Newspapers / Grimsley High School Student … / March 18, 1996, edition 1 / Page 3
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7HuttUuf, 1996 High-priced high way room By Alec Ferrell StaffWriter This school year has pre sented me with many new views of Grimsley. In student council I have had the oppor tunity to observe and be an ini tiator of the way things work here. Also, as a senior, I have been able to view other stu dents from a somewhat au thoritative standpoint. But one of the newest and most disen chanting aspects of this school I learned of in the classroom. Actually one classroom in par ticular: the North Carolina In formation Highway room. You’ve probably walked down the south end of the sec ond floor hallway in Main Building and wondered about that strange room facing the lawn. Why are the windows in the door blocked off? Why is there a burgundy curtain over the windows outside? Is that a 36" T.V. in there - two of them!?!. That is just the first hint of the trademark aspect of the N.C.I.H., inconvenience. Let me explain the setup. Upon entering the room a stu dent is suffocated by an over whelming sense of sterility; three rows of metal and plas tic grey tables with swivel chairs to match, tight grey in dustrial carpeting, a lowered ceiling with Styrofoam tiles and bug-esque fluorescent lighting, and square, grey soundproofing canvasses placed strategically about the white washed walls. In short, a dentist’s office. After the initial shock of the eyesore the room’s physical quality gives, one must then notice the technology. On each desk there is something that looks like a miniature Stealth Bomber, yet is in fact a super sensitive microphone that takes the sound in our room and pipes it into whatever other school’s highway room we might happen to be con nected to at the time, through a speaker at the front of each class. Looming in each comer of the room are two state-of- the-art surveillance cameras, one on the students and an other for the teacher. A Macintosh PowerPC equipped with a CD ROM and all the other goodies sits on the only wooden object in the room, which can be altered to accom modate a VCR and show it on the two T.V.’s on each end of the class. And descended above the desk of the facilita tor (a Gestapo-like sentry who keeps conduct and any fun un der a hawk’s eye watch - usu ally our lovely media assistant Ms. Toon) is a larger, more complex camera for showing documents in full zoom. On the facilitator’s desk is located an object called the “AMX” control panel, which is a touch operated computer screen that allows for selection of cam eras, focusing and zooming them, volume controls and a mute button. All in all, each room is equipped with about $15,000 worth of technology. And yes, there I am with my head on the sterile grey desk, sound asleep. No, I don’t sleep in there. That would be impossible con sidering the amount of annoy ance and confusion produced by the corruption of images sent by other schools, the con stant noise amplified by apa thetic, chatterbox students from the other schools, and just the general discomfort that envelops you as you walk through the stuffy, air-condi tioned room. My first class in the N.C.I.H. room is Japanese, in first period. Our teacher and his real life students are at Eastern Guilford, and we are also accompanied through the airwaves by students at Smith. It is very interesting to attempt Volume 72 Issue 2 The High Life Staff welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor from students, faculty and the reading public. Letters may be turned in to the office. All letters must be signed. The staff reserves the right to reject any letter containing libelous statements, the right to edit for length and grammatical errors, and the right to ascertain the truthfulness of its content. The High Life is published eight times a year and is produced by the students of Grimsley High School, 801 Westover Terrace, Greensboro, NC 27408. The High Life functions as a medium for creative journalistic pursuits as well as a training instrument for aspiring journalists, artists, and v^nXeisThe High Life functions as a public forum for student expression. Editor in chief: Michael Shuman, Editorial Editor: Brendan Farran, News Editor: Sarah Pendergraft, Feature Editors: Stephanie Dorko, Rachel Green, and Erin Murphy, Sports Editor: Ben Blackwood, Advertising Managers: Jennifer Allen and Julie Samet, Photographer: Lee Avent, Staff Writers: Sarah Atkinson, Ted Chen, Alec Ferrell, Simon Newman, Ethan Pell, Mary Kathryn Ross, Brian Schiller, Anna West, Reporters: Danielle Alford, Peter Baggish, Nikia Jones, Grade Morton, and Mark Robinson, Adviser: Linda Kidd. to learn a thousand-year-old language while guys at Eastern are still fascinated by the sen sitivity of their microphones, and the reactions that we give them as our eardrums explode. There’s nothing as enlighten ing as learning a new verb tense and hearing the constant “scratch-scritch-scratch” of a deliberate pencil running over the microphone; or even bet ter, the paper shuffle. It’s enough to drive one crazy. Our teacher, Eastern High School’s Mr. Drumwright, has proved to be a valuable sensei, despite his difficulties in disciplining the barbarians that disrupt. I suppose it is hard to send someone at another school to the office. I have truly enjoyed learning the language, but the constant hassle by and between students over the waves simply makes it a fairly unproductive learning experience. Humanities, taught by our Mr. Hands, is a somewhat dif ferent story. There are only two schools involved. Page and ourselves, which proves to be much less hectic and far more educational. We have had myriad problems with the technology. Everything from our image being divided by a big black bar, to extreme sound reverberation that makes ev eryone end up sounding like that little blond girl Carol-Ann from “Poltergeist.” Senior Dong Dang and myself are the only students who are in the information highway room for both classes, and we both agree that it is tedious both times over. I wonder if the “big people downtown” have ever taken a class in their much praised technological “advance.” It seems that this project is one that looks like a million dol lars on paper (and probably cost just that, even more) but cannot represent in actuality. Priorities in education these days have become perverted to the point that high-ticket fluff holds precedence over the teaching of fundamental knowledge. This could be a good indication of why the quality and quantity of broad knowledge in today’s students are on a drastic decline. I feel that the best way for all of us to do our job of learning the best is to get rid of all the red tape and political ploys, get ourselves knee-deep in chalk dust, swell up that writer’s cramp and get back to the ba sics. If it worked for our par ents, by golly it can work for us tool Of course, that Fax ma chine sure is dope. BTG BROTHEt\ XS WATUilMG YOU h- \% 7 Time is on no By Peter Baggish Reporter There just isn’t enough time — time to eat, time to sleep, time to work, time to relax. If only we just had a little more time, a couple extra hours a day, maybe. I mean, who set the time length for one day anyway? We could have 25 hour days. That would give us one more hour every day to sleep, eat, or work. Imagine the possibili ties: more time to eat breakfast in the morning; more time to do your hair and make up.... more time to watch go by - to procrastinate. It doesn’t matter anyway, scientifically it’s not exactly feasible, since one second is defined as the time required for 9,192,631,770 periods of ra diation of cesium atoms and it takes 86 400 seconds or 24 hours for the Earth to revolve once about its own axis. So, in other words no-can-do on the 25 hour day. So maybe it’s the way we use our time that’s the prob lem. Maybe we shouldn’t wait so long at our cars before school; maybe we shouldn’t jvatch that extra hour of T.V. After the Seinfelds and Melrose Places are over, maybe we shouldn’t wait until the night before to write our 10 page essays and prepare our 15 minute presentations. That seems to happen a lot. We wait until it’s nearly too late to do the things we want and are sup posed to. This called procras tination. It is the vampire that drains our lives away, it is the bicycle without a seat onto which we blindly jump. I myself am an extremely adept procrastinator. My pa pers are always late, my home work is never done when I go to sleep at night, even this ar ticle is late, but I just can’t seem to start my mind’s engine until all the others have passed me by. I am an outsider to time, or at least the time every one else goes by. I could set all my clocks forward and my calendar ahead, but then even Einstein couldn’t save me from the time warp I would have created. If we all worked like gears in a machine, or automated bank tellers that always give people what they wanted, v^hen they wanted it, then ev erything would get done on time, and we would all lead stress-free content lives. But gears can break, teller ma chines can tell you you’re overdrawn, and people get lazy and bored. Schedules. We need sched ules. Each and every person would get a calendar that told when all your appointments were and when your papers were do, and made sure that you weren’t late, or maybe we should all have our own secre taries, soft-spoken women named Louise, who made us tea and coffee and buttered our bagels in the morning, and straightened up our back packs before driving us to school. Or maybe we could all get little spider monkeys, genetically enhanced to manage our time and throw peanuts on com mand, that would follow us around all day and lightly tell us with their easy to under stand monkey sign language, what we needed to be doing. Minus Louise and the mon key, we are left only with our constantly daydreaming brains that would rather focus our hate than our eyes. As the col lective Popeye would say, we are what we are, and we have what we have (at least until the advent of brain transplants), so open your eyes, wipe the wea riness from your brow, and check your watch, because this period will soon be over and after that, the day, and if you hurry up and hug your mom, you just might be able too catch the sun rise.
Grimsley High School Student Newspaper
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March 18, 1996, edition 1
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