This class is very different than classes I usually take. I usually take classes that I don’t get anything out of except a good grade. I take in the information, let it sit for the semester and then throw it all away. This class is different. It has taught me things that I will continue to think about for the rest of my life. The lessons actually apply to my life and I will be able to take this knowledge and let it make me a better person. This isn’t just a class I took for an easy A or one that I’ll forget about next semester, it’s one that will probably shape the rest of my life.
To be honest, race isn’t something I’ve thought of much in my life. I grew up in a predominately white town. In fact, there were only a few black students in my high school. I was never surrounded by different cultures, so while I’m not racist, race just isn’t something I spent much time thinking about. I loved how this class made me think about it, though. It made me realize how different people are and what things are okay or not to say around certain people. For example, at the beginning of the semester when that girl said “colored people” instead of “people of color,” I couldn’t believe the uproar from other students in class. I really wasn’t aware that the moving around of words could offend someone so badly. Things such as this are what I am going to take from this class. Things that I can use in the real world to make myself a better, more well rounded person.
Our discussions about Haiti and the project we completed throughout the semester is another thing that I will be able to take from this class. I didn’t realize how bad things were in Haiti, and this class has opened my eyes to the extreme poverty some people have to live in. Not only will I be able to leave this class knowing that I made a difference in the lives of others, I have learned to love what I have. The strength of some of those people is unbelievable, and something I probably would never be able to posses. I can learn something from them. Despite the awful conditions in which some of those people are living in, they still walk around with a smile on their face, loving life while still helping those who may or may not be less fortunate than they are. Those people are truly heroes.
Finally, I will leave this class realizing that in fact, some lecture classes can be fun. There wasn’t one lecture this entire semester where I didn’t laugh or truly enjoy my time. In a class as long as this one, that’s tough to do. Sam has been an awesome teacher and I’m so glad I decided to take this class with him. It’s been a great semester.

When this question was asked in class, I was one of the people who said there would be no circumstances where I would be able to kill someone. Morally, this is true. I don’t see how I would ever be able to take someone’s life. However, after thinking about it, I could kill someone if I ABSOLUTELY had to. The only circumstance though, would be in self-defense.
The idea of murder is disturbing. How could a person willingly take the life of another person? How could they not only put an end to someone’s existence, they would be ruining the lives of any person who ever knew the victim. Murder isn’t simply harming the person who’s dead; it’s harming anyone who had contact with that person. In fact, sometimes the people who have to live on and mourn the death of the dead have it worse than the person that died. They are the ones who have to continue to breathe and feel the emotions they’re forced to deal with. Murder is unacceptable under almost any circumstance. We weren’t given the right to decide who should live and who should die. That right belongs to a higher power and is something we shouldn’t mess with.
Here is where things get tricky though. What if I was put in a situation where there were only two options: kill or be killed. What would I do then? Would I stand by my morality and end up getting killed for it? Or would I fight for my life and eventually have to eliminate the person threatening my own life? How would I decide what a legitimate reason for killing someone would be? Hopefully, I will never be put into a situation like this, but I think that if I had no other option, I would kill another person. I know I would regret it for the rest of my life, but at least I would have the rest of my life and not be buried in a box six feet under.
I think I would also be able to kill someone if they were threatening the life of someone I loved or was in my family. While this isn’t directly self-defense, I couldn’t watch a loved one die because I was too afraid to save them. In the end, I would consider that murder as well. If I stood by and did nothing, I would stand by my morality, but lose in the long run. I would have aided the killing of a loved one.
As I said before, I hope to never be put into this situation. I could never imagine killing someone. It would scar me for life. The act of actually doing the killing is what gets me. I don’t see how I would ever be able to do something like that. But in the end, I think I would be able to kill someone if I absolutely had to. Hopefully I’ll never find out whether or not this is true.

Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is always a difficult process. Actually, it’s almost impossible. No matter what it is near impossible to put asides your own thoughts and feelings and substituting them with someone else’s. In the end, you really can’t attach yourself from them. While you can try over and over to see things through another person’s eyes, you’re always going to have your own opinions conflicting with what you’re trying to accomplish. As good as your intentions may seem, your task is impossible to complete.
Trying to see things through someone else’s shoes is something that everyone should try doing. It makes you a better person because you can learn to be more diverse and understand things from another person’s perspective. It makes you more well-rounded and understanding person. By stepping out of your own mind for a minute, you can get a clear view of how the things you do affect other people around you. You can begin to see where your own faults are.
The problem with looking at things through another person’s perspective, however, is that in the end, it’s near impossible to escape your own thoughts and feelings. As much as you may think that you are out of your own head, in reality you probably aren’t. The thing you need to remember when trying to look at things through the eyes of another person is that you are still experiencing your own thoughts although they may be filtered a little better than usual. You obviously are thinking about things a little differently than normal, which is a good thing, but you still aren’t totally seeing things as another person would.
Another issue with looking at things through another person’s perspective is that you may be invoking a stereotype. You may think that you are thinking and seeing things as that person would, but you may just be experiencing what you think they would be experience, rather than what they would actually be thinking. As always, stereotypes are a problem because for the most part they are incorrect. And as much as we try to avoid them, it’s very difficult to because they is the way many of us were taught to think about things. I’m not saying that our parents told us to invoke stereotypes, but it is just a way in which we can’t help thinking.
Don’t get me wrong, I think looking at things from other people’s points of view and stepping out of your own shoes every once in awhile is something that everyone should do. It helps make you a better person because you may be able to see and catch things that you wouldn’t normally notice. While I think it’s something everyone should do, it’s something that takes practice. Taking your mind out of the equation is difficult, but in the end, it’s something that can be very rewarding in the longs run.

In my opinion, being gay is not a choice; it is something that a person is born with. When a person is attracted to another person of the same sex, they become different from the rest of the population. They are seen as strange to some people, and evil to others. Homosexuality isn’t a joke. As we all know, many people who are gay are bullied, harassed and tormented. Their lives are sometimes ruined because of love, something that every human being needs and deserves.
The thing I will never understand is how there are people in this world that think that being gay is a choice. You know what, maybe that is the case sometimes, but I mean once in a blue moon. There is no way – in my mind – that I can imagine a person choosing to go through ridicule when they could simple be with a girl and live life normally. Why would they choose to stick out that way? Why would they decide to go against society? It doesn’t make sense to me. I think the only logical explanation is that those who are gay do not choose it; they are born differently that most of us and end up having a “negatively viewed” attraction.
There are many reasons why some people refuse to believe that being gay is not a choice. The main reason, I think, is that it makes their hatred more “justified.” I think that if they say it’s a choice, they don’t feel bad about being rude to those who are gay and denying them rights. If people said that being gay is genetic, then there is no reason why they shouldn’t enjoy the same benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. If there difference isn’t their fault, then we can’t discriminate.
I think another reason why people say being gay is choice is because they feel they are “safe” from being gay themselves. When saying homosexuality is a choice, people believe that if they don’t want to be gay, they won’t be. In reality though, a person doesn’t determine whether or not they are gay. But, if people believe that it’s a choice, they can tell themselves that they have no worries when it comes to potentially loving a person of the same sex. It’s kind of like a safety net. People believe that just because they are not gay means they decided not to be gay. They don’t realize that in fact, they were just born heterosexual. It wasn’t their decision at all.
The thing that frustrates me is that people are so adamant about this topic. But to me, it doesn’t make sense! All you have to do is look at the facts and think about things. People wouldn’t purposefully put themselves in harm’s way. They wouldn’t choose a life of judgment and discrimination if they didn’t have to. Nobody would choose to be gay. They are born that way. To me, it doesn’t make sense any other way.

Abortion is an extremely touchy topic, and one that many people don’t like talking about under many circumstances, but I do feel like it’s something that should be addressed every once in awhile. There are so many people that are so for it or so against it, but in my opinion, it’s not something you can really judge until you need it. By no means in this blog post am I going to say that I’m for or against abortion. What I will say, however, is my opinion on both sides of the argument.
Some people say that abortion is by definition murder, and I understand where these people are coming from. When you have an abortion you’re ending a potential life. Even though it is a life that really hasn’t begun yet, you are preventing it from beginning when you terminate a pregnancy.
On the other hand, there are people who say that abortion isn’t murder because the child’s life hasn’t begun yet. They haven’t been born, which means you really aren’t killing anything. According to these people, a fetus is not a human or child.
As I said before, abortion is a very touchy topic. Rape is also a very touchy topic, which is another part of the question I am supposed to be answering. When a woman is raped it is a terrible thing, something they will never be able to forget or really get over. So if these women are already going to have to remember this traumatic experience for the rest of their lives, I don’t think there should have to be any “extra baggage” that could potentially remind them of that.
That “extra baggage” I am referring to is a child. If a woman is raped and conceives a child, I don’t think that that woman should be forced to have that child. As horrible as this sounds, that child will just continue to be a reminder of a time that woman doesn’t want to have to remember, whether that child will turn out being the best thing in that woman’s life or not. I think that if a woman conceives a child from a rape, they should have every right to choose whether or not they want to keep that child.
Having a child is a blessing. You will never hear me say otherwise. In fact, I can’t wait to grow up and have children of my own. But what I am saying is that who knows what may come from a child conceived from a rape. The father may have serious genetic disorders or some kind of disease that he could pass onto the child. The mother may end up resenting the child because he/she reminds her of what happened to her in order to conceive that child. There are so many things that could end up ruining that child’s life, and there is no way that that child would ever deserve that.
I believe that every child should be loved, cared for and protected at all costs, and a woman who isn’t ready for a child or who may not be able to give him/her unconditionally may not be able to give them what they deserve. Because of that, I think that women who conceive a child from a rape should have every right to go through an abortion. In the end, I think that is what’s best both for the woman and potentially the child.

***The best thing that the woman could do however (assuming no diseases have been passed on from the father) is to give that child up for adoption if she cannot provide for the child with everything they deserve and need****

The fact that most of our beliefs are based off of misinformation rather than facts doesn’t surprise me at all. People are gullible and lazy. When they are told something, they usually believe it. They don’t go and do research on things to try to be more informed. They don’t care enough. They listen to what they are told and use those things to form their own beliefs. That’s just how our society is. It always has been and it probably always will be.
Why are rumors such a problem in high school and other situations? I think it is closely related to the misinformation thing. When people are told something, they figure that what they are hearing must be true because why would somebody lie about it? I don’t think this makes people bad, just ignorant in a sense. We all fall victim to this. We are all guilty of taking what people say as the truth. If this wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t have issues with things like rumors. We probably wouldn’t have stereotypes or things like that. If we all did research on things that we say, do and believe, there wouldn’t be any misinformation problem.
Throughout this semester in this class, Sam has shown us things – facts and numbers and such – that we were surprised to see. For example, we were just told that a child has the same chance of getting struck by lightning as being abducted by a stranger on their way to school. If this is the case, why are so many people afraid to let their child walk alone to school? This is because of this whole misinformation thing. Things such as television and constant media access bring into light things that we wouldn’t necessarily know or think about. We watch the news and find out that a child has been abducted and is now missing. We see that a store has just been robbed a black man. We see people being raped and killed for no reason. When we see these things constantly being talked about on the television, we think that they are common, when in reality, they aren’t common occurrences at all. I think things such as the media fuel the misinformation that we receive. Just because we hear something doesn’t mean we should form our beliefs around it.
As I said before I was not surprised when Sam said that most of our beliefs are not based off of facts. We are all guilty of being too lazy to check statistics to see whether or not our beliefs are valid. If people took the time to do research, or just didn’t believe everything they heard, we wouldn’t have this problem. There wouldn’t be rumors and stereotypes. The thing is, however, that will probably never happen.

This was a very interesting video that illustrating a form of racism that we can’t really even call racism. It’s not something that people do on purpose or maliciously, it’s something that our society has forced them to do based on experiences and ideals.
In the video we saw three different situations where a person was blatantly stealing a bike in broad daylight. In the first situation, the thief was a white man. In the second situation, the thief was a black man, and in the third, the thief was a white woman. All three circumstances brought about totally different outcomes. When the thief was white, passersby didn’t really think too much of it. They either thought that 1) the thief had simply lost his key and was trying to break the lock on his own bike or 2) that the thief was telling the truth when he said he wasn’t stealing the bike. While some people stopped to at least ask the thief had lost his key, others just glanced over at the man and kept going. Nobody called the police to report that a bike was being publicly stolen. In the second situation where the thief was black, most people stopped, questioned the thief and proceeded to call the cops. But why is this? Why were so many people more likely to report the black thief, while most didn’t even bat an eyelash at the white thief?
I believe the answer is simple. Society and experiences have caused us to associate black people with crime and white people with truth and innocence. In reality, this doesn’t make sense. Just because a person is black doesn’t mean that he is a criminal. In fact, in high school my house was robbed, and guess who it was robbed by? A group of white people! There were no black people involved at all! That’s why I think it’s crazy that so many people ignored the white thief in the park, when it was just as likely for him to be stealing the bike as it was for the black guy.
Hey Denzel! Hope you had a good weekend!
The idea that black people are more associated with crime than white people is a stereotype, and it’s a stereotype that some people may consider racism. I, however, don’t think this is racism at all. It is simply a way that society has caused people to think. When people say they aren’t racist, yet they would be quicker to call the cops on a black person than a white person, more often that not they are telling the truth. I believe that they are simply not thinking properly. If they see a black man blatantly stealing a bike, they call the cops. If they see a white man possibly stealing a bike, they think about it and give him the benefit of the doubt. I really don’t think that most people are doing this because they’re racist. I really just think it’s the way our culture has caused them to think and view things.

I have obviously had to make a lot of large personal decisions in my life, but one of the biggest ones was probably where I wanted to attend college. Neither of my parents were “die-hard” college fans, so they really weren’t pushing me in any specific direction. I had to go out and make all of the decisions on my own. Obviously I chose Penn State, and I think that the decision was based on free will. While I’m sure there were some invisible strings pulling me in one direction or another, I think free will is what made my decision in the end.
My mother went to Pitt, but she lived at home and commuted. While she liked the school, she wasn’t in love with it, and never pushed me to go there. My father attended Hillsdale College, a small school in Michigan. He loved the school, but knew that I had no intention of attending a small school, so he never pushed me to even consider there. The only thing my parents did push was for me to attend a school that would push me, not a place where I would breeze through classes and graduate with an average degree. They wanted me to be the best I could be and achieve the best I could achieve. With that expectation of me, I guess I was pushed to look at school more like Pitt, Penn State, Ohio State, and other schools like that. I really didn’t consider any of the smaller state schools. While I thought this was my own decision, I guess I did do this partly because of my parent’s expectations of me, even though in the end they would have been happy with whatever I decided.
When I first visited Penn State, I hated it. But that was back in 9th grade. I couldn’t see myself living in those tiny dorms rooms. (I think I thought I was “too good” for that – I was very wrong.) My parents told me to still keep it in my thoughts, and I returned for a college visit senior year, I fell in love with everything about the school. So without my parents (and friends who loved the school) telling me to keep thinking about Penn State, I never would have given it the second chance and come back.
While it was mainly my decision to come to Penn State, there were obviously some factors that pushed me to go here that I didn’t realize. First of all, if I didn’t have the grades, I never would have been accepted. So while that was my free will, in the end I can only do so much to get those grades. And obviously some of my friends and family telling me to consider Penn State made me think about it too. In the end, I’m the one who decided to come here. I fell in love with the school and made the commitment to my studies and application. So I think it was mostly free will that made my decision to attend Penn State, but some invisible strings did give me a little shove in the right direction.

It’s actually kind of funny when you think about it. Everyone wants to be rich, but nobody will own up to it. But why? If being rich and being able to live any lifestyle you could imagine is a goal that almost everyone in the world strives toward, why don’t people celebrate it, or identity themselves as having money? It is something that defines them as a person. Without the amount of money they have, they wouldn’t be the same person they are today. It’s like introducing yourself to someone you just met. If that person asked you what your nationality was, you would tell them the truth. But if they ask you what your salary is, you either don’t answer, or say it’s less than it actually is. That is if you are rich, I mean. When you think about it in that way, it seems strange that people don’t identify themselves as rich when they are, but when you know the real reason as to why people don’t advertise their money, its really a good reason.
Having money obviously isn’t something is frowned upon. It’s a part of society. There are people that are filthy stinking rich, and there are people who barely have enough money to feed themselves throughout the day. And because there is such a gap in wealth, most wealthy people don’t like to brag about it. Of course they go out and buy their flashy cars and huge summerhouses, but for some reason they don’t like to say the words, “I’m rich.” And I think that’s understandable. It’s impolite to rub in people’s faces what some people can never hope of obtaining. By being somewhat modest and saying, “Yes, I make a comfortable income,” rather than “I make so much money I could swim in it,” people are being honest without being rude.
The thing I don’t understand is why people don’t brag about their wealth, while flaunting it with their possessions all the time. I totally understand that if they have the money, why not use it. They want to live a certain kind of lifestyle, and if they are financially able to do that, there really isn’t anything wrong. I mean if I had all the money in the world I’m sure I would live in a big house in a beautiful location with some crazy cars parked in the driveway. My question is why then can’t those people say “Yes, I’m rich.” That is the part that doesn’t make any sense to me.
If you’re rich, say so. Nobody is going to be mad at you that you are able to live your life a certain way. In fact, many times it means that that person has worked hard to get where they are today. In my opinion, you should either flaunt about it and talk about it, or live modestly in all aspects of life. But in the end, we have to remember that these people help fuel our economy. Without those filthy rich people, our society wouldn’t be what it is.

To be totally honest, I had never even thought twice about women’s body hair until this class lecture. I always just thought that was what women did. They shave their armpits, legs, and anywhere else they don’t want hair to grow. That was just socially acceptable. The thing is, it’s never really talked about. Of course my friends and I would make comments about not having time to shave our legs before we put on a skirt or bathing suit, but other than that it was never discussed. I never really thought that men were the reason behind our reasoning though. Obviously I wouldn’t want a guy touching my leg if I hadn’t gotten around to shaving that day, but that isn’t the reason I shave. I shave because I think it’s more comfortable. I don’t like hair growing on my legs or in my armpits. It’s uncomfortable when it’s there… but then again, if I had always had hair there, I guess it wouldn’t be uncomfortable. It would just be a known feeling.
That’s why I found this lecture (and blog question) to be quite interesting. I had never thought about men’s impact on why women get rid of unwanted body hair before, but now I see its relation. I do see why men don’t like women having body hair – it reminds them too much of their own sex. They don’t want to feel scruff when they’re kissing their girlfriend. They want to see sleek, sexy, defined legs underneath skirts and dresses. They don’t want to see a patch of brown hair underneath a woman’s arm. That is what sets women apart from men. They embrace the hair that they grow, while women don’t. They think women are meant to be clean and well kept – and that includes getting rid of excess body hair.
While I do see the correlation between men and the reason behind why women shave, I don’t think it’s the only reason. Obviously it was a woman who first decided she wanted to look different than men. She didn’t want her legs to look the same as her boyfriend’s. She didn’t want her underarms to be full of hair. She didn’t want a faint line of hair above her upper lip. She wanted to be clean and hair free. And that is the tradition that made its way into today’s time. I find it hard to believe that a man forced her down, handed her wax or a razor and said, “Shave!” I think it was her decision. Today, we shave because that is the social norm. While Sam says we don’t have a choice, I disagree. We have the choice to follow norms. Of course it’s difficult to go against society and be different – in fact there aren’t many people who do go against the grain – but there are people who do it and enjoy being different. As I said before, I find it more comfortable and attractive to be hair free. It’s more comfortable and I think it looks better. That is why I have decided to rid my body of excess hair. Men don’t control my life. Yes, they play a very large role in it, but they aren’t the only things that matters, and that is why I don’t think that they made the decision for me whether to shave or not. Women can do whatever they want to do with their bodies. That is up to them, and nobody should judge them on whether they keep their excess hair on their bodies or not, man or woman.