Food

As everybody is heading home for the upcoming holiday and will be getting together with family and friends to celebrate I couldn’t help but think about how big a role food has in our lives and how important a medium it is. I come from a unique background, my mother was born and raised in Mexico and moved to the United States when she was 13 years old, making me half Mexican. Most people don’t really know this about me as it certainly is not obvious but if you ever came to my house or came to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner this would quickly become apparent. Most families start the Thanksgiving meal with a traditional appetizer such as salad or pumpkin dip with gingerbread or any other traditional American appetizer. However, at my house we have an extremely unique appetizer and our Thanksgiving would not be the same without it. Every year we start Thanksgiving with a traditional Mexican Tortilla soup served with cilantro, avocado and tortillas. This is everyone’s most favorite dish and often people leave asking to take home the leftovers. We have had several friends come to our Thanksgiving dinner and every time they have been amazed by this dish and often really enjoy it.

                To my family, especially my mom, this dish is a reminder of her heritage and her home and it is a way for us to celebrate our Mexican heritage on this very American holiday.  It is also a way for our family to show our friends where we came from. I am sure that we are not the only family with a unique holiday dish, but I think if you stop to think about the different courses served at Thanksgiving you will see that each of them is sending a different message. Food is often used to in times of celebration and can say a lot of different things. Recipes are passed from generation to generation in an effort to maintain a message over the years. It is an extremely useful way to get a message across and often times leaves you very satisfied.

The Beauty of Cars

Roughly four years ago I went with my father and picked out Beatrice, and while it wasn’t until a few days later that I brought her home I knew that as soon as I saw her she would play an extremely important role in my life. While things have not always gone smoothly with Beatrice I know that she will always be there for me and I will always be there to defend her when anything bad is said about her. It may not seem obvious from the beginning of this blog but Beatrice is my car, a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It is certainly not the best car out there, and I have had to take it to get many repairs but it is amazing to think about how important that car is and what it says about me. Many people have many different approaches to buying and having cars. Some people thing that cars are simply a means of transportation to take you for place A to place B. Other people believe that cars are a symbol of your social status and say a lot about you. People spend thousands of dollars on cars just to get a message across that they have enough money to spend a fortune on a toy. It is also interesting to consider what type of message you are sending with your car and how people judge you. The other day my friend went to court to fight a speeding ticket that he got while driving his Porshe Cayenne. The judge heard his ticket, stressed the fact that he was driving a Porshe, and then denied his appeal. Now I have gotten my fair share of speeding tickets while driving Beatrice, and often times I was driving well above the speed limit. However I have appealed every single one of my tickets and have done so successfully without any issues. There appears to be two reasons for the fact that I successfully appealed my ticked while my friend did so unsuccessfully. The first being that I argued my case better than he did (which I continue to tell him is the case) and the other is the fact that he was driving a sports car that is known for its speed while I was driving a Jeep which certainly is not known for its acceleration. It is clear from this example that cars really are an incredible medium and the messages they send across are very obvious. So the next time you are picking a car, which probably won’t be for a little while, just try and think about what message you want to send.  

If you have been to career connections or if you have been trying to stay atop the latest social networking trend you have undoubtedly come across the professional world’s version of Facebook, LinkedIn.  Now while you might not be able to post pictures on LinkedIn many of the features of Facebook, such as connecting with friends and people you know and posting messages to others are available on LinkedIn. Additionally, you can see how the people you know are connected with other people and you can create your own “web” of professional connections. However, articles and books such as “Facing the Facebook” are not written about how LinkedIn is destroying our communities or how it is distracting us in the classroom and causing our critical thinking ability to decline. No, LinkedIn continues to operate and function as its cousin Facebook is taking the abuse.  But what is it about LinkedIn that make it so much less controversial than Facebook? Is it that you can’t post pictures? No. I believe that what makes Facebook so controversial is its users and the setting in which they are using it. Facebook is used by mostly college students and those recently graduated. While older generations are beginning to use Facebook the main problems come from the use of Facebook by college students. LinkedIn however is used by professionals who use it for their professional life and to help them further their careers. People believe that younger generates abuse Facebook and use it as an opportunity to post inappropriate content on the web. It is as if society has created two characteristics of social networking sites, those that society deems inappropriate and should be monitored and censored on a constant basis, and those that should be used for professional careers and that should be used to an individual’s advantage. I truly believe that this is an unfair generalization because if Facebook is causing so many issues in our society LinkedIn must be examined under the same microscope. I think it is extremely interesting to compare these two social networking sites and while they have minor differences in their features, they are treated unequally because of their users.

                                   FACEBOOK                                                                         

                          LINKEDIN