Concerned Prosumers

We can't deny that media has become part of our life. It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. 

       We attended a seminar at the auditorium entitled "Philippine Media and The Millennials" and the guest speaker is Mr. Toni Tiemsin from GMA news network. He started his talk saying this, "The millennials are a generation that has hope for the future." He said that today's generation have a big part in media because we have all been programmed since birth to believe the great lie to be the true reality. Family, society, religion, culture, the media, state schools, science and many more tentacles have all programmed us from every angle. So we are caught in the big lie. He said that we should know what is the difference between a truth and a lie. He said that we should learn to analyze things that we hear or see. 

     He keeps discussion relaxed as he asked us casually; he takes the pressure off to us to get the “right” answer. He draw out our ideas and guide us to critically examine what we see and hear in the news or the social media. He said that we must remember to keep probing the answer, as this helps us to expand our thoughts and perception on the things we see and here. He helps us focus and to understand how others perceive what they view. He said that it doesn’t matter so much what questions we ask; the important thing is to get we express and challenge us what we see and hear. 

Mr. Tiemsin aslo said that as a person, we should be a better prosumer, stay relevant, be responsible, learn how to maintain sensitivity and be intelligent. All in all, we should always be informed and well rounded.

       As one of the blogger said, "Media literacy is not media bashing; the goal is not to ridicule the media. Media are dominant forces in our culture and an important part of our teenagers’ lives. Media should be evaluated fairly, not denigrated. Media literacy is also no silver bullet or magic wand; it will not instantly solve all of our problems. But it is our best defense in resisting manipulation and keeping a perspective on the images and messages that are a part of media and youth culture."

Cheer and Chants: Camaraderie is the key

      Competing as a block has never been an easy task. Working as a group means you have to agree with one idea and you really have to work as one.  

      At first, I was not really motivated in this kind of task because I know that we have different personalities and perception that might lead us to conflicts and misunderstandings. But we have no choice so we have to do it anyway. First, we decided who our leader is going to be. At first no one wants to do it but in the end, Beca ended up volunteering together with Gem as her assistant leader. They asked us and to come up with the lyrics for the cheer by asking each and every one of us to write poem related to the theme which is is "The Challenges and the opportunities building the SOMA and SOE student blocks."

      We are practicing really hard. I know there are times that we're having trouble in terms of the synchronization, the voice quality, the movements, the gestures, and especially the memorization of the cheer. Some of us is having hard time catching up because I know that not everyone in good in this kind of competition, but at least they're trying. It's better trying than doing nothing. 

     As we practice along the way, this happens all the time where we can't  really fully trust each other. While we're discussing our lives and differing views and opinions, we observe an action, behavior, or comment that causes us to perceive a threat. Our minds immediately jumps to "protect and defend mode." Our minds fill with assumptions in an attempt to make sense of the situation and make ourselves feel better. I think it's just natural. If we let those assumptions run rampant, though, we can create a lack of safety in our groups, invent false stories that become the basis for our interactions, and, ultimately, lose the ability to love and care for our group members well. I can never forget the part when we talked as a group about our feelings and comments about the cheer. Some of us opened up their feelings about their concerns which really made me happy because that honesty and trust made us stronger as a block.

    We poured all our hearts, effort and dedication as we performed at the competition. At that time, I know with 100% certainty that everyone on our class was fully committed to the team and would do whatever it takes to beat our opponents.  We counted on each other as teammates and we all did a great job.  The feeling is almost magical – together we felt invincible.  It was probably the most motivating feeling I’ve ever felt. We placed 2nd runner up in the competition. We're really happy because we won. We won because of each and everyone of us worked as one. Like as we said in our cheer, "We may not strike gold, but honor we will hold." An honor to prove our block as one of the best!

    The strength of our camaraderie is one of the most thing that I won't ever forget. The camaraderie formed by everyone during this time will surely last a lifetime, and have an enduring, exceptional effect on the rest of our lives. I believe that power of camaraderie can change you more than you first think.

Film Review: ‘Parasyte: Part 1’

          Adapted from the manga series "Parasatic Beasts" written by Hitoshi Iwaaki and an anime television series "Parasyte the Maxim" written by Shoji Yonemura, Takashi Yamazaki directed the live action and separated it in two different parts. He released the first part of the movie entitled "Parasyte: Part 1" last November 29, 2014.

          The story revolves around to a 17-year-old Izumi Shinichi who lives with his mother in a quiet neighborhood in Tokyo. One night, worm-like aliens called "Parasytes" invade Earth, taking over the brains of human hosts by entering through their ears or noses. One Parasyte attempts to crawl into Shinichi's ear while he sleeps, but fails since he is wearing headphones, and enters his body by burrowing into his arm instead, taking over his right hand and is named Migi. Because Shinichi was able to prevent Migi from traveling further up into his brain, both beings retain their separate intellect and personality. As the duo encounter other Parasytes, they capitalize on their strange situation and gradually form a strong bond, working together to survive. This gives them an edge in battling other Parasytes, who frequently attack the pair upon realization that Shinichi's human brain is still  intact. Shinichi feels compelled to fight other Parasytes, who devour humans as food, while enlisting Migi's help.

          They arrived in silence and darkness, descending from the skies with a hunger for human flesh. Parasytes - alien creatures who must invade and take control of a human host to survive - have come to earth. No one knows the secret except high school student, Shinichi Izumi, who's right hand has been invaded by a Parasyte. Shinichi and Migi, the Parasyte, begrudgingly form a friendship in the middle of a silent war between humanity and the Parasytes, according to Wessel Pot.

     The story falls in the genre of horror and sci-fi (science-fiction) which I definitely fangirl and enjoy watching. Horror genre always give me the chills especially when there is a creepy background music behind it. I know I'm not really comfortable (especially when I'm alone watching) but at least I'm trying my best to conquer it. Sci-fi genre always gives me the excitement and thrill because it generally conform to current scientific reality or possible scientific realities and it always have some aspect of the way science impacts civilization. Both these genre fits the movie because you can actually see the balance of terror and excitement of every breathtaking scenes.

          I like the movie for some several reasons, namely its awakening the question of how humanity might exist alongside a species that, while not antagonistic to it, nonetheless quarries on it. The everlasting love of Shinichi's mother when she died saving him; this really made me cry and reminded me of my own mother. The sense of humor and friendship that evolve between Shinichi and Migi; this helped them conquer and solved their problems easier. But on the other hand, it's also a frustrating show because it often focuses on Shinichi at everyone else's expense and to its own disadvantage, while increasingly becoming centered on battles and answering its own questions in an unacceptable manner as the story continues.

           I already watched the anime series before watching this movie so in my opinion, the anime is still better. There were some scenes that were different and deleted like Migi didn't name themselves because for the parasytes, names are not logical so Shinichi named him or simply Shinichi should have a father etc. Overall, as a manga and an anime fan, I truly did find the movie highly entertaining, though I wish it would have more depth and focus because there were so many great opportunities for memorable scenes and arousing conflicts.

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          Personally, I know that the anime and manga are much better. I'm hoping to hear from a person, who has never read the manga or seen the anime, of their thoughts on the movie, as a movie.

A Taste of Someone Else's Work

          Have you ever experienced that you have to pass something early and you couldn't think of something else so you rely on the internet and just do copy and paste? Actually, what you are doing right now is called Plagiarism.

Illustrated by Mark Airs/ iStockphoto

          According to the website Free Learn, "Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own. It can include copying and pasting text (like I did right now) from a website into a project you're working on, or taking an idea from a book without including a citation to give credit to the book's author. Plagiarism is common, and the Internet has made it even more common." In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward. Actually, it could be a blog post, an image, a person photo or anything.

         In our lives, it's impossible that you have never plagiarized any someone else's work because even I myself admits that I intentionally copied and plagiarized something before. Actually this happened when I'm about to draw something and I couldn't think of how am  I suppose to conceptualize it so I copied some parts and took it as my own. But in the end, I felt bad and I swear to myself to never do it again because I know what it feels like when someone used your ideas and they didn't even recognized you as the owner of it. It really sucks. Plagiarizing something should not be an option even if you have to pass something really urgent because isn't better to just properly cite the reference or recognize the owner?

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       Actually, according to the website Bowdoin, there are some common types of plagiarism committed by the students. Direct plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks. Next, Self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits his or her own previous work, or mixes parts of previous works, without permission from all professors involved. For example, it would be unacceptable to incorporate part of a term paper you wrote in high school into a paper assigned in a college course. Self-plagiarism also applies to submitting the same piece of work for assignments in different classes without previous permission from both professors. Next, Mosaic Plagiarism occurs when a student borrows phrases from a source without using quotation marks, or finds synonyms for the author’s language while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original. Sometimes called “patch writing,” this kind of paraphrasing, whether intentional or not, is academically dishonest and punishable – even if you footnote your source. Lastly, Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution.

          Sometimes even if we didn't mean to plagiarize, it's still possible to do it without realizing it. It's important for us to understand that it's still plagiarism, even if it's accidental. So we must learn to cite the reference and recognize every people involved. As one of the blogger said, "Copying content doesn’t mean blogging, it is something like having the taste of someone’s other hard work. If anyone need to copy the content of other post the you should give proper credit to the writer and before that take prior permission of the writer by mailing them. This will add the value to your blog."