English- Diversity Discussion

“UMBC seeks to create a campus community that is rich in intellectual, cultural, and ethnic diversity at all levels.” This quote, taken from the UMBC mission statement, was the basis of the discussion. Why did UMBC choose these three types of diversity and what do these three words really mean? Why doesn’t the mission statement include racially diverse? These are the questions that came up during the discussion. In the conclusion, it was decided that race specifically is not talked about in the mission statement because it is too complex. Race is usually based off of how a person looks. To be specific, most people associate race with skin color. Most people look at a person and assume their race. However, you really can’t do this because many people are multiracial. Also, even within a race, everyone looks different. Two people can come from the same country, yet have very skin tones, hair type, and facial features. When people see the word “race”, they often think black and white. Therefore, saying culturally and ethnically diverse is more complete because then you are talking about so much more than race. You could be talking about race, but you are also talking about religion, sexuality, and class. The discussion concluded by talking about how sometimes it can be difficult, but people need to “reach beyond their comfort zones and connect with others different from themselves.”

With A Faun As My Witness- Revised

Back home it’s probably snowing, a typical Maryland winter. Thinking of this, I smile. The sun is beating down on me as I walk down the busy southern California street. A special occasion has brought my family across the country, in a few days my brother will be getting married.

When I think of a wedding, I think of a serious, life-changing event. And at the same time, it’s difficult for me to even think of my brother and serious in the same sentence.

My brother, Danny, has always sort of been a little crazy and I expected his wedding to be much the same. My expectations were confirmed when he showed up to the rehearsal dinner in his Looney Tunes tie.

The day of the wedding has arrived and Danny stands by the altar with his sword, why he has a sword, I’m not sure. The groomsmen begin walking down the aisle and the spectators in the pews can’t help but smile. All of the groomsmen are dressed up as different characters. There’s Indiana Jones, a Viking, a cowboy. And then the ring bearer begins his trot down the aisle. The ring bearer is actually a faun, half man, half goat prancing daintily to the front of the church.

Towards the end of the ceremony, I take a look around. I see a Jedi and a ninja. And I see my brother, now a married man. As crazy as it was, his wedding reflected his personality perfectly.

Word Count: 248

Point: Everything in life does not have to be serious.

With A Faun As My Witness

Back home it’s probably snowing, a typical Maryland winter. Thinking of this, I smile. The sun is beating down on me as I walk down the busy southern California street. A special occasion has brought my family across the country, in a few days my brother will be getting married. My two older sisters and I are bridesmaids. And tonight is the rehearsal dinner.

My brother, Danny, has always sort of been interesting and a little crazy and I expected his wedding to be much the same. My expectations were confirmed when he showed up to the rehearsal dinner in his Looney Tunes tie.

The day of the wedding has arrived and Danny stands by the altar with his sword. Yes…he has a sword. The groomsmen begin walking down the aisle and the spectators in the pews can’t help but smile. All of the groomsmen are dressed up as different characters. There’s Indiana Jones, a Viking, a cowboy, a knight. And then the ring bearer begins his walk, or I guess I should say trot, down the aisle. The ring bearer is actually a faun, half man, half goat prancing daintily to the front of the church. How my brother persuaded one of his friends to do this, I’m not sure.

Towards the end of the ceremony, I take a look around. I see a Jedi, a ninja, a faun. And I see my brother, now a married man. As crazy as it was, his wedding reflected his personality perfectly.

Word Count: 250

Point: Everything in life does not have to be serious.

American Studies- The Dangerous Banana

It was one of those perfect beach days, nice and sunny with a little breeze. The door to the hotel room was open, so you could see the ocean, smell the salt.

I have heard many stories over the years of my brother and the many stupid things he has done, but this time he really outdid himself.

Both of my parents were occupied getting things ready for a day at the beach. My brother Danny, who was about four, was sitting on the bed, peeling a banana. Then all of a sudden he says, “Hey guys, watch me eat this entire banana is one bite!” My mom turns around instantly, but a little too late. Danny’s mouth is puffed up with a huge banana and he is trying to swallow it. The banana gets stuck in his throat and he can’t breath. His face instantly turns blue. My dad, the calm guy that he is, starts screaming and shouting for someone to call 911. My mom instantly saw choking and thought of the Heimlich maneuver. However, this maneuver is apparently useless when it comes to entire bananas. So my mom did the only thing she could, got a spoon and scooped the banana out of his throat. All the while, by dad was still shouting for someone to call 911. So in the end, everything turned out okay, but Danny learned a very valuable lesson that day at the beach.

Point: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Word Count: 241

English- Three Cups of Tea

I read Three Cups of Tea over the summer and to be honest, I really disliked it. It took me three months to read because I just felt that it was so boring and I kept losing interest. Don’t get me wrong, I think what Greg Mortenson did over in Pakistan was great and I know that he had a huge impact on so many children’s lives. But, I just felt like there were some points in the story where the author was going on and on for pages about something so small and unimportant to the overall story like five pages on how the men loaded the supplies into the truck. However, there were some parts of the story that I really enjoyed like the love story between Greg and Tara. I also found it interesting to hear Greg’s account of September 11th because his viewpoint, being in Pakistan, is very different from the accounts and memories you usually hear. So overall, although this is not a book I would have chosen to read for pleasure, I still found it moving, and even interesting at times.

English- Shots Fired

The shootings at Fort Hood have left thirteen dead and thirty others wounded. I’m predicting lots of controversies to come up with these shootings. Many people will point out the fact that the shooter was Muslim. This will definitely provoke more racism towards Muslims living in the United States. I just find these shootings ironic because the soldiers who were killed were not fighting in a foreign war, but simply at home in the United States. I even heard a story about a man trying to reach his wife who was at Fort Hood during the shootings. He finally reached his wife and she told him that Fort Hood was in lockdown because of a man who was shooting people. Her husband, who was stationed in Iraq, was shocked to hear what was going on back in the United States while he was away at war.

American Studies- Educational Experiences

My best educational experience also happened to be my first. Most people probably don’t even remember their pre-school days, but I remember mine vividly. My pre-school was at a public elementary school down the street from my house. However, this was no ordinary pre-school. It was a program where half the kids had disabilities and the other half did not. I remember a few of my classmates being in wheelchairs, having Down syndrome, or being deaf. Although the purpose of the program was for the disabled kids to learn from those who were not disabled, I found myself learning from a lot of my classmates by watching these kids cope with their everyday struggles.

My worst educational experience would have to be taking photography my senior year of high school. I wasn’t particularly interested in this subject, but I needed a class so I decided I would try it. It ends up that this particular year, everyone wants to take photography and there is only one teacher who teaches it. So I happened to be in the photography class taught by one of the PE teachers. He didn’t know a single thing about photography and I just sat in a room for fifty minutes, five days a week, for an entire school year. Now and then, we would do a writing activity from the textbook and we did get to go in the dark room once or twice a month. But I think I can say that this class was a total waste of time and my worst educational experience.

English- Halloween Not Just a Holiday for Kids

Ever wonder how Halloween got started? Well, you might be surprised to know that it did not used to be a holiday for kids. The word "Halloween" actually comes from "All Hallows Evening" which was the name of an ancient Gaelic festival that marked the end of the light part of the year and the beginning of the dark part. The Scottish believed that on this day, the line between the living and the dead was thinnest and the dead returned from the Otherworld to walk among them. They believed both harmless and harmful spirits returned, so the harmless ones were welcomed and celebrated, while the harmful ones were scared off by people who dressed up as monsters. This is how costumes came to be such a big part of Halloween. In the United States, Halloween is now considered a day for the kids, but there are still many countries where this day holds a much deeper meaning and it is for families and friends to spend time together.

English- Denied

In New Orleans this past week, an interracial couple was denied the right to be married by a justice of the peace. When asked about why he did this, his reply was "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way. I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else." He went on to say that he has a strict policy to not marry interracial couples because he believes these couples are forcing hardships on their future children. The couple from the story, Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay, was appalled, as they should have been. Beth is white and Terence is black. They are planning to file a discrimination complaint. When I read this story, I was very surprised that these types of things are still happening today.

Memory: It's a Funny Thing

I believe it is important to pass down memories so nothing is ever forgotten. Memory is a funny thing with my grandmother, Mimi, who is now 92 years old. She can’t remember what you just said to her five seconds after you’ve said it. She can’t remember what she ate for dinner by the time she is putting her plate in the sink. She can’t remember what year it is. She usually can’t even remember who I am. She often asks where her car is, though I don’t believe she has driven in my lifetime. Basically, she has the memory of a goldfish.

But, I will never forget the time when she was sitting at the kitchen table with my sisters and me, teaching us her elementary school song, a song she learned 85 years ago. She tells us about our great-grandfather who went to Hester Park on the lower east side in Manhattan to sell pants during the Great Depression. She tells us about how in 1918 there was a deadly flu epidemic in the US and when she had it, her mom sat with her by the oven for heat. Mimi can tell us all the neighbors she had growing up and the songs she learned in school. She can tell us who played for the Yankees in 1936. But she can’t tell us what she just ate for breakfast.

Mimi doesn’t remember much now, but in her lifetime she has remembered the things that are most important. I hope that one day I will be able to pass on my memories and experiences from life to my grandchildren. I believe that the only way to learn about the future is through the past and the best way to do that is to pass on what we know.


Word Count: 300

English- Can TV actually make you smarter?

After reading both of the articles, Watching TV Makes You Smarter and Thinking Outside the Idiot Box, I was torn between which one I agreed with. I decided that I agree with both of them for the most part because TV could make you smarter, but it really depends on what you’re watching. There obviously isn’t a lot of thinking involved if you’re watching something like The Girls Next Door. However, the TV show mentioned in the first article, ER, could technically “make you smarter”. Like the article said, a lot of what is going on is implied rather than said, so watching this show does require some thinking. I also think the first article was well-written and the author did a good job taking a side that most people don’t consider. How often do you hear people saying that TV actually makes you smarter? Hardly Ever. I thought the author used a variety of examples that his readers would be familiar with from The Sopranos to The Day After Tomorrow. Although at the end of the article I wasn’t totally convinced, I still thought it was well-written and it really made me stop and think.

American Studies- A Cause Worth Fighting For #2

You see them everywhere. Everyone knows what it is and what it represents. The well-recognized pink ribbon has been a representation of awareness for breast cancer since it was first introduced in 1991. Today, our culture has taken the pink ribbon and turned it into a symbol of fighting causes. The history of the pink ribbon actually began before 1991, though few people know it. Penney Laingen was actually the first person to use a ribbon as representation for fighting a cause in the early 1970s when she tied yellow ribbons around trees in her town to show her desire for her husband’s safe return from the war in Iran. Many people followed in Penney’s footsteps, making yellow ribbons a representation for the safe return of soldiers fighting in foreign wars.

Then in 1991, Susan G. Komen handed out pink ribbons at the Race for Breast Cancer Survivors in New York City. This, of course, started the phenomenon of the pink ribbon representing breast cancer awareness. But today people have branched out and pink in general is now this representation. There are some grocery stores that hand out pink tote bags if you donate money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. There are some baseball players that use pink bats on Mother’s Day to promote awareness. On March 31, 2009, an entire ice rink was painted pink for breast cancer awareness night.

But it’s not only pink and yellow that have become symbolic in our country. Every ribbon has a color and every color is fighting for a different cause. Blue fights against child abuse, red fights again AIDS, white fights against violence on women, etc. Our culture has taken the simple ribbon round the old oak tree and turned it into the nationwide symbol for hope, awareness, and a cause worth fighting for.


New Word Count: 304

American Studies- A Cause Worth Fighting For

You see them everywhere. Everyone knows what it is and what it represents. The well recognized pink ribbon has been a representation of awareness for breast cancer since it was first introduced in 1991. Today, our culture has taken the pink ribbon and turned it into a symbol of fighting causes. The history of the pink ribbon actually began before 1991, though few people know it. Penney Laingen was actually the first person to use a ribbon as representation for fighting a cause in the early 1970s when she tied yellow ribbons around trees in town to show her desire for her husband’s safe return from the war in Iran. Many people followed in Penney’s footsteps, making yellow ribbons a representation for the safe return of soldiers fighting in foreign wars.

Then in 1991, Susan G. Komen handed out pink ribbons at the Race for Breast Cancer Survivors in New York City. This, of course, started the phenomenon of the pink ribbon representing breast cancer awareness. But today people have branched out and pink in general is now this representation. There are some grocery stores that hand out pink tote bags if you donate money to the Susan G. Komen foundation. There are some baseball players that use pink bats on Mother’s Day to promote awareness. On March 31, 2009, an entire ice rink was painted pink for breast cancer awareness night.

But it’s not only pink and yellow that have become symbolic in our country. Every ribbon has a color and every color is fighting for a different cause. Blue fights against child abuse, red fights again AIDS, white fights against violence on women, and green fights against neglect of the environment. Now there is even a pink and blue ribbon that fights against abortion. People have ribbons all over their bumpers and the color and shape always mean a different cause to fight for. Our culture has taken the simple ribbon round the old oak tree and turned it into the nationwide symbol for hope, awareness, and a cause worth fighting for. And now, in the midst of breast cancer awareness month, you will see an abundance of pink that all started with the little pink ribbon.


Word Count: 369

English- The Chowder Festival

This weekend I am going to Long Beach Island in New Jersey. I go here with family every year on the first weekend of the month of October for the Chowder Festival. Long Beach Island is a small beach town on the Jersey Coast that I have fallen in love with. The Chowder Festival is a celebration of the final weekend of the season. All the stores have huge sales so it is a great time for shopping. There is also a huge contest between all the different restaurants on the island for who makes the best chowder. I have family who live on Long Beach Island so that is how I first discovered this. Now I go every year and I am very excited to go this weekend. I am going with my cousin and I can’t wait.

American Studies- A 60s Repeat?

After the 1960s, people thought peace signs and tie-dye were a thing of the past but today they are more popular than ever. However, these two things are usually no longer a representation of the hippie culture they were once associated with. In the 60s, the hippie movement was composed of mostly white young people fifteen to twenty-five years old. At the peak of the Vietnam War, hippies were described as the ones who wanted “peace, love, and personal freedom.” By June 1966, 15,000 hippies had migrated to the well-known San Francisco neighborhood, Haight-Ashbury.

The given definition of a hippie is “a person who opposes and rejects many of the conventional standards and customs of society, especially one who advocates extreme liberalism, in sociopolitical attitudes and lifestyles.” So, why all of the tie-dye and peace signs you might ask? Hippies wanted to stand out. They wanted to be noticed so people would consider what they were proposing. Tie-dye first became popular out west, which happens so be where the hippie subculture began. Eventually, it was well-known around the world as being picked up by hippies because of its stand-out bright colors and interesting designs. Peace signs became a common symbol in the hippie culture to remind people of what they really were all about, peace. In the 60s, when you saw someone walking down the street in a tie-dye t-shirt or sporting a peace sign, it was always just assumed that that person was a hippie, a good assumption during that time period.

Of course, everything comes to an end as did what people liked to call the “hippie movement of the 60s.” There was a long time period where tie-dye and peace signs really were a thing of the past. But like all so called fads, these two things are back and very popular. But they no longer represent the hippie subculture. Now when you walk down the street, many young people are wearing tie-dye sweat shirts and peace sign necklaces but it would never enter someone’s mind to consider them a hippie. Today, these items are not really given a meaning. They just returned as a very popular fad that will eventually go out and return many times. It is remained to be seen if they will ever again represent something as large as the hippie subculture of the 60s.


Word Count: 392

English- Jon and Kate

I don’t really watch a lot of reality TV but I did use to watch the show Jon and Kate Plus Eight. I always thought it was kind of funny how Kate treated Jon. I also enjoyed watching all of the chaos that went on in their house with having eight kids and all. After a while, I got bored of the show and I stopped watching it for a while. And then all of this drama started with Jon cheating on Kate and then the separation and I started watching the show again because everyone was talking about it. Whenever I went anywhere, all the magazines had pictures of Kate with the children and Jon out partying with much younger girls. But of course, when Jon told his side of the story, he just talked about how Kate is crazy, obsessed with money, and always out promoting books and stuff so she never spends time with her children. I kept up with the story for a while, and then I just didn’t care anymore because Jon and Kate each have their own story and no one will ever know for sure whose story is right. I think they now could be regretting trying to raise their kids on national television.

English- Pit Bulls

Pit Bulls were just recently banned in Baltimore City and they have been banned for many years in PG County. This is because some people train them to fight and be aggressive. And this causes lots of people to fear pit bulls. However, not all pit bulls should be classified as aggressive and dangerous. I have had my pit bull, Rage, for the past seven years and she is scared of everything and isn't the slightest bit aggressive. She came with the name, kind of as a joke because she is so sweet. She is scared of plastic bags and thunder and pretty much anything else that you can think of. But, people will always assume that she is dangerous just because many pit bulls are.

American Studies- My Literacy Narrative

Arbeit Macht Frei. These three words are the first thing I noticed when I was walking towards Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp in Poland two years ago. This German phrase translated into English means “Work Will Set You Free”. These three words can be seen above the gates in most concentration camps from World War II. I was visiting Poland with some members of my team for an acrobatic gymnastics competition, but we also did a lot of sightseeing while we were there. We had to have translators for the trip because we spoke no Polish at all. Our translators were two high school seniors who had been taking English in school and were doing this as a project. We learned how to say some basic words in Polish like hello, thank you, and toilet. We noticed though, that a lot of people in the town that we were staying in didn’t speak English but understood it a little. Our translators told us that most kids take English in school, sort of like here where most kids take Spanish. We also found that we would try to say something in Polish, and even if we didn’t even get it close, they would still usually know what we were talking about. I actually found it a lot of fun to go out places and have to work to try to get the people to understand what we were trying to say.

Since this was an international competition, there were many other people there from other European countries as well. The South African team was staying in the same hotel as us so we did a lot of things together. One day we went to see the botanical gardens with them. It was a very long bus ride so we had a lot of time to talk. At one point, one of the girls said that she liked our accents. We all found this interesting because we never really think of ourselves as having accents. We just thought that they had accents, but when you think about it from their prospective, we’re the ones that talk differently.

Something else that I found very cool was how you could have so many people from so many different countries, but certain things are the same everywhere. For example, my friend and I went to say something to a girl from Germany. Instead of using words, I just gave her a thumbs-up and she just knew what I was trying to say to her. She just nodded and pointed back to us and gave us a thumbs-up too. We don’t speak each other’s languages but we can still congratulate each other.

Overall, Poland was a huge learning experience for me! One important thing I learned is that it doesn’t matter if you speak the language. There are many different ways of communicating and you can always get your point across. Czesc! (Bye!)

Word Count: 484 words

Who Am I

My name is Jenny Herzfeld and I am a freshman at UMBC. I am the youngest of 4 kids. I have two older sisters, Karin and Becky. Karin just recently graduated from UMBC. I also have an older brother named Danny who lives in California and plays in a band called The Lyrics Game. I do a sport called acrobatic gymnastics which is basically like cheerleading, dance and gymnastics, all in one. It's a lot of fun to watch though most people have never heard of it. In 2007 I went to Poland for a competition and it was so much fun because it was my first time going to Europe.