1984

Today we had book club and instead of a structured book club our class thought of alternatives to book clubs to enhance our reading experience. My group and I chose that we would blog our opinions on the chapters we read during the week. This was our first book club for this book and we had a very good discussion on what we thought of the first few chapters.
In the beginning of this book I didn’t really understand what was going but what I could tell was that these people were living in a dictatorship. Towards the fourth page I got an even better understanding of what was going on and it just shocked me. I really enjoy reading this book because it’s so surreal that all of these people are so brainwashed. The main character Winston at this point seems like the only sane person there because he sees how ridiculous everything is, he believes that he is not the only one who feels this way but never really thinks about it too much because he doesn’t want the “Thought Police” to get him. Along with this Though Police there is also a “Two Minutes of Hate”,” The Ministry of Truth”. This book is very overwhelming and shocking but not so confusing anymore. (I will continue to write later)

You're 16, You're Beautiful, You're a Voter

Today we had a seminar on an article found in Times Magazine. This was not the best seminar I have participated in but it wasn't bad either. I prepared for this seminar by reading and annotating the text. I read the text more than once just to make sure I got everything they were talking about in it. My personal opinion on this was basically "NO NO NO" I don't think that 16 year olds should be able to vote. When you are 16 you're still a kid and even if you are smart and politically aware I don't think that kids should have that responsibility til they're 18. As far as being able to get married at 16 that is an even bigger no for me. When you're 16, sure you think you're in love but really its just puppy love. Although there are those couples that are really in love and probably will stay together forever, but I just don't think that is the case with these High School relationships. When you get older you're going to meet tons of other people and most likely won't be with the person you were with when you're 18, and if you are waiting until you're 18 is good idea because if you're really in love what's the rush to get married? In the state of California you must be at least 18 years old to get married without parent consent, anyone under must go to court, counseling, and have one parent with you when you apply for a marriage license. (In addition divorce rates would increase when it is already sky high)
Going on to the next topic, the drinking age being lowered is a great idea. I think once 16 year olds have access to it, they're less likely to abuse it. Another thing I was thinking about is that most teenagers drink because they're not allowed to and they think its cool to do things you're not suppose to do, but once you're allowed drinking probably won't be as appealing to teenagers since its allowed.
This seminar could've been a lot more organized, also a lot of people including myself were intterupting others. Although this was not our best seminar I believe I learned a lot about my peers opinions.

The Year of The Youth Vote

The Year of The Youth Vote is written by David Von Drehile (Time Magazine). This article was about how constituents in the presidential election have increased due to the issues that are most important to them (Education Reform, Iraq). Throughout the country coalitions of youth voters are rooting for liberal candidates like Barak Obama. Barak Obama has made a huge effort to reach out and get young voters to vote. Young voters are interested in Barak because "he does not talk about change, he is “change” and I completely agree with that Barak Obama is change and a very progressive leader. Some voters argue that he doesn't have as much experience as others running, but If I had the suffrage to vote I would defiantly be voting for Obama, the fact that he doesn't have as much experience than the others makes him an even better choice because he sees our flaws in our political system. I think Barak is the best choice for president because he is not evangelical, like his opponent Mike Huckabee. I would never want an evangelical president because I think that the religion of my president should not effect what goes on in my country. It would be awful if a president vetoed something that could benefit a lot of people just because his religion frowned upon it.
I really think this is the year of the youth vote because we finally have someone that gets our youth interested in what is happening in our presidential elections. Barak Obama is doing great in this election, state after state he has drawn more young voters than any of his conservative competitors.

Reflective Blog

For the past week, we have been researching about different candidates and issues. My candidate was Mike Gravel and my issue was the war in Iraq. I really enjoyed this mini project because I learned a lot about both the democratic and republican candidates. I learned a lot about both parties because of our mock debate we had Monday. What I found most shocking during our Republican debate was that not one of the candidates running wanted to get out of Iraq. All the Republican candidates wanted to bring even more troops to Iraq and spend unnecessary money on more weapons. After researching so much on Iraq and learning about how many have died and been permanently injured it shocked me that they wanted to stay and bring even more troops to Iraq.  My candidate’s view on my issue is very similar to my view on the issue as well. This was a great mini project because I learned a lot about the voting process and about different issues.