I recommend trying out as many clubs as possible until you find one that suits you, and in the mean time donating blood is perfect for those of us who hope to actually help our communities rather than do community service in order to convince schools you're worth admitting.

How To: Protect Your Home

        While walking my dog this afternoon, I began to notice these kinds of placards on the lawns of every single house for a couple of blocks, but when I crossed a busy street into a separate grouping of houses, none of them had these security systems. When I asked my dad about them, and why our house doesn't have one of these systems, he replied that ten years ago none of the houses around us had them, and they slowly began cropping up one by one.

       My first thought was that people were buying them to make their homes more safe. But if that were the case, why would only people on a certain block have them?

        Then I started thinking that people were buying these systems out of paranoia. If a robber looking for a house to pillage, and a couple of your neighbors had these types of security systems, wouldn't that make your home seem more easily accessible to a possible burglar? With that mindset, it's no surprise that one street is ADT protected, and the next is not. 

       The graph shows how the stocks of Tyco, the company that owns ADT, have been gradually increasing over the past ten years. (The drop near the middle is due to the '08 crash.) 

        The ADT website says that their product will allow customers to: 

"Get the peace of mind that comes from knowing that the #1 security company in America is helping protect your family and home,"

Is it possible that their increase in sales is due to the paranoia caused by not having their systems? What other products do we own that are for "peace of mind" rather than functionality?

How To: Be Afraid of Heights

         Some see thrill seeker Dean Potter as crazy, others see him as a hero. No matter what your opinion of him is, you must admit he's got guts.
        Now, I don't know anything about this guy other than what I read about him on his Wikipedia page linked above and what's featured in the video, but I'd have a hard time believing that when he was in high school he knew he wanted to break the world record for the longest base jump ever achieved by man.
        Do you think in 25 years you'll be doing anything like this?