A Harsh Truth

I’m not a very open person.

Actually, scratch that. I’m not an open person at all. I don’t like to share feelings and thoughts with others, lest I be judged for perceived childish, silly, or plain foolish ideas and likes. But in this moment, my head is telling me I need to write this and, for once, I agree with it.

I suffer from depression and anxiety. For how long, I don’t even know anymore. I take medicine now and have gone back into therapy. But in the past and even now, it’s caused me nothing but trouble. It’s caused me to have no friends, very limited social interaction, and a whole lot of pain. And the only person I can blame for these things is myself.

I don’t share this because I want pity and consoling. I can do that on my own, thank you very much. I share this because this is part of my recovery. This is me realizing that I’ve hurt everyone. I’m not always the victim in this situation, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. And I don’t blame anyone for not really wanting any contact with me. For not understanding why I couldn’t just reply to things or be more social.

I don’t post this with the expectation that I can rebuild what’s been broken; that people would even remember who I am. I post this because the small amount of world that this reaches should know of what destruction depression and anxiety can cause. That we should be more open in talking about these afflictions and how serious they can be.

But most importantly, I post this for me. This is the scariest thing I could admit about myself. But it doesn’t make me broken. It doesn’t make me a horrible person. It makes me a person working on herself. That she’s an okay person with good and bad qualities. Some of those can change and some of those will never. I may never stop suffering from this. But that can’t stop me from trying to fight it. From trying to claw and scratch my way from the bottom to have some idea of what potential I could have.

It still won’t make me a open person.

Tear Away the Walls

The First Amendment and journalism are the structural foundations of the house of democracy.

Without those, the house crumbles to the ground and the people are left in a lurch as to what to do with the once remains of everything they knew. Democracy is a government for the people, by the people and of the people. It's completely dominated not by the few in power, but by the large majority in most cases.

The overlay of the house is journalism. Journalism is the information presented to the public in an honest manner, with regard to facts rather than opinion. But neither exists well without the framework: the First Amendment. As written in the Constitution, the First Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The amendment is an important one. It's the one that gives people, more importantly journalists, the ability to speak out against the government. In a democracy, it's important that government knows what the people do like and don't like. Without the freedom of speech and press, neither could be printed without the risk of jail. It's what allows us to say "I don't like the tax break deal that Obama made with the Republicans." Airing grievances against the government is what gave this country a start when the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776.

Another important idea is the ability for discussion between people with differing opinions. It is where journalistic bias most likely derives from, but it doesn't always diminish the viewpoint or story that is being delivered. Being able to express a differing opinion and be heard is almost like airing grievances without saying that the government is doing something wrong, but rather something different than you thought. It promotes discussion between people and journalists alike whose mission it is to take the information and present both sides of the argument. It does lend itself to criticism because of how certain sides present themselves but it does promote the ideas to a larger audience.

The most important reasoning for the First Amendment is information for the masses, rather than misinformation. Though, as of late, many people feel that journalists are purposefully participating in giving misinformation to the general public. One must remember the differences between opinion and news, in which the opinions are the ones under fire rather than the news. Not to say I don't believe that opinion pieces shouldn't be rooted in fact, but we have to differentiate between the opinion and news in order to inform better. Democracy thrives on an informed public, which is why journalism is so important to the two.

For now, the house of democracy stands for as long as we respect, not abuse the structure.

Q&A

1. Journalism is the telling of information to the masses is an honest manner, relying on facts more than opinions.

2. There are four models of journalism: advocacy, traditional-elite, public/civic and citizen 2.0. Advocacy relates to the social issues, informing people of the side the journalist supports. Traditional-elite is the most thought of model of journalism. It reports without bias and is simply fact. Public/civic deals with local issues that big media wouldn't usually deal with. Citizen 2.0 enhances the traditional media by enabling people to update major news stories quicker than the media can produce the stories.

3. Democracy is government created by people, for people and run by people.

4. Election politics is the idea of a blanket notion of promises. The politician says what they think most voters want to hear in order to get elected rather than hearing the voters and what they want. Public politics is much more involved with the people and the issues they want to deal with in the course of political action.

5. Lippmann. v. Dewey was a debate on representative government. Lippmann's side was that no person could ever be fully informed on all the issues they needed to know for properly electing people. Dewey argued that it didn't matter how much information the public knew, but rather that they were getting informed at all. He said that journalists were important to the process because they were important to giving information to the public.

6. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

7. All of these are important because they not only affect my life now, but the future. It gives me the freedom to write this blog, to protest the religious preachers who populate the campus and not practice Catholicism, even though I was raised as such.

8. Diversity is important because it enables discussion between people. It allows for varying mindsets to discuss issues in different manners while being protected under the First Amendment. While Christian may be the dominant religion, it's important to have people who are Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and all sorts of other religions. The same applies to the other freedoms given under the amendment.

9. A journalist's job is to give all viewpoints to an issue. It may be easy to give time to the majority group on an issue, but it's more important to give people the other side of the issue to broaden their horizons. No one's voice is more important than another and as a journalist, it's important not to forget that fact.

10. I can't honestly say if I've ever had a moment that had diversity making a difference in my life. While I do subscribe to the ideas of listening to people and allowing people to speak, I cannot willingly partake in many discussions like this because people often do not share my viewpoint and find that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It's simply not true and makes discussing ideas in a civilized manner almost impossible.

How to Be Ugly

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." - Sirius Black

Beauty is skin deep. We preach and preach about everyone has their own special brand of beautiful, whether it be inner or outer beauty. Honestly, I don't care about outer beauty. That's not going to be the point here. It's that people can be ugly. It matter how they act in society.

Basically, it boils down to treating your friends great and everyone else like dirt. And that is true of society when you notice how many people are truly oppressed on a daily basis. The words racist and homophobe didn't appear because we just wanted to have a word just in case. They appeared because that's how society acted. And technically, still acts when you read the statistics on how many rights minority groups don't have. A person's character can only truly be summed up by their personality.

Essentially, a good person is someone who accepts people for who they are. Someone who doesn't find groups of people unsettling to be around. Someone who doesn't want someone to change to conform to society. Do these people exist? I know the internet will surely give me a list of people that claim they are always respectful of every group and are truly good people. Unfortunately, I shouldn't be finding them on blogs that deem it acceptable to mock celebrities. Or trust them, because the internet is anonymous for the most part. That's part of the allure. I can't know because I don't know that person and their life. I can only trust that I try my hardest to not offend people. I do slip every so often. I will call a women the "b" word if they seem to be acting in a horrendous manner. Yet, I do also realise I probably shouldn't have done that. I try and correct it, limiting the use of the word until I feel that I have a handle on not using that word. I don't want to demean women. There is already not enough respect for women without me insulting my own kind. So I actively attempt change.

How many people are as aware as I am? Even if I'm not particularly in love with subjects that are tough, I still seek out those topics and read comments on them. I try and change so that those issues don't become my issues. We aren't set in stone. We never have been.

Attractiveness is far more than skin deep. Society is quite ugly and well, who knows if they'll ever learn that.

Choices

"...if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy..." - Albus Dumbledore

Everyday we make choices. But how many of actually choose something outside of our comfort zone? Stand up for ourselves? We pick the easy route, the one of usually least resistance. Is it right?

When one hears about things that happen in the media, like the suicides of the gay students last fall, you usually hear how no one helped. Or the issues in Washington and how they rather restrict our rights instead of being a free country with CHOICE. Those are easy solutions. That's how things operate and they continue to operate. To be right would to be to stand up for the rights, to fight for those who are bullied because they are seemingly not the norm. It's easy to find these people on the internet, especially when you have a nice veil of anonymity to hide behind. Most people aren't on the internet. Most people live their daily lives not knowing some of the issues that truly face our nation.

Take for example the abortion debates happening. People have decided that the right choice is to not let a women decide what she wants to do with her body. That's not the right choice. That's the easy one. That's the one that lets men who aren't ever going to experience childbirth tell a woman what to do. In a society that supposedly becoming more progressive, women still aren't allowed to choose what they want to do. Is it right to force women to have children when they aren't prepared for it: mentally, physically or financially? No. Yet that is what Congresses around the nation see fit. Undoubtedly, the cycle will continue. They force women to have children they don't want, to then blame them when they can't provide for these children. You can't realistically try and get rid of government aide while forcing women to have children they might not realistically be able to provide for. Is it horrible to let a women decide what she wants to do? Are we really trying to say that women still mean nothing after all these years? People who don't have to endure the physical pain of childbirth shouldn't be the ones choosing what a women can and cannot do. Yet we live in a society run by men, who we unfortunately still have to obey.

Remember, easy and right aren't the same thing. Right is doing whatever you can to make people have better lives. Easy is what we all unfortunately choose on a daily basis.

Why We Can't Progress

"Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged." - Professor Umbridge "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

This seems to be the sentiment of society as a whole. Not just from those who have decided that society has become too progressive but from those who have decided that we haven't progressed enough. It's truly what people characterize as the "want it all, need it all". We either have to fix everything in one fell swoop or declare the world to be a misogynistic, racist, homophobic world that can never be redeemed. While I'm not going to deny that the world isn't those three things, it's not the fact that we can't fix them, it's that we've decided that everyone must fit into a box and that's not how the world works.

Recently, I was reading about misogyny on the popular show, Jersey Shore, which detailed a double standard that had been portrayed on the show. Then I committed a cardinal sin of the internet: I read the comments. Most comments were about how the Jersey Shore had fallen from being entertaining and the discussion of how it was wrong. Then I hit a comment about how all 20-something men are misogynists. It was a heated debate, either agreeing with the original commenter about how right they were, or that they were wrong and there are men who wouldn't be deemed misogynists. I do have to agree that there are men who are misogynists but there are men who aren't that we seem to think have some hidden agenda against women. I'm going on the offensive: The louder a person is, the more polarizing it makes the group as a whole. It's why we deem conservatives stupid, feminists as bra-burners, and liberals as evil socialists. With the abilities of the internet, we can easily communicate with people and tell the stories of the hard struggles that it stays with us longer than the other side of the story.

Honestly, just like with sexuality, there are degrees. There are raging misogynists who see no value of women and actively abuse them. There are those who only verbally say things like believing women shouldn't work and should stay at home. There are those who allow women to do what they want while in their relationships. There are those who are right alongside women, demanding that they are treated the same as they are. Problem is, we only hear the extremes and forget that those who aren't vocal or aren't horrible statistics do exist. I'm all for equal rights of everyone, because I don't see the point of demonizing anyone whether it be for gender, sexuality, age or race. Yet, I wouldn't be taken seriously because I'm a young, white, straight girl. I couldn't possibly know the struggle of others except when it comes to my gender. I don't claim to know how everyone feels, but I can at least try to help people. Instead of demonizing anyone and everyone who doesn't share your exact and only opinion, why can't we help each other understand? Why can't we let those of privilege help those who don't gain some? Not everyone that has some sort of privilege wants to watch those who don't suffer.

Take the steps as victories. Aim to destroy those who destroy our progress. There's no point in having such a black and white version of society because that's not what society is. Aim to teach children how to treat each other, not to let the television be the only teaching tool. We can change how society is, but we can't expect it to be fixed tomorrow.

How to Be Alone

One would think that in a world with six billion people, everyone would at least have a few confidants. Reality isn't so kind. In a world full of people who judge rather than accept, it's easy to get lost in the fray for simply being quiet.

Different countries value different virtues and unfortunately for me, I live in a culture that deems quiet and shy as uninteresting and plain. I do admit that I'm not the most interesting person, but that's because I haven't had experiences like others have had with friends. Simply because I don't have them. Our world focuses so much on how people look and discriminate that we forget that simple personality traits can make someone feel alienated from the rest of society.

I'm what one would classify as a drifter. I drift between different friend groups, but I don't belong to them. I'm a convenient partner or the last resort for people. I've had three roommates since coming to college, and I haven't maintained a relationship with any of them. The biggest reason for this is because I don't know how to be social. I don't know how to create small talk, yet I can discuss many things in a long conversation. That's not valued. Neither is letting someone gain your trust unless it benefits you. I'm not going to detail every aspect of my life when I don't know a person, but apparently that's customary in American culture.

Next time you are out in public or sitting in a classroom and you see someone sitting, most likely by themselves, maybe consider talking to them. Maybe consider talking to someone who might not know how. The saying goes, "The world is a lonely place" and for some, that's just everyday life.

When You Feel Lost...No One Will Help.

As you grow up, the eternal struggle becomes what are you going to do with the rest of your life? Do you go to college? Do you start working in the family business? Start a family? What do you do if you feel like the only one who can't make a decision?

That's exactly where I and millions of others stand. For me, the dilemma is what do I actually want to do in college? What do I ultimately want to achieve my degree in? For some, it's do I fit in? Others, it's how do I explain I want to do something other than what my family has determined? That's how one becomes stuck.

Right now, I'm a journalism major. A few months ago, I could tell you a list of reasons why I chose journalism and ditched English. Having taken one class, I feel lost and confused as to why I thought it was the best choice. Mostly, I thought if I was a journalism major, I would lose the fear of talking to people. Two months into my first class, I am just as bad as I was before. I also love learning and viewing all sides of the story, but as I've learned, journalists think differently. The way I've learned it, I think too rationally to be a journalist. I'd rather not die for a story than interview an alleged criminal who claims to actually be innocent. I'd rather not die in a foreign country because what I'm saying isn't agreeable with that country's politics.

Everyone has been told to follow their dreams. Problem is, how many actually do just that? One assignment for my journalism class is to write about our dream job. I don't know if I write about the dream job I sell for appearances, or the one that really exists in my heart. I tell people I'd love to be on a major news channel, as reporter, anchor, or contributor. What I really want is to act. To get the chance to show people the depths and layers that exist under the almost anti-social exterior. That's something that's never been supported by my parents and something I could never tell them is my real passion. That's why so many people don't follow their dreams. They don't have a support system behind them, telling them that they can do whatever they want.

That's where the stuck feeling comes in. Do I switch majors for the third time? Do I actually give up the potential for a real job for something that will probably never happen? Am I really just doing this because I don't want the learning experience to end? Questions are abound in my head, but with no one to talk to, that's where they forever rest. Just like with millions of other people.