I never really sat back and thought about how much nepotism goes on in our society. Just thinking back on my past jobs, I realize I was able to get them because of the connections that I’ve had. I’ve worked in a preschool with my best friend’s mother. I’ve worked in an office with my mom’s best friend. My most steady job, working in a florist warehouse, I also got because my brothers previously worked there. The owner is also my best friend’s dad. So if I were to say I would try not to benefit from nepotism I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world. I didn’t even realize I was benefiting from nepotism. To be honest, this class was the first time it was really brought to my attention. This summer is probably going to be the first time I am going to try and get a job without the help of a family member or family friend. Yet, I am still benefitting from nepotism this summer because I am going to have observation hours at a clinic that a family friend works at. I don’t think I would ever really not accept taking a job that I get through connections. I know it seems unfair, frankly I guess it is unfair. I just feel as though if anyone were offered something that will help him or her out, they are not going to deny it just because it came a little bit easier. I know that this sounds selfish. I wouldn’t say that it is though. Why wouldn’t someone take advantage of the connections he or she has? It would be downright pointless not to. I am now very curious to see what it is going to be like to actually have to look for a job. I feel very lucky that I never actually had to search one out before. As much as I am not looking forward going through the process of finding a summer a job, I guess I sort of am looking forward to seeing if I can be successful without nepotism. I am sure that I can be. Denying nepotism is not very likely for anyone to do. It is just the way the world works. For those who do not have the opportunities to benefit from nepotism, I do not think that those people would deny the chances for it. The reason people join clubs and groups at school are to form connections and to make networking easier. They are definitely trying to help themselves out in the future for when they graduate and need to find a job. For example, Lion Ambassadors is an example of an elite group who’s networking has been known to help students get jobs after they graduate.

I found that the information on both my own sex, which is female, and also about the male sex were both very enlightening. I’m not sure which one I thought was more enlightening. I mean, I knew how the male body worked and understand that guys want sex strictly going after one thing, which is the immediate satisfaction. I also already knew how the female body works and that is completely different for a woman. What struck me the most was learning about the male standard. It is completely nuts to me how male run the world is. I am one who participates in the way the world works in such a male-centered way. I wear clothes that are uncomfortable and in weather that is too cold, it’s actually unhealthy. There is not a whole lot that will change the way it is. Yes, we can choose not to dress that way, and sometimes I do choose to dress comfortably. Still, the fact that I even sometimes dress the way men supposedly want women to look like amazes me. The clothes girls choose to wear; they usually base on what emphasizes what they think are their best features. And why is this? It could be to compete with one another to get the most attention, or it could be to give them self-confidence. But what gives someone self-confidence? Attention is something that gives someone a boost of confidence. After this class, every movie I watch, I now notice how male driven everything is. If there is a sex scene, the girl is moaning within seconds, which we all know is really not how it works. The media plays an enormous role in making our world male-centered. If you look in magazines, you’re more likely to see the styles of how woman dress. Even the magazines that are made for women, such as Cosmo and glamour, still seem to focus around a male-centered world. There are articles giving tips on how to please your boyfriend. There are always polls asking what a guy likes better, why are there never any polls asking what girls like better? It’s because men don’t read silly magazines like that. They don’t care about that kind of stuff. It seems as though they do not take into consideration or concern about what a girl is thinking or what they might want. Usually, girls go above and beyond to try and figure out the male brain and what goes on in it. I think the problem is that girl’s brains work a lot differently than a man’s brain; they seem to care too much. If girls stopped caring, the male-centered world may not be so extremely male-centered anymore.

I think that everything Sam said about girls dressing up is the complete truth. He was saying how girls don’t actually want to be wearing close to nothing on a freezing cold night in high heels. I know for a fact that it is absolutely nuts for girls to be dressing the way they do during the winter. My friends and I are apart of that particular group of girls that someone would look at and say, “You’re crazy.” Personally, I hate heels. I never liked heels, and I never will pretend that I enjoy wearing heels. It actually is a rarity that I go out in legitimate heels. I stick with boots, and if it’s very cold I will wear jeans. Sometimes I look at my friends and wonder how its possible for them to dress the way we do literally every weekend. I admit to wearing those types of outfits sometimes, but usually I am completely uncomfortable. Usually I am freezing, and if I were to be wearing heels at the time, I would be complaining about how my feet hurt. The reason why girls dress the way they do is strictly for attention from guys. Why else would they put themselves through something like that? What Sam said is a fact. All girls know what is attractive to guys, what can make them look their way. It’s absolutely insane how a girl’s wardrobe at night revolves around if she thinks a man will like how she looks in it or not. I think it is very unfair that guys really don’t have to put themselves through pain like girls do. It’s just the way the world is. Of course men still worry about the way they look. They want to dress in a way that they think will attract girls to them. The fact is the clothes they wear are generally a lot more comfortable and a lot less hard to think about. Here at Penn State, I always think about how lucky these boys are. Beautiful girls dressing up to look good for them, when half the time they don’t do anything to really deserve the attention from the girl in the first place. My thoughts did not change after this lecture, because I already realized this. If anything this lecture helped me to further have stronger feelings agreeing with what Sam said. I thought that the needy penis lecture was very interesting. The two of them just brought to everyone’s attention the facts of life. They were very straightforward and I think everyone should hear what was being said. I think that in another universe somewhere, there might be a place where girls don’t care about what guys think and dress comfortably all the time, but in our world that is the way it is.

I have seen many events take place where there was racism or discrimination present. Literally, not even a week ago I was at McDonalds and I experienced one of these kinds of events. I walked in and it was extremely crowded considering it was two in the morning on a Thursday night. The crowd was very diverse, people of all kinds of race packed the place very tightly. It really was a battle to try and order your food. Still, mostly everyone there was drunk and hungry and determined to get their order in. I admit I was definitely one of them. So, I made my way to the cashier, put my order in, grabbed my receipt, and then couldn’t move. I was stuck up at the front of the counter by the amount of people trying to push their way to the front. As I’m waiting patiently to move I hear a very loud commotion going on that I had not heard a minute before. I start being able to move out and I come across a girl that looked about nineteen hysterically crying because she was being yelled at by a mid-twenties older man. The girl was white and the guy was black. He was yelling at her and pretty much every other white girl in the place obscene and rude things. He was claiming just because these girls were white didn’t mean that they had the right to cut in front of him and get their orders first. He was really going off, saying very rude and discriminating things towards the girls. I finally had enough of hearing him screaming and I confronted him and his friend, who seemed to be trying to calm him down. All I said to him was, “Excuse me, but these girls are not cutting in front of you because you are black, they are cutting in front of you because they are drunk and hungry.” I also pointed out that they were trying to step in front of every other type of person in McDonalds at the time, including whites, Asians, and Hispanics. Usually, in these types of situations I do not get involved. I’m not sure why I felt the need to say something this time, maybe it’s because of this class and what I have been learning in it. I feel like people just need to realize in order for racism to go away, we need to stop being ridiculous. For those who do this, they need to stop generalizing that everyone is a racist and being mad at one another. I have seen other instances where a white person freaks out and there have been several times when I call them out for it. I guess I’m more of the type of person to say something if I see something discriminating going on, at least if it’s something senseless.

The video that was previously shown in class was personally demoralizing and upsetting to my eyes. The fact that the media has portrayed such a distinct and unpleasant opinion towards African Americans is the reason why these children automatically assume that the “black baby doll” was the “bad” one. It is an uneasy feeling knowing that almost two hundred years have passes since the Civil War and blacks were given freedom yet today in the twenty-first century they are still known to society as “bad”. I personally felt sympathy towards the little girl when she finally came to the realization that she had chosen a doll of her own skin color to be the “bad” one. This experiment proved with the utmost certainty that racism still exists and is far more prevalent than we like to believe. While it is very hard to understand that it is a fact in society that racism exists, it proves how ignorant we truly are. It is our jobs to teach the youth that under the laws of the constitution “all people are created equally”, therefore it is sad to know that we still have yet to adhere to these laws that our country “abides” by. Some people in class had brought up the idea of nature vs. nurture and that parenting is a vital aspect to this judgment. While the teacher explained that it is a very important job for the kid to be taught that being black is not wrong, it all comes down to the way that child feels. Even though children have that vulnerability that make them susceptible to believing anything told to them, they still have a mind of their own. It was an uncomfortable thing to know that the black child still did not understand that she was judging people of her own race. I think that parents need to teach their kids from a very young age that each person is equal and that no matter what the circumstances are everyone is allotted the same opportunities. America’s foundation of the land is set on the idea that the constitution “stands as a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise”. Yet this statement seems to be quite hypocritical due to the fact that racism is prevalent amongst society all over. I hope that in years to come experiments such as these do no have to ever happen, and that everyone understands that racism is fabricated and is a matter of opinion. I know I was raised in a way in which I looked at each person as if they were the same and judged them solely on their actions and personalities. In conclusion this was an eye opening experiment that upset me and also gave me motives to change things in life.

This question is one that I asked myself while watching the video on Tammy. When she said that she came from a family of twenty-one my mouth dropped. I wonder what kind of childhood must she have had. I also thought to myself if I have ever even heard of a family that big in today’s society. Then I remembered the show nineteen and counting. It’s about a family who doesn’t believe in birth control, and they actually want to keep on having kids. Somehow they have the means to provide for that many kids, so it is not bad. Still, I truly don’t understand why they would want to have such a large amount of kids. Yes, the kids all seem happy on the show and they are equally treated with the same amount of love, but it makes me think to myself if this family didn’t have the money, how in the world would they survive? I just seriously don’t understand who in their right mind would have that many children if they live in poverty. Then again, their beliefs may have something to do with it. It could be possible that her parents did not believe in birth control. I find that very hard to believe, but its still a possibility. Why would they want to live with the stress of caring for twenty-one children if they don’t have the means to do so? They truly must see things in a completely different way than most people. I think it is completely unfair to those children in that family because it is not their fault that they live the way they do. They were born into that certain situation and therefore, already from the start born into a difficult life. Tammy grew up in a similar life style to the one she is living now. She shows so much pride for her father, who wouldn’t? He was most definitely a hard worker trying to provide for a family of twenty-one. When it comes to Tammy herself, I believe she doesn’t see it as selfish to have so many kids because she herself came from such a large family. I find it so hard to believe that she doesn’t try and get money from the government. Her life style is most definitely a hard one. Walking ten miles to burger king, to try and provide for her sons. It really is unbelievable. Her mentality is set in stone thought. It seems nothing will change her mind. She believes in hard work and success is key that way for her. She doesn’t see it as selfish that her parents had so many children. I wonder if she thinks that if she came from a smaller family she may have been a little better off.

I would like to think that the reason for the statistics is not racism, but I really can’t say that I don’t think it has a small part. I guarantee that there definitely are police authorities out there that are racists and would be prone to arrest one person over another based on the color of a person’s skin. One way to try and bring this factor down would be to consider whom we are allowing to become the policemen of our nation. Obviously, it would be difficult to find out someone’s true character when someone is trying to work in the law force. I could be naïve in thinking that racism isn’t a prevailing factor in the statistics. I honestly don’t know how much racism there is when it comes to police. There could be a lot in one area and not any in another. I do not think that racism is the sole reason why the number of blacks being arrested is abnormally high compared to whites. I agree with the idea that urban areas have more police action. It just makes sense, a more heavily populated space with more crimes happening out in the open is going to have a lot more police around and a lot more arrests taking place. I feel as though these types of situations are shown in the media and movies all the time. When I think of an urban area, I think of more minorities being around. I know for a fact that white people are doing just as many crimes as any other person. It is strange that is always seem to be blacks or another minority that are the ones getting in trouble. Sam made a good point in saying that the crimes are taking place in white peoples homes, but its so much more spread out that they are not drawing attention to themselves. In cities, police are on the prowl all the time watching for drug deals or some other form of breaking the law. Still, I think the reason for the statistics has to do with urban areas being way more populated with police and also racism. I feel as though there are those people who are biased to minorities no matter where you go. The statistics that showed the number of juveniles who are more likely to go to jail was very interesting. The fact that blacks are six times more likely is unbelievable. That right there is pure racism. Where those feelings come from is so crazy to think about. Why do people do that? It’s absolutely crazy that just because someone is not white, they have a higher chance of going to jail. If there were no racism in the world, the numbers and statistics would definitely be different.

Thinking back on my childhood, I realize how much I loved it. It was most definitely a privileged one. I went on many vacations with my family, and cousins. I was the baby of the family, so I would say I was a little spoiled. The whole lay out of my childhood was determined. I was too young to freely decide if I was going to go on a vacation or not. My mother mostly picked out my clothes, even though she had difficulty putting me in anything girly. She said there was a phase of time where I wouldn’t where any type of pants except for stretchy pants. So I still had my free will when I put up enough of a tantrum. The point I am trying to make by talking about my childhood is that the way I grew up was more determined. It depended completely on my parents and their life styles. My older brother, one who is ten years older than me, had a different childhood than me. He still had the same nurturing and loving atmosphere, but the actual environment he grew up in was different. He was the first child, and at that time my dad was just switching from being a teacher to working in finance business. They lived in an apartment in Clifton, New Jersey. So for a little part of my brother’s childhood he lived in an apartment rather than the house I spent my childhood in. He also didn’t experience vacations starting when he was the age of two. My mom, dad, and brothers went to Disney when he was little. Around when I was the age of two, my dad moved up in his business. By the time I was 10 and my brother was 19, my mom would plan a vacation and I would always expect it. My brother said to me how spoiled I was that I was experiencing these beautiful places at such a young age. I never really realized it but he is so right. All through out my life, I have had my free will in deciding what sports I wanted to play, and what friends I surround myself with. I even have the choice of about how much effort I put into my work. Looking back, I didn’t have to work hard to get good grades in high school. Still, I was conscience of what I should be doing to be able to get into college. I joined clubs, played soccer, and made the honor society. All of that was my own choice, some was based off of I should be doing this to look good for colleges, and some of it was just because I wanted to. The fact of me going to college was determined. I had automatically figured I would be going to college. I figured it was a given, after seeing both my brothers go through the process. I am very privileged in the fact that going to college was a given. I did not have to get a job to help pay, and I applied wherever I wanted to apply. I think that determinism is a major part of who I am today, but I also believe that my choices made who I am today too. I believe that each one works off of the other one.

This question seems like an easy one to answer, but I don’t think it actually is. If I were in any other country I would say I’m an American. When I’m in another state in the United States and asked where I’m from, I say New Jersey. If I am asked, “What are you,” I will say I am Italian. Personally, I have one experience that makes me take this question into a more deep consideration. In eighth grade I went on a vacation to Italy to visit my brother while he was studying abroad in Florence. I never even had to tell any Italian person where I was from because they already knew that I was from the United States. Walking into a restaurant, making small talk with the waiter, he automatically pointed out that we were all Americans. “As soon as I saw your crowd, I knew you were form the United States,” is what he said. I thought it was so funny how easily a foreigner can tell that we lived in the United States, its usually a given that I am American. Obviously, if live in the United States you have a very high chance of actually being an American, born there and all. I feel like it’s a common think to ask, “What are you?” When I ask this to other people I am asking about their ancestry. What type of blood is running through a person’s veins? Where did your family originate? Sometimes I like being able to say I am 100% Italian. I feel like its very rare that you hear someone say they are purely one nationality. It’s probably not that uncommon. When I was in Italy, I felt like if I were to say I was Italian, I would be laughed at. There is a great difference between American Italian, and actual Italian. My family has certain traditions that are part of the Italian culture, but if we were to go to Italy and do the particular tradition with another Italian family, it would most likely be very different. Another random thought that comes into my mind with this question is, when did the time come when people really started saying, “I’m American.” When all the immigrants were coming over from all around the world, they would describe themselves as what nationality they were, not as American. If I lived back then, I would most definitely answer by saying I was Italian. Being an Italian now in the United States, I feel like some people are getting very angry with the way Italians are being portrayed on the MTV series “Jersey Shore.” When I say I’m Italian to people, they somehow always refer back to that annoying show.

I think that this is a very good question. It’s not like I mean to have mostly white friends, but I do. Sometimes I wonder why groups usually tend to be usually one color more than another. If it is mostly whites, than there are a few black people, or if it’s a group of black people, there are a few white people. Sometimes it’s a group of one color and there is maybe one Asian. Now that I think about it, all my friends from home are white, with the exception of one kid who is from Africa. In my elementary school it was a majority of a white population. I really think there was not a single black kid in my grade. Then when I went to high school, there still were barely any other ethnicities. There were a few more Hispanics, and seriously that one black kid, Mamadou. He is still my friend. I guess when it came to growing up I didn’t have the chance to branch out with different races. Then I came here, and it is still the same. My best friends are all the same color as me. I joined a sorority, so basically I tried to pick a group of girls that I thought I would fit in with best. I have a couple girl friends that are of a different cultural background, but only a few. It really does surprise me now that I think about it. I have a bunch of guy friends who are of a different ethnicity. Still, my best friends are the same as me. But I look around and I feel like a lot of friends are usually within the same ethnic group. I usually don’t see a group of Asians with a random white or black person. The International kids do seem to stick to themselves, but is that because they feel the need to stick together or is that the kids that live here aren’t really open to the new friendships with the international students? For one thing, I think that people tend to group with people that look most like them, because they assume that they have more in common with people that resemble themselves. People probably look at others with a different skin color, and think to themselves that they look so different, which brain washes them into thinking that they must be different and have very little in common. Its probably true with different ethnic culture backgrounds, people are going to have differences, but that doesn’t mean that their personalities won’t get along. It is all about the feeling of comfort. Usually a person is definitely more comfortable being in a crowd where they don’t stand out.