I seriously cannot believe that this semester is basically finished. I've done it half a dozen times before but it still surprises me. I guess I'll try to recognize that more so when I get to college... to not take my time for granted. There were countless times in CML where I said "I mean, I have ____ weeks left in the class anyways, so I have plenty of time" only for me to now realize that I really didn't have that much time. Senior year has been the fastest years of high school while also being the slowest. It's weird
In terms of my research essay, I need to add in some sources from other sources to spice everything up. It took quite a bit of challenge to fit articles / papers / sources about the subject matter of my paper, so I mostly found articles regarding John Cena playing a different role from what he stereotypically does. I didn't end up doing my performance task. I really, really liked Mind Change and had some great conversations with everyone I know, but I just lacked the motivation to actually get up and do the performance task. I had a ton of bits from the book that I could have sourced, but I just wanted to avoid the work. I'm sorry (the book was really nice though, you should definitely keep it as an option in the future) Hopefully this won't be the last blog, just so that I could finish off at week 1000. This has been sort of a ritualistic thing for the past few months. I would get home from work at 9:40, calm down for a bit, catch up on some social media, and then hop on the computer for the blog to then go to bed. I'll have to pick up something else to do on my Friday nights now, I guess... This week has gone by so fast. I think working on the three projects in CML really made me work harder, which made time go by.
I really enjoyed all that we did in class this week. "Catfish" was an amazing documentary that I've talked to everyone about. Everyone I know understands the concept of catfishing someone, but no one knew what the origin was. Also I had a good time explaining to everyone why Angela (is that her name?) was catfishing Nev in the first place. The whole situation with her was very sad, as she tries to escape her crappy life by creating these fake personas online. Really sad. I got around to watching "Blockers" earlier this week for my research project. My buddy and I went to the AMC 12 theaters over by Falls of Neuse, and boy did we have an experience. The movie itself wasn't that bad, and I can definitely write a good bit for my paper, but that theater is where I am going to be murdered. I swear to god. The place was half under construction, half abandoned, and they had only three people working there. The floors were unbearably sticky and I felt like the very long hallway with all the theaters reminded me of the shining. Bad vibes there. The performance task will be completed this time around and the paper as well. The "Mind Change" book has really gone side by side with our lessons in class. Same talk about how we should all put down our phones and try and disconnect every once in a while. I've been talking about that with my parents, and they agree. Good points of discussion. Currently this is my favorite unit in CML. It's a shame there's only two more weeks left, because I was really getting into this unit <3 There was actual progress this week. Heck yeah
In terms of my book "Mind Change" I've gotten a sizable dent into the book. What really blew my mind was that I started reading the book the day we started talking about the influence of technology in class, which worked out well timing wise. Out of the few first few chapters, I did find some nice quotes that I can use for my performance task (which I actually hope on doing this time). One of the major points of discussion that I think I can delve into with my performance task can be found this quote: "From socializing to shopping, working, learning, and having fun, everything we do every day can now be done very differently in an indefinable parallel space. For the the first time ever, life in front of a computer screen is threatening to out compete real life" (Greenfield 18). That idea that life online can be so much more intriguing than our real world that we lose sight of what makes us human and we don't understand how amazing the real world actually is. For my spoof ad, I'm working with Pablo about spoofing the Amazon Echo: Show, which my dad actually bought for Christmas this year. Even though the Echo has been spoofed in the past, I think we can take the idea of constant spying to the next level since Amazon added a camera to the device. I guess its a low-hanging fruit, but Pablo and I are working on making it unique to us by photo shopping some images of us doing some eavesdropping or whatever. Overall, I'm excited for next week. I have another project in another class, so I'm gonna be hella stressed. *Dabs* This week has been very shocking to me solely due to the fact that I was away Monday and Tuesday. I only got to watch a fraction of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on Friday and I didn't have the time to watch the whole thing, and I only saw the last twenty-thirty minutes of "Queen of Versailles" so I didn't see that movie all the way through either. Plus I didn't see the last twenty five minutes of "Rich Hill" which made me ask my fellow peers to fill me in on all that happened.
Because I was gone those few days, I didn't get much time to read my book. Surprise there. I'm actually not busy at all these next few days so I'm going to be definitely reading some more. I ended up watching my television show last night because of the amount of work I had to make up coming back from my competition in Greensboro, but that activity didn't take too long. Plus it was really interesting to see what type of television shows are playing on major networks since I don't watch television too often. "Lucifer" was the show I ended up watching. Funny enough, I chose that show because I felt like it was the only show on television that wasn't a crime show. To my surprise, it ended up being one... and a weird one at that. The activity got completed though, which is all that matters in the end. I'm in a bit of a rush, since I'm actually heading out the door to prom! I'm going with my friend who goes to Cardinal Gibbons tonight and I'm expecting it to be a ton of fun. I wasn't able to go to my prom last year due to it being on the same day as my sister's college graduation (priorities). I'm super hyped. Overall fast week for me. Catching up isn't fun at all. But winning first place is. I ended up just getting my book, "Mind Change", today in the mail. I have yet to open up the book but I'm looking forward to actually doing my performance task this time. I still wish to make a piece of artwork out of this, no matter how bad my art skills may appear to be like.
I also really haven't given much thought to my research project topic. I'm still pretty set on the whole bodybuilding thing, so I really need to think about that project sooner than later. For my TV show, I'm going to try and watch Lucifer on Monday night just because its one of the few shows on major stations that isn't a crime show. Plus I think the show might be a little cool, so I'll try and work that show into my project. The movies that we've seen this week have been interesting to say the least. "Rich Hill" has to be one of the most depressing documentaries I've seen, but it sure does provide some insight. The viewer can actively compare themselves to the boys on the screen to give them a view of some horrible realities to many Americans. "Rich Hill" is a movie I would show to my friends only for them to see how unfair and helpless poverty can be, but I don't think I'd watch it more than once. Now "Breakfast at Tiffany's" seemed pretty neat, but I actually fell asleep in class for most of the movie so I don't really understand fully whats going on in the plot. I'm very sorry, by the way, if you see me sleep in class. I don't intend on doing it, ever. Its just the horrible combination of the end of the day, after lunch, in a dimly lit room watching a movie. I'm trying on improving that, so I'm actually going to work on watching the new movie. Unfortunately, I didn't have a performance task for that last book that I read. I definitely feel like the class as a whole had less time to work on it compared to the first performance task. Sure, the planning on my part was a failure but I felt like I was very rushed. Just mentioning it.
I've really enjoyed the race unit, for sure. I've always heard the hype about Dances with Wolves so I was more than glad to be able to watch it. Little Big Man and Dances with Wolves (in my opinion) were far better than Smoke Signals mainly because the overall themes of Little Big Man and Dances with Wolves were far more entertaining than in Smoke Signals. I felt like Smoke Signals was just a stereotypical buddy-comedy of the hero's journey with some American Indian Aspects thrown in there. There sure are topics to be discussed with Smoke Signals, like trying to conform to mainstream stereotypes and struggling to find one's identity, but I personally feel like Smoke Signals lacks in comparison to Dances with Wolves. For my research project, I've been thinking about a question over the past few days that can sort of tie back into the Gender unit. I'm thinking about talking about researching modern day bodybuilding and the new push towards Classic Era Bodybuilding competitions. This shift has somewhat changed what "mainstream" bodybuilding looks like, so I could talk about how that shift has impacted the competitors as well as the people that look up to these bodybuilders. The kinks are still being worked out with that, so I'll post on that journal activity sooner than later. In terms of my book, Mind Change, I have yet to get it. Whoops. Apparently didn't learn my lesson from the last performance task. I'm getting it sometime this week. I've been really diggin the American Indian unit right now, I like how this unit ties back to our African American unit as well. The way that the caricatures and stereotypes change throughout history make the topic interesting because you could pinpoint certain parts of history that really paved the way for the future. Really cool stuff.
My book "The Black Image in the White Mind" is hella nice, though sometimes monotonous. I thought that the first few chapters regarding African American representation in news broadcasts was really neat as that was not the first concept that came to my head when talking about African American portrayal in media. The average person is either watching the news or creative media (like movies and tv shows) so it makes sense why not having black "experts" come onto news broadcasts can subconsciously make the viewers think a certain way. I don't know, I thought it was really fun to read into something that was unexpected. The book itself itself is nice and I'm really looking forward to writing that book report. Everything is somewhat straightforward, I think, so I'll definitely be talking about the major themes and discussion points of the book during my report. Also, little fun thing I just found: my first grade Native American Day pictures! This was at a private catholic school in Atlanta with all my kids in my class. Talk about cultural appropriation! Obviously I thought this was all fine and dandy at the time, but shame on the parents for allowing this. I asked my mom about why this was an activity we all were apart of, she thought that it was all fun and games and a good way to learn about the American Indians in the process. She said that everything was private and that no one got hurt, so whats the problem? Theres a whole gallery of pictures that my mom took of me but heres the one that I personally like the most. Cheers. I didn't post something last week because I fell asleep at the keyboard Friday night last week and I didn't want to post a blog post late. This post is covering the two weeks, kinda.
I've been really appreciating the movies we've been watching about race. I thought that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was a good watch that really made the viewer question the stereotypes of African Americans. Just like the Draytons and Tilly, the viewer subconsciously might think that Dr. Prentice is all fake and has ulterior motives due to the "buck" caricature. The audience eventually sees that Dr. Prentice is a great guy and doesn't have any problems, defying the stereotypes. I guess this showed racist audiences that African Americans are just normal people and that they don't deserve the bad stereotypes. "The Evolution of a Criminal", "Good Hair", and "Trouble in the Water" gives viewers a real life view of African American lifestyles and communities. The movies are genuine, they're movies about blacks made by blacks. This prevents other people from adding their own twist to the movies. Overall, all the movies are grand. I had a blast watching them. I really liked getting a new perspective on life and the various communities in African American lives. My choice book on race is "The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America" . I'll be honest, I haven't really read my book. Mainly due to the fact that I just got my book yesterday. I know I'm screwing myself over for the future. I'm sorry, I'll try to make up the fact that I haven't read my book yet. When it came down to my performance task this week, I was pretty much free. I had to write up a little bit and had to read more into my book, but for the most part I was finished with the performance task last week. All I really ended up changing was that I added some sub titles of the techniques I was using and that I fixed a grammatical error or two. Most of my time working on the performance task this week was making the text portion, which I feel like is still lacking in book references.
But what really got me wound up this week was what we all talked about during class involving white privilege. I'm all for having an open mind when approaching topics like this. During the gender unit I felt very informed and had to do some self-reflection about how I personally saw the codes of gender. That was all fine and dandy, I had a great time in that unit. What really got to me recently was our whole class discussion about white privilege and the various videos talking about the topic. I ended up realizing something about myself that I sort of knew before but never fully understood until that lesson. White privilege is something I really want to avoid until I spend more time looking into it. The problem that I faced was that the debate had no right or wrong answers, everyone's opinion can be correct when discussing white privilege. I could possibly debate about whether or not teachers should carry firearms on campus but I wouldn't even stand a chance trying to debate whether or not white privilege exists. I felt like I couldn't even give my real opinion on the matter because there could've been some loophole in my statement and I would've been outed as a racist or something. The topic is extremely broad and complex, I just don't have that knowledge to really share my opinion about it. It also doesn't help that I'm a perfectly average, normal white guy that has experienced some white privilege here and there, so I felt like my voice on the situation was null. What I'm going to work on is listening more than speaking, as I have much to learn. I'm very eager to grow in that sense. |
AuthorMy name is James King. I'm a senior and extremely passionate about lifting, video gaming, and cycling. If you want to be friends with me just bring one of those bad boys up with me in class and we're gonna be buddies real quick. Archives
May 2018
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