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HOT Topics of the Month
Every month the Silver Shield will address its hot topic of the month. Silver Shield writers will touch on topics ranging from bullying to animal rights to current events. Check back every month to read about Shadow Hills HS's
newest hot topic!
What Tires a Person Out More: Physical or Mental Activity?
By Alejandro Grant
There are multiple ways to sleep well at night. Whether you just completed a night class in college or just came from a football game, you know what real tiredness feels like. Though the question still remains, is mental or physical activity harder?
With a physical workout, you feel beat after. You want to go to your little cot (if you make it) and collapse into an unconscious state. If you just played football, wrestled with a bunch of people, or run eight miles straight, the last thing on your mind is homework or much of anything for that matter. It takes about a two hour aerobic workout for a person to be truly exhausted, but what does it take to get tired from mental activity?
Mentally, many of us are not trained like we might be for sports. This means its not fair to compare the two just based off examples; since many of us might not understand. If someone asked you if running eight miles or canoeing in a lake for an hour was harder and you had done neither, it would be hard to relate, wouldn’t it? The same goes for this subject. Sure doing a two hour aerobic workout is hard, but what about going through a two hour lecture? Many of us don’t know how that feels like and even if we had experienced it, we wouldn’t truly get the whole sensation since many of our minds don’t have the endurance that is required for that mentally. In other words, it’s like comparing apples to oranges when you have only tried apples.
Many people can’t grasp the extent of a true mental workout. I read a thorough article on the site Scientific American by Ferris Jabr on energy consumption by thinking and came to some interesting conclusions. When completing an intense task mentally that we find uninteresting (tests and exams), we burn a lot of energy. This is due to stress and all the many feelings associated with the process of mental work. So a four hour test can beat you down like a two hour exercise even when the exercise burns more calories, it is as if the mind does not want to continue with the task anymore and tires out.
So, with mental or physical activity, exhaustion is able to be reached. It may depend on who you are as an individual to determine what makes you tired. In the end, it is important to balance both activities evenly so to keep healthy in mind and body.
You Are Not Alone
By Keera Stone
Have you ever felt alone? Even when you are surrounded by loved ones and especially during the holidays or “joyful” times in life? You are not the only one. Everything can be going great but for some reason you still feel: empty, alone, sad or worthless. Depression disorders and many other mental illnesses occur in everyone, including high school students and young adults.
There are different ways depression can affect people. You may feel overwhelmed, sad, worthless, helpless, irritable, anxious, etc. Along with these effects, you may experience symptoms such as lack of energy, sleeping a lot or not enough, you may also experience reoccurring nightmares. You also may have a hard time focusing on everyday things, eating too much or not enough, and worst of all you could experience suicidal thoughts or attempts. Another part is you can get depression in so many ways. Some of those ways can be inheriting it from family members who had it, and going through traumatic events in your life.
There are many treatments available but if you are silent about your problems because you either don’t like talking about it or you just don’t have the energy to do so, then do things that you know you will enjoy. Perhaps its putting on your favorite song and dancing around your house in your underwear or putting on your favorite movie and surrounding yourself with your favorite junk foods while relaxing all day. Maybe the best way for you to feel better is just crying it all out; that is perfectly fine as well. If those don’t work for you there is of course the option to call your best friend or resort to writing, reading or drawing.
You must remember that depression doesn’t just go away. You have to work on getting better. If you can relate to any of the symptoms I listed above please talk to someone about how you feel or do things you know will help. It is not okay for anyone to feel alone and so sad and there is always ways to get better, you just have to work on it and be open about your feelings.
Helpline:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
Not sure on if you have depression, anxiety or stress? Take this test:
http://www.depression-anxiety-stress-test.org/take-the-test.html
No Name
By Anonymous
One day a question popped into my head. Would people get along with themselves? What I mean is if a person had an exact clone of oneself, would he/she get along with it? The relationships of twins are partially what I’m talking about, and ideas of what it would be like can be pulled from those relationships; however I’m talking about a doppelganger who has all the same memories as you from the point that it is created. It thinks, looks and has the same DNA as you. I asked three people what they felt about the subject of getting along with their clones and they responded:
Dan Mesa→ ”Yes, I would. I would find myself very interesting.”
Nancy Mendoza→ ”Yes, I love myself.”
Sarah Maciel→ “Yes, but if there was another me, the world would be a disaster.”
Learn Genetics (the website) states that clones happen in nature frequently; humans have even repeated the process in a lab (like “Dolly the Sheep” in 1997). Doppelgangers, on the other hand, can portend to death and misfortune like in the case of Catherine the Great. Her servants reportedly told her that they had seen her entering the throne room, and when she entered the room she saw her doppelganger sitting calmly on the throne. Catherine the Great ordered her troops to kill the double. Catherine the Great herself died soon after the sighting.
Listverse, the internet website, created a list of 10 disturbing tales of doppelgangers affecting famous people of the past which is where I found the story of Catherine the Great and many others. Another extremely eerie story is that of the husband of Mary Shelley (writer of Frankenstein). Percy Bysshe Shelley told his wife, right before drowning in a sailing accident in 1812, that he had an encounter with his doppelganger. The doppelganger met him as he walked out on the terrace and told him “How long do you mean to be content?”
Cultures all over the planet believe in doppelgangers and the bad omens that they bring. Our culture, however, seems to be quite interested in clones instead of doppelgangers. Either way, society as a whole is extremely interested in doubles of humans and the consequences that they bring.