Blurred Lines and Fishbowls

As I walked into class, I heard the song "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke playing on the speakers. Dean Almandrez was projecting an image of the song's lyrics on the television so that we could read along while the song was going on. At first, I was tapping my foot along to the music but I quickly stopped once I began reading and understanding the lyrics. Although I'd heard the song before a million times, I now started to realize that the lyrics are both contradictory and insulting towards women. Now, I've become so much more conscious that some of the things in popular culture that I like are very disrespectful towards women. Dean Almandrez said that, by the end of this course, she wants us to be able to look at popular culture through new eyes so that we will no longer support aspects of popular culture that are disrespectful towards a certain group of people.

For our afternoon class, we did a fishbowl activity. We broke up into two groups and one group made up the outer circle and the other group made up the inner circle. The people in the inner circle were asked a series of personal questions leadership while the outer circle listened. After the inner circle was done, people in the outer circle went around and repeated something that someone in the inner circle had said without putting their own personal input in. The circles then switched and repeated the activity. I enjoyed this activity because it was great to have my own ideas repeated back to me word for word because it really felt like people had been listening to me. It also connected to one thing I learned last week: leaders need to have good listening skills.

In the evening, I went to a fun meet-and-greet where students who had gotten here on a scholarship got to talk to current college students. The college students answered all our questions about college apps and college in general. I’d heard a lot of the information already but it was nice to get tips about college apps and financial aid in general.

After I finish blogging, I will resume working on my Action Plan essay. I am sort of a perfectionist when it comes to essays so I spend most of my time reading and rereading my essay, searching for ways that I can improve it. Luckily, though, writing this essay has not been as stressful as writing essays for school because I am writing about something I am passionate about. The assignment is really open ended so I don’t feel restricted at all when I’m working on my action plan essay. However, I am getting a little anxious for Friday’s presentation but I am really excited about my action plan so I hope that gets across to the audience while I'm presenting.