Entry #10 ~ Stress

Dealing with school and what can feel like almost endless assignments can be difficult, especially when trying to stay on top of multiple classes, and can cause a lot of stress. However, what exactly is stress, and what are some ways you can counter it?

Stress is experienced when you feel pressured and can't manage a situation. For example, if you have a lot of assignments due, you may feel stressed because you think you won't be able to get them in on time.

It isn't always bad to experience some stress; feeling under pressure may be beneficial for some. However, if you are experiencing stress over a long period of time or it feels overbearing, then you should seek professional help. But what are ways to counter and or deal with stress at home?

There are many ways to deal with and alleviate stress, but they don't all work for everyone. We all have our own needs and preferences, what might work for someone else might not work for you, so it is important to figure out what best suits you. According to Adam Felman’s article Why stress happens and how to manage it, some ways you can manage stress include exercising, managing priorities, and talking to others. (Felman 2020)

This article compiles everything you need to know about stress and dealing with it and is a good source if you want to learn more. I found it very useful. It taught me that using priority management to organize everything I need to do helps me manage my stress and focus on my assignments. I suggest looking into this article and exploring what works for you to manage your stress the next time you experience it.

Entry #9 ~ Topics in Food Quest

For a discussion response in my class, we looked at two sources related to the food industry, and the article we had to look at was intriguing. It is by Michael Pellman Rowland called "Here’s How We Solve Our Food Waste Problem."

This article aims to inform people about food waste and its issues. The article wants to persuade the audience to take action and do what they can. However, instead of just persuading people, they also provide various solutions, including what anyone at home can do to help lessen food waste. I feel diving further into this article would be interesting since we only did an overall analysis and hadn't gone further than that. This article is relevant because of what's happening in our environment and climate change.

Food waste is a definitive issue and affects everyone and everything on our planet. Being more aware of the problems in the world is imperative to finding solutions and helping solve the problem. In this article, they discuss various issues surrounding food waste, including world hunger, loss of resources, and cost. I never thought any of these could be related to food waste, but this article provides evidence and sources that make it impactful.

Now not only do they tell us the issues revolving around food waste, but they also provide various solutions to help alleviate and lessen the amount of food wasted. These solutions cover each issue and give statistics to back up how they could help. One important one that I should note is the solution for consumer behavior. He says that by changing what we are eating, and avoiding the foods attributed to the issues like animal products. (Rowland 2017)

This solution is crucial because it means anyone can help lessen food waste by eating differently and picking more sustainable products like fruits and vegetables. After reading this article in class, I realized that even though I am one person, there are things I can do to help alleviate big problems.

Entry #8 ~ Delving into Self Care

I find taking care of myself especially important since I spend most of my time staring at a computer screen as I work on school online. The topic of self-care has always been intriguing, but it is an expansive field, so there's always more to learn. Since life can be stressful, taking care of yourself physically, spiritually, or mentally can help ease stressors like school and make them less overwhelming.

First off, what even is self-care? It is the process of taking care of yourself to better your health and make day-to-day life more manageable. Researching it further, I found it is vast and unique for everyone. There are many ways people could take care of themselves, such as taking breaks from working, getting a healthy amount of sleep every night, and even drinking enough water.

From small or massive changes in everyday life, you could greatly benefit from paying more attention to what you do every day to care for yourself and maybe asking where you could improve. I found an article by Elizabeth Scott (Ph.D.) titled 5 Self Care Practices for Every Area of Your Life that talks about how utilizing self-care can have many benefits, including, but not limited to, lessening burnout and increased energy.

Through trial and error, I have learned it takes time to get into the habit of caring for yourself, and I still struggle with it sometimes. Through this, I found that by paying attention to what is necessary for me and prioritizing myself, every day feels a little easier. I encourage you to read her article and look at her last section about developing a self-care plan. It could be a great place to start and learn more about what you could do to help improve your day-to-day and take care of yourself.

Entry #7 ~ FRESH

In my English class, we recently watched the film FRESH in preparation for our third essay. Before this, I never was interested in agriculture or understood anything related to its field. This film provided insights into the current agricultural situation and its issues. 

To explain anything else in regards to this film would be difficult without introducing you to it first; however, I recommend watching it yourself if you have not. To summarize, FRESH is a documentary film by Ana Sofia Joanes that dives into sustainable agriculture, whose goal is to provide for society without jeopardizing natural resources. Its purpose is to inform the audience about industrial production and show them a better, more sustainable option. 

They do this by explaining what industrialized agriculture is and what sustainable agriculture is as well. Throughout these portions, they give various views of farmers and journalists to help the audience better understand the situation. By giving perspectives of the situation, they establish a tone of urgency through vocabulary used to describe situations. For example, how pesticides and fertilizers are destroying the environment. 

The tone helped me connect with the purpose of the movie. I noticed this when the film talked about the conditions inside factory farms and showed it visually; it made me feel horrible. Then when they showed Will Allen's farm, where he explained what he does, I found it interesting and wanted to learn more about urban farming. 

Overall the film made me question our current conditions especially concerning food production. The purpose and message of this film are important because they help cast light on the current situation and provide a potential solution for fixing it. Its message resonated with me, and if you decide to watch it yourself, I hope it does too.