Response to Growing Roses in Concrete

I think Jeff Duncan Andrade is right about helping the young people achieve their potential. Our society is segregated by individualism. People can't trust each other and often ready to go for each other’s throats. The issue here is how people are left out from certain groups like how a city inside of Oakland was free from all the homicides. Not just the community that is isolated, the teachers and students are isolated as well. There is a miscommunication between the teachers and student. The teachers tell students to correct their study habits and other behaviors they think that could lead to trouble, yet they ignore the student's unsafe environment. This unsafe environment causes students to act violently and act out against the teachers. It also causes the students to drop out of school if it gets really bad. I think the teachers should work with the students to get over their problems the best they could. Andrade said "When roses come back to the concrete, they create rose gardens." This is a good way of saying that by helping the students reach their goal in life, they can come back to the community as working adults that can further improve it. This can help make the community safer for future generations who will continue to add more roses to the concrete. That way, it can help unit the community and make it better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CwS60ykM8s

Questions:

1. Where we start to help unify the community?
2. How can we set an example to the younger generations that they are important to our community?
3. What can be done to end the isolation in our community and work towards a positive future.

Why I Hate School But Love Education||Spoken Word

                                                                                       

This video is very inspirational and helps motivate us. For those of you that don't quite understand the message of the video, it is about following what you believe and don't let a simple exam tie down your dreams. I really like this video because it talks about breaking free from the "system" and do what you feel passionate about. By following our dreams, we can work hard and continue to thrive in society. We go to college to learn and get a degree but all that is pointless if we end up getting a job we hate. The whole point is to stand out as an individual and not let society shape you into what they want you to be. Let your passion rise and become the person you want to become regardless of what people think. After all, a degree is worthless if you have no passion to pursue and further your career.

My Struggles and How I Over Came Them

During my time in college, I faced numerous challenges that made my life complete hell. One of the challenges is time management. Probably the most common challenge for college students because it makes us take a step back and look at all of the things we need to do and prioritize first. My first thought about time management is that it will be hard to get used to. We are all use to freely spend our time because our parents did all the hard stuff for us while all we have to do is focus on studying. For me time management was really hard and it caused me to break down and just got me stuck. I'm stuck between what to do today and what to do tomorrow.

I overcame this struggle by organizing my days and schedule on a chart. It's tedious but works very well. I can organize all my classes and all the things I want to do that day. It's kind of like a shopping list except much longer and a little more complex. I also use a calendar to plan out my days for the month. I'm sure a lot of people does this and would know how useful it is. It helps me organize my weeks and by using a chart or planner, I can organize my classes. It is also very useful to plan nights out and party with friends. 

Another issue is my lack of passion to study my major. I studied marine biology and I didn't like it. It was just boring and I doze off most of the time. This lack of passion I had in the past was just devastating for me. It completely ruined my college career and it left me in the dust. In the passion project, Elaine said "If you don't know who you are you will never find out what you want." I completely agree with what she said. If we don't know what we want or feel passionate about, we can't continue toward our goals. It will just cause us more trouble in our lives. Imagine waking up and just sitting there on your bed staring into space thinking "What am I going to do today?" 

I don't really know how I got over my struggle and found the passion to study my desired major, but if I have to take a guess then I would say it was because of my friends and family. There are no substitute for a good old conversation with friends and family members. They can give very good advice and just tell you to follow what interests you. I always wanted to study psychology but the pressure of fitting in with the people around me led me to pursue biology major. My family told me to pick something I like which is what I did and my friends introduced me to many different major to see if I showed interest in any one of them. Another good way to find your passion to do something is to just go ahead and do it. You never know what will happen if you don't. I was scared to do new stuff and I do admit that I am still scared to do new stuff. It might be scary but it can have good consequences after you do it. By just going in there and doing something, it can let you see what it is like to do a specific thing first hand and could even ignite a sense of passion to pursue it.

Privilege and Passion

Passion and privilege do go hand in hand sometimes. The privileged can follow their passion and become what they want because they have the opportunities to do so. Privilege makes things easier and better for certain people and it boosts people's passion. It boosts people's passion by making their life more enjoyable and much more comfortable than others. Romeo, a cast member in the Passion Project movie, said "Society is like not doing its job because it has high expectation for people to follow what other people are doing." Most of us are not as privileged as others in society and therefore, we have to do what others expect us to do. This means we can't do things we are passionate about. I believe this will only make our goals much harder and it will inevitably destroy us. Also in the Passion Project, a member named Karina said education is to teach about respect. “Education is supposed to teach you to respect others and to respect different ideas and how to work with each other.”  Education is a privilege and should be used to help others find their passion. I think education teaching students to be respectful is an example of society doing what they want the students to do. It kind of manipulates the students but at the same time, education can provide insight to a student’s passion.  
 We, the less privileged, look at the privileged in envy. We think that they have everything they could possibly want. This is what the less privileged would look towards instead of what we feel passionate about. It becomes an objective about gathering the most wealth. Emily, a cast member of the Passion Project, stated: "We still have that mindset where we need money to survive. Oh, I have money I can buy a plasma T.V. I can buy a uh a king size, a water bed." This proves that the less privileged wants to get to where the privileged are. We get blinded by what we see and forget our passion. Our dreams to be what we want to become and succumb to what people call "greed and envy" which strays us off our path. The whole point of this is that we are not following what our passion is, instead we are follow what our eyes want and what our families what. There is no real passion if what we are seeking is only a temporary happiness because once it is over, we would have nothing left. In the book, Into the Wild, Chris McCandless found wealth as a bad thing. “Her son, the teenage Tolstoyan, believed that wealth was shameful, corrupting, inherently evil…” (115). I think McCandless doesn’t want wealth to define his passion. He seems to be the type that wants to go out there and live his life to the fullest without the chains of society pulling him down. He was very privileged to have parents that make a lot of money which allowed him to travel around the world with them. This ignited his passion for the great outdoors which is the reason why McCandless decided to have his great Alaska odyssey. 

Link: The Passion Project

Follow Your Passion

The passion project made me realize that I'm still lost in life. I have strayed off my path and got stuck in no man's land. People who are not doing what they feel passionate about are just going to suffer more in life than the people who like what they do in life. There are also many people in society that feel like they are being forced to do stuff they don't like. Whether it is peer pressure or the pressure of society, it still doesn't change the fact that lots of people are doing things they don't like. In the movie, a cast member named Tiffany said passion is what drives us. "It's something that drives you, that excites you, makes you feel good." I agree with her because if we are not doing what makes us happy because we are doing stuff that others want us to do. If we don't follow our dreams, hopes, and passions, then we'll end up working for someone else, someone that did follow their dreams, hopes, and passions. In order to make a difference in our society and to fulfill our goals, it is important to follow our passion. In the Passion Project, a member named Ray said he wants to do big things with his life. “I wanna I wanna help people; I wanna do big things in my life.” I think this statement is a good indicator that the younger generations want to break free from the old generation’s tyrannical judgments and do something with their lives. It is also an indicator that we want to follow our passion and become what we want to become. By doing what we like, we can come up with better ideas and think outside of the box to solve lots of problems, problems that could make the future a better place. That is why I believe following our passion is very important.

Passion is what everyone should have. Without it, we are just an empty shell that will be filled up with society's ideas. Those ideas will not be achieved without passion. It is the driving force within all of us that allows us to continue in our lives. Learning is a passion to everyone. It fills us up with hope and the desire to accomplish our goals. Emily, from the Passion Project movie, said "Learning about other cultures, other ideas, other people, learning in general is like a passion to me." No matter how difficult it is to learn about new stuff, it is always in us. The desire to learn is a human instinct that gives us passion. No matter what we do, we always try to learn new stuff. Like how to play sports, video games, cooking, or even how to edit their own blog. For instance, Andrew from the Passion Project movie said what kind of passion he has. “You know I always had this passion that I’d design the building, my brother engineers it, and my dad builds it.” I think being passionate about something is important and Andrew seems to be passionate about designing buildings. I believe we never stop learning and that is what gives us passion to continue. This movie made me think about all the struggles we have to go through just to follow our passion without losing to the negative criticism from others.

Link:  The Passion Project