MG's Haunted Library

Dear Visitor, The whole time I was sitting in my Structual Oppression I class, I thought about this movie. How quickly moral superoirity goes out the window when your life is on the line. The film is about a group of people who wake up and find themselves trapped in a room with this weird orb in the center of the circle they're standing in. As they try to figure out how to escape, they realise the only way out is to vote for who lives and who dies. Quickly, they conspire against each other and attempt, rather poorly, to justify their decisions. I thought this was a great study on how groups see each other. As much as we are lectured about how we should "be global citizens" and sing "We Are The World", that mentality goes out the window when your life is on the line. All of a sudden you're willing to put people into groups like "the old", "the disabled", "married", "not married", "unwed mothers",...

Dear Visitor, I hope you all had a fabulous Halloween! Mine was more laid back and I had to throw a last minute costume together, but I enjoyed myself! Anyway, I wanted to take a step back and talk about something else. I mentioned before that I'm a grad student getting my Masters in Social Work. It's a lot of hard work, but I love the challenge. I especially love my internship. However, not everyone is as enthusiastic about school as I am. I wanted to talk about that one Whiny Chick that is in every class. You know the one. The one where everything is so hard, nothing is ever fair, and they feel "attacked" when you tell them to suck it up. So I have this classmate who actually has the balls to ask if the final exam is mandatory. I've noticed that she always asks if things are mandatory. For example, we have labs that we have to complete. It's written in the syllabus AND our professor actually told us the first day of class that ...