blog #7

1) Post your favorite lyrics, poem, or quote for this week.
"people are going to try and bring you down, be strong"- i don't know how the real one goes, but that is how i say it.

2) Develop two reflection questions that you would ask your students at this point in the course if you were a UN100 Professor.
-how has college changed your life?
-are you still considering the career you have chosen at the beginning of the semester or are you thinking of something else?

3) What are you passionate about? Why?
i am passionate about my family because i love them so much and they are there for me when i need help and they mean everything to me.

4) How are you going to finance your three years of the Radiology program? If you will be in debt from student loans at the end, calculate roughly how much you will owe upon graduation.
when i get a job, i am going to have that help pay for it along with student loans, and at the beginning of the semester i figured out it will cost me $40,000 total about, but i am going to wait til next year to apply for the program, so adding 2 more semesters to that will raise that amount.

5) Have you changed your mind or do you have any new concerns about your program of study after our guest speakers today (Dr. Foley & Joanne)? Are you thinking of a different major or are you dead set on Radiology? What behavior(s) will you maybe have to change in order to keep up with and make the cut?
i wish that i would have heard their speech at the beginning of the semester because i would have been trying even harder at my classes. i was thinking of doing a different career but i am not really sure just yet. in order to make the cut i am going to need to try wayyyy harder at school and raising my grades up these next weeks before final exams.

6) FAST FOOD NATION (You should be reading through Chapter 7 at this point)

Reflect upon the opening lines of Chapter 7:

"You can smell Greeley, Colorado, long before you can see it. The smell is hard to forget but not easy to describe, a combination of live animals, manure, and dead animals being rendered into dog food."
i would not like to live or even travel through that town because i would not like that smell at all.


-Have you ever read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair? If so, how does it relate to FFN?
i have not read THE JUNGLE, but how it relates is that workers got hurt at food industries in the book the jungle, just how workers are getting hurt in food packing industries today.

-How high is the employee turnover rate in the meat industry and why don't the packing plants see this as a problem?
meat industries have gone through so many employees and packing plants are not seeing this as a problem because they are making money no matter what.

We discussed captive supplies of cattle versus regular farming. Reflect upon this quote from page 150:

"To supply the beef slaughterhouse, ConAgra operates a pair of enormous feedlots. Each of them can hold up to one hundred thousand head of cattle..During the three months before slaughter, they eat grain..The grain fattens the cattle quickly, aided by the anabolic steroids implanted in their ear."

-Do you think that these animals' emotions (fears, stress, anger) affect the meat we eat derived from them? How?
i believe that when the animals are stressed, anger, or scared, it toughens up the meat, because if they are like that when they are getting killed, their muscles are tensed up because they are scared.

-How do you feel about eating steroids via consumption of "USDA Inspected" beef?
i know you can't really taste them even though it is a little disgusting to think about, but this is not going to change no matter what.

I probably grossed you out - sorry guys, but knowledge is power! If you still don't see the connection between this course and Fast Food Nation -- let me know. Most of you are going into health professions and will be dealing with epidemics of cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc.. mostly based on the American sedentary and processed-food lifestyle. I am hoping you are thinking more critically about everything at this point.