Motivation

This week in class we talked about school/learning and what has influenced us to stay in school. In this blog, I’d like to expand on what I wrote in my daybook about what has influenced me to be in school. As shown in the picture, I listed the things that has influenced me the most to be in school. If I were to pick one thing off my list that would be the most influence towards me are my parents. My parents have come a long way with education. They both came to the USA to go to college and receive a better education. My parents are both from Kenya, Africa and both come from a big family that didn’t have enough money so their parents raised enough money for them to buy a plane ticket to America. Once they got to the USA, they were both on their own and had to find a job to pay their tuition while being a full time student. It was difficult for them to work and go to school but obviously they were able to succeed. My dad is currently working on his PhD and my mother has her Master degree. They both are very hardworking individuals and have influenced me to stay in school. If they were able to work and earn several degrees, I believe that I shouldn’t have any excuses to become what I want in life. 

Themes in Media

This week in class we had to generate themes that are represented in media. One theme that I see being frequently used in media is popularity. I think popularity is represented in different genres by the difference in the clothing. If you think about all the movies or TV shows that you’ve seen thus far, each character has a different personality and dresses according to their personality. For example in the movie “Mean Girls” it was easy to distinguish between the different social groups. The “Jocks” were the athletes and always wore their jersey or lettermen. The popular students are usually the ones who drive expensive cars and wear the latest fashion. The way media stresses about popularity and top trends makes our society become concerned about fashion and keeping up with the latest trend. I believe that all ages are concerned about being popular. It’s solely the media’s fault for why there are different social groups in school. If one were to examine an elementary school, all the little girls and boys dress the same. Social groups are created by fashion trends; the children who dress differently than the rest are considered “weird”. I honestly think its ridiculous that our society doesn’t allow others to be unique. Our society has corrupt our minds into thinking that fashion should be the same throughout everyone making it mandatory for everyone to stay with the current fashion or else you’d be considered “different”. I personally believe that everyone is different and unique in various ways and should be able to display that through their appearance. 

Good vs Evil

     One of the activities we did in class was getting into small groups and analyzing what we noticed about representations in popular culture. My representation group was responsible for sharing ideas and examples of how Good vs Evil is represented in popular culture.  Out of the many great examples that my group came up with of how Good vs Evil is represented in pop culture, I personally think that the greatest one is the news.  Everyday as we watch the news, we always hear about the current crimes that are happening in this world. Usually, the officer that arrested an assailant is the good guy of the media and the person who was accused of the crime is the bad guy. The battle between the cop vs the assailant is a prime example of how Good vs Bad is present in today’s media.

     The way that Good vs Bad are represented in writing are similar to social media. As we read stories, we are usually presented with a hero aka  “good guy” and the villain aka the “bad guy” and there is usually a conflict between both sides in a story.

     After analyzing both social media and writing and finding similarities, it is safe to state that it is inevitable that Good vs Evil is present in both cultures.  

ITS IMPROV TIME!

This week has been such a long week because of all the various schoolwork I had to do. In English we spent class time playing improv games. I enjoyed playing these improv games because it involved interaction between classmates. Some of the improv games that we played were closely related to mind games and how you have to use different parts of your brain. I am a very extroverted person and I was able to display that through these games. I think we should implement improv games into our class schedule. We should try to do a game in the beginning of each class sort of like an “ice breaker”. I feel that starting the class with a game would increase class participation and exercise our brains.