Today I am officially signing off of this blog (unless Mr. Phillips has us do another assignment with it :)). As my final post, I wanted to do a small reflection of my senior year. Moving the summer before junior year, I was very nervous for senior year because I wanted to be with my old friends to celebrate all the "senior" things like last homecoming, last prom, graduation etc. Now that I am almost done, I can honestly say that while this was not the dream senior year experience I always imagined, I am extremely proud of how much I have grown.
I started this year with a lot of anxiety about college placement exams, applications, etc. and have never felt more accomplished as I did when I sent in my last application. However, I pushed through the stress and am so proud of where it has gotten me. I never thought I would be accepted into a school as great as NC State and I can not wait to start my next adventure there. I am definitely feeling a bit nostalgic as these final days of high school come to a close, but I know that my friends and family by my side, I will be alright. My senioritis is at an all time high right now and my brain is completely blank. So with that, I will bring this final post to a close. Thanks for a great year! :)
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Yesterday, as I was looking for a quote to put in the slideshow for the senior NHS chord ceremony, I stumbled across one that stuck out to me. It read, "today is the beginning of whatever you want". I think that as a culture, we tend to live life by looking forward to the next thing; graduation, summer camp, starting college. etc. However, maybe what we are looking for is simply in front of us. What if people stopped waiting for the future and started making today into what they wanted it to be? This is definitely a concept that I have struggled with recently. With so many things to look forward to in the months ahead, I haven't been waking up in the morning and thinking about how I can make this day great.
As this school year comes to close and summer is in the near future, I am challenging myself to think about the NOW rather than what is yet to come. After all, that is the only thing we have the power to control. Even as I sit here writing this blog post, I am simultaneously receiving texts from my friends about how excited they are for camp to begin in a few weeks, and my mind begins to crave the future. I think living in the moment is one of the most difficult things to do as humans. We look forward to things in the future to keep us going through hard times, but maybe it is in those hard times that we need to be most present. Today is the beginning of whatever you want, so stop looking for happiness in yesterday or tomorrow. One of the main messages that I got from my choice novel "Working Class Hollywood" was that before there was an obsession with only portraying perfect, happy families and upper class people in the media, there was a time where the media was filled with realistic portrayals of the working class. The novel talks about films in the early 1900's that not only portrayed hard working people's daily struggles but also displayed things such as worker unions.
Reading about the discussion of unions being a part of early media really caught my eye with the struggles teachers have been facing lately seeking reasonable pay. I feel especially bad for teachers in my own state of North Carolina and other states where teachers are not allowed to form unions. I am very excited to see what happens with the teacher rally occurring in Raleigh this Wednesday and I really hope that it brings awareness to the issue of unfair pay. Teachers are the people who educate the future politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc. and they deserve to be paid in a way that compensates for how much power they have in the future and how hard they work. I feel like the media is slowly starting to return to more realistic shows with comedies such as "The Middle" which exposes real life problems of middle class families. Honestly, those are the shows that I find most enjoyable because I think there is a part in all of us that wants to see other people facing issues similar to ours so we don't feel as alone. I also think that is why reality TV is so popular these days. This weekend I will be working to finish up my last (I think) performance task for the year. Then, I will move on to writing my essay about the film "I Feel Pretty" and the physical-appearance obsessed female culture today. Happy Friday! The more I read "Working Class Hollywood", the more I realize what a strange social construct the idea of Hollywood is. Honestly, I don't really love the book because I find the writing does not hold my interest very well. However, I do find the overall idea to be quite intriguing. Similar to my last blog post, I am now finding myself looking deeper into when I subconsiously think about going to the movies or a concert on a Friday night. I realize now as I come to the conclusion of this novel that the idea of going to any sort of theatre on the weekend is a relatively recent phenomenon which is now enjoyed by the middle class rather than just the upper class.
As the year is coming to a close, all the responsibilities and due dates that I thought were so far away are slowly creeping up on me. However, I am just happy I made it to the end. I will begin (I know, I know, i'm a procrastinator) working on my book project this weekend and am trying to figure out a unique way to display the information I have learned from reading this novel. I really liked my last performance task because it was so personal, and I hope I can add that touch to this task as well. Additionally, I have started doing some research for my research paper on the film "I Feel Pretty" and I think it will be a relatively fun essay to write (as fun as writing an essay can be with Senioritis). I am excited to write about something that I actually care about, as I really do care a lot about female stereotypes, especially when they deal with being appearance-obsessed. I feel like being obsessed with physical appearance is an issue that most women (including myself) have dealt with at some point during their lives, and I am intrigued to do more research on the scientific explanation behind it. That's all for now. Happy Friday. When I was in elementary school, I was not allowed to watch television, or any sort of screen for that matter, during the school week. That meant that when I got home from school on Friday the first thing I did was turn on the newest episode of "Hannah Montana" and watch TV until I fell asleep. For me, the weekends meant watching Disney Channel, going to the movie theatre, spending unnecessary amounts of my parent's money at the mall, and eating out at fun restaurants. I didn't realize it at the time, but the reason I thought of the weekends as two days full of exciting activities was due to the leisure revolution of the twentieth century.
Basically, the leisure revolution (as talked about in "Working Class Hollywood") was "built upon the industrial revolution of the ninenteenth century" (13). It occured right around the time people were working less and making more disposable income; therefore, they started "living for the weekend". People began spending their Sundays going to the theatre for entertainment rather than going to church. Their abundance of money and free time sent them searching for public places to relax and have fu such as movie theatres and symphonies. There was a massive shift from weekends being family time at home to being the time for lively and unique activities. I am definitely a child of the leisure revolution. Most of the people I know have the mentality of "living for the weekend" which I now realize is a relatively new sentiment. Chapter one of my book has mainly been focused on the "weekend entertainment revolution" and I am interested to see how the novel progresses. So far, the book is honestly not as focused on class as it is on the entertainment industry in general, but I suspect that will shift soon. I think the writing is mediocre so far, but I am keeping an open mind. Happy weekend! :)
It is currently 8:45 on Friday night. My class finished the film "Rich Hill" yesterday, and I still can not get it off my mind. For some reason, this documentary has stuck with me more than any of the other films we have watched. I think having main characters be around the same age as an audience creates a sort of intimacy and understanding not felt when the audience is in a different age group as the protagonists, and I definitely felt that watching Andrew, Harlee, and Apachee. I can not relate to the issue of homelessness first hand, but I think taking an extremely personal and vulnerable look into the lives of the three boys made me feel closer to the issue than I have ever felt before.
I have only just begun my choice novel about class. Now that I feel a deeper connection to the problems of homelessness and class inequalities, I am excited to see how it brings a new perspective to my book. I sometimes wish I could participate in an experiment called "Homeless For A Day" where traditionally upper-middle class families take on the struggles facing homeless people for one day just so I could empathize with people facing the issue on a more personal level. I found a video where a man did this and posted it below. I am seriously buckling down this week to read my choice novel. Happy Friday! Wow. It really feels like forever since I have written one of these posts. It is now the second marking period and we are beginning our unit on class and consumerism. I will soon start reading my novel "Working Class Hollywood" by Steve Ross and I am more excited for this book than I was starting my other books. I find the topics of race and gender to be extremely uncomfortable, so reading books all about those topics was difficult for me. I feel much more open and comfortable when talking about social class but I am not sure why.
I have taken classes throughout high school such as Sociology and Psychology where we have studies topics similar to social class, and I always find them extremely interesting. I plan on starting my new choice book this weekend and am curious as to how it will expose and compare the different social classes. The title also makes me wonder how they will add the additional element of Hollywood into the mix. I have definitely lived in an upper middle class bubble for my whole life, but I try really hard to be aware of people's living conditions around me. Hopefully this book will help me do that! Happy weekend! With my second novel coming to an end, I am finishing up my Honors Portfolio task and I am extremely proud of it. I truly felt as though anything I wrote about the topic of race would be semi-cringy, as was this novel, therefore I decided to embrace it. The big question Tim Wise asks in the first chapter of "White Like Me" was "what does it mean to be white, especially in a nation created for the benefit of people like you?" (2). The first day I read the book, I underlined this sentence and continued with my reading, but this question stuck with me throughout the duration of the novel. Things that I had never thought of being "White privileges" suddenly answered the question of what it means to be White for me. I honestly felt like I was being enlightened when I read things such as "Geneology itself is something as a privilege" (5) because the idea that many African Americans can not trace their lineage due to slavery had never crossed my mind.
Up until the very end of my novel, I felt like I was learning. I was learning how lucky I was to live in the racial majority in my country, how much I take for granted every day, and how much more work needs to be done to end racial inequality in the United States and the world. I am excited to share my Honors Porfolio project because it is a very vulnerable and honest depiction of what being White means to me now that I have read this novel. While this novel definitely felt cringy at times, I began to ease into as I got used to Wise's writing. If I were to do it again, I do not think I would read this book because I am much more interested on learning about racial issues from minorities, rather than the majority group. However, I am glad I got the chance to learn about a perspective near to my own because it caused me to think deeper into the things I believe in. I can't wait to start my new book next week! Happy Friday! As I continue reading my novel, "White Like Me" by Tim Wise, I notice that I am getting more and more uncomfortable with the issues the book discusses as it gets deeper into the problems with racism today. Since the author of the novel is Caucasian, it hits closer to home for me than any book written by an African American author simply because I can relate to it on a closer level. The message that has stood out to me the most is the idea that as the dominant group in America, White people rarely have to think about race at all.
Another idea that stood out to me is Wise's doubt that his writing about the issue of racism will bring about any change. I strongly disagree. I believe that the more people talk about it, the more things will change. Silence does nothing for our society. I wish more people got the chance to read this novel because I believe the more people aware about the issue of inequality, the more things will get done to solve it. As a Caucasian female, I can honestly say that I believe the majority of White people are extremely ignorant to the racism occuring today. That is a privilege that not all people get to have and this book has shown me how much I have been missing. I am excited to become exposed to more inequalities facing the African American race today as I continue my novel. Happy weekend! Similar to how I began my previous novel, I wanted to dedicate my first post on "White Like Me" to my initial thoughts on the novel based simply on the title. From previous knowledge, I recognize that the author, Tim Wise, tends to take an extremely liberal and progressive view on the subjects of white privilege and racism in general. In the video clip we watched in class of him speaking, Wise seemed like an extremely "woke" white man who is hyper-aware of the privileges he has in contrast to African-American individuals. It feels kind of strange to me that a white man wrote an entire book on race, however this makes me very curious to see his approach on the issue. As a privileged, white female, I do not feel as educated on the issue of racism as I believe I should be. My family and I believe strongly in equality for all people and I wish I had more information to bring to the table when discussing certain aspects of the issue. Hopefully, reading this book will give me new ideas surrounding the topic which I can bring up at family dinners.
Especially in today's political world (a.k.a The Trump Era), I believe the issues of racism and white privilege are as relevant as ever. I am very excited to get started with my new book and hope it opens my eyes to a perspective, while similar to my own, is that of someone else. Happy reading to me! |
AuthorAmy Granick is a senior at Leesville Road High School in Raleigh, North Carolina. She plans to continue her studies at North Carolina State University in the fall with a major in Psychology. Archives
May 2018
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