Archive for month: September, 2014

Survivor Entry one.

I have never watched survivor before, but it somewhat reminds me of the show called the challenge. But from after watching this for the first time, I knew that communication was key to win this game. The episode starts off with nine couples stranded in Nicaragua. The first thing they do is practice how to make a fire. So far, my favorite team is Dale and Kelly; father and daughter. They seemed like they were communicating the best. My second favorite team is the gay couple. They were able to make their fire fast. I am a little confused how people try for years to get on this show. Nadyia and Natalie seem like they are going to argue a lot with each other throughout their time on the show. If you win, you get a million dollars, which seems like a dream come true. They split into two teams. I thought the couples were going to be able to work with each other, guess not! The first challenge deals with untangling a rope and then lassoing it. Jeremy does the first challenge. He gets to compete against his wife! Jeremy beats his wife. He sends her off with Keith.  It seems like everyone likes Jeremy, but he has a big head. I feel bad for Dale because he is the oldest on his team. He was able to start the fire with his glasses and I think he was able to redeem himself. On day one of Exile Island, Val didn’t tell the other guy what was on her paper. The blue team made themselves a structure for their shelter. John doesn’t want them to know he was professional baseball player.

Josh’s eyes starts burning and he doesn’t know what to wear. The second challenge is an obstacle course. The yellow team is the first team to hook the rope. It is a close challenge because the blue team is coming back fast. The blue team won! I really thought the yellow team was going to win. The blue team was able to work together and figure out a way to complete the challenge by communicating and working consitantly. The blue team has immunity. They plan on kicking off Naydia; but Naydia starts talking to the gay guy on her team to make an alliance. This team was also making a girl alliance. It was between Dale and Nadyia and they chose Nadyia.

In the previous class we started by sharing our short and long goals in our life which it was very exciting to learn about other students goals and how we created visions to achieve our goals. What really surprised me was that everybody had realistic goals because when I talked to my friends or relatives most of them had unrealistic goals. For instance, some of them want and dream about playing basketball in NBA, or being an actor or actress in Hollywood which statistically have less probability to occur. I really like the idea to write down our goals and then put it in an envelop because later when we open it, that would surprise all of us. I believe success started by making first decision and then follow it. That is really good to have a vision and create our goals and then use our full potential to achieve our goals. I am pretty hopeful and optimistic to achieve my goals, but the most important thing for me is that to use my full potential and be in the right track. I have learned that not to fight with outcomes. I just do my job, and be the best I can be, then, there is nothing to be worried and accept the outcome. After talking about our goals, we discussed about NCLB which I really learned about some aspects of educational system in California. I was surprised to learn about private and public schools which it seems that it needs a ground research to find out the differences. I have never had a chance to study at high school in U.S, therefore, I had no experience to share, but I learned a lot from my classmates. Furthermore, I hope everybody achieve all their goals in future.

During the history of America, African-Americans have been experienced oppression, prejudice, and discrimination. Those horrible experiences were not caused by nature. Race and culture are socially constructed. For instance, African-American, Asian-American, Middle-Eastern- American, or Iranian-American are all socially constructed. We rarely hear the word White-American or European-American because those people who had power in history, they did not want to constructed. As humans, we were and we are all responsible for that discrimination. African-Americans have high rate of drop from schools and being poor in the U.S. 24 percent of African-American live on poverty, and they don’t have equal opportunity to continue their educations. Those oppression and discrimination from the past, made Blacks to suffer many psychological problems and still continues. On the one hand, everybody have a negative attitude towards racism, but on the other hand, we do not take enough action to eliminate discrimination. Action speaks lauder than words. We need to take an action. We need to educate people to understand the underlying problem of discrimination, especially, towards Blacks. As a result, we, humans, created this discrimination, and we have to finish it all together.

Hey guys It’s KJ from GamersGuild

So I set up this blog just for fun and was hoping if anyone cared to write stuff and tell me stuff about games, news and other exciting stories you guys are more then welcome to do so.

Currently I am the only admin to this section of the page, excluding the admins for class so long as I am on campus and in school this page will be alive for another year and a half.

G.G

I feel that last’s week session was a little emotional. In the activity that we did we realized how must of have gone through many things in life to be where we are today. Some have suffer more than others. Most of us where in the back of the line during this activity, it touched me when i saw some of my class mates taking a step back when Jaimie said, “Take a step back if you were hungry because there was no food to eat”, i was sad because thank god my parents are hard workers and before anything they always provide me with something to eat every single day. I was able to see the difference between parents that have grown up in the U.S.A, with a college degree  that are able to provide more to their children to those parents that have migrated to the U.S.A with no education and have had a hard time providing the necessary to their children like most of the Latinos parents. The way i saw this activity was to be thankful of our success in life that we have achieved. And also to be thankful for our parents who have gone through many things to get us where we stand today, because I saw that everyone took a step forward if our parents supported us to get an education. I feel that we are all standing in the same line because we are in school working hard for our future, and at the end it doesn’t matter what our ethnicity is or if people expect us not to achieve because we are all going to make it.

As for the readings, I found them a bit complicated.  But i kept re-reading the articles over and over and making side notes to understand better.  When i read ch.8 i was sad to read that Latinos and Blacks have a low rate of graduating. I feel that this reading relates to the activity we did in class and lasts weeks reading. I feel that these rates in Latinos and Blacks are low because that’s what they’re expected to be. Like i said before if they have no support and people have no hope in Latinos or Blacks than they do not try their best. Every ethnicity should be treated the same, and the color of your skin or background should have nothing to do with college acceptance, like the white guy who didn’t get accepted to the university he applied for because of his skin color.  I feel that we have very much work to do in supporting our minority group to try their best and not let others tell them they cant because of their ethnicity. There shouldn’t be forecasting a change in 25 years, they should be forecasting a change staring today right away to eliminate the discrimination.

This week’s reading was very interesting. I am still trying to process my thoughts about it. Before the reading I felt that Affirmative action, while not entirely fair, is necessary in America. I feel that it is needed because there are still many prejudice infrastructures in American companies that disqualify minorities from opportunities in the workforce.  I am referring to situations where qualified individuals are rejected on the basis of gender and, or ethnicity. I am not referring to the caricature of affirmative action that gives a minority a whopping advantage over an equally qualified white male. I do not believe that in any situation the minority is given a huge advantage. I do  have to recognize the fact that if two people are equally competent it is unfair to give that position to a minority simply because they are the minority. I recognize the problems with affirmative action, but still find it useful. I do not think that the reading has changed my opinion, but rather given me more to reflect on and opened my eyes to the complexity of this issue.

Is affirmative action unfair? I would argue no. I brought up the point that it is unfair to give someone a position for being a minority over a non minority, and it is, I am not contradicting myself. The problem is that while the scenario presented above may occur it most often does not, in fact the opposite is what realistically occurs, it is for this very reason that affirmative action was created. The intentions of affirmative action are to create an even opportunity, not an advantaged opportunity, for the minority.While there are scenarios such as the case of the Regents of The University Of California v. Baak (who was not admitted to the University of California at Davis in spite of his academics to leave room for minority applicants) we can not ignore the fact that in other scenarios, such as finding employment, the majority of the time Baak has and will be chosen over those very minorities that were admitted into UCD instead of him.

It is important to note that the largest beneficiaries are not people of color, but women. Also the second largest group of recipients of affirmative action are middle, and upper middle class people of color. The evidence of these two groups being largest beneficiaries of affirmative action is important for two reasons. Firstly because it deconstructs the argument that inept people of color are being handed opportunities that they are not fit for. People of middle and upper middle class status, and women in America are generally educated, so it is unfair to argue that they are given these opportunities without merit. Secondly this evidence tells us that affirmative action is not enough to create equal opportunity, education is. If minorities are not meeting the required academic results needed to receive higher education America needs to fix inequalities in education at a much earlier level and stop attempting to take shortcuts.