Time to Vent!

Vent about the Research Project? And not get in trouble for it? Why yes, yes I will! First of all, I hate Research Projects, but what did I expect? The title of English 103 is “Critical Thinking and Research”! I knew when I signed up for this that this part - the researching part - would be difficult for me. Anyway, this specific project is kicking my butt. 

I took seven classes this semester. Plus, if you think about it, this online class adds about another three-ish classes. Honestly, with all of the other papers and projects I’ve had to do in the past few weeks, I haven’t had enough time to really focus on this paper. I’ve been collecting sources, mentally preparing for the hours I’m going to spend this week simply sitting in front of my computer typing out the pages. So essentially, everything has been extremely difficult with this paper. 

My hardest thing to deal with is the thesis. I’ve chosen to do the second prompt, to talk about women’s rights in relation to Reading Lolita in Tehran. I know that Jennifer said this would be harder, but I feel like it will be easier because it is something that interests me. Lately, I’ve been having trouble with any of the thesis’ I’ve done in this class. Mostly, I lose track of my thesis while writing my essay. I forget that I’m proving a point because the facts are more interesting to me. I just keep writing. This is something I know I have to pay more attention to with this essay and hopefully it will come out the way that it is supposed to.

My game plan is to finish everything that is due for my other classes by Monday night. I am going to write out the outlines for this paper, weed out the unimportant or less useful sources that I’ve gathered and see if I can find any that might be more relevant. By Tuesday afternoon I will start the writing process and write until my brain explodes or my hands fall off, which ever comes first. Then I will re-read it. I will take out pieces here, add pieces there, and look away from it. After Thanksgiving and some well deserved time off from school with my family, I will come back and read it once more. If there are still areas that I am having trouble with, I will tackle those areas in my best efforts of not confusing my group members during the peer draft review. 

I am most excited for the PDR. I feel like by reading my peers papers, I will get a better sense of how I am doing myself. Sometimes when I read what the others are writing new ideas form for me. Also, getting the criticism and advice from my peers is an amazing tool that I don’t take for granted. So hopefully with some help from my group my paper will be worthy of an amazing grade. As frustrating as this paper, and this whole semester is, I’m excited for the time I’m going to spend actually writing it and all of the things I am going to learn in the process. 

Good luck to you all as well! 

Online Embarrassment.

Social networking has become huge. Today it seems like everything is online. You can order a pizza, take a class, do you Christmas shopping, read the newspaper, apply for jobs, listen to music, and watch TV shows all online. So it shouldn’t be so shocking that our social lives would be online too. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we are always aware of the things that we are sharing online and down the road there may be some things that we regret. 

I’ve had an account on almost any social networking site you can name of. When I was fourteen years old, my favorite was GreatestJournal. It was a clone site of LiveJournal (which I use now). I’ve always had a journal, a written one since I could write and it always astounded me when I would come across one of my journals from when I was 10 and read the things I wrote about. Embarrassing things, to say the least. But I always took comfort in the fact that no one but me could read these ridiculous things unless they were violating my privacy. Then I got the bright idea to start writing in an online journal. An unlocked, open and out there journal. Did I mention I was fourteen? The smallest things are so dramatic when you are a fourteen year old girl. Let’s not even go into the way that I typed because that alone was embarrassing (apparently, when I was fourteen spell check never crossed my mind!). 

This all probably didn’t matter except that people could read it. They were my very personal thoughts being read by someone. Things that I could forget about were things other people would use to form an opinion of me. They could be things that these people would bring up to me at a later time. If they were smart and I said something insanely idiotic, they could take a screen shot and share it with the world again. 

After a few years of me being a very active member of the site, GreatestJournal closed down. I moved on to LiveJournal with the thought in mind that whatever I posted would be locked, and in addition to that I would really have to censor myself. I would have to edit my post to make sure it wasn’t something that I wouldn’t want others to read. Those types of things belonged in my handwritten, hidden away, journal. 

Lately, I don’t think people do that. I have a Facebook, which I’m constantly logged into. From my Blackberry, I’m always plugged in. But some of the things people choose to write on Facebook make me wonder what they were thinking when they wrote it. If you need any more proof that people really aren’t paying attention to what they’re writing, I suggest you visit Failbook (http://failbook.failblog.org/). It contains screenshots of what some people see when they log on to their Facebook accounts. Things that you probably shouldn’t share with the world, spread to the masses. Things that your future employers could find, your future husband or wife’s family can find, and even things your mother can probably see. I’m not saying we can’t express our ideas online, but my goodness, can we think twice before pressing the “share” button? 

Political Comics

Politics tends to be one of those subjects where you’re constantly running into lose-lose situations. What can start as a simple, friendly debate can take become and ugly session of bashing and name calling in a matter of seconds. It’s all our faults. On the one hand, we get so invested in identifying ourselves as belonging to either one party or the other, we never look at the grey area. Simple conversation has become so offensive, it seems as if we’re better off not even talking about it. 

And then there are the political cartoons. Putting a comical twist to very serious situations, making light of problems in our society. And because we’re so invested in our separate parties, even if the comic depicts an animal (i.e., a donkey or elephant - who chose those anyway?) we feel hurt. Especially, if we feel that they are lying or exaggerating something to make “our” party seem awful. I’ve seen comic strips of Obama ushering pregnant women into abortion clinics or holding a gun to a baby carriage and telling the mother, “It’s never to late to make the choice!” I’ve seen comics that compare Bush to Hitler. 

What it comes down to is that they’re comics. They’re meant to be funny and I feel that quite often many people don’t see the humor. I know that in concern to this comic, I didn’t:

Now, I didn’t vote for Hillary. She was my second choice. She would have gotten my vote had Obama lost the primaries. To some degree I did support her. I support her as the Secretary of State and for all of the amazing things she’s done. With that said, I am a bit of a feminist. I don’t think that women need men, I think that much of the time women are stronger than men and nothing makes my blood boil faster than a man saying that a woman should be in the kitchen making him sandwiches - even if he is joking. Obviously, I admire Hillary for all of the things she’s done for our country and for the world. She is a strong mother and devoted wife, but on top of all of that she is smart and educated and a high powered career person. 

So for this cartoon to suggest that Hillary Clinton was incapable of being President of the United States simply because she is a woman is ridiculous to me. The idea that a woman could not hold her own in a group of world leaders and more importantly a group of men, is ludicrous. Do people really think that faced with the problems of our country and the complicated relationships our country has with other countries, a woman would just break down and cry? As if she’d never been in front of these leaders before, when her husband was President? Was she seen crying when her marriage was hanging on a thread in 1998? 

And then, to add insult to injury, they bring on the issue of PMS. Beside the fact that Hillary Clinton is at an age where PMS probably isn’t a concern, the idea that PMS is so disabling that a woman could probably do nothing more than cry an eat chocolate is horrible. In all, I found this comic to be sexist and offensive and not very humorous at all. 

Perhaps I’m being too sensitive about it, perhaps I am overreacting. It is all in fun, no? I laugh at other political comics. I’m not sure what it is about this one that upsets me, but the fact is that it does. Granted, it is not something that will ruin my day or promote me to find the artist and protest his house. Sometimes, things are offensive and we’ve got to brush it off. At the same time, we need to know when not to cross the line, even if we just want to call it a silly drawing.

Writing Improvement

My writing style has changed quite a bit since we started English 103. I actually think I’ve come full circle and my writing has finally grown up with me.

When I was younger I used to be a great writer. It was the one thing that teachers and family always commented on and it was the one thing I thought I could do well. For a while I thought about becoming a writer. Well, more specifically a screen writer. Then something changed.

Sometime in high school I lost my writing ability. I became embarrassed to show my work to anyone and started dreading writing essays for fear that I would have to show them. I obsessed over what my teacher’s remarks would be to the point where I just felt sick to my stomach. And this carried into college.

Although I passed my English 101 class, it wasn’t with the grade that I expected. I wanted so desperately to be good at writing again, but those same fears kept inhibiting me. I even feel those fears to this day, but I think they’re better. Something about this class has made me feel better about myself and my writing. I think that is shown in my writing as well. I feel that what I write is stronger and more confident, although there is still some work to be done. Sometimes the things come out of my head one way and wind up on the paper another way. It makes for a confusing read. But with the help of my classmates in the PDR’s and the comments left on my blog posts I find that I’m seeing easier ways to express my ideas. Through all the reading we’ve done on language I’m more understanding of the power it holds and what I can do with it. 

My vocabulary has strengthened as well. For a long time I wrote the way in the same manner that I spoke which, if we’re being honest here, doesn’t always make sense. Thanks to this class I think that I’ve found a way to have my voice in my writing while at the same time coming across as more coherent. I feel that now, after having been in this class for the past eleven weeks, that I can better communicate with people. 

The fear that I had when it came to writing to people was nearly disabling in the first few weeks of this class. I was worried every time I posted a blog and spent 30 minutes staring at the submit button before posting my first draft for the peer review. My palms got sweaty and my heart raced a little. Today, I do not hesitate. I take what my peers say about my writing and I use it to better myself and slowly but surely I am becoming more proud of my writing. The people closest to me have gained the ability to read my writing and the best part is that they can understand it better. I’m grateful for what this class has done for my writing skills and I can’t wait to see what the next five weeks will do to enhance my writing. 

Getting the News in 160 Characters or Less

In this day and age news travels fast. Thanks again for that one, technology! It seems that no matter where you turn the hot issues of today are glaring you in the face. On your e-mail’s homepage, the front page of the news paper and the top story on your favorite news station. Sometimes, you don’t even need to look to those things to get your information. A lot of things I find out about are via the ever popular Facebook. Oh, and let us not forget the trending topics on twitter. 

I was eleven years old on September 11th, 2001. I distinctly remember watching the first tower burning on the news that morning. I remember going to school and my friend asking why all of the teachers were freaking out. “A plane hit a building in New York,” I told him. To which he told others. When we sat in class that day we asked our teacher if we could watch the news. He took a moment before deciding that we could and called the other 6th grade teachers and asked them to bring those kids into the classroom and we would all watch together. All day the 50 or so 6th graders sat in a room on the floor with the lights off watching the media coverage. It’s what my family watched when I got home. We were glued to the TV for a long time and that’s exactly how that news came. Person to person and through the news station.

I was eighteen on November 4th, 2008. I was in my women’s history class at AVC. My friend and I were anxiously waiting the results of the presidential election, which I’d voted in early that morning. Finally, during our break we left our class early. I dropped her off at her home and started driving home. Half way there, my phone rang and I read the text message, “Obama wins!” I watched the coverage the rest of the night, now awaiting the results of Proposition 8. I went to bed before those results and woke up the next morning with the news station on but still no results. Finally, I went online to see that it had passed. Full of disbelief, I kept searching the sites and checked back again that night after work. After several of my “trusted” sites and finally the news stories on it, I could believe it. 

I learned of the death of pop icon Michael Jackson through a text message, the resignation of Rahm Emmanuel from twitter, the repeal of Prop 8 on Yahoo. While this is the way that I learned of news, this isn’t the way that I confirm the news. I check over and over again, watch several news programs, check the news papers and read online articles before I can decide what is real and what isn’t. I find that in general I can still with a few reliable sources and somewhat ignore the others. But in these times we need to be careful of simply believing what we read. Not only is there a large amount of bias but sometimes I feel that these sources steal from each other and facts get misinterpreted. While it is good to be informed, it’s better to be properly informed. 

Hate speech in the Media

I’m sure that we’ve all experienced in some way someone hating you for something you could not control. Perhaps you are a woman with some authority over a man in the work place, or you are a person of color in a town that is predominantly white. These day to day life experiences are already hard to deal with without the media continuing to bring these ideas into our mind. 

Often things like movies, television, books and music tell stories of such hardships. Fortunately enough, for the most part it seems that you can find the affects of prejudicial language can go each way in the media. For example, a movie like The Hurt Locker can bring about fear towards arabs and spark the interest of racial slurs against them. The movie G.I. Jane, however, can bring up the idea that women can do something as good, or even better than men.

It does seem to me that more often than not we find the more negative effects of it. Rap lyrics for example, seem to have a lot of this. There are the rappers that talk about how women are unfaithful liars, use the n-word constantly, talk about how the white man puts them down. I’m a fan of rap music, but in general, not this kind. Yet, there it is, played on the radio at least once every two hours because it’s a big hit. Which begs to ask, who is listening to this? And what ideas are they getting about people from it? 

The most viral place for hate speech in media however, is probably the internet. I only say this because of how quickly things get posted around and because everyone has access to post anything they want about it. You can see it in almost everything, even right down to news articles. My e-mail account is with Yahoo, so I get YahooNews. When I read an article about something that President Obama has said or done it somehow turns into how he is a black man. The article may be talking about the new White House dog, but the people writing comments below call him a “socialist nigger who should be shot.” The article might be talking about how the repeal of Proposition 8 is progressing in court, but the people in the comments are talking about how “those faggots should burn in hell.” It’s hateful, and it isn’t simply in people’s minds anymore. It’s in a forum online where hundreds of millions of people can access it and read it. 

So yes, media plays a huge part in the way that hateful speech is being used or promoted and I think this mostly has to do with the fact that it isn’t just a small group of people controlling the media any longer, it is anyone and everyone. While the drama of such language makes for great entertainment, there is a fine line that I think we’re often crossing over. It’s something we as a society have to work against so that our already diverse country can somehow carry on in peace. 

Finding happiness in self-respect.

Self-respect. The knowledge of one's own worth, valuing one's self; pride

Happiness. state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy 

It’s really funny to me, after having read the definitions to each of these terms, that you can have one without the other. Before I read them, if someone had asked me which was more important, I’m pretty sure I would have said that you cannot possibly have one without the other. And the concept of happiness and self respect is something I struggle with so much. 

My mother raised me to be a strong woman. She raised me to be independent and to know my own worth as a person, to not depend on anyone. She taught me to especially never depend on a man. So to me, self-respect is the most important thing. I’m sure you know that saying, “You have to love yourself before anyone else can love you.” I live by that. I don’t take things lying down, I never let people walk all over me. I used to, but then I learned to love myself and respect myself. I respect myself more than I respect almost anyone else. And I am a happy person. Before today, I thought I was a happy person because I respected myself. After thinking about it for a while though, I realized that while it’s good that I respect myself, it isn’t what makes me happy. 

I have a friend who has some serious self-respect issues. She has some abandonment issues due to some family problems and unfortunately it’s carried out into her adult life. She’s chosen someone to love who does not respect her. She does everything for this guy and within the first 6 months of being in a serious relationship with her he cheated on her with her best friend. And she stayed with him. Everything in my body at that time told me to scream at her, that if she had even an ounce of self respect in her body that she would leave him and never speak to him again. She didn’t. She stayed with him and to this day (three years later), although he constantly disrespects her and makes her feel awful, she stays with him. When I ask her why she stays with him after every midnight phone call I get with her crying about how mean he’s been, she replies to me, “Because he makes me happy.” If you were to ask her this question, she would say happiness is more important. 

This brings me back to the definition of happiness. Everyone’s idea of what happiness is will be different. My idea of happiness is loving myself and being surrounded by people who love me. While my boyfriend may bring me happiness, he isn’t the only this that determines my happiness. In general, I think people will always at one time or another find happiness. But I don’t think that everyone will find self-respect, which makes it more important. However, the goal should really be to have both because when you have both, I think anything is possible.