Meta-Post

While rereading my blog post, I was able to view them much more subjectively. There was a definite progression in not only the writing of my posts, but the content and creativity. Just the titles of my first three posts demonstrate the unoriginality and lack of creativeness on my part. They were all posed as questions: “Do Bad People Deserve Good Obituaries?”,“Living a Lie?” and “United We Stand?” Their formats were all the same. First, summarize a topic we had discussed in class. Secondly, pose about this discussion. Third, answer the question. It was boring, uninteresting, and redundant.

But I’m not beating myself up. There were a lot of things I did right I certainly showed more progression. The format has changed in my last couple of posts. Instead of posing a question and answering it, I investigate an issue and leave an opened ended explanation, (not answer!), up to interpretation(check out B&W!) I also began using firsthand experiences and relating to the material.

Simply reading through my comments was eye opening in itself. I noticed that a lot of the commenter’s had picked out certain words or phrases that I had used and criticized them. I was, understandably, berated for my controversial comments such as “race is nothing” and that “everyone can acquire knowledge equally.” Theses weren’t the statements I necessarily believed, but I worded them very poorly and they simply came out wrong. I meant “Biologically speaking, race is nothing” and “everyone is born with the ability to acquire knowledge equally.” These simple changes could have avoided a lot of confusion and controversy.

For the future, there is a lot I need to work on. I really need to focus on variation of content and style of blog posts. I need to be careful with my wording and strong opinions, and try to bring in more sources and multimedia than just my opinion and class discussion.

From College Fun To Unemployed Bum

As we discussed college acceptance in class and the competitive nature of education, I noticed myself subconsciously droning out the murmur of college talk. Frankly, I’m sick of it. It is the expectations of our society: college, job, and family (and in that order!) But it’s not that easy. As the recession puts up an impressive battle,more and more recent college graduates find themselves unemployed and thousands in debt. I have a pretty typical high school job: cashier at a pizza joint. And most of my colleagues are, you guessed it, college graduates. Many are from the area, recently graduated, and have resorted to moving back home and working minimum wage.
Similarly, my sister graduated college last year with a degree in social work, while many of her friends graduated with degrees in considerably notable majors. She is a nanny. Majority of her friends are unemployed or work in retail. These are intelligent and motivated former New Trier students! They could be unemployed or working these jobs without college degrees, and have saved themselves the $80,000 or so debt they’re in. ABC News reports that 80.3% of the kids that graduate college this year will graduate without a job. Yet the unemployment rate is twice as high for people with no college diploma than for college graduates. So, economically speaking, is college really worth it?

B & W

As we discussed the topic of race in class this week, we learned that race is truly nothing. It is a man-made invention to help attain and maintain power and there is no actual biological differences between different “races.” However, I was misinformed, and I always considered there to be two main races in America : black and white (although this is an extremely naïve conclusion). My mother would always tell me to use the term African-American instead of black to be more politically correct. But after our many heated discussions, I have realized that African-American is not an accurate term. These people were born and raised in America, and are culturally completely American. My family came from Russia not too long ago, and you don’t see people referring to me as Russian-American. Sure, some may have come over from Africa but some have families that have been here for hundreds of years. And in the long run, aren’t we all from Africa and thus all “African-Americans?”

But on the other hand, black doesn’t seem right either. Skin comes in many different shades, you can’t just put people into one of two categories : black and white. So, are they black or African-American? Neither. I think the first step in breaking down and diminishing the distinguishes between race is not labeling people. Race is really nothing. And once we stop using words that separate us and imply “otherness, we can finally begin our descent into a truly raceless society,