Interview. Saturday, Dec 3 2011

For freshman seminar, I was to Interview a senior about their opinion of Xavier University’s mission statement. I was unsuccessful in finding a senior however I was grateful in finding a junior named De’Aona Lewis who is just as good. The mission states, “Xavier University of Louisiana, founded by Saint Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, is Catholic and historically Black. The ultimate purpose of the University is to contribute to the promotion of a more just and humane society by preparing its students to assume roles of leadership and service in a global society. This preparation takes place in a diverse learning and teaching environment that incorporates all relevant educational means, including research and community service.”I asked Ms. Lewis what this mission personally means to her. Her response to goes, “the mission statement is very inspiring to me as a student at Xavier University. It gives me confidence to be able to continue my studies and achieve my goals in life. I believe that Xavier does the very best to carry out its mission. That’s all I have to say.”

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Xavier. Thursday, Dec 1 2011

Xavier University is in short quite extra ordinary. Daily routine of going to class each day then home with maybe a touch of forgetting to get my adviser’s card signed. Nothing amazing happens except being able to find a quiet corner in the library to take a nap before class starts. Honestly it was difficult for me to adjust to the schedule because of the eight classes I have now compared to the four I had in high school. However, as the semester went on, I got familiar with everything and with what was expected of me. Now as the semester comes to a close, I realize Xavier is pretty boring. It’s all study, study, study here which I have to admit, I rarely do. I would like school to be more fun and more towards the thought of I would be excited to go to everyday.  Unfortunately, I have to drag myself out of bed every morning, get dressed to go somewhere I don’t really want to be. But don’t get me wrong, the teachers and faculty are wonderful. All of them are nice and they care and have respect for all of their students. I enjoyed all of the instructors that I was blessed to be scheduled with this semester; they have taught me well. I thank all of them for their determination in passing their wisdom onto me.

The mission statement of Xavier University is straight forward. The goal is for the students to become successful leaders in the society. The education level of the school accomplishes the mission every year as it sends little prepared students off to medical school or wherever their paths leads them.  I feel like if I dust off my rusty study habits that I can be just like them in four years and just maybe get accepted into an good medical school.

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Fast Food Nation Tuesday, Nov 22 2011

What did you think of the book Fast Food Nation?

When I first learned that I was required to read a book for Xavier University, it reminded me of all of the books I had to read during summer for high school. I disliked having to read a book for the summer. By me having to read a book, bought back memories of me lying in bed attempting to read the books, reading a paragraph, and then throwing the book to the side, and forgetting about it for the rest of the summer. Basically, that’s what I did for Fast Food Nation, but I read more than a paragraph this time. During the summer, I read up to chapter three. The start of the book was interesting to me. I was amazed at how much of the information didn’t occur to me before I read the book. It made it realize that I barely notice the significance of everything that happens around me. Well, I knew already that the world is filled with greedy, dirty people, but the little facts that were included in the book opened my eyes.  

Even though the book gave many interesting facts, it was overall a boring book to read. I do want to give positive feedback to the author, Eric Schlosser, though. It took him a lot of research and determination to write this book. I can tell it consumed most of his time and days in order to write this book. I want to praise him for having the courage to broadcast his voice and providing the nation the opportunity to consider what exactly they are supporting when consuming fast food products. Fast Food Nation give me a different prospective of the fast food industry.  It requires me to think before I eat fast food.

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Automobiles and interstates Tuesday, Nov 22 2011

Automobiles and interstates are very important to the spreading of the fast food culture. Fast food restaurants exist for one thing: to gain intakes of profit from the society. How will those restaurants gain profit if there is no sort of transportation? Therefore the invention of automobiles gave hope to the franchises that people could now go great distances to consume their food. America is now filled with fast food restaurants; there is one at every corner. Automobiles make it easier for people to pick and choose which particular restaurant to eat at. The turn of the century was when drive thru become available. Nowadays people are lazy and seem to take pleasure in the idea that it is not necessary to get out their cars and walk merely a few feet to order food. It is more convenient to stay in their automobiles and having to exert no energy whatsoever.

Fast food restaurants praise interstates. Traveling on the road for such a long amount of time and distance can make people delirious and that makes them hungry. Franchises take advantage of those moments and build restaurants at very exit and at very available stop in order to satisfy and feed those hungry travelers. That gives them a boost in profit and also a boost in people’s unhealthy state. They also post advertising billboards along the sides of the roads with pictures of mouth-watering foods making the travelers want to eat even more.  However, the downside of the food served at the restaurants is that they don’t even come close to looking like the pictures provided on the billboards or commercials on the television.  Automobiles and interstates have greatly helped the advancement of the growth of the fast food culture. The fast food culture will continue to grow as long as the nation continues to feed off of their deceivingly desirous food.

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Thank You. Friday, Oct 28 2011

Dear Doctor Homan,

As you may know, I’m required to email one of my many teachers thanking them for their hard work. You are the chosen one teacher. Doesn’t it give you a vibrating feel of excitement in receiving an email from a student?  Well, thank you, Doctor Homan. It has been great pleasure being in your presence and also in your freshman seminar class this semester. Though the classes are short, they are very thrilling from taking roll to singing the Alma Mater and learning interestingly random facts. It is funny how we have such a limited number of classes left but yet you are still struggling to learn everyone’s names. However, it pleasing to know that you are trying to get to know your students; you also printed out pictures of us. Also we have successfully mastered the Alma Mater in Hebrew, because you are such a grand teacher. Thank you again for your hard work and enthusiasm in teaching our class.

You may also know that we are inquired to write three hundred words so if you don’t mind me blabbering about nonsense in this next paragraph, you can read on. It is fairly amazing how fast this semester has gone by; it is half way over now, but yet it feels like we just started the semester. It is probably because we only meet once a week for fifty minutes.

I am thinking the whole class should get Honey Badger T-shirts in honors of your random moment of showing the class such a random video. I like how you have your moments where you present your sense of humor. It is nice to have a teacher that puts forth an effort to relieve the increasing stress from all of the other classes. Please continue to excite us.

Best Regards,

Melissa Nguyen

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Katherine Drexel’s Happiness. Saturday, Oct 15 2011

Katharine Drexel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 26, 1858 to a wealthy and well known family. Her father and mother, Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth, were compassionate and taught their two daughters that “their wealth was simply loaned to them and was to be shared with others.” With her parents’ beliefs in mind, Katharine grew up to be a kind and caring young woman. She became interested in the plight and destitution of the native Indian-American. Her heart went out to them and throughout her life she tried her hardest to improve their condition. She became a missionary after a meeting with the Pope; she decided to “give herself totally to God, along with her inheritance, through service to American Indians and Afro-Americans.” Her concern turned to the freedom of Afro-Americans. She saw their treatment, living conditions, denied education and constitutional right, and she felt a great need to help change United States’ racial attitudes. She began a lifelong goal in staffing schools for both Native Americans and Afro-Americans throughout the United States. She founded about sixty schools and mission mostly in the West and Southwest. “Her crowning educational focus was the establishment in 1925 of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only predominantly Afro-American Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States.”

I believe Katherine Drexel would be very happy with Xavier University of Louisiana. Xavier is very successful in educating its students and in helping them fulfilling their life goals. I also believe that she wouldn’t be able to contain her excitement in knowing that many African Americans are attending Xavier along with people of other ethnicities. Her dream of the unifying of all peoples has been fulfilled through Xavier.  Xavier has grown to be a well-known school famous for her science departments and for prepping students for their acceptance in medical schools. Drexel would also be happy with the mission statement of Xavier, because it carries out her heart’s desire, “a more just and humane society.”

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His Agenda. Saturday, Oct 15 2011

I believe that the author does have a political agenda. Political agenda is defined as a set of policies or issues to be addressed or pursued by an individual or group; also, a set of underlying motives for political policy. Schlosser’s intentions are secretly laid out within the many facts throughout Fast Food Nation. He broadcasts to the world about the monstrous money greedy powers controlling the fast food corporations. They don’t care about the hazardous products that they feed their nation. They just worry about the profit they make by doing whatever they can to attract the consumer’s taste buds therefore, attracting their money. And with the power that they process, imagine what they can do. In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser gives a number of examples of how wealthy corporations without a second thought take advantage of workers or smaller companies in order to gain more profit. He also mentions the dirty and contaminated meatpacking companies having no concern about the consequences in feeding the world beef infected with salomella or little microorganisms.

Eating at fast food restaurants, people do not take a second glance at who is preparing the food. A bunch of teenagers, elders, immigrants, who are working long hours and only receiving minimum wage, are working at these restaurants making the world fatter and fatter every day. Schlosser also warns the nation about its overall health. Despondently, the people of this world are getting lazy and fatter as we can see for ourselves. Schlosser writes Fast Food Nation in order to let the readers view the fast food world through different eyes, how it affects everyday life without our realization, and maybe make a change.  I believe he also wanted the government to act upon helping the employers of the fast food industry; however, with so many problems the government is already dealing with, who knows whether the government will take action.

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Oh, Kenny. Friday, Oct 14 2011

Reading about Kenny Dobbins in chapter eight of Fast Food Nation has broken my heart. It is just other example of how cruel this world can be and how uncompassionate life is to some people. Kenny Dobbins was a Monfort, a slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, employee for almost sixteen years, and in those sixteen years he has been most faithful to them. Through the years, Dobbins endured many injures; he gets pierced by the metal rim of a conveyer belt, was struck by a train, broke his leg, and shattered his ankle. He somehow manages to get back on his feet and return to work. The company facility also gave him tough, physical labor such as hauling boxes that weighted as much as 120 pounds and grabbing forty to fifty pound pieces of meat off a table despite his injuries. I refuse to mention the rest of his terrible story. In the end, he had a massive heart attack and was eventually fired from Monfort.  “Today Kenny is in poor health. His heart is permanently damaged. His immune system seems shot. His back hurts, his ankle hurts, and every so often he coughs up blood.”

Through there might be many similar stories like that of Kenny’s occurring this very moment, the thought that children at such young ages go through the same saddens me. A kid name Ngoc Nguyen started working at the age of twelve to get his family through the times of poverty. Every morning, he and his brothers would wake up before sun rise and walk miles away to work in fields until the evening. Though they work all day, what they bring home is barely enough to feed the whole family. Basically, they get nothing out of their hard work. His employers, greedy with money, give them just twenty percent of what they really deserve. Sadly, they can’t argue with that because they needs it.

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My favorite class. Saturday, Sep 17 2011

What is my favorite class at Xavier? I would have to say that my English 1010 class is my favorite so far, and I will have to give all the credit to my instructor, Dr. Baker. She is a very inspirational teacher. She makes the class interesting with the little activities that she comes up with. I believe it’s the way she talks about the readings we have; the way she talks really gets to me. It’s not like the monotone professor-ish voice that makes you want to droop off into a deep sleep, and I can tell that she is really into her work.  I can’t even explain in words exactly why I like this class. She brings up topics that people wouldn’t even want to talk about such as the Vagina Monologues written by Eve Ensler.

We just finished with a book called This I believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. When I heard the name of the book, my first thought was that it will be boring. I mean when do we ever go over exciting books in class; however, reading each of the stories in the book has touched me bit by bit. I suggest reading it yourself. It might not affect you has it did me, but it is worth reading. This class has helped me embrace my beliefs and also think about how the people in life has helped me develop those beliefs.  All of my other classes are pretty decent; I can’t say that I hate them. It’s a constant lecture from the beginning of class to end. That’s something that I will never get used to or even begin to like. The only class I find absolutely boring is Sociology. Five minutes into the lecture and I’m knocked out. That’s not good at all.

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Fast Food Nation and The Jungle Thursday, Sep 15 2011

“Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,–for the order of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards…their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,– sometimes they would be overlooked for days…(The Jungle).” Sinclair’s The Jungle explores the injustice of immigrant workers at meat-packing factories. The Jungle depicts the filthy factories in such vivid images that it made a strong impression on the readers. Sinclair wrote The Jungle with the heart to change the hopelessness among the working class; however, it captured the attention of the public differently. They were horrified by the contaminated food in which they are consuming. According to Maryland State Archives, The Jungle, “Made it possible for the federal government to intervene and regulate the food industry with the passing of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.”

I believe that Fast Food Nation will not change the nation as The Jungle did. I did not read the book The Jungle; however, reading the summaries of the book gave me much more visuals than what Schlosser gave. Honestly, Fast Food Nation was a bit boring. It gave too much information that did not interest me.  There’s another quote from The Jungle that I like. “…mostly women — to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work: that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper: of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children — for all of which things the community have naturally to pay.” Sinclair touched on topics that people would have never even thought of thinking of.

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