Performances

Performances are hard for most people. There are, of course, quite a number of people who are completely at ease with performance but then they are the lucky ones. They are the ones that we all want to be yet still wish we were somewhere else. Something about public performances just makes people feel nervous. I guess that brings us all back to one of man's greatest fears. That is the fear of being judged by other people. Psychologists have shown that this is one of our greater fears so much though that it can turn the bravest of us into nervous wrecks.

Image Source: http://www.macanxiety.com/information-about-anxiety-disorders/social-phobia/

There are many different types of performances out there which can have a diverse range of effects on the performer. For example, tonight I had a piano performance for the Music Society of Victoria (MSV) which went really well. The thing with me is that when I practice at home I make all these mistakes, especially right before a performance. However, when I play it in front of a crowd it is played almost perfectly. This even happens to me during my Piano Exams and is part of the reason as to why I get such good grades. I stress out before hand and make heaps of mistakes in practice. When I go to perform it is as if I never made a mistake in practice. That is just one of my reactions to public performances. Some people have the exact opposite reaction and play it perfectly alone yet choke when they come to performances. I am just one of the lucky ones although I do become a nervous wreck. Then there are the people who need absolutely no practice for their performance (musically or otherwise) and yet still perform perfectly. I guess they are just the lucky ones.

Practice generally makes perfect, see you tomorrow!

Internet Censorship is Wrong

Imagine a world where sites like YouTube and Facebook did not exist. A world where one could not share their thoughts through the click of a mouse, or the touch of a button. This is a world where everything online is censored and the only way to share what you’re really thinking is through word of mouth. We should not be controlling what is posted online. If we do what are we really losing? Culture? Social networks? Jobs?

We live in an age where the online world has become part of our global culture and ingrained into our everyday lives. We can see our culture everyday online; YouTube is a prime example. There are over half a billion channels on YouTube with over 70 hours of video uploaded every minute and it is available in over 60 languages. All the users and videos from all over the world create a vibrant global culture online. The censoring of this site and those like it would mean censoring of the global culture.

What democratic country censors a culture? Such an abhorrent act seems impossible of the western world yet if we were to regulate what people post online this would become a reality. We would lose our global culture due to the possibility of causing offence or alienation. Our Internet would be reduced to something devoid of entertainment. The internet would be the laughing stock of the modern world and our global culture would be lost forever. What do we really stand to lose when we control what is posted online?

The beginning of the control of what is posted online marks the end of Social Networks as we know them.  Sites like Facebook and Twitter would cease to exist. The sheer task of censoring the billion monthly active users on Facebook would mean it would take days for a post to actually go out to friends. People are not going to wait days to tell people what is happening right now. They will begin to stop using these sites and the companies like Facebook and Twitter will not be able to keep up with running costs and will have to shut down. Thousands of jobs would be lost for what?

What do we really stand to gain through controlling what is posted online? Is this insignificant gain important enough to cost thousands their jobs? Can we really bare the guilt associated with mass job loss just to protect our feelings? Thousands of people will have to go home one night and have to explain to their families why they will be no longer working. Thousands of families will struggle to make ends meet. Thousands of relationships will be put under stress, hundreds doomed to end. These jobs not only include the companies like Twitter and Facebook but also the local petrol station and café which rely on the workers coming in for breaks or to refill their cars on the way home from work. What about the local shopping centre that will lose customers? What about the children who will grow up in strained families where tension is always waiting around the corner? How will they cope when their families can no longer afford to pay for their school, hobbies or interests? How is a five or eight year old going to understand why they cannot have what their friends have and the concepts of unemployment? Controlling what is posted online will lead to pointless loss of jobs and will cause an emotional ripple effect.

The censoring of what is posted online will become one of the modern tragedies of our time. If we let this happen what do we stand to lose? Our global culture is surely doomed for extinction and the internet would be set to become the laughing stock of our generation. Then there are the social media networks that would no longer exist and the jobs they caused becoming redundant. Our entire economy would suffer just to protect our fragile feelings. Thousands of families will stand to lose so much more than their feelings if we begin to monitor what is posted online. We should not monitor what is posted online because we stand to lose so much more than hurt feelings if we do.

Image Source: http://www.israeltrade.org.au/israel-eyes-next-generation-internet/

The above was my speech for an oral presentation on the prompt "should we be allowed to post whatever we want online?" I presented this speech yesterday in English. 

May the odds be ever in your favour, see you tomorrow!

Homework

Finally! I just finished all my homework and assignments and I am feeling free to relax. I have had so much work with assignments and homework recently that I haven't even had a chance to enjoy some of my Birthday Presents yet (except for four episodes of Doctor Who). I've been lucky to even find the time to keep writing these posts. However, now it is over I can finally relax and catch up on all that I have missed out on. Hooray! It is is such a great feeling.

So the assignments we've had is a DNA Extraction Practical Report on the experiment we did last week and that was due today. It wasn't as bad because it was completed in pairs but it was still a lot of work to do, even between two people. The next thing was an English Oral Presentation which started today on whether people should be allowed to post whatever they want online. From here we got our own issue and contentions to talk about and we started presenting today though we were really slow (even though the speeches only go for 3 to 5 minutes) and we only got three done today so I probably will not even have mine until next week. I just have to say that it takes me 20 minutes to 40 minutes to write one of these blog posts with pictures but for my Oral Presentation which is just a speech it took me nearly 2 hours to write when it was shorter than two of these blog posts. The logic in that... At least that's done now and I just have to keep practicing every night which isn't so bad because I have what I'm going to say down pat so I only have key words on the palm cards.

Another assignment we have which is due on Friday and which I just completed was a Humanities Macroeconomics Assignment on an economist which we had to choose from a list. Each different Economist has their own questions related and though it seems simple it is far from it and it may seem easy to get the information but it isn't. It's very deceptive and takes hours to complete. It's an assignment you wouldn't be able to complete the night before (and get a good mark). I'm doing mine on Milton and Rose Friedman and I actually find it very interesting, although it can get boring and tedious.

The final assignment is one for History of Western Medicine which we started in class and it's a case study on a topic of our choice to do with Medicine from the 1800s to the 2000s. I'm doing a case study on Cholera while focusing more on the history of it and comparing it to modern day cases. It isn't such a hard task as we have benchmark tasks to complete along the way that help us complete the assignment. Our first benchmark task was an opening paragraph outlining our topic (I may have wrote a very large topic) then a statement (I may have wrote a paragraph) on why we chose it and some research questions to focus our research. The second task is an annotated Bibliography of four preliminary resources (we can use more in our research stage) and the third benchmark task is a research table using our research questions and we write notes from our research and the source we got it from. Finally, we write it up in a report and then print it out ready to be handed in (next Thursday).

So that is all the assignments we had plus all the extra homework we get on top of that. Luckily next week is Revision Week before exams so we don't have any tests and we don't get much homework because it's all revision. Then it's exams and we won't have a lot of homework for the next few weeks. Finally, I can relax!

May the odds be ever in your favour, see you tomorrow!