This I Believe… The Power of Not Knowing

When I applied to colleges last year, I didn’t understand why undecided was an option for prospective majors. Why do people not know what they want to study or pursue?

Before I came to Penn State, I was student who was strong in math and science. I clearly knew my strengths and weaknesses. I was always confident with my approaches and I never really failed getting where I wanted to end up at. My life was planned out beforehand and I was able to follow what I outlined.

Then, everything started to fall apart after my first day of orientation for first year students at Penn State. I got accepted to the college of engineering so I was with all the other prospective engineers. Unlike me, they already knew what they wanted to do after they graduate. Some people were already interested in certain professor’s lab/research and others were done with their schedules. At that point, I felt that I was behind and I got scared. I didn’t know what classes to take, which professor is better than the others, what kind of labs I will join, and so many other things. College was a world that I was never prepared for and full of unknowns. Maybe other students knew just as much as I knew but it seemed like I was the only one who was lost.

In the darkness, my first semester began and I tried to plan out my life again. I already had four-year academic schedule planned out and I was taking 18 credits, which was good amount to start with. When I began to know what my future would look like, I failed my first chemistry test. So I doubted my talent in chemistry. After I failed my second chemistry test, I was completely undecided with my future. My next step was to visit a Division of Undergraduate Studies adviser, who helps undecided students to find their majors. I never expected myself visiting someone because I didn’t know something.

Unlike my worries, it helped me so much after I admitted that I actually knew nothing. From that point on, I explored different majors with more open eyes. I’ve talked with career services, and went out to seek more information. I first had to know who I am.

I read books to find out who I am and what I like the best. I realized that sometimes not knowing is beneficial than knowing. Failure is the mother of success. You fail when you don’t know. But, at the end, you will have gained so many valuable experiences, and those experiences lead to success. Don’t be afraid of unknowns.

I did two student interviews this week about their opinions on the street evangelizing. Obviously, these videos are not edited so they are not perfect, but we are working on it as a group to edit and research more about the topic for our project. So far, so good!

Even though we are suppose to write about the two potential topics for our last project, public controversy, our group already decided on what we are going to do about on the first day. As a group, we decided to research about the evangelizing on college campus in general. However, we are planning on focusing the topic here on Penn State campus.

Evangelizing, or converting people to Christianity, can be found easily around our campus today. I see big signs almost everyday in front of the hub saying “believe in God” or “Bible is the way to heaven” and more other things I don’t really pay attention to. Of course, I can’t forget about the Willard Preacher. I heard about him even before I came to Penn State. He preaches in front of the Willard Building at the similar time, everyday. Sometimes, I stop where I was headed to and listen to him. He talks about the basic Christianity and I thought that it could be interesting for people who had no idea about this ideology.

As a Christian, I thought about other people who had different religions. If I were in their situation, the signs around the campus and the people who are willing to convert students to Christianity can be very distracting and disturbing. From here, I think the controversy arises. We all have different and distinct perspectives about things. Evangelizing could be right but also wrong at the same time.

Although I did not come up with this idea, this topic made me think about the campus life and how I viewed the converters deeper. I hope that as I go on with this group project, I will be able to clarify some questions and moot points I have right now. We will be interviewing several people in order to serve both side of the controversial topic and some students to back up the points with our opinions.

This Tuesday, I gave my TED talk presentation in the small room located in the library. I’ve been to that place about five times before the actual speech and also practiced in my room by myself for about ten times before the actual presentation. I was that nervous.

When I first was introduced to this assignment, I worried so much because I remembered how I did on my speech in the beginning of the semester. This project was one step more advanced since we couldn’t use our notes to guide our talk through and the entire presentation was getting recorded.

Everything gave me pressure and I couldn’t stop thinking about myself messing it up. Though, I thought I would be fine after all those practices.

On the day of the presentation, I was actually feeling well and prepared. I ate lunch and practiced with my roommate for the last time. Then, it was the time. I stood up in front of the classmates and the camera after pressing the button that starts recording. When the bright light shined on me, I couldn’t stop shaking and stuttering. Then, unexpected situation occurred. I almost cried when I shared my own story during my speech. I did not know what to do when I felt this uncomfortable feeling arose inside and my eyes were getting wet.

I don’t know how I ended the talk, but when I came back to the room and watched my TED talk again, I realized that I didn’t do as bad as I thought. I felt regret right after for not controlling my feelings, but at the end, I think it turned out as a good example to show other people how hard it was for me to go through when I had an eating disorder. Overall, I thought the TED talk presentation went well because we all has improved from this speech and learned that practice will only make it better.

Evolution of the Standards of Beauty

When people talk about the beauty, a vocabulary that can be portrayed objectively and subjectively, they can be referring to the physicality, or the atmosphere and aura, or those aspects combined. Mostly, though, the beauty depicts the visual attractiveness, especially when we are dealing with women. The ideal and far-fetched beauty that many women aspire to have has changed over time and became more unattainable dream. Along with the development of the beauty, the American culture has changed too. The new perception of eating disorder and the booming of plastic surgery arose among the contemporary women. The standards of beauty evolved with the portrayal of the movie stars on the mass media, the consumer cultures and eating disorders, and the role of women in the society, which affect how the population embraces the image of the standard golden woman.

Instead of defining what the word beauty is and how it changed over time, we can use the celebrities from the time periods as symbols to represent the beauty. In the 1950s, images of women in the media seemed to focus on the glamorous with very tight waists features; the epitome of this time period movie star is known as Marilyn Monroe. Then, it surpassed to the delicate, chic, and minimal body of Audrey Hepburn in the late fifties. Later, in the 1960s, Lesley Lawson, famously known as Twiggy, illustrated the tall and thin body that is now being highlighted again. Also, she presented the anorexia trend, which promoted the excessive skinny woman as an ideal. The 80’s then returned to the voluminous body represented by Madonna Ciccone who allured both men and women. Beginning of the 90s was the era of supermodel cat walking on the runway with gorgeous body shape. Finally, the 21st century designed a beauty image of a tall, thin, glamorous, sexy, and longhair woman, such as Angelina Jolie, with more confidence than the predecessors. Generally, the body image that the mass media depicts internalizes the ideal beauty standard that changed the perspectives on the “perfect” body. Likewise, the media advocates the commercialism and continually attacks women with advertisement and merchandise. In this case, people are more likely to adopt various standards of beauty and easily integrate themselves into it. The media has a powerful influence on the way women view themselves because the perspective of the mass media expects for women to be considered attractive, fulfilling the unrealistic standards. Movie stars from the media portray a standard of beauty that is impractical and elusive for a majority of women in society.

These actresses, who are the examples of the changing beauty standards, were able to influence the audience greatly. Diet pills, eating disorder, and anorexia are all generated from the consumer culture and the broadcasting that has enabled the beauty ideal to be personalized by women in innovative but more detrimental ways than in the past.  Since people are more exposed to the civilization from teenage, the expansion of a perfect body figure initiates early and has more subtle psychological and subjective effects. With the advanced technology, the thin ideal seems to perpetuate as today’s standards. For example, rather than producing larger sized clothing, the fashion industries generate more of tininess attires in order to target those people who pursue the latest fad of beauty. The coercive but obligatory pressure that comes from the society well explains the growing number of diet products to gain attention. The images of modern definition of beauty are ubiquitous and after all allowed the factories to gain more and more power, as consumer culture began to set the standards of beauty.

Additionally, the concerns over weight and appearance brought about bad result such as eating disorder.  The thin ideal and the factories promoting superficial healthy weight loss pills are to blame the disordered eating behaviors. Since our society depend largely on the instant pleasure, and people want impractically prompt results, the number of eating disorder increased exponentially. With the edited photos and ads that are all around the streets and televisions make the model appear even thinner and more ideal. Surprisingly, however, the model herself does not posses the ideal beauty standard. According to the data, eating disorder occurs from the people who have already tried dieting or are on diet right now. Unfortunately, many people believe that the diet culture is the solution to the obesity problem in America. The social standard of beauty threatens modern young women because they believe that being thin and skinny is the definition of feminism. Maybe because people tend to judge others only by the appearance rather than personal relationship, the obsession of losing weight became the daily agony for most of the today’s women.

Since many people yearn for the instantaneous responses and feel urged to accommodate to the standard at younger ages, they become vulnerable and susceptible. Starting with the youth, they are likely to learn to judge and to enforce one another’s beauty. Avoiding the worst, the physical appearance is accentuated only in the upper class women back in the 1950s.