Carry it Forward: Born into Brothels

This past week we have been watching the documentary Born Into Brothels in humanities class. I can honestly say that it is one of the most upsetting movies I have every watched in my life. And the fact that it is a complete documentary and that everything in it is real makes it even harder to watch.

Throughout the movie you meet a group of young kids that live in the brothels of the red light district. A woman comes to teach them photography so they might have a chance of getting out of the horrible future plans they have set for them. It is so disturbing that at the age of thirteen a girl who has just started puberty would be put on the line to be sold as a prostitute. And the saddest part is that this is the only life they know. They do not know that there are other choices and ways to get out. But on the other hand it would be so hard for them to get out because it would mean leaving their families which most of them seem very dedicated to.

When I started thinking about how I am going to carry this idea forward, I did not know what I was going to do. There is little action you can take when trying to help these innocent children without actually flying there and doing something (which trust me, I would in a heartbeat if I had enough money for a plane ticket and a plan for how to get them all out). But then I realized, carrying something forward does not only imply taking action on that specific thing. It can also mean carrying it forward into your own life, into the lives of those around you. To carry the message I have received from Born into Brothels forward, I plan to spread awareness. I had no idea that this horrifying crime to innocent life was happening anywhere in the world before we watched this documentary. I cannot imagine how many of my friends, family and people I work with have no clue about this issue either. It scares me that something of this magnitude could go on for so long, maybe not unnoticed, but sure as hell unattended to.

In a perfect world, I would love to bring all of the children and their mothers out of the red light district and into warm loving homes in the US but that would be culturally unsound. I also believe that it is wrong to take people out of their culture forcing them to adapt to a new one. So in the second most perfect (and a little bit more practical) world, I would want to just bring all of the children to America or just away from the red light district, and find them homes so that their children can have healthy, happy futures.

"You don't have to be great to get started. You just have to get started to be great"
-Les Brown

Metacognition: QE Essay

Throughout our first quarter essay, me and the rest of my eighth period humanities class were given a very strict structure to follow. Whether this made things easier or harder, I am not sure yet. But I am about to figure it out!

So basically we had to write the essay in three sections and hand them each in separately and then all together at the end. As I am a very logical and math brained type of person, I started off the essay thinking that so much structure would help me a lot with the issues of creativity that I usually had while writing and essay (not to mention that I was writing about the obstacles of creativity) but back to the point; structure is my thing. I am fairly disorganized so when structure is handed to me, I pounce.

The amount of structure given to us ended up being both a good and a bad thing though. On one hand I was able to finish the whole paper without feeling too rushed because I needed to have the other parts finished ahead of time, but on the other hand I felt that my creativity was being completely blocked out because we were being made to write a certain way. I guess my brain works different than others because I have almost never started a paper from the beginning. I always work from the middle out. Get the meat and bones of the paper and then decide what I want to introduce it with so i can make it as relevant as possible. With the way we were asked to turn in our papers though, it would have been nearly impossible to do this.

I must also add that trying to be creative about writing a paper about creativity is much more difficult than one would expect because you end up analyzing everything too much because it is what you are writing about in your paper!

As I tried to relay in my paper, creativity can take time. Sometimes when you get a spark of creativity it can be amazing and you can just drill everything out in a short amount of time. But other times it takes careful thinking and analyzing. I am not going to lie- between work, after school activities, and all of the other homework I have, I frankly just have no time to sit and analyze the amount of creativity I am about to put in a paper. I wish I could have made it the best it could be, but it is discouraging to write an amazing paper when you have hours worth of math homework sitting on your other side.

Overall, I enjoyed writing the QE essay. I wish it had a little bit less structure, but after analyzing how much stress I've had in the past couple of weeks, I don't think I would have made it through the whole thing without it.

Blogging Around

First, I decided to take a gander at Becca's blog. As I suspected Becca was able to easily find the deeper meaning to the music we listened to in class the day that we actively listened to the beautiful piece of music. When she blogged about it she was able to not only capture the emotions of the music but also her own emotions as she listened to it.

This is what I posted on Becca's Blog:

Hey Becca!

It was very interesting to me to find out that you did not pay attention to music as closely as you do now. I always thought of you as one of those types of people that got carried away by music. From reading your blog though, it seems that with Mr. Allen's influence you have now been able to do that! I have to agree though, usually when I am listening to music in my car or while doing homework I am not actually paying attention to what is going on in the music. Not just the lyrics but what the artist is trying to convey by the whole tone of the piece. I also agree that when I do end up taking the time to pay attention to what I am listening to I enjoy it so much more. I can tell you have a deep appreciation for music and I remember after this lesson in class you were very excited about taking it further into your regular life. Reading your blog was almost poetic, like a song.

-Elyse

Next, I wanted to see what brilliant work Nicole came up with. I have read some of her writing in the past and knew she would have something great to say in her blog. When I saw that she wrote about The Sea of Information article we read I immediately wanted to find out more because I enjoyed it a lot. She wrote about how the article inspired her to find the deeper meaning of things in life and not take reading for granted because there is always something you can learn from a good piece of literature.

This is what I posted on Nicole's Blog:


Nicole,
Just by reading your blog I can tell you are a very careful reader. That is something that I tend to struggle with a lot because I try to read things fast and not take in the meaning of the reading enough. With that said though, I completely agree with your point of view on the The Sea of Information passage that we read. It was so different than many other things that we have read before and inspired me to take more time in life to think about the little things. You noticed a lot of small details that I would have never noticed without reading your blog so thank you for the insight!
Elyse
P.S. your ultimate goal in life is very inspirational!