The Final Meta

Wow.  Contradicting what Fish said in her meta post, this year has flown by.  It actually has been the fastest year so far in all of my school career.  And though I can't wait for summer, I'm sad that this class is coming to an end.  The people, teachers and students alike, have made this class so memorable.  I have met so many wonderful people with different thoughts, ideas, etc.  The class itself has been challenging but interesting and I have really enjoyed it.

Now let's get back to blogging.  I have really liked blogging.  Not gonna lie, I was skeptical at first, but I've come to really enjoy it.  It is a way for me to share my thoughts and opinions to a wider and different audience.  It is a way to have discussions at any time you want.  It's really open ended and freeing.

This semester I moved a little away from my "music theme".  I didn't choose to do this, it just kind of happened.  Instead of coming up with musical connections, I found myself analyzing different types of media like an AT&T ad, a car commercial and a piece someone entered on Gives Me Hope.  I've explored different ideas in my posts.

Please read: "The luxury car for people who can park themselves"

Thanks for a great year B'Oc 2010-2011!

Uniquely American

The other day I was looking through the new advertisements made by AT&T.  It is hands painted and positioned to represent different countries while holding an AT&T phone.

Check them out here.

 Each one represents a different country to show how AT&T covers the nation, not just the US.  There are so many of them, as you can see here, but none of them were for the United States.  But then I started to think about what the one for the US would even look like.  Unlike France that has a known image like the Eiffel Tower, we don't really have one defining structure.

Some ideas I thought of to represent America...

-The Statue of Liberty

-A baseball scene, as baseball is "America's Pastime"

-A bald eagle

-The White House

-The Capital Building

These were all I could think of for uniquely American symbols.  That is probably why AT&T didn't include America in the campaign.  Also, the audience is directed towards Americans and showing them the international side, so maybe some "American hands" were not needed to effectively draw consumers.

Memorial Day slips people's memory

Today is Memorial Day.  A day to honor those who have lost their lives serving our country.  A very "American" day so to speak.

But for a lot of people, today was a day off of work, school, typical activities.  I feel like many people treat it as a day to relax or run errands, etc.  It is supposed to be a day to commemorate, to honor, to remember.  We celebrate the Fourth of July decked in red, white and blue with fireworks soaring, yet Memorial Day seems to go unrecognized by many.

What does this say about our nation?  People always say the support the troops, but then why don't people take the time to honor the troops that have given their lives serving the nation?

"Happiness hit her like a train on a track"--Florence and the Machine

Today in class we were talking about goals we had.  As we discussed, we realized that most of our goals served a greater purpose, that purpose being our pursuit of happiness.  Whether the goal was to earn a PhD, to start a family, to climb Mount Everest, they all led towards this idea of being happy.  Tonight, I was reading some of the posts on Gives Me Hope, a website that compiles people's stories that are hopeful and touching, and came across a happiness related excerpt.

"I was reading about a little kid whose mom told him the key to life was happiness.  When he was in school the teacher asked them to write down what they wanted to be when they grew up.  He said happy.  They said he didn't understand the assignment.  He said they didn't understand life.  My generation GMH."  --An Entry from "Gives Me Hope"

For this kid, happiness was his goal.  Though we don't realize it, this is all of our goals.  If someone said they wanted to be an astronaut, it would be because they thought that it was interesting and essentially would bring them happiness.  If someone wanted to be a successful businessman so they could be rich, they would want to do this because they would think it would bring them some sort of happiness.

Personally, I think that everything we do in life is to bring us to this sense of "happiness" whether we realize it or not.  For example, doing homework.  Though homework does not, scratch that, CANNOT bring anyone happiness directly, completing it could bring some joy.  Maybe it will increase your grades and you will be rewarded.  Maybe you believe it will lead you on the right track to the career you choose.  Maybe it will make your parents happy, in turn making you happy.  Everything we do is essentially attempting to bring us more and more joy in life, whether it is long term, or short term.

This boy had it right when he said "they didn't understand life".  They didn't understand that his goal was the summation of everyone in the worlds goals.

"The luxury car for people who can park themselves"

This commercial is for the Audi A4 (not that I can tell you anything about cars).  In the commercial, the company makes fun of the self-parking Lexus when it says that the Audi A4 is "The luxury car for people who can park themselves."

This reminded me of something we have been discussing in class.  In class we are talking about class (hahah), as in social class.  One thing we talked about was how a lot of people say they are in the middle class when they are in fact upper class.  They do this as to not fulfill the snobby upper class stereotype.

In the commercial, the A4 is still described as "luxury" as to draw in consumers, but is trying to seem more average rather than over the top.  They describe the car differently to make it appeal to the people who are upper class, who say they are middle class.  Just as people try to seem modest, so does the Audi A4.

The Tea Cup Ride

Ok, I'm going for junior theme random analogy number two.  I feel like I'm on the tea cups ride at an amusement park.  It spins by itself, but then you get it spinning faster and faster.  Everything around you starts to blur.

This is what I feel like.  I feel like this whole process is flying by and I have no way to slow it down.  Yet at the same time, I feel like I am making it move even faster, but don't have the power to stop myself.  It's all a blur.  Though I must say, the blurriness is probably due to sleep deprivation.

All I can say is, this is the home stretch!  Overall I think I've enjoyed the process...well maybe I'll enjoy it more looking back, when I have a second to catch my breath!  Regardless, I've really enjoyed learning more about my topic and have found my research interesting.

Driving on the wrong side of the road. Blindfolded.

As Chloe blogged about, I am also having trouble deciding what to focus on in my junior theme paper and what to cut completely out.  Each time I read an article, conduct an interview, listen to a radio piece, I uncover a new path to take my paper.  There are so many ways to go and I have written my into over and over to fit all my different ideas.

Another difficulty is in some of my body paragraphs, the information is overflowing.  I have to make cuts left and right, which is difficult but isn't a bad problem to have.  In a few of them on the otherhand, I have found that I have some information, but not enough evidence to back it up.  In those cases, I have to go back and refocus some of my research to find fitting evidence.

At some moments I feel like I'm driving a car, on the wrong side of the road, blindfolded, as I write this paper.  I think I'm starting to get back on the road, but hopefully I can do so before I total the car.