Final Blog

Race. Before this class, this was a simple term classifying what country a person was from. Through this class, I learned that it has many uses of that word. It has evolved so much from what it used to be back in the day. I think that reading these texts about race, nation and other things was good to to have in class because I dont really think about that stuff on my own. In the beginning of class, it was hard for me to understand some of these texts, but as i kept rereading it, it helped me read complex texts.
A nation is not just a country. It is a place where people come together to have similar beliefs and are all made citizens. All of the ways that Balibar and Omi and Winant thought up of these what i thought was simple terms forced me to think outside of the box and really stretch my thinking.

SLO

So for my Service Learning Organization, WashPirg, there was a year book photo shoot last week. This consisted of having student's pictures taken that had debt because of student loans and after their picture was taken, we put all of the pictures together to make a year book format book. Underneath each person's picture, there was a caption of how much debt that they were in, and how they were going to pay it off, and estimated time that they were going to pay all of that off. The photo shoot went pretty decently. We were expecting to have about 100 people in it this year, but ended up with roughly 84. Thats a lot better than last year because they only had about 50 in it. What they do with the yearbook afther they are done with it is they give it to the state senator Reichert, who is a major person that supports the cutting back of interest rates for student loans. This helps to show senator Reichert how serious of a problem that the debt that students have is. I did not enjoy doing this outside in front of the Hub because it was slightly raining and it was freezing cold. Although I may have suffered physically, at least i contributed in making things better for people that are struggling with debt.

service learning

So far, for my service learning, I meet with my instructor for an hour every thursday and plan what we are going to do. For last week, I was given the task of finding the contact information of ASUW members, an economics professor, other faculty, some state legislature member's contact information, and many other people. It was frustrating to find all of this information because it became very tedious and it was difficult to find the all of their phone numbers, fax numbers, address, email address, and their names. Some of the people on the list didn't even have a last name, so I had trouble figuring out who the person was.
A story that I have is when I wen to meet my instructors, Nicole and Shirin. I was a little bit late to our planned meeting, and Nicole was not in her office. I was about to go home, but I saw that Shirin was coming up the stairs. We then started our meeting and Nicole joined us a half hour later. She was out of breath and very happy about something. She said that the interest rates for student loans were cut and because she worked so hard to do it, she was in the front page of the Daily newspaper here at UW. She then started to freak out and wanted to make a thank you card for State Senator Reichert, because he was the main supporter of this interest rate cut. It was really fun seeing Nicole making a very flamboyant and colorful thank you card. She even put glitter all over it. She loves glitter. The most intersting thing was that there was glitter all over the table and all over the floor. It took us an additional hour to clean that up. It was a very frustrating thing to pick up glitter. After we were done cleaning up all of the glitter, I thought that we were done. However, the card was accidentally glued shut. We attempted to pull it out, but instead, we just ruined it. So for the next 2 hours, We reconstructed the card, and had to go through the whole process of finding the news paper articles, cutting multiple sheets of construction paper, myriad amounts of gluing and pasting, and a lot of coloring and glitter application. This was a very long day.

Blog Entry 2

1.The service learning that I am doing is with Wash Pirg student debt. This is an organization with many different things that they focus on. What they do is basically try to help students have an easier and more less stressful time while going to college. I am working with the student debt part of the organization. There are many other parts to washpirg such as cutting textbook prices and other things.
2.The position that I am working is working with the media. I am assigned to contact the news, state senators, and other people to come to our forum that wash pirg is holding at the end of the quarter. At the forum, the leader of the group Wash Pirg that I am working with along with her co-workers are going to inform the people in attendence about the serious debt problem and the high student loan interest rates that exist. The task of contacting all of these people is pretty difficult to do because I have to go and find the contact information for each senator and all of the other people that I have to contact. It can get pretty frustrating because it is difficult to find some of the senator's contact information. Also, I am going to be phone banking to get volunteers to come to the annual year book photo shoot. The purpose of this is to get students with debt and have their picture taken along with how much debt in loans and etc. that they have. After all of the pictures are taken and the year book is complete, we are going to send it to state senator reichert, who is the person that supports cutting student loan interest rates.
3.My student service learning is connected to Balibar by helping to become a unified nation. I may play a minor role in cutting student loan interest rates, but if I am successfull in bringing some senators and media attention to the forum that we are going to hold at the end of the quarter, I have shared knowledge with people and informed them about a problem that they were unaware of. Also if we are successful in persuading the senators in supporting the cuts in student loan interest rates, I will have been a part of helping to put everybody in an equal plane and create what Balibar claims is a "nation."

In class assignment first blog

My name is Phil Kim. I am a second-year student here at the University of Washington. I attended Jackson High School. I currently reside in Mill Creek, and commute I commute from there. I like to play basketball,tennis, sing, eat, sleep, and just kicking it. On the weekends I like hanging out with my friends and doing random things. In the summer time, I love to fish and go crabbing. It is the best feeling in the world when the wind is blowing in your face, and you pull those ropes up and see a cage full of crabs. I am the oldest of 4 kids. I have 3 younger sisters. My sisters' names are Regina, who attends the University of Washington and is 19 years old, Christina, who is 15, and Stella, who is 5 years old. I live with all 3 of my sisters, mother, father, and grandmother.
Society is affected by race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and ability in many ways. People are often discriminated and outcasted because of the above mentioned things. I have experienced a lot of discrimination because I am an asian american and the ways I carry out my culture. Once in middle school, while I was eating some rice with kimchi and other korean food, my caucasian friends would make fun of me and say that my food smells like shit. From then on, I would never bring a sack lunch. There were many other instances like this in my life.
Community to me is a group of people that are together and work together like a team. It also means to me that the people in the community are close with each other and share a strong bond together. A citizen is a person that resides within a community. I think that a duty of a citizen is to contribute to the overall well-being of the community by whatever means possible. A nation is a large group of many communities. Although it has many communities within it, it is still one community. When I hear the word race, I think of the human race.
To be an active citizen, like I mentioned earlier, you must contribute to the well being of your community. You can do this in many ways. A good way is by volunteering. One does not have to do something incredibly difficult to be an active citizen. You can do something small like obeying the speed limit signs, not littering, saying "please" and "thank you," or anything along those lines. They all contribute to the overall well-being of a community.
I have volunteered at many places in my life. Currently, I am volunteering at my church as a sunday school teacher. I do it because I like making an impact on kids lives. I think that the community-based service that I am going to do is going to be fun.
I think that I will make a big impact on the community through the service learning that I am going to do. I strongly believe that one person can make a difference. I think that the community will make me a better person and help me learn new things about myself through this service learning.
The qualities and skills that I bring to my service work is my hard working skills, being quick on my feet, timeliness, being an optimist, and being a friendly person. The skills that I hope to develop through working in the community is patience. I know that I am an impatient person, but through this service learning, I hope to find patience within myself and find my inner chi.