Life it hard

Change is supposed to be a part of every one’s life, I know this. I have always known this. But when everything moves one you then how do you handle it? My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer last month. It was a lot to take in. she turned eighty just a few weeks ago and yet she is going to go on kemo. I don’t know if it is better that she wants to hold on…or if she could just let nature take its course I have seen how the kemo rips apart a young person…so what makes me think at eighty she will be ok with the treatment. Then on top of that my boyfriend is moving….he is the person that can make me smile after a long day the one I talk to when I am in need, the one I love. And he is moving away. I am scared on how it will affect our relationship. If all that is not enough to make a day wonderful, my best friend I met up here in college cannot afford to stay here, so she too is moving back to home….mind you home for her is in Hawaii. Such a far off place, I fear I will never see the three of them again. All I can hope for is that everyone is ok where they end up. I am happy that one day my grandmother will be reunited with my grandfather, I just do not want it to be any time soon. I feel like I have no control over my life and that I am falling in to a deep black pit. That no one can hear me because no one is left, and I am scared. I don’t want to be alone. Please don’t let be alone.

Sex Education in the United States

Looking at the United States one can see the amount of teen pregnancies and abortion rates are much higher than one would like. Especially if you compare the United States to another country, as a matter of fact, almost any other country. One may ask why this is, what is the United States doing wrong? I have been doing research on the topic and on e of the most common things I have come upon is what we chose to teach the children of America, if we do at all. In the United States we push abstinence. Almost all of our government funds for sexual education go to the one and only topic. This is much different than what West Europe teaches their youth. Yes, they do talk about abstinence, but it is a small part of the sexual education class. They main push that they have is safe sex. They teach kids how to use condoms and what birth control will do to help. West Europe also makes birth control and condoms readily available to children very early in life. This plan must be working because they have a very low rate of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Compared to the United States a teen girl cannot get birth control without a parent until they are eighteen. To sum it up, I think that if the United States would teach a different curriculum in the schools, we too would have a much lower unwanted birth and abortion rates.

NAU BUSS SYSTEM

The buses here on campus are used very often by many students. i know that i ride them around 4 to 6 times a day because i have alternating classes on north and south campus. there has recently been an article in the LUMBER JACK paper talking about how the system will be changing. NAU will not be having their own buses soon. They plan on letting the city buss take over all the stops on campus. the major push is that the city buses are good for the environment because they use less gas. There are a few point of interest that they seem to be leaving out. i have talked to some of the on campus drives and they say that if the city does take over they will have only a few stops and it will leave the poor freshmen in McConnell out of the loop completely. It is the freshmen who will be using the bus the most because it is most likly that they are the ones with out a car. We as students should put a stop to this transfer of buses. We pay enough to keep the buses running from our tuition. Oe they could charge the students a fee for the year to ride the bus. I am not sure what to do but i know we need to act quickly, or we wont have them for much longer.

The Allegory And Buffy

The Allegory of the Cave Vs. Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Similarities-
Buffy has leavels of knowledge. There is the lowest levels, the vampires. These things are driven by instinct, and though they think that they know everything and are now "better" when they are truly lower than humans. this is comparable to the slaves at the bottom of the cave. they only see shadows. they too think they know what is going on but really they are very sheltered.

The next level of knowledge is the average man. An every day human who knows the read world. they see the sun and have a job. they have families and loves ones. but they are missing a part of the world, the dark side...the side where creatures come out to get you. this is comparable to the people who make the shadows in the allegory. they see the true objects, but they do not know what it is like out side of the cave, they are missing the light side of the world. the sun and flowers.

the last level of knowledge is the highest, this is for the people who see it all. in Buffy the vampire slayer this would be Buffy. she not only knows about the monsters but she tried to get rid of them to save the people. in the allegory it is the one man who was able to escape for the cave. the man who was able to see the trees and grass. the one who was able to be free.


Differences-
there are two major differences that i see. In Buffy people are not seeing the dark side...which could be better than knowing. That is a personal opinion. where as in the allegory of the cave the slave escapes into light, the good side of the world.

Also Buffy is working on hiding everything all the the vampires and monsters. the one person who escaped from the cave was trying to spread the word of how much better it was outside




In the end they both say that there is so much in the world that we do not know about. and it may be hidden so we must look for it or it may be in our faces and we are looking away. either way we should try to find the truth.

Graham and Amandas Joy

"What is Joy? What is it that make us feel Joy? I think that Joy is the ability to be happy and have fun. To be able to find happiness in everything and exploit it for everyone and everything. Your personal happiness in an excited state."-Graham

"What is joy? Is it someting as simple as a someones smile that mkaes your day brighter? Or it have to be something bigger such as a dozen roses nad a trip to Disney Land. To me joy can be either. Joy is anything that makes you feel warm inside. It is something that makes a person wantr tobe with and help others."-Amanda

Here are two peoples views of whatjoy is. I agree with both of them, i think that it takes them both to be jpyful. i think that people should be happy with the little things in life but they will also have to apply it to everyone and everything.

Joy

What is joy? Is it someting as simple as a someones smile that mkaes your day brighter? Or it have to be something bigger such as a dozen roses nad a trip to Disney Land. To me joy can be either. Joy is anything that makes you feel warm inside. It is something that makes a person wantr tobe with and help others.

The Allegory of the Cave

This image is shows the story. As you can see there are people who can not move and see only shadows, also known as presniors. Then there are the guards. they are the ones holding up the objects in the back. they are allowed to see the objects and the fire. yet both groups have not seen the real world. The lucky few who have seen the real world know that everything in the cave is an illusion of reality. In the story one of the presinors is able to escape. he see the guards and the objects. he is blinded by the fire. until he finds his way to the outside of the cave and is set free. At first he is scared and can not see anything. but eventually his eyes adjust to the light and he is able to see the grass, trees, and colors in the world. He now knows his life was only half lived. trying to help the others he goes back down to tell them about it and they think he is crazy, they say he has spoiled his eyes and do not want to go up with him.

When looking at this essay one can look at the levels of the people. The upper class, are the people who are allowed to see the world. the middle class, the gourds. they have a decent life. they know real objects but they still are missing the joy of outside. wind in their face or sunlight warming their skin. and last, the lower class or prisionors. they do not get anything that is real. they have been tricked the whole time.

Sadly the prisoners were given the choice to be free, to become the upper class. but they said no. they were so scared or set in their ways that they would not try something new. believing and seeing is something the world needs to be open to. The Cave is a wonderful example of how people should be more open to peoples ideas. How we should look at what we are doing because we may be the ones in the dark.

Gender Roles

"What? Dinner not ready yet?! What have you ben doing?"

The two diffrent images have two very diffretn meanign. The black and white one, is supposed to be the classic role of a woman. She is supposed to take care of the kids, clean the house and cook dinner. Be the hometaker. When the father or man of the house gets home he expects the woman to have it all done; dinner ready, house clean and kids behaving. When in reality she works juat as hard as he does with rasing the kids and keeping the house. why should she be expected to do everything?

This is why i like the color picture of the woman. she is doing the mans job. provong that she can. does that prove that men can take care of the kids and cook dinner? It is my opnion that women are just as good as men. we are all equal. granted yes, each gender may excell in one area or another, but we are all human, and all eequal.

Pople are suck in a rut, we seem to think that if you are male you can not be a nurse or a stay at hime mom.People can be what ever they want ot be. Women can be a fire fighter, or a police man if they want. in fact, i think that anyone who satnd up in what they beleive in should be prased. i am pround of our male nurses and femail cops. I like our femail mechanics.

i am proud to say that my father was a saty at home father as much as he could. and one day i hope to be as independant and inseprational as he is.

Iceberg

An Iceberg, were as you can see 90% of it is under water. The author is the man or woman who took the picture. It is the person who was kind enough to dive into the icy water with a camera and take a picture. A person who knew the importance of being able to understand the world around you. The audience could be for a young child to look at and say the world iceberg. It should be for a teen to learn how the titanic went down. It was taken for adults to reflect upon. Don’t forget the elderly who can use it as a calming picture. Overall all people can use and love this picture. it is not meant for just one person. Purpose I believe that the purpose of the picture is to make you wonder. To make you think about all the options you have in life. Your life is just like an iceberg. You live part of it but so much of it never gets played out. This could be because you were scared to live, to let go. It should be because you took a different path in life. Or this picture could be a teaching aid, this could be in textbooks to show kids who they form. Why the Titanic sank so many years ago.



Emotional appeal or Pathos has a strong hold of this picture. People who look at this picture feel a sense of wonder. Looking at it one can ponder how the iceberg is so large underneath. How it can do so much damage because so much is hidden. You can see the light that floats through the water. Bringing your spirits up. Making you feel hope and wonder.

Ethos or the credibility of the picture and Logos, the logic, is an important part of the overall picture too. I do not know who took it but I do know that it is valid. One can see the deep blue ice that is covered compared to the lighter ice that is floating on top. It is a common known fact that icebergs do indeed have a much bigger base than they do floating on top of the surface. Here it gives you a clear and logical understanding of the picture.

A Shitty First Draft

I think that we all have a hard time putting our words onto paper. I know for me, I can sit in a room all by myself and hear my thoughts, thoughts I could fall in love with. Thoughts I want to tell the world. But when I sit down I get so nervous that I can remember them. I love to write. i love how when I am one my head feels free, like a heavy load has been taken off. I love to see my words in bold black ink sprawled across a fresh white page. I just have the hardest time getting them onto the page.

I would most defiantly agreed with Anne Lmaott about how one has to simply fill pages upon pages with words, sometimes nonsense simply to get it off your mind. Fearful that someone will somehow see what you have said, hoping you can change it before it is too late. Yet again she is right; she said that once you have gotten it all down you take a deep breath, and go back with a red pen. Nothing you put down is set in stone. It can always be changed. I think that one of the hardest things for me was to ask for help when I need change. But if you edit your own paper I think that you will miss a lot of little things someone else will see.

Writing is not an easy task for me, and to be honest if it is a topic I don’t like then I truly hate it. But I cannot deny the fact that if I can simply empty my head of the stresses of life, I am truly grateful for it. Writing can be looked at in so many ways. I just hope that people get the same release from it as I do.

For the conclusion of Anne’s essay she spoke of mince being closed in a glass jar. That is an amazing analogy. I can truly understand how she feels by taking the voices in her head and placing them in a jar. It can only be described as a truly liberating feeling.

my fisrst week at school

This is my first week of the second semester. I really like it up here, though i miss my family at home. My classes are harder this semester than they were last semester... so i will have plenty of work cut out for me. My favorite class is psychology 240. it is the study of human development. i also love my anatomy class. i go to lab for the first time this week, i cant wait untill i can see the bones and mucles in person! anywho now i must be off to cach the buss so i may have lunch with a friend!