I question a lot of things. I question why I do a lot of the things I do in my daily life. I question why I skip class to drink on a Thursday afternoon. I question why I’m dumping thousands of dollars down the drain to get a degree that won’t do anything for me. I question my friends, the people I surround myself with and my overall life choices.
So it doesn’t matter if I’m like someone or not. It doesn’t make me question anything any more or any less. I’m weird like that I guess. I don’t really take into account someone’s race or ethnicity or anything else. I just look at someone or something and ask why they are doing a certain thing. It’s very interesting to me.
A good example of this was the other day when I was walking down Burrowes Street and saw a bunch of kids playing Humans versus Aliens in the West Halls area. There were Indian Kids, I didn’t care what race they were or what group of friends they were in, but I obviously questioned why they were shooting each other with Nerf guns and other stuff. I wasn’t sure why they would play that, but I let them be because I’m sure they enjoy it and have fun with it. But I question it.
I’ve never really been a person that has seen race and has made decisions based on race. I do make racial jokes and see other people in a different way when they’re of a different race. Of course I see people differently when they’re of a different way because it’s so easy to and they’re skin is a different color. In the current progressive era we’re living in, race is becoming a fading demographic. While common stereotypes rooted centuries deep still persist, I feel that our nation’s youth is beginning to cripple these views. The fact of the matter is our country is as equal as it has ever been, and regardless of your color the opportunities are the same. Yes, appearance obviously matters, but race isn’t that serious of a factor anymore. For example, an Old Spice marketing director would hands down hire an attractive African American man over an average looking white man to appear in their commercials. Diversity has in ways become “hip”.
It’s cool to be different now a days. Hipsters are different, but for some reason, people are attracted to them and want to be around them. I don’t know why, but I don’t really like it. People want to be way different and not conform, and it’s strange. It’s just weird now. The world is changing, and we’re all a part of it.

My mother always said everyone finds something that he or she is good at. There’s one thing, or multiple things, that every person in the world can use to help other people. And she was right.
I’ve been good with words since I can remember. I can write with the best of them and I believe I could use my skills to teach children in Haiti how to read and write in English. It would be difficult, of course, but I enjoy helping others.
When I graduate, I plan to apply for Teach Across America, which puts teachers in rougher areas to help at-risk students who have low graduation rates. I’m a writer, but I love teaching too. I love to share my knowledge with the world. And I would love to do it with Haiti and the people there.
Here’s a quote that I read a few weeks ago that I really enjoyed that relates to teaching and helping those who are less fortunate and need my help.
"They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel." - Carol Buchner
I remember being in second or third grade and playing a hockey game at a nearby arena. In the crowd was one of my teachers, who lived in the area. It meant so much to me to see him there just to support me.
In high school, my teachers would come to my hockey games too. And even a teacher I was closest with, my journalism teacher coincidentally, gave me a huge hug after we won the state championship. He cared. I think he actually did. Which meant a lot.
Another reason I love teaching is because I like to push people’s limits, in a good way. I don’t like when we settle for average. I like when we push ourselves and strive to be better. No one should ever settle for ‘good enough’ or anything like that. Everyone should try to be better than they’ve ever been. I feel like I would be a good educator and a good teacher.
I feel like I could use my writing to help the people of Haiti learn to read and write. I have always tutored and helped younger students with their writing, and I think I could do the same.
But this quote, a powerful one, makes me really want to help others.
"A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank...but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child." -- Forest Witcraft

WhenI first saw the video FOX did about Asians and their lack of knowledge of football at the University of Southern California a few months back, I laughed.
To be perfectly honest, it was hard not to. It’s just parody. It’s comedy. It’s meant to poke fun at Asians because they usually don’t know much about football. It wasn’t meant to insult an entire race.
In my opinion, they didn’t pick Asians because they didn’t like anyone from the Far East. They did it because it was funny.
If it was any other group of people about a different subject, this would be a different story. If you asked white students studying in China about something they didn’t know, would that be racist too? This was just the circumstances and how the chips fells. It could happen to any race of people in any situation where they don’t know what the hell is going on.
When the whole scandal at Penn State broke, I did some thinking about the Asians here on campus and if they had a clue as to what was going on. I never asked any, but still, it was a nice thought for some research. Did they know who Joe Paterno was? Did they know why all the news vans were downton?
But do they have any idea what is going on? Is there that much of a disconnect between the Asian American students on Penn State’s campus from the rest of the co eds that occupy it, as well as the downtown area?
If there really is that much of a disconnect, we need to fix it. I feel that students coming from other countries to study here aren’t getting enough of a culture emersion because they stay in their comfort zones, and so do white people. We have to start branching out and meeting different kinds of people, because on this campus it always seems to be “Us vs. Them.”
There’s no meaningful connection between different races on this campus more often than not, and Asian American students who come thousands of miles to study her aren’t reaching their full potential because it doesn’t seem as if they’re actually part of the school. It just seems like there’s a giant gap between “The Partiers,” “The Non-Drinkers,” and then it just drops off to the Asians. I want to go to a school where everyone is involved together. Where the lives of others, mostly people different from me and people I don’t know, can affect and help me. And I hope I can do the same for others.
This video showed that the Asian American students are so much different from the white ones, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I wish we were all part of the same things and part of the same college culture.

When we’re in elementary school, we’re essentially puppets. We have little access to TV, radio, the internet and any other outlets that we can view and have our minds changed about things because our parents don’t let us. So as we’re in grade school, our teachers and parents begin to tell us what is right and what is wrong. They teach us to be accepting of other peoples differences and embrace those differences. But then, when those pre teen and tween years start to kick in, people begin to think differently and they begin to see the world as they imagine it, not as their parents want them to.
SO those same kids who were taught to praise the Middle Eastern kid in their class whose grandparents came to America with 14 dollars in their pocket and no real future here, are now the same kids thinking racist thoughts.
Teens, especially at a young age, around 13 or 14, are very susceptible to influence from the media and from outside sources. At a young age, like six or seven, we don’t have that same influence.
Take a show like Dave Chappelle’s for example. It’s incredibly racist and offensive, but hilarious at the same time. When kids started watching this show in middle school, they began talking about it during the day or classes and other students started to hear about this show and how great it was.
Now the show isn’t directly saying “You should hate black people,” or “you should hate white people,” but what it did was make teens of my generation think it is acceptable to make racist comments and remarks.
My mom always told me to “get that shit off the TV,” but I never listened. I never realized the things these shows and media outlets planted in my mind subconsciously, but now I see what they were doing. It wasn’t intentional, but sometimes teens at that age don’t know how to distinguish what is simply comedy and what is a serious message. Chappelle’s Show was for entertainment purposes only, I’m sure, but sometimes 12 year olds can’t realize that and ultimately fail to realize that. Nobody wants to be racist, but that age where you start thinking for yourself can cause some problems for the future. BY high school and college, I would hope that kids are a little more rational in deciphering what is fact and what is just a joke. But at that young of an age, as a young teen, it is difficult to do that.
Parents will say don’t do this or don’t listen to that, but those outside forces, at that age, have much more of an influence than your parents do at that time because you think your parents don’t know anything.

As I write this, I’m watching a commercial for the United States Marines. They are the few, the proud, and they are the marines. It’s amazing to see how these men dedicate their lives to keeping me safe. They don’t me, and I don’t know them, but we’re forever connected for that reason.
I don’t enjoy war and I don’t condone it in anyway. More often than not, the war has something to do with government interests that don’t really help me. But still, these men risk their lives with almost no real reward or benefit to them.
The life of an American soldier is invaluable, because they’ve done so much more in their lives than I will ever do and they deserve to be honored for that very reason.
I still don’t understand why people refuse to support our soldiers. Everyone has the right to disagree with war and speak their minds about it, but our troops are simply put in a situation and asked to do their best. That’s all. They have no influence over their objectives and goals, most of which are government control, and just do what they’re told, for the most part.
These men are keeping America safe and we could all be gone if it wasn’t for them. So before you go bashing our military around, think about your safety and what it’s like to live in a country that has no protection and sees violence in its communities on a daily basis.
This has always been my view on war, to support our soldiers but no always the cause, and I think that I will stand by that even after these last two classes. It’s interesting to think about war in a different way and why it’s so horrible, but it is a part of the world and it happens, unfortunately. I wish it didn’t happen, but there’s no way I can play a part in changing the world like that. But it happens. So we have to deal with it, and if you bash our soldiers, it’s certainly not helping anything. Seriously, it makes me so angry when people talk down on our military. They’re just human beings that are keeping us safe and have no influence over any issues. It frustrated me greatly in the last two classes when some people on the Twitter feed on my phone were bashing our troops. We’re lucky to be in the greatest country in the world with the best military keeping us safe and fighting for us so many miles away. Not near their families, these people face so much adversity everyday and we don’t do enough to honor them. God bless our troops, and God Bless America.

There was one short reading the first part of the textbook that really stuck out to me when I read it. In fact, I almost emailed the author telling her how much I enjoyed it.
It was about the Native American woman who grew up going to white schools and also grew up hating the very people she attended those schools with. She also discovered later in her life that she was a lesbian and that she was interested in women.
It struck my especially hard because she talked about how much she despised white kids when she was growing up and going to school with them. Some minorities won’t admit that, I feel, because they want to hold that card of racism above white people. I have no idea if that’s true, but that’s just the feeling I get sometimes. But Barbara Cameron, the author of this reading in the book, doesn’t care about having that leg up. She speaks her mind, and she says how she felt. So while white racism is very prevalent in the world, it’s also very prevalent in minority communities, like this Native American one, who bash and are racist against white people.
The other part of this reading that I really enjoyed is how the author had to balance grewing up as a Native American, which is already a minority, but also had to deal with criticism for being a lesbian. So her skin color was considered worse or not superior because she was a native American and her sexual orientation was also criticized because it is just not acceptable to be gay or bisexual in our society today. There are some people who have to deal with criticism as all different kinds of minorities, and she had to deal with two completely different but equally difficult stereotypes.
I take for granted how easy I have gone through life sometimes. My parents help me pay for school, have been very supportive of everything I’ve done, and I’ve gone trough life without facing all that much adversity. But people like Barbara Cameron had to deal with so much in her life, and it makes me think about how lucky I truly am to be blessed with the life that I have. It’s easy to just sit back and glide through life seemingly unscathed and unharmed, or you can go out and try to change something or do something for others. I feel that I haven’t done that enough lately to better the people around me and to help others. I feel like Barbara’s mission could be to be a spokesperson for minorities like the one’s she embodies and helps others, and I feel like I should and could be very easily doing something similar.

Expectations can be defined all too often by race and by status association. Growing up in a white, upper middle class home has given me expectations that some others don’t have when they are kids.
It was always expected that I go to college. It was always expected that I do well in school. It was always expected that I played sports and joined extra curricular activities and clubs. It was always expected that I stay out of trouble. And it was always expected that I carry on the good name of my family.
My parents were fairly strict with myself and my brother and sister when we were growing up, but it’s because they wanted me to fulfill the expectations that were set for me by society.
Some lower class families don’t have those same expectations of sending their kids to college or having their kids stay out of trouble and they don’t push the same values and morals on their kids because society shapes them differently. In my hometown, mostly white, mostly wealthy families all expect their kids to go to college. If not, people judge you and your family. And world travels very quickly around my town because everyone talks, and everybody knows everyone. That community itself has shaped the expectations of all its kids growing up because of what those who have come before them have done. There are towns in the United States that send very few kids to college every year because that is simply the expectations. The expectations are to go to work straight out of high school, or even to not finish high school, because that’s what the kids did 10, 5 and even 2 or three years before them. But for us, Penn State students mostly, our communities forced us to go to college and forced us to keep up with the social norm, which is to complete some form of higher education.
If everyone was given a blank slate, with no expectations of what they should do in life because of race and status, I’m sure things would be much different. If people didn’t put it in their heads that they HAVE to go to college, or if people didn’t put it in their heads that they CAN’T go to college, things would be much, much different. If we took that association between an upper middle class high school kid and going off to college the next year, maybe a lot of them wouldn’t. If we took away the black stereotypes that it’s hard to go to college if you’re from the inner city, maybe more would.
I could stop writing this blog, buy a plane ticket, fly to a Caribbean Island and become a snorkeling instructor. I would make little money, but it would be enough to get by down there. But I won’t do that, because it’s not what society wants me to do. It’s not the expectations that have been laid out for me.

Growing up, I played hockey, because I was fortunate enough to have my dad pay for it. Ice time was scarce and equipment was expensive, but I was allowed to play through high school. My father had the means to pay for it.
My high school team has won four of the last six New Jersey public school state titles. We continue to breed hockey players even when everyone else thinks we’ll have a bad year. Our county, Morris, dominates hockey throughout the state. And there’s one simple reason: it’s also socioeconomic.
We have the rinks, we have the money and we have the time and talent to excel at hockey. Because to be honest, we just can’t compete in a lot of other sports that are dominated by black athletes.
The reason third world countries produce soccer players is because it takes so little to play soccer. All you need is a field, something to mark a net, and something to kick around. It could be a can, a rock or a ball. Same thing with baseball. Mariano Rivera, who is one of the best closers of all-time, used to hit milk cartons with a tree branch growing up. They found ways to adapt and still work on the sport even without money. Hockey, golf and tennis, however, or sports of that nature, can’t be worked on with a single ball in a single park. They require a lot of expensive equipment and extensive work to excel. Hockey players need to skate a lot and shoot a lot in order to get good. Golf requires years of patience and hitting practice. It also requires getting out on the course and doing it. But it’s just so expensive that very few people in the world can excel at them. Golf and tennis, in my county at least, are dominated by Jewish kids because a lot of them had money for private lessons and the best equipment. But an African American kid in the inner city will never get on the golf course because they don’t have the money. So instead, they play basketball or football, something that isn’t expensive and they can work on with a $10 ball in a park. That’s all it takes.
But expensive, white-dominated sports don’t get the exposure to black kids because they just don’t have the means and funds to do so. I worked at a driving range facility in high school and they had programs for inner city kids to come and hit golf balls. I though the program was great and I enjoyed working with the kids, but realistically, if they don’t keep hitting every week for a few years, they’ll never really get all that good at golf. It’s great they can hit, but that doesn’t get them on the course. They just don’t have the means, and it’s really a shame.

Gym 1. Court 1. Intramural Building.
Nobody dares step on the court minus the 10 best basketball-playing, non-athletes at this school. And they’re almost always all black.
So move down a court, white people. Or maybe two courts.
Now, there’s three black kids and seven white kids on that court.
You give a hard foul on a fastbreak to stop the easy bucket. The black kid comes at you and gives you a shove. So you never foul that kid again. Or any black kid for the rest of the day in fear that they’ll retaliate and foul on every possession and argue that they didn’t.
I’ve seen it all too many times. I’ve seen black people assert themselves with force and white people back down just because of their skin color—but I never really understood why that was the way it was. But it is. That’s just the way it is.
White people avoid race, sure, but it’s because of the fear of that unknown. When you foul a black kid on the basketball court, sometimes you just don’t know what will happen next. Will he come back with elbows on every defensive possession or will he get up and accept your apology. Because white people just don’t know.
We haven’t spent enough time around black people to know what they’re going to do in that situation, and that, in part, contributes to the racial boundaries that build in our society.
We don’t talk about race because we may be scared. Making a comment about race to a black person may result in them being offended and giving an expletive-laced rant about how white people ‘just don’t understand.’ Or they could agree, disagree or talk it out in a respectful and personal manner.
But the problem is, we just don’t know. Which is why we avoid it. Because in reality, talking about race is a lose-lose type of scenario for white people.
If we say the wrong thing, we fear getting screamed at and called insensitive, racist and prejudice. If we actually try to talk about the subject, we fear getting called ignorant and naïve.
So for white people, the majority, have no reason to talk about race because it doesn’t fall in their comfort zone and there’s no reason to put themselves out there. We can just stay in our shells and keep quiet in fear of being called racist, ignorant or insensitive.
But what I’m trying to say is break out of that shell. Get our of your comfort zone, white people. Because until we talk about race, the walls of those comfort zone will stay up and help create those racial walls. SO break them down.

I believe that no matter how much we have, how well we do in life, or how many friends we have, we always want more and we always want to do better. I could have everything in the world and still, I would want to do better and out do and be better than the guy sitting next to me.
It’s really an interesting concept, because I have been blessed with so much, and I still always want more and always complain about what I don’t have.
I believe that people of all races want certain talents and skills that people of other races have. For example, I wish I was more athletic than I am and I wish that I could do math with ease. But I’m not, although I do have plenty of skills, and I honestly believe I won’t be satisfied for my entire life for some strange reason. I have a great life, a great family, I do well in school and I love the friends I’ve made in my three semesters at this place. But I still want to be like other people at certain times. I’ll see a kid walking down the street who’s a little bigger heading to the gym and wish that I had the work ethic and actually went to the gym and got big. There’s certain girls I’ve always wanted to chase after but I never do because I’m afraid of the what if question that always arises when I go after something I want. Sometimes it ends terribly, and sometimes it works out for the best. But more often than not, it doesn’t really go all that well. I think what happens is, when you get away from who you are and what you’ve been raised to be, more often than not, it doesn’t end like you wish it did. I know that whenever I try to be someone I’m not, it backfires on me. So the point I’m trying to make is that when I’m myself, everything works out a little better for me. It doesn’t have to be big things, but just little things like talking in class or turning in assignments on time, things I have always done and will continue to do, can go a long way in this world.
I’m not going to be someone I’m not, or change who I am, from now on. It just doesn’t make sense because I’m so lucky to have the life I have been given. I don’t want to be someone else, because honestly, there’s no one else in the world I’d rather be than myself. And that is the honest truth and I wouldn’t change it for anything.