Communication Major

Rather than relating class material to my own thoughts, this post will be more of me saying what I think about the Communication major at UIC (though I guess that was class material, just in a different style). I'm planning on declaring Communication as my major after this semester ends, and I don't really think I'm too worried about things. That is, until after Tuesday's class with Dace's presentation. I'm a transfer student with most of my gen eds completely out of the way, so after this year I SHOULD only have 1 year left, but it's starting to look like I might have a tough time doing so with all of the pre-requisites for many of the Comm classes. Let's hope I can get through this as quickly and painlessly as possible. I don't know if I could afford another semester of school!

Another thing, which is more of a critique of her presentation, that I noticed concerns the way she made the path of graduating with a bachelor's degree in Communication seem. She spent quite a bit of time talking about how it's not going to be easy getting through the program, but not because of class difficulty, but she made it seem like things will go wrong that will be out of the student's control. It almost seemed as though she was trying to scare people out of the program rather than convince us to join it. I know she doesn't mean to do that (at least I hope not), but this is what she seemed to communicate to the class (ironic?).

Either way, I hope choosing to major in Communication at UIC doesn't end up biting me in the rear end rather than help me learn.

Torture in the media

In class we talked about the use of the word "torture" in media stories about Abu Ghraib. It seems as though the feelings of the people that conducted this study were trying to get people to think that the news coverage should have used the term "torture" more often than they did. Now, I definitely believe that the treatment of some of the prisoners there was DEFINITELY torture, but by no means do I think that it's the media's job to tell us whether it was torture or not. If the media started reporting this as torture out of nowhere, I think it would sound very biased if no one was convicted of torturing prisoners by that point in time. I think the media should report what exactly occurred and then leave it up to the readers to decide whether or not it was "torture." Until anyone is convicted of torture, the media has no actual power in saying that torture occurred.