What is Success?

Is there one way to go about success? Do you have to do things in a certain way or order to reach it? Define success. Success is looked at differently amongst different people. Some people believe it is about how much money you make/have. Others believe its how many people they've helped. Success to me, can be big or small. I believe that you have to make short term goals to help you achieve your long term. So to say I think that is the same way with success. You don't just wake up one morning and find yourself successful until you have achieved the short term goals. Within these short term goals, there are always obstacles. For the example above that we've used in class it says 'Take the SAT' followed by 'College Admission.' Who's to say you get admitted to the college you want to go to? What if taking the SAT isn't required at the college of your choice? What if college isn't what you WANT to do? Does that mean you don't qualify for being successful? Certainly not! I look up to plenty people, including family members who I find successful who didn't even finish high school! I believe there are different definitions of success depending on the person and I also believe that there isn't just one way to be successful but plenty and that you have to fall down a few times maybe to even reach your desired goal and maybe have to change your path to get to the bigger picture. One last thing, when you reach your goal, I think, you still should aim higher and set even bigger goals because there is also no finish line to success.
Have a great week! :)

Emotions and Expressions

This week we looked at several different pictures of movie scenes and commented on what caught our attention. After observing the different pictures we came up with different categories that we can apply these scenes to and for the scene above I came up with emotion and expression. You can tell that the girl (Akeela) at the mic is nervous as she attempts to spell a word. A lot of the comments even mention her expressions which give off an emotion. Not only for this example but also a lot of the other pictures that were being passed around such as "Harry Potter" and "Mean Girls" can apply to emotions and expressions. Even in everyday life you can tell someone's mood by their facial expression.

Identity and Representation

This week we really focused on Stuart Hall's introduction to Representation. It ties into culture and language a lot that my writing group and I had those same words on our wordle. From the reading I got that we don't really learn something or know something until we represent it to others. We do not all speak the same language or practice the same culture so it's something beautiful when try to represent ourselves using different objects. Although we speak different languages we still have a lot of the same morals. For instance, we all know that killing someone is wrong universally so it brings us together. Also we have a lot of the same interests..like music and sports. We have the World Cup; it brings us all together..people of different languages and cultures still come together for the same interests. The point is that even though we're all different in our own ways we have more things that bring us together than shift us apart. :) 

Margaret Sanger...is she really all for Women's rights?

One of the classes that I'm taking this semester is Women's Studies. On Wednesday, one of the topics that we discussed was "Women and the New Race". Margaret Sanger was one of the women that contributed to this topic. She is the founder of the birth control movement; also known as "the Pill" today. But something that really interested me is the argument that she was a racist and did not believe that birth control should be provided to Americans of African descent. I was really baffled after hearing this because it didn't mean that she was really fighting for ALL women. Sanger published articles in her newsletter, the "Birth Control Review," that portrayed her opinions that certain groups of people "never should have been born" and  that birth control was intended to "create a race of thoroughbreds" and ensure that society had "more children from the fit, less from the unfit". Planned Parenthood never acknowledges any of these views upon which they were founded in 1942.  Although they honor Margaret Sanger each year with the “Maggie Award", they pick and choose which of her beliefs to condemn and which to rather silence.  They would never consider releasing posts of the twisted theories and philosophies of Sanger. People (in this case, Planned Parenthood) will only tell you what they want you to know. Although today it is available by prescription to all women and is a lifesaver to a lot for females I still don't respect her views on how birth control should be handled or accessed. Some women who were poor and couldn't afford to have kids couldn't have equal access to birth control due to discrimination. Is she really fighting for Women's rights? Just some food for thought...