11: Final Post

I’m honestly so surprised I got through this semester without missing a single blog. I’m very bad at managing my time and procrastinate everything to the very last second, so doing all the blogs this semester is a very big accomplishment for me. This class was definitely different from how I expected it to turn out, but I’m really glad I was forced to take it! Not only was I able to express myself better than I have in any other class I’ve taken before, I also made a couple of new friends in such a small class (that’s another first in my college career).

Anyways, back to the actual content of this blog post. While there were so many things I enjoyed doing in this class, the one thing that I enjoyed writing the most was the memoir narrative. Even though it was difficult to get started in the beginning, it made me think and reflect on aspects of my life and the way I think and feel now. I enjoyed the challenge of writing a different kind of genre that I’m usually not used to.

The hardest part of writing the memoir was actually before I even started writing it. Thinking of a single moment in my past to write about that held a special significance to me was difficult. Finding that one moment I could write about in the 20 years I’ve been alive took a really long time, but when I finally thought of something I could write about, the words just wrote themselves on the page as I recalled my feelings of angst at the time my recalled memory took place. Even though I enjoyed writing the memoir for the class, I don’t think I’d ever voluntarily write another one for fun. In the end, it was just way too much reflection done on my life that I usually never think about.

I hope you’re all enjoying this class as much as I am and with that said, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :D

10: Brainstorming

As a pretty indecisive person that practically has no creativity, choosing a discourse community to research about is proving to be a fairly difficult task for me. However, if I was forced to choose at this very second, I would choose to research about the nursing community. Choosing to write about this discourse community wouldn’t be too bad, I think.

Nursing is a very rewarding field and I think learning about how nurses started their career, what attracted them to take up nursing, and how they interact with each other and their patients would be an interesting topic to cover and research.

I’ve never seen what hours are like behind the hospital doors, but as the daughter of two RN’s that both work the night shift, I’ve gotten to observe how exhausting and tiring the job can get. I wish I could say I know a lot more about the nursing community, but other than the occasional “how was work last night?” I ask my parents, we don’t really talk too much about their job. Sometimes when something really big happens, they talk about their work but besides that, still no conversation about their work. If I do end up writing about the nursing community as a discourse community, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding people to interview because I’d already have two people at home I could interview. Not only that, my parents’ friends are practically all nurses, so if needed I could easily just ask for a couple of their phone numbers. It would be pretty cool to get the perspective of other nurses that I don’t know as well as my parents.

I’m a person that gets attached to others pretty quickly, so one question that I’m definitely interested in asking is how nurses manage to separate their feelings at work from the ones they feel when they take the uniform off… If that makes sense. It must get really emotionally exhausting working with different patients in a day, with each one dealing with their own injuries, problems, and personal feelings. I probably could never be a nurse just because of how emotionally invested I would feel with each patient I see. The emotional toll it would have on me would probably grow into a whole other problem in my mind. That’s one thing I admire about my parents, and nurses in general. In my 20 years of being alive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my parents really cry or talk very seriously about a particular patient. Sometimes they would mention something really vague about a teenager involved in a bad car accident, but that’s really the most they talk about their job. I really don’t know how nurses do it but hopefully I could get that answered, even if only partially, if I do end up researching the nursing field as a discourse community.

Although I am still not sure I will go through with the nursing community, I can already see the potential where the research paper could go if I do decide to write about them. Happy brainstorming, everyone!

8: Service Workers

I have never worked as a waitress before. Or in any customer service job. But from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, working in that kind of setting is not easy. I completely disagree with the things Drucker stated about service workers.

When I go out to eat at a restaurant, I always make sure that I show the employees with respect. I know they already get treated like crap by a lot of customers that they get so the least I can do the make their job easier is to be respectful. As an introvert, it amazes me how a lot of hosts and waiters can manage to keep a positive attitude throughout their whole shift, even if they’re just faking it. They always have to constantly talk and ask customers if they need anything. It just seems like a job that would tire anyone out quickly you know? So really, props to those who work in the service industry.

“Inactive service workers lack the necessary education to be ‘knowledge workers.’” I don’t know if I’m understanding this statement correctly, but I think it’s a load of bull. It’s very difficult to get a job in your field of study these days, even with a college degree. But people have to find ways to make a living. And service industry jobs may be easy to get, but they’re not easy. There are also different situations in which this quote just sounds flat-out ignorant. A lot of college students that don’t get financial support from anyone work service industry jobs. It doesn’t mean they “lack the necessary education.” Single parents who struggle to make money may need to keep their job working at a restaurant. They can’t afford to go to school because if they do, then who will feed their kids? Just because they don’t have a college degree, it doesn’t mean they “lack the necessary education.” They’re just struggling to pay the rent every month and trying to put food on the table for their children. I find it really sad when someone looks or talks down on service industry workers. They’re probably so used to exercising their privilege that they don’t stop and think how being a host is the only way some people are able to afford food.

Even though I’ve never worked as a waitress before, I can still say that this job definitely requires some sort of ability to solve problems. These workers stand on their feet all day, taking orders from parties of two to five, and even a dozen sometimes. I don’t know about you, but I’d probably pass out from talking to too many people in a small crowded space, navigating my way through tables, frantically getting everyone’s different and complicated orders, and asking to stop if someone needs water. Honestly, service workers are God-sent. What would we do without them? Imagine eating out with some friends or family. But all the waiters and hosts boycotted the work day. Isn’t that such a shitty thing to think about? It’s depressing. So please, respect the service workers that have to please your privileged lives.

9: Identity

So I tried to read Wardle’s article in its entirety but about four pages in, I found myself rereading every sentence about ten times before I processed what she was trying to say. It wasn’t until I got to page 524 that something really caught my attention about the topics she addressed. Identity is a big part of belonging to any job. Doctors, teachers, musicians, professional athletes, and every other job you can think of will involve different identities associated with it. Whether we think so or not, identity plays an essential role in belonging to a group of people that share similar values.

Warble mentions a sociologist named Ettiene Wenger. Wenger had a theory of communities of practice where he described workplace enculturation. He focused on identity within the workplace setting and other activities. Wenger described identity as a “negotiated experience… a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other.” What I make of this quote is that our identity in the workplace that we belong in is a long-time occurrence that develops over time. We obtain our identity by participating and being actively involved in what is required of us, rather than just watching someone else and learning from them. Of course, our interactions with the people in a work setting help but they are not all that we need in order to obtain our identity in our job.

According to Wenger, in order for newcomers to find their “own unique identities” within new organizations, they must choose levels and types of engagement and modes of belonging. These three modes of belonging included engagement, imagination, and alignment.

Engagement basically describes how newcomers and old-timers of the job interact with each other to develop “interpersonal relationships.” I’m not entirely sure what this means, but if I had to guess the “interpersonal relationships” are more important to the newcomers in that a relationship with more experienced members of their workforce could really work in their favor as they’re still learning to be an expert in what they’re doing. Wenger also explains that even though engagement can be positive, it could also lack in mutuality, meaning that the newcomers wouldn’t really get the full respect from the old-timers and therefore a sense of marginality is created especially towards the newcomer. I’m studying to become a physical therapist in the future, and this is definitely a career where I will need to engage with more experienced therapists in order to become better at my job. Even after obtaining higher education in the field, I can’t just become an amazing physical therapist without actually learning from those who are more experienced.

Imagination is pretty much that- newcomers imagining themselves transcending, and “creating new images of the world and self.” Wenger points out that while imagination can lead to a positive mode of belonging, it can also “be disconnected and ineffective.” With imagination, newcomers could potentially interchange their experience in the community as competence. A scenario I thought of when I read this quote that relates to my field of study is someone who has volunteered their time learning in a hospital or clinic setting prior to actually getting a job. Even if they have volunteered for a long time it doesn’t automatically mean that they’ll be a superior physical therapist than others when they finally get a job. This person might hold the mindset that they’re already better than other newcomers just because they’ve volunteered and learned the workings of a physical therapist in the past. In turn, this might lead to arrogance in the workplace and a sense of superiority that will blind and prevent them from becoming better at their job.

Finally, there is alignment. Alignment requires those involved to basically find a common ground and “reconcile diverging perspectives.” This could be a good thing in the long run, but Wenger mentions that alignment often violates a person’s sense of self and crushes their identity. What I get from this is that maybe sometimes someone’s personal values and beliefs don’t completely align with what their work requires them to do and alignment is necessary in order to completely identify with their job. They have to sacrifice what they believe in just to fit in and to be able to identify with the others in their career.

7: Mushfaking

I can think of many instances when I had to mushfake. Because my whole is basically a big mushfaking festival. In fact, one of the mottos I live by is “fake it ’til you make it”. I know I’m not the only person that pretends like they know what is actually happening around them, but I’d say I do it more often than others. 

One of the times I had to mushfake is when I first moved to California in 4th grade. First of all, I was 10 and had only attended an American school for a year before moving back to the Philippines. I lived in Maryland for a year when I was 8 and was in an English learning class but when I moved back to the Philippines at 9, I went back to speaking my native tongue. Anyways back to California. When my family first moved to San Diego, my sister and immediately started school (in February, too!). It was difficult adjusting to such a different atmosphere and environment. I only knew a small amount of English and I had a fob accent, lol. It was hard to talk to the teacher and ask for help because I didn’t even know what we were learning about. I often found myself sitting in detention during recess because I wouldn’t know which homework assignments we were supposed to do, and therefore I would not do them. It was especially challenging to make new friends because kids can be cruel sometimes, and the fact that I had such a strong Filipino accent when speaking English made other kids not want to talk to me. 

I remember towards the end of the school year all the 4th graders had to make three speeches and present them in front of the whole class and be filmed while giving the speeches. The speeches were assigned every two weeks, so everyone had two weeks to write and prepare to present their speeches before giving them. Those weeks were the ultimate mushfaking time for me. I barely spoke English, I had a strong accent, and I had trouble asking for help because my communication skills at 4th grade weren’t so great. So basically, I was in some deep ass trouble. I eventually went to my mom for help writing and preparing my speeches but since Tagalog was also her first language, she was only able to help me with the main ideas and points. Putting the speech together to make it flow smoothly was still a challenge for both of us. Fourth grade was not a fun time for me. 

I started to adjust better in 5th grade. It was still there, but there was definitely much less mushfaking involved. I had made a couple of friends by then and started doing better in school. I  even became friends with my school librarian because I read so many books. Because of this, my English improved significantly, but I think it wasn’t until middle school that I lost my fob accent. 

School is a setting that everyone mushfakes at. Even to this day, I feel like we all mushfake at some point during the school. We all kinda just learn how to hide the fact that we’re faking it. 

6: Discourse Communities: College

Growing with up in an Asian household, I was expected to go to college. There was no question or difference of opinion when it came to the topic of college. I never really cared about that thought, though. Even I assumed I was going to college. I didn’t ask questions about why it was absolutely necessary. I just knew it was important because that’s what I’ve been taught and influenced to think my whole life. 

On my first semester of college, I realized that not everyone is actually really required to go to college. I noticed that a lot of people I graduated high school with went straight to the military, or got a full-time job, or even just took a break from school for a year to do whatever it is they need to do. I had a secret admiration for those people, actually. I admired them for being so honest to what they think they’re capable of handling at such a young age. And in a way, I was a little envy of them. I envied that they were able to make a decision for themselves while I just kinda had the idea embedded onto my brain that I was going to attend a university, no questions asked. 

College is… Different. It’s a lot different from high school, that’s for sure. In high school, you had to ask the teacher if you could even use the restroom. You had to raise your hand, wait for the teacher to notice you, then you asked if you could leave the classroom for a couple minutes to use the restroom. It’s very structured. But in college, you can not show up to class for a whole week and the professor wouldn’t even know you didn’t show up. It’s a whole different world. How do you adjust to a very structured educational setting with a million rules to an educational institution with over 34,000 students in a span of 2-3 months? The answer is you don’t. At least you don’t adjust right away. You learn to adjust when you fail your first midterm as a straight-A student in high school. You learn to adapt to the environment when you go from seeing the same 30 faces every day for a whole school year to barely recognizing one face in a sea of students in a 500-seat lecture. Adjusting to such different setting takes time, but it also depends on the person and where they came from. 

I’m a local of San Diego. I know how to get to the main places without needing Google Maps. Because I live in San Diego, I also get the wonderful privilege of commuting to school for class. It’s a blessing and a curse, really. It’s a blessing because the only thing I basically have to pay for besides tuition, is gas and the parking permit. It’s a blessing because I get free home-cooked meals every single day, and also get the comfort of using my own bathroom and staying inside uninterrupted for an hour because I decided to bring my phone in with me. Commuting is also a curse because I spend 4-5 hours commuting to school every week. That’s 4-5 hours I could’ve spent doing something else like studying or getting involved on campus. It’s a curse because it’s hard for me to meet new people and make new friends. But, being the annoyingly shy introvert that I am, I would say that that last part doesn’t really affect me as much. Even if I did live on campus/close to campus, I’d probably still have the hardest time making new friends. So I would say that the pros of commuting far outweigh the cons. Of course, adjusting to college life is different for everyone. It is different for someone from New York, or an international student studying in San Diego. How we adjust to life in college depends on where and how we grew up. 

As a junior, I’ve pretty much learned to adjust to college life. As of now, the only thing I’m adjusting to is living at home without seeing my sister everyday. She just started her first year at UCSD and my parents had let her dorm. It feels weird at home because I’m not very close to my brother so I have no one to talk to at any given time. She’s also very smart and often helps me with Chemistry (ironic right?), so not having someone to ask for help at home makes learning Chemistry more challenging for me, lol. But overall, I’ve learned how to adjust and adapt to changes around me. 

5: Discourse Communities

Not gonna lie, it took me a while to think of a discourse community that I’ve been a part of. But when I finally thought of one, the ideas just came flooding in and I immediately thought it was the perfect thing to talk about. 

Music is a big part of who I am and constitutes a big portion of what my interests are. Naturally, this had to have come from something. My love for music just got bigger with the different music groups/ensembles I’ve been a part of. Since my freshman year of high school up until now, I’ve been a part of marching band, wind ensemble, jazz band, orchestra, and even serving on the worship team for a church I used to attend as the keyboard player. 

I believe that the music world is a discourse community in itself but I will be identifying the key characteristics of what makes it one through music groups and ensembles. 

#1: A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. 

A common public goal of a music ensemble as a discourse community is to work and play together to achieve a superior sound in order to perform for the public and music enthusiasts. 

#2: A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. 

In any type of music ensemble, you will find that there are different sections within the actual group that work in closer in order to help the overall goal of playing better together. There are different ways the director communicates among the members of an ensemble. While playing a piece, the director’s job is to conduct. The most basic part of conducting is moving the arms in a continuous pattern simultaneously (for a piece that is in 4/4, it is usually down left, right, up when using the right arm and down, right, left, up when using the left arm). The musicians playing understands that when the director’s arms move down a new measure is starting, and this is helpful because it keeps the ensemble to play in unison and not play their parts as individuals but rather like they belong in a group. Even though this type of communication is not done through words, it is common understanding by both the conductor and those being conducted without the need for further explanation. There are countless more examples I can think of, but this was the most basic example that I think applies to almost all music ensembles. 

#3: A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. 

In a music ensemble setting, participation is a big part of achieving the common goal of being able to perform a piece of music with exceptionally as a whole group. This is achieved mainly through participation and being actively involved in practices with the whole ensemble. Music ensembles go through hours and hours of practice just to perform for an hour or two for their audience. The “information” and “feedback” in a music ensemble setting refers to the director’s different orders when practicing and conducting with the whole group, or different sections in the ensemble (such as woodwinds, brass, percussion, etc.). The information and feedback provided by the music director is considered a participatory mechanism in helping to make the group better as a whole.  

#4: A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.

Music comes in all forms, whether it be jazz, classical, rock, or even contemporary. This means that there are different groups that cater to different audiences when it comes to music groups and ensembles. The kind of music ensembles I was involved with in the past were jazz band, marching band, wind ensemble, and orchestra. The music community is considered a discourse community because it is not limited to just one genre. The various types of music appeals to distinct audiences and this further pushes more purposes for music to be a big part of different cultures. 

#5: In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.

Reading music is, obviously, a very big part of being able to play the music. I consider this to be the specific lexis that is relevant to this discourse community. The first thing on every staff line is a clef. This tells the musician which notes they will read and because the notes are different in a treble clef than it is on a bass clef. To make it simple, the treble clef is usually played with the right hand and the bass clef is usually played with the left hand for a pianist. Of course this is different for each instrument, but usually the higher pitched instruments are played with the treble clef (violin, flute, clarinet, etc.) while the bass clef is played on the lower pitched instruments (cello, trombone, tuba, etc.). This is an example of a lexis that can be found in the music discourse community. Another example are the dynamics that indicate to the player how loud to play a specific part of the piece. It varies throughout the piece, so it is essential that every single player follows it and plays it according to the sheet music so that no single person stands out while everyone else plays a pianissimo (indicated by pp in the sheet music) dynamic. 

treble clef 

 

bass clef 

dynamic markings 

#6: A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise. 

The older the people in a music ensemble are, the more it usually means that the group is more experienced and can therefore play at a higher level than, say, a middle school or high school band. Music groups and ensembles are their own discourse communities because there are countless numbers of groups out there that fit specific requirements for different players of various ages, experience and level. But in the end, these groups work together in order to perform their best for their specific audience. 

I actually really enjoyed writing this blog post, so I'm sorry if it was too long for anyone to read. If you can't tell, I get really excited when I talk about anything music related and start to babble on and on and on. But anyways, hope this didn't bore you too much! 

- Julianna Duque 

4: Opinions

The power of opinions is really exemplified today, especially with all of the current events. I think that people like to read opinionated things regardless of consenting/differing opinions because they legitimize our opinions. If we read something that agrees with what we think, our opinion is reaffirmed; if we come across something that goes against our opinion, we become so heated that we shut down and just think that we’re automatically correct and whoever wrote it must not have their facts correct.

In the NYT “Why Facts Don’t Unify Us,” there is a quote that reads. “In the case of information about ourselves…people normally alter their beliefs more in response to good news. In certain circumstances, that will also be true for political issues.. But at times, good political news can threaten our deepest commitments, and we will give it less weight.”  This reminded me of one of my favorite cracked articles of all time, titled “6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person.” Point number 6 (actually point #1, aka the most important point made) says, “Everything inside you will fight improvement,” that we “intentionally interpret…criticism as an insult” and we “focus on the messenger to avoid hearing the message.” 

I know this is true because I’m guilty of it, especially when reading opposing opinions on things that I’m really passionate about. For example, when reading the TownHall Op-Ed about liberals, I was super shook, in a bad way, because the opinions of John Hawkins went against my beliefs. The extremely negative way he portrayed liberals based on liberal ideals got me thinking, NOPE, I’m out, and had me thinking about all the “wrong” things that people on the opposite end of the spectrum feel (I’m actually moderate leaning left, but it still fired me up).

But I think this is why Op-Ed articles can be great source of information. Op-Ed articles are written in a way that is really opinionated while still having a varied source of facts, sometimes even complete with links to their sources of info. Reading different Op-Eds revolving on the same thing can provide something like the two halves of whole. “Liberals Are the Sort of People Who…” and “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling…” both are very opinionated articles on the same topic that take opposing views. Both Op-Eds are charged with negatively contorted words about the candidate that they don’t support, and don’t exactly say things that are wrong, just things that have been phrased to highlight what they mean to an extent that is so exaggerated that it sounds wrong, specifically to the person whose was already pre-inclined to disagree. I can provide a personal example for this. Like I stated, reading“Liberals Are the Sort of People Who…” had me shook, to the point where I was just -

I guess that the things pointed out weren’t necessarily wrong, the same way that opinions can’t actually be wrong. Still, the way he displayed his thoughts, going against my own personal beliefs, just sounded wrong. On the other hand, “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling…” sit pretty well with me. I agree with what was said passionately, and I just wanna wave the points made in the article in front of people who say “at least Trump isn’t corrupt.” But like “6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person” and “Why Facts Don’t Unify Us,” (though in a much nicer way) said/implied, we tend to respond more strongly to information when it affirms a belief and less likely to respond to information when it doesn’t.

On to JSTOR articles though - these are really fact-based. The tone remains relatively neutral and the articles objective, relaying facts without the focus of the opinion of the writer. So while Op-Eds seem (to me, at least), to highlight either their opinions through fact-based argument or fact-based argument throught opinions, JSTOR articles simply highlight the facts without opinion. I couldn’t see JSTOR articles firing anyone up the way an Op-Ed would, but JSTOR articles do relay information just as powerfully as Op-Eds, since the lack of opinions mean that we can focus more on the information and formulate our own responses based on fact. Which might be just as well, considering the lack of opinion may make us more open to accepting the facts as they are. 

2: Genre

 Even though the length of the reading and the reading’s sophisticated diction originally put me off, reading what Devitt had to say about genres had me like :

I've always thought of the word genre as different categories to sort things like movies, music, and literature, and never more than that surface level meaning of the word. I’ve never considered it in the depth that Devitt goes into it, or even thought that genre had an effect or purpose beyond giving the intended audience a way to choose what they are going to process. Devitt’s definition of genre is that they are "social and rhetorical actions: they develop their languages and forms out of rhetorical aims and contexts shared by groups of users" (342); to me, this means that genre is a way to connect groups of people who are involved within that genre. This goes hand in hand "existing power structures and dynamics” (347) of genre.

I consider texting, emailing, and my academic writing as the different genres I encounter in day to day life. Texting, like with many other, is the one I most commonly use. When texting, the amount of emojis, slang/proper wording, ALL CAPS, and keyboard smashing I use depends on who I’m talking to and what we’re talking about. I text my sister very differently from the way I text my friends and parents and the people that I babysit for. When I email someone, I usually am much more formal than in a text, as when emailing I usually contact professors and potential employers, and so I have to be a lot more formal in my writing than if I was just going to text someone. In my academic writing, my writing is probably going to be much more structured - unless its for this blog, which is a more informal genre anyway - than a short email or text. I’m also going to put much more thought and time into writing academically than I would when sending rapid texts and short emails. In a way, this is an example of how writers take up the ideology of their genre. As the genre changes the way I approach the genre also changes, be it texting, emailing, or academic writing.

One form of writing that Devitt criticizes is “explicit genre teaching,” as she states that this limits genre and that there are better forms of teaching genre that do not limit the writer to a set structure. One form/example of this that I can really relate to my life is the five-paragraph essay. From elementary school onward the five paragraph essay was the holy grail of getting that A; to master it meant to have an advantage when teachers graded. I had a 10th grade English teacher grade essays entirely on the structure of the five paragraph essay, complete with a checklist for each paragraph - the actual content of the essay was only the deciding factor between an A- and an A+. I do think that the formulaic structure of that writing form introduced and advocated from an early age affected me as a writer, and it limited my freedom in writing, thus making me dread writing essays, but also diminished my will to really grow as a writer, as I just wanted to get the essay over with. Even beyond essays were the creative writing assignments with word count limits, supposedly “free-written” journals that had to have specific vocabulary words in order to be marked as passing, and even science lab reports that were limited to a certain number of pages. Because of explicit genre teaching, people are limited in their creativity. Devitt fears that this way of teaching will cause everyone to write very similarly to each other, and that critical genre awareness becomes limited as well.

For the most part I agreed with Devitt’s points. And after reading her work, I am going to put more thought and consideration into importance of genre and what it means in my life and society. 

3: Memes

Now that I think about it, I’ve never actually had to define what a meme was to anyone. Besides my parents (who are the only people I know that don’t have a Facebook account), most people already know what I mean when I mention, or talk about a meme. After reading Davison’s short scholarly article about internet memes, I’ll finally have a definition for anyone that asks me what memes are in the future. 

In "The Language of Internet Memes" by Patrick Davison, an internet meme is defined as a “piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission” (122). Although I’ve never been really able to define what a meme was prior to today, the main thing that pops into my head when I think of the word “meme” are different recognizable pictures that have funny catchphrases edited on, or captioned with the picture. 

One meme that particularly stands out to me is the one of Julie Andrews when she played Maria Von Trapp in the original Sound of Music movie. The meme is the one of her on top of a hill/on an open green field with her arms outstretched as she smiles and looks like she has no worries in the world. 

Like always, it’s taken me almost two hours just to type this much of the blog post, so it’s no surprise that this particular meme is the one I thought of. I realized halfway through typing this that I didn’t really have to try so hard when choosing a meme to talk about. The right one will just pop up when the time was right. And it did. 

I feel like a lot of us in the class have related to this meme countless times in the past. This especially applies to me because of my horrible habit of procrastinating everything until the very last second. I remember having to do winter/spring break assignments in high school the day they were due because I hadn't touched them in the three to four weeks I was off from school. I've gotten better at managing my time since high school, but I still procrastinate from time to time (more like all the time still). I think about Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp whenever I don't do the work I'm supposed to be doing.  

I chose this meme because of how versatile it is. As you can see, this is the same exact meme with a different caption. I connect with it on a strong level, and I'm sure a lot of you do as well. It just shows how a picture without context can be turned into something that suddenly a lot of people can relate to. As a struggling college student slowly drowning in her own tears and massive student debt, I feel like it's getting easier for me to accept things when they don't turn out the way I want them to. And Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp just embodies how I feel on the inside whenever that bad thing happens. I want to show that everything's okay on the outside and that I'm pretty good at this thing called life, but on the inside everything's actually gone to sh** and nothing is fine. 

I couldn't really find when this meme started getting used or how it came about, so I will briefly compare it to the Advice Dog that Davison mentions in his article (127). Like the Advice Dog meme, this Sound of Music meme has a center image, with a first line and a second line that contains the punch line of the joke. This image macro theme fits in to the practice of adding different text to a common image. 

If a person has never seen the Sound of Music meme, the first line "Look at all..." sets the person up for anticipating something, and the second line (usually something witty and a little sad, really) delivers the punch line when the reader realizes that Maria Von Trapp doesn't really have anything around her. So when the reader sees "Look at all the money I have" and laughs to him/herself, they realize that they probably don't have money too, and that's the reason they chuckled to him/herself when they saw a meme of Julie Andrews from 1965. We may be laughing at first, but we all know that we're secretly crying on the inside.


- Julianna Duque 

Julianna Duque

I’ve literally been sitting in the same spot for an hour and this sentence is the only thing I’ve typed. I feel like Spongebob right now.  

Anyways, I am 20 years old. I’m an Aquarius. I am a Kinesiology major, and I am a junior. 

Hi! My name is Julianna and if you’re still reading this, I want to thank you! Most people just call me Juli and Jules, but my family calls me “Iya”, or “Ate Iya” if they’re younger than me. I got that nickname when I was a baby. I was born in the Philippines and in Tagalog, the word “iyakin” translates to “crybaby”. Apparently I cried so much that my parents decided to give me a nickname with a root word that relates to crying and being an inconvenience to people around me (honestly, things haven’t changed much since then). 

I’m an introverted and shy person. One of my least favorite classes I’ve taken at State is Comm 103. I hated talking in front of my classmates. I’ve had trouble getting involved in campus the past two years because of how terrified I am of talking to new people, and also because of the fact that I commute from Chula Vista, which is about 30 minutes away (an hour when there’s traffic in the morning). I’m challenging myself this year, though. I plan to get involved and join a club related to my major and maybe even one involved with community service. I’m overwhelmed just thinking about having to talk to new people, but also a little excited. 

My family relocated to San Diego, California when I was 10. Since I’m now 20 years old, I can officially say I’ve lived in California for half of my life, and also for a whole decade! I adore living in San Diego. It is a beautiful city with endless destinations that you can never get enough of. It has perfect weather most of the year, and the different beaches never disappoint those who love the water, me included. If you can get used to the sand that gets everywhere, the beach is an actual paradise. Another reason why I’ve been wanting to go to the beach a lot lately is because of Pokémon Go. There’s just way too many Pidgeys around my neighborhood and the beach is the perfect place to break the continuous streak of catching Pidgeys. Unfortunately, I have not seen nor caught a Lapras that everyone else seems to have. 

Another thing I love to do is play my piano and guitar. I learned how to play the flute when I was in high school, and I’m not sure if it counts as a club, but I was in the SDSU Marching Band last year as a flute player. It was definitely one of the most memorable things I’ve done at State because it was the first time I made a new friend since I had started college. Music is a big part of me, and if I had enough patience and discipline, I would definitely switch to being a Music major. Sadly, I have neither the patience nor discipline to ever excel in anything music-industry related.

Let’s see… Uhh… I prefer being behind the camera instead of in front of it. The only time I willingly go in front of a camera is on Snapchat when I can put the dog filter on my face and look half-decent for 24 hours. I want to learn more about photography because the only pictures I’ve ever really taken are on my iPhone 6. I’ve captured some pretty cool pictures with it though. 

  

- iPhone cameras aren't that strong 

- I actually had to use my friend's telescope to get this picture (thanks Angie!) 

- The moon is beautiful 

I wasn’t originally going to talk about this, but my life is literally so boring that I’m just going to put this fact out there. In short, I’m obsessed with two groups that are completely different from each other. The first one is Fifth Harmony. Fifth Harmony is the very first group I got obsessed with. They’re on tour right now and one of their shows was supposed to be in the Open Air Theater here at SDSU. I paid a lot of money to be able to meet them but about three weeks ago I found out they cancelled their SD show. I’m still a little bummed about them canceling but at least my bank account isn’t in the single-digits anymore. The second group that I absolutely adore is a South Korean boy group called BTS (방탄소년단). I don’t want to start talking about them right now because this post will turn to an extremely long read for anyone reading, and no one wants that. I just love them to no end, and if you search them up on YouTube I promise you won’t be disappointed, especially with their dances and their clean, precise choreographies. 

Well, that’s basically it. It took me about four hours to write less than 900 words, and I feel like that says a lot about how good I am at expressing myself (not very good). If you stayed long enough to read this far, THANK YOU again. Seriously. My life is boring so thanks for reading this. If you made it this far let me know and I’ll bring you chocolate/candy next class.