BLOG 19

Class Reflection

The three blogs I consider were my best pieces of writing were blogs #9,13,15. This is because in the beginning of the semester my writing skills weren’t good enough but now I have excelled in my writing. These blogs reflect my ability to write not only about different perspectives but real life issues.

It is better to write online because I can type a lot quicker. The organization is better than handwriting. In addition, it was easier for me to have access to a dictionary online then by looking for the word in the dictionary, since all I have to do is type it in. Writing blogs helped me a lot because it made my writing skills stronger. It was a hard process since there were so many of them to write. It showed me that I am capable of writing many interesting works. To me this was an individual activity but sometimes when I needed help this was a shared experience for the person that was helping me and myself. When I finished my blogs or needed to add more information I read other student’s blogs. This showed me the different perspectives individuals have on different subjects. It even helped me favor one side more than the other when it came to agreeing or disagreeing. I never thought about someone reading my blog. It doesn’t affect me in any way since everyone has their own opinion on various topics.

            From this class I learned that writing is the key to everything. Throughout life you will need to use writing. It is needed in all my subjects that I take. The blogs really helped me to understand the real life issues that make an impact on today’s society. The main lesson is to never give up only keep pushing yourself to you reach your goal. I wanted the class to be more focused on grammar and punctuation. This is because I am a student that has trouble with English since it is my second language and I believe that many students in the class had the same problem. This class taught me how to write essays, summaries, and even map my ideas out. When I started the course I didn’t know what a summary even was. Writing my thoughts in an organized way was not necessary in my eyes. The food unit was memorable to me. It showed me that what may seem good to us is not really good. It opened my eyes to new experiences. Now I drink tap water and eat healthier. I even look at labels before buying a food related item. I would recommend any students to take only this class especially if you are working. Don’t try to take any other courses since all the assignments take a big amount of time to complete. Since I am a full-time student it sometimes took me till 2am to finish various assignments. I recommend Dr. Ximena Gallardo who is an amazing and funny teacher, because she makes the class very interesting. It seems as if she drinks big amounts of energy drinks since she is always energetic. If you don’t pass the CAT-W then its not the professors fault because she helps you from beginning to end just to prepare you. I hope I will pass because I have been studying every night by reviewing my notes. J

BLOG 18

The Story of Stuff

According to Annie Leonard “The American economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.” In my experience, I find this to be true because nowadays people buy more items especially if they have discounts on them. In addition, media creates an image that we need to buy the latest items to keep us satisfied and replace the worse quality objects we once had.

I see many individuals that occupy the mall hallways. The parking lots are always full especially during holidays. I always wonder why people in the United States especially where many are in a recession, spend their earned/saved money on worthless items that may not be needed in the future. The answer is simple; the industries want you to increase your spending money so they can have a greater interest.  Industries pay for advertisements mainly to persuade the consumer into buying their product. They believe that this method is the best and most convenient way because many people watch television shows. Females such as me go shopping mainly to be in fashion. The shoes that you wore last year must be thrown out since they aren’t in style the following year. New technologies can be similar since technology is changing every couple of months and everyone wants to buy them just for show. One example is the newest Iphone 4s model. Many people were waiting for days just to get it. It is the same like the other Apple phones but people believe that each phone has improved dramatically inside which is not always true.

The ultimate purpose of the American economy should benefit the population. An industry producing more leads to more people buying their products. If this wouldn’t happen we would only spend our money on necessary items such as food and housing.  In conclusion, the more people that buy from certain companies help the workers have a stable job because they are depending on their consumer’s money.

BLOG 17

The American Dream

The American Dream is life, liberty and happiness. Everyone believes that’s the ideal life but many people can’t find this in the environment they grow up in. This is why they seek it in different places that don’t always have positive impacts on their life. Memo is a good example of someone who was tricked trying to reach the American Dream.

            Memo is a young individual that lives in an area where he can’t accomplish his dreams in comparison, to many immigrants. Living in the small village Memo’s biggest dream is to leave his small city and work for a high – tech company in the United States. In his free time, Memo builds an antenna so that he could hear voices from different places all over the world. One night he overheard a conversation between Rudy, a drone gunship operator and his colleagues. When his signal was detected Rudy received orders to kill Memo and his family since they were “aqua terrorists.” The next day Rudy blew up their house and killed Memo’s father.

            After his father’s death Memo moves to Tijuana to support his family. His biggest dream finally comes true. Memo starts to work at Cybracero, a virtual labor factory, where people can work distantly for many US companies without leaving their country.

His father never understood Memo’s fascination because Americans built a dam upstream and they destroyed his plantation, which was something that he worked for all his life. After a while Memo realized that his father was right.

           The American Dream was only an illusion. Although Mexicans can work for American companies, they could never cross the board to the United States. Americans exploit them because they only complete the jobs the Americans do not want. Americans don’t pay for the health problems the workers face since this is going on in Mexico and not the US.  The image that media creates is also different from reality. The TV shows that his brother loves to watch when the good defeats the bad guy, has nothing to do with the truth. Someone like Rudy is presented as a “super hero” even though he kills innocent people with cold blood. Rudy has been uncertain about the Santa Ana operation occurring. When he found out the truth he wanted to meet Memo and confessed that he killed his father. Rudy offers Memo help for what he has done to his family and Memo finally accepts his help.

             Memo and Rudy destroy the dam, which made all the residents of the town excited and there is water flowing again. The movie isn’t mainly about two different backgrounds competing over a dam but more about not having boundaries. Everyone should have the right to live how he or she wants. There shouldn’t be any exceptions based on your background. Individuals should be willing to help each other out instead of battling between themselves. Sticking to your traditional values is more important then trying to live a different unknown life that you imagine. 

BLOG 16

“The New Industrial Migrants”

Part I

In the article “The New Industrial Migrants (part I)” Eric Schlosser wants to draw our attention on a big problem, which is the turnover rate in slaughterhouses. Every year the slaughterhouse hires about 5,000 workers from Mexico, Central America and Southeast Asia for meatpacking. The working conditions are so hard that the average person quits after three months. Most people that work at the beef plants are immigrants who don’t have any education and they don’t speak English. They live in bad conditions that often include sharing a room with a large number of people. Slaughterhouses offer health insurance and pay for vacations, but you need to work for them at least for six months, which for most of the employees seems to be impossible to accomplish. Most employers don’t care about people that work for them and they don’t even try to improve their working conditions as a result, each year the turnover rate at the slaughterhouse is about 80 percent.

The second part of the article is about how companies recruit migrants to work for the slaughterhouses. Since the job is very hard and they pay small amounts of money the companies have a big problem with employees because nobody wants to do work. Therefore, they are recruiting people who are very poor and desperate sometimes homeless. The slaughterhouses hire buses to bring illegal immigrants to work for them. Since they don’t have health insurance they sleep in shelters and nation meatpacking communities pay for this.  The Immigration and Naturalization service know about the procedure of hiring illegal immigrants, which the beef companies are denying and there is nothing they can do about it. Every time they find illegal immigrants they are sending them back home, but in their place there will be always be another one.

Part II

            In the article “ The New Industrial Migrants” Eric Schlosser states that owners of the slaughterhouses don’t care about the conditions the workers face. In my opinion if the workers would work in a better environment then they would work there for a longer time. If you work in a slaughterhouse your manager should offer you insurance since this is a risky job.

 Individuals from Mexico and Southeast Asia migrate to the United States in search for a better life. They are so desperate to earn money to help their families that they get tricked into working in harsh conditions that are life threatening.

            Many businesses would want to have a high profit with little money invested that’s why their employee demand is high and offer bad working conditions. There are many cases of deaths and injuries reported in these factories and the people that wanted to earn money to improve their life can end up dead or critically injured when faced with this job. A good example can be my dad’s friend. He came to the US to help out his family in Poland and didn’t understand or speak English. An agency offered him work in an asbestos manufacture. They didn’t tell him about the risks he would face later on. He earned big amounts of money a week and sent half the money to his family. At the age of 39 he decided to end his career and go back to his family in Poland. One year later he died because of lung disease.

This shows that people would do anything to improve their everyday life but at the end all that money goes to waste when they die from life threatening diseases.

BLOG 15

“Mom, Dad, Buy the Broccoli”

           In the article “Mom, Dad, Buy the Broccoli” from The New York Times the author explains that in recent years the companies that were selling junk food to children are “out of control” that even the food industry were alert. A few companies came up with the idea to reduce the advertisement of unhealthy food and replace them with the healthier once. They want to accomplish it by removing cartoon characters from unhealthy foods and stop advertising their products in elementary schools.

The author reports that we should not promote unhealthy food to young children. I believe most of us would agree with this statement because advertisements can influence children to buy junk food especially when it is associates with positive feeling. In addition, eating this kind of food may lead to serious health problems.

The food that contains a lot of sugar, salt and fats is almost in every school. Our children can buy them from vending machines and they don’t help in keeping our youth in shape. Children spend most of their time in school and it is very likely that they are going to buy something to eat. Since there is no healthy food they will end up with chocolate bars or soda. This food can be really addicting and sometimes kids would starve if they would not eat them. It is a very good idea to remove those machines from schools or at least replace them with healthier options in them.

I remember when I was young, candies and chocolate were for special occasions and I could eat them once a week. Now times have changed and children like my cousin who is 12 years old eat them every day. A few weeks ago I watched a good movie about what our young generation knows about eating healthy. Jamie Olivier came into a kindergarten classroom and showed a few fruits and vegetables to the students. The outcome was that none of them could tell the difference between the vegetables. Many knew what ketchup was and how it tasted but no one knew that it comes from tomatoes and were shocked when they found out. Since children don’t have enough knowledge they can’t distinguish the difference between healthy and unfit foods. As a result, the obesity rates are growing among the youth instead of the adults and are developing more life treating diseases such as diabetes.

We can always blame the companies that make these unfit foods but at the same time we are not teaching our children any better. Since they are exposed to these kinds of foods everyday they would tend to eat more of the junk food instead of fruits and vegetables. If children would help cook meals with their parents then their minds would be more focused on healthy instead of unhealthy foods.

BLOG 14

HAPPY MEALS

In the article “Happy Meals” Michael Pollan give us a few advice about how to eat better.  Some of them can be really useful and I think that my family and I could take his advice and change some things, but some of them are out of the blue.

           Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. When I was young my grandmother had a beautiful garden where she planted flowers, vegetables and fruits. Back then people didn’t go to supermarkets to buy food everything that they ate came from their own cultivation. Their food was fresh, healthy without any pesticides, antibiotics and hormones. Nowadays most of us don’t know where our food comes from and what it’s made of. So, if we want to be healthy we should take Pollan’s advice and don’t buy and eat anything that doesn’t look/taste like real food.

           Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. In New York City there are no farms where you can buy fruits and vegetables straight from the producer. The nearest farm market is an hour away from the city. When you are tired after work or school the last thing you want to do is drive a few hours to buy something to eat when the nearest supermarket is five minutes away from your home. Maybe “you won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market” compared to your local store, but we have influence on what we buy. Once in a while I can go to a farm market but this can be hard to accomplish everyday, that’s why I go to the supermarket.

Cook. If you can, plant a garden. Eat complete meals, at a table, if possible not alone. Eat slowly. I have so many things to do in my life that this part of Pollan’s advice is impossible to accomplish. Although I would enjoy having a garden it is really hard when you live in apartment especially in New York City. Besides, I don’t think that one garden could provide food for my whole family.  I don’t like to cook especially when I need to spend a few hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. I prefer to do other tasks that are more interesting than cooking. In addition, my family and I have a different schedule that’s why we cannot eat together. Everyone goes to work and comes back at various hours so eating at the table is not an option.

BLOG 13

“The Story of Bottled Water”

It all started a few years ago when one of the French companies came up with a brilliant idea to convince people that it is cool to buy bottle water. How do they convince people to pay for something that they have at home for free? Simply by saying that bottled water is safer, healthier and it tastes better. When we are watching all the advertisements on TV with all those beautiful mountain views where the water is crystal clear and then you compare it to your tap water the result is obvious. Your tap water is dirty, has a lot of bacteria and it tastes filthy. There are many myths about bottled water and one of them is that “bottled water tastes better than tap water.”

 Most people state that they actually know the taste of their favorite brand and with closed eyes they can tell the difference between bottled and tap water. Researches wanted to know if this is true, so they took a few well-known brands and tap water, sent them to the laboratory and found out that there is no difference between the two. After that, they gave the water out to people to try. Not that they couldn’t tell the difference between them, the tap water was rated higher.

They say that good advertisements can sell almost everything and it is true because we pay for water even though that we don’t have to. Sometimes people waste big amounts of money just to buy a special kind of water. Last year I went to Florida to visit my friend over the summer. She decided to take me to the beach. I was in a hurry and I forgot to buy something to drink so, I filled an empty bottled with tap water. When my friend saw that she poured it out into the sink. I asked her why she did that and she replied that it carries bacteria and I can get sick. She gave me her Fiji water and said that it’s healthier and it’s the only water that she drinks. When I told her that there is no difference between them she started to argue.

Most people think like my friend and it’s really hard to change their minds. We prefer to spend our money on water even though the water that comes from our sink is even better than the bottle one. What we can do to change this is to stop paying for bottled water, buy the aluminum bottle and refill it. This way we can save big amounts of money and the environment will be much cleaner. If someone were so skeptic about the tap water I would recommend them to watch the 20/20 report to see where their bottled water really comes from.