Unit Three Reflection

As the semester draws to a close I take time to remember the things that I have learned in my writing 205 class. I think that overall the class has taught me a lot about myself as a writer. I feel that I have also learned a lot about consumerism, consumption and waste as well.
The quote that was given at the beginning of the reflection prompt really makes sense in the context of this class. The “text of pleasure” for me in this class would definitely have to be ads that we watched at the beginning of the semester. Although they are not the normal things that you would call text, I think that they really helped to make the course more interesting, by evoking emotions from the classes and helping to make us think about the ads that we all see on a day-to-day basis. They also help to affirm my beliefs on how ads work to get consumers to buy the product that they are trying to sell. They try to make us believe that we will somehow be cooler, sexier, or even better looking if we buy their product. Take the ad that we saw for a Mac computer. The person in the ad that represented the Mac looked cooler and younger; where the person that was supposed to represent the PC looked dorky and out of date.
I think that the “text of bliss” for our writing 205 class would have to be the book, Affluenza, by Graaf, Wann, and Naylor. This book challenged my beliefs about certain issues regarding consumerism, consumption and waste immensely. Before reading this book I had brushed these issues off my shoulders and had tried to pretend that they were really not a big deal at all. After reading the book I was faced with the grim reality that theses three issues were affecting my life and the lives of many other Americans every day. Americans are going into debt; they are more stressed than ever before and are spending way more than they ever have in the past and ever should. We are trying to be better and have “better” things than everyone else. This over consumption is being passed down to younger generations and they are becoming consumers and being targeted by mass media at younger and younger ages.
When it comes to my research project I feel that I have learned a lot about the pros and cons of Big Businesses and Small Businesses. Through the research of myself and the rest of my group I have drawn the conclusion that Small locally owned businesses are a really good thing. These Small Businesses help the economy of areas like Westcott Street greatly. They bring revenue into the community and they offer a job opportunity to local people that might not be able to find a job otherwise. The small businesses, like the restaurants on Westcott Street can serve as social gathering places for members of the community. While my group visited Westcott Street I was refreshed to find out that people were allowed to sit and talk in front of the local businesses even if they hadn’t purchased anything from the store. The Westcott Street area is also a hub of local culture. One thing that I learned about while I was doing my research is the Westcott community fair that goes on every year. It celebrates the different cultures that live in the Westcott area. The people that put this on are trying to show people that don’t live in the Westcott area how great it is and try to attract people to come check it out. They really caught my eye and I definitely plan on checking out the community fair next year.
No texts were really instrumental in leading me to a better understanding about the Westcott verses Erie Street topic that I was given. I think the thing that really led me to my conclusion was being able to get out into the community and doing the research on my own. I have never been asked to do that type of research in other classes and I feel that this was the best part of the class because it made me do something that I was scared to do. I normally don’t like to talk to people because I’m shy, but this class made me get out into the real world and do our own research in order to get to the bottom of our topics.