This I believe:
One of my ideas for my this i believe podcast essay is to write about the importance of individualizing yourself throughout your life, especially your teen years. I strongly believe that you can only be true to yourself if you act like yourself instead of trying to fit in with everybody else. This has been a constant idea in my life – I have an identical twin sister who is extremely similar to me, but nonetheless, we are each individuals with different values, interests, etc. I am passionate about this idea because I always try to be myself – whether in school, out of school, during sports, etc.
Passion thinking:
I do not think I am changing the topic of my blog and will stick to the traveling style theme. I liked how I had a broad topic so I had a wide range of ideas to talk about. My goals for my blog this semester is to make them more interesting to read – re-reading some of them, I can understand how some readers might not be as interested in reading about a country or place they don’t want to visit or have already visited. My goal is to make people really want to travel to the places I describe, because I think it is something that everyone should experience.
Civic issues ideas:
Between politics, identities/rights, environment, education, and race, I am interested in the environment topic. For each blog, I intend to have an over-arching question to guide that specific blog, but it would still be environment themed. Within the environment, I would want to talk about climate change, because it is something that I feel is extremely relevant today. However, I am also interested in writing about education. I know what a privilege it is to have an education at penn state, given that other students in other countries don’t have the opportunity to go to college and get the education that I am currently receiving.
Sophia,
Emphasizing individuality seems to be a great topic for you to give a unique perspective on since, like you mentioned, you have the background of growing up with an identical sister. This topic is also extremely relatable to our class since we are still trying to figure out just who we are as people and how that differs from the people around us.
I mentioned in my blog concerning the future of my “This I Believe” topic the importance of travel in a person’s life, so I am definitely for sharing your experiences with your travels and how they have shaped your life.
Similarly to “This I Believe”, finding a topic for the civic issues blog seems like it might be difficult because of how overplayed some our current politics and other social issues have become over the past year. Not that such things aren’t important, we are just kind of jaded from them. Choosing an issue that you are passionate about seems to be the most important thing about this blog since it pretty much is a passion blog, just specifically directed to a civic issue. Efforts to better our environment definitely appears to be that for you, and I wish you luck in putting together some great blogs together.
Have a great semester!