Weekly Reflection 7

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This weekend I chose to read the New York Times article, “Donald Trump’s Trail of Comments About Women.” I chose to look at this article with hesitation, but I was genuinely interested in what would be included. The commentary was really just a collection of direct quotes from presidential candidate Donald Trump from as far back as 1991 up till 2015. To summarize, select quotes from Mr. Trump imply that a woman’s value may depend on her appearance, flat-chested women will never be a “10”, and that women should have all of the responsibility in raising the children a couple may have together.

I am a passionate feminist and reading all of this hateful speech coming from the next potential leader of the free world really made me take a step back. I am not writing this to discuss my beliefs; however, this article really made me reflect on certain things in my life. Many of my family members share many of the same thoughts regarding women and have always made it very clear to me through out my life what they thought my role ought to be. Their thoughts pushed me to be the best version of myself and I always set out to prove my worth as a student and community member instead of my worth based on my appearance. However, many other women will continue to believe what their family members/friends may tell them or what they hear coming from a presidential candidate for example. I used to want to prove my worth, but now I realize my actual goal is just to encourage other women to follow what they actually want to do with their lives. Therefore, I find this speech extremely hurtful towards that goal and I have a hard time believing so many people are okay with Mr. Trump’s words.

Daily Reflection 3/23

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Today’s class help me develop ideas about my essay.  I thought about how I can avoid using a certain tone simply because I have a former inherited opinion about people who may disagree with my argument. In addition, it helped me to recognize areas that may be a source of bias and where that bias may stem from. This discussion also helped me think about how I might better address the opinions of my opposing audience to clearly explain why my stance is correct. I will focus on trying to dissolve any ideas or bias their opinions may originate from in order to effectively persuade the audience.

Weekly Reflection 6

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This weekend I chose to read The New York Times article, “The Man the Founders Feared.” This article was in reference to presidential candidate Donald Trump. While I normally try not to involve myself in arguments and discussions of politics, I still have been following along closely since the first GOP debate when there were 17 candidates because I like to stay informed so that I can be a knowledgeable voter. I tend to avoid certain articles that are obviously strictly one-sided but this one struck my attention because I was interested in knowing the author’s interpretation of what the founding fathers may have thought of Donald Trump. To summarize, the article stated the nation, including all Republicans, should fear his popularity and his (supposed) encouragement of political violence, passion, and love for the country. He spoke of the founding fathers concerns of a political strongman and what Aristotle described as, “the insolence of demagogues.”

While this article/topic may not directly impact my life right now, I still feel it influences my life a good amount. The presidential election is coming up this November and I have to decide which candidate to stand with. I generally see myself as a peacekeeper, so seeing this issue (violence as a result of politics) spur from a presidential candidate is very upsetting to me.  The author’s argument gave me an interesting point of view of this concern. In addition, this issue helps me identify who I am as a person and as a voter and represents what kind of issues I will support or disagree with.

 

Weekly Reflection 5

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This week I chose to read the New York Times article, “She Wanted to Do Her Research. He Wanted to Talk ‘Feelings.’” I was drawn to this article because I thought the title was very unusual and I was interested in finding out what it was about. Professor of geobiology, Hope Jahren, wrote the article discussing reasons she believes behind why many women leave science and STEM fields. The article goes on to address specific examples of one of her students who was emailed by her advisor professing his admiration for her and stating basically she is just going to have to deal with it until one of them leaves. The author highlights other specific examples of similar emails and confrontations made.

As a female going into a STEM field, I found this article very enlightening. While I personally have not experienced any sort of discrimination and/or any uncomfortable confrontations, I realize how this could become such a serious issue. Behavior that may be deemed harmless and romantic in reality just becomes a form of harassment and becomes dreadful for the women who have to deal with it. Reading this article actually made me angry thinking about how much these inappropriate dealings are looked over until far too many women have left their once-beloved fields because they feel so uncomfortable they cannot even do their work. While this may not affect me at the moment, I plan on doing my own undergraduate and graduate research as well as in my professional career and do not think it is fair to have to worry about being harassed.

Unit Reflection-Visual Analysis-03/04/16

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The visual analysis was a challenging paper for me.  I struggled with “seeing through the picture” and I had a hard time differentiating between what was obvious and what was analysis.  I enjoyed this unit because it gave me a different perspective as to why specific images are included with certain articles and text.  While writing this paper, I learned that I actually enjoy analyzing images and having time to think about what symbolism might be underlying in them. I have not done a paper like this before, so I had to commit a lot of time and effort to make sure I was staying on topic in my essay and had given a thorough analysis.  This was challenging, but the in-class activities and group work we did as part of this unit helped me to understand what exactly I was looking for in pictures and different ideas to discuss.  Re-learning pathos, ethos, logos, and kairos was also very helpful for analyzing the image and thinking about why certain elements were included.  After this unit, when I see an image I will be able to analyze it and understand the significance of why it was chosen.

Weekly Reflection 4

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This week I chose to read the NYT article, “Pastor in China Who Resisted Cross Removal Gets 14 Years in Prison.”  I chose this article because I am devoted to my Christian faith and I was concerned and interested in what had happened to the pastor.  The article states how a protestant pastor and his wife were targeted for resisting orders to remove a cross and received sentences of 14 years and 12 years, respectively.  They were charged with corruption and gathering people to disturb social order and were also penalized with heavy fines and had money taken from them.  The article goes on to detail the additional detainment of a well known Christian lawyer who just so happened to be planning to meet with American state department officials to discuss religious freedom in China.  It is terrifying to think that if I were in another country I could be detained just because I defended my religion.  While I fully understand not all people unite under one faith, it amazes me how little protection some have in other countries and it is difficult for me to comprehend not having full religious freedom. This article made me reflect on the privileges the citizens of the United States enjoy and how much I take my civil rights for granted sometimes.  The government would be in complete control, and I would not be able to speak my mind or practice my faith.  It also made me question why the United States conducts so much business with China when they do not give their citizens religious freedoms and other basic rights.

 

2/26 Daily Reflection

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Reflection is overall beneficial to me.  By reading others’ work, it gives me ideas on what I could expand on personally in my own paper and issues it may contain grammatically.  It gives me practice reviewing others’ work and revising so that I am better prepared to revise my own paper.  In addition, it provides me with more examples of visual analysis papers which helps me to view all of the elements of the photo I have chosen.

Weekly Reflection 3

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This week I chose to read the New York Times article, “ISIS and the Lonely Young American.” The title of the article caught my attention because like many others, I worry about attacks from this Islamic terror organization and fear the group as a whole. The article was extremely long and detailed the steps of how a twenty-three year-old girl became very close to ISIS fighters and supporters. It detailed her conversion to Islam and how they played into her insecurities and loneliness and constantly spoke with her and sent her gifts to win her over.

This whole article was extremely troubling to me. It makes me empathetic towards those ISIS and radical groups target, but also makes me worry because it could be happening right next to me without me knowing about it−which is a terrifying thought. With all of the technology coming out and new social media, it seems like it will just become easier for these groups to target people who feel isolated.

This article also opened up a new side of thinking for me. I had never thought of terror groups working so hard to “win” people over, or pretending to become friends with those they targeted online. It puts what is going on in today’s times a little easier to understand why and how people are willing to convert to these radical beliefs and travel to Syria and the middle East to join ISIS. It is terrifying to think about this happening to my friends and/or family members.

Weekly Reflection 2

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This week I chose to read the New York Times article, “For World’s Top Gymnast, a Body in Motion and a Mind at Rest.” I am not a big sports fan, but I did competitive gymnastics for many years so this caught my attention. The article was about the 18-year-old U.S. gymnast Simone Biles who has won 14 medals overall. It was a personal story about the stress she is dealing with and how she maintains her composure under the overwhelming pressure that she has to always win.

While Simone and I have different goals, I can still understand what she may be going through. I am under a lot of pressure here at Ole Miss to score high on every test, have a job, and also participate in leadership and extracurricular activities. I have a lot of anxiety, so sometimes it is hard to deal with all of these. When a test is coming up or I am stressed out, it is all too easy to start overthinking and start panicking. The article described how she kept a book with her with a list of goals. However, the goals were only about improving certain things, not goals about winning all of the medals. This really stuck out to me and made me reflect on all of the goals I currently have, and made me re-think some of them. In my biology class for example, instead of worrying about making an A I’m going to focus on keeping up with the readings and following my study schedule. While Simone and I may be different, we have the same fears and I can relate to a lot of the struggles she is currently dealing with.

Literacy Narrative Reflection

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I have not done any writing similar to the literacy narrative assignment, so it was a challenging paper to write.  I am not always comfortable reflecting and analyzing my decisions and reasoning behind what I like and what I dislike so that was a new thing for me.  While it was difficult, I really enjoyed processing why I did choose my article and what it says about me as a person.  It was interesting because it let me think about my major with a clear mindset as to why I am so drawn to that certain field.  I was able to easily talk about my background with how this article stood out to me.  I spent a decent amount of time working on the paper, but if I had more time to review and edit it I think I could have added more analysis of what I am ultimately drawn to as a reader.  I generally stayed on topic and made sure not to discuss my beliefs on the article too much, which was a little challenging since it could have easily turned into an argument paper. I was able to make some “big picture” connections, but I could have added more reflection to my paper.  I liked taking the time to actually think about my interests and how they define who I am and what I am drawn to.