Challenge Check-in 3!

For my challenge, I had to read the original fairy tale of The Little Mermaid and also watch the Disney animated movie. From this activity I learned a lot about Disney itself; that it thrives on happy endings. I also learned, at least with the case of The Little Mermaid, that Disney took a minute amount of the actual story and made a new story around that bit of history. From a Gothic stand point, I didn't learn a whole lot of what I didn't already know. To me, the Gothic is anything that is scary to a person. You could even go as far as saying that it is anything that goes wrong in a person's life, because that in itself is a scary thing to have happen. In the life of the original little mermaid, her dreams were crushed by the prince not loving the little mermaid. In the animated film, Ariel almost had her dreams crushed by the sea witch, who was plotting against Ariel. My understanding of the Gothic has been further enhanced through this challenge by showing me that there are different levels of Gothic. There is light and friendly Gothic like Disney's interpretation of The Little Mermaid where there are some wrong doings but in the end everything comes out okay. There is also a heavier kind of Gothic that is represented in the original tale of The Little Mermaid where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Although, defining Gothic in this fairy tale is up to the person who has read the story and everyone's interpretation is different.

Emblem

I would have to say that my emblem is a puzzle, but I guess you could say that for everyone. I picked a puzzle because there are different  areas of my life that have to merge in order to show the person that I am. The different areas are: the academic piece, the social piece, the volunteer piece, the family piece, the childhood piece, and the by-myself piece. They represent all of my interests and all of the people that have come into my life.  My family puzzle piece is definitely the biggest piece just because I have several different families. Sometimes these pieces can be split into two different pieces. In high school, I had two different set of friends who never really intermingled. I had my academic friends, who I met through my classes, and I had my band friends, who I met exclusively through band and they were not usually in my classes. I would have to say that the band friend piece would be bigger than the academic friends piece because my band friends were in my life more than my academic friends. This could be just because we were always together at band events, but it could also just be because I connected with them more. I have tons of different experiences and people that make me me and they come up in all aspects of my life at some point or another.

Blod Post 4

A literacy agent in my life, who did not necessarily sponsor me, is a program called Y-READS. It was a program to help children in elementary school read better and in some cases learn how to read. We were always at the same school, working with the same students, in the same classroom, but all the teachers made a bond with the students that they would work with. One of the teachers, Mrs. Colleen Fearney, who was also the supervisor, really showed me how to not only manage kids behaviors, because sometimes they would have a bad day at school and take it out on us, but also to help kids learn a skill that is much needed in the world today. I was a "teacher" throughout my whole junior year of high school. Everyday, before I got out of my car, I would think, "Okay, here we go, another day." Sometimes I would think about making this one a better day, if the day before did not go so well, but my days were usually fine. Some days, I would get out of my car with a not so great attitude, but I would change it, right then and there, so that I would not upset the kids. Overall, the mood of the day would just depend on the people who are interacting with each other.  On very good days, I would walk in the door I would be greeted with a multitude of hellos and how are yous, which made me feel wanted and gave me a sense of belonging. In a way, I guess, you could say that I was a literacy sponsor to those children.

Problem Statement

Problem:

              Babies and young children are vulnerable beings that need a lot of love and care in order to survive; therefore, leaving them in a hot car on a blistering day is not ethical. In this day and age, there is a large amount of parent who are doing just that, leaving children in the car. This is a problem because the children are overheating, dying in the cars and parents are being jailed. 
             Since the year 1998, 624 children have died from having heatstroke in the car, which means that there has been an average of 38 fatalities per year in the US (Fact Sheet). The state of most of the deaths is the state of Florida, which can be a very hot state with all of its humidity.  Most of the country’s fatalities have been children under two years old, but there has been children over the age of ten who have suffered the same fate. The time of these fatalities can depend on the last time the child drank something and what color the child is wearing, but the average time for the child to overheat is about fifteen minutes (Balmain 2012).

All of these children’s care givers have been jailed for “forgetting” the child, but it is not always a case of forgetting the child. There have been cases of “forgetting”, children playing in the car while unattended, and even caregivers who have intentionally left the child in the car (Fact Sheet). The parents and the families of the children are the people who are being directly affected by these occurrences. I read in an article that the public does not thin that it is fair to jail the parents because they are victims themselves. This statement can be true for the parents who just “forget” but not for the parents who intentionally leave their children in the car. About 18% or 111 of the 624 child fatalities have been because the child was left in the car by a parent.

There are a couple of strategies being used in order to not forget the children. The first technique that has been used for a long period of time is “The Shoe” trick. The parent puts the child in the car and he or she gets into the car themselves, once in the car a shoe is taken off and put in the backseat. The theory behind this method is that you will get out and realize that you do not have a shoe on and you have to find it and as a result you see the baby and remember to get him or her out. Another solution was a gadget invented by an eleven year old boy who needed an idea for a project. The gadget is called the EZ Baby Saver and it wraps around the driver’s seat and attaches to the door in order to stop the driver from getting out. This device would make the driver remember to retrieve their child from the back seat. I am not sure if the ‘left shoe’ technique or the EZ Baby Saver has actually saved lives but they are a couple of solutions to a very dangerous problem.

My Solution:

The solution that I have come up with for this problem is making a bracelet that sends a shock or a vibration through the driver to remind them of the child in the back seat. Every parent or guardian would receive a bracelet at the hospital or when they retrieve the child from a foster care or adoption agency.

Sources:

Balmain, M. (2012, July 12). Tragedy in the backseat: Hot-car deaths. CNN. Retrieved July 30, 2014, from http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/12/living/hot-car-deaths-parenting/index.html

Fact Sheet - Heatstroke Deaths of Children in Vehicles. (n.d.). Fact Sheet - Heatstroke Deaths of Children in Vehicles. Retrieved July 30, 2014, from http://www.ggweather.com/heat/

Peer Review:

1.       What is the broader topic that the author proposes is a problem?

            death

2.       How does the author define that topic? State that definition here.

            It is defined by showing the problem of babies dying

3.     Is there a readily identifiable thesis statement which states the problem and reasons in a because   claim?

            Yes. "This is a problem because the children are overheating, dying in the cars and parents are being jailed."

4.    How is the problem contextualized? (e.g. when the problem began, what has already been done regarding the problem, the consequences of the problem, etc.).

            I explain how it is a problem by giving historical background and who it is effecting

5.     Is the problem topic specific and located in the smallest possible category? (e.g. cats > feral cats on UF’s campus)

            The topic is specific but it is not in a very small location. It is happening throughout the US

6.    Is the problem unique? If the topic is popular (e.g. obesity, gun control, abortion), does the problem statement offer a new interpretation of the common problem?

            The problem is not as popular as the above examples but it is heard of on a regular basis.

Proposal

There seems to be an indescribable amount of baby deaths this summer and they're from being left in a hot car! Something needs to be done about this problem. Not only is it sad to hear about but it is also not beneficial for the people who forget their children. These people can either be jailed or have charges of murder put against them. 

Practical/policy solution: I propose that every parent gets a watch or bracelet mechanism that will send a shock or vibration through their body in order to remind the parent that they left their child in the car. If the bracelet goes over 10 miles per hour and the speed drops rapidly, the bracelet will wait a couple of minutes, to make sure that the person didn't just stop at a red light, then the bracelet will vibrate or shock the parent to remind them that they are forgetting something. 

Research solution: In order to form a practical solution I would first need to research why parents forget about their children when getting out of the car. Whether they forget because the child is quiet or just because they are in a hurry and have a scattered brain, finding out why the child is left would help to construct something to make it stop.

Media solution: I have found that it is easier to get people's attention through media when there a very sad story to go with the post. To get people to become aware of the problem, I would find someone with a story of their own child who has died or been injured from sitting in a hot car. 

Challenge Check-in #2

To: Mikayla Beaudrie, ENC 1101 Professor

From: Tiara Walters, Student at The University of Florida

Date: July 28, 2014

Subject: Challenge Check-in #2

I decided to do my challenge on Dark Disney's The Little Mermaid and I haven't even started it yet, but over the next few days I will be reading the story and watching the movie.

Blog Post 3

Anastasia-Once Upon a December

The movie that I remember most from my childhood is the animated movie called Anastasia. It was and sometimes is still my favorite movie. Anytime that anyone says "movie from your childhood", that's the one that I think of. The movie is about the duchess of the Russian empire who falls from a train causing her to lose her memory and become an orphan. The duchess' grandmother holds a reward for anyone who can bring her back safely. Two men hear of this reward and looks for a woman who can play the role of the grand duchess, but little do they know that they have found the real duchess. As they go on a journey for the grandmother's house in Paris, the grand duchess regains her memory and remembers everything. But of course, there has to be a bad guy in every movie. The bad guy in this movie is called Rasputin. He lives in some dark underworld place and finds ways to stop the grand duchess and her grandmother from reuniting because he wants to have Russia all to himself. The link above is the song that she sings in her old house (mansion). It is the first instance that she starts to regain her memory. I've watched this movie so much that all the details stand out whenever I re-watch it. Every once in a while I will find new things that help me understand some of the lyrics or some of the reasons that the characters say things.

Challenge!

I am going to do the dark Disney challenge. I am going to complete this by reading the Little Mermaid and then watching the movie. I wanted to do this challenge because I am curious about what the original text says and because I enjoy watching the Little Mermaid. #kissdegirl

Blog Post 2

This picture is from band day at Florida Southern College during my senior year of high school, featuring the three people that I was closest to and am still close with (from left to right: Me, Eddie, Kinsey, and Katelynn). The mood of this picture is obviously happy. We got to skip school for this, so needless to say we were all pretty happy. Our eyes are squinty because it was super bright outside that day. My mom had the idea of saying "One, two, three, open." That idea didn't work as well as we all would've liked. We are a pretty close knit group of friends and our body language reflects that as we are all mushed together. This picture evokes so many memories. Late night talks, late night adventures to merry-go-rounds outside of k-mart, geo-caching, movie dates, and ice skating outings, just to name a few. The thoughts that comes from this photo is how much fun we had that day. We all sat in the back with my mom and broke rules that our band director put into place. Only because we were talking and on our phones for part of the time. It was senior year, we had to be rebels. I have some feelings of sadness from this picture because we won't have weeks of seeing each other ever again, well not that I know of. We are all going to separate colleges (at least we all will be when Eddie and Kinsey get into college), but I know for a fact that we will all keep in touch with everyone.

Blog Post 1

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Installation-Licensing/Autocad-Architecture-2014-displays-displays-conceptual-view-as/td-p/3908717

This image is of a program that is used quite often when working with a field in architecture or engineering called Autocad. It has many different features to it to help you draw a figure or a house like in the picture. This imagine changed my mind for what I want to do with my career and made me think that I wanted to do something different. I changed my mind so much because I was good at working with this program that I thought I was getting bored of it. I wasn't. I took a drafting class in high school and my teachers didn't really do jack squat. They always sat back and told us to draw something. They never gave background information about anything. Until my senior year when someone actually tried. His efforts didn't last very long. Anyway, it always fascinated me to realize what I was designing. I was making a house! That someone could live in eventually. It made me feel like I was doing something for someone. Well, I came to realize that there's not a whole lot of different options in architecture. I had always heard people talking about civil engineering and decided to look into it and realized that it's basically what architects do but they get more options as to what they can do. So I decided to pursue engineering.