Swing-shift Kisses

Like every princess, they have their prince charming. Like some mothers, they have their husband. And whenever they show their love, it is with a kiss. That is how their kids learn and began to cherish love.

My own experience support Scott Saalman’s idea that the kiss his parents give should be cherished. From what I have experienced, my parents were a little different from Saalman’s. The one thing I remember from my parents was that kiss they would give each other every morning when my father or mother would go off to work. I would always watch them say goodbye to each other with a nice kiss but it was always a quick one. Saalman said he had a bad love life at one point in his life. I also, had a few bad experiences but I've have learned to look back at that kiss from my parents. Saalman experience his parents love life and it’s was a beautiful one. Now that he was older and learned to look back at it, he affirms that the love is still strong. Unlike my parents, even though it is all over for them, they have taught me well. I will always thank my parents for that kiss they shared.  I will always cherish it just like Saalman learn to do.

According to Scott Saalman, in the essay “Swing-shift Kisses”, love should be cherished. He stops what he is doing and watches the kiss his parents give each other. Saalman’s father has a routine of when he touches lips with her. One week at 3:15 pm, another week, at 8:15 am, and at 11:15 pm. As he gets ready for work, Saalman’s mother prepared his lunched. Once he was ready, she would tiptoe and was ready for the smooch. Once Saalman turned Forty-five and he had gone through his love life, he began to repeat his parents kiss in his head. He learned to believe in that one kiss and have hope that one day his life would be as his parents. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/49173/

            Next time you are with your partner, or see ones relationship going off good, remember that if you cherish it, you will have a successful love life. Even if you do not have a love one, you will have that in mind that love should always be cherished in order to have a awesome relationship. 

The Second-Hardest Job

           

           When ever you feel like giving up on your step kids, think back to all the happy and grateful moments you've had with them. This will really help the job of being a step parent so much easier. Even though it will not be easy, the risk will not cost anything.

Step parenting can be one hard job for a woman but also can bring lots of joy afterwards. Tina Boscha says that she became a stepparent for two girls. She had married a guy with kids and had good relationship with these girls mother. I believe that if a biological parent is going to be away from the family, the kids should always go with their other parent. That will discard the possibility of becoming a hard task. Now on the other hand, if the stepparent does not mind being with the kids, there are moments when it does become hard. Even though the role of being a real parent can be easy, most of the time the person can go insane. They might not know how to play the role. In my experience, since I have been taking care of my siblings since I was a kid, I kind of know how to work it out. Being a stepparent is like being a babysitter, they are not your kids but you still take good care of them. It may be hard but if you are used to the role, it becomes a much easier task to do. 

According to Tina Boscha, in the essay “The Second-Hardest Job”, being a stepparent is one hard job for a woman. Boscha did not know when she was considered being a stepparent until the kids used the word “mommy”. Both Boscha and her stepdaughter’s mother work as a team and co parent.  She believes that if her husband is not there, it would make it difficult for her to be a parent for his kids. She also tries to make the best out of it whenever she has the kids to herself. Being a step mom is not so easy but Boscha knows that she will have to be a stepmom for the rest of her life. It will not be hard for her to keep up with this role so she will make it work. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/7303/

Being a step parent can be hard, but there can always be solutions to it. Treating them like your kids can be the best solution to make this job easier to handle. This job doesn’t always have to be hard, as long as you know how to handle it. 

Remembering All the Boys

When I Die, I will like tons of flowers to be placed in my tomb. I know that my grandpa up in heaven can feel the love we give him with all the flowers he receives his family.  Flowers are always a symbol of love and care we have towards someone or something.

Every human being deserves flowers in their tombs. Bautista experiences other graves sad and lonely with nothing to comfort them with and it makes her sad. I feel like it is depressing seeing graves this way because it shows that they are not being missed. A way to show that you’re showing love toward these people is by spending time and visiting them once in a while. This is what Bautista and her friend did when they would go to visit the two boys killed unfairly.  I presences a death of a friend and his death was due to gang bangers. To show some love and respect, we wore rosaries and his favorite color but most importantly, we all brought flowers to support his family. From my experience, I also lost a loved one. As a family, we reunite on his birthday and father’s day. We also try coming on our own spare time to show that we have not forgotten about him just like Bautista does with her brother in the essay. Elvia Bautista has a great opinion which I respectfully agree with. Every individual has the right to have flowers in their grave. 

According to Elvia Bautista, in the This I Believe essay “Remembering All the Boys”, thinks flowers should be placed in each individual’s tomb. Her brother was shot at due to someone liking blue and he liking red. Bautista thought that she needed to find revenge for whatever they had done to her loved one. Since that was not a good idea, she did not do anything but go and visit her brother and put flowers on his grave. Her and some friend would go and visit him and some other kid who was killed for the same reason. Bautista never did this act to harm or favor anything, all she wanted is to never forget the memory of her brother and admire him with bloom of plants. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/21255/

Whenever I visit my grandfather, my family brings flowers to show how much they miss him and love him too. It is right that every human should have flowers in their grave just to show how much they still mean to us. 

The Beauty of Yourself

According to Ee'da in the spoken word “Faded to White”, you should let the reason of why you’re proud of being who you are, be the reason to forgive, to live, and to love. Being bleached was painful but that was the only way people would not discriminate her. Boxes were made which came with different packages for different time periods, but a box was still just a regular box.  Beauty was included in thoses different packages which let yourself be seen no different from others. Your own beauty reflected by the mirror should be the only thing that judges who you are and who you are suppose to be.  

In Ee’da’s the spoken word “Fade to White”, the most striking part of the video was when Ee’da said her mother used to bleach her every day. This was striking because back then everyone wanted to be white skinned to not be discriminated. It was everyone’s dream to be white to have same rights. What was remarkable about the video was that Ee’da stated that many girls want men with a package of box but the meaning of that box was still a box. She says that that box is full of mix messages with a property making girls feel they need to be something more than what they are. These two things were really striking and remarkable.

Ee’da’s message is so important because it goes back to the civil war period. Discrimination was a big part of this war. People of color where separated from all of white color. She says many things that make people of her skin color be proud of themselves and their race. Her message is obviously trying to bring all peoples self-esteem up and to fight for more rights. When she says that her mother would bleach her to be white color skinned, she said she did not stop her because she knew that people would not dis her for being black skin color. Her massage after saying all those things was to be proud of who you are because all people go through, teaches them to love themselves for all the shades they are.

“Faded to White” is related to the video "I am Nobody’s Nigga" by Dean Atta because the video talks about misusing the N word. Both of these videos appertain discrimination and others putting them down with words. I will also compare “Faded to White” with “Doll Face”, which even though “Faded to White” does not share the same experience with social media, appertain to trying to be someone they think will make them feel more of a better person.  The assignment done in class, “Street Harassment”, can be compared to “ Faded to White” because anyywhere a color person would walk by, white people would harass them with big and mean words. This video had a powerful message that has lots of different elements to be compared with other different videos.

Love Who You Are!

"Doll Face" scared and impact me because it had a strog message. I believe the reason why I was scared was because the doll broke. She looked really weird broken in half and creepy. The other video of the dove was more touching. I felt like that video had more to tell society about. I liked that even though many think they are the ugliest person, there is always someone out there that thinks are beautiful. These videos were thought-provoking because when I showed my siblings the video, they sis not understand what the lesson was. I felt this way because maybe kids their age do not function their brains like us teenagers do. The themes are really relevant to everyday life because every person does feel like they have to change who they are in order to look and feel better. The themes that caught my attention were afraid and urge. I felt like it was urging because in the doll video, she looked like she was desperate and urging to become and be where the lady in the TV was. The other video’s theme was low self-esteem. The reason why is because many thought their appearance wasn’t as good as others said it was.

My opinion, discussing these types of things in elementary school would be good but it can also have bad outcomes.  Some good reasons this topic has for elementary school students is teaching them a lesson. This video showed that trying to be someone else can break who you really are. To have little kids discuss about this could be a good idea because then they know that it can cause many bad things. Sometimes, kids who watch the media tend to develop thoughts about wanting to change their physical appearance.
Watching this video can teach a really big lesson especially to students in elementary school. Videos like the doll face can help a student that age understand more what the video is trying to show. This topic for high school students is a really good discussion. I believe every student should have the opportunity to discuss this topic at a certain point in school because it can help many students who are in this situation. Discussing it can be difficult only because to some, the message can be seen wrongly. Some people can take it the opposite way so that they think that being someone else from what the media is portraying, can make you feel better. 

Student's Reasons To Failure

Two reasons why students might fail are that the work is hard and students miss class. Getting difficult work can cause students to not only fall behind, but also fail. For example, students who have trouble with reading and writing tend to give up after they are handed hard work. They might just give up. Symptoms to having hard work can be panic attacks, nervous reactions, and having negative thoughts about the situation. All of these symptoms relate to me because when i start to feel them, I know I am about to fail. My warning sing is stress. When I stress about an assignment, I start to panic and decide to put it aside. The consequence to that action is falling behind which then makes it become hard work.

The other reason to students failing is missing class. Missing even just one day of class has bad consequences.  This consequence is falling behind also, which means you missed class work- hard or easy. When a student doesn't come to class and they've tried asking their peer to explain what was gone over, peers may say it is to hard to explain. This is one of the reasons why it is easier to not miss any class. Missing class is a big reason for failure because outside classwork then becomes hard to do. To avoid failure in college, attending every class day and keeping up with class work, so it doesn't become hard work!

Moving Forward In Life

          

    

         There are many reasons why a lot of people decide to not attend college. But in my case, I decided to start fresh out of high school. I did so because after graduating, I was used to being in school and had many skills fresh in my mind. One reason why students do not start in college right away is having lack of motivation. Motivation comes from seeing other succeed. My motivation happens to be my family and wanting to make them proud. I believe that because I am the oldest sibling, i have to set an example to the youngest ones. I know that if I slack off, my siblings may follow the same path. It might get hard. But believing in myself and putting effort into my classes wont let me fail. 

       Another reason is feeling overwhelmed for getting low scores on their placement test. This determines what classes the student should be place in. Some students, if they receive low scores on the test, decide to not even start school year or keep pushing back the day they will start. My scores were low for English, and math was my highest. So i was placed in English 42&43 and in Math 46. These classes are one of the lowest, but it did not make me want to give up. This encouraged me to keep moving forward in my studies and more in life. I knew that if I want a bright future, I must start form the beginning. I believe that starting soon is more successful than waiting until it's too late. I am on my way!