My Favorite of 2012

Beginning classes early for our AP English class gave us a chance to start sooner and get additional work done. Until today, our class has read and discussed different types of literature, for example speeches, autobiographies, memoirs, and a few novels. Out of all the pieces of literature read until today, my favorite would have to be one of the first couple of essays we read, which is "Graduation" by Maya Angelou. This essay could be considered my favorite because the story is one we could relate to and picture ourselves in her place because it is the day of her graduation. Our graduation is a year and a half from now, which is not too long. In the story, she is graduating eighth grade as the end of her school life. However, our ending is high school, even though we still have colleges or universities to attend to and start taking classes that can affect our future. I can tell that, already, the students in my class are getting excited to graduate and leave what they think is our torturous high school. Even Maya Angelou states that her school is torture, but they only had to be there until eighth grade. An additional four years, and who knows what she would have described her school as. Even though this essay was read a while ago, compared to the other ones we recently read, I can clearly remember it because it makes me think of where we are going to be a year and a half from now.

Birthrates are Dropping

-U.S. birthrate falls to lowest level ever recorded

-Jon Bardin, Los Angeles Times

-November 30, 2012

-http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-us-birth-rate-falls-to-lowest-level-ever-recorded-20121130,0,1776253,print.story

Last year, the birthrate of the United States was recorded to be the lowest it has ever been since 1920. It is said that this drop has been due to immigrant women who cannot afford to have children. The birthrate during the Baby Boom after the second World War was 122.7 babies per a thousand women. Last year, it was approximately half of that at sixty three point two babies per a thousand women. The Pew Research Center is partly focused on the differences of demographic groups, and they noticed the drop in foreign women's birthrates. The birthrate for Mexicans in the United States was the most dramatic, by twenty-three percent, while all other foreign-born's birthrates dropped by fourteen percent. The Latinos have also had the most economic problems. However, the babies born from women born in the United States dropped from about sixty-two, to only about fifty-nine. The states that had the largest amount of birthrate drops, were the states that had the most economic issues. Thirty-eight years from now, the majority of children will be born from immigrants.