Blogging Reflection

            I feel that my best work on the blogs was done when we were doing the rhetorical analysis unit on advertisements. Although I feel that I did well on most of the ones done during that time, my best I feel was the one titled “Propaganda.” I wrote about the commercials with poor African children’s faces in them and how I disagreed with the propaganda being used on us today. I think I did my best on this because I felt strongly about it. I think that my worst blog was when we reflected on our first discussion forum. I know that this is my worst work with blogging because I did not participate in the forum as much as I should have; therefore, I did not have much helpful feedback and opinions that I could give.

            Even though we did a lot of blogging through the course of this semester, I still do not think it something I would be interested in continuing. I am not big on keeping journals or publishing my opinions on things. I would easily give my opinions if asked; however, I don’t like publishing it for no reason. I also do not think that the blog experience that I have had in this class is much like the blog I would choose to do on my own if I wanted to. If I was going to post a blog, for whatever reason, I would want to post it where more people would view it, like on Facebook or something similar to that. If I had a strong reason to post my opinions I would make sure it was seen. I also do not think that my relationship with writing publicly has changed with this class for the same reasons and because, although I do know that anyone could possibly read what I post, I do not think that anyone really outside our classroom reads what I have to say.

Disney

                Although I am not completely sure at this point what essay I am going to write about, I am more leaning towards responding to Racism in Disney’s Animated Films by Cristina Maldonado. This essay initially caught my attention because i personally do not believe that Disney is trying to ruin the way children think about White people being the dominant race and African Americans as people with a lesser value of life. I do agree that Disney could have defiantly been a lot more culturally sensitive to our growing society, I do not feel that the extremes that poeple bring Disney into are completely correct.

            Three points that I plan to bring in my paper I believe will counter what was said in Christina’s paper. The first will be that the Disney company is not set out to brain wash children into believing that White people are the dominan trace. The second point that I plan to counter act is that Asains in Disney’s films are either cats or  squinty eyed figures that have strong asian accents. Did anyone ever watch Mulan? She was a young Chinese woman who went to war and saved her country. I do not exactly see how that could be called racist. The third point that I want to make is an overall view of Disney’s movies that are not focused on White poeple. Although there are more movies that do center around White culture there are a lot more that have a broad cultural setting; and when I do bring up This specific point I plan to focus more on the movies that were released as I was growing up, not the ones that were just released like the Princess and the Frog.

            I’m not sure that This is exactly what I want to write about because I hate attacking other peoples papers. Also, I have not yet done the proper research to support the arguments I plan to make and that could change a lot of things in my paper. If I fail to find informaition from interviews and more well respected sources I will most likely pick another topic to write about.

**Sorry if my spelling is really bad and random words are capitalized. My Word is set to spanish for spell check and I don’t know why!

Disney and Women in Advertising

After watching this video I felt, for the most part, like it was completely ridiculous. Although I understood some of the points that the people being interviewed made about Disney, that does not mean that I agree with the fact that they were trying to make the Disney corporation look like a greedy company that is only mindful of the profit that they make.

            A lot of things about Disney have changed since it looks like this video was made. The biggest thing to me is the racism part about Disney. They recently have added a movie with a black princess. This helped Disney put out a lot of flame about them being racists. Although these things have changed, I do understand where the people being interviewed are coming from. When evaluated as a whole, all of Disney’s movies at the time were made up of predominantly white characters. I find this fact extremely interesting because, for myself, growing up as a white female, I never noticed anything out of place until I was older and could understand. These people are claiming that Disney is trying to shape children’s imaginations based on what they think is right. I do not find this statement right because although Disney did not prove to be diverse until the past 10 years, I do not believe that they could be trying to corrupt young children at such a high level as the people in the video seem to think.

            I do not believe that Disney is only a greedy company out to make money. They may have showed those in quotes at the end a person viewing it may never know if the statement is legitimate or not.

            After watching Disney I watched a second video on women in advertising and how degrading and sexist it can be. The video proved to have a lot of good points in it; however, I feel that some of the speaker’s arguments were too strong. I agree with all of her facts and thoughts on how the image of tiny models and skinny women have corrupted the minds of young girls into thinking that they need to be more like this. Once this image has been noticed by girls, it is hard to make them understand that that image is not the only form of beautiful, and that most men do not find that attractive anyway. All girls can understand the feeling she is talking about. We all still feel that way at every age.

            I feel that the speaker took the arguments too far when she began to compare all of this to violence and dehumanizing.  I feel that violence is really one of the last things modeling is when looked at as a whole. If she was specifically talking about eating disorders I would be able to understand more; however, she seemed to be discussing modeling as a whole and made it all sound violent, which I do not agree with. Also, after seeing the fake pictures that this speaker tried to use, I feel that she is no different than the people promoting these photos because she edited them herself anyways. The speaker seems to be taking some of the things to extreme levels because she seems to be trying to connect with women and young girls on a deeper level that she can only seem to do by making matters in the media seem worse than they actually are in some cases.

            I think that these two videos have a lot in common based on the fact that they are trying to make things in the media look a lot worse than they are in reality. Although both of these large corporations have some issues to sort out, they should not be defamed on such extrme levels. We pay for the Disney movies and watch them, and we also pay for the magazines that carry these ads. So how much worse are we than the people that produce them? We, as the audience, control what is put out for us to view because if we don’t like it, we will not buy it. So I feel that instead of all of these people complaining about how children’s imaginations and the appropriate image a woman is being destroyed, they need to find a way to do something about it for themselves.

Drug Testing at Work

I recently read a blog post about drug testing in places where people work. Following this blog post I saw another one posting against it and why everyone had the right to their own privacy. Although I could find reasons to not agree with both, I have more of a personal reason to say that every place has a right to make sure their employees are not doing anything they are not supposed to be doing. If a person is chosen for a specific job and they are serious about what he or she does, he or she should have no reason to not cooperate with drug testing. I understand that everyone has the right to privacy; however, certain substances are illegal for a reason. Therefore, there should be no trouble when an employer wants to know if his or her employees are obeying those rules. If an employee is on drugs then that would make them more prone to absences in work and it could make them less efficient in the work that they do for that company. The employer should always have the right to find out if there is a reason that they should keep an employee or hire someone based on these tests. If there is another applicant that is clean then they would obviously rather choose him or her then someone who might have a problem. If a person is clean at the time when they are hired and find that they cannot handle the stress of the job that they have and turn to drugs to help them cope, this is another reason for more drug testing. If an employee cannot handle it then they should not have the right to have the job. Being stressed is one thing, but dealing with that stress by using drugs is another. One example of a job that would be high stress like that is being a doctor. I have a personal event that took place involving a doctor that abused drugs, and it ended up taking a life.

A very close family friend of mine was expecting her first child when she found out that the baby was having some issues that I am unsure of. They told her that surgery would have to be done while she was pregnancy. The surgery did not end up going well and baby did not live. Soon after this my friend found out that during the operation on her and her baby the doctor was drunk and high on pills and he was the reason for the death of the baby. It was horrible event in all of our lives, especially her life, because it could have been easily avoided and she could have that little girl with her today.

This event has made me strongly agree with drug testing in the working environment, especially hospitals. Anyone with the power to do what doctors do should always be clean of any substance. Anyone who is a professional should have no reason to feel that they need to turn to drugs. Life can get stressful, but that’s life. Employers should always have the right to make sure that their employees are not doing anything illegal. It is illegal for a reason.

Online Interaction

I feel that the blog posts are very effective for our class. However, I do not believe that they are necessarily physical conversations outside the classroom. I would assume that if no one was required to write blog comments that they would not occur very often. Although I am glad that we are required to do them because of their helpfulness, they still do not seem to strike any real conversation. Personally, when I comment on blog posts I do it so that I can receive the credit and to give my peers in the class good compliments on their writing and my own opinion on what they say. I do not mind giving comments either although I do not believe that they serve as a good way to start an interesting conversation. I feel that the blog comments are only really statements that we make to each other complementing our work. A conversation could possibly be started, I guess; however, I do not think that that happens very often. Most of us state what we need to then just let it be. We write a few compliments and constructive sentences and are done. I usually write what I agree with that the writher of the blog said then tell them that they did a great job because everyone always does. Personally, I do not really ever converse with others that have made comments on my blog or other peoples blog. When I have to do my comments, I pick two people at random, read their blogs and then comment on what I took from reading what they thought. Although I do not believe that blogs start conversation, I do find them very helpful because it is nice to see what people have to say, and I feel like they are very honest in their opinions and give good compliments. I also like to see what other people have written for the same topic.

If I had to choose between blogs and forum discussions, I would most defiantly choose blogs because I like them a whole lot better. They are more beneficial to me because I like to write and express my own knowledge; whereas, I feel like in forum discussions we are more asked to read and respond rather than tell what we think or know.  I am a great deal better at writing what I am thinking or giving my own insight on a subject than I am at reading comprehension and responding to texts.  The forum discussions are not very interactive to me and defiantly a lot less interactive than the blogs. Although it is possible to comment on people’s forum responses, not many people do that; thus, making the forums not very interactive.

Altogether, I think that the all of the online interaction we have had has been successful. Even though I do not think much has occurred other than what we are required, I think that everyone pays attention to what they read and works hard to give effective feedback.

Qualitative Research Concerns

            I feel that I might be somewhat more prepared to write this research paper because I have done one before. In my junior year of high school we had to a research paper using MLA format and it had to be at least six pages in length as well; however, we could pick whichever topic we wanted. I do not think that the open ended questions will be difficult to me because we had to do interviews for the paper I did in high school and I did very well with them. Another reason I think that I will have more of an easier time with the questions is because I was also in newspaper and yearbook in high school, and we had to do interviews almost every day. I think that it might be kind of hard for me to stay away from quantitative research because that is the most comfortable form of research for me; it’s not that I have done more of it I just think that it comes more naturally to me to do research that way. It is harder for me to think more in the aspect of understanding why we do the things we do and going in depth on that topic.

            In contrast, I think that I will do quite well on this research paper if I go ahead and get started on it and do not procrastinate. I like writing papers and doing research to support my arguments. I feel that there are endless resources that can be used, and that I need to start using them. I think the best aspects of writing qualitatively will be really grasping how to do it and, once I get into it, being able to go really far in depth in my research and reasoning why a novel was changed into a movie; I want to be able to learn how to research why we did this and learn how to interview to support what I find.

            The main challenge I except to face with this research paper is simply grasping what qualitative is and how I need to do it.  Sometimes it takes me more time to figure out what I am doing than it does actually doing the task. I want to make sure I have a complete understanding of this type of research before I start my paper so that I will not have to redo anything or lose points to a misunderstanding in the directions for this paper. Although I think that interviewing and writing questions will be easier for me, I also think that I may have trouble figuring out who to interview or where to find interviews pertaining to my topic of choice. I plan on doing the Twilight series and how it was put on the big screen because of how popular the books were. I am not sure if I should interview people around campus about the topic or just search the web. I think we should have a forum discussion on this!

Learning

I think that there are times when I can tell that I have learned from an experience and times where lessons were learned but I may not be able to explain it or know that it actually happened. It is more obvious to know when I have learned from a course because the factual knowledge is more comprehendible compared to life lessons. To know that I have learned a lesson, I look at the evidence from similar occurrences that happened post the event where a lesson was learned. In a simple example, after making plans with a friend and her bailing on me twice, I learned to not make plans with her again unless it’s more of a last minute thing. I do not think that it matters what type of learning is occurring as long as leaning does occur in an experience. I feel that on a basic level most of the lessons I learn from experiences in life do not alter my world view. I always learn something, but the lessons are more of something that would carry me through the next similar experience, not something that would completely change my world view. I have only had one experience that I thought would change my worldly view. I went to a Christian church cam in the mountains for a week over the summer and it made me have more of a religious outlook on life and that it made me think that I need to be a better person and give more back to society that I am taking; the feeling lasted for a little while after I left camp; however, after being back at home and getting back into my regular routine of working and being with my friends, who had not been at the camp, I soon went back to the same mindset that I always have had before I left for camp. I have been to this camp four times and have had the same experience every time. I do not know what it would take to make all of those new outlooks stick for me, but I know that it would have to be a lot of determination which I did not have at the times.

I think that similar experiences help me connect to my peer a lot better because it gives a common ground to base conversations on; however, I think it is a lot harder to relate to teachers on that same level because I think of them more as my superiors and not my equals so I do not necessarily feel that it is a good thing to relate to my teachers on personal of a level. I think that everyone learns in a different way and some people may be able to relate to each other better because of that common ground and for other it may be more difficult. I do not judge the way other people learn and I feel that others do not judge me, mostly. The evidence of learning can defiantly be communicated outside of class just as well as inside class to me. To the only difference is being in a classroom setting.