Keeping It Short and Sweet

Approximate time reading this post: 1.5 minutes

Let me tell you that looking at a blank page where you are expected to crank out meaningful and interesting ideas is pretty unmotivating. But I am going to make this post short and sweet because it’s not always necessary to talk more in order to say more.

The past couple weeks have sort of been repairing the one’s before which were pretty rough for me. I think I am finally getting the hang of this whole busy schedule thing and really getting my grades under control. Even though that may not really show right now it is a very prominent thought engraved in my brain! (promise).

I still plan on having a hopeful Monday and rest of my week but I just don’t have a lot to say today. So I will leave you with some good songs and other things I recently found that I deem awesome.

Other Thoughts:

  • I’m thinking I need someone to help build my portfolio of fashion-forward photos so feel free to let me know if you have high quality photography skills and want to collab :)

  • “Go the extra mile, it’s never crowded”

  • This coming Spring semester I might have a lot more free time than intended so PLEASE give me ideas/contacts for internship (journalism and/or fashion) opportunities, advice on preparing to transfer to a university, and any other great ways you think I could spend the next few months before summer rolls around.

  • “The best work is when it hardly feels like you’re trying but you’re really giving it your all. That’s called passion.”


Thanks for reading once again and I hope your stressful weekdays to come are as short and sweet as this little post, happy Monday!

The Only Consistency in Life is Change

Approximate time reading this post: 4 minutes

For some reason I am convinced that I have had a fairly decent week. Which is weird to think because it was a complete roller coaster. From failing my math midterm, getting to actually spend time with ALL of my wonderful best friends, driving in the ridiculous rain fearing for my life, purchasing my favorite fall perfume, to absolutely disliking where the change in my life is taking me. One thing you will begin to notice about me is that I love consistency but the feelings are not mutual.

For the past month I have really started to question going on to a university, journalism, my new job decision, and everything else under the sun. And of course I am worrying about all of these matters because they are brand new right now or coming to a close very, very soon. I will warn you right now that I despise change. It is 1000% my worst enemy, besides consistency. But if I am not able to look forward, how do I expect to move at all? I may like who I am and who I have become but I wouldn’t want to stay positioned in this exact spot of my life for the rest of my existence.

In order to live a content and happy life I must allow my world to change and I must allow myself to change with it. I was really close to skipping my post today (I always write my HFM posts Sunday nights so whatever I feel I need to discuss or accomplish from the previous week I can do so in the next. Also it is my only open window of blogging time) because typing this right now is forcing myself to accept the change already and bringing me to a few personal realizations about my current state. And the last thing I want right now is to have someone say “I told you so” but at least it is coming from myself.

As any average millennial looking for answers, I turned to the internet and googled “dealing with change” where I came across this article from the Washington Post called “3 Ideas to Accept Change”. The author, Kali Hawlk, nailed it on the head with her statement that “we would often rather be unfulfilled and not quite happy in a situation we understand than trying a new, unknown path that provides the potential to find satisfaction and happiness. Don't settle for something solely because it's a known quantity.” I tend to do just this and since realizing I have been working on changing.

It can be a good thing to awkwardly force yourself to speak up in class, introduce yourself to the most successful person in the room, or crack a smile when you feel like breaking down. Situations like these serve as opportunities to test your patience and how deep you actually are in fear, which may not be as treacherous as you thought after the first attempt.

In Hawlk’s article, she explained how as humans we are never quite finished with anything so there is always room to progress at any pace as long as you are doing so. She used a passage from "Time is a Powerful Force” by Dan Gilbert that goes a little something like this:

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting, and as temporary as all the people you've ever been. The one constant in our life is change.... The present is a psychological illusion. The present is just the wall between yesterday and today...if you go to the beach, you see water and you see sand and it looks like there's a line between them. But that line is not a third thing. There's only water, and there's only sand. Similarly, all moments in time are either in the past or in the future; which is to say, the present doesn't exist."

When I walk into the Student Life office at PVCC just about everyday my mentor and friend, Mike, tells me that I am completely different than the young adult he met two years ago and how he is thoroughly impressed by my growth. I agree and I see the change as well. The person I was two years ago would NEVER even think it remotely possible to follow through with my dreams in the way I am doing right now let alone even have a blog. Slowly but surely, I have been pushed to adapt. From the advice I gave in my previous post on “Irony and Conquering Stress in the Moment,” you can compare your current situation to one that you previously conquered that was equally if not more difficult when conquering stress and heavy life choices.

This is supposed to be the most exciting part of my young life, so I am going to start treating it that way. I will also take the last piece of advice from our guest author, Hawlk, “Enjoy the journey and appreciate that, every step of the way, you can be in a state of constant positive progress. You're always developing into the person you're meant to be.”

If you are currently conquering change or debating it right now I hope this helps you in any small way. Here’s hope for change and the future because the line between now and then is unimportant, so just make your move already.

Reading the headlines: An unacceptable way to learn about the world

Approximate time reading this post: 5 minutes

Bear with me okay, don’t stop at the title and don’t stop here.

In a time of politics, world issues, bad news, and good news there is a lack of reader interest. And I don’t really blame the readers. Being a journalist and a reader, sometimes I too just read the headlines and believe what they tell me. But this isn’t the best way to get your daily news fix. Some journalists are lying to you, so here’s how to recognize the faulty information when you see it.

(I would like to first state that I am guilty of doing this on occasions when it comes to reading news articles, fashion posts, or any of the latest and greatest. Especially on Facebook, if I read a headline, it strikes my interest, and I do not have time at the moment to read past the headline and first paragraph, I share the article publically and read it later on that day. IF I decide at the time that I read the article that I disagree with their points, opinions, or find their evidence to be faulty, I remove the post from my page.)

But this goes beyond the realm of shared Facebook likes and dislikes. The rising misunderstanding of what is actually going on in the world is a fact the news, journalists, readers, and nonreaders need to grasp. The concept of getting one’s “news” by just reading headlines creates a very small window of knowledge and political correctness. As a whole society and merely reading the headlines, this could make misinformed information actually become the truth. It’s like when someone tells you that if you keep repeating the same lie long enough, you won’t be able to remember which story of your own is true anymore.

Last year, The Washington Post, published an article called “Americans read headlines. And not much else” where they mentioned a study on the fact of how much news we consume and don’t consume. About “41% of Americans report that they watched, read, or heard any in-depth news stories, beyond the headlines, in the last week. 49% reported that they invested additional time to delve deeper and follow up on the last breaking news story they followed. So, roughly 6 in 10 people acknowledge that they have done nothing more than read news headlines in the past week. And, in truth, that number is almost certainly higher than that, since plenty of people won't want to admit to just being headline-gazers but in fact are,” Chris Cillizza wrote.

As a journalism major, I understand the purpose of headlines, how to write one, how to grab a reader’s attention, which audience to pull in with the headline, and how to mislead the reader. I really honed in on this recurring fact recently after the multiple school shootings in the United States. I would also like to disclaim that the victims and their families have my full attention and I am deeply sorry for their losses. My following thoughts and opinions in no way are not acknowledging the unfortunate events of the victims and their families but I am questioning the way the media portrays them.

Especially in recent news that really hit home was the Northern Arizona University death of one student, Colin Brough, and several others who survived but were injured, Nicholas Prato, Kyle Zientek and Nicholas Piring. I decided to mention the names of the victims and not the shooter because in the news the victims are often unacknowledged while the shooter’s name is heard around the world. People shouldn’t only be recognized if they die or if they commit a horrendous crime. But those are the names that the audience wants to hear in the news; hoping they don’t know them in either circumstance.

In the wake of school shootings, specifically at NAU, many people were startled by multiple headlines that read along the lines of “MASS SHOOTING AT NAU.” This not only startled students at NAU but their friends, family, and most of Arizona. I was greatly disappointed when I saw that Vice News posted an article on the day of Brough’s death, “Yet Another Mass Shooting Has Left One Dead and Three Injured at Northern Arizona University” which you can read for yourself because it is too ridiculous to even analyze at this point. I have read this article multiple times but right now I just really can’t get past the headline.

You can see that in the comments multiple people were outraged not only by their loose content but the headline in general using the words “mass shooting.” Many commentators on the article questioned the meaning of “mass shooting” in this case. I tried to research if there was a correct definition in APA style writing (which is the format journalists must follow) to define “mass shooting” but there is no difference or guidelines in when a journalist mentions a shooting or a mass shooting. I have a feeling this will soon change in the world of journalism for when the news is allowed to use certain words like “mass shooting,” “school shooting” and “shooting” to accurately explain a situation like this. At least I hope so.

This is one of the many reasons why I want to go into the field of journalism. I think we will always have bad news but I don’t believe we will always have to have inaccurate news. This should change because the world deserves to know what’s going on across the ocean or next door. I believe in privacy but I also believe in the truth. My heart goes out to Brough’s family and friends and the rest of the NAU community in this wake of confusion and sadness.

 

My advice to avoid the confusion that comes with faulty news is...

  1. Read between the headline, before and after it. Then read it again and you decide if it fits.

  2. If you have the time: investigate further into other news sources and especially direct sources. In this case, I went directly to the NAU website where I found a time schedule of the occurrences on that day and a letter from President Rita Cheng of NAU.

  3. Just because you aren't interested in reading or watching the news on a regular basis does not mean you don't care. It's a complicated line to define but I understand because that was me. I highly encourage anyone who does not often learn about what is going on in the world to find something that sparks your interest and go from there. Because this stuff affects you more than you may understand right now.

  4. Please remember that not all news sources and journalists are untrustworthy. You know one good one *cough* me *cough*.

 

Thank you for sticking with me throughout this lengthy post but I just really had to get this out of my system. And if you didn’t make it past the headline, your loss.