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. 

Brain Games!

This week in English 1102, we’ve analyzed the different platforms of learning and how games could be implemented into learning. Personally, I believe that it is a good idea to implement games into our learning. I think that games are a good way to exercise the brain and its fun! If we could play brain games just like the games on lumosity.com, then it’ll be beneficial to us. The games on lumosity.com are made to exercise your brain in a healthy way. There are different types of games in order to exercise different parts of your brain.  Research shows that certain types of mental exercise can enhance the health and function of the brain. Lumosity’s mission in creating their games is to improve brain speed, attention, memory, flexibility, and problem solving. Who wouldn’t want to play fun games while exercising their brain? I know that I would love to! I think Professor Manship should really take into consideration about using brain games in class as a warm-up.

Reflective Blog 1/20/13

As this being my first blog of the semester for English 1102, I want to introduce myself and spend time to reflect about who I am as a writer. All through out the span of English 1101, I was determined to discover who I am as a writer. In the beginning of the year, I did not like English at all. It was my least favorite subject because I hated writing papers but as the semester came to a conclusion, my perception of writing changed. I discovered that I seemed to enjoy different types of writing and disliked others. I am a more personal/ reflective writer than an informative/ research writer. I enjoy talking about personal experiences and reflecting about my personal encounters because my thoughts flow easier. I also like to read personal experiences because I seem to learn from them even if they aren’t my own experiences. 

After completing the first full week of English 1102 and participating in various activities in class, my reflection is going to be focused on the string game. I enjoyed participating in the string game because it was fascinating to discover all the different types of shapes you can make string become. I believe that the string game can be compared to how we view life in certain aspects. In order to play the string game you have to be able to accept failure and take risks. Just like in life, there will be times when you fail and times when you have to take risks. The string game is only played by one person and that same person as the ability to make the string become anything they desire it to be. In this world, everyone has their own lives and live their lives they way they want it to be. People can either learn the different types of shapes the string can become or choose to not play with the string. As compared to life, people can either go to school and gain knowledge about different subjects or just drop out of school. To me, I believe that the string game can very easily be compared to life which is why I chose it to be the certain of my reflection.