21 and Invincible

This is my Journalism 301 blog so enjoy! My name is Ariana and I'm a senior Journalism Major with a minor in Sociology at UMass Amherst. I am a Sister of Iota Gamma Upsilon as well as a UMass student blogger. My goal in life is to one day work for the Boston Bruins =)

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[arianamarie717]

do ittt! but really do it because i’m super bored. nothing is off limits!

[arianamarie717]

Liana Steir is a class of 2011 graduate living with $30,000 in student loan debt. (click on pictures for captions)

[arianamarie717]

The Class of 2011 is graduating this year with a lot more than a college degree as students will be facing an average of $23,000 in loan debt.

[arianamarie717]

[arianamarie717]

Graduating with Honors and Loan Debt.

Not only did the class of 2011 graduate with a degree they worked four years on but they also managed to graduate with an average of $23,000 in student loan debt. Students between the ages of 16 and 24 are being regarded as the "lost generation" with more than 50% of them unemployed. The struggle to find a job during the recession unfortunately doesn't stop the student loans one would rack up from a four year stay in college from increasing. The student loan crisis is one of the many reasons for the Occupy Movement. In the declaration of the occupation of New York City it is stated, "They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right".

Liana Steir is one of the many class of 2011 graduates that is in student loan debt. She says that she had no real notice on when she would have to start paying back her loans. "It was a mess. Once I graduated, I had 6 months. I got a letter telling me I owed a different amount each time." In the end, for two years of college as an in-state student at the University of Massachusetts, Steir owes $30,000 including interest. She pays $300 a month for the next 10 years and is already 4 months in. Though she is able to pay the loans off with only one job, it took her 5 months and over 50+ jobs applications to find employment. "I was qualified for all of those jobs but I actually only interviewed at 4 of them", says Steir. Instead of having an extra $300 dollars a month to help boost the economy , Steir will be putting that money into paying off her debt. In regards to the occupy movement, Steir says she's gone down and visited people at Occupy D.C. "They (occupy D.C.) mean well- but nationally it lacks focus on what they are actually going to do. They lack leaders but i think next year it will morph into occupy congress rather than Wall Street", says Steir.

[honey-magnolia]

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[arianamarie717]

sing-in-time:

jack’s mannequin, “amelia jean” amelia jean, you be a good little soldier I drove to richmond with your love in my bag but chasing trains won’t stop you getting older amelia jean, wait for me by the tracks

song of the day!! i am sooo happy this album came out today. perfect music to get homework done too! andrew mcmahon never fails to amaze me!

[delovesrobots]

[w-a-s-t-e-o-f-s-p-a-c-e]

[arianamarie717]

w-a-s-t-e-o-f-s-p-a-c-e:

song of the day! ellie goulding; guns and horses. I usually do my journo homework to Ellie so it's only appropriate that she appear on this blog!

[theprincelessdiariess]

4 Days until the end of hibernation!

[arianamarie717]

sempershelbymarie:

[arianamarie717]

Construction on Campus Seems Never Ending

The annoucement of a "New Academic Classroom Building" to be built on campus by spring of 2014 is another project added to the list of 400 that the University of Massachusetts Amherst plans to start this year. The "NACB" will be a four story building with the bottom two floors designated for academic learning. The top two becoming home sweet home to our journalism department as well as the communications, and linguistics departments. This building is being built around the idea of state of the art technology, something that could further the University's ranking of higher education schools in the United States. Within the building will be a variety of media studios and labs for TV broadcasting and production, film screening, editing, etc.. and every classroom will be furnished with Smart Boards. 

(http://www.stmarys.pta.school.za/pebble.asp?relid=56)

“Buildings like this are urgently needed,” says Lisa Henderson, chair of the department of communications at UMass. “They will optimize teaching and learning at UMass".

Besides the NACB, other building projects that are in the works include a $177 million Commonwealth College Honors Dorm , a $80 million Physical Science Building, and a $30 million addition to McGuirk Stadium . Henderson sees the renovation on campus as a positive and important process saying, " just look anywhere on campus and you can see people creating and using the space on campus, buildings like this are urgently needed." The NACB as well as all other additons on campus further the school's potential to crack into the top 25 public research schools in the nation, a goal that has been prioritized by newly appointed UMass president Robert Caret. Now if only I could manage to turn my 4 and a half year college plan into graduating in 2014 so I can experience some of these new renovations.

[bosstownsports]

I’m going to leave everything on the field. I’m not going to have any regrets about this season – that’s for damn sure.

- Dustin Pedroia. (via bosstownsports) 2 more games, hopefully they'll make em count!!

[arianamarie717]

If there were ever a more perfect blog for me to get assigned, it would be The XX Factor.

Not going to lie when we were each assigned a blog to read, my initial reaction was hoping that I wouldn't get something boring/unrelated to my life. And then I got the XX Factor and everything got better.

Essentially I am this blogs target audience. The blog's title "XX Factor" is a reference to the xx chromosome of women. Annie Le and Yale: How Much Can a University do to Protect Women is an example of this target audience. The blog appeals to the college aged working woman. She is someone that goes to class full time but can also be someone that is making her way up in the working world. Though there are a few guest contributions from male bloggers (which I'll get to in a bit), primarily the bloggers are female. Having the target audience be a specific gender might seem like it is limiting the topics that can be discussed. However, I think that it is a way to make a blog more personal. As a female, I read this blog knowing it was written with someone like me in mind. The Annie Le article is a good example because it is relevant to someone my age. Annie Le was a college grad student at Yale who was brutally murdered in 2009. The parents of Le have recently announced a law suit against Yale with the reasoning as follows:

          "According to the Yale Daily News, the suit alleges that Yale fostered “an atmosphere of tolerance of sexual harassment and sexual assaults” that “emboldened” Clark and points to a Title IX sexual discrimination complaint lodged by students against the University as evidence. Yale has responded by stating that there is no basis for the charges." This is a fact presented by another source but what The XX Factor does that I think is a good example of blogging is they give their opinion with the source. And when I say give their opinion, it's not in an "I'm right and here's why I'm right sort of way." The usage of photos, videos, links, etc. are effective ways to blog because they can be used as either support for your post or another interactive tool to engage the audience. I found myself engaged in The XX Factor because before I even began to read a post, I knew what the article was about based on the image.

(http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/xx_factor/2011/09/12/forever_21_shirt_equates_femaleness_with_being_bad_at_math_/102267749.jpg.CROP.rectangle-large.jpg)

The above image comes from the article Discouraging Math Smarts in Girls. As you can see, the image is simple; a teenage girl in a classroom, but it's the simplicity that really engages the reader in the story. Out of all the post I read on this blog, this article was the one that stuck out to me the most. Maybe it was the Hermoine Granger reference, the fact that I have actually seen the "allergic to algebra" shirt in Forever 21, or even my young sister being the focus of the post but I found myself agreeing with a ll of the points raised in the story.

(http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/39/2011/09/xlarge_allergic_fail.jpg )

This quote to me just might be the strongest point raised in the article,

"The problem isn't so much that the girls who go with "smart" are going to have to wait until they're a little older to feel the warm bath of male attention so much as that the girls who choose to downplay their intelligence when they're young in order to be popular will pay the price for the rest of their lives.  Young women may not really grasp that once you turn 21 or so, you get to be both sexy and smart, and I worry that bad decision-making may be the result. "

Personally, when I was in middle school and high school (the target audience for that shirt), grades took priority over getting a boyfriend. Yeah I may have disliked algebra but I was decent at it. The reason I focused more on school was just because I knew I wanted to make something of my life.

I think that is what the bloggers are trying to get across and I think that this is what makes The XX Factor blog so relatable. They write with a conversational, personable tone that not only makes you agree, but it makes you think what's next.

Like I said before, a lot of the blogs will start off with an introduction from a different link. This is the case in the article, "How to Prevent More Boy Scout Sex Crimes". I picked this blog to talk about because it was written by a male contributors to the primarily female blog. Anyway, the author of the blog, got the idea for the post from a link off the Great Falls Tribune. Rather than just report that article and leave it with just the facts, the author goes and gives his thoughts on it. J. Bryan Lowder, the author, is an eagle scout so having the perspective of someone with that personal relatable experience give the post a little something extra.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this blog. Maybe it was because I'm the audience, maybe I like pictures a little too much, but I think what really stood out to me was there really wasn't a consistent topic the blog focused on. Yeah it's for women, but like I posted, there are things for guys too. I'm happy to have been assigned this blog/ I think The XX Factor gained a new reader!

[unorthodoxology-deactivated2012]

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[arianamarie717]

punky-brewster:

lxtc:

Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks

on my personal tumblr, I always do a song of the day; it's usually something that's fitting my mood or something that amuses me on my way to class. either way enjoy =)

[bosstownsports]

[arianamarie717]

every day that passes is one day closer to hockey season!