Essay #2.

Juan Martinez

English 144B

April 30, 2012

Community Makes Individuales

What shapes a person's identity? The truth, I really don't know. But my experiences can lead me to the answer. Seeing and learning shapes you to the person who you are or going to be, and this all starts as a child. Growing up in your own community gives you those situations you can learn from and people that can aspire you to be or aspire to be completely opposite like. A community can help a child become a strong and successful adult, but can also do the complete opposite. A community helps construct a person and shape identity by offering many things: different levels of schools and education, neighbors and friends, culture, and resources.

The San Fernando valley, where you can start from the west side of the valley to the east, and see two completely different communities, but even smaller Pacoima and San Fernando are my community.

According to the Los Angeles Times, San Fernando is the neighborhood with the least diverse ethnicity. On a daily basis, Spanish is my main language, “Banda” is my music, and Latinos are my people. This is what I have grown up with and what I have come to learn and follow. Here, being Latino isn't an ethnicity, it's a way of living and a way of thinking. Community helps build your identity because it can introduce and teach you about your own culture, and even if your own community is more diverse than mine it can teach you about other people. In my culture I learned the importance of family, friendships, and religion and I have I continued to learn bout it and implied it through the people of my community.

Community affects identity by learning through other people, and can use help, like religion for example.

Growing up in a community you'll spend plenty of time with friends, and neighbors. In my example I made my neighbors my closes friends. I spend mostly all my time with them, so I encountered many situations with them and I learned plenty from them. Everyone's community will have all kinds of different people in them. So depends which people you meet and make friends with, that will depend on how useful the information they teach you will be. For example if a child is surrounded by highly polite and respectful neighbors and friends, there is a huge chance that they'll learn how to be polite and respectful too. The opposite too, if they are surrounded by criminals and disrespectful people, they can get influenced to act in the same way. The community will give you many people to encounter and you can learn and take something from everyone. Whether good or bad, can affect your identity and future decisions.

The San Fernando valley has a vast variety of incomes. According to the Los Angeles Times Porter Ranch has the highest median of income and Van Nuys with the lowest median of $41,000 and Pacoima a close second with a median of $49,000. The amount of money a community receives and the median incomes can have a huge impact on the community. This can affect many resources the community can offer, or may not offer. This can have an impact on a person identity because if someone is trying to do something bigger and better for themselves or trying to get some help in something, it may not be possible because the poor community can not afford it. For example many communities can have a large amount of drug and alcohol abusers, and that may be seeking help. This help can influence a person's identity and overall change a person.

Also median incomes and the wealth of the community can have an affect on the educational systems of a community. Many programs may have to be shut down or not even offered because of not enough funds for the community. For example, some schools can offer services of a psychologist for children in need. Many children may be seeking for this help and can not find it nor afford it. This service can deeply help a a child's personality. And if not received if necessary, can affects a child's identity all the way into adult school.

In the city of Pacoima services like Pacoima Beautiful and Project Grad, offer community involvement. Pacoima Beautiful helps clean up parks, plant trees and flowers, and helping the needy.

This can help a person find the love to look out for people, the community and themselves. Some communities may not have the funds to have programs like these, not even giving people the chance for community involvement. Community involvement can have a huge impact on a person, it can make some more kind heart and giving them the feeling of looking out for someone rather then themselves. This can teach people discipline, affecting a person's identity greatly. It's going back to the elementary idea of sharing, and caring for someone. Never to late to change a person or influence someone, and through community involvement being kind and having respect for others can be learned.

In the San Fernando valley, Pacoima is the neighborhood with the lowest rate of residents having a four year degree. Education and being surrounded by educated people can have an affect on a person's identity. It can affect a person’s plans for the future, and influence a person to think about everything a little more closely, which can greatly influence a person's identity. Some communities may have better schools, or more resources to offer students like computer labs and libraries. Knowledge is power, a can have one of the greatest affects the construction of a person's identity.

Also in many communities, resident's outlook on life can be different. In low educated communities, the outlook of life can be vastly different from a highly educated community. A low educated community may not have much hope for more education such as college or actually doing anything big or important in life. This can instil in a person's mind. One, I can do anything, because others around me have. Or two, I can't do much cause mostly everyone I know doesn't go to school. A communities outlook on life can affect a person identity to be a hard worker, or completely lose outlook on life.

The community has people to observe, plenty to offer and much to teach. Identity has to be constructed by what you learn and who you follow. The community you grow up mostly can offer those things. Whatever a community has to offer it's up to the individual to decide what they make of it, and how you let it influence you.

Work cited

"The San Fernando Valley." Mapping L.A. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/region/san-fernando-valley/>.

As Nature made him: Nature vs Nurture.

     This idea of, Nature verses nurture puzzled me at first and i thought it was very interesting. I thought about it long and hard, and i thought both could be right and both could be the right one. I could not decided on which one I was leaning towards too, and this bugged me. 

      I'm not lying when I said I thought about it all day, that I started asking other people on their opinion. I thought that i would absolutely find that most people would be confused on which one to pick, and I was right. But what puzzled me was the certainty of some people, how they right away shook their head and were so sure of their answer. This happened for both, some so sure of the nature option and some sure of the nurture option. 

I took a look at the other blogs and i also found the same thing. The responses were cut up. Some saying "you can't cheat nature" and others explaining how it depends on what the individual feels as they grow up. It amazes me how people have so much to say on this idea of nature verses nurture, and i still can't seem to chose.  

     People's opinions can be hard to change and if science seems unsure or still haven't found an answer, seems like  we have basically no proof to back up our answers. Seems like we can only put our self's in the shoes of an individual in that situation and wonder how confusing it would be. Nature can't be cheated.? or follow our minds and hearts.? who knows.

Project space: Neighborhoods.

      The city of Pacoima, home of rock and roll legends, and actors. I've grown up in this city, so i know it pretty well. But on my day job as a pizza delivery boy, I see the whole neighborhood different to everyone else. Today, I saw the neighborhood and how the "space" can change instinctively. 

      In the morning everything seem peaceful, the Cesar Chavez March was going on. The streets was packed with marchers so the space felt very social and public. Food carts everywhere and activities going on, it was a different feeling than just a regular day, a great day to walk and explore the streets. But as the afternoon and the rain approached the space quickly changed.  The rain rapidly trapped everyone in there houses and the neighborhood emptied. The rain itself changed the space into a lonely and isolated space. But as I continued my pizza routs the space changed again. Traffic, non-working street lights, car crashes, police sirens and angry customers that didn't receive their pizza on time filled the neighborhood. The space completely changed to hectic and out of control! But as the day continued and the rain slowly stopped and people left there house once again, the space turned into a new, improved and clean space and environment.
      My day was pretty hectic and experience the space changing along with everyone else.  The neighborhood is a set and permanent place. But the space it takes up can change instinctively due to weather, events or location.

Project Space: Orange Groves.

Once, when CSUN was not CSUN, it was completely orange groves. Now CSUN has come to be as we know, but still kept part of it's history.  Our group decided to do the orange groves off CSUN. It's an amazing sight to see, and an amazing thought to grasp that once, orange groves was all CSUN was. So keeping part of the orange groves as a part of CSUN services as a historical landmark for the whole community. The orange grove is amazing, includes an observatory, a duck pond, and of course the orange tress. It can be a very quiet place but also a very populated place. So it can both fit a learning facility due to the observatory and the quietness of the duck pond for studying, and for recreation due to the peacefulness off the pond and orange tress, and the attraction of the ducks and animal life.

My space can be considered the complete opposite. My room is very loud. There is always loud music blasting or ESPN on full volume. It can be a welcoming place due to the bright colors, posters and pictures posted. I consider my room to be a very good explanation off myself. Enter and you will find, a guitar, a piano, a stereo, many posters of rappers and artist, to show my love for music. You will also find many trophies, athletic clothing and shoes, photo albums and newspapers albums, and soccer balls to show my love for sports. My space can be very loud and self explanatory. But i guess everyone else's space has there own story too.  

i choose to do an ethnographic study for my essay topic.  i will be focusing on social media sites, facebook and myspace.  On why people go on it and why they made their face book the way it is. Also on why they choose to put in certain information and decided to leave some out. I will also be focusing on video games and gamers, and their behaviors of when and when they are not playing these video games. Also i will tie this into the focus of the clas, identiy.

when the controller, controls you..

video games are harmless, right?  Not in the the movie Gamer. In this movie, video gaming just got a whole lot more intense. Criminals don't go to prison, the are actually used as real living avatars in the video game "slayer." Gamer's can control the criminals every action in a war like game and these criminals have no way to resist. But in this game when these criminals are killed, they are permenatly killed. While the gamers can simply just pick a new charecter.
This movie can say alot about real life. It's poking fun at the video gamers, It's trying to prove a point that adults and children are not being benifited from long hours of playing. Long hours of playing can be bad; from taking time away from homework and work,  long hours of no physical activity, and just simply taking time away from learing how to physicaly interact with people. One detail I took from this is that in the movie, gamers can control actual humans. In a sense, in real life gamers play for long time and are addicted to the game, that becomes the players reality. Gamers play this maybe cause they are unsatisfied with there current lives, or they need some sort of relief, but for whatever reason they would much rather be playing this video game than be living in there current life. So this can become as an escape, or an alternative life or person. Also when they avater dies, a real human dies too. When gamers play for long hours and are addicted in a sense the gamer dies too. They want to just play and live in this fake world to get rid of and escape thier current lives. The gamer doesn't litterally die but is lost in this game and comes to want nothing but.

El Face vs Myspace.

Myspace; The queen of gossip. Middle school kids and incoming high scholars left to comment and post whatever the heck their minds please. Then comes Facebook, which is pretty much the same thing but both have vastly different reputations.  After reading, Implications of User Choice: The Cultural Logic of “MySpace or Facebook?”, I started to recall my transition from Myspace to El face and how I fitted right into Danah Boyd explanation on the transition. I was surprised, astonished, amazed and humored on how right and correctly he explained the transition.

Many of the transitions where most likely caused by friends switching social websites, as Danah Boyd explained "people go where friends go."  I agree with this very much, most people did not switch websites without knowing at least one person they know would be there. These social websites are called "social" for a reason. Most of the time people will not socialize with random people. Social websites are made so members can socialize with friends and people they are familiar with so people look for the social websites with the greatest activity. Facebook was the place. Boyd also explains his and common views on the differences of these social websites. He explains that the distinctions between these two websites can be put upon taste, social economic status, and education. I reacted very surprisingly, i do agree with this very much but its very mind boggling how it all works. As the hip hop and gossip full myspace has a different audience from the procrastinating students on facebook.  

I' ll admit, i did switch to facebook because of friends. I saw everyone making the switch so i did too.  I don't mean to fall into the educated, classy group of Facebook but I guess I do. Embarrassing to say, but I did and I think everyone else did too, design my profile a certain way. I put up what in want people to see. Funny stories, pictures, videos, comments, and conversations all of them I would not mind people looking at them. I do not think I or anyone else will purposely post something we wouldn't want other people seeing or knowing. so i guess we all designed our profile a certain way. A more perfect and less embarrassing version of ourselves.