Erica's RCL Blog

I received a bunch of e.l.f. cosmetic products complementary of Influenster and they are great!

Here is the link to my e-portfolio.

Erica Reeves E-Portfolio

We plan on focusing our advocacy project on Educating girls in developing countries. The audience for this would be any and all Penn State students and other young adults that we can reach through social media. We plan on producing a proposal and a corresponding campaign video. This would allow our message to be received by many and is an effective way to reach our target audience.

I had to completely redo my idea for my policy paper, so now it is going to be on how education before incarceration and during incarceration is beneficial because it will drastically reduce the prison population and lower the money spent on incarceration in general. Research has proven that education greatly reduces the chances of being incarcerated later in life because if they are educated then they are more likely to be financially stable and therefore have less need to commit the crime. Education while incarcerated helps prisoner have more self worth and will help stabilize them in life once they are released so the re-incarceration rate will also go down. This is an appropriate topic because it is a pressing issue and my research fully backs up my argument.

Citation List

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/14/states-spend-times-incarcerating-educating-studies-say-464156987/

http://www.onlinedegrees.org/10-states-that-spend-more-on-prisons-than-education/

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/prisons_and_drugs#sthash.PEFRujH6.dpbs

http://www.wsj.com/articles/robert-rubin-and-nicholas-turner-the-steep-cost-of-americas-high-incarceration-rate-1419543410

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/17/2166481/study-throwing-kids-in-jail-makes-crime-worse-ruins-lives/

http://all4ed.org/press/crime-rates-linked-to-educational-attainment-new-alliance-report-finds/

http://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SavingFutures.pdf

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4011

http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departments-announce-new-research-showing-prison-education-reduces

http://nation.time.com/2014/02/18/report-prisoners-less-likely-to-reoffend-after-education-behind-bars/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/collegeprose/2013/03/25/college-behind-bars-how-educating-prisoners-pays-off/

Yesterday, March 18th, I participated in the “50 Shades of Consent” deliberation. Just to summarize about the overall experience of the deliberation, I thought that it went well and I thought it was a very interesting topic to discuss because of recent events at the university. It was in a larger room compared to the smaller table that I had for mine which I liked, but also didn’t. I feel with the smaller table, we were able to get a more personal response from people, but with the larger room there were a LOT more opinions and I thought that was really helpful.

Going into the actual deliberation, the big problem that I had was that their three approaches overlapped too much and I felt like each discussion about them didn’t really lead us into different topics of discussion, but instead led to us consistently talking about the same thing, just worded a little differently.

For me, it was really interesting to learn how this specific university handles sexual assault. A point that I wish was expanded on more was what happens after we get a text alert. Personally, I think that the repercussions of student’s actions should be made more public in order to deter those actions more. While I would have liked to gone into more discussion about that, I felt as though we were really pushed to focus on preventative measures to be taken by victims and the university instead of the students who committed the crimes. I also felt as though we didn’t actually come up with any new solutions to the problem, we just kind of kept talking about why the few things that we have now don’t really work. While I feel like we really talked through the reasons why the ideas that are currently implemented aren’t working, we really didn’t come up with any dramatic changes to make. A main problem that we found was that education about preventing sexual assault needs to be more engaging and more personal on order to get people’s attention and maintain that focus. We all agreed that the online program that we are required to do regarding sexual assault, does not teach us anything.

A really good point that was brought up was that education about sexual assault is really forced upon you during freshman year, but after that it stops. We reached a general consensus that this education needs to continue throughout college in order to keep it constant.

I felt like the people who ran the deliberation were very professional and were good at encouraging people that their answers were good and I really liked how they didn’t just stick with the questions that they had pre-written. They took the conversation at hand and tried to expand on it.

I think the main difference from my deliberation was that with my, I really felt like I walked away from it with different points of views and opinions and was still pondering what could be done. While I thought this was a very well-run deliberation and that the topic was interesting, I feel like I didn’t walk away with any new opinions because everyone seemed to agree about everything.

I Believe in Scrapbooks…

I sit with my legs crossed on the plush living room carpet and plop the heavy, bound pages down in front of me. A small creak escapes as I open the cover, after which I’m greeted by smiling faces that seem like old friends. The plastic preserving the precious pieces of time crinkle as I flip the pages of my very own biography. Pictures of gapped tooth days and Scooby-doo lunch boxes fill the empty spaces between color coordinated paper and perfect cursive handwriting.

I turned to the author of this book and asked whether she had the same curly hair as me on her first day of kindergarten or if she wore a matching bow as she waved goodbye to her own mom as she got on the bus. She quickly said that she couldn’t remember and had no pictures of herself to show me.

But how is that possible? This is the woman who would tell me to turn and smile just one more time even though I was clearly occupied with splashing in my mud puddle. The person who told me to stay above water for two seconds because she wanted a picture of her little fish swimming with goggles on for the first time. The mom who, in response to my eye rolls , would say “trust me, you will want to remember this someday.” How could the one person who treasures my memories as much as her own not have pages upon pages of a freckled faced little girl riding a bicycle for the first time?

“That is why I scrapbook, Erica. So when your children ask things like what you wore on your very first day of school, you can show them.”

And she was right. I could tell you what number I was on my very first basketball team and I could show you my favorite big bird sweatshirt that I refused to take off.

But I realized, it wasn’t just about the pictures she glued on the page that were important, it was the note she would write flawlessly reminding me of how proud she was of my first report card and how much I loved catching tadpoles in my bright yellow rain boots. She wasn’t just documenting moments, she was preserving how I lived my life.

The page of me and my first dog doesn’t just remind me of buying that dog. It reminds me that I wanted a girl puppy, but we got a boy instead so my parents let me put a pink collar on him. It reminds me of the house we use to live in with my barbie doll covered bedroom and warm summer nights spent on the patio.

My mom knew that these pages were more than just pictures and that pictures were more than just memories. They remind us of who we were, who we are and all that we have done.

I believe in taking a picture of how tall we are at the pumpkin farm. I believe in makeup less snapshots of icing covered faces. I believe in scrapbooks.

TIB Ideas:

1. I Believe in Scrapbooks: Ever since I was little, my mom had been obsessed with taking pictures of my family and preserving those memories in a scrapbook. This has taught me the power that pictures can have in my life and how memories can shape our present and future.

2. I Believe in Quotes: I love words and what they can do. I’ve been in journalism classes and have been writing essays for years, so when words come together the right way it’s perfect. For a long time I thought that I just enjoyed writing, but after realizing that my Pinterest is filled with quotes, I now know that I’m in love with words.

CI Ideas:

1. Women’s Rights in the Modern Professional World: I’ve always been a huge advocate of women’s rights, but they have come a long way since the goal was just to seen women as being capable of other things outside of the household. Even though molds have been broken, that doesn’t mean the high emergence of women in professional fields aren’t struggling with modern problems of their own.

2. Attempts at Health Reform in Schools: This includes the attempts at making eating healthier in the school and also what children are taught about body image.

Passion Blog Ideas:

1. Bucket List: Last semester I did my Humans of Penn State blog and I liked how it pushed me to go do things and talk to people that I normally wouldn’t have, which is why this would be perfect.

2. Adventure of the Week: While this is kind of similar to the bucket list idea, it is different because I wouldn’t be planning out something interesting to do, but instead it would be about an experience that happened to me or that I saw that had an impact on me or how I view things.

I really loved my passion blog last semester, but I think if I continue it that it will get slightly repetitive. I will continue to write in my style of writing, but I think I’ll include more of what I think about the situation than last time to make it more personal. The challenge I will have this time is taking pictures that correlate what I’m trying to convey in my post.

When preparing for my speech, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to say and get across. With my topic I knew that it would be very easy to appeal to pathos because of the number of girls in the class and how they can all relate to the controversy of the topic, but I also wanted guys to be able to understand where I was coming from. I wanted people to hear me and be able to relate and be interested, which is why I wanted to start off with some stories about my own life. I think that stories help the audience become emotionally invested in what you are saying because it creates a situation that everyone can relate to it on some level. I wanted to talk about my experiences I had as a child and what values I was taught because they were things that everyone learned as a kid, not just girls. By telling these stories, it also allows me to establish ethos so that they audience trusts me as a speaker. It gives them an inside look at my life so they can really see where I’m coming from.

Regarding the preparation for actually saying my speech, I practiced non-stop. I walked around by dorm room all weekend just repeating what I was going to say over and over again. I think I definitely prepared myself as well as I could in that aspect, but every time I practiced I was by myself. I think that I should have at least practiced in front of my roommate so I could have prepared to look at an audience while speaking. I think that it would have helped me be a little less nervous and fully prepared me more.

I also prepared my slides to look very clean cut and easy to read. They went along with what I was saying and didn’t have any words on them so they were very easy to comprehend but they didn’t distract from what I was saying. They were very simplistic and I think they really got my point across. Another good thing that helped me was having black slides in between my regular slides so that I could switch to them when the current slides didn’t pertain to what I was talking.

During my actual speech I think they it went okay. I had my main points that I wanted to get and I remembered all of them. I was a little nervous and didn’t exactly say everything with the most confident tone like I had practiced in my mirror, but I did say everything that I needed to. I think another main improvement that I needed to make was the timing of when I moved on to the next slide. I thought that I had planned it out well enough, but at some points I should’ve moved onto a black slide instead of leaving a slide with picture up on the screen for as long as I did. I main thing that I messed up on was I had a few second gap where I completely forgot what I was going to say next, but I managed to regain my composure and continue on with what I was saying. Overall, I was pretty happy with how it went but the main thing that I would have changed was practicing it in front of an audience. I would recommend that for anyone because I think it is a very beneficial preparation tactic and I will definitely do it in the future.

I was watching T.V. earlier this week when I saw a commercial for either Coca-Cola or Pepsi that said that they were partnering with other companies in order to create a healthier, balanced life for people. I was honestly appalled at this because they are obviously just trying to make soda seem better for you than it actually is. This really upset me because the commercial was targeted at families and children. I thought that it would make a perfect topic for my post, but after scouring the internet, I can’t seem to find it. I did, however, come across something worth talking about on Coca-Cola’s website.

I personally haven’t seen these in stores yet, but Coca-Cola has released a new spin on their classic soft drink. Coca-Cola Life is a low calories alternative that is made with cane sugar and stevia leaf extract.

This company already has other low-calorie options like Coke Zero and Diet Coke, so why would they take this spin on things? They want to make their consumers see them as healthy.  They do this by using several different things.

They use ethos because…well let’s face it. Who doesn’t know what Coca-Cola is? They are prevalent in our everyday lives from sporting events to our own refrigerators. This is a well established company that we all know and love from the precious polar bear commercials that always seem to show up around Christmas. As consumers, we trust the company as soon as we see the logo on the bottle or the box.

This is a good example of pathos because, as Americans, we are subjected to the bandwagon effect. All of the country people are focusing more and more effort on becoming skinnier and more attractive, so everyone wants to be healthier. In order to stay up to date with the latest trends and fit in with peers, we conform to that style of healthier living. If the company says that their product is now healthier, then we going to believe them and buy it.

Coca-Cola also appeals to logos here because of what they do with the style of the label. Logically, we attribute the color green with healthy. We associated the cursive handwriting with something that’s down-to-earth. Both of these things also appear on packaging of organic and socially deemed healthy foods.

In one of my classes the other day, we were talking about giving a presentation about a stereotypical controversy, such as abortion. We were reminiscing about high school and how whenever we would have a debate, people would always pick the same topics over and over again where we would just hear the same facts that everyone knew already. After sharing some stories, I was asked was the most dramatic debate I ever witnessed in high school was.

I was in psychology class when my teacher put this up on the board and said “who is ready to have a debate today?”. My class was split into two sides; one that supported the use of the ad and one that opposed it.

I thought that this was a really good example to blog about, because even though its two years old, it is still relevant to us today.

This advertisement wants you to support gay marriage, but it also is using the support of gay marriage to convince you to buy Oreos. It uses ethos here because it is an already well established company, so if they are supporting it then so should you. Also, the poster overall is obviously very professionally made and very clear-cut, so you trust it automatically.

I think that it also uses logos very uniquely here. Oreo is projecting that it supports gay marriage, so by buying Oreos you are then logically supporting gay marriage. This is such a smart move by the company because the support for gay marriage is rapidly growing so that would in turn increase their sales.

Pathos is also used here because of the fun way that the idea of supporting gay marriage is presented. There is a reason the company does orange filling for Halloween and yellow for Easter. It makes it more fun to look at and eat, so the array of colors in the cookies makes it seem fun and easy to support this cause.