Talking Is Hard

We have all had to deliver many speeches, perhaps even one every year since middle school. Giving a speech to a group, even only as large as thirty people, can seem to be the end of the world. However, with all the speeches that I have had to write and present to a class, I have learned an awful lot about what I can do well, and what I really cannot.

My biggest weakness, like many others', would certainly be nerves. In every speech I gave in high school I was certain I had the worst nerves of anyone else in the class. I have learned now that the easiest way to eliminate nerves is simply to practice the speech over and over again. So to overcome nerves in all of my future speeches I will make sure that I have all of my content internalized enough to be conversational, but know exactly what I am talking about to be confident in my presentations.

Another big issue I have always had is that I have no idea how to stand, where to walk, and what to do with my arms. I have known people who would use hand gestures in everyday conversation, but that has never been me. So when it's time for me to stand up before an audience and we are not supposed to simply put our hands in our pockets, or by our sides, I haven't the slightest clue how to gesture without appearing awkward. I think that the best way to overcome this would be to practice gesturing while speaking, but I do not know how that could be practiced. Hopefully the workshops we will be doing in RCL will help with this.

I believe that my strongest strength in speaking is my verbal variety. I think that I am very good at creating variable sentence structures, and projecting my voice in a way that engages the audience. By putting emphasis on certain words, and just having a dynamic voice in general, I make my speeches more interesting to listen to. I will continue to capitalize on this by practicing my speeches and knowing where to place emphasis during delivery.

By putting a lot of effort into practicing my speech, learning how to use my arms, and capitalizing on my dynamic speaking, I believe I will be able to deliver a killer presentation.

The Progression of Violence in Video Games

After much consideration, I decided that I did not like either of my original topics for the Paradigm Shift Paper and TED Talks. I did not believe that either of the two would make great discussions for the topic, in being too general and hard to narrow down to be more specific.

So instead I have come up with an entirely new topic! I will discuss the gradual change in our popular, best-selling video games from a complete lack of gun violence to an era where just about every popular title features shooting of people, whether they be soldiers of an enemy nation (in war games like Call of Duty and Battlefield), or even innocent victims (such as in the Grand Theft Auto series).

My thesis then would be the following: Over the span of just three decades, the most popular video games in the industry have become noticeably more violent, illustrating a shift in society's mentality where once simulating killing at all was unheard of, yet now it is extremely common, even in our youth.

This trend can be measured in a variety of ways, many of which I will aim to discuss in my paper. The first, and perhaps easiest thing to research is the most successful video games of all time, and to compare the ones from the 80s, to the 90s, etc... The trend should be obvious, Mario Bros., one of the most popular of all time, came out in 1981, while Call of Duty made its appearance in 2003. Of course many exceptions exist such as Minecraft in 2009, but the general trend is there. We can also examine how series like The Legend of Zelda have been on the decline, while Call of Duty puts out a bigger hit every year. Another discussion point is how the violence itself evolved, from ghosts chasing Pac-man, to criminals running over pedestrians with their cars.

After defining the shift, I will also discuss how the shift is important, in how it affects our society. Our youth seems to be more violent than it has ever been, according to this article. While some people believe it is all good fun, many people hypothesize that these violent video games may cause increased aggression in children. Both sides of the debate can be found in this article. Even if the games don't cause increased aggression, they certainly show a change in mentality of the acceptability of killing other people (even in a virtual world).

Some sources I will use are linked in the post. Some others are below:

http://www.video-game-addiction.org/violence.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33960075
http://time.com/4000220/violent-video-games/
http://ncac.org/resource/a-timeline-of-video-game-controversies/

Paradigm Shifts

As all of us who have lived any amount of time have realized that our world is not static. Everything, especially the way that we think, is constantly being changed. We have seen this all throughout history. Our world is obviously very different than what it was even twenty years ago. We call the mental climates paradigms, and a change in society's collective paradigms over trends are paradigm shifts.

It has taken me quite a long time to come up with adequate, yet somewhat interesting ideas, but I think I have two fairly good ideas. The first idea for my paradigm shift is the rise of atheist/agnostic/unaffiliated individuals in the United States. In just 2007, only 16% of the United States population identified as religiously unaffiliated, while last year the percentage shot up to 24%. I have seen people handing out free bibles across Penn State at least three times now since I have moved in, and this is a clear reflection of the slight fall of Christianity in the United States.

A 6% increase is a very steep increase for only a period of 7 years. For my research paper and TED talk, I would like to examine what else is changing that correlates with the decline in religion, and what this overall change means for our society. (Photo Credit)

Another very prevalent paradigm shift that we have seen in just the past decade is the changing climate for the LGBT community. Just fifty years ago it was almost unheard of for an LGBT individual to bring their sexuality to the forefront, while now LGBT pride is getting more and more popular. I would like to discuss how our social environment has changed to make it a little bit easier for an individual to be proud of their own sexuality in public, and what this means for civil rights as a whole.

I am not yet sure if I will use either of these topics, but they are indeed a good, tentative start....