Blog 5 - Facebook Rewind

My Facebook citizen was an adventurous senior citizen from China. She was great at martial arts and loved to skydive. She was also into going to Bingo after she was done with her comedy shows on the weekends. All-in-all she was a pretty unique person. When I originally had an ideal citizen in mind I was thinking of the craziest person I could think of. I just didn’t think that being normal was on the right track to being ideal. Envy, theft, and death are all normal things that we encounter in life but are far from perfect. There is still one change that could be made to my citizen to make her an even better citizen.

One thing I would do to my citizen is have her more active in the society.  My citizen didn’t really take a stance to make a change on anything. To make her more ideal she would be passionate about a social issue. To be more specific I’ll say that she would fight for America to have universal health care. She would be passionate about this because when she was living in China a lot of her friends died of polio that ravaged the land. She wants to make sure that nobody has to lose someone close to them from a disease that could have been prevented from proper health care.

I think that this would be a great leap toward perfection. Before, my Facebook didn’t really have a goal that she was working towards. I think people should always have some desire that they’re aiming for. A depressing mistake that a person could make is getting to a point of their life and realized that they accomplished all of their goals; it means they didn’t aim high enough. My Facebook citizen will not have this happen and will fight for change until the day she dies.

A lot of the stuff that was covered in this course was taught in my high school. When I was a junior we had a boat-load of classes on rhetorical analysis. In my senior year we covered the moves of rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos. What made this class different was the emphasis on activism. I really enjoyed how this class made us take a social stance and to be able to sway people to our point of view. That is why I thought this class was worthwhile to take. The skills that we learned don’t just have to be used in the classroom either. They can be used at home, a ballgame, the movies, or pretty much anywhere when we have to argue our point of view. 

Blog 4

[I neglected to add the whole post. Here's the remainder]

My experience has led me to relay my own experience to others. I even managed to have some of my friends sign up to be donars. It feels like I'm really doing something that matters and it feels good. 

My Experience at The Ebony Health Series event (blog 3)

For this blog assignment I went to an event called “Giving your Seven Pounds” which was hosted by the Ebony Health Series. The main focus of the event was to raise awareness about the importance of bone marrow, blood, and organ donating. Because bone marrow type is dependent on race factors the presentation focused especially on African Americans donating. The goal of this Health Series was to have more people change their mind about any negative stigma they had with donating. One of men presenting there was Edward Drake. Edward was actually a self proclaimed great football player and was diagnosed with kidney failure when he got his routine physical. For two years Edward was on dialysis and it was very depressing because a lot of the people in the health center were dying because of lack of organs. When he received his new kidney he felt obligated to spread the word about the importance of donating. Now he is the founder of an organization called YNOT which stands for Youth Needing Organs and Tissues.

                One thing that really hit home for me was something that a Ms. Candye said. She explicitly spelled it out that doctors will not let you die just because you were an organ donor to save the life of another patient. I know that most of us are going into some medical profession and will end up being doctors. We would never think to do that dare we violate the Hippocratic Oath. But ever since I was a kid I thought this to be true. This was caused by what I saw in shows like ER and General Hospital. Ms. Candye said it made for good entertainment but couldn’t be further from the truth. The only way you’ll be a candidate for organ donating is if you’re brain dead of heart dead.

                Actually being at the event helped to sway how I felt about the whole business of being a donor. Seeing someone else’s personal testimony, and simply learning the truth about the process was a big push in the right direction. I liked the last thing that Ms. Candye said: “In the event of your death wouldn’t you like to perform one last heroic act?” When I thought about that I was just waiting for them to end their presentation so I could sign up already. Now you’re reading the blog of a new blood, organ, and marrow donor and I’m so proud to say that.