I found this article to be extremely powerful and moving. Initially I thought that I was going to have zero sympathy for the person that wrote this article, just because of the fact that this person was serving life in prison and there has to be a reason for that. But after getting through reading it and really reflecting on the message that this man was trying to get across, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I do not really feel anything for this person. Everyone has the power to make their own decision in their life. No one forces anything upon you, and I can almost guarantee that no one forced this guy to do whatever he did to land a place in jail for his whole life. When you do something, you are usually aware of all of the consequences that come along with that action. So part of me feels like everything that he is going through, everything that he is feeling, he deserves. Who knows what this man could have done? He talks about how he has never had the opportunity to feel love, well what if what he did to put him in jail was take the life of someone that someone else loves? It is thoughts like this that keeps me from feeling sympathetic for him, thinking of all of the terrible things that he could have done to land himself in jail for the rest of his life. But on the other hand, I have this piece of me that believes that no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, everyone deserves love. There is a quote that reminds me of exactly how I feel about this article: “There are four questions of value in life: What is sacred? Of what
is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same; only love.” Everyone deserves to know what it feels like to love and be loved. I truly believe that there is nothing greater in the world; it makes everything you do better and more worthwhile. It makes you feel alive, and this is coming from someone who has not spent time in jail or has had a moment in life where they were completely alone and felt as if their soul was dying. I could not imagine spending life in prison without someone to love or someone that loves me. So where I feel bad that this guy could deserve the life in prison, the physical and emotional abuse, and the solitude and time alone with his thoughts, I cannot help but to feel sympathetic towards the fact that he has not gotten to experience the greatest emotion in the world…love.

I think that Sam said it best in class when he said that nepotism makes the world go round. It has been around forever and will be around forever. It is how people get jobs, it is how people get into certain schools, and it is what America is built off of. I have heard numerous times from people young and old that it is not about the grades that you get because once you graduate, it is all about the connections that you have made. I have a perfect example of nepotism. One time in high school when I was applying for a job at a local pool, I was looked over for employment in favor of a friend of mine who had a relation to one of the employees. While I was disheartened because it was very culturally acceptable to be an employee of this pool, I did learn early on the problems with nepotism. Nepotism creates an unfair environment in terms of hiring and other practices such as being promoted within an organization. If those who are benefitting from nepotism are not adequately prepared to do a good job, their appointment is hurting the institution in which they are working for and it gives those who truly deserve the job an unfair advantage. And, while I’m not like vehemently against nepotism, it’s effects are extremely evident and if practiced in great quantities can put a company at a significant disadvantage. Also, for those coming from low or impoverished households who may not have an significant networks or friends, nepotism excludes from those who need it most. In a sense, nepotism can prevent the talented from being able to contribute positively. And, in that instance, I am not in agreement with the practice, although I do recognize that it is in practice everywhere. From mediocre jobs to high society jobs, nepotism is extremely prevalent. If posed the question “Would I actively not benefit from nepotism?” Hell, no. If everyone else is benefiting from it, I might as well too. Unfortunately, I don’t have any real family members in high profile positions that can really benefit me, so I don’t really know how often I will be given the opportunity to take advantage of it. But if I did have the opportunity, hell yea I’m taking advantage of it. I’m not stupid. I think anyone who would actively not benefit from nepotism would be a fool.

This class topic was a very interesting class topic, and I love the fact that Sam decided to take it in the direction of putting us in the shoes of a middle eastern. I do not know if I necessarily agree with everything that Sam said, because I do feel that a lot of what he said was very opinionated, but I do think that the things that he was saying made me rethink the way I feel about the war. If you think about it, we would be extremely upset if something came from another country and declared war on us because they were not happy with the way that we were distributing OUR resources. Everything that Sam was saying about oil was very eye opening for me. I cannot say that I did not realize that the war ultimately was about oil, but to hear Sam talk about it out loud and to hear him justify it was something completely new for me. It made you see how other people in the world view what is going on with this war, and even though it was kind of hard to hear some of the things that Sam was saying, I could not help but to agree with a lot of it. I do not think that I have ever had a professor that put me in a position to question everything that I have believed in and what I have been for and against, and that is what Sam did. Did I ever expect to sit in class and feel somewhat sympathetic towards the people of the Middle East? Or even the people who attacked our country in September of 2001? I have always hated them with every ounce of my being, I never wanted to hear anything except that they were bad and we were good. But here we are and I am feeling bad for the people who have ruined so much about my country, my city, and a lot of the people that I care about more than anyone else in the world. The way that the soldiers are handling the situation over there makes my heart ache every time that I think about it. So I cannot believe that I am sitting here, thinking about how wrong we were in this situation as well. I have always had tunnel vision about this situation; I never wanted to see the other side. But I am very happy that Sam showed me a different way of thinking.

This class topic was a very interesting class topic, and I love the fact that Sam decided to take it in the direction of putting us in the shoes of a middle eastern. I do not know if I necessarily agree with everything that Sam said, because I do feel that a lot of what he said was very opinionated, but I do think that the things that he was saying made me rethink the way I feel about the war. If you think about it, we would be extremely upset if something came from another country and declared war on us because they were not happy with the way that we were distributing OUR resources. Everything that Sam was saying about oil was very eye opening for me. I cannot say that I did not realize that the war ultimately was about oil, but to hear Sam talk about it out loud and to hear him justify it was something completely new for me. It made you see how other people in the world view what is going on with this war, and even though it was kind of hard to hear some of the things that Sam was saying, I could not help but to agree with a lot of it. I do not think that I have ever had a professor that put me in a position to question everything that I have believed in and what I have been for and against, and that is what Sam did. Did I ever expect to sit in class and feel somewhat sympathetic towards the people of the Middle East? Or even the people who attacked our country in September of 2001? I have always hated them with every ounce of my being, I never wanted to hear anything except that they were bad and we were good. But here we are and I am feeling bad for the people who have ruined so much about my country, my city, and a lot of the people that I care about more than anyone else in the world. The way that the soldiers are handling the situation over there makes my heart ache every time that I think about it. So I cannot believe that I am sitting here, thinking about how wrong we were in this situation as well. I have always had tunnel vision about this situation; I never wanted to see the other side. But I am very happy that Sam showed me a different way of thinking.

This class topic was a very interesting class topic, and I love the fact that Sam decided to take it in the direction of putting us in the shoes of a middle eastern. I do not know if I necessarily agree with everything that Sam said, because I do feel that a lot of what he said was very opinionated, but I do think that the things that he was saying made me rethink the way I feel about the war. If you think about it, we would be extremely upset if something came from another country and declared war on us because they were not happy with the way that we were distributing OUR resources. Everything that Sam was saying about oil was very eye opening for me. I cannot say that I did not realize that the war ultimately was about oil, but to hear Sam talk about it out loud and to hear him justify it was something completely new for me. It made you see how other people in the world view what is going on with this war, and even though it was kind of hard to hear some of the things that Sam was saying, I could not help but to agree with a lot of it. I do not think that I have ever had a professor that put me in a position to question everything that I have believed in and what I have been for and against, and that is what Sam did. Did I ever expect to sit in class and feel somewhat sympathetic towards the people of the Middle East? Or even the people who attacked our country in September of 2001? I have always hated them with every ounce of my being, I never wanted to hear anything except that they were bad and we were good. But here we are and I am feeling bad for the people who have ruined so much about my country, my city, and a lot of the people that I care about more than anyone else in the world. The way that the soldiers are handling the situation over there makes my heart ache every time that I think about it. So I cannot believe that I am sitting here, thinking about how wrong we were in this situation as well. I have always had tunnel vision about this situation; I never wanted to see the other side. But I am very happy that Sam showed me a different way of thinking.

I found reading this letter to be very interesting. The guy is so young, yet is so wise and has so much experience to talk about. Already being in there for ten years, you have to wonder what he did to get a life sentence. It is pretty obvious that he would have had to do something very terrible, possibly a murder or something else to that degree, but you would think that if that were the case than he would not receive as much support and love from his friends and family as he had when he first got in there or over the past ten years. Listening to this man’s point of view, it really makes me rethink the way I feel about prisoners in jail. Before, I thought that if you were in jail, you were most likely a terrible person who deserved to be in there. If I would have heard that someone was in there for a life sentence, I would have automatically assumed the worst, thinking that they deserve life sentence or worse, and that they do not deserve to have any contact with the outside world. Now, after reading this letter from someone who was in jail for a life sentence, I have a whole new outlook. This letter has proved to me that sometimes people just make bad decisions or end up in bad situations, but that does not make them bad people. Clearly this guy must have done something to land him a life sentence in jail, but he has a good heart and does not seem like someone who deserves a life of isolation. Now, I am not claiming that everyone who is in jail, especially those who have life sentences, are good people. I know that there are people in there who are terrible people, people who are out to hurt others and who deserve the life that they are leading. But I am now realizing that I need to take a step back and really stop judging people by the situation that they are in or the decisions that they have made in their life. It also makes me realize that I need to be better at keeping in touch with those people that I love, because I take them for granted. Sometime I pull away from the people that I care about because I am unhappy with the decisions that they have made, but after reading this I realize how it affects those people. No matter what people do in their life, no matter the decisions that they have made, everyone deserves to have a support system behind them.

I am honestly at a loss for words. I never could have imagined that things like this could go on, especially within a family, but here we are. That is what I find to be most disturbing, this is happening within a family. I am not sitting here saying that I understand how rape, torture, or cruelty in general goes on in the world, but within a family blows my mind. At least if it is happening within strangers, there are no ties to one another; no feelings or emotional connection with one another, but with family it is completely different. These people are your own, they are pieces of you. You are supposed to be able to trust your family with your inner most workings, your deepest thoughts and feelings. This boy was not only gypped of a family, he was gypped out of a childhood, adulthood, a life of happiness, a life at all. I am disgusted by his whole family, and I cannot claim that I would be above murdering my parents as all of the repressed memories came rushing back to me. Another thing about this article that bothered me was the fact that no one listened to him when he tried to confess the nightmare that he was living every day. How could you ever have a little boy, 8 years old, confess something like this to you and you turn the other cheek? I just could never imagine anything like that. At that age, how are they able to make something like that up in that much detail? These kinds of things happen all of the time, you don’t think that parents are going to deny it so that they don’t look like the monsters they actually are? I feel like someone should have known better and should have stepped in and done a little more research on the situation, maybe then they would have been able to save more than one life. After all of the pain that they put him through, he survived. That is the most amazing thing that I have taken out of this whole article. He was able to repress his feelings and bad memories and push out of it. He was able to survive and not commit suicide like they wished, that shows true strength. It is just a shame that surviving was all he got to do, he never got to live. He never got to experience true happiness or love, and I feel that death should come to anyone who takes those two things away from someone. I am not saying that killing his parents was the right thing to do, but I am not also going to sit here and say that I do not understand why it happened. I hope that stories like this can inspire people of authority, especially teachers and others in the schooling system, to look past the surface and listen to things that kids say, you might save a life.

I always found it interesting how diversity can influence so many of my decisions, even when I do not necessarily realize it. When I was making the decision to apply for colleges, I would go onto websites to find out more about those colleges, like Princeton review and College Board. One of the pages that they had on their website included information and statistics on the diversity of the school that you were looking at. I personally never took advantage of this information because I did not really care about the diversity of a school, I was more interested in what extracurricular activities they had or the criteria I had to meet to get into their school. My best friend in high school, however, was not the same way at all. One of the first things that he looked at, before SAT scores, before minimum GPA requirement, was the diversity of a school. Coming from a small, majority white suburban town right outside of Philadelphia, it is to be expected that a lot of people would be interested in what the diversity of the school is. But he was not looking at these statistics because he wanted to expand his horizon, he was looking at these statistics because he wanted there to be as little diversity as possible. He applied to Penn State and committed to Penn State because this school was majority white, much like where we grew up. Although I can honestly say that I did not look at statistics to see the diversity, one of the things that I did know about Penn State was that it was majority white and I was very comfortable with that. I can sit here and say that diversity ratios do not have anything to do with the schools that I looked at or other major decisions that I have had to make in my life, but it really does. I would not go to a school that I knew was majority black or Asian because I would be out of my comfort level. I would not go to a party or to an event by myself if I knew that I was going to be the minority race. So even though I do not go out of my way to look for information about the diversity ratio or do not ask questions about the races that will be at the places that I will be at, it still affects my decisions and I do not even realize it unless I stop and think about it.

Although it may seem inconsiderate and selfish to have children when you are living in poverty, I feel as if having children is a part of life. It is something that brings happiness to everyone and sometimes you have to be selfish with your happiness to live a good life. Some may believe that it is selfish to have children when your economic stability is not in good standing. However, I feel that as long as you can budget your expenses and with a little help from either the use of food stamps or welfare, a family can live. Having children is not about giving them everything they could want. It is about showing your kids the love that they deserve and assuring them the same opportunities any person is entitled to. They can still go to school and have an opportunity to go to college and create a better life for themselves. Although it may become more of a struggle for them, they are still capable of receiving the same treatment from everyone. So maybe they will not be able to get the newest iPod, or wear the most fashionable clothing, but they are still able to receive the necessities such as food, shelter and education. To some having a child is the greatest joy they could ever imagine. Telling them that they are selfish for doing so is like putting a restriction on someone’s life. It is discriminating against someone for their financial status. This is not something that should be allowed. I do not understand how anyone could think that it would be a selfish action of someone to have children. The only reason that I can see someone considering it selfish is because of the fact that they are able to collect so money from the tax payers, but I do not believe that they are having kids so they can collect money. People have kids because kids will make them happy, or sometimes by accident, but I do not consider it selfish. It does annoy me when people have a lot of kids that they will not be able to support, because I see that as irresponsible. I see people having a lot of kids that they cannot afford equal to me having a kid now as a 20 year old college student. I cannot afford it, so I am going to do everything in my power to avoid it. I think that people who are living in poverty need to reevaluate their decisions on the amount of kids that they have and try to make more responsible decisions.

It is hard to say whether or not I believe that arrests of different races are caused by racism or location, probably because of where I grew up. I grew up in a suburb outside of Philadelphia that was predominantly white. I know that a lot of people say that their area is predominantly one color, but when I say it I am telling you that I could count the number of people of color in my high school on my hands, that how un-diverse my area was. The people in my high school and my general area who were more prone to get in trouble were those of color. It definitely could have been due to the fact that the police officer were racist; many of the local officers had grown up in Aston and continued o live and work there because they enjoyed living there and saw it as a great place to raise a family. It could also be, however, because neighboring my sheltered, predominant white town was Chester, PA, a predominantly black area that has had numerous lock downs due to gun violence. Some of the police officers were originally police officers of places like Philadelphia and Chester, so it comes as no surprise to me that these police officers watch the people of color more closely than they do the white people who live in my town. I am not saying that this is the way that it should be, but I can definitely see where it comes from. I do believe that the arrests of different races occur more because of more police officers. When I go into Philadelphia, I see a lot more police officers than I do where I am from. When I walk around Philadelphia with my best friend who attends Temple University, we see a cop on every other corner. This is not due to racism; it is because a cop is needed on every corner. If the city did not have as many cops as they do, it would be pure chaos. The crime rate for that area, which is already extremely high, would sky rocket to unbelievable heights. With more police officers in urban areas, there are bound to be more arrests, that is exactly what they are placed there for. If there are more eyes watching you, you are going to be less likely to do something you aren’t supposed to do, right? I believe that arrests of different races can be a result of racism or location, it just all depends on where you’re looking.