Speak, Dog!
A dog is determined. She jumps around enthusiastically to socially engage with her owner. Sometimes she sleeps in perfect peace after an exhausting exercise or a tiring road trip. She darts to her drowsy owner who has just completed a rigorous day of work to greet him and cheer him up. She might bark for ten minutes straight at a stranger who just moved into the neighborhood. A dog speaks her mind.
Having had my dog, Copper, for nearly nine years, I’ve noticed some things about her behavior that interested me after a year in Mr. Z’s class.
After getting dressed and stretching for her daily run, my mom began towards the closet to get the dog’s leash. As if rehearsed, Copper leaped up from her crate, eager to dispose of her excess energy. Her short, stubby tail viciously lashed back and forth like the hammer of a new twin bell alarm clock and her sharp, elongated toenails clicked on the ground making the sound of a college student frantically typing his final essay ten minutes before it is due. I didn’t need to see her jumping up and down to know the energy and excitement that was going through her mind. There’s a good chance our neighbors down the street heard her jumping around.
Copper is a perfect example of an ordinary dog. When she is excited, she will let you know that she is excited by running to you and being very playful. When my brother hasn’t fed her yet, she will follow him around the house trying to get his attention so he will feed her. Once she sees him going to the garage where the food is stored, she does the same bobbing up and down and wagging her tail to show that she is excited and happy that her food is coming. When she wants to go outside, she will wait by the sliding glass door whining until someone comes over and lets her out. Dogs will let their owners know what they want and how they are feeling through the many actions or the lack of actions that they perform.
The biggest thing I’ve taken away throughout my learning in Mr. Ziebarth’s class is to speak up when you want a change. If you have a problem with something, you need to let someone know and do something about it because nothing will improve if everyone hides their ideas from the world.
Prior to this class, my way of dealing with problems did not consist mainly of effectively communicating my concerns with others. I am the third of eight kids in my house so growing up I have learned a few ways (although maybe not the best) to handle my situations.
- Fight for it.
When you live with eight other ferocious siblings, Social Darwinism really kicks into place. It might be “more important” for you to get on the computer for the sole purpose of because it is inconvenient for you to be selfless. In one particular instance, I made the mistake of trying to fight back when my older sister “needed” the computer. After a barbarous brawl, I ended up with a one-inch mountain on the right side of my forehead after getting a black chair launched at me. At this point, I came to my senses and decided there was no way I would win this fight without a stronger ally. From then on I usually won my fights. Not because I was stronger but because every time I was dragged into a fight (in reality, I probably started more of them), I was bailed out by my oldest sister.
2. Deal with it.
A big part of choosing this option might have been the relationship I had with that sibling. Maybe it was the sheer thought of the energy needed to retaliate that stopped me from springing up into rebellious action. Probably, though, it was my ego and the frailty of my confidence. As a kid, I’ve always enjoyed being accepted and favored by older people. I was the youngest of my friends, I never snitched on my older sisters, and waited around with big eyes for an invitation to do something with them.
I recall coming downstairs on a sunny afternoon to the sight of my sister subtly scooping the ice cream from the corner of the kitchen. As I casually retrieved a spoon from the drawer, she turned her back and quietly shook her head. I got the message: Turn around and walk away.
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3. Talk about it.
Talking to my family about our problems isn’t something that didn’t exist. Every once in a while my family got together to have a family council. In one particular family council, we discussed what the best way was to fix our problem of a messy house. My younger sister complained about how she hated when everyone “worked until the job was done”. To her, the work never seemed to be done. There was always another dish to wash, another window to clean, another floor to sweep. Her idea was to separate the downstairs into different sections that everyone would get assigned and when your section was done, you were done. I, however, am not a fan of this strategy because it always seems as though the older kids get stuck with the harder jobs. Plus, if everyone just worked with a good attitude, we’d be done pretty quickly. Our family debated over the two options and ultimately picked one of them. Every family council we debate and pick the choice that best suits our situation for that day.
In a perfect world, everyone would kindly discuss their problems with one another and work together to resolve everyone’s conflicts. But everyone knows that’s not the case. We get flustered by our emotion and some people get angry or frustrated. Others may think to themselves, well I’m only one person so what difference will my opinion make.
I applied this concept of speaking up in my Precalculus class when our teacher announced that we would have a class vote. She presented our two options for a test as taking it on Thursday and have a free day on Friday or taking it on Friday so we had an extra day to study. The correct choice was obvious. Take it on Thursday and have fun. Hoping to be able to convince anyone on the fence, my first step was to shout out my vote and make sure everyone around me was on board. I then proceeded to call out each person individually and pressure them by reacting as if they were insane if they considered the second option. I’m sure it affected people because one girl later spread the rumor that “Tyler forced the class to vote for Thursday”. We ended up winning by one vote. Every vote counts.
On the other hand, I look back on something that I wanted to change but I didn’t speak up in time:
Some of the leaders at our church congregation decided that they wanted to have a “youth-led meeting”. This consisted of youth singing songs and talking about some of the things that they have learned at church. I dreaded going to the rehearsals that took place every Sunday after our regular hours of church. It felt like an eternity before I left that building. I recall driving home with my dad and telling him about how I felt about this youth-led meeting: If they’re going to make it a youth-led meeting, they should let the youth lead. No one wants to sing these songs and we could get smaller groups together that would sound much better. The youth want to create something that they would be proud to invite their friends to. My dad casually agreed with me but he wasn’t going to do my talking for me. He told me this is something that I should talk to my friends about and then approach our leader with our concerns. This would’ve been a good time to do it because the event was a few months out and we had only started one practice. I didn’t end up talking to anyone that day because I felt too busy organizing my thoughts. The idea slipped my mind until the next week when it was a little harder to talk to someone about my concerns. I talked to my dad again. He told me the same thing. This process repeated until I knew it was too late to make this event any better.
Consider Copper not having been fed and following my 3-year-old sister, Gwen, around the house waiting for food. Gwen doesn’t know that she needs food. And if she did know that Copper wanted the food, she wouldn’t be capable of getting the dog food. This is because our dog’s food is up high in our garage. Much like this example of Copper following Gwen around, I was complaining and talking to my dad about the changes that I wanted to happen. I learned from this experience that I need to talk to the right people. Talking to someone that is in authority is important because they can help you to make the change.
So how can you apply this concept into your life?
I would say to start, if you’re over 18 years old, you can participate in voting for your community and country. If half of the United States population thinks that their vote doesn’t matter, then that is half of America that isn’t telling people what they want. Voting is an obligation that all Americans have and it’s a simple way, already set up for you, to make your opinion count for something.
Now, to take it a step further, what change do you want in your community? Have you considered writing an email to your mayor or doing research on that topic to gain more insight and knowledge about the subject? Talk to someone about your concerns and maybe someone will agree with you and back you up.
This class has taught me to speak up.
This class has taught me that my voice matters.
This class has taught me that your voice matters, USE IT!
