HW 35 - Other People's Perspective

As I was interviewing my fellow juniors in high school who are also my comrades in arms when it comes to Call Of Duty, I noticed a similar pattern. All of their comments were "bubbles" with the exception of Henry Guss's interview. I had prepared 9 questions to ask every interviewee and Henry's interview lasted 27 minutes compared to the other's 4-5 minute interviews. One of his most brilliant insights were, "Giving birth has become a ritual instead of a necessity like it used to be. We have enough people to last us another hundred years or so. People nowadays are reproducing because it is a social norm." (Paraphrased - He was a lot more articulate) Henry also shared with me a story about a mother he knew that had the C-Section procedure done when she delivered her baby. Neither the baby or the mother had any complications so the C-Section wasn't necessary. The mother was a doctor, so she was well educated about C-Sections and the natural process, which makes me think that the best way to deliver a baby would be a C-Section.

The interviews that I conducted with other juniors who do not attend schools in New York showed a very obvious pattern: They were just as intelligent as your average high school student. Marshall shared some insights on how he was born and what his mother had later told him later on how she had felt. When asked "How does a woman's fertility affect her desirability?", everyone said it doesn't. When the question was further explained, "If you were married and you found out your wife was infertile, what would you do?" They all sticked to their answer. "I would still love her and if she still wants a family, we would look into adoption or surrogate mothers." Overall, I think my fellow high school juniors are just as clueless about birth as my class is right now. However; we are fortunate enough to be studying this insightful unit so we can move above and beyond the standards set by our flawed education system.

Henry Guss's Interview:


Michael Perez's Interview:


Marshall Fox's Interview:


Spencer's Interview:

HW 34 - Some Initial Thoughts On Birth

It is quite surprising that people do not know a lot about birth. Not the common people at least. Then again, that is one of the reasons we are studying the “Normal is Weird” unit; to know what the public or even scholars do not. I am no exception to my statement above. When I think of birth, the image of a woman in a video (yes Andy, I came back and edited it) giving birth in Mr. Whelton’s 10th grade biology class pops up. I can’t say that that isn’t surprising since that was first visual and real demonstration of birth that I had ever seen, and being limited to the limited potential of the human brain, it’s is easy for me to remember visual demonstrations than textual. Every single person (except Whelton) in my 10th grade class was shocked and repulsed by what most people would consider the most beautiful thing about life. Most beautiful thing in life? I hardly think so. How is a woman giving birth beautiful? The woman is suffering pain that no man can ever compare with while being told by an “expert” to do something that will only cause her more pain. Evolution is defined as the process of an organism getting rid of an undesirable trait/characteristic and replacing it with something that will help the organism. After 30,000 plus years of human reproduction, you’d think evolution would start helping the mothers out a little…

As for my immediate knowledge about birth, I think I know all the basic insights that someone my age should know. The most common one being, it takes approximately 9 months for a woman to deliver the baby after it has been conceived. When were asked to think of what we already know about Birth in class, almost everyone talked about how painful it was and how women really have bad luck because it is up to them to keep the human race alive yet they have been given so much crap ever since the first human society emerged. It surprises me that so much rsesources and time is being spent on curing things like cancer or as the previous major unit showed us, caring for the dying, yet no one has yet to come up with a completely painless way of giving birth. I don’t have a lot of knowledge of C-Sections but I do know that creates a lot of complications for both the mother and the baby and it can also be somewhat painful. Not having a solution for the painful birthing process led me to think about the Star Trek prequel where Captain Kirk’s mom was going through the same style of labor that women go through today. I really hope that humans can come up with a simpler method for giving birth BEFORE Star Date 2350.

Questions:
-Being a woman and all, why did Mother Nature create such a horrible process?
-Where is evolution when you need it?
-What are the different methods doctors use to ease the pain women have to go through?
-Would anti-abortion people really be as determined to stop this “heathen deed” if they were fully educated about the horrors of child birth?