Archive for year: 2015
Thoughts on Death and Dying
Thinking about death has always been something that makes me uncomfortable. I used to think that these uneasy feelings surrounding death were “normal”. However, the more I think about it, and talk about it, the more I think my feelings are influenced by the culture and society I live in. Death is not something that has been openly discussed in my life and is not something I have had much experience with. When deciding to embark on a career in healthcare I was nervous and curious to see how my thoughts surrounding death would develop. I knew I would be more readily putting myself in situations where I would be exposed to dying and death and I felt this might be really good for my personal development. Death is something everyone will have to go through at some point. I feel gaining comfort with death and dying most likely makes you more able to help not only others through the process but to help yourself when the time comes.
I’ve had limited conversations with family members and friends surrounding death. I feel confident in my parents and significant other that they know me well enough to make a decision I would be happy with if something were to happen. However, I think it is important we have more conversations to better understand each other and what we would want. Hopefully clarifying our thoughts would make things easier for those having to make the decisions if something were to happen. I love that there are organizations such as Death Over Dinner encouraging individuals to talk more openly about death.
If I am ever put in the position to influence some of the events surrounding my death there are a few things I would focus on. I would want to ensure the “important things” are incorporated into the end of my life. To me this is spending my final moments with loved ones. I would want to surround myself with family, friends, and animals that I love. It would also be important to me to be in a place that I am comfortable with. For me this would most likely be being at home and being outside as much as possible. I would love to be able to make a final visit to the mountains and the ocean not only for myself but also to bring my loved ones on a final adventure together to remind them of the things that matter most.
Prepare and rest for tomorrow!
Good luck on the exam tomorrow. We will be starting the next section on oncology after the exam for the last hour of class. Come prepared and get good sleep tonight!
Still Diving In
Hello and good afternoon, this week has been a very colorful(no pun intended) week as I am still diving into the communities of LGBT. If you have not been following my blog, I will sum things up for you in just a few words. I have been taking on and researching the social issues that might occur using different types of techniques. First I started with the database here at school to get some hard to the facts literature on the subject. Then it was off to the internet to see what else I could find out and if there was anything I could do to help or show support to those that rally for equal rights. At first it was scanning FaceBook and Twitter to acclimate myself with the terrien. Then I spent a couple of weeks just lurking around and seeing what I could. Now here I am engaging in the LGBT and having some interesting conversations to say the very least. At first I was met with some hesitation and unpleasantries, but now I can honestly say that I have met some awesome people. Now that you are all caught up let’s get to this week’s topic, The various effects Halloween has on some.
Halloween is a time for most of us to dress up and be someone or something that we are not. May it be a superstar athlete, a mutated zombie, superhero, in my case a super-villain or whatever fun get up you can think of. But for many people that are transgender it is the one day they get to shed their costumes. The costume that they have to wear all year long, being someone they are not. Both transgender men and women get this one day to be who they truly are without ridicule or worry. Now we all know that more and more people are transitioning from one gender to the other and that the western world is starting to open their eyes to and hearts to those doing so, and I give those people all due respect.
On Halloween night, I was at a party where there was an entire cabaret of Drag Queens on parade, and it was fantastic. There was Joan Rivers, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield and many more. I spoke to many of the girls and they were all having the time of their lives going party to party showing off their beauty, inside and out. Many said that they were transgender, but this was an especially special night for them as they could really shine. As one sang out loud, “There ain’t no stopping us now”! and I don’t think anyone was going to try.
The next day while scrolling through Twitter, I ran across some similar stories of people that had strong ties to Halloween and being able to shine on that special day. Halloween is a special time for me as I get to use my creative side, the side that most people never see. That sentence has a whole new meaning to it now as I sum up this week’s blog. “A side that most people never see,” that phrase just leaves me speechless. It leaves me like that because I am talking about my hobby, not who I am inside. It leaves me in silence because I know that many people are waiting eagerly for 364 to pass so they can shine again.
Next week I will be covering some health issues and ways to deal with them. Until then, remember to smile at others, get someone to laugh out loud, and have a fantastic day.
CDR
Challenge 5 pt 2
This challenge is about engaging and researching more about the topic we chose in social media sites. The topic that I chose was Refugee Crisis which is one of the big problems in the world we have. I started to think which social media site I would use, so I logged onto my Facebook account which i hardly use and finally used it for a good cause. I also used my Instagram account to find out more about refugee crisis. In face book I saw so many posts about refugee crises when i typed it in. It was almost every hour someone was making a new a post and alerting the world what is happening in their own countries. There are a few posts I’m going to focus on for this week, next weeks and hopefully in the future is about a post on how kids arrive by themselves in other countries. Its still sad too see that kids leaving their countries with no parents because of whats going on in their countries. But when I was reading the post most of the kids traveling by themselves were with their parents but they just disappeared on the way. Most of the kids that fled the country to get to another were between the ages of 14-17. They mostly fled because of poverty issues, recruitment of soldiers, war, getting kidnapped to be suicide bombers, and deaths of family members. The most posts I also saw were posts on how to help refugee crisis and how can you donate cloths, money and foo to those that need it. I was really looking into some of those posts because it be neat helping some of the refugee crisis kids that are suffering in other parts of the world. On Instagram there was a picture that really meant something to me it was a picture of a kid staring at a boat and it said,” No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” ( Warsen Shire). To me that meant that the child is safe in the water because they are either beiing shipped to another place for safety or someone for sure is going to find them and put them at least a better place where the war isn’t going on. Its sad to see kids suffering in these kind of situations. I think about it sometimes and see how can the world be so cruel to a young child and treating them badly. I hope to participate someday in some kind of help to save kids from refugee crisis in the future. Hopefully in these days till next week I engage in some kind of activity like that.
New Threaded Comments in VoiceThread
The long wait is over…and the irony of the Voice”Thread” name has been put to rest! VoiceThread has released the following new commenting options.
- Direct reply. This feature enables only the owner of a VoiceThread to leave a direct reply to any comment left in that VoiceThread. A direct reply appears as a regular comment, but is inserted directly after the selected comment. This eliminates the need for an instructor to “move” a comment into proper sequence. Students do not have the ability to leave direct replies. Click here for more information about Direct Replies.
- Private reply. All users with access to a VoiceThread may leave private replies in response to a comment. This will be particularly useful for sharing important feedback to students that isn’t appropriate for a group setting. Click here for more information about Private Replies.
- Threaded comments. This feature is turned off by default. It can be enabled in a VoiceThread in the playback settings. To leave a Threaded comment, click the comment to which you want to reply and click the threaded icon. Threaded comments are represented by a circle instead of the usual rounded rectangle. Threads cannot be built off of threads. Click here to learn more about Threaded Comments.
These are new to me too, so I created a VoiceThread so we can try them out together. Feel free to participate in the VoiceThread above (this will require you to log-in to your existing VT account or create a free one).
I Try Commenting This Time
This week we are still trying to reach out to these organizations and groups about our topic. My topic is health. I chose to look at the organization: World Health Organization or (WHO). I noticed they commented back when people would comment on something that they posted. So I thought I would give it a try. I put the simple question, “What can one do in California, U.S?”. (This was from a post about polio being Iraq) I had no response from WHO, which surprised me because when people would ask this organization a question like this they usually responded. What I did notice was that a person commented after me praising the organization and WHO did respond to him. So I thought well maybe I should post something praising this organization, or by asking another question. I guess WHO could comment on a few but not all.
I noticed that they have a new topic this week. Now they are talking about the cyclone Chapala that is going to hit Yemen. They are raising awareness and working to help prepare these people. They are also talking about the cholera vaccination that they are organizing in Iraq. Not only that but they are spreading awareness for the antibiotic resistance, which is when people refuse to get treated. This results in disease that normally would have been cured “to undermining advances in medicine”(WHO). I personally had no idea that these things were going on in the world and I find it helpful that this organization is doing something about it. I thought it was just the U.S who had people who didn’t want to get vaccinated (separate things), but either way it is a serious medical issue.
Here is a link to WHO
A Modern View
One of my biggest take aways from this week was my voicing to political leaders. Regardless if they respond or not, it feels so different as to simply saying it to someone else in person. Hashtags are a brilliant idea that have revolutionized organization amongst the masses as clearly stated in this weeks TED talk. Lurking is not just lurking any longer. With the press of a button you can now directly interact and participate in any movement you feel strongly about.
This tool that humans have manufactured that has progressively and magnificently improved can be the way out of social injustice and outdated methods that don’t correspond with the modern view.
More and more I’m beginning to feel not just a desire to participate but to actually establish an important role that can change the world.
We all feel as if we are destined for something great. At least that’s how I feel. Without this desire we would wake up without any motivation, drive, or optimism.
With the use of Twitter, and even just the web in general this desire is becoming a reality.
Realizing this power that is a passcode away should be and one day hopefully will be the end to a barrier that has kept voices repressed and ideas rejected.
With my contribution towards this issue comes a great responsibility to make this issue understood by everyone in my reach.
The tools are here, ready for me to use. So I will, everyday I get the chance to and I know I can make a change.
Challenge 5: Component 2: Actively Re-tweeting
This is another week of engaging with our social topics. Last week I had a lot of interpersonal issues, this week I decided to try to just let those go and re-tweet more things that I saw which grabbed my attention. Most articles, pictures, or posts in general that I clicked on regarding my topic are things that I re-tweeted. This is a big step for me because like I stated before, it takes a lot of me to feel comfortable, but I’m just trying to go for it. Last week I left a comment on an Instagram page, which didn’t get a response, but I knew it was a fifty-fifty chance. I tried to engage more this week by re-tweeted more, a lot more than I expected from myself. One of the quotes that I re-tweeted was from the United Nations Human Rights Twitter page which read, “ #RefugeeCrisis: Migration doesn’t threaten any culture. Every society on this planet was fashioned by women & men who came from elsewhere.” This really spoke to me because I feel like it has so much truth to it, humans are treating other humans as if their lives have no meaning and this is so sad. Reading and seeing all of the news on the refugee crisis makes me question the world and what we can do to help. I see so many organizations and random people dropping everything to help, and this gives me hope that the world will get the bigger picture. This will have been done by participatory culture of the Internet getting people together and making that change. Although I have not gotten any responses from anyone, I see a step in the right direction regarding my engaging process. I do not feel as apprehensive to post things that I feel are important for others to know about. My plan for next week is to continue to re-tweet, adding some comments on these links and even trying to spark a conversation by tagging someone directly or even just acknowledging someone for the things they are doing for the refugees. I’m hoping maybe one of those techniques will allow me to grow and develop more with my topic and being more active online. Although it has taken me some baby steps to get to this point, I can only myself getting better from here.
Challenge 5: Engage PT 2
Hello Everyone! For this weeks challenge we continued in our attempt to engage in social media for our respective topics. My topic as usual has been mental health and instead of just retweeting things I found interesting on my topic I decided to look for people that were doing important work for Mental Health. Here is how that went.
For my topic of Mental Health I hopped on the hashtag #mentalhealth and looked at the list of users that would pop up. Here is a picture of the top results.
If you look at the picture you can tell that many of the main accounts that are ran for mental health do not have a clear author and are some organization. Since the majority of the accounts on the top list did not have a face to them I was hesitant on sending them a message in fear that I would get something automated. As I continued to search the hashtag however I found a user that was very interesting. When I ran into the account by user @garyhgoodridge, I read his bio and learned that he was an MMA fighter in the UFC and an amateur boxing champion. The reason he popped into my feed; unfortunately, was because he suffered from permanent brain damage suffered from his career as a fighter. Due to his brain injury he suffers from depression and other mental health issues. I tweeted at him asking if he suffering from mental health has impacted his love for the sport but as of now he only liked it and not replied. 
Another noteworthy item I found while attempting to engage was this article about people coming together to end the stigma on mental health.
The screenshot above is the article I mentioned and it tells how Canada has come together to implant a system to improve mental health. They claim that in Canada mental health is the 3rd highest reason that people call out of work and if they were to implement some sort of system to improve the overall mental health it would actually be profitable. Other than this article I also retweeted another tweet about another group attempting to do the same thing and I found in both interesting and wonderful that people in different countries are coming together to finally make a difference on the mental health issue. Thanks for reading! See you guys next week.
