FIRST YEAR STUDENTS!

Dear first year studentsJ

We are now finishing our last few weeks at school and I want to share some words of wisdom that I've learnt throughout my time at Sandvika VGS. The most important thing you should know when you start here is that you need to focus on your studies and try not to be distracted by all the fun stuff you can find on the internet. I know from my own experience that it's hard, but I wish now that I had never started in the first place. You should try to balance it and use it for studies in stead.

What makes Sandvika different from most other schools in Asker and Bærum is that you get to use your computer at all times. It's both positive and negative. Your learning experience will probably be more varied because many of the teachers here like to try out new fancy methods. You will probably like some of it, and dislike other things. Some of the things you should prepare for are a program that's called One Note from Microsoft and blogs. We also use many other applications or programs that most people don't even know existed. Here are some of the examples: Photostory, Glogster, Wikispaces and GoogleDocs.

Good Luck!

If you like English you should definitely chose that for one of your optional classes. If you like it even more maybe you should consider to study abroad your second year? I truly recommend that to everyone, because it's something you'll remember for the rest of your life and it's a good experience to have. Not just to improve your English skills, but you will also get to know a whole other culture, get to meet new interesting people, and most of all get to know yourself better and hopefully come back a little smarter and a little more independent.

Migrant workers

We just read an excerpt from a novel written by Marina Lewycka called Two caravans. It is about different immigrants were the two first are spending a day in London and the second person is trying to get a job at a farm. The two first people in the story are Andriy and Irina from the Ukraine. They are visiting London for the first time and are overwhelmed by all the different sights. They talk about all the new technology and all the well dressed people and they feel like they don't fit in at all.

The second person in the text is Tomasz who is looking for a new job in England. He finds a job at a farm where he has to catch birds and scrub out the barn. The employer he has to work for has no respect for migrant workers, he's only interested in the foreigners because he doesn't have to pay them as much as the locals.

The main subject in this excerpt is that migrant workers often work black with lower than minimum wages and no safety or rights. Is this really fair? Shouldn't we be thankful for having some people there who wants to do our dirty jobs for low wages? Therefore we should give them enough respect to at least give them minimum wage as long as they follow the rules and do a good job.

The conflict in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is a small country which is a part of United Kingdom, and it lies just above Ireland. They have had many issues throughout the years. I'm going to tell you about the most recent one concerning the riots they've just had. 

 

The troubles is the term that refers to the violence between the nationalist community (roman catholic) and the unionists (principally protestants). The conflict was a result of discrimination nationalist minority by the unionists and the question on whether they should be in the Union or not. 

 

The IRA (the Irish Republican Army) have been using armed campaigns to get Northern Ireland out of British rule to be reunited with Ireland politically. The British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary has also been involved with the violence. 

 

It's been going both ways, but there has been some critical situations such as the Bloody Sunday in 1972 and the hunger strikes in 1980-81. There has also been some recent activity. The beginning of this month, two police officers were murdered and they suspect members of the IRA. And just yesterday there were an incident involving some torched cars in the catholic area of Belfast which caused some of the main roads to close. 

More about the torched cars: 

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Belfast-Suspected-IRA-Dissidents-Hijack-And-Burn-Cars-According-To-NI-Police/Article/200903415252115?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15252115_Belfast_Suspected_IRA_Dissidents_Hijack_And_Burn_Cars,_According_To_NI_Police

The British Parliament

The British parliament bicameral and consists of two houses. It is the upper house which is the house of lords,  and the lower house which is the house of commons. The Queen is the third part and she is the head.  It has the ultimate power over all political parts of the UK and it's territories.

 

The House of Lords

Has three types of members. Lord spiritual is the first group which is the senior bishops of the Church of England. The second group is the Lord temporal which is members of the peerage (the people who are noble with titles). The third group is the Law Lords which are the judges that carry out the judicial responsibilities of the house of lords . The members of the house of lords are appointed by the Queen and advised by the prime minister. 

 

The House of Commons

Are democratically elected by the people. Elections are held on different times of the year and they don't have a special period they have to sit, but it has to be within 5 years. The house of commons are divided into different chambers and are located in Westminster in London.  All government ministers including the prime minister are members of the house of commons.

 

One Note

One Note is this great new program from Microsoft where you can write your notes in a much better organized way. It is an addition in the 2007 version of the Microsoft Office package. What’s great about One Note compared to other notebooks is that you can put all your notes in one place and it lets you search in all your notebooks for one certain word. It also gives you the opportunity to use a pen a write directly on your computer (if your computer has a touchpad with a pen) and it can also recognize your own handwriting.

If you’re on the internet and just want to cut a small piece of the web-page you can just click on the windows button and the S and then it automatically opens in One Note. It also writes down the exact time you pasted it in your document so you don’t have to worry about that.

One Note also has different audio and video functions where you can just click on a button and then record a speech for example. If you have a webcam you can also record a video if you want that. You can also share your notes with your friends or classmates.

So I recommend people to try this program if they want their notebooks more organized in the future. 

Martin Luther King jr

Martin Luther King jr was born January 15th 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.  As a young child he had a great learning ability and by the age of 5 he could recite huge bible verses and when he was 6 he started singing gospel. And one time when he went home from church he had heard a priest from out of time holding a great speech so that's when he decided that he one day would be able to use such big words himself. 

While growing up he witnessed a lot of racism for instance on the buses it was completely normal for all the black people to have to get up from their seat for white people. This was something he grew a strong dislike of and started to hold speeches on racism and about "the black and the constitution". 

Since Martin was extremely smart he was able to start college 3 years earlier than most other people. And he also decided to become a priest so he attended an all black college. This was very stimulating for him so it made him more confident in his believes.

During his college time he read a lot of books and studied really hard. There were especially two people that inspired him the most. The first one was Gandhi and the second one was Thoreau. This is something you might recognize in the way he fought for equal rights for black and white people later in his life.

Martin Luther King is mostly known for his great speeches and his outstanding non-violent way of fighting equal rights for the blacks in America. It’s also a very known fact that he sacrificed his life for this cause when he was assassinated during a speech he held in a motel in Memphis, Tennessee in 68. 

Senior Project

I am going to have my senior project on the great depression and try to compare it to the financial crisis they have especially in the US today. When it comes to one spesific thesis I need to do a bit more research before I know exactly what to focus on. If this is too big or too difficult I might just focus on the great depression and just bring out the most important factors that got them into the situation in the first place.