Summer and a recap of Freshman Year!

What are the plans for this summer?

I can't believe that we will be finished with school in less than a month! It is crazy to think that I am nearing the end of my first year of college. But I can't wait for summer time.

I love the winter, I think it's my favorite season of the year, but summer time is so relaxing and I really need some time off. Plus, I want to spend time with my family and do some things I've been meaning to do for a while now, but have not been able to because of school, like working to save up for a new car.

This summer I am planning to go to Disney Land, Washington (the state), maybe Georgia, and I'll probably do something cool for my birthday. That's also one of the cool things about summer time, it's my birthday. This year I will be turning 19, and although there will be no real difference except for yet another year that has gone by, I feel like I am slowly leaving behind a stage in my life that I will never get back to. It sucks to think that these will be my last few years being a teenager. I also feel like the older I've been getting the faster time has been passing me by.

To me, it's just a shocker that I will be finishing my first year at Sac State already. I remember being super anxious and nervous at orientation and the first day of school, now look at how far I've come. I can only imagine how fast it's going to be getting to graduation. But I don't even want to think about that at this time, life is so great. I just want to enjoy the very last days I have left for this school year at Sac. But I have truly grown and learned how to become a better and more responsible person throughout this entire process.

Response to Muller

Richard Muller argues that we should consider how we are storing nuclear waste. He mostly argues that we should not be worrying about nuclear waste because we should never have the problem in the first place. The government is not making sound decisions about what to do with the waste that we have accumulated through the years for no good reason.

I think Muller's argument was good because he gave some really good points about the entire situation. But he did not offer his own plan of solution to this problem. I wanted to hear more answers. He didn't argue a solution which kind of left me lingering. I want to know what he plans for us to do in order to get rid of this problem. Because its a huge problem that we should all be thinking about.

His language was very effective, he used words that caught my attention and phrases as well. For example when he asked if we were insane, thinking that we could just dump all the waste in capsules and bury them under water, he really made me giggle because it's a serious question that sounds kind of crazy. The entire concept is crazy.

College, is it worth the hassle?

My source was a short article about 6 key findings about college graduates vs high school graduates. Here is the link http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/11/6-key-findings-about-going-to-college/. Its a very short piece and includes mostly graphs. But the graphs tell a lot about the entire situation.

We are all in college, and our parents, or someone is investing a lot of time, effort and money in gaining our degree. But is it all really worth it? This question probably races through a lot of our minds as we go on with our daily lives going to class and working or doing whatever it is we all do.

If you look at the key findings in this article you would argue that the degree is definitely worth the time, effort, and money. While the numbers add up and they really do get you thinking, I want to see how much of a difference it really makes to have your degree, or even the difference in the type of degree you have attained. There are many who go for the 2 year plan instead of the 4 year plan. What really is the difference between the two plus the ones who simply graduated high school?

There are so many different factors that contribute to this controversy. There are not enough, books, charts, graphs, articles, or stories I could read that would really give me the right answer. All I could really do is try it myself. I know school isn't for everyone and there are many who will do just fine without a degree, but I want to have an idea of the actual differences and the actual benefits.

My Tumblr Addiction

I have been on Tumblr for about four years now. Honestly, I don't even know what I like so much about it, but I am obsessed! I have totalled 5,835 posts in these four years. I don't even remember how I got into it in the beginning. I remember just becoming super obsessed. It was something that would interfere with my daily life because I was on it so much. Nowadays, and especially during my senior year, I did not go on it as much. But ever since I've gotten the app on my iPhone, the whole thing has gotten worse.

I think for me it's not any other social media outlet that is the problem. For me it would definitely be Tumblr. I cannot get off of it. I find myself on it thinking I will only stop by the website for 10 minutes then get back to whatever I was doing and before I know it, its been around 1 hour that I've been on it.

I know its not very healthy for me to be on it so much but I find it makes my days better. I will find funny posts, serious posts, rants, posts of fruit, posts of very pretty girls, posts of very handsome guys, posts about life, about love, about school, about everything. I wish I were tumblr famous but then I think about it and would rather not. Those people basically run their blogs like it is their career!

But Tumblr is also my way of letting go. I can always just log on to Tumblr after a really long day and relax. It's my thing. My Tumblr link is on my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Everywhere I go I am just looking for new Tumblr followers.

So take a look at my blog, you could really get to know me as a person if you look at it.

Heres the link... http://briannda.tumblr.com/

Response to Turkle

Technology is so advanced that we are not going to be able to get rid of it. There are also many pros to having technology, but we have become too immersed in the technological world. We have to learn how to live with it or else our lives are going to be so unhappy. Have you ever tried not being on your phone for a whole day? I tried it not too long ago and it felt so miserable. But why would it feel so miserable if I have lived before without a phone? There are really no excuses at this point to say that we cannot live without our phone. If we tried hard enough we could. Sometimes it is good to take a break so that you can focus on what matters. We complain we do not spend enough time with our families and friends, but when we do spend time with them we do not focus our time and attention on them which does not make sense at all.

"Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model."

The other day, I was bored and was browsing the internet. Out of no where I came across a TED Talk. For those of you who have never heard or seen a TED Talk, they are basically just presentations, big or small, that people give. Usually, it's people spreading ideas or sharing their stories. There are very interesting talks.

I watched a talk given by a supermodel about her insecurities and the luck she's had in "winning the genetic lottery". She speaks about the fallacies of what people believe model's lives are like. In reality, she describes that it is exhausting to have to worry about how you look everyday of your life. Her points were very interesting, because as a model, I would have expected she say something completely different. From my perspective models get the best clothes, wherever they go they get all the attention, they are said to be the most beautiful girls in the world. It's very surprising to see that being a model is not all it's cut out to be. She speaks about how the pictures everyone sees of her are not truly her. Those are all pictures that are retouched and enhanced to create the "perfect" image.

After watching the video I began to think about the things she was saying. I agreed with most of it, but then after reading some of the comments I realized that she speaks about the modeling industry in very critical terms but she is still a model. One person in the comments mentioned that her courage was respected but that her actions were contradicting the points she was trying to make. Even after she speaks against the fallacies of the model industry, she will still continue with her career. But to me it only makes sense. She is getting paid millions of dollars for what she is doing in the end. Of course she is going to continue. But there has to be credit given where she stood her ground and describes the inaccuracy of her lifestyle and the harm it is causing other girls.

But here's the link for any of you who want to see it, let me know what you guys think!

http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model

From the Bay to the Universe!

If you have already started reading, and you are trying to read a short blog post, I suggest you close the page and read someone else's blog because this one is going to be a long one.

I come from the Bay Area. The hub of hippies in Berkeley, the Hyphy Movement, E-40, Mac Dre, San Francisco homelessness featuring San Francisco's richest in Russian Hill, Sea Cliff, etc. Oaklandish, the SF 49ers and the Oakland Raiders, Silicon Valley, the beaches, the food, the people, the vibes. Everything you've ever wanted is in the Bay Area. Of course, to me everything about the Bay is the best. I grew up there. Entirely my whole life has passed there. I have accustomed to the life in the Bay and I can surely tell anyone that whoever is from the Bay reps the Bay till the day the die. If you don't, quite frankly, you are a disgrace, and you have no sense of appreciation. I know that sounds harsh but how could you not be proud of one of the best places in the entire planet?

One of the most noticeable Bay Area attributes, would be their rappers, the ones who started the Hyphy Movement and the ones that came after, who were influenced by those who created Bay Area rap. Many know about E-40, Mac Dre, and The Pack, those who don't probably have never listened to the radio. Those of us from the Bay grew up listening to these rappers. Many aspired to reach the heights the rappers who coined the Hyphy Movement reached, and one is actually on the road to the success they achieved.

Gerald Earl Gillum better known as G-Eazy or Young Gerald is hitting the box office, selling out shows a month in advance, touring the world and growing his fan base, all the while being an independent rapper who isn't planning on getting signed by any record labels anytime soon. His goals so far have been doing what he loves (recording music, living the lifestyle of a star, and growing his fanbase) and representing the best of the best from the Bay. He is planning on growing his fame by staying true to his roots, remembering that he has come from the bottom and will not stop until he's reached the top. His number one hit, Runaround Sue, a remake of the original by Dion, puts him on record as the James Dean of rap. His slick back gelled hair, all black outfit with the signature leather jacket is only one of the aspects of his image that sets him apart from other rappers in the West and East Coast. He has appeared on shows with E-40, A$AP Ferg, Drake, Lil Wayne, Big Sean, and many others. He received his B.A. in Music Industry Studies from Loyola University of New Orleans and toured while in school but had to make many difficult decisions between touring with Drake or staying in school.

That's just some of his background, it would honestly be too much for me to include everything I possibly could find out about him. My thing with him is his vibe. This super chill, wait till I reach the top type of vibe. He is so true to his roots, which makes me even more excited about him. It's always amazing to know someone like that could make a life for himself. There is a sense of accomplishment coming from his music. The fact that he talks about things that everyone from the Bay knows about and can relate to makes his music even better. "Everywhere I go, bro I rep the Bay", thinking about everyone that has helped him get to where he is at, basically touring with all of them. I know what it's like to live in the streets of Oakland, I may not be directly from Oakland, but I know people I am literally right next to Oakland and the fact that hes gotten this far, really makes me believe that what you set your mind to will be accomplished if you really try. His rap makes sense, it is true, it does not exaggerate, it does talk only about doing drugs, having sex with women, and what all other rappers brag about. He speaks only what he has lived through and it just so happens that being from the Bay I can completely understand where he's coming from. I have never really liked a rapper this much. Of course he is physically attractive to me as well, but his music is what I admire the most.

But there you have it, my rant about G-Eazy, officially my favorite rapper of all time. I just can't wait to see him live and finally meet him playing at some show in the Bay, probably the Fillmore.

How Effective Are Advertisements?

Above is a picture of my ad, I chose it because I think it is an effective advertisement. The advertisement's argument is to play Game Boy’s new handheld device. The author wants to convince the audience that they should play the new Game Boy. The author is Nintendo and we know they are video game producers. They value sneaking around and hiding stuff from parents. They have a very sneaky personality. The target audience is teenage boys. The audience would read this text because they like playing video games and it appeals to something that they go through which is being grounded. The text is found in the bottom of the advertisement. It looks like it might have been used in the 90s. There are no emotional appeals. There are no facts, or evidence provided in the ad. But the author talks about being grounded, which is something that many teenagers can relate to.

I thought the advertisement was effective because their message is very relatable. When you are grounded your parents usually take away your phone or they don't let you go out and for many guys, they will prohibit your use of video games. The handheld device, since small could be hidden. This may sound like I am a bad person or whatever, but I used to do this all the time when I was "grounded" I would just hide my iPod touch or hide my other devices, so that my parents would just take away my phone. It wasn't that bad of an idea. But the actual message they are conveying is bad because they are essentially telling you to sneak around and disobey your parents. None the less, the advertisement is pretty convincing.

Having a little sister, is literally the best thing ever!

I don't know how many of you have siblings, but having siblings is amazing. It's like having a pet that actually replies to you and sometimes gets really mad at you and yells at you or throws the occasional TV remote at you. But having a younger sister is the best. She will be your best friend till the end of time and she will share a bond with you that no one else will.

I love having a little sister because she is like the mini version of me. She is so alike but at the same time she is completely different. There's a quote that totally describes our relationship, it reads, "In a way I was incredibly proud of her (not that I had any intention of letting it show while I was beating the crap out of her)." It's funny because she is the apple of my eye but sometimes she can be so rude. I am the type of person that likes to show affection and be very in contact with others. My sister hates it when I go into her room and kiss her and hug her. There are literally a certain number of times she has told me that she loves me but when she does, she reveals a little secret about how much she admires and looks up to me.

If I didn't have her I don't know who I could share all my secrets with and who's opinion I would think about before I do anything stupid. I love it more than anything else in the world.

The Food Issue Response

While reading Foer's "Against Meat" I kept wondering why I had never thought about eating meat that way. Most of what Foer was explaining made sense but I really couldn't accept the idea. I feel like it doesn't make sense that we should not kill the animals because we would not kill another person. I strongly believe in the idea that we are part of a cycle. The only way to survive is to kill other animals and eat the meat. It makes sense. We have been doing this for so long, basically since time started. How could we as a society stop eating meat all together when it is a staple in our diets.

There were many other theories he described in the piece. Basically talking about human values and their ways of thinking. For example, when he talked about how parents lie to their kids and the kids with their naivety catch the parents in lies where they cannot get out, there is a sudden change in the game. We always grow up with these "rules" that no one ever really refutes because they are so drilled into our brains. It's the same with the meat strategy. Foer was so used to eating meat and his grandmother never shared stories to him of how the meat and the food was produced because no one really thinks about that, its just something that we know and that we do.

Technology...is it hurting our language skills or strengthening them?

After reading chapter 13 of "They Say I Say" there seems to be a substantial amount of criticism and support for the advancement of technology and how it has influenced our language/reading/writing skills. From my opinion, the text spoke volumes about reading online and the substance of online communication. I love reading articles and almost always, after reading an article, I read the comments and most of the time I do not respond simply because I find it to be tedious work (there are so many people/comments it seems overwhelming). But the comments for the most part are not irrelevant/stupid. I find them to be very controversial and a good way to spark conversation. I find it so interesting that we can communicate in any given time at any given place about the same thing, while never even meeting the other person in the real world. But I love this ability to perform online, whenever I read an article online I go for the comments after because that's the only discourse I could get out of the article. Most of the time, a teacher is not going to give the class the article to read and talk about and analyze, that's just impossible. But to think about all the ideas/questions I have after reading the article and having no place to go to after is dumbfounding, I like having those discussion boards and comments to look back to.

In terms of the rapidness and amount of information we get on a daily basis, that is different. My COMS 5 teacher said, just the other day when we were talking about using easybib.com, that it would be irrelevant for her to tell us not to use the site for our bibliographies, because it would essentially be like telling us not to use the library for books. She is right about that, she claimed she did not like the website because it made it easier for us to write our bibliographies when she and others before us had to suffer and look for everything manually. Yet, she understood that we have these resources at our availability and we should be using them. After all, someone did go out of their way to create the website, database, or whatever program/process for our use.

Yet, I am part of the millennial age group and our whole lives have basically been run by technology and we frankly cannot live without it at this point.

New Friends

Since I arrived at Sac State, I have met many people. Making new friends was king of hard for me at first. I felt like I had to do anything and everything in order to meet new people when I first got here. I made some decisions that were not the best when I first started and hung around people that were not really trying to be my friends, simply just making school harder and stressing me out about everything. Luckily, I met the people I am friends with now.

I honestly don't know what I would have done right now, that I've been in a need for friends, if I didn't have the people I currently hang out with now. Making friends in college turned out to be harder than I thought. Although the people here are very nice and they are open minded, you never know who is truly your friend.

Recently, I've come to realize that you never truly know someone until you hit their breaking point. It can be very stressful to hang around the wrong people and that's why you always have to be careful who you wind up with. But at a time like this and in the age we are in, friendship is what is going to get us through the hardest times we are going to face. College has proven to be nothing like high school and I have realized that you need people who will truly be there for you no matter the situation in order to survive through it.

Writing Process

Believe it or not, I haven't really written anything big since I started college. The biggest paper I wrote was last (also my first) semester and it basically stood as my final. The paper was supposed to be at least 12 pages long to get a C and 20 pages to get a B or an A. I thought the professor had not done a very good job teaching us in class and that he was being ridiculous for making us write such a long essay for basically only two topics that were simply not that extensive. I decided the best idea, which turned out to get me a C in the class, was to write close to the minimum (I wrote only 13 pages). This essay was really hard for me given that I had not written an essay that long before in my entire life and also that I had not written an essay in it's sense since May before I took my AP tests Senior year in high school.

My only approach was to simply start writing based on the little knowledge I already had about the topics. After that, I realized I really knew nothing about anything, so I did a little bit of research. My research was not great because I didn't really know what the professor wanted me to write about. He had simply given us a paper that had the two topics and a couple of questions. In drafting my essay I did not really think about the topic I just wrote down fact after fact I had researched online. In terms of getting feedback, I didn't even have a clue where the writing center was at and didn't bother to ask for help because I thought the professor might not even entirely read 30+ people's essays. I hated the class, it was my first semester and I didn't really find the assignment relevant to the class, which he cancelled basically every other week. So, writing a paper for the class was dreadful.

After I realized that I was not going to put in the hard work for the paper, I just decided I would write about a page everyday for a week. I mostly sat around my friend's house and asked them to help me as much as they could. They were the only editing I got done for that paper. I ended up writing half of the paper totally last minute (two days before it was due), that's probably also why I got the grade that I did. I know I should have researched the topics more, I was being lazy and I didn't want to get any help because I didn't really want to do the assignment. I know now that you must really take into consideration the different steps to writing a piece.

Hello Welcome to my Blog!

Hello everyone!

My name is Brianda Perez Avila. But usually I just tell people I'm Brianda Perez. My name is hyphenated but I don't do it. I am from Guanajuato, Mexico but have lived here practically all my life. I have a younger sister who is only sixteen, so it's just me and her.

I am a first year Government major with a focus on International Relations. I do not know exactly what I am going to end up doing, but for now I really want to join the CIA. I also want to learn Arabic or Farsi so I can travel to the Middle East. I hope to focus on Foreign Policy once I join the CIA. I want to go to the Monterey Institute of International Affairs when I finish my undergraduate studies at Sac State.

I am writing this blog for my English 5 class at Sac State.