Critical Thinking, Personal Experience, and Dialogue on Facebook

   My recent blog on Sexual Assault Awareness Month, if you read it, highlighted some of the ways that our own experiences can shape our perspectives, but opinion alone should not always the sole element that defines our perspective. One must understand the perspective of others. It is always hard to wrestle with different notions that confront our own gender/religious/social world view. Here are some things to think about when we debate and/or use our Critical Thinking abilities in dialogue with others.

Social media use in modern society

                Social media has become a pop culture phenomenon since Friendster, one of the first social networking sites, was created. There is media outlets such as blogging, micro blogging, photo and video sharing, writing forums and even podcast sharing. These outlets include Facebook, Twitter, word press, Tumblr, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram.

                Social media has seen different spectrums of uses. These range from business networking sites like LinkedIn to the six second video sharing Vine site. Yet the most popular ones are the ones where sharing content is unlimited and free from definition such as Facebook posts or sharing your everyday life in photo form with Instagram.

Third Times the Charm - HvZ and Me

The Most Undead Time of the Year

   So, it’s that time of year again: Humans Versus Zombies has returned. Now in its third year, HvZ has become an extremely popular campus wide activity that has gained the attention of students, faculty, the local news outlets, and even UT Administration.

TL;DR ... or, Hello! [ My Name Here! ]

 
   Greetings to you Mr/Mrs Reader who has either found this blog via private discovery, or maybe because you are one of the people I have linked it to in order to gain more followers for this site! I am Michael Hale, a senior English major here at the University of Texas at Tyler.

    I feel the process of blogging must convey some inspirational, educational, and/or motivational component, otherwise I always imagine the reader ( you, dear person! ) are reading nothing more than a glorified Facebook post with far better font options.

   What do I have to say? What things will this blog cover?

Alpha Phi Omega

At the beginning of the semester, the organizations all get together for a campus event
and display themselves to the incoming freshmen in hopes that they will join their group. They present you with information about their organization, candy, sticky notes and other shiny materials with their organization name printed on it. That way, you remember them later when the chaos and nervousness of taking college classes.

We have a number of organizations on campus. Most of the student workers of this blog are in one or more student organization.I had my pick of organizations to choose from. My big thing in high school was that I was apart of organization which became more of a family over the 6 years that I was apart of it. That organization was AVID (Advance Via Individual Determination). AVID is "a college readiness system for elementary through postsecondary that is designed to increase schoolwide learning and performance." according to their website. Volunteering was a key part of 

the organization as it looks good on your college applications.

            My ears perked up at the mention that an organization had Jimmy Johns sandwiches. I jumped on the opportunity for free food. If you don't know already, the way to get college students to come to something,is to offer them free food, and they come like moths. We sat in the a presentation room in the third floor of the University Center, snacking on the sandwiches as the head of the organizations explain to us what Alpha Phi Omega was. Which is a service fraternity but really acts more like a service organization. That's when they reeled me in.  After the presentation we went to dinner and set a reminder to go to the meeting at Wednesday at 5. I managed to stick with it for both semesters and now it looks like this baby petitioning group will be a chartered by Fall 2012. Finger's crossed. 

Have you heard about the story for a service dog for Autism?

           April is the month for acknowleding Autism as well as Occupational Therapy and because both are related to each other I decided to do a blog that covers both topics. I am very passionate about occupational therapy becasue it is the career that I have chosen for the future. I am also doing an internship at Trinity Mother Francis Hospital (Occupational Therapy Outpatient Clinic). However, most importantly I love working with children and this is why I wanted to share this story with you.
           The first video you may have seen is from the story of the young girl from East Texas. People responded to pleas on Facebook about a family in need of a service dog for their daughter. I remember seeing this on Facebook and I responded promptly after seeing the post, but I wanted to show a follow-up video about this story. So check it out!