More Knowledge

          I wish that when I was a teenager, the internet would have been as accessible as it is for teenagers today.  It was only ten years ago when I was a teenager and internet was not as available as it is now.  So many advancements have occurred.  Teenagers of present day could not even imagine a world without Facebook.  I think that if I would have had access to the internet when I was younger, I would have had more knowledge and felt more involved in the world.  I appreciate having the type of access to the internet that we do today.  As an adult, I spend several hours per week on the internet researching topics such as nutrition, parenting, and politics.  Having the internet available to me makes me feel like I can make a difference in the world because I have access to people all over the world and I can share the information I learn with them.

Discouraged

          I have been struggling with the Critical Analysis project since it began.  I have no solid clue what I am supposed to be doing.  I read the handouts and examples but do not know how to create one myself.  Ugh!  Anyway, I wrote my proposal.  I am choosing to apply a feminist approach towards the film Shrek the Third.  I uploaded my proposal to the WCC site and felt crappy about it because I did not know what was expected in the proposal.  Then, I decided to look to my course book for help.  I found a section that explained what needs to be in a proposal and I started my paper over.  I uploaded the new proposal and feel a bit better about it but I am still discouragedL  

It's a BigPharma World

          One thing that makes me angrier than anything else is the way that big pharmaceutical companies exploit people.  I understand their place in the world and some good things have come from their labs, however, using people that do not have any other options or choices, as guinea pigs, to test if a particular drug will work and to see its side effects is unbelievably unethical and immoral. 

          Microbicides are compounds that can be applied inside the vagina or rectum to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV.  These products are being tested on women in India.  The pharmaceutical company’s stance is that they are empowering the women of India by giving them an option to prevent the transmission of HIV since many of them do not have the option to refuse sex or demand a condom be used during sex. 

          It’s incredible that these gels and creams “may” help in protecting these women from HIV.   My question is why they test these products in India.  In my opinion, they targeted the women in this country because they do not have any other options to fight HIV.  It’s either risk getting HIV or let pharmaceutical companies use your body to experiment on and you could possibly prevent HIV.  These women are backed into a corner with only one way out….the pharmaceutical companies. 

          When the BigPharma companies were gathered around the table with this new product asking where the trials should take place, I’m sure they didn’t think, “We need to go to the country that needs the most help with preventing HIV.”  Nope, I think it was more like, “Where can we find enough desperate women that will not ask any questions about what we are giving them, who are quiet enough that if there is an adverse reaction won’t make much of a fuse, and expendable if they die from it...hmmm, India!”

A Feminist Approach

The critical approach that most interests me in analyzing a film is gender studies.  I feel that what films show of how and what women are supposed to be is inaccurate.  Unfortunately many people believe that there are certain ways women should act, dress, and think.  If a woman acts a certain way or dresses a certain way out of what society deems “normal” and “appropriate” then she is shunned and labeled hurtful nasty names.  Women have been portrayed as week, dumb, and slutty objects for far too long.  In most movies they are “emotional”, illogical and poo-pooed for their ideas and feeling.  Women are in fact, just as strong, smart and successful as anybody else.  It's time that films start portraying what and who women really are.

False Images

Magazines do more than lure people in with numbers and smart titles of articles, they lure people in by creating a false idea of what a person should look like and what they have to do to be as beautiful and successful as the people in the magazine.

The fact is the people in the magazine are produced.  They have multiple people working on them to make them look the way they do.  They have nutritionists and chefs to keep them eating healthy and staying thin.  They have hair stylists, make up stylists, people to tell them what to wear and fitness trainers.  And what’s worse, even after all that “work” their team has put into making them look “perfect”, graphic designers airbrush the photos to make them look flawless and thinner.  These people are not a realist view of “normal” people. 

It is ultimately our responsibility to feel secure within ourselves, however, the magazine companies are being totally irresponsible buy putting these “flawless” images on their covers and in their pages because young women are in the process of discovering their self-esteem and may be influenced to think that they can only obtain self-esteem and security if they look like the models that litter the pages of these magazines.   

Yes, That Will Work

I wondered why I was not been able to comprehend a complex book or article after reading it.  Come to find out, I was not taking the correct steps before I started reading the book.  In the past I would just start reading the book page by page taking notes along the way.  I love taking notes.  I fortunately have learned new tools to help me get a better understanding while I read.  The first thing I need to do is to glance through the chapters to get an idea of what I will be reading and learning.  Secondly, I need to glance through the entire book and read the first and last couple of pages.  By having an idea about what I will be reading, I think I will be better prepared when I actually read it.  I am defiantly going to apply this in my Biology class.

An Irked Realization

I am irked.  I was reading a Textual Analyses on poverty and the US.  Habitat for Humanity was brought up in the article.  I have mixed feeling about Habitat.

My parents divorced when my sister and I were in middle school.  My dad never paid his child support, provided health insurance, or anything a good father should have done.  My mom took care of us herself.  My mom was on disability and barley made $1200 a month, which included my sister and I’s social security.  Once you took out rent ($450) and the other bills, there was not much, if anything, left.  Now, my mom did the best she could but it was still very hard for my family.  We did not live in a nice house but rented a trailer, which looking back now probably was filled with fire-code violations.  We ate what we could afford, which was not much, and did not really get any of the extras, or needs for that matter, in life.  

Anyway, my mom sent in an application to Habitat for Humanity hoping to provide her children with a safe home.  She was DENIED!!  They said she made too much money….are you kidding me???  One adult and two children living on $1200 a month is too much?  We were living way under the poverty level yet no one helped.  No one cared.  I thought they were supposed to help those who lived in poverty?

 I agree and think it’s wonderful that Habitat is helping people build homes.  But, their message about wanting to end poverty is not going to happen when they forget about those who live it.

While writing this blog I realized I do not do enough to help others that are in the situation I was once in.  I need to help others and volunteer my time and money. I need to help.  I also realized and am grateful for everything my mom did for my sister and me.  Thanks mom:)

Revisions

             I can sometimes be a perfectionist and I like to have a step by step guide to everything I do.  That’s how I think.  Inside my head I have a little voice that is always telling me what the next step is whatever I may be doing.  

            Writing two profiles on a fellow classmate was difficult.  For me, writing papers is not an exact A-B-C step-by-step process.  You go from step three to step five and back to step one.  Just when I think I have a perfect paper, I re-read it and have to revise.  Many times I had to go back and think of new ideas. 

I have learned that writing is not an exact guide but a process that can take days.  The first day I wrote down ideas.  The second day I wrote a rough draft.  I reread through the papers multiple times and had my mom and husband re-read through the papers as well.  I ended up with two rough drafts full or corrections and ideas of both papers. My final papers did have some of the information that was in my drafts and included my major points and ideas. I was able to revise my paper with more details and more descriptive words to make my writing more intriguing.  Overall, I appreciate the art of writing more. I appreciate it as a process.