Skip to main content

Journal Entry #1

What impact is technology having on your daily life? Is this different than usual?
Technology is playing a huge role in my daily life. I use it to print out and do my homework, I use it for entertainment, I use it for contacting others, and I use it for tracking my running mileage. I believe that I’ve been using technology more these past few weeks than I usually do. I have found myself anxiously watching more press conferences (being held by the president) than ever before, because I used to never do that unless a clip from such a conference was being used in an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. With more time on my hands than one could possibly desire, I also just got into watching Netflix, which may or may not be a good idea (I haven’t determined that yet). Also, with our economy in such turmoil, I have been checking the stock market much more frequently than I usually do. This once-in-a-lifetime event that is currently upon us is applying immense stress on the market, and I have become intrigued by the strange trends that are occuring as well as the ridiculous amount of records that are being broken.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Struggle for a Better World  Prior to reading Between the World and Me , I was under the impression that everyone collectively would be responsible for “the birth of a better world”. But when Coates tells his son that “a better world is not ultimately up to you,'' he is referring to the fact that it is ultimately up to the wealthy Americans in power that refer to themselves at white, and that young black men (like Samori) are not able to make such advances in life. In the beginning of the novel, the Ta-Nehisi Coates describes his recollection of an interview with a popular news show host. Coates says that she asked him about his body, but soon after asks about “hope”, as he discloses that “I knew that I had failed” (10). The news host is almost completely disregarding the words he had supplied for her previous question. His ideas of how America is and always has been white America don’t go through to her. She seems to be convinced that the prejudice towards African-Am...
2 comments
Read more

Values

Humor While watching the NBC show Saturday Night Live over the weekend, I tried to force myself to find some value of American society conveyed through one of the skits. I wanted something obvious, like capitalism, equality, freedom, or maybe education. But as it went on, and as the actors & actresses poked fun at various aspects of our society, I came to realize that we value humor. I took an hour or two out of the day to watch this, along with everyone else in the country who watched it. The value of humor is evident on the North Shore and in American society as a whole. People today, especially those in the audience at SNL for example, may have certain feelings associated with what’s going on in political news these days. So when Beck Bennett (acting as Mike Pence) elaborated that the president is “meeting with an alligator breeder about filling in a moat at the border”, or when Michael Che explained that “Trump keeps sayin’ that there was ‘no quid pro quo’, which ...
1 comment
Read more

Don't Catch You Slipping Now, Look What I'm Whippin Now

What comes to mind when you hear, “The American Dream”? Freedom? Opportunity? Wealth? Fame? While the American Dream was once about affluence and materialism, it is now considered to be the hope that any American has the opportunity and freedom to earn success if they work hard enough. This means that race and economic class do not play a role in achieving happiness. Success is when you achieve your goals, which means you consequently feel happiness. While many may gain wealth, they may not feel happy. Many are unable to achieve either. Nostalgia (a particular affection for the past) and materialism (the tendency to prioritize physical possessions over other aspects of life) are both large factors in The Great Gatsby and Between the World and Me . The corrupted, materialistic Dream of gaining wealth without happiness is demonstrated well in The Great Gatsby , and the fact that many Americans (specifically African Americans) are at a great disadvantage towards achieving the American D...
1 comment
Read more