Twentysomethings

This reading talks about how people in their twenties now are kind of a lost generation. He says that their generation is getting dumber and they will do worse than their parents. He talks about television shows such as Melrose Place that showed a group of people in their twenties messing around and not taking life seriously. I have never watched the show before but I’m guessing it’s like a soap opera with younger people. In a way I kind of agree with the author when he says that this generation is lost. If we look on TV, most of the dramas and comedies have people that are older than 30 or in high school and younger. All the people in their twenties are mainly found on reality television shows. This shows they have no real goals other than to make money by competing on TV, and have their fifteen minutes of fame. On the other hand, I don’t think that we can group that whole generation into reality TV slackers. Many people in their twenties go to college, find a job and ultimately do better than their parents.

Grey's Episode 6

This week’s episode was the conclusion to the three-part event on Grey’s Anatomy. Meredith dies and goes to heaven where she comes face to face with people that had died in her life. They all join together to ask her why she purposely drowned, but she could not get herself to admit to them that she killed herself. She kept telling them that she couldn’t swim because the water was too cold, but they all knew what really happened. Once she finally admitted what she did, she realized that she made a terrible mistake and that she needed to be with all the people that she loved. She then saw her mom in heaven and realized that she had died too. Meredith’s mom apologized for yelling at her for not being good enough. She told Meredith that she was anything but ordinary and that it wasn’t her time to die yet. Meredith then regains a heartbeat and comes back to life. The fact that Meredith dies and comes back to life proves that television drama does not represent reality. The basis of the show is realistic, in the aspect of having doctors saving people’s lives, but when they show things like that it proves that they bend reality in the best interest of the show. They obviously weren’t going to kill off Meredith, because she’s one of the main characters.

Life According to TV

In this week’s reading, George Gerbner talks about the misrepresentations and biases of the world according to television. He did an experiment where he asked questions about these biases to heavy television viewers and light television viewers. He found that the heavy TV viewers chose TV influenced answers and the light TV viewers chose answers that were closer to real life. He talked about how males get most of the leading roles and females are given small parts on TV shows. I don’t completely agree with that statement because there are more and more shows today with females as the main characters. For example, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Girlfriends, and many others have strong female characters with real jobs and responsibility, both in and out of the home. He also talked about how people over the age of 65 are showing up less in television. I agree with that because it’s hard to find a show nowadays with the main characters all around that age. He said that young people think that older people are less healthy because that’s how they are shown on TV and don’t necessarily agree with that. I don’t think that just because someone is older it means they are unhealthy. For the most part, I agree with the other points he brought up about race, work and crime.

Grey's Episode 5

Last week the episode ended with Meredith falling in the water. This week the episode started with Meredith kind of bobbing in the water with her voice in the background talking about life. One minute she’s in the water swimming and the next thing we know she decides to stop swimming and just let herself sink into the water and ultimately, drown. In the midst of all the chaos, Derek manages to find Meredith and pull her, now blue, limp, body out of the water and get her to the hospital. The episode ended with all the main characters all standing together waiting to hear the fate of their good friend. I know that Meredith will survive because she is one of the main characters, but the issue of suicide is a prominent problem in our society today. I think that Meredith is going to realize that her life is not that bad, and then decide to fight for her life and come back to life. Because it’s television, Meredith can come back to life, but many people that decide to commit suicide cannot reverse their decision. I think suicide is horrible and unfortunate problem in our society. I don’t think anything is worth taking your own life. As much as I would like to think and hope that these problems don’t exist, I know it does. All we can do is help raise awareness about suicide and try and prevent it in the future.

Grey's Episode 4

Today’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was the first of a three-part continuation. In the beginning of the episode, the interns were doing triage drills to practice in case of an emergency. In the middle of their drill practicing, the chief of surgeon comes into the room and tells all of them to get ready to leave because their has been some kind of accident where there are numerous people in critical condition. Once they reach the scene of the accident, all the interns freeze in their footsteps at the horrifying scene. It turns out that somehow a huge ship had crashed and many people were hurt. Bailey, the attending doctor, yelled and told them all to snap out of their shock and start saving lives. Each of them tended to different people and reacted in different ways. Alex, George and Meredith found injured people right away and started helping them, but Izzy still stood there frozen in her tracks. I don’t know what I would do if I were in that same situation. I want to pursue a career as a doctor, and I may one day have to go through that same kind of thing, and I don’t know if would freeze up like Izzy. I would like to think that I wouldn’t, but we will just have to wait and see. I give so much credit to doctors, emergency workers, and any other people that live to save other people’s lives. Finally, a man then approached Izzy and begged her to help a friend that was trapped under something. She hesitated but finally went with him. The episode ended with all the interns in the middle of their cases. Meredith, however, had been pushed off the dock and into the water by one of the patients acting out from severe pain. I can’t wait until next week to see what happens to Meredith and all the other interns with their extreme cases.

Adobiography

I thought that this paper was fairly easy to write. I thought the hardest part was picking the advertisements because I had to flip through a lot of magazines before I finally found three ads that I could write a paper on. Starting off the paper was a little difficult, but once I started writing the words just kept flowing, which is good. The peer conferences were pretty helpful. My partners pointed out some things that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own. I liked how Ellen read through the papers and gave her comments. With her comments, I knew I was on the right track and I knew exactly what I needed to work on to do well on the paper. This was really helpful to me in writing the final copy of the paper. Another thing that was really helpful was the checklist. I liked having it and so I knew exactly what I needed to add to my final copy. I do think that having the checklist and all the requirements of the paper from the start would have been a little more helpful. Overall, I thought this paper went well for me and I hope it shows up in my grade.

The coolhunt

I thought this was a pretty interesting article. I really didn’t know that they were actual people that go out to different neighborhoods and find kids to tell them their opinions of their products. I think that is a really good strategy for increasing sales because what better way to find out what the people want then to ask the people. In the article, it talked about Baysie going to a neighborhood in the Bronx to find out the kids feelings on their new shoes. To her surprise, many of the guys liked a shoe that was made for girls. So she took that information back to work and decided to turn that girl shoe into a guy shoe, and it did much better in the market. Although it’s a good strategy to ask people their opinion, how does that one opinion talk for all of the consumers of the product? What exactly is the definition of “cool”? I think that many people just buy the products because it is a certain brand name, or a certain celebrity was wearing it, regardless of what it might say. This is why coolhunting works. If one person is wearing it, it will catch on and soon become a popular item for the most part.

Grey's Episode 3

In today’s episode, Meredith’s mom comes to a completely lucid state after five years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and not remembering anything. The last thing she remembered was Meredith going away to Europe and the only thing she wanted to know was whether or not Meredith had followed in her footsteps and became a surgeon. The whole episode Meredith was trying to avoid her mother, even though everyone was telling her talk to her mother because most people aren’t given that kind of opportunity. Despite everyone’s advice, she decided to stay away from her mother, and at first I didn’t understand why. If I had the chance to speak to my mother after five years, I would jump at the opportunity. When she finally built up the courage to talk to her, her mother yelled at her and criticized her for not being the best. Then I understood why she didn’t want to talk to her, because she knew everything she accomplished in the past five years would not be good enough for her mother. I think that many parents have this standard that they expect their children to meet, and no matter what they do it’s never enough. It’s sad, because the kids beat themselves up about it and end up resenting their parents. I’m not saying that all parents are like this, in fact most aren’t. I think the best thing a parent can do is to encourage and support their kids in everything that they do. In the end, I think that Meredith’s mom realized that she made a mistake in yelling at her. Unfortunately, she went back into her state of Alzheimer’s before she could tell Meredith that. As for last week’s cliffhanger, George and Callie eloped in Vegas and Christina accepted Burke’s proposal.