“This I Believe” Ideas:
I believe in sharing tea with people. Whenever I go home, my grandmother offers to make me chai, and it’s a tradition I’ve been trying to take up. Making tea for yourself and others is a way of appreciating the small things, of celebrating culture, and of showing love.
I believe in giving your loved ones handmade gifts. My younger sister used to make everyone handmade gifts for Christmas because she was little and didn’t have money to spend, while everyone else would buy things. Today, the gifts we still have are from her (I have a picture frame she made me up in my dorm). Knowing that something is personally meaningful and was created out of love just for you can be a really powerful reminder that someone cares.
I believe in impulse haircuts. Sometimes it’s a terrible idea, but sometimes your gut reaction that something needs to change should be followed because it allows you to start anew. Before I cut my hair short, I had been feeling like something was off for a long time, and indulging the impulse to cut it helped me get rid of the baggage attached to my old hairstyle. It also encouraged me to take more risks with my expression. Sometimes impulsive change can be exactly what you need.
Passion & Civic Issues Blogs:
In a kind of continuation of last semester’s passion blog, I want to highlight banned/challenged books by diverse authors and discuss why they are valuable. This would be paired with a civic examination of censorship in education. I would look at why it has grown in recent years, what justifications people use to advocate for censorship, and how these practices may align or conflict with the goals and intentions of the public education system.
My second idea would be two separate blogs. The passion blog would be reviewing classic and more modern movies with LGBTQ+ themes for how much I personally enjoyed them, how they handle representation, and the strength of their themes and cinematography. The civic issue blog would focus on affirmative action and look into its precedent, arguments for or against it, and what underlying assumptions it makes about historically marginalized groups.
This became a really long first post! If you managed to read to the end, please let me know what you’d be interested in seeing. Here’s to a great start of the semester!
Oooh… I’m so excited about your “This I Believe” ideas! I completely think you should do ALL of them. I 100% agree with you about the importance of sharing tea with people; my family used to do “poetry teas” where we would read poetry out loud, with tea and cookies on hand. I also think handmade gifts is an awesome idea (as someone who does handmade gifts every year). So cool!
I’m definitely not being super helpful in helping you choose between your ideas, because I like all of them. For the blogs, I’m excited about both of those ideas. Whichever idea you decide to do, I really like the way that you are planning on connecting your two blogs with similar themes and topics. Can’t wait to read your next post!
I really love your second idea for the “This I Believe” prompt; I value homemade gifts because they show a love and care that is a bit more difficult to convey through gifts that are bought from a store. Also, homemade gifts show a dedication of time that demonstrates how much you are valued by another person. I think this belief and the congruent story about your sister, really fit with the idea of this type of prompt.
I also really love both of your passion and/or civic ideas blogs as both are incredibly interesting. Also, as I know you more personally now, I know that both will be insightful and will open my eyes to different perspectives. I look forward to read whichever one you choose.
I love all your ideas for the “I believe” speech. Both the idea about tea and the one about homemade gifts sound so wholesome, and I would love to hear the possible narratives that could go along with them. However, your spontaneous haircut idea sounds the most interesting. Your opening statement will easily grab people’s attention, and I love the idea of being more adventurous and random.
I think that both your passion blog ideas sound great. If you end up doing your banned books idea, just make sure you have enough books in mind to write about. I especially love the LGBTQ+ movie idea. I would love to read your thoughts on queer films, especially if you blogged about The Half of It.