You Know You Are A Grown-Up When...

You Know You are A Grown-Up When:

1. When someone criticizes you, you stay calm, try to understand it, and then move on if it is incorrect.

2. You travel for the sake of self-improvement, not with the purpose to post pictures on Facebook.

3. Facebook gets boring. You want to go out and explore your city and meet new people.

4.  You know what you want out of life. You know what type of job you want, you know what career you most want and the money that goes with a chosen career becomes less of a matter.

5.  You realize Prince Charming only exists in the world of Disney.

6. If a guy rejects you, you move on and realize that there are men out there who would treat you 1000X better than the last one.

7.  You become friends with your parents and siblings.

8. You move out and pay your own bills, car insurance, rent, and you make sure you mark the due date of each bill on a calendar.

9.  You own a planner.  

10.  You believe in quality over quantity.  While that Forever 21 jean makes your butt looks great, you spend $40 more dollar to buy a quality pair of jeans from Gap or J. Crew.

11.  You enjoy staying in on a Friday night rather than going out.

12. You learn to say no and you mean it.

13.  You don't know where the future will lead but you are okay with it.

Why We Should Use Wikipedia

As a college graduate, I was taught by professors that we should always be aware of what we are reading, whether it is an academic work or in an entertainment reading material. It was ingrained in me for the four years in college and one cannot forget it if it was hammered in them for that long. I was brainwashed by the American college system and the skill became a part of me till now.

On January 15, Wikipedia turned 15.  I can still remember the first time using Wikipedia back in high school over a decade ago.  I was new to using the internet (or World Wide Web) so Wikipedia was definitely a challenge to navigate. Before using Wikipedia, I had to flip through rows of encyclopedia books in the library whenever there is a research paper assigned; my comprehension in English was minimal so it was definitely a challenge to have to read all those thick and dusty volumes of books that might have contained out-dated information. And besides it was time consuming while I could use that time for reading or sleeping and preparing for the next day of school.

Over the years, Wikipedia gained popularity and many college students depend on it for the quick and current information that it provides. Opponents say it is cheating to use the website and that the information can be incorrect.  After using the website for over a decade, I beg to differ on the criticisms that it has been getting for the past decade of its existence.  Here are the reasons why we should continue to use Wikipedia:

1. It is free. Shall I explain more?
2. It is useful. We can find any information on it and use it in conversations in social gatherings, school projects, and our daily life.
3. The information is generally accurate. Of course, there will be time where the information may not reflect reality and this is why we always have to be aware with what we are treading into. Also just because an information is in a academic work, it does not mean it is correct. Every piece of writing is prone to error and our job as a critical thinker is to recognize it when we run into it and to always take any information in with a grain of salt.
4. Best of all, it saves us time from looking up the information.  Why spend the time flipping through books and random internet websites when the information is just a click away?

I am not working for Wikipedia or endorsing it in anyway. The above writing is from my own personal experience and I hope it can shed a better light on a resource hat has helped me survive in my daily life and academic work for the past decade.

The Seconds Before Death

January 7th marked the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris a year ago.  The attack left a total of 17 deaths with the 10 victims came from the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.  The two gunmen were killed two days later in a city north of Paris after the manhunt that left the country in a high alert. The gunmen marched in the magazine's headquarter and knew who they wanted to shoot, and they exited the building with their mission accomplished. The dead were the well-known staffs of the magazine which has published controversial cartoons of Muslims for the past years. In November 2011, the office was firebombed after an issue with the picture of Muhammad was published on its cover and despite the tragedy, the magazine stood by what they believe and continued to publish. 

All that aside, in a video recorded by a resident showing the killing of a policeman by the two gunmen, the assailants stopped a black stolen car, got out, and shot a police officer. While the police was injured and still alive on the ground, he looked up at the assailants one last time as the gunmen approached him. One gunman shot the police on the head and he was dead in an instant. 

The closest to death experience I had was when I was six. As I stood in the kitchen doing my oral hygiene, an episode of laughing attack hit me and I choked on the water that I had in my mouth.  Seconds later I became blue in the face and found myself to have a difficult time breathing and luckily my dear mother was home and ran to me and started doing CPR on me and I survive.  I remember to not have any thought as I found myself grasping for every bit of air and trying to regurgitate the water that entered my windpipe.  Maybe because I was too young and did not have much life experience so there was no instant thought or memory. But what about the people who got killed in the two Paris attacks in 2015.  What run across their mind the seconds before they died?  The Paris attack in November 2015 left 130 people dead, majority of the death came from the shooting in the Bataclan theater and most of the deceased were young in their 20s and 30s and still had much to look forward to in their life.  Did the people who died have time to think about their love ones and did they have time to remember the happy parts of their lives?

Death seems like a scary thing and it is an experience that no one has any recollection of. Is death the transition to another life, another earth, a better place? We don't know and no one knows.  The victims of the Paris attacks did not have more time to accomplish what they wanted in life but those of us who are still breathing at this moment still have it.  We still have time to travel to the places we have always wanted to, we still have time to show to another person that we love them, we still have time to get that one career that we always wanted to at a young age, we still have time to reach our goals.  All we have is this life, this one life and we have to make use of it to the best of our ability, because we might not have another life, another chance to enjoy the experience that many people call life. 

In Syria, Children Eat Leaves from Trees to Fight Starvation

Starvation. It is an experience that many of us have never gone through but millions of people in the world have to go through it every day.   That is Syria in 2016. Activists in Syria reported and showed pictures of Syrians starving and  dying because of the lack of food. Pictures of an elder man with ribs protruding from his chest, lying down his back and of a child crying wearing nothing but a thin cotton pant.  These starving Syrians come from a small town called Madaya, south of Syria, bordering Lebanon. The children and older men of the town eat  soup made from leaves and grass. And if they want rice, that would cost them more than $100. Yes, dollars. More than most Americans would ever spent on a kilo of rice.  Some children have not eaten for more than seven days.

Hearing these stories should make us feel grateful to be able to live in a country where we have all the necessary. If we have a roof over our head, then we are safe. If we have enough food on our table, then we are blessed. Millions of people do not have access to a shelter and even food and they do not have a choice but to live that way as it is the way of life for them.  For most of us, we should use this opportunity to count our blessings every day and to remember that every meal that we eat is an experience that millions of people in the world do not have. 

When A President Cries

During a speech to the nation yesterday, US President Obama proposed an executive gun law where gun sellers are required to do a background check on their customers.  Every president has have proposed a law before so there is no big deal but what makes this speech different than others is that the President put some emotions in it.  Rather than stay firm and strong as a man, he cried as he spoke about the killing of children in the town Newtown in Connecticut in 2012 and other victims in gun violence for the past decade.  We are taught that in order to think clearly, we have to remove any hint of emotions in our life.   But sometimes emotions can be a good thing. Having emotions shows we are still humans and we care, rather than brushing every problems away and coming up with a solution, like a programmed robot.  Despite the fact how he is the leader of the United States, Obama is still a human and he has emotions.  And best of all, the crying shows he cares and in a time of trying to put a change in effect, we need someone who cares behind all the fact at hand. 

The End of A Chapter

My favorite show How I Met Your Mother ended in March 2014 after ten years of being on air. Today is the year 2016 and I can still enjoy the series when I replay it on my laptop.  In an interview with the lead actor Josh Radnor, who played the character Ted in the show, he and the cast felt it was the right time to wrap up the show and the timing was in their own plan and it did not come as a big shock.  Likewise, in life, there will be chapters of our life where we will have to close and move on. When we choose to close certain parts of our life, we sometimes do it grudgingly and unwillingly but when we look back, we see how it benefits us and how it was the right move. When we move on, we open to new opportunities for our future instead of reliving the past.  Closing a chapter of our life means we have decided to live the presence and not focus on the past and move with where life takes us.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Chinese philosopher Xun Zi once said, "Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity."  Is human nature really evil?  In the movie The Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo wanted to see the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner and prison guard from August 14 - 20, 1971.  He interviewed a group of 70 students and chose 24 of them, giving them the role of either a prisoner or a prison guard in an experiment conducted in the Jordan Hall, in the Stanford Psychology building .  The participants came from middle class families and were mentally stable.  It intended to last for 14 days but it ended only after six days of the trial. Unexpectedly, the prison guards took their role seriously and began treating the prisoners as if they were real convicts.  The guards humiliated and used physical force to make the prisoners do certain tasks that the prisoners refused.  A few prisoners left the experiment early due to the mental torture that were inflicted on them.

The experiment shows the label of a person produces behaviors and it causes the person to act certain ways base on the label.  The worst part about the situation is that the person does not feel bad about their action because they see that it is their duties to do so.  It is the duty of the prison guard to be firm and show no leniency toward the prisoners.  And that the more authority a person has, the more risks he takes to mentally or physically harm the other person.  I wonder if each of us were given a label as a prisoner or a guard, would we do the same? Would we still be submissive like the prisoners and be harsh like the guards?  And despite how fictional the label is, would we forget our identity?

The experiment did no physical harm to the participants but the psychological effect is apparent through the actions of the participants after the label was put on them.  The study shows how our human nature is prone to being evil just by putting a label on us.  So is human nature naturally evil? Are we prone to inflict harm on other people?  At the end of the movie, a new student took the role of a prisoner after a few prisoners exited the experiment and he saw the brutality and the harsh treatment that the prison guards were inflicted on the prisoners.  The new prisoners refused to do what the guards ask them to do and they pointed out the harshness of the guard and how the experiment has gone too far.

As humans, we are prone to evil but like the new prisoner demonstrated, we can sense it when we see one.  We can smell and see evil from afar and we can choose to do something about it.  I used to complain to my mom that our American government spends so much time interfering other countries' business; for instance, America is involved in the Syrian refugee rescue because of a civii war in Syria and many of the refugees need a place to stay for their own safety and for a better future and the United States offers to take in a number of refugees. I used to be against the action but now I am all for it.  As humans, we cannot see evil and let it gets on with its cycle, we have to do something and make the world a better place to live.  The Stanford experiment shows humans are capable of evil but at the same time, we are capable of seeing goodness as well.