Oh, My Silly Life

So, do I have a story to tell...

I've had a swarm of trials in the last few days. And I've discovered that I get very overwhelmed when it's a collection of issues I have to deal with. I'm fine with dealing with one thing at a time, but when things come all at once or without any breaks to relax and enjoy life, I end up taking it all on at once and become overwhelmed. I'm glad I have such a great friends I can rely on and that are always there for me, ones that don't mind me breaking down on them.

So this last weekend, what was supposed to be an enjoyable weekend at a cabin in Wyoming, ended up being a weekend of misery and distress at a cabin in Wyoming. My allergies were terrible. They ended up being so bad that I became sick. Luckily I had some friends there that took care of me.
It took a few days to recover from my allergies, I still haven't completely recovered, but am 98% better than this past weekend. However, just when I think things are starting to get better, my life decides that it needs more adventure...and I discover that the song "My Bonnie lies over the ocean" has a whole new meaning.

This past Monday, Garrett and I were driving home from playing basketball at the stake center. When we got outside to get into the car, it started to rain a little bit, by the time we got down the street a little ways, it started to rain harder and eventually hail came pouring down on my poor car (Bonnie). We decided to pull off to the side of the road for a little bit to let it pass....however, the storm didn't. It just got continuously worse. As we sat there, I looked down at the ground and it seemed like we were moving even though I had Bonnie in park. Apparently the water was carrying Bonnie, so we decided to go up a hill into a neighborhood and wait under a tree so that the hail wasn't so harsh and we didn't get carried away by the water. We waited for a good 10-15 minutes and found that the storm started to dissipate. As the storm seemed to calm down I figured I would be able to get Bonnie home.

The streets of Fort Collins were very wet and the further we drove, the more intense the storm seemed to become, and the more the streets filled with water. We were about a mile away from my house, when I turned left on Elizabeth, and that is when we practically sunk. Elizabeth had turned into a river...like literally. Bonnie's tires were practically completely under water. Bonnie didn't like the water too much and decided to kill the engine. That's when we realized we weren't going anywhere anytime soon. So there we were in the middle of the street, stuck, waiting for the storm to pass...which it didn't. We waited for probably a little over half an hour and decided to give Bonnie a push. Thank goodness Garrett was there and was able to help me. With a lot of waiting, some pushing and a lot of hope, we got Bonnie back home. What an adventure that was.

Fast forward to yesterday, I figured Bonnie's engine was flooded and thought that if she just dried out she would work again. However, later I found out that that was not the case at all. To add to my stress, we discovered that her piston rod needed to be replaced because of the water that creeped into the engine. "Not a big deal, just need to get the part and replace it", I thought. Oh how silly of me, I was told then that it was better and more efficient to just replace the whole engine at this point. The WHOLE engine! Oh, my poor Bonnie.

And thus, begins my financial adventures once again. Replacing an engine is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. So at this point I'm waiting for my mechanic to find a used engine that I might be able to afford....however, there doesn't seem to be any used engines in the state of Colorado. I'm also waiting to hear back from my insurance company to see if they could cover me since I have full coverage and it's flood damage. I'm waiting for them to make an appointment with me to look at my car. So I'm crossing my fingers.

On top of all this work is really busy and getting yelled at everyday does not make my life any easier.....

Lucky for me, because I have this silly life, the Lord has also placed many wonderful friends in my life to help me through it. So I feel very blessed for those many people who are here to help, if nothing else for my sanity and emotional support. They are necessary for my silly life.

The Inadequacies of IQ

So if any of you know me, you know that I'm minoring in Anthropology. I love the study of humans socially and biologically through the evolution of time. The other day I was going through one of the books I had read for my Human Biological Variations course I had my sophmore year. The theme of the that class had to do with race....which makes sense hence the name of the course. The question we were trying to analyze during that whole semester is: what is race and does it matter?
One of the books we read was called "The Mismeasure of Man" by Stephen Gould. This book really caught my amusement and interest as it talks about what intelligence is and ultimately what is race. This book is an argument to the book "The Bell Curve" by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which talks about IQ scores and inborn cognitive limits. In this book the argument is called biological determinism. "Shared behavioral norms, and the social and economic differences between human groups-primarily races, classes, and sexes- arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of bilogy. (Gould 1996: 52)"

"The Bell Curve" makes the suggestion that the IQ is an innate variance that everyone has that can determine an individual's intelligence....it does not take into consideration that there are environmental factors that can determine innate intelligence. Gould's book illustrates how this is a propostrous determination, he also explains how the IQ test is a terrible analysis of an individual's intelligence and that it leads to social class differences (even race differences) that are inaccurate and falsely protrayed. How does the IQ test lead to social class differences? It's just a test to see how intelligent right?

IQ is based on a test that was developed by Alfred Binet to determine where a child was educationally and to find out if they need extra help in school. It was not a measure of innate intelligence by any means and it should not be used as such. However, in today’s society the IQ test is now used to measure intelligence of an individual to the extent of getting jobs, determining a position in society, and even in schools as a labeling mechanism. The IQ test gives children and individuals a label that they live with in society which leads to social class differences.

The IQ test is a ridiculous tool to measure one’s intelligence. Environment is a big factor because what we’ve learned affects our intellect and reasoning. Our genes can only code for so much, the environment is what determines if we are to reach our potential for those coded genes. Culture, economics, politics and the physical environment all affect whether we reach our potential or not.