Pay Attention! Or, what is our brain on the Internet?

The beginning of Chapter 7 discusses idea of avatar. People are able to chose any avatar that they like to represent themselves, and no matter what they chose, it would somehow represent who they are, even if it doesn’t look like them. The funny thing about these avatar is that, like in a real life work environment, people base their judgement on how your character look. Tony created an avatar as a overweight African American woman named Lawanda. Through Lawanda, Tony was able to see the unfair of being ignored by the other coworker because of how she looked. The unfairness is no different in work environment and virtual work environment.
The virtual world is a place for people to create a new self. They have the ability to control how they are made. They are able to pay God in their own computer desk. The virtual world allows anything to be possible. The work environment can be brought into the virtual world. A person could manage to make themselves heard because of the identity they are able to hide.

Our classroom discussion on our ideal workplace has got me to think that everyone has a very unique way of their work environments and what is most suitable for them. The most suitable workplace environment that I have discussed would be working as a open office member. I want to be able to travel around and to meet new people to work on projects. I dislike experiencing the feeling of being trapped in a boxed-like cubicle.Being able to travel around and yet representing your own company is better than staring at extensive amount of papers everyday.

In the beginning of chapter 7, Tony O’Driscoll, an African American, who knows that once people have caught themselves in a unproductive pattern, it is much easier to help them find ways to break that pattern and find a better one. He then gave an example of a women names Lawanda who is the head of a human resources department in a midsize corporation. As Lawanda enters the room for a session, she is automatically seen as being invisible. Even though, she sees everyone being acquainted among themselves, she discovers the real reason to the ignorance. The reasons were, body size, gender and cultural background. During her research, she has found out that being overweight in business is how it lowers your chance of being hired or promoted. Women executives are paid less,promoted less and given less credits compared to man executives and being African American are 50% less likely to be contacted for a job interview. (210) Workplaces are a place where you are able to develop as a person and discover new talents in which you never knew you had before. Workplaces are not meant to be a place where there must be perfection or a place in which they are told to hire specific people of one kind. I was surprised to see how a workplace could have that type of environment where everyone who was hired in that office had to be slim or non African American. I could imagine how a person would feel if they were put in a position where everyone was the same but yourself.

A cubicle to some people is a little home away from home. That is what I see in a classroom, a home away from home. But, as long as  I breathe, I will not be confined to a cubicle when I start working in business…..hopefully. But for now, I should worry on classroom spaces. I was never a fan of big classrooms especially during high school. I tried to avoid the 40+ students classes and with a lot of luck I succeeded. But Baruch managed to change that.

My first semester of Baruch put me in three classes with 110+ student. Reluctant at first I, however, grew accustomed to the large classroom environment. I eventually began to dislike small classrooms as each day passes by. The second semester rolls in and I was given 4 classes out of five  in which the size is pretty small. Now I’m still trying to readjust to the small classrooms while asking myself which is better: small or big classrooms? That question then branches off to this question: would I rather work in a small working environment or would I rather work in a large working environment.

I know where I’m not going. Good bye cubicle.

So as of a few days ago I started watching videos of George Carlin. Kind of late, I know, considering that he died in 2008. But anyway, he’s an American comedian, satirist, and GENIUS!! He talks about politics, Americans in general, human nature. He’s a comedian and he’s smart, hard to find. I just thought I woul d write about him because his life is interesting and, gave me a lot to think about. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade which is even more surprising.

I guess it made me realize that you don’t have to go to college and graduate with a 4.0 to be successful and know how to use your brain, Then again he might just be an exception.

My theater proffesor who is pretty famous, and owns a theater told me he never tok a theater class. Thats also surprising too. Makes me question college in general.

So I have decided. I’M DROPPING OUT!!!!!!

Well maybe not, I don’t have much of a back up plan.

 I read the article of Blogs vs. Term Papers from course site yesterday. I thought it’s a pretty interesting and thought-provoking piece worth of our attention. Bascially, Matt Richtel claims that we should balance the importance between blog writing and term paper writing. Furthermore, he indicates that whatever content students posted on their blogs are more naturalistic and creative than whatever they wrote in their term papers. We can see this evidence from the research of Professor Lunsford, ‘Students…they feel as if they’re actually producing something personally rewarding and valuable, whereas when they write a term paper, they feel as if they do so only to produce a grade.’ I agree with those students because blog is a place where most people feel comfortable and therefore, they are more willing to devote their time writing entries on blogs. When I was blogging, I felt I’m highly engaged with no rigidity or any boredom. On the contrary, I felt I was just following the class syllabus and writing for the final grade when I was writing a term paper. In other words, writing of term paper gives me a feeling of we’re writing to meet requirements rather than writing to express our own opinions.

  In terms of solution to this dilemma, I will say I quite approve of what Professor Lunsford suggests- that teachers can take both. Encompassing both blogs and term papers into classroom is a good idea. My suggestion for professors is to have students post their entries onto blogs twice a week and have them learn real life-related essays such as what Professor Davison used to teach: cover letters, business letters, thank you letters, career goals etc. A mere end-of-grade term paper is only a standardization to judge what grade a student deserves. It won’t suffice in preparing students for the future.