Jessica Alvarez

Professor Cheng,Dinsmore and Cook

First Year Seminar

2nd May 2017

One connection I made with Professor Dinsmores module and my life experience was

over social media. In his class it was discussed how sometimes social media is used to show off

places people have gone and explaining the wonderful time they had when in reality it wasn't

like that. We read a story called Anxious America and it was a chapter called Im not a happy

person I just play one on Facebook and when I read this chapter it really connected to me

because sometimes I see myself doing this. I end up posting a picture on snapchat describing

how happy I feel when in reality I had a bad day and I am just trying to cover it up. And when

reading this, I realized I shouldn't put false emotions on social media, and instead just not put

anything at all if I am not feeling my best. Another connection is with Professor Cheng over the

topic of water, and I connected with her class over the California Drought. I enjoyed learning the

reasons of the california drought and how it connected and made sense to the knowledge I

already knew. Lastly, with professor cook, I connected my identity and culture with the Tongva

Family by having my roots of being mexican in the United States and carrying those traditions

wherever I go.

The three modules connect with the bases of community in common but branching out

to different types of community. Like for Dinsmore and Cheng, dinsmores community focused

more on social media and the effects social media has towards teenagers and the users, while

cheng talked about our environmental community and how each type of ecosystem has certain

animals and different types of care. With those two communities i found in common the effect of

the human life, like to clarify if a human leaves its trash on the beach it can go into the ocean

and get stuck into a tuttles nose, and for social media if too much bullying goes into a human

being, suicide will be the way to end. Following, all three modules connect to the idea of
community by them being close together, like the ecosystems are in the same area, social

media is all on the interent, and culture is followed wherever the traditions want to be carried.

All the skills and abilities learned in this first year seminar class are used everyday. One

way they are used is by being more conscious of the water use and trash disposal to keep the

ocean and ecosystems looking their best. For social media, there needs to be always a second

thought checkpoint whenever their is a comment a user wants to add. Their needs to be said if

they would like people to comment the same thing on one of their post. It comes back to the

idea to treat others the way they would like to be treated. And for culture, the skills I learned

follow the idea to always follow your footsteps with risks and challenges just the Tongva family

did.

This Class, has enlarged my perspectives of all the three communities by giving

examples of communities that are not doing as well as others. As well as some history about the

communities. This class didn't really enlarge my knowledge it just served more as a reminder of

all the issues california has by the environment and social media use. For my environment

community, I know take more precaution to trash and water usage. I know take shorter showers

so california doesn't go into an extensive drought like in the past three years. I also use less

gas, and if i need to go the market or gym I instead ride my bike so california's air pollution can

go down. One thing that did challenge me was not to use my social media for one week, I

noticed during Professor Dinsmores Module, that I was very connected to social media and how

I was always using all the platforms. In the end, all the modules help give me realization about

my surroundings especially in community and how each and every type of community needs its

own special care.