Blog #11: The Last of Them

Blogging was a whole new world for me, before this assignment I had never ventured out to share my ideas with complete strangers. It truly opens up a new world in terms of connection and education. The idea of blogging is still strange to me, do people actually check on certain blogs daily in hopes of seeing something new? But this assignment also showed me how many social media sites are actually micro-blogs. Facebook and Twitter consists of mostly people sharing blurbs about their days or sharing things they enjoy and blogs aren't much different. Blogging just condenses the information while popular social media site cut it up into bite size portions.

I took this assignment very seriously, it was important to to have blogs that reflected key issues I believe are important. This blogging experience was very useful when it came to finding my own voice while writing. In most conventional English classes teachers limit the creativity of their students which severely limits the effort put forth into assignments. This assignment however did the opposite of that for me. Many classes I've taken before don't allow for you to decide what topics are important enough for you to write and put effort into. I highly enjoyed writing even short bits about issues I find not enough people talk about.

A very important thing I learned from this assignment is that everyone can write. All the blog posts I've read from my peers have been well written and interesting. This is in contrast to my previous dislike of reading my peers' work because it was like reading the same paper over and over again. This blog assignment let people share bits of themselves though. I think it's an incredibly valuable lesson to learn that anyone can write if you allow them the freedom to choose the topic. I think if there's one thing I can comment on is the assignment is that entries #7 & #9 are pretty similar. It was difficult to write about pink slime with the limited resources given without doing additional research. If anything I would say that #9 was my least favorite entry to do because it was the one that felt the most limited. Many of my classmates wrote similar or the same things for that entry which I didn't notice for any of the other entries. Besides this one issue I loved this assignment for the class. It allowed us students much more freedom than another writing project and, in my opinion, helped develop our writing styles more than any other assignment this term.

EC Blog: Food, Inc.

Food, Inc. is a documentary many have watched by now. It shows the horrors of industrial farming in a whole new light. The film starts with chicken farming. Many chicken farmers are now mass producing to keep up with corporation demand. A Tyson chicken farmer refused to let the cameras into his chicken houses after being told by the corporation not too. However, a Perdue chicken farmer allowed them in into her chicken houses. She spoke openly and honestly about how messed up the chicken industry is now. The overuse of antibiotics and improper food has made these chickens grow to twice the size in half the time. The chickens bodies can support this overdevelopment though; many of them can't move and die because their organs don't function properly. 

Another key issue discussed in the documentary is E.coli 0157:H7 cultivated due to chemicals used in industrial farming. Barbara Kowalcky, a mother from Nebraska, lost her 2 year old son after he ate a burger infected with E.coli. Now Kowalcky is working to create legislation to better monitor slaughterhouses. Surprisingly, the FDA doesn't have the authority to shut down slaughterhouses even if they repeatedly fail safety tests. Kevin’s Law was made to try to help this, by making sure the FDA actually has power. Despite new laws being drafted, the inner workings of the FDA is just as corrupt. Many top people in the FDA are also top people in industrial farming companies; making their motives very questionable. 

The issue of good food and farming is one every American should be concerned with. What we put in our bodies is extremely important to our health. We, as a country, have a very negative attitude towards things that inconvenience us in any way. However, we need to reevaluate how much our demands matter compared to the health of all of us. Personally, I value quality over quantity and would rather adjust to having less than continually destroying the earth and my health. 

Entry #10: A Coming of Age

My 21st birthday is coming around in just 2 short months as any American teenager can tell you, it's a big deal in our culture. The thing I'm most excited about isn't being able to drink in restaurants or go to bars though. I'm most excited about not being the only one of my friends not able to go to certain concerts because I'm underage. Besides that fact, the whole "drink until you're obliterated" thing isn't really my cup of tea. I've always been keen on the idea of balance, my family has a slight history of overdoing things and the thought of going down that path keeps me from losing balance.

There's this huge noise around turning 21 nowadays, this expectation for organized disaster. I don't fully understand why people make such a big deal out of it, most of us drank in high school to begin with. So why the huge fuss over continuing doing things we've been doing for years? Despite my skepticism towards the whole "life changing birthday" I'm still excited. I'm excited to not have X's on the back of my hands after I go to a show. I'm excited to not be called a child in my friend group or hear that collective groan when they want to go to a bar and I'm present. I'm excited to have the added freedom of going wherever I like at events and not waiting in the car when the boys want to buy beer for the football game. It's an exciting time in my life that I'm ready to get over with.

Entry #9: Pink Slime Scandal

Almost everyone has heard about pink slime or seen the unsavory videos of it being made in factories. So what is pink slime and is it really that bad for you? Pink slime, as it's been fondly nicknamed is actually left over beef mixed with chemicals for sterilization. Funny enough, it depends on who you ask about the health drawbacks of pink slime. Most large industries seem to all agree, this "pink slime" isn't that bad but as you know large industries value their profit margins over the health of their clients. Many people have accused McDonalds of being on of these titans of industry that use pink slime, a claim they continue to deny. But regardless of who uses and who doesn't we as people all need to stop and think how the foods we eat affect our bodies. We live in a day and age where convenience is king, people want what they want and they want it now. But that's not how the earth works, things take time to grow and can't always grow in certain conditions. It's sad to think that our own demand for bigger, cheaper products has lead us to this, pink slime.

Entry #8: Growing Pains

Growing up is rough. As an almost 21 year old girl I think I can officially say it's one of the worst things I've ever done. Between acne, constantly changing body, and suddenly caring about what people think about me it was a tough few years. When I was younger I had this intense desire to fit in, to be part of the popular group that always seemed like they were having the most fun. I worked extra hard my first year of high school trying to fit in to a new place where I knew only a handful of people. Slowly I made friends with "the popular kids" and you know what happened? It was crap. They all talked bad about each other behind the others back and every day was a game of who do we not like now. I grew up in a small school of 200-300 kids with the same 25 kids by my side from 2nd-8th grade. We had our problems and closer friends but at the end of the day we were more of a family than anything else. By my sophomore year I was completely over the idea of being popular. Instead I tried finding friends that drew out the good in me instead of cultivating this petty side I never knew I had. Flash forward to nowadays and my friend group is the best it can be. The friends I made my freshman year of college were truly the best thing to happen to me. They taught me to stop caring what people thought, that I don't need to wear makeup if I don't feel like it, and at the end of the day as long as I'm comfortable nothing else matters. Everyone needs friends like that, people who encourage them to be completely themselves. That's the one thing I want to make sure to teach my kids, your friends should reflect the traits you want yourself to have. Don't surround yourself with people due to their social status because that's not friendship. 

Entry #7: Fresh to Death

The above is a trailer for a food documentary called Fresh. They talk about various things all rotating around the theme of fresh clean food. A few farmers are featured in the film, most of who dislike the new way of industrial farming. I personally learned a lot of new information from the film, like did you know industrial farming isn't actually sustainable compared to organic farming? I've always been a fan of the natural cycle of things. It's almost magical how well the earth functions without any outside force, just nutrition flowing through one thing to another. Speaking of nutrition, industrial farming has been sucking food dry of it, in the past 50 or so years it's down 40%. Government subsidies of high fructose corn syrup has only help popularize the consumption of processed foods sadly. It's shocking to me that here in the U.S., a country known for it's desire to be #1 in all things, we're supporting something that's ruining our health. Sadly, it's not so shocking that we're ruining the earth along with it. Things can be done to help change and reverse this though! We can start being more conscious of where our food comes from, how it's treated, and how the land it's grown on is treated. As seen in Fresh it's not impossible for this natural cycle to be implicated on normal farms, plus the lack of antibiotics and junk actually saves money. It's important to be aware of the way things are going especially when they aren't working well. Hopefully with our generation we can bring an end to the inefficient practices of industrial farming and go back to how nature intended food to be grown.