Lasers

The laser movie was a short film created by two students in Chabot that categorize the types of students that come and go on this community campus. They interview different types of students and put them into 6 categories.
                 Check out this video when you have time:

Focusing The Lasers from Sean McFarland on Vimeo.

• Visitors: These types of students are the type of people who have only just started their journeys into the world of college. It is a completely new field in which they have almost zero experience in. The come in and feel as if they are not part of this new environment and feel distant towards everything around them.
• Wanderers: They have very little idea on what they want to do academically. They may have some troubles in speech and communications with those around them because of they're new to this type of environment. 
• Explorers:  These types of students are the experimental types, they try out things that seem to interest them. They still have no real path in which they want to follow, but when it comes to the path in which they want to study academically, they have some idea since they have been in the system long enough to try different things out. 
• Seekers: Students in the seeker class are the more, evolved types of explorers. They have been exploring enough and have seen the many sides of different subjects and have a clear goal in which they can strive for. These guys can deal with college life like second nature since they have transitioned from high school classes that have taught them how to deal with the work loads since day one, AP classes are a great example of one of these prep classes. 
• Dreamers: Dreamer type students have clear idea of what they want to do when they graduate from community college. They already have that dream of theirs in their heads and are ready to set out on that goal. 
• Lasers: These students are the types that literally have a straight pathway in which they want to be. Like a laser pointing specifically at a goal, these students have a clear materialized goal in which they can obtain.

      After watching the laser movie, I have come to realize that I am a number of things, for one I could be a visitor, a seeker, and a explorer. These three have suited me the best throughout the entire video due to the things said by the interviewees.
    In the visitor class, I am a new incoming student attempting to make my own in this new environment. I know nothing of college life and only hope to fit in with my peers, I struggle greatly with how to adapt to the new work load compared to when I was still in high school. There was a large shift in the amount of pages needed to be written in an essay, in high school, the maximum for me to write was roughly three pages, here I'm writing a twenty four page essay and still going. When I first entered, I felt like an outsider, a person who didn't belong in society. I also did not have a clear path in which my future would take me, I wanted to in the medical field, but now it seems to be like a second thought.
      As for the seeker category, I know what classes I'm taking, fulfilling my GE courses and hopefully transferring to a good four year institution. That is my main goal as of right now and it seems to be the only real path that I can follow. Though this may sound like a contradiction to the statements above, I have faced heavy workloads in high school before, and well, I've learned to adapt to these things rather quickly. I have faced this in my AP courses in during the four years in high school and those courses have prepared me quite well if I have to say so for myself. I generally have control over myself and have the ability to manage my time considerably well.
     And finally we have the explorer category. This category would suit me the best since I have no real clear path in which I want to take. I take a bunch of GE classes that seem interesting and hopefully it fulfills the requirements I need to transfer into another institution. I know for sure that I want to head into a four year institution for a higher education and obtain a degree that I can be proud of. That is a clear path that I must absolutely follow through with in hopes to push through with my prideful self. I just hope I know how to obtain this goal... long ways away, but the journey has only just begun!

Critiquing Education

        As a fellow student, I do believe that we should have a say in what we are learning. As a whole student body with different backgrounds and experiences in different environments, all of them have an input in this topic. Students entering community college would be around the age of 18 years old, at this time they have been in school for approximately 13 years. With this many years of experiencing different environments and adapting to ones that suit best to them, they have a vivid idea of what an optimal learning space feels like. They are far less experienced in the mindset of college than those who have been here for two or more years and have expectations on which how people teach and how the school should act. The students who have been here for a longer period of time have learned to adapt to this new mindset of college and now "go with the flow." The longer you stay, the more the system sticks with you, you become less radical in the amount of change that you want and now have a more conservative feel. There's a saying where "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kind of thing going around, the students are unhappy, but they are at least earning credits to graduate. The problem is that, it takes longer and longer for the amount of students heading in to graduate because of this flawed system so what I'm trying to say is that the system is not broken, but it is heavily flawed. Being involved with the school can help with passion because, even though they may not have a passion at the moment, this Passion Class can help bring out a side of them that had been shut away before. The people who were not outspoken to begin with may have some helpful ideas, with the encouragement of the other classmates, they will be able speak out their minds and hopefully have a better understanding of what they might want to do. But it all depends on how this class is taught, if the teachers themselves are not passionate, what's the point of having people with passionless goals and passionless teachers teaching a passionless class. This class requires that both the students and teachers be active and have different ideas to share, the functionality of this class all comes down to the class environment. 

        A flawed system affects a person's education. They should take into consideration what they want rather than what their parents or society pushes them towards. My parents have always pushed me and my brothers to go into the medical field because of how well it pays. Coming from my parents standpoint, it's completely acceptable since they came from a rough and rural country with very little education opportunities. As a child I had no ambition to do anything, all I wanted to do was become of those power rangers fighting crime to save the world. That was soon crushed after the fact that my mom told me it was fiction and that huge giant robots fighting giant monsters was never going to become a reality. And so, my childhood dreams were crushed and were replaced with things like becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a chemist, an orthodontist, or maybe even an engineer. All of which rely heavily on the math and sciences, now don't get me wrong, I love math and science, but that gave me very little to choose from. I was stuck with this mind set of going into the medical field up until this point. I actually am having second thoughts in which where my true passion lays.  I now look back and see that I was only doing this to make my parents proud rather than trying to find a job that best suited me. A small question is all it took for me to realize that this was not my passion, but, I have nowhere I am interested in. Since I've walked down this path, I guess I'll stay on it until I find something else more interesting. The reason why this class is a good idea is that it asks the student to make an insight on themselves and see where they are. They can change their minds before it's too late, too late from causing themselves misery for the remainder of their lives. 

Preventions of Success

        I can claim many things prevented any of my successes, but that would be me giving into the reality that I am a very incapable person. But if I had to pick one, it would be the idea of time and how it continues to move forward while I stand here wallowing in my own failures. Time passes with each and ever second, minute, and hour, it waits for no one. Those who always move forward succeed and excel in the world. Those who stand and look back into the past will only slow their development and never attain the success they yearn for. The concept of time is one that humans developed in hopes to understand how the world works, simply put it's the idea of how the Earth revolves around the sun. And so from this concept, the limited amount of revolutions of the world prevents many successes from happening and stops many in their tracks to reflect on their past failures never to move forward again. For me, whenever I have failed at something I throw it away hoping that the subject will never focus again. This happens to me a lot in math class, when a hard lesson comes my way and I have just bombed the test, I push it aside and never bother to understand it because it's an embarrassment on my part that I do not understand it. But as we all know, math is a foundation type learning process, without the foundation, how can the future lessons stand on top of it? It can't, if you do not understand it now and never bother to understand it later, more failures will come to surface. As McCandless states "So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet do will not take the initiative to change their situation [. . .]" (58). You can interpret his quote with the concept of time in mind. As people come and go, they continue living with their miserable lives, they lack the concept of time and how their lives have come thus far. If you take Chris' idea, it would be the opposite of mine. His idea states that people should look to the past and the should recognize their sufferings in order to change for the future. But since they do not take the time to do so, nothing will ever change in their lives never leading to success. Some of them may be successful in the fact that they have a job and a home, but they are not successful int he fact that they lead lives that do not appease them. Having a job and having a career are two completely different ideas, the latter is the only one that is able to make you happy. However, in order to have this happiness, one must take the time to understand themselves in a world where time keeps moving, this is not an easy task. As things go, most people live their lives on the spur of the moment rather than thinking about the future and how it will affect them.
      The second thing that can prevent success is the lack of privilege that people have. As far as education goes in the beginning twelve years, it's all free. Government still has your back and is paying for your education, reach college, not so lucky anymore. The government no longer funds us and we have to pay for a large sum of money for a higher degree. The lesser privileged now have no way of getting their higher degrees, instead they are forced to slave away working and have to pay for the tuition.The less fortunate are forced to turn away from the option of obtaining a better education and are forced to go into labor in order to provide for themselves. For example, in Breaking Through, an autobiography by Francisco Jimenez, the author comes to the United States in hopes for a brighter future. This is considered the land of the free and the land of opportunity. They soon find out that in order to make in America, you must work and it is not as easy as they had anticipated. Francisco starts working in the fields with his father picking strawberries on a pay to rent farm, meaning they rent the land and whatever sum of money they make more than 50% of the profit goes to the landlord. His father eventually cannot walk due to his bad back and cannot work to support the family. This places the burden on Francisco, who is only 15 or 16 years old and still in high school. Being less privileged than the rest of the world, he is unable to do anything to gain an upper hand in life, his grades begin to fall and his family is falling further and further in to debt. Of course his mother is also doing work in the fields, but that obviously is not enough money to provide for anything. As you can see, money is one of the many reasons in which success cannot happen. Francisco is actually a very bright student, but because of this lack of privilege he cannot allow his potential to grow. However, when we look at McCandless' case, he had no problem with money and was just about ready to become a student at Harvard Law School. This would be considered a high achievement on many people's part, even on my part that's seen as a major success. Because his family had money, he was able to achieve high standards and succeed in life rather than having to suffer such a cruel fate like Francisco having to work multiple jobs, attend school, and suffer the cruelness of society. Not only that, but the fact that Francisco was not a white male but instead an illegal immigrant from Mexico also made it hard for him to obtain certain jobs or positions. It was much easier for Chris to reach his goals of going in to the wild because he was more privileged, if he was not as fortunate or if he was not white, things would have not gone the ways they did. Living in a privileged family allowed him to feel society's nature of hypocrisy, this allowed him to make and obtain a passion unlike any other. From there on, his privilege in the fact that he was a white male allowed him to keep pushing for his passion, he was hired to work at many jobs such as burger king and wheat farming. If he were of different ethnicity, it would probably be significantly harder to obtain these jobs. People with more privilege tend to gain their successes with more ease than people that have less privilege.
       Finally, another idea that prevents success is the lack resolve individuals have. They lack the ability to settle a dispute, not with society, but with themselves. They attempt to live up to expectations and try to make themselves acceptable the eyes of others, having a well paying job and a sizable home, rather than trying to pursue their own dreams and passions. A person with a lack in resolve will never be able to obtain the success of happiness. For instance, many asian families, including mine, expect their children to go into the medical field. Sure, these types of jobs pay considerably well, but the amount of effort and time put into the major is back breaking. As a child, I had been pushed towards the idea of becoming some kind of doctor, and the idea has stuck with me ever since. Even now, I too have no idea what I really want to do like most people. I lack the ability to think for my self and my own happiness. Chris on the other hand has successfully gained his own passion, he is able to escape from the world of expectations and lived up to his own. When he goes into the wild, he makes up a name for himself. An identity that society has not given him, a name that will severe the ties between him and the rest of the world. He was no long "Chis McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own identity." (23) His resolve was so great that it allowed him to severe his ties with everything that he once had. He no longer wanted to live up to his parent's expectations of having a good job and living the life of a privileged person. Rather, he wanted to be his own person by settling his own dispute between him and society's views. He is able to achieve the success of becoming free and "unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers [. . .]" (23). He is able to get away with from his parent's dreams and is able to pursue his own by allowing himself the opportunity to break free from his metaphoric chains. Aside from the fact that this dream seems unreasonable and that it breaks all the teachings that our parents have taught us, he is at lease able to pursue the life that he has wanted instead of living up to the expectations that his parents put him through.

Defining Success

        So far, my life has been full of being unsuccessful.Not a single day would pass by without one of my failures being pointed out to me, be it by my parents, friends, teachers, or just any random occurrence that can be tied to a failure. For instance, when I go to Chabot, I realize I've failed in getting me act together. If I had not procrastinated in signing up for universities or state colleges, my parents would not have to lecture me day in day out about attaining he highest grades possible to transfer to an acceptable four year institution. But in order to understand that feeling of being a failure, I must also know what it feels like to succeed. One of which can be described in a form of victory. When you come out to be the victor in a competition that you have trained several weeks for, it leaves a sweet feeling of success. In the early ages of my childhood, my father believed I would be able to go far in playing basketball. At the age of eight I joined the YMCA basketball team. We had practice five days a week for two hours. Each day we would run, do drills, and have practice matches. It was a gruesome practice for eight year old children. At the end of the three month session, we would have a match against other YMCA teams, yes apparently there were other teams in the area. I was not the best at basketball, considering many of my team mates towered over me and the fact that I had almost no ability to make the ball go into the hoop. The only thing I was good at were rebounds and being on defense, when I go into offense I have no ability to shoot but I was able to control the ball and assist pretty well. My team was down a measly two points. My team only needed one three point shot to win this game or two two point shots. Since nobody had the ability actually make a three point shot with confidence, we all decided to go with closer two point shots. There was only five minutes in the game before the coach called in a time-out. He told everyone to just pass it to the person most open near the hoop, so much for any other real advice. The opposing team started the game, they ran down the court in hopes to make a shot to pull away from us, a team mate was able to block it and pass it down, two minutes left. He passed it an open team mate down the court, he was in a pinch, everyone was surrounding him, no chance to make the shot. One minute left, he saw me open so he passed it to me, thirty seconds left. I thought to myself, "Can I really plow through this crowd of people to perform a lay-up? No it's impossible." I was a the three point line, I looked at the hoop and threw the ball. Everyone looked at it in its last seconds, it all counted. *Swish* I made it. My entire team erupted into cheer, and patted me on the back. Well, I'll never be doing that again, because once I made it, I landed on my ankle and twisted it. Oh well, least we won right? That feeling I had of winning by a hair was the feeling of utter success. Though it may seem like luck to me, the people watching were probably thinking that this was all payed off by my hard work.
         Another way to define success is through achievement. A hurdle that must be overcome no matter what the cost. Achievement in anything is a success anyone can feel, through athletics, education, or a goal that has been achieved. Once you have achieved something that you once deemed to be impossible, that itself is a success. In my short swimming career that all started in the second year of high school, I was able to achieve many awards and best times. It all could not have been done without the many months of hard work put behind all of it. I started with times that could easily be beaten by children younger than me, and ended with times that children can still beat, I know it's pitiful, children are way too fast nowadays. I mean look at Michael Andrews, a fourteen year old 6'4" swimming prodigy already going pro quicker than Michael Phelps. He now holds 34 age national age records for swimming. If that itself does not define achievement, I don't know what does. Rather than thinking that he is a "prodigy" or a "genius" it would just put his hard work to waste, he worked hard for those achievements and it was probably not handed to him on a silver platter. We also have the fact that Chris McCandless was able to achieve "ulitmate freedom." Though most people would rather not throw their lives out of the window, Chris was able to achieve something that not many people can have. That would be the idea of "ultimate" freedom. This idea would probably spring from the idea of getting away from society's harsh views on everything. He was able to get away from all the hypocrites and undo the chains of law and order to live out the life he pleased. As people live now, we work slaving away day in and day out in order to make money, we believe that money is out ticket to freedom, but now matter how much we have, we can never achieve enough money. McCandless' father was a very wealthy man. He achieved many things that others only dream of getting, a good job, fame, and fortune. One can only have so much, but Chris' father only sought out for more. As people, achievement is defined by the amount of joy or elation we feel by reaching that goal, that achievement will later turn out to be success if you keep pursuing for that dream.

          Another way to define success is through passion. A passion to follow and a dream to chase is a large goal in life. When you reach your goals and attain your dreams, that would define success in all its glory. Success will always follow after achieving a goal in life, it just means that you were able to push yourself to your limits and achieve something that only seemed like a dream. With said, in Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, Sara was able to pursue her dreams to be a teacher. In her time period, it was very rare for women to be able to go to college and attain a higher degree, or a degree in anything at all. She being a female and working is something so radical in her family's culture that this dream was seen as impossible. She would literally have to go against the cultural norms that have been followed for decades and become the black sheep of the family. Rather than chickening out on her ambition, she decided to follow through with it and obtain a success that no one her family dared do, the success of passion. She started out with a rough start, running away from home with little money and with little food and no shelter. Rather than giving up like most of the run away children, she kept pushing forward with her passion to become a school teacher. She knew that her life would only get better if she kept it up. When she achieved her dream, her outlook on life was much brighter than it first started when she was with her father. She was able to afford her own house, clothes, and even find the man of her dreams by following this passion of hers that seemed impossible with the little privilege she had. McCandless also had a passion to follow that later led to his success of being free. That passion was to head into the wild and live as one with mother nature. Many people would look down upon his decisions as wasteful or just plain dumb, but it was much more than that to Chris. What he wanted to do was get away from the "fake" faces and fronts that society throws at him. The lies that they lay down in front of each other disgusted him and he hated the fact that he was a part of it. So, he had a passion to get away from it all, to go in to the wild where no one judges you, where you only live on your own accord with your wits and intellect. That passion took him on a journey where he had no regrets, he was actually happy. Rather than having to spend more time in a room cooped up and having no freedoms and only expectations of what to do, he ran away from it all and became something that he wanted to be. This form of success is not something that we see everyday, in fact it might just be once in a lifetime. But with that said, it still is a form of success for he was able to see that his passion was achieved, that's what counts. 

Guy With the Red Shoes

      The guy with the red shoes, or Jeff Bliss, is an individual that knows what is good for the children inside of a classroom. In order for students to be fully engaged and learn, it is the teacher's duty to be able to bring up a discussion. If nothing is brought up, what good will sitting there and handing out worksheets do? As students are more physically and mentally engaged on a subject, new ideas and concepts can be brought up upon it. In my high school physiology class my teacher would put us into groups of four and allow us to converse the topics of how the body works. She would give us homework the night before about a topic, such as how the heart works and what causes the beating. As some people were not able to understand the reading last night, this would allow it to be clarified through not only a teacher's point of view but a fellow peer's point of view. What Jeff was doing was that he was arguing for the hope that teachers will interact with others, rather than just pass things out and expect them to understand. Some teachers believe that they should only teach content rather than actually helping students. Different people have different learning styles, others are better at retaining knowledge by just learning straight from the book, others require hands on attention in order to grasp the concept. I will paraphrase Andrade, a rose growing out of the concrete will only continue to grow if an outside source will help nurture it to health. The student is the rose growing up inside a community that only seems to reject them, the teacher is that gardener that helps that rose to grow up and shine inside the community that only seems to forsake them. If a student cries for help and no one is around, will they make a sound? Yes, but only if you choose to hear it. That's what it means to be a teacher, a guide, a nurturer, a difference.
        Teachers must also be willing to give up some of their spare time to help these students in need. What else does it mean to be a teacher, it means you must teach. They must be able to not only teach content but also how to understand the concept how to grasp it and a bunch of other things that can help the student. Teachers fail to realize that they were once those same students that had those same questions. They also fail to realize that once in their life, a teacher had once made a huge change into their lives causing them to be a teacher as well. There is a passion in being a teacher/professor, that passion is to ensure that all, not just one, but ALL of the students understand the content. A survey shows that students usually enter college with no idea what they want to do in the future.However by the time they leave, something must have touched them in order for them to keep pushing onward with a dream that they have not realized yet. Future teachers are usually inspired by other teachers and realize what they want to do because of what their teachers have done for them. But the future teachers fail to realize this and ask students why they can't decide a future or why they lack inspiration, it's because they haven't found it yet. There's a phrase that goes "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." In this context the teacher will have to provide the student with something of meaningful value, that being their time and effort to aid their growth and ever expanding curiosity of students. From there, the students will then give their full attention and cooperate with the teachers more fluidly. 
        

Potential Deal Breakers

    I feel that in college, there are many potential deal breakers. Many of which may or may not relate to one another. But either way, even with those deal breakers, I'm still here. One of the deal breakers I had to face was, well, the fact everything was so expensive. Each class is about forty six dollars a unit along with all the books and gas that are needed to attend classes. All of which in two semesters could cost well over a thousand dollars. With all that accumulated in the time span of two years or more, more and more money will have to be spent on classes and books alone. That's a lot of money, with this in mind, you could probably just drop everything and just start working. I had this in my mindset in the beginning, but with the way I was raised, I decided to go through with college. Even though it's expensive, it will all be worth it in the far future if I am able to get a good job. With that potential deal breaker of possible money issues, Sara from Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, had to struggle day in and day out with her money issues. At one point she had no money to afford food for herself. She worked as an ironer, ironing clothes, but as she began daydreaming about her mother's home cooked food, she forgot about her job. Consequently, she burned the shirt and had to get three dollars deducted from her five dollar pay. Sara, already in a money pinch,  could not say anything it was "either [ . . . her] job or pay" (224). Going to college and working part-time is a harsh experience, especially since you have to pay for not only college, but your living expenses. In this era, jobs were scarce and if something were to happen, you would not be allowed to complain. If you did, then the boss would happily find you a permanent replacement for your leave. When you can barely afford college, what can you afford to eat? Can you live off cup noodles and bread for four years or more? With Sara's case, she was only able to afford bread, when "three dollars out from [her] wages, when every fraction of a penny was counted [. . .] Maybe for weeks [she'd] have to live on dry bread to make up for the loss" (224). Sara had to suffer with all these hardships for several years, but in the end it was all worth it. She could now afford anything she pleased, a house, food, and clothes. All of the material items she had ever wanted as a student is now within her grasps. So what I'm trying to say is, with a little hard work and a LOT of perseverance, money will no longer be a problem.
          Another deal breaker was time management. As a person of the working class, this is rather hard to manage, taking three classes in the summer and working for my parents right after is not an easy matter. Now I'm not saying that my life is harder than anyone else's it's just that, if you work and study, you should be able to understand this struggle. Aside from working, I am also swimming for a private team on the side of that as well, so with classes, work, and sports, I tend to fall behind on homework. But I cannot give up on any of them, without the classes I would not able to graduate and transfer to four year institution. Without swimming, I would be super stressed about school and work with nothing to blow off my steam and keep in shape. And of course, I can't stop working, how else am I going to pay for college? All of these things cost time, money is important, but "time is of the essence."In the beginning of summer, I was thinking about dropping my English 1A course because of the time commitment needed to write essays and reading books. It was too much for me in the beginning, I had to read the book within a night and write out a six page paper minimum. With that in mind, I had to do homework while on break at work. The first assignment was due the next few days, but I had barely written anything down at all. I was just about to give up, when my father decided to say that he would be able to change my work schedule so that I could be given more time to do my homework. Now I work twice as long on the weekends, but at least I have time to do my homework on the days when school is in session. With that, I was able to write a nine page paper in one night and later compose a sixteen page paper right after that. Even with my schedule, I was able to procure enough time to do such a thing and find out my capabilities. In a book, Breaking Through by Francisco Jimenez, a young boy, the author, and his family are illegal immigrants trying to make ends meet in America. Later in the story, the hardest working person, the family, dies. The burdens now lay on top of Francisco, having to work three jobs and study at the same time for high school. It goes to the point where he had to read an article why sweeping the floor at three in the morning in a janitorial job. Working to support a family and having to go to school are very harsh on a young fifteen year old boy, especially since the family isn't "legal." But with his perseverance he was able to go to Santa Clara University and become a successful author. Even if it seems hopeless, keep pushing onwards because you will never know where it will take you.

         The last deal breaker that I had to deal with was with the lack of confidence I had in myself. As time goes on, people become smarter, faster, and even stronger. Expectations grow and cause people to feel lesser of themselves when comparing themselves to other people. With new advances in technology, one must now find something that is even more technologically advanced, and this of course is not a simple task. A couple of years ago, the times in swimming for JO's or Junior Olympics, had always been in my grasp. Time after time, I would keep on making the time standards and feel proud of myself. But not soon after, as I grew older, the time standards became harder and harder to accomplish, pretty soon I was no longer making the cuts for the Junior Olympics. A fifty-three second one hundred free short course was not going to cut it because now there are people who are able to swim forty-six seconds one hundred yard free. My confidence had dropped considerably. Obviously this has nothing to do with education, but what I'm trying to say is that, standards are always rising. Those who already struggle cannot compare to those who always succeed. As you lose more of your confidence, you begin to doubt yourself. When that happens, quality of your work ethic also begin to drop and causes you to give up entirely because of your failures. As Chris states "I read somewhere... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong... to measure yourself at least once."(127). Rather than moping around in your own failures, you can always try the opposite and look at your successes. Even the littlest of success can get you right back on your feet because it is an inspiration to reach higher. With a small success you aim to make an even bigger one. With the growing successes that attempt to achieve, an inspiration will grow and cause you to regain your lost confidence. In the movie of Into The Wild the narrator says something that catches my attention, Chris' confidence allowed him to accomplish a feat that many people cannot do. "That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do." Confidence allows you try and attempt, without it we do not bother. Chris on the other hand had such great confidence that allowed him to experience different feelings. Because of that, the low confidence deal breaker did not affect him. 

       
   

How into the Wild Intersects

           I have not finished reading Into The Wild, but from the few chapters that I have read, I can get a general direction from which it can intersect with our issue of privilege. In the previous works that we have done, we have elaborated about how privilege can be seen directly and indirectly. It can be seen out in the open by people of power, by power I mean money and social standing. In this case Chris McCandless was  a very privileged young man, he was white to top it off. He was also able to live in a fairly close family along with the fact that he was able to graduate from high school and graduate from college. He had a great outlook on the future, but he chose not to go down the privileged path of having that future go into success. Rather, he took the privilege to go into the wild. For a person born into a less privileged family, the first one to college is a great accomplishment. Nobody would just simply throw all of that out of the window. They wasted away for several years and just simply giving it up is something a person of lesser privilege would do. To show how privileged Chis was, his father was "an eminent aerospace engineer who designed advanced radar systems for the space shuttle [ . . . ]" (18). His father held a steady job and also was involved in major projects in NASA which made him a pretty big deal at the time. Any kid would love to brag about their parents and show off what they do for a living. With that comes the inspiration to try to become more like them, even trying to surpass them to later have their kids do the same. Chris, being as privileged as he was, decided not to take that privilege and instead threw it away like a piece of garbage, that being another privilege available to him. Another privilege he had was that his boss offered him to pay for his college. As we all know, college is expensive, if you were given money on a silver platter to be able to pay for you tuition, would you not take it? Chris didn't, he threw that away to travel the world and live in the wild. As a privileged individual, it seems that he did not care what would happen in his later life, he had enough of it and wanted to explore the world. What privilege does is that it allows you to do things that you thought impossible. When given that power, or after finding out about it, it enables to do things that you thought was once unjustified. 
        
       It also intersects in the fact that he is not only privileged in the fact that he was living in the upper class, but by the fact that he was white. By being white, people would judge you less for what you have done. With so much social standing, one can do almost anything. If a poor man were to buy an expensive car that was well over five hundred thousand dollars and live in a house that was only worth half as much, people would look down on this. They would think to themselves that he only cares for accessories rather than what really matters in life. On the other hand, if a richer man were to buy the same car, they would not question it because he has the privilege to buy the car and still provide for his family. People of the upper class have the ability to pick and choose what they want in life. If they wanted to give away tens of billions of dollars for charity, it would not matter since they are so rich. Such as in the event of Bill Gates buying a million dollar horse for his daughter. Sure you can criticize him saying that he can do so much more with that money, but think about this, he donates BILLions of dollars each year to charity. What's the big deal if he blows off that money just his precious little daughter? He earned that money and so he has that privilege to do whatever he pleases with it. In McCandless' case, he has lived a privileged life. He has felt how privilege feels and can do whatever he pleases with that privilege. Gates' privilege was that he can do whatever he wants with his money, Chris is allowed to do whatever he wants with his own life. If he so chooses to make his life better in a way that people see, having a job and living in a nice home with a family, he can so choose so. But if he wants to make his life good in the sense where he has freedom and explore the world on his own accord, he can so choose to do so.

       Being a male also has its privileges. Males can do things that women cannot, such as taking off their shirts in public, making obscene noises in public (burping for instance), and even not having to be in the kitchen (sorry for the stereotype, I was out of ideas). Chris, being a male, had the ability that no other woman could have. That being that he could hitch hike, women cannot do this because, well because they're women. What does a dominant male do to a woman that cannot defend herself? The obvious answer is rape since men do not think with their upper head, you if you get where I'm going. With that said, males have the ability to justify their powers over women, we see this in our everyday lives. The head of the country has been male since the beginning of the United States. Forty-four presidents, not one of them being a female. Sure we have one African American, but he's male. And guess what, it's never the alpha"female" no it's always the alpha male. Yes even in the animal kingdom, males dominate, from gorillas to lions. We have some deviants such as hyenas, but that is one of the few. Even in Bread Givers by Anzia Yerzierska, Reb, the father, abuses his powers as the father. Even when they're in poverty he chooses to give away the majority of their money to charity. It would be much more sensical to save that money and support his own family in need. But because he is male, he can justify his actions as the "man of the Torah." He can use that privilege to use his families life support for some other reason that would make no sense to us nowadays. For Chris, he is able to make these decisions because he is a male, and because he male, he does not have to fear the options of getting raped, sure it's possible but not likely. 

          Another way how it ties into the topics that we have discussed is how it relates to a person's passion. Passion can be defined in a number of ways, a dream, a goal, or even an accomplishment. As we strive to catch our passions, others are faster than others, we continue to strive on and do our best. My passion in swimming has always pushed me forward to strive for a better time, these times allow me to feel better about myself as a person, it tells me that I have not yet reached my peak, I still have room for growth. In Into The Wild Chris' passion was to get away from society and live his life in the wild. Though this passion would seem unruly and very much "stupid" in many aspects, but it still is a passion that drives Chris forward. As he says "It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty...” (109). People take everything around them for granted, the beautiful scenes around you and the way nature is all there for you, no one ever bothers to take notice and marvel at how amazing the world is. Instead, they take it all for granted and live their lives in an endless loop never making it more interesting by adding more new experiences. Chris left his way of live because of the lack of difference that everyone had, they were all the same in the aspect that they all had expectations. Expectations are always met through the same daily routine of going to school, getting a job, getting paid, and living in society like everyone else. Because of this lack of difference he came up with the idea that "The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure." (70) If no one is willing to make a difference, what point is there in life? With change comes a new age, a revolutionary cause. For example, we can use the founding fathers as an example. England held the United States for quite a time period, the colonies were treated poorly and had barely any say in the government. If not for these select individuals, we would still be living the same way we did a couple centuries ago. The reason we are not is because they dared face a new journey, they we passionate in the fact that they could indeed change the course of the world and hopefully make lives if even a little bit better for those around them. They succeeded, but now look where we are, trapped in the society that the found fathers attempted to make better. The lack of new experiences has led man down the wrong path, the path that makes our lives an everlasting loop. We lack the aspiration that the past generations had to make lives better because our lives are already too easy. As passionate Chris was, he was the most radical out of all the people in the world. A man that stoop against society and dared to live out the opposite of everyone's expectations. His passion has led many others to follow their own passion because it brought him joy and it too can bring them joy.