Scholarship Questions (the 5th of August, 2013)

In which I give my answers to two scholarship essay questions..for a scholarship that ended back in April.

It’s the beginning of August, which means summer is coming to an end. I don’t mind that much, considering school makes me happy and it also keeps me busy. I’m not saying I wasn’t busy this summer, but there’s an actual real-world reason for going to school: I want a job in the future. At its most basic level, summer is a rest-and-recovery from the grueling schedule of the previous school year. I have a summer job, but I would rather be doing something else for the rest of my life. Thus, summer ending isn’t the worst thing ever for me.

 

This is also about the time of the summer where I really start to think about next year. Textbooks, packing, notebooks, mechanical pencils…and, of course, scholarships. So I’ve been looking at some scholarships, thinking about which ones I should really invest my time into.

 

Most scholarships ask for an essay of some sort. I’m fine with writing �" why else would I have invested some of my time in a summer blog? �" but I’m only fine with writing when I’m actually interested in the topic. So when some fancy scholarship committee asks me to write an essay about the Russian-German history in WWII, I kind of lose interest in scholarships altogether. But there are also the scholarship committees that want me to write something creative, like poetry or an autobiography. This is a problem because my poetry is recreational at best and my autobiography isn’t all that interesting.

 

Then there are the scholarship committees that want me to discuss some topical debate or some philosophical question. Those interest me, but I have a problem eloquently stringing paragraphs together to form a readable, working essay. However, the topics still interest me. Thus we come to the reason why I opened up a Word document and began to type.

 

Although the deadline passed four months ago, I stumbled upon this one scholarship that asked me to choose between four topics: “Advantages vs. Disadvantages of Online Education”, “The U.S. Election Process vs. England’s Election Process: Evaluating cost & efficiency”, “Does the Media have a Predetermined Biased?”, and “When is a Country Responsible for Its Terrorists?”. I don’t know if I could write 1,500 to 2,000 words on these subjects, but I thought I would give my thoughts since a) I need the practice and b) two of the subjects are pretty interesting. The other two subjects I couldn’t really care less about but I digress.

 

Let us explore these four topics in order of which they appear, since I’m boring and don’t care much about which goes first.

 

And by four topics I mean three because I’m not actually going to do the one on the election processes. I mean, they gave me four topics for a reason, that reason being the will to ignore the most boring of them all. Although the media one seems slightly straightforward, the election one requires research and I’m not touching that at the moment.

 

And now that I think about it, my answer to the media question is so sad and terrible, I don’t even want to publish it to the internet. It’s atrocious; just take my word for it. To be perfectly transparent, I did answer the media question (with 715 words) but it’s a wreck. Enjoy the other two answers, though.

 

“Advantages vs. Disadvantages of Online Education”

 

Whenever I’m watching TV and I see a commercial for some website offering online education, I immediately think it’s a for-profit organization that wouldn’t really teach me anything. I think I’ve been on one or two websites for online education. My dad used online education to train to become a licensed relator, and that all combines to form the experience I have coming in on this topic. I think some of the advantages/disadvantages are pretty obvious but others are slightly less so. In any event, I’m going to start with the advantages and then move into disadvantages.

 

For some people, the only way to become educated is through online education. For the most part, you’re able to choose your own hours. You also get to study from home, so you get to avoid the real-world struggles of getting dressed and interacting with fellow classmates. For some courses (math, for one), you are able to retakes tests until you pass them. You are also able to set the pace, because some teachers run through the subject like there’s a bomb about to go off. Also, some people can’t sit down and study for a long period of time. Some people have jobs they cannot quit. Some people have babies they need to take care of. Also, some education transfers really well online. Becoming a relator is an example. Learning a language is another example.

 

And, of course, the whole education aspect of online education is a major advantage. More people are able to get educated, and thus society as a whole is filled with smarter, better-thinking individuals. This not only betters that person but it betters America as well. Through online education, there is an alternative for people who have lives they cannot put aside for a traditional university.

 

However, there is the “for-profit” aspect as well. Paying a lot of money to a website in order to get education might not work out. The website could be a scam to get your money. Also, that particular website might not be enough to obtain a real-world job. It might worry employers that you got a degree in business or biology or behavior analysis on the internet rather than going to a real school. Along with that, some majors cannot be fully translated into a working online education program, because some majors require a lot of hands-on learning. I would think a car mechanic who was trained in trade school might have the advantage over someone who learned online and didn’t necessarily receive the same hands-on benefits that trade school provides. Because I’m majoring in physics, I wouldn’t want to receive my degree online because of the real-world education I get by attending labs. I also would rather have a doctor who was trained in medical school rather than online (I don’t even think that’s a thing you can do, but if it is, I would still stray away from that online doctor).

 

I also think the human interaction helps a lot as well. When there’s a teacher present, you are able to ask original questions or ask for a different explanation. With your fellow students, you’re able to get help outside of the lecture, work on homework together, and ask questions to more than one person. Also, there might be a plethora of student teachers you could ask as well. With so many minds working on the same subject, you have more opportunities to not only get the help you need, but also to understand the subject material better.

 

(That was a 588 word piece on the advantages and disadvantages of online education. Of course, I could add more meat to my paragraphs, delving into each point and stretching it out high-school-English-class style, but this isn’t the point of my blog. The point is to get to the point, which is what I tried to do. I’m actually pretty surprised I wrote that much on online education, because although the topic is interesting, it’s neither deep nor thoughtful.)

 

Moving on…

 

 “When is a Country Responsible for Its Terrorists?”

 

Now this is an interesting topic, at least for me. However, before answering that particular question, I would think we need to address whether a country should be responsible for its terrorists. Also, is the question directed at the government, or the country itself, regardless of what government system it has? For example, if the government is a dictatorship or an absolute monarchy, then is one person solely responsible for the terrorism of that country? If the country’s government is an oligarchy, then is that one group responsible?

 

It wouldn’t matter in America whether the question is directed at just the government or everyone in general, because if our government is really “by the people, for the people,” then the average citizen would also have to take some responsibility. Americans are handed a large role in the workings of our government, whether we vote or not. And whether we vote or not, if our country is responsible for its terrorists, then we must also shoulder that responsibility.

 

I think it might come down to how Americans would shoulder that responsibility. We might pay our taxes to employ government workers who will hunt down domestic terrorists. We might volunteer for neighborhood watches. Or we might give up privileges in order to catch domestic terrorists in a faster and more efficient way (for example, we might allow the government to track certain web searches that are suspicious, like bomb making, and therefore giving up the privilege of internet privacy). 

 

In any event, I still think a country should take responsibility for the actions of its terrorists. Plain and simple, there comes a point where enough is enough and some sort of action must be taken against terrorism. The people of a country can only witness so much tragedy committed by their fellow citizen and be numb to it all. At some point, the people will stand up and ask their government to take action. And when a government takes action (for example, the judicial sort like laws being made), then that country is taking responsibility for its terrorism.

 

Kind of as a side note, I think we may have to define what terrorism is, because that will play a large role in determining the point where a country needs to take responsibility. I’ve always thought of terrorism as an event that harms others in some way (it’s most likely a physical harming instead of words, since sticks and stones are the things that people attribute to breaking bones rather than words) that insights paranoia and fear among a large group of people. Dictionary websites cite terrorism as the use of violence for coercion, especially for political purposes. Wikipedia has a similar definition, minus the political part. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism by not defining terrorism, but actually defining the word “terrorist,” which is someone who uses violence for a political cause.

 

I guess the only agreement every piece of material I referenced can come to is that there is both violence and terror involved. If we include the political portion of the definition, then the amount of violent and tragic events that can be classified as acts of terrorism decrease significantly.

 

Yet this means I am answering the question “when is a country responsible for its terrorists” with a number of tragic events, which might not be the best way to answer said question. Perhaps the better way to answering the question is to consider the number of casualties and injured that take place rather than the number of events that happen.

 

Now, I was going to use the all-powerful Wikipedia to help prove my point with this, and in my initial look at the Wikipedia page titled “List of terrorist incidents” I noticed something kind of alarming and slightly depressing. As I would expect, the list is organized chronologically, but not by equal lengths of time. The first time period spans the length of a century, then fifty years, then 10 years, then by year (from 1970 to 2010), then six months (all the way to 2013). This outlines the evolution of violent acts committed by terrorists in a very subtle way, since Wikipedia literally reached a point where it was more efficient to list the events caused by terrorists in separate pages, in smaller lengths of time. So many acts were committed in the span of six months that it required its own page.

 

While this is slightly off topic (but since this isn’t actually an essay for a scholarship), I think this raises an interesting point about whether humanity is growing more and more numb to the condition and well-being of other human beings. Perhaps this is a statement on the status of our politics (if Wikipedia considered solely the attacks that were politically motivated). Perhaps these past generations are more heartless and cruel to their fellow man.   

 

Anyway, from 1865 to 1877, the Ku Klux Klan (which contained American terrorists, although I’m not attempting to attack America in any way by using America as an example here) killed approximately 3000 people. On October 1, 1910, two Irish-Americans bombed a Las Angeles building, killing 21 people. Do we consider what the KKK did with more weight than what those two men did in 1910? Or shall we consider both events with an equal amount of weight, ignoring how many people died?

 

I guess the answer to my own question (the question being paraphrased as “do we consider the number of deaths/injured or do we consider the number of events”) is that we should consider the individual severity of the attacks. While I believe every attack is just as tragic and just as terrible as the next, I do believe one single event can make a bigger impact of the future actions of a country.

 

The question still stands: When is a country responsible for its terrorists?

 

For me, the answer is broken into many different parts:

 

1. When there are either an overwhelming number of terrorist attacks committed by people of that country or the severity of one terrorist attack committed by people of that country is overwhelming;

 

2. When a vast majority of the population of a country is considered by many (and I do mean many, as in other countries and organizations and another majority of the population) to be terrorists;

 

3. When the people in the country stand up and demand for the government to take action against their own terrorists;

 

4. When the people in the country (particularly the countries where the government is a representation of the common wealth, AKA “by the people, for the people”) are ready to help shoulder that responsibility of its own terrorists;

 

5. When the government is not only ready to take responsibility, but ready to take action against its own terrorists;

 

6. When other countries demand for that country to take responsibility for its terrorists.

 

And that’s all I can think of at the moment, although I’m sure there are more parts I will want in the future.

 

Allow me to conclude the answer to this question by saying that I’m not trying to point fingers at countries that need to take responsibility, because I don’t think I have the power or the education or the experience necessary to point fingers. I’m merely trying to answer the question as thoroughly as I can (particularly because I would really like to get at least 1500 words into this answer because it would be really cool to actually meet a word requirement).

 

(1254 words. So close, yet so far…)

 

Now that I’ve answered these questions, I guess I should actually answer real scholarship essay questions. Before I tell you all to stay classy (because I will eventually end this piece), I would like to add website addresses to some of the places I mentioned:

 

The original scholarship link: http://www.americanism.org/?c=collegeessay

 

The dictionary website I used: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorism

 

The Wikipedia article on terrorism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism

 

The Wikipedia article on terrorist incidents committed around the world, from 1800-2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents

 

The Wikipedia article on US terrorist incidents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_United_States

 

Stay classy.

 

Author's Note

Let me know.