Summary:
A personal essay about Mass Media class
To whom it may concern,
I would first like to thank you for taking time out of your busy day to read my letter. I feel this is a very important matter and should be discussed amongst your fellow legislatures. I will now get straight to the point. At the beginning of the school year, I moved in with my aunt and uncle and decided I was going to finish my high school career at Delavan Darien High School. Intimidated by this new high school, I walked in feeling insecure and unsure about this situation I was in. I glanced down at my schedule and the first class on the list was "Mass Media". The last class I would ever want to go to. So I entered the room uneasy at first and had a prejudged idea of how boring this class was going to be. so I had an idea of what to prepare for, but nothing I did would prepare me for what was about to happen.
The teacher, Ms. Sloan, started teaching and she talked for a while, I wasn't paying too much attention. And she looked directly at me and said, "Media is pervasive. Its all around us, sometimes we notice it and sometimes we block it out." that really stuck in my head. I've never really thought about it before. Media is always around us, no matter whatever we do, its there. Webster's definition of "pervasive" is tending to pervade or spread throughout. Media has been spreading for centuries and it has never slowed down at. In fact, it actually has increased more and more over the years. Whenever you drive on the road, you have the radio telling you about a new concert coming out or if you look off the side of the road, you'll see a billboard advertising McDonalds. As I walk down the hallway, I see shirts advertising Abercrombie and Finch and book bags advertising East Sport. Media and advertising is all around us and I believe that with a required "Mass Media" class, kids and young adults will become more aware of this and will be able to actually think about what they're seeing or being exposed to.
After the first introductory unit, we learned how to break apart some mediums, such as television, radios, newspaper, and even advertisements, and analyze certain components that make up media. We just recently learned the basic components that make up an advertisement and how you can really tell if an ad is a "good" ad or if its just made up to be better than it really is.
I feel that with the use of a media and society class, it would help students not to be "suckered" into certain media. A few decades ago, big cigarette companies were advertising cigarettes on television and because of that many teenagers were hooked. If they had a media and society class back then, I bet that the number of smokers would have been a lot lower than it actually was. but that was a long time ago and times have change. there is proof that since they added more public service announcements about drugs, that the amount of teenagers who actually do drugs has decreased and most of that is due to fact that more people watch television than ever before
This is the complete article, containing 559 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
