My Podcast

Going Further

Complete Show Length in Minutes: 6.5 minutes
Episode 1: Topic: Graduate School: Be PREPARED
Intro Music Clip: Title: Habib Track 9 Time: 20 seconds
Intro: The Choice of Education Minutes: 2 minutes

Ever thought about education after your four years of college? Well, there is a lot to think of, even when you first step foot into college. There is your major to think about, what career you want to get involved with, and which school to choose. There is also the choice of how far you want to extend your education to. This is where the idea of graduate school comes in. I want everybody to know about grad school. There is so much to think about when considering graduate school. Everyone has their prerequisites in their undergraduate years to get them prepared, but is that enough to get you prepared for things to expect beyond the academics of graduate school? This is Tasnim everyone, and today we will discuss the hardships and what to expect when enrolled in a graduate school.

Segment Music Clip: Habib Track 9 Time: 20 seconds
Segment: College Life; Prepared, or Not… Minutes: 3 minutes

In our years of undergrad, we are all busy with completing our coursework. Our entire mind is dedicated to is the subjects in front of us and whether we get accepted into grad school, if that is where you guys intend on going. Obtaining a PhD level degree is really successful, and hard-strived for. I would like to introduce a professor from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, who has her PhD in Psychology, and shared her experience with me Dr. (and professor) Jane Sheldon. When asked did she know from the start of college what she wanted to major in, she didn’t know, but was close to what she chose. She started off with sociology, and then switched to psychology. She warned against the professors of grad school. “Most professors in grad school usually have favorites: they treat the ones that will come out a shining star the best, and shrug off the rest with less attentive treatment.” She mentioned that work was strenuous, as expected, and entering graduate school is like a smack in the face: even with all the preparation one receives, the wind is blown pretty roughly once enrolled. Time management is an enormous factor of being successful in grad school, guys. You HAVE to be able to set study times and stick with it, and set a time for your hobbies and activities: you don’t want to become brain-fried with all the hard-core studies; you would want your brain and body to be relieved sometimes. Graduate school is an excellent setting to be in, but I want everyone to know, it is more than just hard-core work, it is being able to handle the professors and handling time to be successful when entering grad school. Thanks everybody for today’s discussion, and stay tuned for next time’s!

Ending Music Clip: Title: Habib Track 9 Time: 50 seconds

Recycling: Can the World Live Without It?

The answer to that is yes. The world can very much live without having to recycle. However, the difference between the recycling and non-recycling worlds is the atmosphere of cleanliness and preservation of the earth’s resources. Without recycling, there would be innumerable material going into waste. Everything would seem to run out more rapidly. In the world today, there is so much recycling going on. Also, there are many people who could add on to the growing number of recycling: YOU!

With recycling come several benefits. Resources are saved, materials become reused, and the atmosphere becomes less endangered. Recycling is not just handing over plastic bottles, paper, aluminum and glass to a recycling center, but it’s saving our world from further pollution.

Nature is greatly affected through recycling. When regular waste and garbage are dumped into landfills, an aroma and scene of scum and helplessness is created. A landfill is an area that cages in all of our garbage. There are many many landfills all over our planet. The garbage becomes a hill, then a mountain of just trash and trash. When I mention nature is affected, I mean the animals, birds, and atmosphere.

In this case of not recycling, nature is hurt. A landfill is open to everything and anything. Birds that fly by and land in a landfill are tempted to look for goodies. Many birds get trapped into plastic bottle separators. In some countries where cows are like pedestrians, landfills are like playgrounds for them. Cows end up grazing around landfills, and end up eating plastic bags like its grass. From the website You Tube is a clip from a documentary film, Recycling, Waste and Its Impact on the Environment, that presented several details on how to make earth a healthier place to live. Also, glass builds up so much because it does not break down compared to paper.

Paper is so important to recycle. Think about how much you throw away in one day: or one week. Now multiple that number by thousands: although you may think, throwing away a couple sheets here and there won’t hurt, it has a huge impact on saving resources. There are many who think that throwing out paper won’t hurt. Imagine if everyone was to recycle every paper meant to be trashed: a great amount of trees would be saved, which adds on to oxygen levels in the atmosphere.

All the junk in the landfills emit methane into the air. There is compost, glass, paper, aluminum, and several other things in landfills. With all the waste and its’ juices, a gas is produced that harms our planet’s ozone layer. This is already dangerous as it is, with pollution and global warming making the ozone layer endangered. Not recycling, believe it or not, adds on to it. An increase in numbers of recycling means a safer ozone layer, and that means to enforce recycling in more areas.

Some states have recycling laws. Where some cities have only trash cans, other cities have recycling bins along with their trash cans. Having recycling bins encourages a person to do more recycling. As opposed to those who have the bins, those who don’t are less encouraged.

I spoke with my brother who lives in Michigan. He told me that while he grew up, he would always save pop cans and plastic bottles. My brother and my dad would go to the local grocery store and fill the machine up with pop cans and 2-liter bottles and get ten cents back for each can or bottle. It was a good way of keeping the environment clean because it helped the usage of plastics and aluminum from the soda companies to make for other uses. I also interviewed my sister-in-law, who happened to grow up in Canada. I wanted to ask her because being that she’s from another country, I was curious about how they took care of their recycling. She told me that there was a paper recycling company that picked up paper every Wednesday, and so they’d have all the papers in the house that would normally get thrown out into this blue container and left it on the front porch. In public places, she told me there are trash cans for garbage, but next to the trash can is another bin only for pop cans and plastic bottles. She said this was the way they recycled their aluminum and plastics, whereas in America, we would get ten cents back. Albeit she pointed out that when they buy soda from the store, they don’t get charged extra for the deposit of the can or plastic bottle, thus not having to worry about refunds of ten cents.

I hope the people of this great planet earth will realize one day that if this world suffers, only mankind is to be blamed. The way we live in our homes and take care of it, this planet is our home and it is up to us to take of it! If everyone puts in the effort to recycle, the negative effects of harming our world will sharply decrease.

Activity 1

4.

Mona Lisa Picture Tags:

-Edited

-Creative

-Disturbed

-Humorous

-Well-thought about

-Intimidating

6. The logos for AltaVista, Google, and Yahoo all have a standing-out characteristic. They all have bold colors, and are easy to catch eye to.

AltaVista: The logo of this website is red and represents the A and V for AltaVista.

Google: This logo is colorful and is direct to what the website is. It has a fun edgy look to it. It seems like it is for kids.

Yahoo: The logo of this website is red and has a funky font to it. It is looks like “BAM! There’s Yahoo for you.”

The logo that I like most is Google, because it is fun. I like how on special holidays, the logo has a design around it, like on Earth Day, the logo is surrounded by trees and leaves.

Yahoo’s logo is the one that I like least. It is too bold of a logo for me. I don’t hate it; I just don’t prefer that kind of logo. The font of Yahoo is not too much of my taste, either.

13. Three pieces of advice to give about conducting research on the web and trying to assess the validity and credibility of web sites in general:

1) When searching, try and look for content that is full to its’ meaning, not just some blah-blah about the subject being searched about. The website should have its’ resources listed.

2) Have a set of questions ready to search for that you might want to include in your project, some intriguing questions. This will provide more insight into your work. The website will have an author’s name, and more resources if any. Search the author’s name and see if there are more sites under him/her.

3) Keep eyes open for the sources of the website. It will be listed as .edu, .org, .net, .gov or .com. The .edu and .org are educational and supplemental.

Three pieces of advice to give to people trying to assess the validity and credibility of the visual content of web sites:

1) Search for the listing of the site’s sources: this should prove valid.

2) The visuals should have a statement of where it was taken, or by whom it was taken by.

3) Some visuals have logos on them: that’s fine; it shows that it is branded by the producer of the visual. It is credible.

Mini Glossary

Represent (verb): To show an action/idea to an audience with a visual, representing a culture, idea, or behavior.

Design (verb): To produce something that communicates to its’ audience about a project, idea, or action.

Information Architecture: A visual that has a structure showing an idea of building/progressing an action/idea.

Icons: A visual depicting a feeling, idea, or action.

Seeing: To be observing an object or to a distance. It is to perceive, view, and understand.

My Reflection

Women rights. In the religion of Islam. Something so simple to understand; yet something so easy to have false beliefs about. This is an issue that needs to be regarded. So in trying to make this world a better place, I created a website to attack the most believed misconceptions on Muslim women.

The duration of my research I have learned things that I wasn't even intending to research about. I learned more about the rules and regulations of Islam that support the peaceful life of a Muslim woman, not oppressing their lives at all. The main concept I learned was everything is a choice. Nothing is forced at all, which is a major misconception on the lives of us women. A visual that I thought was an important one was about the hijab the Muslim women wear to cover themselves: Mary, mother of Jesus, I had found, also wore the hijab. I felt this to be a strong visual because it represented modesty, and was able to support my advocation project. I was searching in Google Images for the perfect picture, and this portrait of Mary fitted well.

Coming up with this topic of misconceptions of women in Islam, I first thought, how would I make this an interesting advocation... Then I realized, there are so many ideas that I am able to present and explain to my audience. I started feeling more comfortable with my topic, because while working on this project, I realized I will enjoy presenting my matter.

In my website, I took the top three misconceptions of women in Islam: 1. We are forced to wear a hijab; 2. We have limited rights, and; 3. We have a destination of being a housewife for life. I can understand why people think of Muslim woman in that behavior: the media has an enormous influence on what people believe. I am strongly willing to advocate against the false beliefs on Muslim women in this world. A thought that had come to mind while working on this was, do I sound too serious? Islam is a really tense topic these days, and there is always an atmosphere of awkwardness when Islam is being discussed. I just want everyone to be comfortable with what I say and present. Presenting this topic, I hope that I could change any negative beliefs or thoughts that someone may have, and having created my website, I am proud that I am sending a message throughout the world.

http://sites.google.com/site/misconceptionsonthemuslimwoman/

My Action of Advocating

Everyone has something they feel passionate about, whether it's for change, improvement, or the cease of an action. Something that I would advocate for is improving the disappearance of misconceptions against Muslim women in the world . Living in America, I have grown up with misconceptions that I have not realized were misconceptions until I was older. Being a Muslim, I have had misconceptions against myself. I strongly feel for this. I want to advocate for the awareness of Muslim women and our rights.
The way I would bring this about is through media: making posters/designs on billboards that depict a misconception, but showing against its' being a misconception. My audience is older teenagers and adults. I would work with a team, or individually if I have to, and compose illustrations for solving misconceptions. Another way I would try and prove misconceptions wrong is taking this case to radio shows. There are many discussions on various topics over the radio, and it's a great way to communicate to people throughout the world, letting them hear what is needed to be heard about misconceptions. Doing radio shows is something I feel confident about because I have an uncle that was recommended to participate in a radio talk-show about gay rights. So if my uncle made it to the radio about a strong topic, I believe I can too, and hope for change.

*My Screenshot*

I love music and art. Although this painting isn't too much of a good one... When capturing this screenshot, I wasn't sure if it was one that I wanted. However, I left it to be.. This screen shot was taken while watching Lady Gaga's Just Dance. It is a song that I enjoy listening and moving to. When there are a lot of things on my mind, I usually scribble or compose something, ANYTHING, on paint. It's a good way for me to just...relax..i guess...-and listen to music. :)

How does composing change shape in digital spaces...? Well, composing changes A LOT! You could do ANYTHING... In the world today, composing in digital spaces is taken to its best advantage possible by us people. It changes shape because of the different kinds of people that compose in different ways, and there are so many layouts, editing, and composing of literally anything that changes how the screen in front of us looks like.

We could better understand digital composing processes by simply being creative, and being open to other's creativeness. This helps build our understanding of the process, and to be more broad minded. :)