Passion is Love. Love is Life. Life is Kindness.

Passion is defined as "a state or outburst of strong emotion". Now that is a passionate definition for that simple word. Do I have passion? Yes, I very much do. Every human being in this life has passion, has a reason to live, a strength undeterred by anything. What are my passions? To help others who need it, stand for the truth, to be kind to everyone and everything, to love my friends and family through all trials and tribulations, to state my opinion regardless of the result, and to make my voice heard and make a difference in another's life, no matter what.

Now that, ^ this is passion. My Passion.

Love is defined as blind. Love is defined as magic. Love is defined as an incredible attraction, devotion, and connection to another person, place, or thing. Do I have love? Yes, yes I do. I love my writing, my charitable work, I love my independence, I love my family and my friends to the point of taking a bullet for them, and most importantly, I love being me. I love Love. Have I been In Love? Yes, yes I have and it was the most incredible love of my life. Do I believe in True Love? Yes, yes I do. Though a philosophy, I do believe that each of us feels a connection with "one" person that we cannot feel with another and never will. And that connection stays with us for eternity. Have I experienced that? Yes, yes I have and I still feel it now.

Now that ^ this is love. My Love.

Life is defined as hard. Life is defined as amazing. Life is defined as this crazy world that we live in. Do I have a life? Yes, yes I do. I live my life, I've fought for my life, I've enjoyed my life, I've seen crazy things in my life, but all the same it is my life and life is what you make of it. Does life drive you crazy? I'm sure it does for everyone at some point, but you always have to remember that those crazy moments will stand by you forever and teach you, remind you, and inspire you. My thoughts are that if you can make it through the tough times of your life, the sweet things are always sweeter.

And your life is always yours, so make it count. You only have one.

Now that ^ this is life. My Life.

Kindness is defined as the unwavering ability to show positive, respectful energy to another person or thing. Kindness is that emotion that is free and should be shown every single day. Do I have kindness? Yes, yes I do. I give kindness every single day. Just a simple hello and a smile will suffice me because I know that is simply enough to make my day brighter. Giving a simple farthing to someone in need is beyond enough for me because I know it is being done for the greater good. A task I do more often than people realize. Kindness comes in so many forms and it doesn't take much to do so. I give kindness each and everyday because I know the hardships of being brought down by others and most of them never got the chance to know me. I am kind because it makes me feel good and it's an amazing feeling when you smile to another. Kindness should always be spread, you never who may need it and who really deserves it at that moment you do.

Now that ^ this is kindness. My Kindness.

Passion is Love. Love is Life. Life is Kindness. Care and Love Passionately. Love your Life. Live to be Kind. Be Kind to those who Live.

Bullying and Self- Image

Bullying and self-image go hand in hand because without bullying we would not have some of the self-image issues that we have today. Bullying is a disease haunting our schools and our online communities. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes and they come with a very wide range of attitudes. Depending on the bully, they can criticize you who you are as an individual, for what you own, how you dress, and how you look (physical attributes). Bullies gain their confidence and power from other people’s weaknesses, so if you were self-conscious about your body they could make it ten times worse. For example, you are worried about gaining weight and being called fat; a bully comes up to you and calls you a name “Lardo” and then tries to shove food in your face. You feel depressed and self-conscious for the rest of the day. How will you handle it? Well, depending on the individual you have many options, (1) tell the bully to leave you alone, (2) go home take the bully’s advice and eat uncontrollably til you do get fat, or (3) shrug it off because you know that you are not fat. The second option is what most teenage girls do when a bully comes up to them with that remark. It is in a girl’s nature to not want to be fat or unattractive because it gives them the opportunity to catch the attention of boys and their peers. If a person comes up to them and calls them fat, they will feel overwhelmed as if everyone thinks the same thing and they will change how they look. Sometimes girls go to drastic measures to change their appearance by hiding under saggy clothes, staying home from school, or they will believe what the bully has said and act on that. An example of this behavior is eating disorders. Eating disorders include anorexia nervosa (starving) and bulimia (non-stop vomiting). The eating disorders mentioned are mental issues inside a female that give you the sense or belief that you are overweight and fat when you are not. The effects of eating disorders are drastic and can lead to hospitalization, therapy, and death. Victims should not be intimidated by bullies because bullies have their own insecurities and can be criticized like any other human being. But, being the bully yourself is not the answer. Some ways to handle a bully include telling an adult, telling the bully to stop, or ignoring the remark or action altogether. If you follow these tips, you will be able to stop a bully in its tracks.

Self-image is a problem which we all face through our school years. We try to differentiate what is appropriate and what is acceptable amongst our peers. We have different ideas about what defines positive and negative self-image but let’s start with the positive. The characteristics of feeling confident about your self-image is by having a positive attitude towards your daily activities, you exercise daily or when convenient, and you can look in the mirror and say that you look beautiful and walk out the door. Your body type should not affect your positive self-image nor should how you eat because the physical appearance does not matter. The only thing that should matter is how you personally feel about yourself and how you feel you look in your own eyes. Negative self-image is easy for anyone especially teenage girls to understand because in their middle school and high school years, teenage girls are more likely to criticize or complain about how they look instead of giving themselves a compliment. In the pre-teen and teenage years, girls start to go through puberty and hormonal changes. Changes such as these can make a girl feel insecure or out of place because they want to be cool and normal in their development. An example of this is when a girl starts to develop physically. The girl could look in the mirror and think she is so ugly when really she is starting to develop into a woman and start experiencing changes, such as the menstrual cycle, acne, and physical attributes. In the teenage years, girls try to adapt to these changes by wearing different clothes and experimenting with make-up; the female psychological purpose to do this is to look beautiful and accepting to their peers. If they look in the mirror and do not like what they see, they will change it within an instant because they do not feel beautiful or accepting. Girls also complain about how they look physically by saying they are too fat, they didn’t wear the right outfit, or because they feel insecure of themselves. It’s perfectly natural to feel insecure about your body because you want to have the feeling of acceptance with you all day and feel as if you accomplished something. It is healthy to call yourself beautiful and to wear clothes to build your confidence but it is not healthy to constantly cut yourself up and destroy your self-confidence when you are already beautiful. Everyone has different qualities and everyone sees beauty differently, but you can not speak negatively about it.

Cyber Profit

The Internet is a playground for our capitalist societies to not only develop new, innovative technologies but to make as much profit as possible. The idea of the Internet spawned great promise and hope for the intellectual communities because it would give them an opportunity to thrive on vast amounts of knowledge and information. On the other hand, the government and monopolistic corporations saw the Internet as a breeding ground for advertising and for developing their businesses. “There is more media than ever before” said Joe Mandese, editor-in-chief of Media Post, “media is being spawned every second.” In our modern society new innovations on technology are created every single day and they are being used not only to seek out information but to sell products and services as well. Since the development of the World Wide Web in 1990 I believe that the Internet has become more profitable than educational.

It is argued in McChesney’s Digital Disconnect that the Internet has become more commercialized and is used for more profit seeking purposes such as advertising and campaign promotion. I actually disagree and say it is equally distributed because according to Education Week “Public schools now provide at least one computer for every five students” (Ed Week, 2016) and it allows more students to be exposed to the technology within the classroom. It mentions briefly in the article by Education Week that faculty are slower to adapting this technology to their teachings because they don’t know what influence it has on its student’s performance. However, according to former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance of Excellent Education, Bob Wise, “strong gains in achievement occur by pairing technology with classroom teachers who provide real-time support and encouragement to under deserved students.” (Stanford, 2014) In my opinion by pairing teachers with technology it allows the student to be introduced to a new way of learning while also receiving personal instruction from their teachers. It also helps the students thrive when they move on to the following grades because with each grade the content and nature of the information being presented gets more intense and the usage of the technology will become more obvious. Although technology is slowly making its way into the public school sphere it is not as obvious as the advertisements the American public witnesses every day.

According to the 1993 trade publication Advertising Age “marketers stated that they feared a tidal wave of flaming from a cyberspace community peopled by academics and intellectuals who regarded a commercialized Internet as advertising hell” (McChesney, 102) and in my opinion the publication is correct and the marketers should be afraid. The American public sees an advertisement each time they log on to the Internet and they are manipulated into buying products on a daily basis. The baseline goal of a corporation is to make enough profits to pay their workers, create new products, and to advertise its products to the public. Corporations spend thousands or even millions of dollars to flash its name on a billboard so that it can attract new audiences. In my opinion it is amazing how far some corporations will go and how much money they will spend to get a tiny glimpse from the American public. According to the online magazine Digi Day an ad on the” Yahoo homepage is around $450,000 and on the YouTube home page it is about $400,000”. (Digi Day, 2013) In short a corporation would have to pay close to half a million dollars to plaster its companies name on the top websites on the Internet. This reality defies the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, because he said it “would have been unthinkable to patent it or ask it for fees” (McChesney, 103) the point of the Internet was sharing for the common good” said Lee. But sharing for the common good only gave corporations more of a reason to invest in the Internet because it was a profit making market. According to Al Gore in McChesney’s Digital Disconnect, who helped fund the Internet, “the foundation for the “information superhighway” should be a public network analogous to the interstate highway system.” (McChesney, 116) He basically argued that corporations should use the Internet as much as they use the highway system to promote their products and services. The corporations since then have taken advantage of the Internet because the American public not only sees it while they drive them also receive it through its email-based inbox. But now the American public can now control what ads they want to see and which ones they don’t which can jeopardize a corporation’s goal to obtain more consumers. The fact that consumers can now control what they see can limit how much power corporations and even the government has on how the Internet is to be run.

In conclusion the Internet has grown into a vast superhighway of information and knowledge since it was first thought of in the post-World War II era. It is clear that it has become more commercialized through the use of advertising and new innovative technologies. It is also clear that technology has morphed its way into our lives more than ever before with the adaptation to the public school system. It is unclear how commercialized the Internet will become and what new technologies will arise because of its development. But one thing is certain that the Internet usage has grown from hundreds to billions of people worldwide and that each person who has access to it is subjected to the commercialization of hundreds of monopolistic corporations.

Works Cited

Herold, B. (2016, February 5). Technology in Education: An Overview. Education Week, 1. doi:http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/technology-in-education/

Johnson, C. (2006, September 17). Cutting Through Advertising Clutter. Retrieved April 9, 2016, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cutting-through-advertising-clutter/

Marshall, J. (2013, February 22). What Online Ads Really Cost. DIGIDAY. doi:http://digiday.com/publishers/what-online-ads-really-cost/

McChesney, R. W. (2013). Digital Disconnect. New York/ London, NY: The New press.

Technology can close achievement gaps, improve learning. (2014, September 10). Stanford Graduate School of Education. Retrieved April 9, 2016, from https://ed.stanford.edu/news/technology-can-close-achievement-gaps-and-improve-learning-outcomes