Secret Agent: Family

Family is a huge influence on one's life. Family plays a huge role in shaping a person. Their views, beliefs, even habits all originate from their family members. Some even pursue the same career as their parents or gaurdians. In my own family, before my family had moved back to the United States, we had lived in Ireland where my father was a high school teacher. Next year I am planning to go to Miami University to study to become a special education teach and the high school level. So i guess one could say I followed in the footsteps of my father. Even our personalities are unlike. Not only do I look a lot like my father, we act alike too. Our sense of sarcastic humor, active lifestyle, and temper are all the same. When you think about this, is it really that weird? I mean maybe it's a little weird that I have all these qualities similar to my father and almost none to my mother. Maybe that was becuase at a young age I observed my father's actions more than my mothers or for some other reason. Family provides the basis for your morals and your quirks. It's unusual to realize that even one's quirks that one may think makes them different from others is not really that different becuase they were taught to you by others when you were younger and still using observations as your main way to learn.

Human Nurture

The experiences in our lives shape us as human beings. We have seen this through the cases of Genie and Danielle. If you think about it to yourself though, wouldn't one agree without the evidence of these cases? A baby is not racist at birth, he learns to discriminate through the actions of his parents. Or even examples of how to chew. This week Sal told us of how even at table during lunch, his daughter would mock him chewing his sandwich by making the same movement in eating her own mashed up food. Thinking back to stories of my own life, that's how I know i learned to speak. Would anyone of us had uttered the words of "mama" and "daddy" had they not been said over and over to us as a child. How about our own name? We have heard it in our direction since it was given to us, thus we know our own name. After learning about these cases and reflecting them upon my own life, it is hard to imagine what life would be life had I never learned these things. One never stops to think at how something so small can provide the basis of who you become for the rest of your life.

Tuesdays With Morrie - Love

I think that as Americans we have been taught to be self-reliant and to not have to lean on anyone else for it shows weakness. This is why we are afraid to fall in love. It has been beaten into our heads since birth that while going through life we learn to become more and more independent. Even as teenagers we all remember feeling independent once we attained the plastic card telling us we could finally drive all on our own! Even in history we refer the Revolutionary War, we say we were asserting our independence as a country. We overcome this fear for the soul reason that there is social pressure to marry and find someone to spend your life with. This is what Morrie refers to "romantic love". It is still love, but once the spark is gone, its gone. And at that point people are together becuase thats all they know. Morrie then talks about "true love". The difference in these being is that "true love" doesn't need that spark, and its never ending. It cannot be terminated by separation physically or death. It is there no matter what.

The Subculture of the Sheltered

At SHS, students don't need to worry about much. We don't have to worry about drive-bys on the way to or from school and we definitely don't need to worry about violence breaking out in our school. Could this be how our our surroundings shape us? Most students at SHS can say they have never witnessed a murder or violence broken out over the territory of gangs. Maybe this is because of the way we live and our surroundings. Most in the suburbs are so sheltered that hearing of murders in their own state among teens is just enough to give them a heart attack at such an early age. For others, its normal. As a teen who grew up in the suburbs, we can not even begin to imagine how different life would be for us if we lived in one of those "bad neighborhoods" that have become infamous due to their violence and crime. We can not begin to fathom how we would feel if we had been put in that same situation. To others who are accostumed to these actions, they feel as if it was just another day. At the end of the day, we are all just people who's thoughts and actions have been shaped by our community.