I really enjoyed Dr.Bezios podcast, but there was one point she made a few times that really stuck with me that I personally relate to on so many levels; When Dr.Bezio said that the leadership major is not safe, that people outside of UR don’t understand it, that that is different from the conventional degrees that our parents tell us are safe, useful, or will help me get a job. When I declared as a leadership major, my more traditional parents, although trying to be supportive, were really concerned, especially thinking about how I would get a job and somewhat mad that they were paying thousands of dollars for me to go to college and get a “useless degree”. Anytime i’ve told anyone outside of UR what my major is in, they also respond similarly. This is something that is super frustrating to me, as why do I need to get a conventional degree to get a job? Leadership studies are something so diverse, so universal, and taught/exposed me to topics that I would have not have been exposed to otherwise, such as anything in the social sciences and even logic. 

This idea of an unconventional/risky major/minor applies to me in multiple ways, as almost all my major/minors are considered “unsafe” and risky. I am a Leadership major with a triple minor in Visual Media Arts Practice (VMAP/studio art), Women Gender Sexuality Studies (WGSS), and Education and society. For WGSS, since it’s not the most well known area of study, I am told it’s useless because it won’t help me find a job. In this minor I have learned about so many social justice issues that are going to help me look at the world in an intersectional and inclusive way. Something similar is said about a degree in art; the first thing I get told when I tell people i’m studying art is “what are you going to do with that? Be a starving artist?! Your only other choice is to be an art teacher”. While An art teacher is on the list of possible jobs for me, art is not just about drawing; it’s about expressing creativity, which is honestly needed/should be desired in most jobs today. Education and Society is the only minor I do not get questioned about, and sometimes when people outside of UR ask me what my area of study is, in order to not have to explain leadership, I sometimes just say i’m studying education. Although I am learning not to care what other people say about leadership studies and tell the truth, it’s interesting to see education as a major more respected because it’s more “traditional” than leadership. However, I still get comments about studying education, as compared to other jobs “it doesn’t make as much money.. You will be struggling to pay bills your whole life”. I think instead of criticizing each other’s areas of study, people should try to learn from each other about what others are studying and try to look from multiple perspectives and see why any degree provides you useful tools and strategies in order to become successful.

I’m glad that Dr.Bezio chose for us to watch “This is America” and “Formation” as part of our homework assignment! I have never seen the Beyonce video before and I found it really intriguing to watch. I found myself having to watch it multiple times in order to capture all of the imagery as well as the lyrics that went along with it. After reading the article discussing the video and Beyonce’s musical style off of the album lemonade and watching the video, the main message I feel that she is showing/telling us is almost a juxtaposition of the “high life” and “low life”, showing the viewer different aspects of black culture. I also think within her messaging she is telling the viewer that she has earned her place in this luxurious high life and that she’s helping to lead the way for more black art/artists/musicians to be brought into the mainstream. It also highlights the struggles black people face in order to get to the “high life”, shown with examples such as the police car she is standing on top of at the beginning and end of the video, highlighting the police brutality black people face daily. However, Beyonce also relates her experiences back to the way she group, such as the lines “earned all this money but they never  take the country out me”. 

“This is America” Is a video I have seen many times before, and it’s one that was discussed in many of my history classes in high school once it came out. This video shared some similar messages with Beyonces “Formation”, such as the ideas of black culture as well as police brutality. However, this video take has a bit of a darker outlook, with the music being cheery in some places, then immediately contrasted with gunshots along to the words “This is America”, signifying what “America” is like for black people and the harm that comes to black bodies in America constantly. However, watching it through again and really trying to critically analyze it showed me some more visuals and messages that I have not seen before. For example, I thought that at around 3 mins 30 seconds in the video was over as the screen goes dark, but it actually continues to show Childish Gambino running away from a mob of people chasing him. This is very contradictory to his more positive smile and dance throughout much of the video. It really signifies to me that although black people try to act happy during their daily lives with so much chaos and threatening actions going on around them, they are deep down scared of what is going on around them and feel that they cannot run away from it. Throughout the video, Childish Gambino happier facial expressions as well as many of the backup dancers tells the audience that black people are so used to the sound of gun fire and chaos that it doesn’t even surprise them anymore, and is honestly pretty disturbing to witness, which is obviously the point, especially to make viewers who are not black or do not experience this same discrimination understand straight forwardly the torture that black bodies experience everyday.

I found today’s reading and podcast both very interesting. The idea of close reading is something that I have learned over and over again, both in high school and in college, but Dr.Bezios podcast really laid out all the different steps and questions you have to think about while close reading to really understand what the text is saying. Discussing the use of symbols in these close readings was also interesting to me. When I am personally any sort of article or book or literature, I never think about the words being symbols themselves; I think of the context of the words being a symbol to mean something else, such as the lion meaning courage example. This is why when Dr.Bezio described that even the word “cat”, the combination of the letters c-a-t is just a signifier for a creature, the animal of a cat, and how this can be a sign/symbol was a really interesting concept to me, and makes me think about different readings I have done over the years and makes me realize how much more complex words truly are. Even Dr.Bezios analysis of the word “sword” meaning violence, kingship, masculinity, etc, and then switching just one letter makes a whole new sign, a whole new symbol and a way to understand the context of the word. This paragraph became kind of a rant, but I found this idea of the complexity of words when close reading to be really interesting and something that I have not close read too deeply on. 

Now thinking about the second part of the podcast and the reading, I’ve read this story before for a class I believe in high school or early in college (I can’t remember when I read it but I remember seeing it), but I never learned about the background to the story. It was really interesting to understand that the story was a response to the author’s own rest cure treatment and seemingly going a bit crazy from it. This is really evident from the story that she goes through spurts of depression and her mental health getting worse and worse as time and the story goes on, seeming almost to the point of delusion and her mind being so warped and distorted. I think the wallpaper not only represents her feeling of being trapped, but her lack of a way to escape both her own mental illness and the opinions and views of her husband/doctor who are not caring for her  enough. There is a lot of talk about not only the color of the wallpaper, but the smell that goes with it, and that even when she goes “for a ride”, she feels like she can still smell that room, now associating the color yellow with that particular smell, almost as if its stained in her mind (that experienced is stained in her mind) and she cannot escape it. The context and background around the time period of this story makes its so much more real; a time that women were told they have “female hysteria”, and people not believing their mental health issues, making the symbolism of the room she is trapped in and the wallpaper surrounding her that much more significant and impactful to the reader, making it evident how important close reading of this story is in order to fully understand the impact of it to both the author and others during this time period.

I found Dr. Bezios podcast about popular culture in its relationship to leadership to be very interesting, and I have two main takeaway points from it. The first point being how impactful popular culture is on our society and can cause real change and conversations to happen outside of the fictional worlds or our television screens. When Dr.Bezio talked about Robin Hood, the only thing I really knew about the story was the “steal from the rich and give to the poor trope”. I did not know that because of Robin Hood, it caused riots and revolutions that changed the whole face of english governmental system and paved the way for the creation of parliament and the house of commons.It’s also amazing to see how this trope has been carried into our current culture today. Although I cannot think of any specific examples at this moment, it makes me think about what movies, tv shows, or popular culture of today has had a huge impact or may continue to have one in the future. This also shows the importance of what popular culture is put out there, as if one fictional story can cause a revolution, it shows both the good and the bad sides of popular culture in how impactful one story can be if we get attracted to the narrative and characters.

The other takeaway I have from the podcast is the importance of representation in media. Dr.Bezio says that media is the number one way we normalize behaviors, and how Entertainment has more influence over changing our mind than facts and we need to see representation immediately made me think of the films such as Black Panther, Hidden Figures, Us, Get Out, The Princess and The Frog, and many others before Dr.Bezio even mentioned them. These movies doing so well in mainstream box offices really shows how much our society is craving diversity and diversity heroes and main figures to look up to. We know that there has been tons of stereotyping and lack of representation in the media, so to see people of color painted as powerful, good people is so important. This discussion actually makes me think about my research topic I am doing for this class, as it relates heavily to this. I am discussing the power of media to influence their audience through the perspective of how powerful reality television has influence on the audience, specially looking at racial stereotyping in media and more specifically the TV competition show Survivor. Within this topic, an important point I am discussing is how the narrative can be manipulated by the media and tends to paint people of color, especially black people, in a bad light. This is made clear by dozens of black Survivor contestants speaking out because of the resurgence of the BLM movement this summer and discussing how they feel they were painted to look “angry” or the villain of their season, or overall were given a bad narrative that was not true to their personality or actions on the show. This relates back to Dr.Bezios point of the story the media tells (in tv, film, etc) is extremely influential to the audience and needs to include proper representation.

Both the reading and the podcast  for today were really interesting, and made me think about my own education as well as some of the terms used in context. First off in the podcast, I knew about the Great Man Theory because it was discussed both in my leadership 101 and leadership 102 courses, but I never really thought about why in very past history there was not much recorded about common life besides white, rich men. It made perfect sense when Dr.Bezio described that if you wanted something recorded on that day you had to pay for it, meaning the history of the time that was recorded was about rich, white kings, guardsmen, and knights. This shows us that even in ancient times, records of events are distorted and only parts are recorded based on those recording it. This can be related to any way that the media distorts information today, as depending on which news station or magazine or website records information, it can be displayed very differently and from specific perspectives. This idea that  People who seem to do everything in history are white, christian men with money made me think about my own education, especially middle and high school. Besides from MLK, Rosa Parks, and Fredrick Douglass, I did not learn about many other people of color who made an impact on history. I also did not learn about many women, or even the way that common people lived, and if I learned about the way common people lived, it was told from the perspective of comparing their lifestyles or in the context of the “leader” or nobles. 

Continuing with this idea of only learning about specific people in history, When Dr.Bezio brought up the idea of Invisible Leadership, it reminded me of a lesson I had last semester in Leadership 101 with Dr.Henley. We spent a day in class learning about people of color in the Civil rights movement that are not normally taught about in classrooms, giving us just a taste of these people who were truly leaders in their own right, but their work seems invisible to us. This idea is strengthened when Dr.Bezio in the podcast bringing up MLK and how although he was the speaker and face of the moment, most of the people who were leading it were behind the scenes, many being women. This is also Strengthened with the reading from Dr.Hayter, as the whole article basically discusses how local people, or people that may be “invisible leaders”, can have a national level impact.

I was assigned to watch ads from the 2016 race (Trump vs Clinton), specifically watching the Republican ads. This is just my personal opinion, but I very much dislike Trump’s campaign style. In almost all of his ads (minus two or three), they are directly attacking his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her views and policies, without contextualizing what Trump’s policies are going to be. Many of them call Hilary out for what she is doing (regarding immigration, the letters/emails that were leaked, etc), and then Trump moves on to just explaining that his policies will not do what Hilary is doing, but they do not go into detail of what his policies are exactly. I personally do not like the attack campaign style, as in elections I want to learn about both the Democratic and Republican parties opinions, policies, and viewpoints, not just watching the Republican Candidate attack the Democratic Candidate. There also seems to be a fear tactic instilled in almost all of these campaign videos, trying to make the viewer fearful of what our country would be like if Clinton were to take office; Although fear can be effective, I do not see it as a positive way to present your campaign and get people to vote for you. 

Although I do not like the majority of the 2016 republican party ads due to the crime, fear, and attacking of the other party, there were one or two that I actually thought were effective strategies by using emotional appeal instead of fear. This is why my “favorite” out of all these ads was the one titled “Motherhood”. This features Ivanka Trump discussing family values, and that no women should have to take a pay cut to be a mother, and that all women should have enough money for childcare and paid maternity leave. I think this emotional appeal not only would pull in women who relate to this, but fathers and children who understand the struggles of trying to make money while raising a family. I think emotional appeal is a better approach to convince an audience to vote for someone rather than instilling fear, which is why the messaging of this ad was my favorite. (the video of this ad is linked below)

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2016/motherhood

The Millennium Simulation game turned out to be much harder than I expected.. Considering I play a lot of games and simulation games as well, this seemed to be one of the more realistic and challenging ones I have played before. In my first go around, I focused on keeping Fatou and Kojos’ health as high as possible. This meant allocating time and resources in order to make sure that they stayed healthy. Although this was a good strategy for a while and kept them alive, eventually this caused them to get sick anyway due to lack of money.. Also, I constantly thought I had finally found the right balance of allocating time for fishing, farming, gathering fuel and water, but everytime I found the right balance for a round or two, the simulator would tell me the next  round that the food or water needs were not met. This really shows that with the changing world, especially in a time where you are trying to stay alive, what you do one year will not always work the next time. It also really shows me the complexity of allocation of time and  resources, something that many of us in America and the world who do not have to worry about this allocation of resources take for granted sometimes.

Besides just keeping the characters alive and making sure they had enough wood and water (and it got continuously harder to do this), the thing I struggled with the most was earning money. No matter if I put more time into the small business, farming, wood collecting, etc, for some  reason I could never get it to bring in a decent  amount of money which was really frustrating. I thought I figured out which crops were better than the other, but then it  would tell me there was a really bad season of collecting crops, something me nor the characters I was playing as really had any control over. It really shows you that survival is not  always completely in your control, and trying to make money in such a rural setting is  very difficult. It also showed me the difficulty of needing to try to make money without having any funds to allocate in order to increase profit.

https://youtu.be/V3rPyLjcMbI

When we were told to pick our favorite/a memorable advertisement, my mind immediately went to the “How many licks” Advertisement from Tootsie pop.. I think most of us have heard or know the saying “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop”. This is because since this ad with the owl aired for the first time in 1970, it became so memorable that it is still used today on television in an updated format, and is one of the longest running advertisements to date. If you have not seen this ad before (which would be hard for me to believe), a little boy comes up to an owl and asks “Mr Owl, How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie center of a tootsie pop?”. The Owl then says “lets find out”, taking the Tootsie Pop from the boy and licking it twice before eating the whole thing on the third. The narrator then says “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop; the world may never know”.

I believe this ad is so captivating for all generations because of the question the ad asks. In this advertisement, it never actually tells the audience to go buy Tootsie Pops, taking the main focus away from the actual purchase of the product.. Instead, it offers the viewers a challenge, telling them that “the world may never know” how many licks it would take to get to the tootsie center of a tootsie pop, enticing viewers to go buy the tootsie pop to see how many licks it takes. This ad is also memorable and captivating because Now that this ad is over 50 years old, it is nostalgic for older generations, as well as cute for younger generations to see and talk to the older generations about, creating a bond between the two. Attached to this post is the 1998 version of this commercial, when it was shortened down from multiple creatures to just the owl (which is the most memorable version of the commercial). It is impressive to me that even with this nostalgia factor and the idea of challenging the audience as motivation to get them to purchase the product, that people still enjoy this advertisement with its very old graphics and animation style compared to the modern style of most animated advertisements today. 

From today’s reading/podcast, but more specifically the podcast, Dr.Bezio discussed the importance of statics and numbers in humanities work, as well as how easily numbers can be manipulated, used to manipulate people, and how inaccurate they can be. There were a few examples she gave that stuck out to me the most. One being how the way you present data can change someone’s feelings and interpretation on it. The example Dr.Bezio gave was “only 25 percent of covid patients will be asymptomatic”, versus “One in four people who catch covid will not be symptomatic”. The second example sounds like a lot more people, and also sounds like a one in four chance of winning. It really made me start thinking about information and data I have heard within my own life, and thinking about how the way data is presented can change someone’s feelings. This makes me think about the classic “glass is half full” verus “glass is half empty” saying. One example has a more positive connotation, making you feel better about the amount you have in the glass, while the other has a more negative connotation, just like the  example Dr.Bezio gave that I explained above. 

Another example Dr.Bezio gave that was very interesting and important to me was the  idea that how we get numbers and where you get samples from is important in the validity of data. The example given  was about if college students like chicken nuggets, and how evaluating just our class based off of this was not enough people,diversity, etc in order to determine if it is accurate. This really shows you that when you are examining a set of data, you need to think carefully and really investigate the data you are looking at and using. This ties into the big concept of checking your sources.

For the chart/graph we need to add to this blog post today, Because of the current state of our world, I decided to find a graph that shows our positive progression of COVID19 by looking at the amount of people who have been vaccinated.This graph shows specifically the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people per country since January of 2021. I like this graph because not only does it show positive progression towards herd immunity with the amount of people being vaccinated (and which countries are having the most people vaccinated per 100 people in their countries currently), but the chart on this website seems to be the most accurate with some of the most detailed information out there. This graph is updated daily (with the graph below being from today, march 14th), and by going onto the website there is even more detailed data. They also list a full dataset of sources, showing that they are coming to these conclusions from valid sources, and that they are really doing their research before sharing it with the public (for some reason the chart is not showing up clearly on this blog post, but you can use the link below to see this chart in detail).

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

I do understand some people’s perspectives and reasons for not wanting to change the building names on campus, as they think that we should remember what happened in our past and try to learn/grow from it rather than just changing the names on the buildings. However, this brings up the point of looking back at history of not only seeing the history/what the importance was of the names on the buildings in the past, but we also have to think about what those names meant and continue to mean/perpetrate to other large groups of people/students on campus by doing research, as well as just listening to stories, reasons, and supporting those who are greatly affected by those names being on our buildings on campus. This also brings in the concept of ethics, and what is ethically and morally right to do. We need to think about everyone that is affected by these building names and why students created the “protect the web” petition in the first place, and how much an issue this truly must be if the students took so much time and effort to bring this movement into motion. I personally think it is morally and ethically right to  stand by the large groups of our students that these names negatively affect and I think the names should be changed on the buildings  across campus.

 While I do see the importance of remembering the past, There are ways to remember the history of the buildings and their names while not continuing to advertise and display names on our buildings that perpetrated (and continue to penetrate and a constant reminder for some) the worst parts of history, such as putting a plaque inside the buildings or on the outside that discuss some of the history, or simply state “formally known as Ryland hall”, in order to preserve the history of the buildings.