Journal 10

10/22/20: This wasn’t a normal class test day it was different, at the beginning of class we were not greeted by professor sandridge however a youtube video. This video was actually the original cast of the Broadway hit Hamilton who was singing the famous song from the play “The room where it happened” however there was a unique twist. This video was about voting with the original cast singing the song to a video about the voting process. Coincidently, I had on my alexander hamilton hoodie, which my mom got the second time she went to see this play. Like she really loves the play she has seen it at least 4 times compares to the rest of us, and she loves to blast the soundtrack around winter time so I already knew the lyrics to this song. After that, we started on this weekly quiz which was on The Requisites of True Leadership by Ida B. Wells along with some other greek text which I barely remembered. This was very tricky. There was some terminology that I wasn’t sure about so I had to take more time to recall it than former quizzes. Once we went over the answer I realize my errors and how I failed to exert the same level of skill compared to my former quizzes. I personally blame my lack of sleep that plagued me for the last couple of days, which obviously impacted my recall. I just hope this grade won’t be the start of a downward spiral from the peaks of success. After the quiz went through plotting our leadership development and talked about aspects of group work. Professor Sandridge explained every aspect of group work and afterward we were tasked to go into breakout groups to list ways these aspects can be acted upon. My group chose Aspect 1 which was an emotional connection which we listed things such as helping with mental health, building healthy relationships, believing in a community, and exhibiting self-lessening. Afterward, we shared the list that we made for the group mainly focusing on the mental health aspect of my topic and how to get better at this. Which my group proposed is to be aware of one’s own self. While other groups were sharing we talked about Physiognmeny which was understanding someone character-based of their face. The discussion also led to the topics of Django unchained and eugenics, that rooted back to physiohnmeny. We then talked about how demonizing other nations help justification of action which can be thoroughly seen throughout American history. This can be related to the 1619 project which tells a more accurate depiction of slave history. Which lead to a question on how countries and nations get better at peacemaker, which I believe that the best way to better this is by emotional understanding. We also talked about another project which was looking for America program which I cut out for. However, I was there for the end of the class which was a combination discussion about taking languages which I found out I need to take one, after that, I believe people stayed after class to watch a clip from Dave Chappelle.

10/24/20: For this week’s assignment it was something unique instead of reading a book or a passage for class we had to watch a movie. It wasn’t those typical class movie which is just a monotone guy talking for around 45 minutes, it was a real movie that was in a theater and made money. The movie was Moana, a fairy recent Disney movie about a Hawaiian native princess who has a passion for exploring which leads her on a mystical journey to venture beyond her home so that she can save her people. I actually watched this movie before and I enjoyed the storytelling so I was looking forward to watching it again. Hopefully this time I can gain a better appreciation for the movies writing and story. For this week’s assignment, we had to Watch Moana and identify the elements of mentorship that you have already witnessed in our chapters on Athena-Telemachus, Odysseus-Neoptolemus, Dr. Brookner-Ned Weeks, and even Bandeira-Otálara. What similarities and differences do you see in their leadership development? The movie Moana can compare to the lessons of activating an individual’s potential and help them realize their possibilities and being a friend to humanity. I say the activate potential because similar to Binti, Moana makes a connection to her people and helps them release their potential as great sailors. And with Maui, she helped him train himself to use the hook once, and again later she helped him realized that he doesn’t need to be dependent on it. Moana also shows how she is a friend to humanity when she goes on a quest to help save her people from starvation by calming an ancient goddess. However, the differences I see in Moana’s leadership is that she doesn’t connect to everyone and use them to achieve her goal Moana prefers to do actions for others without their help, while Binti uses others and herself to accomplish their goals. Also, her being a friend to humanity is different than Wells, Moana was just saving them for an outside threat while Wells advocates for internal change. This connects her to the aspect of advocating for others similar to Ted in Normal heart. These two are very similar because they both push for helping their community to the point their community is off-put by the brash nature of these actions. However, Ted was more aggressive to others while Moana was passionate like she didn’t carry anger as Ted does with his advocating. Moana seems to connect to a large chunk of the type of leadership we have learned through the semester and is a good ending subject, not to say it’s the last one we get to analyze. This week’s assignment was fairly interesting cause this is the first case we had to analyze a movie which is harder than literature since we can’t cite it as easily.

10/27/20: Today in this class it was fairly normal compared to last week’s class with the video at the start. It was just a normal greeting where we then went into a discussion about the movie. We talked about certain leadership aspects found throughout the characters and stories and then made some comparisons to other Disney movies. I remember professor sandridge asked us which movie we preferred either COCO or Moana, personally I would say Moana since it’s less sad while COCO had a lot of emotions with the story. However, I am a huge fan of the lore and world-building that COCO decided to go into. Both movies were great introductions to the culture of the native people which isn’t often highlighted In mainstream media. However, the reason we talked about these two movies is they both have the theme of going against tradition, and throughout that rejection, the protagonist learns something about themselves which then relates back to their tradition. And the information learned helps them embrace tradition while expressing themselves. We then went into a brief tangent about voting which I meant that I voted on the same day which was extremely fast. This was my first time voting so this was a great experience despite the risk of covid. He also mentioned how Bill Clinton is older than both current candidates for president of the united state, which raises the question of older and older president candidates coming year after year. Personally, i believe we need some new blood in the set of the president so we can have the most competent person in power. We turned back into our Moana discussion talking about the importance of soundtrack like the comparison between songs. We compared Where you are to Who you are and the different meanings these songs portray, like knowing where you are from and the other is knowing who you are. Professor Sandridge then goes into a discussion about change in one's self like with the golden mean and life in high school and using the movie good will hunting to help explain it. On top of finding out oneself we talked about spirit animal which is strange since in class before he wasn’t a fan of “signs” and horoscopes but to each their own. And as usual, we talked about a section of our weekly reading in this case the Moana movie. We talked about the importance of Maui to Moana’s leadership along with the importance of Disney in our society. Finally, we reflected on societal pressures that impact use similar to the ones that pressure Moana, however, we all aren’t destined leaders. And during this reflect we talked about themes in Moana that’s important to us, which in my case is the freedom to explore and creates one destiny.