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"Pictures are worth 1000 words" lol sure

Although photographs serve as a tool for retrieving memories, they fail to tell the full story and can often give a biased view of things. With the excessive use of social media nowadays, online photos distort reality and build false personas for users. Pictures are great for capturing instant moments, but they can't explain the full situation- this leads to the formation of misconceptions misinterpretations. Furthermore, people selectively choose the pictures they want to be seen on the internet and even edit them to make them more unrealistic. Something as simple as a camera angle can even alter how people judge a photo. All of these factors contribute to people drawing their own conclusions about someone with barely any evidence. I, myself, am extremely guilty of this. Sometimes I'll just be scrolling through Instagram, clicking on accounts, and quickly drawing conclusions about someone purely based on the four pictures they've posted in the past two months. Recently, I...
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sorry? or not

Whenever the words "thank you," "please," and "sorry" come out of a person's mouth, he or she doesn't necessarily mean well; it sometimes may cause even more damage than one anticipates. Whenever I do a make a tiny mistake around adults - sometimes not even around adults - I say sorry; at a point, it actually gets annoying. I found this out when my parents started giving me a speech about saying sorry too much, that it has lost its value and I have started saying it simply as a filler word. To the extent of me saying this word, I started saying it when my mom forgot to make breakfast for me. This isn't even my fault! My mom started picking up on this after a couple times and ask, "why are you saying sorry, I was the one who forgot to make you breakfast. I should be sorry." After a few seconds, it really hit me: I do say sorry way too much when I don't actually mean it.  I doesn't end with the word "sorry," however. ...
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personal computer

In the Word Police, my favorite quote that I chose to reflect upon was "In the case of the politically correct... it's purchased at the cost of freedom of expression and freedom of speech." I especially found this quote intriguing because the author references "freedom of expression" and "freedom of speech" as if they are tangible objects that "cost" something and can be "purchased". This allows the reader to understand the sense of trading one thing (freedom), for another (being politically correct). Personally, the whole PC idea seems a little extreme to me. I'm not easily offended and take things very light-heartedly, so even the example of people asking "where are you really  from?" after you've responded multiple times with "Troy. Troy Michigan.", I never really take these things to heart. I do agree that people should think and speak respectfully, but it has come to the point where I feel as if I ...
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Balance in Life

In Woolf's piece The Death of a Moth , the moth is characterized as a creature with "enormous energy" flying "vigorously." He flew back and forth and back and forth until suddenly, he tried to fly once more "but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the windowpane." The moth's life was going perfectly well and smoothly until suddenly, it wasn't. Starting from the small tasks in life like taking a test to something monumental like a wedding, these are all things that people plan. So, although death is everyone's inevitable fate, it is one of the few things in life that we cannot prepare for. This leads to quite a paradoxical mindset. There all these motivational quotes I constantly see on social media about "living in the moment", but in our society, today, is that really possible? It seems that sometimes I am just blindly walking through life- doing things because I feel that I am ...
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dont read this if you haven't watched greys anatomy s3e13

During the summer of 2015, I went to Las Vegas for my cousin Diana's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, and although it was the first wedding that I've ever been to, it was everything I had imagined for a typical, traditional wedding. Diana and her family have lived in Vegas all their life- not to brag for them or anything, but the family of five kids live in a ginormous house with everything from a swimming pool to a tennis court. With this as my only background knowledge of Vegas, reading "Marrying Absurd" was quite a surprise for me. It messes with my mind to think that the famous "Las Vegas Lifestyle" targets a very, VERY different audience than the people who actually LIVE in Las Vegas. When driving around Vegas, there were tons of fancy cars and people wearing expensive clothing- so why is it that this city is so well known for weddings that only require "five dollars for the license" and for the bride and groom to be 18 an...
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Eating Environment

One of the distinct characteristics of David Foster Wallace’s writing style is his common use of catalog. When listing what was present at the Maine Lobster Festival in his article "Consider the Lobster", Wallace says, "Also available are lobster rolls, lobster turnovers, lobster saute, Down East lobster salad, lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, and deep-fried lobster dumplings." Another important feature that shines through his author’s voice is his extreme attention to detail and his creative ways of describing these details. Wallace writes with high diction and a variety of sentence structure and length. Below, I have inserted a small excerpt of me explaining an extreme version of our school lunchroom while adopting some of David Foster Wallace’s writing techniques. Slimy, gooey, watery substances slid around my lunch try as I walked into the cafeteria, trying to find a seat. My eyes scanned the room- jumping from the annoying freshman talking too loudly, to th...
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For better or for worse?

While reading "from Serving in Florida", I kept debating back and forth whether Barbara Ehrenreich's experience working in less than desirable conditions were worsened because of her previous privileged lifestyle or if they weren't as bad as they could have been.  They could've been worsened because she's never been put in a situation like this before. She's very fortunate and has never been treated like she was in that environment or forced to do that type of work. The difference between the two types of lifestyles is incomparable so the drastic change could've made the poor conditions seem worse than they were for the other workers. On the other hand, this experiment could've also been biased the other way around in that the situation for Ehrenreich was better than it was for the other workers. She knew that this was just an experiment for her own purposes and that none of her actions would have long-lasting impacts on her life. For instance, ...
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