en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/3574900 Comments by kjh5319 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/11/15/voices-from-the-classroom-78/#IDComment227457969 The Sandusky scandal while controversial has also proved to be a learning experience. At the very beginning, when I knew very little information, I reacted very strongly and voiced my harsh judgments everywhere. Day by day, as I learned more about the scandal, I also realized that there is so much information that we, the public, will never learn. There are probably numerous more people involved that knew what was going on other than Paterno and Spanier. Also, there may be more victims that we do not know about. There are so many things about this scandal that we have no way of ever finding out. After realizing this, I learned that any time there is a problem, there are factors about the situation that we do not know even exist. Because of this, we should always keep an open mind and not go on rants about this or that, but instead try to stay informed and be willing to change your opinion if information is learned that opposes your opinion. It is most useful not to overreact about bad situations and to take a step back from the situation and think about it in the place of other people. I learned that it is important in situations like this to think about how this affects people other than you. It is so easy to think “Wow, this scandal ruined Penn State football and I’m really upset about it”, and just think over and over about the small things in life, but I learned that it is important to think about the situation and how it affected the lives of the victims and what steps we can take to really care about the victims and try to make improvements so that a similar situation does not occur again. I also learned from this that even people that are viewed by the public as heroes, are not perfect. Often, we put sports stars and celebrities on these pedestals and expect that they would never do anything wrong, but in an instance like this is really reminds you that we are all just human and that even the most positively viewed people are capable of terrible things and that we should not let our love of a celebrity get in the way of doing the right thing. We all just need to take a step back from all of this and think about what we should be doing next and what kind of behavior we want to rest of the world to see. I am not proud of the way that some students handled the scandal, but I know that together this university can get through this heartbreaking news and unite as one university to do the right thing. Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:41:58 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/11/15/voices-from-the-classroom-78/#IDComment227457969 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/11/09/voices-from-the-classroom-32/#IDComment220606628 “Money does not equal happiness.” A lot of people believe this and a lot of people do not and are working their hardest to make absurd amounts of money. From my experience, I can say that okay, money does not mean I am going to have an entirely happy life, but I can also say that having enough money to eat and have a few extra things makes life significantly less stressful which in turn creates happiness. I have had weeks at college between part time jobs where I had zero dollars in my bank account. My parents do not give me any kind of financial support either. It has been up to me since I was sixteen to have a job if I wanted new clothes or to go out and do something fun with my friends. From these past six years, I can truly agree with the statement that nothing is free. When you are accountable for all or almost all of your own money, you start to notice how little things really add up. Buying a coffee every morning before work can put a huge dent in my part time salary. I have had many times since I was sixteen where I could not go out with my friends to do certain things because I did not have the money to do so. I had weeks in high school where I barely had enough money to put gas in my car to drive to school. I have seen what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and I am still a teenager. It is not fun to live that kind of life. I have been blessed in many ways that others have not with a great family that I am extremely close with. My family makes me so happy, but if I had been financially supported more in high school there is no doubt that I would have been happier. I would have gotten to spend more time doing fun things with my friends and less time working my part time job to make money. I missed out on every football game in high school and so many other things that are part of the “high school experience.” I feel like I have spent so much time working for corporate America to make money and missed out on so many things so yeah, part of me says that money is happiness but it is only one component. You cannot be truly happy with just a lot of money, but it sure does to help life be a little bit more comfortable and enjoyable. Ask a millionaire and a homeless person who is happier and then try to tell me that money is not a part of happiness. Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:42:17 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/11/09/voices-from-the-classroom-32/#IDComment220606628 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/11/01/voices-from-the-classroom-20/#IDComment216893529 When you walk into your local Lowe’s and many other stores, signs greet you immediately with all sorts of directions explaining where certain items are in the store. As soon as you see these signs, you also notice that all of the signs are translated into Spanish as well. When I was younger, I never really understood why it was this way, especially considering that in my small rural hometown, there is not a large number of Spanish speaking people in the community. Now that I am older, I understand what is going on. Many of the workers for Lowes are probably Spanish speaking and also, the community must have many more immigrants and Spanish speaking citizens than what I had previously thought because I was too young to notice. After these signs started appearing, many people start talking about how these signs are not necessary. Many people think, “if you come to America, you should have to learn English.” Is this right, or should we try to help immigrants adjust to their new surroundings? Personally, I do not think we should be spending tax money to translate traffic signs into Spanish. I know that none of these immigrants are asking us to make these signs and are not to blame, but I also do not think it is fair to legal tax payers to have to pay for the creation of these signs when our country is in such economic turmoil and every dollar we spend really matters. On the other hand, if a private company or corporation wants to spend their own money to make these signs in their store, that is completely fine. A company is going to do what they need to do to make money, and for some companies, these signs help increase profit. The signs do not bother me in any way when I see them, I just do not want to be the one paying for the signs. With the question of these signs, the question is brought up whether or not immigrants should have to learn to speak English. Personally, I think we should not force anyone to learn English if they do not want to. Our country was built upon many things, including freedom of speech. If these people do not want to learn English, it would be unconstitutional to force them. If these immigrants are content without knowing English, who are we to tell them that they must learn the language? Also, I do not think we should go out of our way to make signs in their language. I think that we should treat them as any other person and have the expectation that if they want to understand English, that they will take the time and make the effort to learn it. Otherwise, it is completely up to that person to have someone around to translate for him or her, or to just not understand. Fri, 4 Nov 2011 18:18:27 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/11/01/voices-from-the-classroom-20/#IDComment216893529 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/10/27/voices-from-the-classroom-57/#IDComment213574084 So the question is, should we give back the land we stole from Native Americans? Personally, I say no. This land was stolen from them so many generations ago. I agree that it was unfair and should not have happened but, why should we take away land from people now to give it back to them? It would kind of defeat the purpose because in order to give this land away, we would have to take it away from someone else who is using it. Then, many generations later, would we feel the need to give it back to that person? The cycle would continue forever and accomplish absolutely nothing. I think. If we really want to make things better, we should share the land and try to help their neighborhoods by helping to build better schools so that the high school dropout rate and unemployment rate would become much closer to the rates of the rest of the country. It is like the saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Just giving back the land to the Native Americans would not mean that their life expectancy or anything would improve. They would have more land to work with, but the quality of their lives would not improve unless we “teach them to fish” and help to educate them. This is the only way we can really say we did the right thing to help these people. If we just dump them all this land, we are really just wasting resources that someone else is probably already putting to good use to give to someone who doesn’t really know what to do with it. Also, I do not think we really should guilt ourselves this much about the past. I understand that what happened was a really terrible thing, but there is always going to be a group that we treat poorly. In another one hundred years, we will be having this same discussion about another group. I do not mean that what happened was okay, I just mean that if we are so concerned with that kind of behavior, we should focus on treating everyone equal today so that there is not another instance of this in the past. We should be working together to make a country where everyone is treated equal and there are no feelings of remorse for past behavior. I think that focusing on the past is a waste of time. If you feel bad about it, you should change it. Otherwise, I think the discussion about it is completely pointless. We need to stop talking about whether or not these people are being wronged today and do something about it. Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:38:14 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/10/27/voices-from-the-classroom-57/#IDComment213574084 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/10/11/blog-about-happiness-for-soc-119-and-learn-something-useful/#IDComment207655218 I found this article to be extremely interesting. Happiness is the focus of almost every person’s life so this article is very relatable. I thought it was very nice to read about the part that said that money does not equal happiness. On a personal level, I often have trouble not wanting the latest gadget and newest clothing trend. I often spend my latest paycheck to buy these things but in the end I am never satisfied. It turns into a cycle of me buying, getting bored with the purchase, buying the next newest product and repeating. There is really no way to obtain happiness from material possessions. It is funny how most college students have the goal of getting a job where they make a lot of money. They want this high paying job because most people think that wealth equals happiness. As this article said, wealth and material possessions actually makes people less happy. So if you stop and think about the way that we all define success, it is actually the opposite. We should all strive to have enough money to live comfortably. We should no longer focus so much on getting the latest iphone and focus more on helping other people and being a virtuous person like people did a long long time ago. This article made me realize how we all focus so much on being happy but actually do many things to hinder our chances of being happy. The fact that we even think about trying to be happy lessens the chance that any person will be happy. Also, the fact that we waste so much money on pointless purchases takes away from potential happiness. The article made me think about a good friend of mine. This friend of mine who we can call “Mike” often gets into moods where he complains about how unhappy he is. He sends me dozens of extremely negative texts about how unfair life is and how happiness does not actually exist. This to me is an example of how important we all value happiness and how skewed our knowledge of happiness is in our society. If we feel the slightest bit unhappy, we think that we are being wronged in some way and that we deserve to be happy at all times. This is completely delusional. Happiness is just a term that society created. Instead of focusing on what society tells us “happiness” is, we should focus on taking advantage of every moment of life we have and living the most virtuous life we can, taking the time to help other people who are not as well off as we are. This article really opened my eyes to how happiness actually just creates problems for everyone. The more you think about how unhappy you are, the more unhappy you will be. Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:25:56 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/10/11/blog-about-happiness-for-soc-119-and-learn-something-useful/#IDComment207655218 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/10/06/voices-from-the-classroom-40/#IDComment204517725 Yesterday was Thursday. To any normal person this wouldn’t really mean much, but at Penn State, Thursday is a big deal. “Thirsty Thursday” as most students refer to it, is the unofficial start to a weekend of partying. So last night, I was busy doing homework all night while the rest of campus was out partying. I went to drop off something at my friend’s apartment late in the night and got to see the people partaking in “thirsty Thursday” on the street. The strangest thing about seeing these college students is comparing the way that girls are dressed compared to the guys. The night was extremely cold. You would think that this meant that people would be wearing clothing to stay warm. This thought is right about half of the time, with guys. Girls on the other hand were wearing the skimpiest little outfits with six-inch heels parading around in the bitter cold evening like it was a warm summer night. This entire sight is ridiculous when you really think about it. Why are girls dressing up in the smallest outfits and painful heels when guys are wearing jeans and comfortable shoes? It seems outrageous. Are girls really that desperate to get attention from guys or are guys only attracted to girls who are dressed this way? To me, I think it all has to do with the media. In movies and tv, the most popular girls that are getting the most attractive guys are dressed this way. This sends the message to girls that it is the only acceptable way to look if you want to meet/hook up with a guy. Most college girls want to have fun and meet guys so they are willing to adopt this crazy way of thinking just because they are told it works. Why don’t guys dress to impress girls then? The reason for this is deeply rooted in our society. Our society focuses on the idea that men rule the relationhip and have all the power. So following this, if men have all the power, why would they need to try to impress girls that are powerless to them? It is all a messed up notion that college, and especially Penn State follows. Maybe for some girls they think that dressing in such a way makes them feel confident but then you have to question where this confidence is from. The confidence is from guys giving them attention and making the girls feel sexy when in fact, they should just feel manipulated and pathetic. The only reason girls feel good dressing like this is because they have been taught this way and never stopped and really thought about why guys were putting forth an equal effort. Fri, 7 Oct 2011 21:22:41 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/10/06/voices-from-the-classroom-40/#IDComment204517725 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/09/27/voices-from-the-classroom-25/#IDComment201443169 As a country with immense power, we also hold the great responsibility of helping other countries that are in need. Unfortunately, with our current economic crisis, it has not been a large priority for our country lately. I personally believe that if we really want to help other countries, we should help them by first giving them the immediate needs for survival, i.e. food, water, medical needs and shelter. This takes a lot of time and money, but even providing anything to people in need is better than nothing at all. After that point, I think it is essential to help underdeveloped countries by helping to educate the citizens. This kind of aid is more or less service based. Service based aid is much more effective than just donating money to a country because there is no guarantee that the money will actually reach the people who need it the most. With service based aid, there is the guarantee that it is helping the citizens because there are people there working in the country with the actual people who are in need and can see whether their efforts are actually making a difference or not. Service always makes a larger impact as well. There is nothing personal about sending money to a country. Actually going to a country and working with the citizens to make improvements to communities is much more personal because volunteers get to know the people they are trying to help and volunteers are much more likely to become passionate about the project when their personal emotions are involved. In underdeveloped countries, the United States are often viewed as the place to be because our education system gives every child an education up until grade twelve with no cost and without the long walks that are necessary in many other countries. This kind of opportunity is not available in these less fortunate countries, which is why it is one of the best ways we can aid another country. Education is so important because most of these countries have very poor health care systems. If people were more educated, there would be an increase in working health care providers and the overall quality and length of life would increase exponentially. It is also important to educate citizens so that the country has more businessmen working to increase the overall economy of the country. Overall, with more educated citizens, families would have more money to spend on health care and other basic parts of life that they currently cannot afford and need to live a better life. Providing education would improve the future of the country as well because future generations would know how to improve the country too. Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:36:04 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/09/27/voices-from-the-classroom-25/#IDComment201443169 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/09/15/voices-from-the-classroom-17/#IDComment194267423 This may come across negatively, but when Sam said that gay marriage wasn't a big issue, I kind of agreed. When you really think about it, it is pretty stupid that we spend so much time talking about how gay couples are not equally treated instead of focusing on other parts of society that are more important. I am not saying that gay couples do not deserve equal rights to heterosexual couples by any means, I just think that it should be clear to everyone that they deserve equal treatment and we should just give it to them. It is completely stupid that we let religion control our country the way that we do. Why should we let the beliefs of a small portion of the population decide that gay couples cannot get married. It makes absolutely no sense. Maybe if people would take a minute and actually think things through without letting religion get involved, our country would not be half as bad as it is. No one really knows anything so people should stop acting like their beliefs are so much better than anyone else's and face reality that they actually mean nothing in the scheme of everything. Nothing we do really matters so we should all just focus on making the world the best place that it can be. That being said, I think that the bigger issues that we need to focus on are starvation, and war. There is no reason that a child anywhere in the world should die of starvation when so many people have more than enough to eat. Also, instead of focusing on gay marriage, maybe we should spend some time thinking about why we have to be at war constantly, and figure out a way to get along with all the other countries. There is no reason that we need to be out there killing thousands of people in wars. It is outrageous that the "civilized" way of dealing with our issues with other counties is to just kill the citizens. It is utterly disgusting that we seem to be unable to work through our problems without physically harming each other. When I think about the amount of nuclear weapons throughout the world, I am astounded that we can have such devastating weapons at our disposal that can harm so many people instantly. That is an issue that we need to focus on. Why are we so desperate to hurt each other and destroy the planet when it is all we really have. Maybe my idea of what is important is entirely wrong to other people, but I do not know why we work so hard to have such inequality. It should be apparent that no person is better than anyone else. Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:23:32 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/09/15/voices-from-the-classroom-17/#IDComment194267423 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/09/07/questions-from-the-classroom/#IDComment191619835 If you really stop and think about it, everything in life is classified into groups; age groups, grades in schooling, and species of animals. Classification is used as a way to separate large groups into smaller groups that are easier to study and learn about. Race is kind of like that. I think that is the main reason that race even exists. Personally, I do not think that we should focus on something so trivial to determine the way that we feel about certain people. Why should we split people into groups determined on the genes passed onto individuals from their ancestors? To me, that seems like a very backwards way of thinking. When you think about all of the ways that our species has evolved and become much more intelligent, it does not seem logical that we would still hold on to an idea so primitive and let it affect people in such a negative way. For me, I hate putting labels on anyone. By saying that I am a “hipster” people will make many assumptions about my personality without even speaking to me. The same can be said of labels such as “bros”, “Goths” and even labels associated with religion, such as “Christians” and “Jews”. If we continue to use these labels, there is no way that we will be able to stop using race labels as well. Why do we need to categorize humans into groups that they have no choice in, when every person is different regardless of their skin color or physical appearance? I honestly believe that race labels will continue to exist until all the races are mixed throughout generations and everyone starts to look the same. At that point, people will just find something else to categorize people with. It is extremely sad that this is the way our society has to function, but I do not see many ways to end this ignorance. Education would be the only way to teach people to stop, but if we focus on race in classrooms, it only brings more attention to the problem. If we were somehow able to just stop talking about the controversy and stop using these race labels, we would be able to reach a place of racial equality because all people would be seen as the same and no prejudices would be used against innocent people. That scenario seems almost impossible. There is no doubt in my mind that things will improve but I do not think that this issue will ever truly disappear either. People just need to realize that the labels thy use have negative connotations and people are better off without being labeled off the bat. So the reason we can’t all be humans is that most people are not satisfied without labeling of some sort. Fri, 9 Sep 2011 20:32:54 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/09/07/questions-from-the-classroom/#IDComment191619835 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/08/30/double-helix-and-god/#IDComment189148171 Growing up, my family has always been religious. We went to church every Sunday as a family and each summer I spent a week at church camp learning all about this crazy thing we like to call religion. As I grew up though, my beliefs about religion have strayed from the beliefs of my parents that they tried to teach me. I think the way that my parents pushed me into following a religion made me more likely to question and resist it. I firmly believe that one must think about every aspect of something before buying into it. When I think about religion, I am left with a million unanswered questions such as why am I here anyway? This is why I am very skeptic of religion itself. After hearing about the double helix incident in class, my thoughts were more jumbled than previously. It blows my mind to even think that a situation like that is possible. Ironically, the day before this topic came up in class, I had a similar conversation with a friend. My friend told me about this theory about DNA. He said that studies show that we only use about nine percent of our DNA. The rest is not used. He said that there is a theory that some sort of other form of life somewhere else sent the DNA as a message to our planet because they were facing extinction and if we were able to uncover the rest of the DNA code it would tell us this. I think it is crazy just to think about the existence of god and the chance of other life forms. For me, hearing the double helix story in class just reminded me how small our existence is. Whether or not there is a god I could not tell you, but when you think about how big the universe really is, you have to think that there is so much out there that we can not even grasp the idea of in our minds. I think that it is entirely possible that people are able to take drugs that allow them to speak to plants to receive insight to heal wounds, and also to get answers from the double helix that is believed to be god. It makes me wonder how all of this is connected. There is no way that someone who knows nothing about science would come up with the double helix as the depiction of god for no reason. There has to be some sort of connection and significance behind it. Honestly, the only thing this topic has made me realize is that there are very few things in life that I can say I truly know the answer to. As Sam always says “I know nothing.” Fri, 2 Sep 2011 21:36:20 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/08/30/double-helix-and-god/#IDComment189148171