History Essay final

Being cool and hip has become the most natural way for teens in America to mask and cover up there insecurities, it is rarely the case that we face our character flaws.
The majority of kids spend countless hours in stores carefully picking out clothing that will give them an image of cool. The area in which the clothing they choose is acceptable is such a thin line. If they dress too flamboyant, they will be looked at as a person that is trying too hard and going overboard. Dress with too little flare though and the person will be too boring and average. The style and mode of the current time changes so frequently making it extremely difficult to keep up with every move. Putting these two together makes it near impossible to truly stay in style and cool while also remaining good in school. Plus you have to find your image for personality. You need to have this role or image you relate and compare to but at the same time you have to take that image and make it seem original and effortless. The problem many teens face with school relating to cool is that working hard to do well in school is lame. But if you can some how manage to pass with little effort and work ethic than you remain cool because of the fact that you are relying on natural smartness and do not really care about it. Being cool in high school alone is a basically a full time job. You cant be seen wearing the same clothes often and you be seen working and studying hard. Slacking yet passing is one of the important factors. The interesting part of being cool in high school is that unlike many other things, you financial background is not the most critical aspect of being cool. In other words, you don't need to rely on money to be extremely cool. Of course having money will make the cause easier for you but you can get buy with spending the money you have and depending on a "careless" attitude while still being genuine and original.
The crazy part is that although the majority of people use cool to cover up character flaws by being cool, the people in our society that are at the peak of the cool mountain are not typically using it as a cover up for insecurity. This small group is the one that predicts the fads before they come. There are in a image of ahead of the game and are respected for this. There personalities do not count so much because there style of hipness can cover up for that. It is not usually purposely done so and can therefore not be referred to as insecurity. The majority of us conform to the styles of these people in some way. The style part of cool becomes so vital because it is the first thing you see when you meet someone. You first impression is always a lasting one because it is what you refer back to. For instance if are interviewing for a job and you dress extremely well and then follow up by dressing poorly you will be viewed as a well dressed person who has been dressing poorly lately as opposed to a poorly dressed person that dressed well once. The image you remember of the person is often the first one. Its sort of like a name. If you meet someone with the name Jane and your ex girlfriend happened to have the same name, you automatically relate them. First impression is vital.

A persons image and how it is perceived by others also plays a major role. Once an image of a person is determined, he constantly relates to it. For instance the jock may be naturally good at sports but equally good at school but decides to pursue his athletic talents because of his parents role. And although he could go through high school being a good student and athlete, his role of the jock allows him to rely to heavily on sports and his education to be squandered.

A ruined image causes a person "true colors" come out. Tiger Woods for instance played the role of the focused and extremely talented golfer that truly enjoyed the game. His passion and dedication seemed unreal. Little was known about his social life and people assumed it was average and he remained loyal to his family. His impressive golfing career was enough for people to respect him. But now with all these women admitting that they had affairs with him, his character and image come into question. Although his golf talents likely remain exactly as they were before, companies such as gatorade, nike and bing no longer want to sponsor him. Technically they were sponsoring him for his golf abilities and not his social life. It is interesting how in some cultures, including men in college are respected for how many women they are able to do sex with but when a professional athlete does it, it is considered a bad image for children and people who look up to him. I am not defending what Tiger Woods did in any way it is just interesting.
In conclusion, It seems like although not all of use cool as way to cover our insecurity, the majority of us feel the need to because we are in deep denial of our character flaws. Cool is merely an opinion and image of someone that you would like to see yourself as. Everyone wants to be someone else. We constantly strive to be someone we are not and can never be truly satisfied with who we are. Although some people claim to be themselves and respectively, some people get quite close. No one is completely satisfied with themselves. There would be little point to living to we were completely happy. We have ambition to make money and be successful. Some have it more than others but to an extent we are born with this idea of "get rich and famous" we set our standards of cool too high.

History Homework #36 Triangle Comments

Arden,

I enjoyed reading your essay as it was very in depth. I think the foundation of it is very strong and with some solid editing you would have a great paper. The fact that you used examples and direct quotes from some of your interviews is helpful in portraying direct examples of what some people are like as opposed to just speaking from opinion of what and how you think people would respond. My favorite section that you wrote in your essay was the rules of cool. It was written in a very honest and straight forward with an alternative approach. As far as improvement goes on what you already have. I think by labeling your draft ideas in a mess, you already sort of know that organization of your essay is going to be vital for it. What is very good though is the fact that you use many hard facts including numbers which add strength to your essay as a whole. I think you should definitely expand on your ideas of the rules it takes to be successful at cool and hip. Some of your other arguments are not as relevant to your thesis which I think you could drop and therefore make fewer arguments but stronger ones. Its often quality not quantity. I do look forward to reading your final draft and think you have the potential to make a good draft an excellent final.

Omar,

Although you are not technically not in my triangle partner group. One of my partners failed to submit there rough draft essay so i figured i would read your essay. For starters, great essay with solid points all around. At this point I think the points you have are strong enough to squeeze out 1000 words for your essay. I dont think you need to add any more arguments, i just think that you should expand on the current ones and provide more supporting arguments for them.
The most interesting point and argument that you provide in your rough draft is the one about how important connection and touch is in our lives. It immediately reminded me of the book Tuesdays with Morrie. In the book one of the characters talks about how important touch and connection is in our lives. We are never touched and held enough as children. Although we are held a lot, the connection cannot be used enough. No amount of phone calls and emails can substitute for physically seeing and connecting with them. When you write that we are helplessly slaves of cool you immediately move on to another topic. I think this is a shame because that phrase really catches the reader and think you could expand on how and why we are slaves of cool because that phrase is so interesting but is not quite straight forward enough to be not supported with any arguments.

History Essay Draft

Being cool and hip has become the most natural way for teens in America to mask and cover up there insecurities.
Many kids spend countless hours in stores carefully picking out clothing that will give them an image of cool. The area in which the clothing they choose is acceptable is such a thin line. If they dress too flamboyant, they will be looked at as a person that is trying too hard and going overboard. Dress with too little flare though and the person will be too boring and average. The style and mode of the current time changes so frequently making it extremely difficult to keep up with every move. Putting these two together makes it near impossible to truly stay in style and cool while also remaining good in school. Plus you have to find your image for personality. You need to have this role or image you relate and compare to but at the same time you have to take that image and make it seem original and effortless. The problem many teens face with school relating to cool is that working hard to do well in school is lame. But if you can some how manage to pass with little effort and work ethic than you remain cool because of the fact that you are relying on natural smartness and do not really care about it. Being cool in high school alone is a basically a full time job. You cant be seen wearing the same clothes often and you be seen working and studying hard. Slacking yet passing is one of the important factors. The interesting part of being cool in high school is that unlike many other things, you financial background is not the most critical aspect of being cool. In other words, you don't need to rely on money to be extremely cool. Of course having money will make the cause easier for you but you can get buy with spending the money you have and depending on a "careless" attitude while still being genuine and original.
The crazy part is that although the majority of people use cool to cover up character flaws by being cool, the people in our society that are at the peak of the cool mountain are not typically using it as a cover up for insecurity. This small group is the one that predicts the fads before they come. There are in a image of ahead of the game and are respected for this. There personalities do not count so much because there style of hipness can cover up for that. It is not usually purposely done so and can therefore not be referred to as insecurity. The majority of us conform to the styles of these people in some way. The style part of cool becomes so vital because it is the first thing you see when you meet someone. You first impression is always a lasting one because it is what you refer back to. For instance if are interviewing for a job and you dress extremely well and then follow up by dressing poorly you will be viewed as a well dressed person who has been dressing poorly lately as opposed to a poorly dressed person that dressed well once. The image you remember of the person is often the first one. Its sort of like a name. If you meet someone with the name Jane and your ex girlfriend happened to have the same name, you automatically relate them. First impression is vital.

A persons image and how it is perceived by others also plays a major role. Once an image of a person is determined, he constantly relates to it. For instance the jock may be naturally good at sports but equally good at school but decides to pursue his athletic talents because of his parents role. And although he could go through high school being a good student and athlete, his role of the jock allows him to rely to heavily on sports and his education to be squandered.

A ruined image causes a person "true colors" come out. Tiger Woods for instance played the role of the focused and extremely talented golfer that truly enjoyed the game. His passion and dedication seemed unreal. Little was known about his social life and people assumed it was average and he remained loyal to his family. His impressive golfing career was enough for people to respect him. But now with all these women admitting that they had affairs with him, his character and image come into question. Although his golf talents likely remain exactly as they were before, companies such as gatorade, nike and bing no longer want to sponsor him. Technically they were sponsoring him for his golf abilities and not his social life. It is interesting how in some cultures, including men in college are respected for how many women they are able to do sex with but when a professional athlete does it, it is considered a bad image for children and people who look up to him. I am not defending what Tiger Woods did in any way it is just interesting.
To Conclude my thoughts, I feel like although not all of use cool as way to cover our insecurity, the majority of us feel the need to because we are in deep denial of our character flaws. Cool is merely an opinion and image of someone that you would like to see yourself as. Everyone wants to be someone else. We constantly strive to be someone we are not and can never be truly satisfied with who we are.

Homework #34 Cool Pose

Society provides us with different options of which cool role we want to fill. The main ones include the jock, the cheerleader, the nerd, the hipster kid, the bully, the drama queen. These are found usually in the stereotypical white high school. But even in more diverse places this often occurs. The real question is that where do the people get grouped in that don't fit in any of these roles. Sure, some of them slip through the cracks and become misfits but still that is categorizing. That is still a group and role. But those of us who don't fit into these roles are left without anything to relate too. We all try and find a role because it serves as a way to guide us. We have something or someone to relate to.
Cool is a risk and often a bad choice. Only in rare cases do the cool kids of high school stay cool throughout their life. Friday Night Lights, a book by H.G Bissinger really portrays this. The book is about a high school football team and how they are completely worshiped by the entire town. Everyone in school knows them and looks up to them. They are never expected to do their homework and are given free meals all over town. The interesting part is after they graduate their senior year. Out of a roster count of 78, only 4 members of the team go on to a full 4 year college, the rest of them go on to work low income jobs and support the next class of high school football stars. It is interesting how one week they are the heroes of their town and riding the top of the world and then suddenly they have to settle for this low class meaningless life and have trouble adjusting to it.
The fact that many ghetto black kids spend so much money on shoes instead of saving it for college makes sense to me. They are grown up in an environment where very few people of their own race end up attending college and therefore have a tough time having these aspirations. Where poverty is so crucial people want to show so badly that they have overcome it. Attending college just does not have the same immediate affect. Wearing flamboyant expensive clothing shows that poverty has no affect on this person. It remains ironic to me that they are able to afford all these expensive clothing but always complain that they barely even have the money to put food on the table. We are way too shortsighted to notice what would be best for us in the long run.

Hw #33 Outline for big paper

Thesis: Being cool has become the natural way in our current society to mask and cover up our insecurities.




Main idea
Cool is an endless cycle of change that is kept up with by only a small part of our population. The cool ones can see whats in style before it is in style to the masses. They predict the trends and start the fads. Does this mean that they are the most insecure of us? Certainly not. But they definitely use there style to cover up some of there weak spots and personality flaws. Take tiger woods for example, his image of face was busted when we found out about his affairs with all these women. Suddenly his character came into question. Nike and Gatorade no longer wanted to sponsor him and he began to be doubted. He used to have the image of the focused golfer that was just too good for his competition. His character was firm. But now that he has been shifted out of his comfort zone, his true colors seem to come out.


Examples:
Tiger Woods
Hip Hop stars
People craving attention


Include:
The definition of the word "authentic" in the context that most people use when describing how they live their lives.
The affects of masking up our insecurities in society.
How the easiest way of doing it is.
The difference between being truly cool and putting it on for friends.

History HW #32

Tattoos have become more than a body art. When I see a tattoo on someone I only scratch the surface of the meaning of it by looking at the depiction itself. With closer friends that have tattoos, I feel more comfortable in asking what the tattoos represent and symbolize. Most of them are about a memory of something they did which is ironic because they are still so young and already they have this label on their body that reminds them and brings them back to a memory they had in the "good old days". I find it interesting how regardless of their age and hobbies, all of their tattoos are extremely different. One of them has something written in Sanskrit and the other has a picture of a Croatian flag representing his heritage.
Its interesting how our society views Henna art. Henna is a form of tattoo popular in parts of India and Sri Lanka. The reason it is interesting to me is because a friend of mine really wanted to get a tattoo but her mother would not let her. When she asked her mother for a Henna, which is equally permanent but explained that it was part of the culture in India, her mother said it was no problem. Although often less flamboyant than a tattoo. I was shocked how her mother viewed this Henna as so extremely different than a tattoo. John Fanning explained to us how tattoos used to be looked down on upon society. Still today, tattoos are looked down on a lot. At job interviews for example, people will often be canceled out of the job if they are seen with tattoos.
Tattoos are more than a image, they become a part of us. We take them with us everywhere. As Andy wrote is his post, tattoos " decompose with the rest of us" We take them with us everywhere. Many of us whether old or young see the body as being clean and natural and think that getting a tattoo is rupturing this naturalness and cleanliness where we have no problem with getting our noses redone or piercing parts of our skin. I think that the fact that tattoos were looked down on by society for such a long period of time causes people to get tattoos in places that are rarely seen. But this raises the question of why would someone get a tattoo or image on their body if they personally were embarrassed for it to be be seen by the masses.

EC #2 History

a. How does Ivan's quest for status, advancement, prestige, and generally the approval of others endanger his chance to live a more meaningful life?



Ivan's life is spent constantly striving to move up in his social class. He starts off in Russia living growing up as I would Imagine Russian youth typically does. His quest for status, prestige and approval of other really begins to affect him when he becomes successful in life. His wife seems to demand more than Ivan is able to handle and he therefore ignores her and his family. He masks this problem he has with his ambition and work. He works hard in order to become successful and although he succeeds and moves up eventually, his family at home is suffering and he seems to be caring less and less for them.
I think his primary reasoning for this is that in a mental state, his work and life outside of his immediate family is more clear cut and in a way, it is also easier. Although in the long run he may have to work more, it is simple. Usually at work the more work he inputs, the more he will get as his output. In family, things are never this straight forward. It is hard to establish a routine with family life as it is compared to work. He is unable to realize how it is impacting not only his family but himself. He is too deep into the thought of what others thing to notice what his family thinks. This is common in todays society. People are not worried about how they treat family because often their family will come back to them and will take it where as with others, people put off an image in order to impress. It is common among teen relationships where the male will treat the female poorly in front of friends in order to impress at the cost of another sometimes without even noticing. Ivan isn't concerned with his family because he is too busy with business and class.
Ivans life can be viewed as a metaphor or representation of our lives. For the majority of Ivans life he is living and doing very little thought about whether it is wrong or right. He is only able to criticize his life when he discovers he is dying. My grandparents often question the route or path taken in their life and what is has brought them to. Many of us, when we reach the end of our path are not completely satisfied because the society we live in does not allow us for more. Ivan just wants to make something out of his life and have a sense of meaning and this is, in his opinion, a good, smart way of doing it. He only realizes later in his life how out of order his values were.
Ivan lives a life looking up to a man he wishes and thinks he could be. He wants so badly to fill the role of a strong sucessful lawyer who is popular amongst his friends. He enjoys playing cards but also uses it as a way to avoid his life at home which is not quite so stable. He in a way hides his family from the outer world because he feels like they prevent him from filling this role he wants to be. He does in the end, fill out some of the role that he wanted to complete but he becomes terminally and realizes that his sucess was really useless .

EC #1 History

f. Please discuss and analyze any other aspects of the book, of your choice, that relates to our sense of lostness, the source of our lostness, and our attempts to either cover up or fill that emptiness through heroic life and/or the approval of others.

Ivan throughout his life is masked by this artificiality. He gets brainwashed from the time where he attends the school of law. He puts into his head that he wants to be successful and approved by society. Similar to the book Tuesdays with Morrie, the thought of facing death makes Ivan realize his true values. He looks back on his life and feels the emptiness that we often feel today. Although there were points in his life where he was in fact quite successful, he realizes he was constantly masked by the artificiality of the people around him.
At the beginning of the book Ivan seems to be growing up in an average childhood. He seems quite happy and becomes more ambitious as he grows older. Once he is faced with this illness he discovers while furnishing his new house he does not immediately realize what he values in his life and that the only real joy he felt within his life was way at the beginning in his childhood. His ambition, although very important and vital to some people, ruins the joy he could have had in his life. Even during the beginning middle of the book where he is successful and has more or less what he wanted and aimed for, he does not seem satisfied as ambition constantly wants you to get more of what you already have never leaving you happy with what you currently posses.

In the book two completely different types of lives are represented. There is the lifestyle Ivan is living and the lifestyle that he wished he had been been living near his death. His way of life is represented by fake relationships with friends and materialistic surroundings. The way of life that he wished he had lived only becomes clear to him when he is nearing his death. He realizes that a large portion of the path or journey he went in his life with was done in a way that was not quite as authentic as he planned. The irony though, is that the life he did want to pursue and live was very similar to that of Gerasim. Gerasim fills the role of living the more authentic which in end is viewed as the more fullfilling lifestyle. Similiar again to Tuesdays with Morrie, Ivan learns that to start living life, one must learn to overcome the fear of death that we are all in such denial about.