*cries*

Sam, PH, 18. I post here my college papers for my own future reference. not everything is useful. some are half assed or paraphrased stuff from the internet. I'm not trying to plagiarize so forgive me if anything isn't properly cited. xoxo

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PUBLIC RELATIONS word cloud

I’ve never in my life considered taking Public Relations as a course track. I’m just not into public speaking. It doesn’t help that we have such a terror professor teaching that subject this semester.

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Photoshop seatwork!

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questions to ask journalists examples:

1.       PROFILE

2.       What made you choose this profession?

3.       Did you feel doubts or regrets for this choice? Why?

4.       As a journalist, how do you verify facts when you're gathering news?

5.       How do you come up with topics for news stories?

6.       What case or situation would you consider too extreme to cover?

7.       How do you handle negative backlash towards your work? Like for example, the death threats, blackmails, bribery?

8.       How does the culture in your company differ from others?

9.       What experience/s made you feel proud of being a journalist?

10.   What's the worst thing you've experienced in your profession?

11.   What is a ‘good journalist’ for you?

12.   How do you feel about people accusing the media of being corrupt or biased? Do you agree or disagree with such accusations?

13.   In what instances do you think it’s possible to sacrifice the credibility of the news?

14.   What advice can you give to students who aspire to be journalists someday?

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14TH EDUKCIRCLE CONVENTION ON MEDIA COMMUNICATION

Reaction paper!

The focus of the 14th EdukCircle that happened last 10TH of September 2016, is the “Traditional Media vs. Social Media: Issues and Concerns”. Knowledge about it is essential to the Communication Arts and Journalism students of our generation. Aside from printed media, TV, and radio, an important and more effective medium of reaching to people is the social media.

I think what people really like about social media is that it offers freedom and anonymity. As a heavy social media user, I’ve noticed that the topic that most people argue about is politics. It’s good that people nowadays are knowledgeable about important issues, but it’s hard to filter just what type of information they’ll be exposed to. Politics, specifically issues involving President Rodrigo Duterte has really split the population of the country into two. Everyone seems to have an opinion about him and people are not scared to be vocal about it especially on social media. Ms. Kristine Sabillo from Inquirer.net shared how she was attacked on twitter after an unfavorable tweet. Online journalists experience most of these negativity, but normal social network users are not exempted. If you comment on an article expressing your dislike about Duterte, his heavy following will immediately attack and bash you. I remember reading about a girl being threatened to get raped after she reacted on a Facebook post about Duterte’s sexist statements. Some fan pages of Duterte screen captures negative posts about him, including the name of the poster so Dutertards can visit their account and bash them. Those are just examples but it has made me somewhat scared of stating opinions online, and I shouldn’t be. Everyone is entitled to freedom of speech. Sadly, lots of people are just mindlessly typing, without any consideration to how it would affect themselves, and the people seeing it. Even a simple post comes with consequences.

I agree with what Professor Rachel Khan said, that at a very young age, children should be taught in school that they should distrust what they see on the internet. There are parody sites and fakes news all over the web that uses shocking headlines to get clicks, more commonly known as Clickbaits. If you’re not critical or well educated about a certain thing then you might fall for these pranks. Some people wouldn’t even read the article before liking and sharing a link, thus disseminating wrong information even more. On Lourd de Veyra’s presentation, he showed just how important revenue has become to media companies. Some of them would choose to report unimportant or trivial things in order to cater to what people want, rather than what people need. Facebook, for example, uses robots instead of actual people when it comes to filtering these news. It’s not really effective but they argued that they are a ‘tech company not a media company’, so it’s not their priority.

           I also realized that most people see Media as corrupt, which is an unfair generalization to people working in the media. There are always comments on news articles about how it is ‘biased’ and that it was paid. Ms. Sabillo did say that some good journalists quit because they can’t tolerate lying on their job so I supposed corruption do exists. But it should be the goal of media practitioners to tell the truth. Being honest also means that you can’t please all the audience so there will always be people who will disagree with media.

           News about children and minors should be handled with care, especially those with very sensitive topics such as child pornography, and sex slavery. Minors’ identities should protected by omitting videos or pictures of them, their names, addresses, and schools attended. Even with these restrictions, it is still possible to tell the story effectively by just showing little parts of their bodies, or the place where the story happened, or giving them aliases. When it comes to getting statements from them, it could be done with a supervision of a psychiatrist or someone from child services. Violating these might result in serious damage to their life, so their safety should be the priority. 

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Communication theories

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM is the continuous use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the others will react in a conversation.

An example are setting meetings with friends to hangout. There’s always that one friend who never arrives on time and always late by an hour or more. Because of our awareness of ‘filipino time’ and our knowledge about our friend, we can already anticipate their actions. The next time that the group of friends set appointments, they make sure to tell that friend a much earlier time than they are all supposed to meet up. By taking the role of others, they predicted what will happen.

It is related to social constructionism, which describes how humans act toward people or things based on the meanings they assign to it. Symbolic Interactionism relies on symbolic meaning that was created in the process of social interaction. An example is the symbolic meaning given by the LGBT community about the rainbow flag. It symbolizes Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender pride, and represents their social movements. It means being free and accepting your identity, and fighting against biases and discrimination Non members of the LGBT community who is unaware about that would feel indifferent upon seeing a rainbow flag. But LGBT people might wear something with a rainbow on it to show their pride and their support in this issue.

Also included in this perspective is the looking glass self. Human beings always think about how other people see them, and what they think about what others think about them affects the way they act. That’s perhaps why we adjust our personalities with whoever where with. Personally, I put on a different mask in whichever group of people that I am in. When I’m with my family, I try my best to act like a well adjusted human being. My high school friends have known me since the days when I’m an immature person who talks about her crushes all the time, and I think they still see me as how I was back then. Accordingly, I am more confident to act like a loud, messy, girl with them. I think my college friends see me as a quiet, unemotional, and detached person who doesn’t like people, so I tend to share less to them than my other friends.

Self-fulfilling prophecy where there is a tendency for our expectations to confirm what we first anticipated is also tackled in Symbolic Interactionism. It is because of this knowledge that I always force myself to believe that I will do well before ever class presentation, production, or performance. I found that it is more likely for me to fail or mess up when I believe that I will. That is because I become more nervous that I can’t do my tasks well. A similar example to this is a scene from the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie, where Ron Weasley applied to be a Quidditch player. He initially believed that Hermione used a luck potion on him that will help him do well on the game. Hermione didn’t actually do that, but tricked him into thinking that she did. His belief that he will do great because of a potion, lessened his anxiety and made him confident, and that paid off because he succeeded. His expectation came true because of how much he believed in it.

 CMM or the Coordinated Management of Meaning states that people who are interacting socially, construct the meaning of their conversation. The interpersonal system that comprise each individuals help explain their actions and reactions.

It also talks about how the way people speak is more important that what they are saying, which I agree on. In a classroom setting, for example, recitation is an everyday class activity. Based on my observation, more people listen when the student is good in speaking. There are those with very good diction, pronunciation, tone, volume, and quality when reciting, who can make the whole room quiet, even though they are lacking in content. Even though someone has a repetitive and has no substance in what they’re saying, people still listen. On the other hand, people who speak quietly and not as lively rarely ever gets listen to, even if they have a rich and sensible content.

 EXPECTANCY VIOLATIONS THEORY While communicating, people will create an expectation of how the other will react and the violation to this expectation can either have a positive of negative effect. It tackles proxemics, and personal space.

An example I can give about this is based on my experiences on my freshman year in university. What really caught me off guard is having to socialize with my blockmates. I spend elementary and high school around the same people, and because of that, I had difficulties on making new friends. In my first few months of that semester, I did not speak unless being spoken to, and only in short phrases. It made me uncomfortable when being asked personal questions by strangers. It took a while before I eventually opened up and let people into my personal space. As the relationship I have with my college friends get deeper, the more comfortable we are to get closer to each other, physically and emotionally. source: An Introduction to Communication Theory book

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Is life a matter of choice or destiny?

Interview and essay

     Is life a matter of choice or destiny? Destiny implies that there’s a higher power that controls how one person’s life will turn out. In destiny, the entire history of a person is already fixed and predetermined. Choice, on the other hand is more about free will, and the decisions one makes that determines what will happen to them.      Majority of the people that was asked believed that life is a matter of choice. To summarize their similar reasons, most think that a human being’s life is a product of the choices they made. We are the author of our own life, so wherever we may be right now is our sole responsibility. Every hardship, difficulty, success, or whatever situation we’re in is because of these choices. When it comes to life, people also think of one’s dreams and ambitions, and mainly, achieving success. When using this as an argument, it is our choices that gets us where we want to go. If we just sit and wait for our fate to take a turn, then nothing would happen. We can remain as we are now forever, or we can work hard to achieve a greater state of life. One person’s example was her goal to lose weight. She admits that it’s her own laziness and fondness of eating unhealthy foods that is the cause of being overweight.      One interviewee stated that ‘destiny’ is a lie fabricated by society so that people would simply accept how their life is going and not take action to change its course. There is no master plan that forces into roles that we have no power to resist. Oftentimes, people do use the whole idea of ‘fate and destiny’ as an excuse for their laziness. When something doesn’t go their way, they can comfort themselves with the thought that maybe it’s just not meant to be. They’ll accept defeat thinking that a better opportunity is destined for them. “Everything happens for a reason”, they’ll say. It is the hard work and effort that we put on something that helps us be successful, so we can’t just rely on chances. During difficult times, people resign to the unknown.  There are things that limits the choices we make like our environment, our own capabilities, and many more. But ultimately, we can do as we want, so we can take it in our own hands to have a more satisfying and fulfilling life.  

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Examples of PSA for radio

PARTNERSHIPS

SFX: SOCIAL MEDIA NOTIFICATIONS

30 PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S YOUTH ARE DIGITAL NATIVES OR THOSE WHO ARE KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET AT AN EARLY AGE.

MSC: UPBEAT MUSIC

WITH RECENT INNOVATIONS IN TECHNOLOGY, PEOPLE NOW HAVE UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ENTERTAINMENT, AND KNOWLEDGE. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE TECHNOLOGY CONNECTS EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US, NO MATTER WHEN OR WHERE WE ARE IN THIS PLANET WE CALL HOME. WITH COUNTLESS ISSUES AND GOALS THAT NEEDS ACTION, IT IS ONLY POSSIBLE IF WE ARE UNITED AS ONE. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH A STRONG COMMITMENT TO GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP AND COOPERATION. LET’S STAND TOGETHER IN THIS FIGHT AND DO OUR PART.

A REMINDER BY UNITED NATIONS. VISIT US AT www.un.org/en/ FOR MORE DETAILS

  SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES

SFX: SOUNDS OF TEXT MESSAGES, VEHICLES, AND PEOPLE IN TALKING IN PUBLIC BLENDING

WE LIVE IN THE AGE OF URBANISATION. TODAY, MORE THAN 50 PERCENT OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION LIVES IN CITIES, THAT’S ABOUT 3.5 BILLION PEOPLE! WE SEE HOW FAR HUMANITY HAS COME WITH THE TOWERING BUILDINGS, THE LATEST DEVICES, AND INFRASTRACTURAL INNOVATIONS.

SFX: SAD MUSIC

BUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT IS THE POOR LIVING IN THE SLUMS, WIDESPREAD CRIMES, UNSAFE SPACES FOR WOMEN, CHILDREN, OLDER PERSONS AND PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES, THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT, AND MANY OTHERS. BE ONE WITH THE UNITED NATIONS IN ELIMINATING THESE PROBLEMS. BE EDUCATED, AND TAKE ACTION.

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Something Childish But Very Natural and 500 Days Of Summer character analysis

(an assignment for my World Literature class)

The short story, Something Childish But Very Natural and the film, 500 Days of Summer, are stories that both explored themes of one sided love, and heartbreak. Aside from the similarities of the plot, the characters also has noteworthy comparisons and contrasts.

In the stories, we see events unfold through the point of view of the male lead, Henry and Tom Hansen. Their thoughts and emotions are the highlight of the narrative, so it cannot be avoided that audiences are watching through their biased eyes. We may sympathize from their heartbreak so much that a lot of people miss some flaws of their characterization.

In both relationships, they’re the ones who loved more. Henry often showed romantic gestures like giving Edna flowers and taking her on dates. Tom was described as a hopeless romantic who believed in fate and destiny. Their intense affection for their love interests can be downright obsessive at times. Henry often have urges to touch and hold Edna, as seen in his constant fixation with her marigold hair. He often initiates physical contact but Edna continually shots him down. He takes her out, and even planned to take her away so they can live together. He ignored how unrealistic the plan was and wallowed in his fantasy. He also stated that he didn’t want to wait because it makes the promise seem unattainable and farther away. Tom, on the other hand, would often read between Summer’s lines during small talk, before they were friends. He succeeded to be in a physical relationship with her, but is seeking for commitment and emotional connection, something Summer wasn’t ready for. Tom decided on his own to label their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend, and assumed that they were exclusive, despite her telling him otherwise.  Henry and Tom both made the mistake of thinking that they could change their counterpart’s perceptions about love if they worked hard enough.

           They both fell in love at first sight. Henry was much younger, though, and has never experienced love before Edna. It was a new feeling that excited and thrilled him. While, Tom has had a string of relationships before but no one has made him feel as strongly as Summer.

           They didn’t take being rejected, lightly. Something Childish But Very Natural ended with Henry being unable to move after reading the telegram. Tom was depressed and angry that he even called Summer a ‘whore’. But on the bright side, the break up pushed him to quit his job and pursue his dreams as an architect.

Edna and Summer are the less committed in the relationships. Their feelings for Henry and Tom, respectively, aren’t romantic but more platonic. Edna has never felt love before Henry. Although Summer was attracted to Tom, she wanted to keep it purely physical, casual and unattached. Summer treated Tom as her best friend and expected him to stay friends even after they separated. She is a realist, and has never really fallen in love with anyone she had ever been in a relationship with.

The biggest difference between them is their age. Edna is younger and still exhibits that childlike innocence and lack of knowledge about that area. Part of her aloofness is her fear for being involved in something she doesn’t not fully understand yet. Summer is older and has gone through more experiences that shaped her to be the way she is. She already knows her way around relationships to decide on what parameters she would set when it comes to dating. She is sure of herself and what she wants, and has told Tom that right from the start.

They were the ones who ended the relationship. Edna indulged his fantasies one last time before she broke up, and even let him touch her hair. She chose to bring her message via telegram rather than in person. Summer, on the other hand acted distant when they were nearing the end. She got engaged to someone else so suddenly without properly explaining everything to Tom. As a result, he was confused, clueless, and angry at her. They achieved closure after the marriage, in which she explained her side and Tom finally let her go.

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Hi, I need your help! As our final project for our Religion class, we need to promote a video about voter education. As an incentive, the class who posted the video with the most views will be exempted from taking the final exam! Please take the time to click the link. If you could just reblog this post for your followers, that would be a great help. You might even learn something from the video (if you speak Filipino)

Please help me pass the subject, I don’t want to take this again next year. I love you. Thanks

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INTRODUCTION TO FILM: CHILDREN OF HEAVEN REVIEW

(This is an assignment for my film class that I posted here for my future reference. I am not a film critique. I suck at that.)

In our Intro to Film class, we saw a 1997 Iranian family drama titled Children of Heaven. It was written and directed by Majid Majidi, starring Amir Farrokh Hashemian and Bahare Seddiqi. It follows the story of two young siblings, Ali and Zarah, after they lost a pair of shoes. They decided to hide the fact from their parents to relieve them from expenses and devised a plan of sharing a tattered white sneakers to get to school every day. The story rises as Ari joined a competition to win a pair of shoes as a prize for the third runner up. It is a tale that shows the value of hard work and determination, motivated by the love for one’s family.

The plot was entertaining enough to get vocal reactions from the class through the whole length of it. The race scene which lasted for five minutes, managed to be one of the most heartwarming and exciting scene of the movie. It kept audiences at the edge of their seats, cheering for Ari as he ran in slow motion while Zarah’s voice play in the background. The film ended with Ari going home defeated to Zarah, having failed to win the pair of shoes he promised her. I noticed that a lot of my blockmates found that ending disappointing and complained about the lack of closure. These types of endings are also common in some indie movies that I’ve seen. The typical approach if it was like any other mainstream movie is to end it with the family hugging, with Zarah happily holding her shoes in her hands. I admittedly would find a scene like that satisfying, but the current ending, I think tells more by showing less.  It was already shown in the previous scene how that conflict would be resolved, so it is up to the audience to imagine what would happen next. A scene showing how the protagonists lives happily ever after is unnecessary and unrealistic.  

The quality of the film was well preserved, despite being made a decade ago. The cast are excellent actors, especially the two main leads, Hashemian and Seddiqi, who are both just young children at the time. There were scenes where they can communicate without using any dialogue but only their facial expressions and movements. Their acting felt so natural and they perfectly internalized the role as children living in Teheran. The setting of the film, which is the poor part of Iran, felt authentic and real. It doesn’t hide the unfortunate living conditions of the people there, and it gives the audience the sense of being in touch with the place.

The film gave us a glimpse of the lives of a poverty stricken family living in Iran. In small little details we see the culture of the people there. Their religiousness, their art, their economy. We could also see how family oriented Iranians are like in those scenes where parents are being supportive to their children at the race. Moreover, it showed the contrast between the poor and the rich inside one country, shown in the scene where Ari and his father took a gardening job in a house own by an old man his grandson. From the title alone, we can infer that it would be a film that would deliver special messages or moral lessons. One thing we can get from it is how there are sweet things in life despite all the hardships. Although, in reality, money is very important, it doesn’t mean that wealth is everything. In the end, family and relationships are still above it. Overall, Children of Heaven is a great film, content or technical wise. It is an inspiring and heartwarming film that people all of ages will enjoy.

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Aristotle’s theory of poetics applied on the story, Open Couple.

(an assignment for my World Literature Class)

           Open Couple is a play written by Dario Fo and Franca Rame. It centers on a husband, a wife, and their dysfunctional relationship.

Hamartia or the ‘tragic flaw’ is the point in the story where the protagonist makes a wrong judgement that would result to his own downfall. It is displayed in Open Couple when the husband made an agreement with his wife to have an open marriage so he can have the freedom to pursue other women. He persuaded his suicidal wife using the argument that open marriage is politically correct. He thought it would be a good idea to have a wife and mistresses at the same time even if his wife is clearly infuriated by the set up. This worked well for him, but we see that the perks of this open marriage is one sided.

           The anagnorisis is shown in the story when the husband found out about his wife moving on and finding someone else. She told her husband about the man she’d been dating who is a Nobel prize nominated professor and a singer-songwriter. The wife has also improved her appearance. It was then that the husband finally became aware of their situation because things are not better on his side of the relationship. As said by the wife, only one part of their ‘open relationship’ is actually open. This realization evoked the husband’s love and affection for his wife and pushed him to try to make things right again.

Peripeteia is the reversal of circumstances involving the characters. When the husband found out about the professor, he experienced the jealousness and dismay that his wife often experience because of his actions. Tables had turned and he became the one threatening to commit suicide. The wife told him that she invented the professor in order to prevent his death. He attempted to revoke the open marriage agreement with her and proposed to be exclusive from now on.

Catharsis is experiencing intense feelings of pity and fear vicariously in order to purge all of it. In a flurry of emotions, the husband rushed into the bathroom and killed himself in the bath tub after he found out that the professor is real.

The catastrophe or the tragic conclusion of the story is when the husband killed himself in the end. It was a complete change of fortune because he was the one who died but it was his wife that has been trying to do that at the start of the story.

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Amelie Film Review

(the following is written for a homework on Film. That would explain why there are so many unnecessary words that I just used to achieve the word count. I posted it here for future reference.) Introduction to Film: Amélie Film Review As someone who constantly scours the internet for great films, Amélie is a film that I’ve repeatedly came across with on movie blogs and forums. It is a highly acclaimed film that garnered awards and praises worldwide, and I finally got the chance to see it in our Film class. Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain or simply Amélie is a 2001 french romantic comedy film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The story is about Amélie, a solitary young woman who decided to help the lives of the people around her. Fortunately, it strays far from other films in the rom-com genre. It doesn’t focus only on the romance, but most importantly on the character development of the protagonist, and the people around her. Based only on the story, I might say that some parts of it were a bit unrealistic. I’m talking about how unlikely it is for Nino to fall in love with Amélie after she stalked her. Not to mention how different the ending would be if Nino didn’t find Amélie attractive when they met. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable and lighthearted film that you could watch again and again.

It might have a simple story but what made it extraordinary is the eccentric style the director used to tell it.  For one, it was fast paced. It managed to hold my short attention span with frame after frame of visually appealing scenes while an omniscient voice over narrates the story. The narrator often uses dry humor in telling otherwise silly or weird situations. Moments when the characters break the fourth wall are also common in the film. Characters sometimes looked directly at the camera or talked to it which I think added to the hilarity of certain scenes, and made the story easier to understand. Each character were introduced to the audience by the things they like and dislike, paired with shots of said things. It gives attention to little character details like how Amélie enjoys plunging her hand into a sack of grain, cracking crème brulee, and skipping stones at the canal.I like how there were a lot of different shots and angles used. I loved the style used in the final scene, where Amélie and Nino was riding a bicycle seemingly in fast forward. The shot was shaky and chaotic which I think shows a lot about the story of how the two got together. Visual effects was boldly used in the scene where Amélie literally melted to a puddle, and xray visions to her heart. It was a decent effect considering that it was made back in 2001. Aside from that, the use of CGI and digital enhancement is evident throughout the film to give it a more whimsical feel.

The whole movie looks extremely French, from the fashion, art, food, and the music. They made the streets of Paris looked dreamy, which is what the director intended from what I’ve read while researching about the film. Jeunet supposedly wanted to make the setting look as if it were a soundstage so they altered the shooting locations by cleaning it up and splashing it with more color. As a result, it made the movie very satisfying to the eyes. It was like entering a painting because of the wide array of l colors used. The general lighting of the film has a mostly warm tone, with lots of yellowish and reddish tints. The soundtrack also sounded distinctly French because of the heavy use of accordions and other instruments. Listening to it with your eyes closed is enough to take you in an adventure around the streets of Paris. It works well as a background for narrative or dialogue scenes. Yann Tiersen, the music composer really did a great job. It’s also a good soundtrack to listen to while studying or doing homework.

Amélie’s signature look is wearing warm colored retro style clothes, and her boots. The color coordination of their wardrobe in contrast to the setting was well thought of. And of course, the most distinguishable thing about Amélie’s look is her infamous haircut. Audrey Tatou’s hair and makeup shows how youthful and innocent the character is. The costume of the cast was clearly designed carefully to be appropriate for the time and place they’re in.           

And of course, the performance of the actors was a big part of the success.  Audrey Tatou was especially perfect for her the lead role. In her appearance alone, especially her big black eyes, you could see the innocence and naivety that composes the main character. People loved Amélie’s charm seen through her smiles and the curious way she gazes at the world around her. Tatou had the talent to portray a loveable and unforgettable character. 

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Photo at the bottom is not mine. Painting for my Art Appreciation class We had the shittiest professor for this subject. We only ever learned from the youtube links he posts on our school website. But it taught me some things about painting. I’m getting more decent at painting now.

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Continuous line drawing for my Art Appreciation class

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My speech for English class

Morality In Equality

Philippines is labeled as Asia’s most gay friendly nation. 73% of Filipinos agreed that ‘homosexuality should be accepted by the society’, based on a survey by the PEW Research Center. Since the 90’s different LGBT organizations have been giving support and fighting for equality. With this forefront, it seemed like a very fortunate place for our LGBT friends to find love and acceptance. But is that really the case? Does Philippines live up to its title? What is the Philippines’—a country rich with religious cultures and traditions--- stand on same sex marriage?

From celebrities, fashion designers, entertainers, politicians, to normal Filipino citizens, LGBT has a diverse population in the Philippines. They come in all different shapes and sizes, wear different faces and labels, but they’re no different from their heterosexual counterpart. Same sex couples want the same thing just like straight couples do. One of those things is to be able to get married. As humans, they have to right to love and be loved by another human being and be able to celebrate it. They long to stand in front of their family and friends in taking the lifetime commitment with the person they love.

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” goes the popular saying. It is an overused quote based on the bible used by many anti-gay activists to condemn gay people. One might go as to quote 20 or so different bible passages to assert that marriage is not between two men or two women. With 92.5% of the population claiming to be Christians, Philippines is no doubt heavily influenced by religion. Shifting from social to moral beliefs, it appeared that Filipinos tend to have a more homophobic conviction. Based on another PEW survey, 65% of Filipinos deemed same sex marriage as immoral. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines is one of the groups that oppose LGBT rights. On a legal perspective, being unable to marry also denies gay couples government support and benefits that straight couples can get. Many Filipinos believe in traditional marriage or a marriage exclusive between a male and a female. One reason why is because procreation and building a family are the primary reasons for marriage. Without certain biological parts and gender roles, people just cannot see how homosexual relationships are fit for familial lives. Many argue that having gays or lesbians as parents would deny a child the love and care of a mother or a father, respectively. In truth, having gay parents is an opportunity to reinforce a healthy sexuality and open mindedness on children. Moreover, homosexuality is still viewed by many as deviant and out of the norm. It’s unfortunate that people receive hate and prejudice just for being themselves.

           For me, love is love. All kinds of love should be accepted regardless of two people’s age, race, religion or sexual orientation. So many people have taken marriage for granted. There are people who get married for money, a position on a job, to please their parents, or out of a whim on a drunken night at Vegas. And there are people who have been committed to each other for a long time, unable to get married because their bond is seen by society as ‘abnormal’ or ‘immoral’. They should be able to shout their love from the rooftops and be accepted. They wouldn’t be hurting anyone by getting married, they’re merely just taking a step to deepen their relationship with the person they love. After all, marriage and family is not defined by who’s in it but by their relationship. Furthermore, religion is often used in this issue by people to hide their bigotry. Not everyone shares the same opinion and it’s wrong to ruin other people’s happiness just because it’s not according to our beliefs.

Lastly, there would be people who would be against same sex marriage. They would judge and put people into boxes or write labels on their forehead.  Hating them wouldn’t make them defect from their convictions. All we can do is respect them. Looking back, we can recall a time when people have to fight for the rights of women and interracial couples, but humanity’s efforts helped equality prevail. If there’s one thing that comes out of these endless issues, it’s that love and acceptance would always stand tall.