For our advocacy project my group plans on bringing awareness to water shortages around the world and responsible practices regarding water.  To do this, we want to hang up posters above nearly every water fountain on campus that looks like this:

The goal of this sign is to encourage people to visit the twitter account we will create. (We can will also try to lead people to the twitter account through Facebook cover photos and profile pictures that group members and friends will use). This account will tweet facts about water shortages and awareness, as well tweets that encourage retweeting – things like “if you turned the faucet off all the way, retweet this!”  Further, we will use the hashtag “wateriswet” to try to get our message trending on twitter.

I stumbled upon this article while researching a paper for another class.  The paper (and the article found) is an opinion piece regarding the validity of posting nude photographs of one’s child on Facebook.  What I liked about the style of the article was its colloquial nature, which I think suits the topic of discussion well.  The author, Carolyn Savage, persuades and engages the reader through her passionate tone, personal anecdotes, and humor.  It is a very interesting and engaging piece and a nice departure from dryer and more rigid opinion pieces.

My second op-ed I found on Wired.  The article humorously discusses the behavior of human beings when riding in an elevator with strangers.  What I found interesting about this article was its attempt to persuade largely through humor – every fact, every opinion, and every example are expressed in a humorous way.  I am not sure if this makes the ideas presented easier to accept, but it certainly makes the article entertaining and the behaviors relatable.

Out of fear that my previous “This I Believe” draft did not have enough narrative, I completely changed my topic.  Please let me know which one you like better! 🙂

I grew up in a family obsessed with television.  We watched it all the time, and I loved it.  At six years old, if I had learned anything from the Disney Channel, it was that the guy ALWAYS gets the girl, and friends ALWAYS magically and magnificently fall madly in love.  From Lizzy McGuire to Phil of the Future, this rule always held true.  At this point in my life I had trouble separating fiction and reality, and as a result I applied this principle of friends and love to my relationship with my best friend George.

George was an athletic, blonde haired, blue-eyed boy who I spent nearly all of my time with.  From the time we were five we were the best of friends, and I considered myself one of the boys.  That is until I began to convince myself that rather than living in reality I lived in the children’s show Kim Possible and George was my Ron Stoppable.  The fact that they were both blonde only made me more sure of our future together.

Delusional six-year-old Emma steadfastly believed that by the laws of the universe this friendship was destined for something more, and she had significant difficulty keeping her mouth shut about it – the entire school knew.   For two years the information didn’t seem to matter; George and I still hung out on the playground every day, played basketball, performed in the elementary school talent show together as baseball players, etc. etc.  Come the third grade this precarious relationship changed.  George had gotten a new group of friends who were uninterested in having a girl in their circle.  In what to an eight year old felt like a monumental betrayal, they performed together in the school’s talent show without me.  It felt much more significant than it sounds.  By fourth grade George did not completely abandon me, but delusional nine-year-old Emma who still steadfastly believed in a love that did not exist, had had enough.  We fought about his group of guy friends, and as a nine-year-old who believed she was 25 in a romantic comedy, I did what I thought I was supposed to do, I gave him an ultimatum – them or me.  He chose them, and we have not spoken to each other since.  We went through the same middle and high school together, never acknowledged each other, and now eighteen-year-old George is a complete stranger.

At the time, the loss of my best friend felt devastating, and the lesson I thought I had learned from it all was to always swallow your pride and apologize.  However, almost ten years later, I finally learned the true lesson, and it leads me to what I believe.  I believe in letting your friends go.  Cherish the time, the memories, and the laughs that you experience together, and know that some relationships will simply run their course.  I now understand that even if I had said nothing, my friendship with George would not have lasted.

Expecting more out of the relationship than what is reasonable to demand, or holding on too long to something already gone is a mistake.  Understanding this allows you to value the time that you do spend with your friends so much more.

I believe, that when the time is right, you should let your friends go, never regretting the moments you shared together.

On one of the last days of my senior year of high school, a teacher I greatly admired decided to tell every member of our AP US History class something nice that he thought of them, as a way of saying goodbye.  When my turn came, he told me that so often during our class discussions, as I sat silently, he wished that he had a subtext button so he could read all of the thoughts that clearly raced through my mind but I refused to share.  Being silent kept me from forming a close relationship with this teacher that I liked, it stopped me from speaking my mind when part of me desperately wanted to, and it means that I will never be the center of attention or the life of the party.  However, I have come to find that my shyness and insistence on keeping my thoughts to myself is an asset and a strength.  I believe in the power of staying quite in a loud room.

This silence allows me to develop a strong sense of someone’s character based on how they treat the shy girl in the corner.  On a class trip to China, one girl found my quiet and reserved nature so boring that she told me I needed to “get a personality.”  On another class trip in one of the many pictures the other students took together, I participated in making a funny face.  When they saw the photo, everyone including the advisor responded “hey! Emma’s doing something!” as though the possibility that I had humor or even the ability to function was an overwhelmingly shocking revelation.  The reaction insulted me.  It still insults me.  I am quiet not socially inept.  These two experiences, with groups of people I had considered friends, taught me that people’s true colors are revealed based on how they treat the people that are so often overlooked.  By staying quiet and reserved I notice more about people, the subtleties of how they talk to each other, and me, and it reveals more than they realize.  This time to simply listen and observe has allowed me to make informed decisions on who I decide to become friends with, and as a result I can honestly say that the people I have the privilege to call friends are some of the nicest I have ever met.

Many people undervalue silence.  They ignore the virtues of acting in a shy and reserved manner.  I see the power that this behavior holds.  I see how it lets me see people for who they truly are.  I see how speaking less frequently gives my words power and weight when I finally raise my voice.  I believe that rather than being the outgoing, bubbly, center of attention it is better to be the shy girl in the corner.

For my group’s project we are going to discuss the glorification of partying in the United States through mediums such as YouTube, film, television, and music, and how these decisions can have ramifications on the reputations of both Universities and individuals.  To open our project we are going to focus on the YouTube series “I’m Shmacked.”  The series attempts to catch a glimpse of party life at various colleges, and showcases quite a few drunken people. For our video we will begin with a compilation of clips from various “I’m Shmacked” college videos while Ke$ha’s “Tick Tock” plays in the background.  We have tried to match the pace/tempo of the music with the pacing of the cuts between different clips.  This gives the beginning of our video a very fast and exciting feel which matches the party atmosphere as well as mimics the general style of the “I’m Shmacked” videos.  Then suddenly it will cut to a deep voice saying “I’m Shmacked – the videos usually show drunken college kids shouting this gleefully, but our cut will be much more dark and ominous.  I think the way we present the “I’m Shmacked” phrase serves us well because the sudden change in atmosphere will both keep the viewer on their toes as well as represent how quickly a good time can turn sour.  Then, we will show Caroline talking about the history of the “I’m Shmacked” video series. I think we plan on then overlaying her voice onto various video clips, so the voiceover doesn’t appear out of nowhere, but I am not sure what video clips we have decided upon for this section.  In another section we will take a similar approach – show the individual then continue their voice over other images – with Dan and clips of the party movie “Project X.”  I think we are off to a fairly good start; we just need to piece together our somewhat fragmented ideas.

Before I went into the one-button rooms on Wednesday to give my TED talk, I was visibly shaking from nerves.  I had practiced my talk a lot and felt good about it, but I could not stop my leg from twitching uncontrollably as the dread began to sink in.  I had been describing this as the speech from Hell for the days preceding my talk, but to my surprise it wasn’t that bad.

Once I got up to do the talk, my nerves started to go away, and then completely disappeared once I started swearing wildly.  After that, it all went by like a blur, and I hardly had to remember anything as all of my words just began forming by themselves.  The most surprising part of this experience was that I actually enjoyed it.  Listening to the room crack up laughing at my swearing and ridiculousness, and seeing the people in the front row look shocked and concerned as I pretended to forget my words and make mistakes, was priceless.  The only thing I would do differently is be more mindful of where I was standing, because watching the video of my TED talk, I realized that I slowly shift off screen to the left.  As I gave the speech I thought I was standing in the same place, but on the video the fact that part of me is cut-off looks sort of silly.

Unfortunately I did not get to see Monday’s TED talks, but from what I saw on Wednesday everyone else’s looked pretty awesome.  I loved how people added in small moments of humor and spoke colloquially.  Actually being in the room to hear the speeches delivered in this manner made them much more enjoyable than watching TED talks via YouTube, because I felt like people were actually talking to me.  That ability to connect with the audience was something I really admired in the TED talks that I saw.  Something that impressed me was how calm people seemed as they gave their speeches, because if anyone was nervous or unsettled it did not come across that way.  Shout-out to Dan in particular for giving his talk completely unfazed as a swarm of adults on a tour obnoxiously peered in through the windows and took his picture.  I would have become so unconscious and unsettled but it didn’t even seem to bother you.  Great job Dan and everyone else I saw go on Wednesday! They were very interesting talks and I really enjoyed them.  🙂

For my TED Talk, I have run into a significant problem – I do not know what aspect of my paper I should focus on.  Instead, I find myself drawn towards discussing the topic as a whole, which I think will make more sense (given its convoluted nature) as well as prove to be more interesting for the audience.  However, this leads to issues with timing, as my current estimation for this speech is around eight minutes, when I only have five.  So any suggestions regarding what to cut would be most welcome, but this is my thought process so far:

1. Start with something unexpected and funny that is topically related
2. Discuss (briefly) what the MPAA is, along with its ratings system and standards
3. Introduce “The King’s Speech” and explain why it was rated R, as well as how it represents what is wrong with the MPAA
4. The MPAA has become irrelevant (as evidenced by “The King’s Speech”) in two important ways:
   1. Our standard and tolerance for course language has changed significantly while the MPAA standard has not
   2. When comparing films with course language to violent movies also rated R, the level of offensiveness is quite different for the two films, making their similar rating seem illogical
   3. Present the consequences of the MPAA’s declining usefulness
      1. Explain the controversy surrounding the documentary film “Bully”
      2. Finish by explaining that a regulatory body is only useful when its rules coincide with the standards and desires of those being regulated, but in this case it does not

I think that the only way to effectively and powerfully explain this shift (while also presenting in an entertaining way) is to go through all of these topics.  However I clearly cannot do so due to time constraints.  If only the talk were 6-8 minutes long!