American society is extremely commercialized as we focus our values and morals around superficial expectations. Americans find themselves picturing their lives like this: a nice house, a neat family, a dog or a cat, and of course, the perfect spouse. Due to society’s stereotypes, we want an attractive, respectful, and loving husband or wife. These unrealistic expectations and desires lead Americans to joining superficial-love shows such as love island, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and etc. On these shows the contestants are always needed to be one thing, attractive. The participants spend their time getting recorded doing activities such as hot air balloons, horse-back riding, and others in order to fall madly in love with their meant-to-be, everlasting soulmate. The couples that find each other and pair up most likely end up spending, a forever loving, 3 month relationship together. These shows expose the egocentric and unrealistic mindset that tends to float in the brains of Americans. Unconsciously, we tend to compare ourselves to how others live around us and from that, we generalize and form a hardened mold of what our life is supposed to look like. Similar to the way we morph and shape ourselves to superficial values, the same happens in Las Vegas. As Didion says, “But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of beholder all of which makes it an extraordinary and interesting place, but an odd one” (Didion). Las Vegas is viewed as a magical and wonderful place, however, all it is realistically is a place to have an excuse to make reckless decisions.
Poetry- the unit that most students dread to learn about in their English class. But why is poetry so disliked among high school students? A few of these reasons, and that I can attest for personally, are that poetry is seen as old, it can be quite difficult to understand/interpret, and we just fail to see the point of it. However, after interpreting some poems in class, my perspective began to shift (only slightly not significantly though). While I am still not the biggest fan of poetry, I am beginning to see a different side to it. Yes, poetry is all of the negative things that I stated above (at least in my opinion) but once poetry is understood, the lesson becomes that much clearer and applicable. Understanding and correctly interpreting poetry is not only a beneficial skill to have but it also opens your eyes to a deeper understanding to things that are important in terms of culture, history, and etc. For example, poetry has effectively been used to advocate and teach about i...
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