Year Reflection on CAS and Freshman year

Wow. That is certainly a word that can adequately describe this year. Whenever you ask someone about their college experience they have a tendency to always relay back to stuff that happened their freshmen year. Whether it is the friends they made, the funny experiences and memories they have or simply the adjustment to living on their own without parents looking over you shoulder, everyone always has stuff to say. That being said, I’ve certainly made some great friends this year and experienced just a plethora of great stuff. Between learning the “College Life” to joining a fraternity freshman year offered a lot to me and it can offer a lot to just about anybody. Something that has stuck with me the whole year is this CAS class though and I feel it has done a successful job at helping me grow as a person. To be provided with a class that is ambiguous allowing you to do close to whatever you want within rather vague guidelines, it certainly assisted me in getting in touch with my creative side. With two passion blogs that were slightly different yet very the same, I feel I was able to become a better writer simply by writing about my thoughts and experiences with a larger audience in mind. First semester my passion blog focused on my love for art as well as all the things art has to offer. Getting to talk about my love for music and my favorite stories was a simply satisfying experience. This semester I had the pleasure of having my passion blog focus on experience. With my passion blog having an aim towards experience I was able to have some fun with it. Sometimes I talked about some cool things I had recently been doing, while other times I got rather philosophical and detailed how our experiences craft who we are as individuals. I had a rather good time with this entry level CAS class which prompted me to take another CAS class this semester along with changing my major to CAS. I feel this class is great in assisting with self-discovery and should be recommended to any freshman regardless of major. For I feel, even the people who didn’t like the class that much will later look back on it to discover this class provided them with a lot more then what they expected.

A Strange Weekend

Have you ever had one of those one of those weekends that is fundamentally absurd? One of those weekends that starts a little weird, but progressively through the course of the weekend it gets increasingly weird. Well regardless of whether you have any idea of what I am talking about, I had one of those really weird weekends.

My weekend began friday like most fridays do. I woke up, brushed my teeth, got dressed and didn’t go to class since I don’t have friday classes. I got up and went outside to be slightly confused by the wether. Since it was in the mid 30s, low 40s Thursday, I was quite surprised to go outside to be greeted to warm weather in the 50s which totally threw me off from the beginning. Following a relaxed morning while everyone else was at class, in the afternoon I went to this artscrawl a friend of mines club was hosting. The event itself I found very interesting. A large variety of art ranging from aesthetic exhibits to a plethora of different bands showcasing several different genres of music. I left early because I wasn’t feeling good and while friday wasn’t too weird, it seemed it was weird enough to set the stage for one of the strangest of Saturdays of possibly my entire life.

Again, I woke up feeling sort of sick and what not. I had a lot to look forward this saturday because one of my best friend’s here invited his friends up for the weekend whom I had become pretty close with. So with a cluster of teenage boys simply chilling in my buddies room we spent a good part of both the morning and afternoon playing video games while listening to music to pass the time. Rather bored of sitting in the dorm all day, we headed over to the arboretum to watch the sunset. It was pretty cool. We stayed there for a while having rather in-depth conversation about both life and philosophy.

And from there the rest of the night quickly escalated to so unbelievably bizarre it felt as though it was a dream.

After our conversation was finished, we directly made our way downtown to get our night underway and on top of other things grab some Canyon Pizza. As we consumed our delicious pizza two of my buddies and myself crafted a plan. Amongst the friends visiting our buddy Jackson was a brother of one of the fraternities at Ohio University so we thought we’d go ahead and split from the rest of our group of friends to checkout what was going on there. So we split up and headed to the fraternity where we greeted with open arms. As strange as it was, the fraternity we were visiting was hosting a parents weekend that wasn’t their own, but a sorority taking advantage of their house. So as we headed into the basement to be greeted by a bunch of parents listening to both 70s and 80s music we saw  plenty of parents who were far beyond the point of drunk. To make things stranger, I’m from a Maryland, so when a girl from your high school you weren’t friends with in High School pops out of nowhere and starts dancing with you, it is a little weird. With all the absurdity happening in the basement, my friends invited me to join them as they took a step outside to smoke a cigarette. As I sat at the side of my friends we started up a conversation with a parent there named Yugo. And carrying the motif of the absurdity of the night, Yugo being an intoxicated parent, took the time tell us about his feelings of daughter and her sex-life while amongst other things he gave us the spark notes to his life story. With all the strangeness happening my friends and myself included thought it was time for us to leave. We thanked the brothers of the house for their hospitality and made our way back to the dorms. I sat outside with my friends and simply talked to them while they smoked their cigarettes until it was getting rather late and decided it was about time to go to bed.

Now, you would guess that since I’m going to bed that would be the end of the absurdity. Wrong.

As I comfortably rested in my bed preparing to go to bed, I looked to my right to see my roommate peacefully asleep. As I began to relax, roughly 15 minutes later I see my roommate get up and ask him whether or not he is okay. He struggles to get up and from there he comes over to my bed and tries to pull off the covers. From there I ask my roommate “What the fuck are you doing?!??!” And from there he left the room and thats when I knew he was sleep walking. Being the concerned roommate I am, I followed my roommate around as he made attempts at sleeping in another person’s bed. I kept talking to him and at one point he woke up to make his way back to his own bed. Although, this was all before he decided that the shower was a toilet.

So overall, weird night.

Advocacy-Persuasion Reflection

Being rather confused about exactly what I am suppose to be writing for this blog post, I suppose I’ll simply take a crack at it. For my persuasive paper I took the liberty of writing about why Aliens should invade earth. Thus, I think it is pretty cool in which how I’m integrating my paper with my Advocacy project. For my advocacy project I’m creating a video that mocks the Anti-defamation league video displaying the life of martyrs in the war for peace through out history and what would happened had they not be killed. In my video it spins that very idea into the fabric of what would happen in the case of an alien invasion.

WE ARE… NAKED!

When looking through the news today on feminism called ” We are Femen, the naked shock troops of feminisim”. This article depicts a new wave of feminism occurring across our seas in Europe. These people who call themselves Femen are war with a patriarchy that sees women as sex objects. Their choice of protesting weapon? Strangely enough their weapon exists in the form of, well, their breasts. This novel social movement has protestors walk the streets wearing no clothing to attempt to make a statement. Beyond their lack there of clothing, instead of featuring traditional pick-it signs, they write what they stand for, literally on their chests. Rejuvenating a rather dead feminist movement, this form Russian president Vladimir Putin, left, is accosted by a Femen activist in Hanoverof protest seems to be packing a punch. If you look to the right you can see it certainly captures the attention of current President of Russia Vladimir Putin. I find this kind of stuff to be particularly interesting. While we take our rights here in the United States for granted, those in Eastern Europe still seem to be living in the 19th century with barbaric customs that objectify women and establish concrete superior patriarchal system. Thus, it is very cool to see a group of women create a powerful organization that uses their body as a tool for change. From what I’ve been able to find revolving around Femen they are an organization merely 4 years in the making based in Kiev, Ukraine. Since then they have been making attempts to extend their reach to as far as U.S. And amazingly enough this organization in only 4 years has a total 150,000 supporters worldwide. Damn. It is crazy how much stuff can be accomplished in so little time during this day and age.

Advocacy Project

So as I begin to put the finishing touches on my persuasive essay, I’m required to begin to brainstorm ideas for what I should do for my advocacy project. Well, I suppose I’ll start with topic of my persuasive essay to begin brainstorming. So where do I go from a persuasive essay targeted at convincing people that an alien invasion will bring about peace and a better life? hmmm… Very good question. Well, something that I was contemplating doing is producing a powerful spoof of the viral video released by The anti-defamation league. In the video released by the ADL they show clips of prominent figures who died as a result of hate and intolerance in an alternate world in which they didn’t die.. Thus, my aim would be to produce a sentimental video demonstrating the idea that the world would be a significantly better place in the situation that aliens invaded our beloved planet. I plan on making the video using stock video of really positive looking situations as well as mock news articles produced and video taped on my computer to present a situation in which aliens invade earth.

Stop and Smell The Roses

Quote

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“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”~ Walter Hagen

It is quite often that people find themselves getting caught up in so much stuff. Whether that means their job, their family, their club/organization, or anything else, people get so stressed and wrapped up in both their passions and goals. We get entangled in so much we fail to take the time to recognize and appreciate the little things in which we often take for granted. For example, the individual who takes the effort to start a conversation with the person they hardly know as they make their way to class. That little thing. So minute, it is often passed over. Yet, it is by far one of the most powerful actions a person can do. That little thing just changed their day.

Today is Easter. While I’m not Christian, I enjoy the friendliness of others on days of celebration and family gathering. This morning my friend’s parents treated me out to my first Easter Brunch. We went to the Tavern to be presented with a fantastic buffet made complete with prime rib, mashed potatoes, and just about anything you could possibly think of. As I went to go grab some food I made a comment on how good the lasagna looked. Next to me was a middle-aged woman who replied to my open-ended comment “Yeah, but I think I grabbed far too much for my size, haha!” followed by a pause and then a swift “Happy Easter!”.

It is those moments which we take for granted. The simple smile as we walk to class or the effortless “hello!” as we greet others on our floor. Believe it or not it is those moments that make the entire difference. Your entire day can be altered based on the microseconds of a single moment in time. It is wonderful, yet generally overlooked.

That being said I end this post by inviting you to have an unbelievably fantastic day!

 

Persuasive Essay Body Paragraph

Now, like anything else in this world, we can’t start by looking at the solution. Instead, we must first start by having a proper understanding of the problem.  The world in which we have had the misfortune of inheriting is subject to a variety of problems. From inadequate availability of resources to contradicting ideologies to bigotry and racial inequality, the world in which we inhabit is by no means a pretty place. Thus, as professor of rhetoric Stephen H. Browne often says, “Controversy only exists because different groups and people exist. The word Homosexual wouldn’t mean anything if there was not a pre-determined understanding of Heterosexual.” To support this claim using more scientific terms, in the world of psychological studies this concept is referred to as “group polarization”. According to a study conducted at the University of West Germany in 1976, David Myers formed the conclusion that people grow more confident about their ideas when in a group of like-minded people. Thus, it is from this idea that the problem being discussed stems. Ethnic groups, generally speaking, have consistently separated themselves from other groups using words such as “savages” and “monsters” amongst other racial slurs to effectively express the uniform idea that “we are not like you”. Simply looking at the American experience, the byproduct of this has resulted in several infamous institutions such as Slavery, Segregation, The Trail of Tears, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, The Civil Rights Movement, and many more.

Introduction to Persuasive Essay

Peace, Prosperity, and Why Aliens Should Invade Earth.

Since the beginning of time, people have consistently recognized hate, indifference, and intolerance as a problem closely associated with the human experience. Within most civilizations over the course of history, there have always been a group of individuals that has been labeled in one way or another as “inferior”. This title has granted them the luxury of being, enslaved, discriminated against, slaughtered, and humiliated in their respective societies. Yet, in the past, we have made attempts to correct our human errors. As early as 539 B.C., when the armies of Ancient Persia conquered the city of Babylon, Cyprus the Great freed all the slaves declaring that all people had the right to choose their own religion establishing a reoccurring aim towards establishing racial equality.  And since then, over the many centuries we have made several strides in that regard, but no single accomplishment has covered the amount of ground it should. That being said, we should aim to bring our planet together through the unification of a common problem. We should aim to bring our planet together through something we can all get behind. We should aim to encourage alien’s to invade our planet. In this paper I elaborate on the problems we face through social inequality, the solutions we have purposed in the past, why an alien invasion will bring about peaceful prosperity, and the inaccuracies associated with counterclaims to this argument.