Month: September 2015

I am currently majoring in biology and minoring in Spanish in hopes to become a bilingual Physician’s Assistant. My goal is to become apart of an organization similar to Doctors Without Borders and travel abroad on medical missions.

This desire developed when I went on my first mission trip to Haiti during Spring Break of my sophomore year in High School. When I arrived in Titanyen, Haiti I was shocked by the poverty and living conditions. The medical clinic was cramped, understaffed and lacked adequate supplies and the majority of the children were shoeless. I was witnessing first-hand what I had only ever briefly read in articles or seen occasional pictures of in commercials and newspapers. Immediately, I desired to help in any way I could. I had the opportunity to wash the older women’s feet and paint their nails and toes, play soccer with the children, paint houses, and hold the young orphans in my arms. I was touched by the love and joy I saw on the faces of each person I met. They were genuinely excited to meet and spend time with me.

Due to the language barrier, I sought other ways to make them laugh and showed them, to the best that I could, Jesus’s love through my actions. However, I could not help but wonder what it would have been like if I had more to offer them. More than anything, I wish I could have met the medical needs of the people I met who were suffering. I am excited to pursue a medical career and hopefully have the opportunity to return to Haiti and travel to other areas around the world and assist in clinics.

Becoming more globally engaged allows me to better understand the world and how to communicate appropriately with the people I meet. I am only six weeks into the course Understanding the Global Community and have already learned an extensive amount of information. Through the course,  I have realized that one should never believe a “single story” about another country and the importance in understanding other cultures and their traditions. I am excited to continue setting goals, learning about other parts of the world, and pursuing study abroad opportunities and mission trips.

How do you get your news? Do you go outside every morning with a cup of coffee and sit on the porch while reading the newspaper? That’s how my parents use to do it! Now everything can be accessed at the click of a button! Now my parents, my sister, my friends, and even I get our news all the same way, on our phone. Its amazing what ten years of growing technology can do to us. Anyway, this blog is about media convergence and its effect on the consumer. Do you think you have been effected by technology? I believe that media convergence has had an effects on the consumer. According to JMC 1013 Student packet page six, “to today’s media-consuming public, smaller is better.” Consumers seem to be separating themselves by race, religion, language and ethnicity. Mass media companies are now realizing that they need to appeal to a more narrow audience and to grow these audiences. With this strategy they can appeal to a more diverse audience in the process. In JMC 1013 Student Packet is states, “There are bloggers who create their own content….publishing news, commentary opinions and other material on their own individualized websites.” With all this new technology why couldn’t you just make your own blog? Most only double or triple their readers, so is being on your own worth it? In journalism you can either have money or impact. When it comes to growing your audience, its one or the other. By just having your own blog you could easily post your opinions on Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and tumbler and have thousands maybe millions of views, but what makes it credible? Should we just believe what you say cause there are a lot of views?  What does it take to make readers keep coming back to you as a source? Although we think we can just do things on our own, we still need the famous names of news. FOX, CNN, NBC are all great and we trust them. We need media to provide the world with news, entertainment, sports, and advertisement. Money drives the engine of news and entertainment. As you can tell mass media is changing and in a very big way. News has become easier to access, but another change is the faces that the news is coming from. The news is shifting and changing in a diverse way as well. Media convergence is a huge topic that has effected how we obtain news and how easily it can be changed or wrong.

XOXO,

Noisette

Hello again! Here are the questions for Reflection #5:

After spending some time looking closely at different study abroad possibilities, what do you want to do and why? Has your mind changed since you applied for this program? How and why (or why not)?

After researching all of the study abroad possibilities that OU offers, I have decided that I would like to go on the Journey Program to Peru! One reason I want to do the Journey program is that I have never been abroad without my family. The Journey Programs are very structured, and many younger students go on these trips. For my first study abroad experience, I want to have other OU students and professors close by so I’m not completely by myself in a foreign country! When I applied to be a Global Engagement Fellow, I had no idea where I wanted to study abroad, so my mind has not changed since I’ve applied for this program.
Another reason I would like to study abroad in Peru is that there will be a local service project with an early childhood center. I really like this idea because establishing relationships with people from Peru is very important to me. This will help me better understand the culture and language. I also love little kids, so it is a perfect match.
One of the things that really grabbed my attention about Peru is that they will be going to Machu Picchu. I have always dreamed of getting to hike Machu Picchu! All throughout my Spanish classes in middle school and high school, I remember seeing pictures of Machu Picchu in the textbooks. One of my teachers from high school even went to Machu Picchu and showed us pictures; she said if we ever get the chance to go, we must go! I am a very outdoorsy person, so going to Peru is right up my alley! Since I enjoy the outdoors so much, staying in Amazon Rainforest for a few days also sounds so much fun! I can only imagine the wildlife that I will get to see there! Peru is definitely the place I would like to study abroad to, but studying abroad anywhere would make me happy!

Today I met my OU Cousin. Her name is Hawi, and she is AWESOME.

I was really nervous about meeting my cousin, because even though I’m someone who is genuinely interested in other cultures, I am often worried about making whoever I’m talking to feel super different, or since I don’t know what that particular person may be sensitive about, I don’t want to ask questions in a way that could be inadvertently offensive.

But Hawi was very nice. She is a sophomore living in Traditions, and she is originally from Ethiopia. We bonded over a mutual love of Ethiopian food, and a mutual grudge over the fact that neither of us can find an Ethiopian food place near campus, let a lone a decent one. We talked about television, and about all the different places you can go in America and how they’re all so different, and about how she has way more siblings than I do. We both love Washington D.C.

My favorite thing about my cousin so far is how relaxed she is. My fears about seeming too interested in what makes us different when I’m really just curious about different cultures were immediately put to rest. She asked me the same questions I wanted to ask her, and I didn’t feel weird about it. When she asked where I was from and I said Dallas she acted exactly like I did when she told me she was from Ethiopia: she immediately wanted to know more about it. My fears were put to rest for a little while after that.

But later when we were talking about food and she mentioned she doesn’t eat pork, I felt awkward again. Because Hawi is Muslim, and even though I don’t have a fear or prejudice toward Muslims at all, I didn’t know if she had experienced that since she’s been America. Especially post-9/11 America, where the wrong people blame an entire culture for what took  place in New York. I wanted to talk about it because Islamic culture is interesting to me, but I didn’t want her to think I was prying in a way that was “judgmental,” especially is she had experienced that sort of prejudice.

After floundering on my question, and doing a fair amount of embarrassing stuttering, she just stopped me and kindly asked (even though I think she might have been slightly exasperated) “What do you want to know?” I told her I didn’t know how to ask in a way that seemed correct, and she told me to just ask, because she knew by now that I was doing my absolute best not to come off wrong.

My cousin really is very nice. I can’t wait to hang out with her again.

Several years ago, I stumbled across the idea of joining the Peace Corps after obtaining my undergraduate degree. I knew that I could get some kind of financial relief from the cost of a Master’s degree if I worked for the Peace Corps, all while traveling to a remote region of the world and assisting a community towards a better quality of life. However, I never did much research into the organization beyond the initial visit to their website which is why I thought it a good idea to attend the Peace Corps Career Workshop on September 21st.

The workshop speaker had nothing but wonderful things to say about his experience in Moldova working for the Peace Corps’s Economic Development sector. The vivid pictures of beaming children, breathtaking natural landscape, and a foreign culture’s personal tapestry beckoned me towards a new, unforgettable international adventure with the Peace Corps. However, two little words were – and continue – holding me back from completely committing myself to the program: two years.

The length of service the Peace Corps requires is two years. Of course, they allot their volunteers with vacations days (which our speaker encouraged us to use for exploring outside of our stationed region), but I remain hesitant. I cannot imagine being away from my family, away from my way of life for such an unimaginably long time. It is not as if I get offered a job on the opposite coast of the country from my home and move away; at least then, I will be able to see my family during holidays and keep up with friends via social media. Compared to continents separating us, several thousand miles seems like a grain of sand on the beach.

Right now at the age of 18, two years seems like a time period that will unfurl into the ambiguous future without end. I have only been away from my family for a month so far, but over the course of the next four years before I need to make up my mind, I will probably grow accustomed to being on my own, and maybe even welcome an adventure such as this.