e-Portfolio

Intro:

Thanks for visiting my e-Portfolio! Here you will find a collection of my best writings and projects created during my years as an undergraduate at Penn State University. I am an International Politics major pursuing a Spanish minor and I am also a Paterno Fellows aspirant. The Paterno Fellows program will allow me to graduate with honors and it will provide me with several advantages during my academic career. Upon graduating, I will have completed an honors capstone project. I hope to study the effects of universities primarily employing liberal professors in political science and international relations departments, focusing on how this affects students and their future careers.
In addition to my schoolwork, I am a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha. I'm very involved in my sorority, which instills the values of "aspire, seek, attain" in all of its members. We pride ourselves on our involvement in community service, especially Penn State's THON. ASA placed third in Greek Life Organizations in THON 2011 with a total of over $182,000.
I am further involved in Greek life with my position as a staff writer for The Odyssey, a newspaper catered to collegiate members of Greek organizations. My writing position at The Odyssey provides me with an outlet to connect to my immediate community at Penn State, and also Greek communities throughout the country. Articles are published weekly both online and in print format on campus. Though I consider writing one of my hobbies, I also enjoy horseback riding and singing. Feel free to browse through my selected work, and if you would like to contact me, I would love to hear from you!



Link

A Smile a Day...From a Disney Princess!

Sorry, I had to. My life this past week has been partly consumed by the Disney Princess franchise. Even the projects are over, I just can't let go. Since the Disney Princess movies were sadly never a part of my childhood, I was never exposed to their beauty or their romances with perfect princes.

One of the things we realized in our project, though, and one of the most respectable realizations, is that the princesses, no matter what dire situation they're in, see the best in it, and often smile. This almost permanent smile gives viewers (or children) an attitude of optimism that they take around with them after viewing the movie. Maybe this is why I was such an unhappy child compared to my Disney-Princess-Watching friends. Or not. Though I was never exposed to any Disney movie besides Dumbo, The Lion King, and 101 Dalmatians (Yes, I wasn't even allowed to watch Lady and the Tramp), my childhood didn't take a hit from my lack of knowledge of the Disney Princess fairytales. I may have been jealous of my friends at the time, but I found a more realistic happiness in other ways, never expecting a happy ending or that "all of my dreams" would come true. Though the Disney princess isn't the only way to make little children smile, it is probably one of the most common.

Sure, the children may be more excited about witnessing the happily-ever-afters in all the movies, but the positive attitudes of the main characters subconsciously contribute to the optimism the children feel after watching the movies. Perhaps we have identified a brighter side of Disney's portrayal of sexism toward women.

Enough Smiling... It's Snowing!

Before the dawn of April, in which we would usually expect short-tastic weather, Mother Nature decided to give us the gift of a final snowfall-- not a gift many Penn State students appreciated. Well, let's hope that was the last one. I'm ready for my April SHOWERS. My umbrella has never been more ready. Though many of us may be more than sick of this cold and unpredictable, not to mention hostile, mountain weather, we need to smile because we have beautiful weather coming! Maybe just not as soon as we had hoped.

Perhaps Mother Nature is trying to teach us patience, or maybe she is punishing us for not working as hard as we should be. On a sunny spring day when we can just smell spring in the air, we feel happy, almost rewarded. Maybe Mother Nature was telling us with that last snow that we have nothing to be rewarded for-- yet. When that day finally comes, when we can smell spring in the air and feel so intoxicatingly happy that we just can't wipe that ridiculous smile off of our faces, we will feel the ultimate reward and know that we deserve it. Mother Nature smiles on us when she changes our mood. This season, she will smile on us by giving us sunshine, spring showers, and warmer days. But next fall, we're going to be longing for our first snowfall. She will smile on us, then, too. Mother Nature's smile is the ultimate reward. Does this signal successful use of rhetoric? I leave it up to you.

A Smile..Even on a Sick Day

Yes, the time is finally here once again for me to be chained to my bed for a week full of complete misery. This time of year, no matter how hard I try, I always catch some serious sickness or another: this year, I am the lucky host to some flu germs (even though I got my flu shot?) that have caught me at the worst possible time. I've now missed countless assignments, an exam, and almost a week of classes. I am the type of person that gets stressed out if I'm 2 minutes late to class, so hopefully we can understand the amount of stress and worry I'm experiencing right now. Luckily my teachers have all been understanding.
This morning, I decided I would fight those silly flu germs and drag myself out of bed to try to start my day. Bad idea. I was too weak to walk across the hallway and had to cancel my make-up exam and stay in bed the rest of the day after going to the health center, where, in the deepest most darkest depths of my misery, the nurse's smile and simple "feel better soon" made my WEEK. The fact that this comes from a stranger makes it all the more meaningful. A stranger, who has no idea who I am and knows nothing about me, actually cared about me enough to hope for my health.
I will probably always remember how that lady's simple comment and smile made my week more optimistic, and it proves how powerful body language and simple human sympathy are in affecting others positively.

A Smile a Day... Can Sometimes Send the WRONG Rhetorical Message

Most of the girls in my pledge class, including myself, ventured to sunny Miami over spring break to bask a few days in the sun, taking a break from the cold and hostile State College. Of course, like all girls who have fresh new tans and lightened hair colors to show off, we staged an impromptu photoshoot while waiting for our table at the restaurant. We were smiling and looking like we were having the time of our lives, spreading that feeling to everyone around us. We took maybe one hundred pictures and were about to go inside the restaurant when a native onlooker asked my friend Courtney to take a picture of him. She gladly grabbed his camera, prepared to take a shot of him and his supposed friend in front of the palm trees. We quickly figured out that he was alone, but he didn't want a picture alone. He grabbed my friend Rachel, and everything happened so fast that we didn't even know what to do. She drug me into the shot so she didn't have to do it alone, and we even snapped a copy of the photo with her camera so we could remember our encounter with the world's certifiably most creepy man. After the picture, he sniffed her hair and tried to linger a little longer, but we ran away. Of course the situation could have turned out to be much worse, and we were grateful that he didn't follow us. We knew that we would have to be more careful around strangers for the rest of the vacation-- and I learned that sometimes smiling, and all body language, can send the wrong signal to someone who's watching that you don't expect to be.

Anyway, now the picture has turned into a funny memory (although we hope this won't happen again):

A Smile a Day... Even on State Patty's?

Of course! Everyone smiles on State Patty's with the drunken camaraderie you're supposed to experience walking around fratland or through downtown. On the contrary, my friends and I got sick of the obnoxious non-Penn State students and headed back to the dorms in the early afternoon. But first, we needed to eat. What better day to avoid the hustle and bustle of downtown with all the visitors than to spend some meal points at Redifer? Salad, sandwiches, cookies, chips, Chinese, or Mexican? Being the indecisive person that I am, I couldn't choose between the latter two and treated myself to both- it's a holiday, right?
In the line to order my naked burrito, the lady making it initially thought I was the most hilarious person in the world by verbalizing the word "naked", so I decided to go along with it, continue the jokes, and make her day (which I did, by the way). My friend and I smiled and laughed while asking her to put everything on the burrito, even all the types of cheese and all the types of beans and sauces, saying things like "You got it girl! Put some more of that nacho sauce on there yeah!". We asked her what she recommended, and if it was the best naked burrito she had ever made-- she said yes, and the whole time looked like she was going to pee her pants from laughing so hard. Even when we were paying for our naked burritos, we looked back and she was still beaming with joy while serving her next few customers. I like to think that she looked like that for the rest of the day! Since that Saturday, I've seen her around Redifer commons a few times and she laughs and says hello. I'm glad I could be such a memorable customer.

A Smile a Day... Rather, for a Consistent 46 Hours....

This past weekend, I attended my first THON. My sorority had made LionShrine the previous year, meaning we had earned enough money to have 5 girl dancers and 5 boy dancers on the floor this year. I'll have to admit that I didn't know the dancers (seniors) very well, nor did I have any idea what THON would really be like, though I had spent hours upon hours soliciting funds in various ways. The whole weekend, I got 8 hours of sleep, ate 8 subway sandwiches, an entire pizza, 4 soft pretzels, and too many large dippin' dots to count (yeah, I don't really have any meal points left) and lost my voice from so much excited screaming. Sounds like a bad weekend? Not at all. One of the best of my life. I'm not going to go into detail about what I learned at THON or what it is about. I'm just going to tell you how my screaming radiant positivity kept the dancers going, or so they say.

One of our dancers, when I went down to the floor, told me that every time she looked up, I had the biggest smile on my face and was dancing like an idiot in the stands, and that it kept her going even when she was about to stop. She told me to keep it up, it would really make a difference in how our dancers survived. I did. I really honestly don't think I wiped that smile off my face, even amidst my delirium and slowly approaching laringitis. It's crazy that a smiling, dancing supporter can keep someone awake and on their feet for 46 hours so that they can help kids fight cancer. My smile helped keep our dancers going with an energy derived from all of the positive support. Keep smiling, and you might help pull someone through the roughest, and longest, of hours.

In case you're fancying a visual of my overwhelming positivity:

A Smile a Day... Always Draws Attention

This past Tuesday, I dragged myself to Penn State's Career Fair at the Bryce Jordan Center, despite my persistent belief that no employer would be interested in a freshman. But I wanted the experience, and it couldn't hurt to be rejected a few times, right? A few of the employers dismissed me right away, some of them quite rudely, which I didn't find surprising. I was dragging my feet and allowing my naturally angry facial structure to glare at all onlookers when my luck turned around upon receiving a text from my dad saying "Smile! They'll love you!", and immediately my confident smile seemed to attract more positive attention. The employers suddenly seemed much more interested in me, saying that they usually don't give internships to freshmen, but they admired my drive and ambition and so decided to accept my resume and application. I did feel quite cheesy giving my 30 second introduction with my overly ambitious pearly whites popping out at employers, but it seemed to work. I had so many valuable conversations with company representatives, and I was invited to a couple of special employer events and I was even offered a co-op that is usually only for sophomores and juniors! I honestly think that it was the rhetoric of my smile and the confident aura that the smile bestowed upon my personality that helped these employers to see me as an attractive candidate for an internship, despite my young age. Through this experience, I learned that a simple smile can mean success. The rhetoric of positive body language can enhance professional experiences to their full potential, making those who manipulate rhetoric in this manner the most successful in the survival of the fittest.

A Smile a Day... From an Animal?

Meet Rags. My cat. He's smiling, because he's so unbelievably happy. The September of my senior year in high school, my dad and I discovered Rags, abandoned and near death, hovering under our backyard deck. We saved him, and now he lives with us (except outside, because my dad's allergic). Rags was the runt of his litter, but he was the most optimistic of all the kittens- he pulled through and survived his abandonment, and now he's the happiest cat to walk the face of the earth. You'd think Rags's constant happiness and kitty smiley face wouldn't really make a difference in my everyday life, but it makes all the difference. Now that I'm in college and I can't see Rags everyday (which slightly depresses me), my brother sends me a picture of Rags smiling almost every day. The picture above is from when Rags and I first united when I came home from school for winter break- of course that was the happiest he had been in a while. Everyone knows that animals spread joy. But when animals smile, it makes life so much more joyful. I don't know what I'd do without my smiling cat- but can animal body language be a form of rhetoric? I think so. If people have rhetoric, so do animals, and perhaps theirs is even more interesting because they can't articulate the way humans can. Maybe this is food for future thought.....

A Smile a Day...A Form of Consumerism?

Commercials. No matter how willing you are to admit it, they influence you. Some of us more than others- some of us are avid television watchers, and others may only see a few commercials a week. Nonetheless, the majority of the American population is familiar with ads from companies such as Geico and Subway. Perhaps some of us are familiar with this Pepsi advertisement, aired during the World Cup games this past summer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9sE4GaFekI

This advertisement spreads a feeling of togetherness and joy through many elements of the commercial: the music, the screen shots, but most importantly, the acting, or the radiance of the people. You know where I'm headed- because these people are smiling, it spreads a feeling of happiness throughout the community. But why are these people smiling? Not only because of soccer, but because they are bursting with bubbly joy from their refreshing cola beverage of choice: Pepsi. Through eliciting a feeling of togetherness and joy, the Pepsi marketing team has successfully convinced consumers to buy its product, whether directly or indirectly. Not many viewers think to themselves, "Pepsi has made their product appealing by making the people in this commercial happy. If I drink Pepsi, I will be happy and will help spread joy to my fellow citizens." If consumers even contemplate the commercial at all, it will be more like, "That looks refreshing. I want one."

How does rhetoric play into this? Again, body language is rhetoric, and the Pepsi marketing team has achieved an excellent portrayal of happiness through body language in this particular advertisement, which is an extremely convincing way to produce a positive response in consumers. In this world cup advertisement, then, Pepsi has successfully marketed the smile to attract consumers to buying their refreshing smile-inducing beverage.

Podcast: I Believe in Perseverance

A Smile a Day...Keeps the Doctor Away?

Just like apples, smiles can also keep your visits to the doctor to a minimum. A happy life is a healthy life, and spreading that happiness to fellow citizens helps everyone to live healthier lives.

But let's be serious. No matter how happy someone is, they are sometimes struck by headaches, colds, or worse, the flu. Have you ever thought about the rhetoric of medicine labels? Neither had I, until I was stumped while composing this very blog post only to have my bottle of Zyrtec glaring at me from my desktop. Zyrtec has printed about 300 words on its tiny label, informing consumers of its active ingredient, uses, warnings, directions, and "other" information. It seems as if drug producers only provide the minimum amount of information in the simplest form possible. What if all forms of communication were like that? I think humans would become quite robotic within colloquial conversation. Even further, imagine President Obama giving a political address in medicine label format:

Active Ingredient: Immigration law reform
Purpose: Protection
Uses: Relieves danger from overflow of foreigners, provides citizens with more jobs, protects citizens by the border
Warnings: Do not use if an illegal immigrant planning on staying in US
Directions: Illegal immigrants must take responsibility in addition to our government and businesses
Other Information: Don't dispute the betterment of our US citizenry at the expense of illegal immigrants
Inactive ingredients: effort, planning, enforcement, conflict.
Questions?

This type of address would cause unprecedented questioning and outrage by all inhabitants of the US due to vaguely ambiguous delivery. I guess I see why politics uses rhetoric the way it does, but wouldn't it be interesting to view the actual reaction of our citizenry to any important rhetorical situation in medicine label format?

A Smile a Day...

Rhetoric can essentially be defined as the art of successful public communication, whether spoken or written. But what is successful public communication without body language? Oftentimes, our bodies communicate more effectively than our language does. How does this play into “civic life”, or being a valuable citizen and asset to society? For me, the answer is simple. I can use body language in my everyday life to improve the lives of my fellow citizens. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. Our “Generation Y” is predisposed to always performing with minimum effort to achieve anything. Some of us might think, “Being a valuable citizen by improving the lives of others? Takes too much time. No thanks.” Think again, Generation Y. It only takes 26 face muscles and merely 1 millisecond to smile and spread happiness to your fellow citizenry. Can’t even spare 1 millisecond? Well, you burn more calories the more you smile. I hope I have you convinced. As a person who has been told countless times that she has a naturally angry facial structure, I have always made a conscious effort to smile, or at least look happy. But it wasn’t until high school that someone advised me that smiling at a stranger can make their day. For some reason, this fragment of advice stuck with me. Maybe it’s because when I find myself to be the recipient of a random smile, my outlook instantly experiences an optimistic boost, helping me to welcome everyday challenges with a ready attitude. Sometimes, I feel like a semi-idiot smiling at strangers on my walks to class, and it isn’t until that smile is reciprocated with a sense of gratitude that I am encouraged to keep on handing out smiles. I’ve noticed that smiling tends to have a type of “domino effect” on humankind. I smile at a stranger walking by in Penn State's HUB, and they return the smile, continuing to smile at the next person they encounter while leaving the building. That person extends the gesture, and so on. I believe that this domino effect allows people to become valuable citizens by spreading a happiness that has the power to improve even the worst of days.