The space in my house is just enough room for my family. We have three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and one really big basement. There is a room for my parents, a room for my sister and a room for me. When i’m not there my room becomes extra storage space.  We have a really nice size kitchen that i think was specially made for my family because on Sundays everybody comes over and helps cook. Our living room has enough space for my dad, my uncles and my cousins for when there is a game on and they come over to watch it. We have two bathrooms in my house, which in my opinion was the greatest invention ever! For some reason my family always has to use the bathroom at the same time so having more than one bathroom is perfect. Another really spacious part of the house is the basement, which i really love because my sister and i love to throw parties for people. Our basement is the perfect party place. We have just moved in this house about a year ago and we’ve thrown lots of parties and it’s never over crowded. The most spacious part around my house is the backyard. We have a really big backyard and it’s mainly for my little sister. She loves to run around and play.  Whoever designed this house was really conscious about the space in it and what the different rooms would be used for.

                                                                                        Tamika Dailey

                It may be common misconception that people go to college for an education.  Although they do learn things like calculus and chemistry while there, it’s the hidden lessons that mean so much more.  It’s the situations and trials that help us discover the lessons of life, how we apply to them and, in turn, find out exactly who we are.  I find it hard to believe that ten years after we graduate we are going to remember or care how to do a titration curve or discuss the deeper meanings behind a Shakespeare play.  But discovering our values, work-effort and other personal traits will still be with us no matter what we fill our days doing.  It is my belief that we get homework for more than the shallow purpose of beating the meaning of a derivative into our heads.  We get homework, and more importantly stress, from every class we go to because it helps to teach us so many more things than the words on the papers could ever do.  Are we going to go above and beyond to make sure we get the best grade?  Or are we going to push it off until midnight the night before it is due so we can go out and party with our friends?  Or better yet, what exactly are we willing to sacrifice in order to accomplish our long term goals. 

                What exactly are our long term goals?  Are they merely pipe dreams we hope to wake up to one day?  Or are they the first thing we think of when we wake up and before we fall asleep?  Everyone wants to have fun in the here-and-now.  But everything comes with a price.  And one thing I’ve realized is that everything has a price on it.  We can either earn it before hand, or we can pay for it afterwards.  It is as simple as choosing to party or study.  If we work hard and complete all of our dreaded homework, we earn the right to have a good time.  But if we go to party and neglect to do our homework, then we pay for it when we see our grades begin to fall.  Everything in the world is available to us at all times.  We can have an amazing and wonderful night being high or drunk and pay for it the next day when we sleep through class, forget to go to work or potentially have legal consequences that will really screw up our lives.

                So what does college teach us?  It teaches us exactly who we are.  Sure it helps to know how to analyze a poem or find the height of a ball 4 seconds after it’s shot from the moon, but it means so much more to find the balance we all individually have between work and play.  We are all different and we all have different goals and ambitions.  It’s here, in college, through all of the stress, available activities and responsibilities that we find out exactly what it is we want out of life and how hard we’re willing to work for it. 

Andrew Reid

I have become more and more interested in Tupac’s death. I have never really been interested in Tupac at all. I think it may have mainly been because I was never exposed to him. When he was alive, his music was not what I was particularly interested in, besides, my parents had the most control of what I listened to and rap was not a part of their ongoing interests therefore it was not a part of mine. After reading about Tupac’s death in class I quickly became very interested. I never truly knew why so many people continued to say that Tupac was still alive. Some people may have just been saying it just because other people were saying but there are real reasons why other people were saying it. I have found myself now questioning whether or not Tupac is still alive. It seems that there are far too many clues and signifiers that are clearly unclear, questionable, or just too much of a coincidence. Because I have never been a Tupac fan, I will not to take a biased approach on the whole situation. Tupac may still be alive but he could also be dead. The fact that many of his lyrics suggest that he knows that he is dead or going to be dead when the album drops rises suspicion. Was his death planned? If so why would he want to die? He may not be dead right? So he staged his death? The death may have been staged just for marketing purposes. That is understandable but after that marketing and money making technique no longer works, Tupac will have no more opportunity to make money off of his talent. This is an extremely interesting topic to investigate. If I was into investigation. By the way, if he isn’t dead where in the world could he be and what is he doing?LaTasha Moss

In todays society advertising is trully everywhere. I honestly cant think of anywhere I can go without seeing some sort of advertising, whether big or small. If u drive down the street, drive on the freeway, go to the grocery store, go rent a video, read the mail, your guranteed to see advertising. Sure its definately not the worst thing in society but its quite noticeable. Its to the point where as you grow up you learn to ignore it but it seems to have begun getting annoying, at least to me. I cant drive two minutes without having some big billboard cathcing my peripheral vision. Sometimes i wanna stop the car n find a way to rip the billboard down. That seems a little overboard but it explains how tired I am of seeing advertisements such as billboards. Especially since many of these products disgust me or i have no use for. Some may see it as selfish but im just saying how I see it. Dont get my wrong I understand that companies have to advertise to be successful. In fact I am a major in business major so to be successful i will also have to advertise. However, the fact still remains that these constant advertisements are very much annoying. Although I say this now, ill be honest, I may very well be doing the same thing in ten years or so. Maybe by that time ill be more mature and the overflow of billboards wont annoy me to the degree that they do today. Although this is true, I admit it is very much petty to be so bothered by a bunch of billboards. This is because there are much bigger problems in society than billboards so maybe i should start paying much less attention to petty stuff in life and focus more on the big picture. Looking at the petty things and failing to see the big picture will get you nowhere in life but failure. Surely none of us want that. In fact, i am not the only one who sometimes doesnt see the big picture in life…many of us do this. Its as if we look at what happens tommorow rather than months from now that is why we often times encounter rough times. However, hopefully we all can begin to see the big picture, I know I will because as I said earlier, without the big picture one cannot be successful. -Alphonso Mack

As I was doing my research about women in rap, I thought back to my blog that was about gender. I realized that women have been trying to do everything that men have done. Think about it, rap was a men-dominated genre of music. A few years later, women become interested in rap also. We can also look at other examples like soldiers and pilots. Before, there were only male pilots and mostly male soldiers, but now we see more female soldiers and female pilots. When did this start. It definitely was not an over night thing. Women worked very hard and in the long run this is what happened…women wanted to be looked at differently. They wanted to be treated equally, so they worked the same jobs as men, so why do some women get less money for doing the same job as men?? This is a very debatable question. I read an article about why women get paid less and it said that women choose a lowers paying job because they do not want to do the dirty work!!! But that is not true, like I said women are doing the same work as men. Even thought we are not 100% equal to men, we are very close. But do we want to be? Yes, it would be awesome getting paid more at certain jobs, but what about life in general. For example, I can not imagine asking a guy to marry me (although some women have done that) if we were treated equally then asking a guy to marry you should not matter. It would not matter if guys asked girls out or vice versa. It would not matter if a girl opens the car door for a guy and buys him roses on a first date. This is why men and women are not treated equally; because I think it is really weird if a girl buys a guy roses on their first day.  Women have gotten so far and are almost treated equal to men. But honestly I would rather be not completely equal to men and have the guy take care of a first nice date J but that’s just me!

R.M.

People always debate about whether smoking should be banned in public places or not. Smokers of course do not see why it should be banned and non smokers say that it should be bad because secondhand smoking is very bad for their health. Personally, I am not a smoker but I believe that it should not be banned from public places. I mean yes smoking is dangerous but I am sure almost every smoker knows that and yet they still do it. I think that banning smoking will not do anyone any good. People will still smoke no matter what. Weed is illegal but people still smoke it! Drinking under 21 is illegal but teenagers still drink. If smoking is banned, what is next? Not being able to drive your car because it will cause air pollution which also causes cancer! I do not think that it is fair to smokers. Can you imagine not being able to drive you car? I mean smokers pay taxes when they buy cigarettes; I think that they should be allowed to smoke in public. Banning smoking will not solve the problem; it will just kind of silence the problem. I really think that if smoking is banned in public places then you will barley see any people in public, because according to a quick research that I did a lot of people are smokers. Restaurants, bars and clubs will seriously go out of business. To be fair, smokers should be able to smoke in public places. I actually think that some restaurants do a good job at separating the smoking area form the non smoking area. I go to champps all the time and we always sit in the non smoking area and I never really smell or see any smoke. Yes it is true that secondhand smoking could cause cancer, but like I said, many other things out there could cause air pollution which also causes cancer. If you think that nothing but secondhand smoking is bad for you, then you can always sit in the non smoking section of the restaurantJ. It is almost impossible to divide all public places into smoking and non smoking sections because these places, bars for example, are for people to go to and just relax and have fun not to be separated from other people. As far as I know most (but not all) bar tenders are smokers so I don’t think that they will be bothered by secondhand smoking. Basically, people should know that there are other things out there that can be bad for their health. I mean the air is already polluted from cars and factories and that can cause lung cancer also. I think that if smoking is banned in public places, people will not go to bars or restaurants or they will still smoke even if they know it is illegal, so banning smoking will not work

R.M.

Everyone has different views on the issues of gender. From my culture, being Indian and Pakistani, the roles of women are very different. If in the U.S., people feel that women are not treated equally, well you haven’t seen anything yet. In my culture, women are mostly seen as just doing things around the house and it is very unseen for men to ever make dinner. Things are different in recent times but years ago, it was worse. I still know of some families that don’t even allow their daughters to attend college because they are just going to receive an arranged marriage and be a housewife. I feel lucky that my dad doesn’t view things in that sense. He feels that it is very important for me to receive a good education and be able to support my family. Many families are like that now but there are still those few that are not. For example, my relatives are very old fashioned and when we go to their house, the men are always sitting on a couch talking in a separate room then the women. The women are always cooking and serving and the men don’t do anything. I feel that this is unfair because I know that in the future, if I had to get an arranged marriage, I would not want my husband to just think he can sit and do nothing while I cook the food and take care of our kids. I know that I will have a job as well so he cannot make excuses that he is tired from work. I believe that in the household, men and women should have equal roles. Women should be treated equal not only within their own homes but in the workplace as well. It is not fair at all that till this day, in some work places, women don’t get paid as much as men. There is no reason for this because if they are all in the same positions, doing the same job then they should get paid equal amounts. In my culture, it also a custom that women and men should not converse with each other if it is not on a level of something serious or maybe concerning an issue at work or school. For example, girls and guys are not technically even supposed to give each other casual hugs or high fives. It is kind of hard to explain but basically, there just shouldn’t be too much contact between the opposite sexes. In this generation however, things have gotten lenient. Some parents are more strict then others but my dad is pretty strict when it comes to that. He allows me to talk to boys if it is at school or something but I cannot talk to them on the phone or hang out casually. This brings me to my next point, which I find unfair in my culture. It is ok for guys in my culture to talk to girls but it is not ok for girls to talk to guys. Also, it is ok for guys to go out for as long as they want but for girls, we have to be home before it gets dark or even in some cases, we cannot even go out at all. For example, if I hang out with my friends one Saturday afternoon, I am not allowed to go out for the next few weeks because my dad feels like it is too much for me to go out even for just a few hours every weekend. Also for girls, lets say I wanted to go out to dinner with friends one day; I can’t even do that sometimes just because my dad doesn’t want me to. I just find it unfair sometimes that girls of my culture are at a mature age and we can’t even do simple things such as go to a movie or go out to eat at times. Boys however can do anything they want just because they are boys. I am not sure if everything I have discussed makes sense because I guess it doesn’t sound as bad unless you have actually been in my shoes but it can be ridiculous at times. Overall, cultural differences have a major impact on gender issues and I believe changes need to be made because it is not fair that men have advantages over women.

~Seeron Ali~

Well here I am again discussing my opinion about relationships. I have very different views on relationships I believe mostly because of my culture and just the way I was brought up I guess. Moving on, this sort of contradicts my last blog on relationships but I just wanted to discuss it anyway because of some things that have happened recently. I really believe that it takes very strong people to maintain a long relationship. I think for the most part, many people end up moving too fast in the beginning because everything always goes so well and they are so happy but then in many cases, it messes things up later on in the relationship. For example, my sister just got out of a seven month relationship, which for her was a big thing because she had never had one that long before. I think many of the problems that she had faced in that relationship was the fact that things had gotten too serious too fast. The things that she had encountered in that relationship were at levels that in my opinion, should not even occur until maybe a few years of being together. I feel as though sometimes people get too dependent on each other in relationships and when one little thing happens where that person cannot be there for any reason, then many problems can arise. I know in many people’s opinions, when they are with someone that they really care about, they feel that they need to spend all of their time together and nothing else matters but their relationship. I know that many people do often realize that this is not good and then they give each other their space but what sometimes happens is that if the space is given for too long then for some, they drift off and think about finding new people and different things. Basically, the way I see it is that either way, it is hard to win because when you spend so much time with a person, you get sick of them but when you are away then you realize what your true feelings are and that you might not even want to be with that person. It can however be the opposite though because I know for some that when they receive the space, they start to miss the person they were they with and vice versa so then it is also a good thing because the space was successful and they can go back to the way things were. I really feel that it is very easy for things to get complicated and that is why as I mentioned before, a lot of the time things don’t work out because of everything moving too fast. In my opinion, I think that before people get on levels such as kissing or getting too close, it is important to really get to know a person. As some say, opposites attract, this is true but not to a real extreme. I feel that it is very important to have someone that is somewhat like you so they can understand you on certain levels. Then again, the opposite part plays a large role as well because you need someone that has different yet positive qualities that you may not obtain, so you can absorb some of them and balance yourselves out. Overall, the way I analyze relationships is most likely in some ways the same as others but although many people know that they shouldn’t move too fast, get too serious too fast, or even make a move on the first date, I know that many of us still do these things just because sometimes it is hard to control and it may come naturally to grow close to someone quickly. On the whole, my views may be different then others’ but to me they make sense and I try to follow them as well as I can.

~Seeron Ali~

Advertising is everything           

               Advertisements are all over the place. Advertisements have become so important that most newspapers, magazines, TVs, websites and radios stations could not exist without them. Advertising is how most of the money is made by these Medias. These days advertising is annoying in that when surfing the website for information other than advertisement a person encounters many of what we call “pop ups”. This type of advertisement works but not all the time. In other words, sometimes a product like nail polish for example pops up and as we all know that nail polish is mostly used by women. As a man I would not be interested in buying that for my own (maybe a man would buy the nail polish for a girl as a present?) because it’s a woman product. However, I would be interested if a pop up was advertising computers (laptops). Most of the time it really depends on the mood, sometimes people don’t have time to browse the pop ups because the have something better to do (research information for a music paper) or they don’t trust pop ups when it comes to entering a credit card number, because they think it’s a prank and the pop up will take more than their suppose to. People sometimes intentionally advertise products, but most of the time people advertise products or companies with out them knowing. For example, one day I was walking when all the sudden I saw a t-shirt that had a Pepsi picture on it. The fact that I saw that made me want Pepsi, so I went to the nearest store and bought Pepsi. The Pepsi Company did not pay the teenage kid that in a way advertised the product for me to buy. The teenage kid was just wearing a t-shirt to cover part of the body that most people cover. To estimate right know everyone (at home) is wearing a t-shirt that advertises a company. Mostly brand names like Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, and others. They are advertising the companies without any income being given to them. Think about it I am wearing a t-shirt that says “got milk?” well I am a media of advertisement to, I am advertising milk.   

Saher Hamood   

Home is suppose to be one of those places that make you feel comfortable at all times. It is suppose to be a place that you can go when there is nowhere else for you to be. A person is suppose to enjoy the time that they get to spend at home because not to many people can get to say they have a lot of time to spend at their houses. Home is where all of you things are that you need like: hair supplies, clothing, shoes, personals, and your favorite showering gels. Home is where you’re suppose to have a space to call your own, a place where you can have as much space as you want and need. This is how I use to feel about my old house. Sorry to say it but I don’t feel this way anymore. My new home doesn’t fulfill the most important quality…SPACE.

 Not to get me wrong I love my new home new home it’s a whole lot nicer than the old one. It has a built in stand for my computer, a dishwasher, new appliances, new furniture and sweet new bathroom that’s to die for. I know it sounds like I shouldn’t be complaining but its just not enough space in this house. I feel like everywhere I turn its always someone there, there’s always someone THERE!!!!

My old house was so much bigger. It had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a full basement. There was so much space everywhere. You didn’t have to see anyone unless you wanted to. We didn’t have a lot of fancy things but we did have a lot more comfortable things. You know things that a person can actually use in the house for instance the couch.

I know now that no one lives with use, we don’t need all that space anymore but at lease be more compassionate with the space. My new house is a townhouse with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a small basement. I know its not bad but it is when your mothers room is right beside your I mean right beside and she feels she can come lounge when she wants. I love my mother but she is two freaking close. I want to kick the person that designed this house. You can’t buy a private moment in this house. I use to always say how nice it would be to live in a more modern house with nicer things. I guess it’s true what the old folks say (you have to be specific when asking for something because you’ll only receive what you ask for). I know better now.