Author: rachroh

We first see here a beautiful sunset full or warm vivid colors. Right off the bat, setting a nice comforting vibe when looking at this image. Drawing from the “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” you see this is an album cover. “You should Be Here” by R&B female artist Kehlani. On the very cover of this album is Kehlani, in her authentic self with her tattoos and all. The songs on this album are very personal, just like the cover. Kehlani in raw form with her hair let loose and a pair of classic dirty high top vans tossed off to the side. This album is not a decorated version of herself, but her true self. The white T-shirt wearing Kehlani with not a care in the world except her music.

Here she is sitting on top of the world… (or a city in California hence the Golden Gate Bridge in the background) with nothing but her computer and a music recorder. Kehlani is the type of artist that takes pride in her music and wants to perfect her craft as much as possible. The album cover models this, as Kehlani is sitting on the roof top of this tall building with no distractions what so ever. Just staring off into the sunset, and letting the music flow right out of her. Kehlani’s raw talent is a reason why so many people listen to her songs; because, they are so relatable to the average person.

Kehlani could’ve easily chosen a glammed up album cover like other R&B artists, instead she chose a drawing of herself just facing the beautiful colorful sunset. Another factor in this image which I believe Kehlani did on purpose almost as a form of symbolism is: the fact she’s facing away on the album cover. You can’t see her face, the only thing that stand out besides the background is the fact that you can tell it’s her. With the hair color, and her exact tattoos she has on our body are detailed on the album cover.

Kehlani’s philosophy is she wants her music to matter more to people than what she looks like. Looking at this album you’re not listening to it simply because you see a pretty face, but for the zenful vibe the album cover gives off as soon as you look at it. Looking at this album cover I see a woman lost in reality, but lost in her music at the same time. Kehlani is watching the sunset go down, and planes go by as she’s coming in tune with her music and self. That album comforting album cover itself, makes me want to listen to this album. Album covers are a big factor when it comes to audiences who are actually going to listen to albums. By this album cover, those who don’t even know who Kehlani is are going to want to listen to it.When artists connect to their music by means of even an album cover they can connect with their listeners. Kehlani does an excellent job in executing her album cover as cover art, drawing in fans.

“White Cop Shoots Black Man” is a title way too familiar we see everyday in the news. The issue of police brutality is much deeper than this common article title. Police brutality has a tremendous impact on African Americans and their communities. There have been millions of African Americans who have been affected by police brutality. “Black Americans have been policed by others (namely whites) since their arrival to North America hundreds of years ago” (Harris 13). Police brutality is only a part of the broken system towards African Americans living in the United States today.

“African Americans accounted for 27 percent of all people and 37 percent of unarmed people killed by the police in 2017” (Hillstrom 118). Despite, African Americans being only 13 percent of the population in the United States. The percentage of people killed by the police is more than the actual percentage of African Americans living in this country. That percentage only accounts for one year, just imagine the number of African American lives that have been stolen by the very people that are supposed to be keeping them alive and safe.

Hundreds of pages could be filled stating different scenarios of police brutality against African Americans with the amount of incidents there are. Not to mention, the undocumented events that happen every single day with the contact between officers and African Americans which are riddled with racial profiling and stereotypes. The one that stands out the most for me is the heartbreaking story of Tamir Rice. A 12 year old boy who was playing with a TOY gun, which the police officer believed was real, and shot the 12 year old boy to death. Many more examples include Amadou Diallo a man shot 53 times, or the “police” handling a man in custody, Freddie Gray, who was found in a coma in a police van. 

With deaths of unarmed and innocent black men killed for no reasoning at all except for wearing a hood like Trayvon Martin comes with extreme anger and hatred. With results ending with protests, and sometimes even riots. The connotation of riot does sound bad, but the reaction of the police makes it far worse than it actually is. “Since 1935, nearly every so called riot in the United States- and there have been more than 100-has been sparked by a police incident”, wrote Nikhole Hannah-Jones of ProPublica (33). The very people there protesting against.. . For example, in Ferguson, “Ferguson police responded aggressively, employing armed vehicles, riot gear, rubber bullets, and tear gas against the protesters” (Hillstrom 9). Also, “Urban police forces have repeatedly confronted unarmed protesters with military-grade weaponry, a symptom of despotism that Americans seem to tolerate only because the mot visible targets of such deployments are black” (Rickford). Black Americans are not nearly treated equally as white Americans, and incidents like this makes me question if they’re even treated like humans. 

With all the tragedies of the results of police brutality, has became a tremendous increase in raising awareness. For example, the Black Lives Matter Movement which was created in light of the thousands of lives of innocent black Americans in more recent days. The involvement of many including a large population of young people and peaceful protests of Black Lives Matter has brought many successes. Including awareness to the police officers committing these horrible crimes or murders, and the need for the removal from the department and/or arrest. Tremendous steps have been made in this issue of police brutality, but there can still be no justification for the thousands of lives lost.

So far my plan is to create an outline of what I want to talk about in my research paper. I’m going to read through all my sources and find the important quotes and points. Create a partial draft to turn in, and then continue working on the paper. I am worried about the paper in general and the organization. I have all the points I want to make it’s just a matter of organizing it, and actually proving my thesis.

For my final topic, I decided on the impacts of police brutality. My thesis is the impacts of police brutality on African Americans, and its long term effects on their communities. I chose this topic because I’m very passionate about it, and it is a topic that will get me fired up.

-police brutality

-prison system = modern day slavery

-wrongful convictions

-marijuana convictions

-mass incarceration

The new idea that researchers have come up with in case humans for whatever reason have to flee the planet is space colonization. According to the Wikipedia article, space colonization is the permanent human habitation off the planet Earth. That’s right permanent, which to me doesn’t seem like a very good idea when humans don’t know the slightest bit about actually living on other planets, besides their research from Earth. I’ll get more into that later, but the first issue of space colonization is how much money it will cost. It will cost billions if not more to send humans to live on Earth with all the resources they need. It’s not like you can drop humans off, and be like “here ya go. woohoo, vacation time”. Just one human needs a whole suit to even survive living on a planet, just imagine what the total cost of colonization will be. Along with the money there has to be a lot of technical advantages to space traveling. Scientists must make sure humans are equipped to stay alive on another planet. It’s much easier to live on a struggling Earth than a planet which will cause more struggles within itself. Let’s face it, in almost every space movie you see which has a space crew, not an entire civilization there’s always some type of problem or someone ends up dying. The only environment humans are used to living on is on Earth. For billions of years humans have been living on Earth… I have never read a history book about Abraham Lincoln’s time on mars or Gandhi’s vacation on the moon. It’s not a good idea to rule out life on Earth to a different planet, one where humans do not belong. Allowing for this civilization on other planets, also allows other civilizations to know about humans. There in fact, could be aliens out there that could destroy the whole human race if we decide to impede on their home. Realistically speaking, there’s a high possibility there could be other civilizations out there on other planets that would not live well together with humans. As for the argument that humans will have no other choice but space colonization; because, in the future the Earth will sometime not be fit for humans to live anymore. My problem with that is, what happens when humans find a way to destroy other planets too. Already leaving behind a destroyed planet Earth, the home of the humans in the first place can’t be good for the cycle of other planets either. I say we focus on keeping our home clean and safe, so we won’t have to go live with the aliens.

This article by Emma Rigaud discusses the importance of protesting. Rigaud explains her stance on the issue developing a strong argument to the positives that come with protesting. She proves this through her credibility, use of diction and facts including statistics and quotes about protesting she uses throughout her article. She starts her essay out with a quote that introduces a counter argument explaining protesting in a negative way. Rigaud then backs up that quote, to start off her argument that protesting is indeed a positive thing. The author uses examples of many protests of the past and then shows their positive outcomes they have to this day. Rigaud also ties in the topic of patriotism with protesting. She then ends her essay in including examples of the extreme measures even legislatures are taking to try to prevent protesting. What caught my eye to read this article in the first place, was the catchy title and it’s use of alliteration. Rigaud does a good job in showing her credibility with examples like that (her use of diction), as well as her very passionate tone. Her use of past protests comparisons like the Freedom Rider protest, and how that was seen as negative in the past and is now part of history today was a fantastic way to get her point across to the reader. Her inclusion of quotes of experts and graphs also helped with supporting her argument and made it, so it wasn’t solely her opinion. The author does a successful job in keeping the reader engaged through various tactics of ethos and logos. Using comparisons from previous protests, even recent ones today to clearly get her argument across and relate to readers. Never really going overboard with her stance but allowing readers to come to terms on their own on their view of protests. Rigaud conveys her argument to the audience never backing down and keeping an assertive tone.

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If you were to ask my friends at home about me and going away to college, they would’ve told you that I was probably the most excited to leave home. To get away from parents’ rules and getting out of a small town where everyone knows everyone (which is so annoying). To start living my own life. After my third week of being in college now… all my opinions about that “adult life” have now changed. I realized I should’ve appreciated my life before this a little bit more.

            My whole summer leading up to freshman year was filled with working. It felt like I was working every day of my life. When my time came to stop working, I would be in college. Now I’m in college and as crazy as it sounds, I actually miss working. I miss the simplicity of life before college, having a routine. Just working, going to the beach, maybe a party or two, and you wake up the next day and do it all over again. My summer was full of pure fun and work of course. The only worries I had was leaving home. I would literally count down the days until I left for college. If I only knew what it was really like I probably wouldn’t have been counting down the days.

            My summer was full of seeing my best friends as much as I could. My friends are another thing I didn’t appreciate enough at the time. I was lucky to have friends to watch over me at our crazy summer parties, when at the time maybe I wasn’t even able to take care of myself. Then came college when I need friends like that. In college you’re just thrown in with a monsoon of new people and personalities. Dodging the sorority girls for me because I actually want to meet real people. Also, it’s crazy that were meeting people now when we’re all ADULTS. Now seeing how difficult it is to find that new group, has made me think to myself how lucky I was to have the group of friends that I had.

            This summer was the most I have ever felt the feeling that I needed to get away. Keep in mind, I’ve wanted to get away from home for a long time now. The main words I probably said to my dad this summer were, “I can’t wait to get out of here,” about twice a day. Which probably wasn’t the best thing to say. I now know that I could, wait to get out of there. Now I miss coming home to my dog barking, my brother screaming about video games, or my sister rambling about YouTube. I took my family for granted when I lived with them “permanently,” I guess you could say. The thought of doing everything on my own seemed so easy to me, but then I did some shopping for my dorm after I got here, and I didn’t even realize how much groceries costed. I kind of missed my mom’s frozen ‘Stouffer’s’ lasagna that I always complained about, even though the dining hall food here is pretty good. I kind of miss the echoes of Lord of the Rings in my house because my family watched one every single night. Now instead, all I hear is echoes of drunk people in my hall. My point here is that it doesn’t hurt to be a little bit more appreciative towards your family when you’re living with them every single day. I will defiantly be sure to act like an angel once Thanksgiving break comes around.

            Now this essay wasn’t here to make college seem like a terrible, lonely place. This essay could almost be like advice for incoming freshman. In the end, I’m glad that I left home. I did consider saving money and go to community college, but I am so happy that I didn’t because I probably would’ve hated my life even more. I only wish I appreciated my life a little more before the start of adulthood. There are no regrets here because this is a part of life, and that would be like regretting a lot of parts in my life. So that is my lesson here, to not take moments in life for granted. Not only life before college, but now not to take college life for granted, or any steps in life for that matter.

  

         

        

My name is Rachel Rohman. I’m from Sussex County, Delaware and I live near the beaches. Therefore, I love to go to the beach and miss it very much. The things I love to do include hanging out with my friends, shopping, and hanging out with my family. I have a sister and a brother… I’m the oldest in my family. I also have a Great Dane named Mae, and I miss her very much. I can’t wait for the upcoming seasons because Thanksgiving-Christmas is my favorite time of the year! My current major is Political Science and I live in Gilbert Hall. Also looking forward to meet all of you guys 🙂