The semester is now halfway over. It seems like my junior year is going by too fast. As more time goes on I think to myself how I even let all of this time slip away from me. Freshman always wish they weren’t freshman anymore just so they can be a little older, and juniors and seniors always wish they were freshman again just so they could do things differently. It’s funny to think how everyone is so scared of life after high school, but once you get to college it’s no big deal. Even though I know I ended up fine with life after high school, life after college seems more real and raw. These thoughts are things that have been crossing my mind a lot lately, especially being around all of my friends that are going to be graduating in May.
Last week we ate some delicious pizza and wings while watching Mona Lisa’s Smile, which I totally expected to hate but I absolutely loved. When first hearing Dr. Martin talk about the movie I thought it’d be hard to follow and a cliche boring movie that I’d be forced to watch in AP English in high school, but it ended up being one of my favorite films that I have recently watched in the past couple years. It’s also not everyday that I get to watch a badass female main character in a film that I can relate to as a young woman. The rhetorical message about gender roles was something that really made me think about how women are still treated similarly in current day, even if it wasn’t all the same issues. Although it isn’t as prominent in today’s society, in a male/female marriage, the men are still expected to be the “breadwinners”. If the wife makes more money than her husband, it is considered abnormal. In reality, a job is a job and it doesn’t matter who makes more in a marriage. The film also brings up the subject of how women are expected to go wherever their husband ends up and not do anything with their college degree. In my mind, it is pointless to get a degree only to not use it and become a housewife. Although love is important, finding yourself and becoming your own person as a young woman is even more important.
For my final paper proposal, I have been thinking about which subject I want to do. Since we were given such big leeway on our topic, there were a few topics I was interested in writing about, but I finally narrowed it down to body image on social media. This is a topic that I have always thought about heavily and how modern day social media can affect people’s perception of themselves. Also, since I am a mass communications major, I have a big interest in social media and studying how people are online. I will definitely find researching about this topic interesting since I got to choose it on my own. In all honesty, I haven’t done research papers in over 4 years before taking this class. Even back then I only wrote a couple, so research papers are a little foreign to me. I also totally suck at citing sources, because I was never taught the proper way in high school. With that being said, this paper will be a challenge for sure, but at least I’ll be researching a topic that I care about.
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