Paper 1 D.S.
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Paper 1
Video Analysis
Starting with the Wesch video from YouTube, where he collects multiple forms of data to illustrate what it looks like to be a student presently--which we might call Student Ecology, or Student Anthropology, at times--I'm asking you to consider possible issues that come along with looking at Student Ecology. So, you should work at both summarizing what Wesch has done in the video, as well as what issues might come from that video.
Following the summary of the video, I want you to present your connection to these issues. You should answer questions like, "how does the video compare to my experience? How does it differ?"
Finally, Wesch also brings up the ideas of cultural literacy and cultural competency, particularly in that we're "preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist". Here you should answer questions like, "Does your present ecology (outlined above) provide you with either CL or CC? In what ways? Can you see your connections to the videos? How are they present, how are they not? You should end up with approximately 1200-1400 words. You may also include video or images if they are pertinent to your work.
The outcomes for this assignment include:
Using and understanding the terms that the course is based on.
Connecting (personalizing) those terms in your own experience
Thoughts and Ideas
Student Ecology
-Definition of ecology: The scientific study of the distribution and abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as insolation (sunlight), climate, and geology, and biotic factors, which are other organisms that share its habitat. -wikipedia
-Student Ecology: How a student interacts with others and his environment.
Video
-Summary: The music is accompanied by music that reminds me of 007 golden eye for N64, it's got a beat and it gets faster as it goes but it's almost saddening or depressing. The entire video was wordless, there was music but the only form of communication was writeing either on the room, signs held by students, pretyped messages on lap tops or on a blank screen. --
-Here are the messages (my thoughts will be in italic):
(on a blank screen)
"todays child is bewildered when he enters the 19th cententry environment that still charicterizes the education establishment where information is scarce, but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects and scheduals." -Marshal McLuhan 1967
If the 19th century learning environment is so bewildering to students and lacks information, why do we still use it?
Our culture is responsible for our learning establishment. We have our system set up the way it is because that's way it has been and people don't think it needs to be changed untill they look past what culture has told us to be true.
(on walls and chairs)
If these walls could talk
what would they say?
If students learn what they do...
What are they learning sitting here?
Are we learning to sit? take notes? be students
(on chalk board)
The information is up here
Fallow
(on chairs)
of course walls and desks cannot talk
But students can
(Document in background)
200 students made 367 edits to this document
and surveyed themselves
To bring you the fallowing message
I think it's nice that a student ecology project was made by students, it makes the information seem more crediable
(students)
my average class size is 115
18% of my teachers
know my name
i complete 49% of the reading assignments given to me
only 26% are relevant to my life.
I buy hundred dollar text books that I never open
I feel like these past few lines have addressed problems that were pushed apon them in a way. I feel like it addresses the way the education system today treats us more like a number that needs to be put through a system as apposed to an individual. It seems like we all just kind of have to bite the bullet and take some dumb classes or buy some worthless books about stuff we'll never use for a prerequisite or somthing.
In my sociology class we discussed how a education system must balance 2 charictaristics that confilict with eachother. The first charictaristic is maximizing human deveolopment, the second is educating the masses. Maximizing human deveolpment would be seem to be the goal of top priority, but if it is focused on too much, children that excell immediatly would get immediate and a lot of attention, leaving those less quick with hardly any attention at all.
my neighbor paid for class but never comes
I will read 8 books this year
2300 web pages & 1281 facebook profiles
I will write 42 pages for class this semester
and over 500 pages of email
This set of messages seems to be more self-blame situations. All these people addressed issues that were complete personal choices. So should we blame the students for focusing on things other than class or should we blame the education system that cannot keep their attention?
I get 7 hours of sleep each night!
I spend 1 1/2 hours watching tv each night
I spend 3 1/2 hours online each day
I listen to music 2.5 hours a day
I spend 2 hours on my cell phone
I spend 3 hours in class
2 hours eating
I work 2 hours every day
3 hours studying
that's a total of 26.5 hour a day
I'm a multi-tasker
I have to be
I know how that is, just the other day, the internet destroyed my paper and now i've gotta do a lot of multi-tasking to re-type it :)
I will be $20000 in debt after graduation
I'm one of the lucky ones
Over 1 billion people
make less than $1 a day
This laptop costs more than some people in the world make in year.
I think this is one of those "It's not good but it's not the worst" sort of situations.
when i graduate i will probably have a job
that doesn't exist today
filling this out won't help me get there. (on "bubble in" for exam)
or deal with all this
I think they're getting at the point that our education system is so set on being organized and structured that it's not fully preparing students
i did not create the problems
but they are my problems
(writeing on screen)
Some have suggested that technology (alone) can save us...
(students)
I facebook through most of my classes
I bring my laptop to class, but i'm not working on class stuff
So, there are a lot of very obvious reasons that technology is helpfull, but I think this is sayign that technology alone cannot save us.
(on blank screen)
"The invintor of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributers to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind." -Josiah F. Bumstead 1841
...on the benefits of the chalk board
Cultural Literacy/ Cultural Compitancy
-Defenition of Culture: refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another" -wikipedia
-Summary: Culture is defined by it's symbols and their meanings. We create the association we have with a symbol even though we may dislike it. These sybols lack fixed boundary, and their meanings are always changing, interacting, and competeing.
-Defenition of Cultural Literacy: The ongoing process of the acquisition and management of "the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions and informal content which creates and constitutes a dominant culture. From being familiar with street signs to knowing historical reference to understanding the most recent slang, literacy demands interaction with the culture and reflection of it."- wikipedia
-Summary: Cultural literacy is a person's ablity to interact, understand, and fit in with a dominate culture.
-Defenition of Cultural Compitancy: ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. Cultural competence is comprised of four components: (a) Awareness of one's own cultural worldview, (b) Attitude towards cultural differences, (c) Knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and (d) cross-cultural Skills. Developing cultural competence results in an ability to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures.--wikipedia as well.
-Summary: how well a person interacts with other cultures. allowing them to understand, communicate with, and interact with people from different cultures.
(a) knowing your own culture
(b) how you feel about cultural differances
(c) knowledge about other cultures
(d)cross-culture skills
-Culture Quotes (intro idea)
"Culture is made--or destroyed--by it's articulate voices" -Ayn Rand
"Culture is like dropping an Alka-Seltzer in a glass-you don't see it, but somehow it does somthing." -Hans Magnus Enzensberger
"If we are to achieve a richer culture...we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." -Margret Mead
"Culture is roughly anything we do and monkeys don't." -Lord Raglan
"Culture is a youth holding a molotov cocktail. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down" -Edward Abbey
-Definition of Civilization: a society or culture group.
Rough Draft 1
"Civilization is a youth holding a molotov cocktail. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down."
-Edward Abbey
I've never really thought of civilization as a young man carrying an explosive, and I don't believe I've ever viewed culture as a tank or cop shooting a Molotov cocktail wielding youth. I always thought that culture was suppose to help a civilization, not supress it.--I think this might be your thesis, if it is try to make it pop so that it sticks with the reader throughout the paper-- I recently watched a video made by students at Kansas State about student ecology that made me look at society and culture a little differently by taking a closer look at some of the issues brought up when looking at how students interact with their surroundings and others.--this last sentence is a little confusing but i like where you are going with it--
One issue addressed by the video was stated in a quote, "Todays child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still charicterizes the education establishment where information is scarce, but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects and scheduals." -Marshal McLuhan 1967. When looking at this quote you get the feeling Marshal wasn't too fond of the 19th century's definition of an education establishment. Looking a little closer at the 19th century's definition of the education establishment I found that wikipedia defines formal education as "systematic instruction, teaching, and training by professional teachers." It even goes as far as to name the different systems of formal education. Looking back at McLuhan's quote about the education establishment I'd say he pretty much said the same thing with a little more distaste. So if the education system is too focused on organization and not focused enough on learning, why don't we change the education system? Could it be culture? Why would our culture stop us from improving the education system.
Another question to ask would be if our education system isn't up to par, why do we put so much faith in it? We all go through classes we that don't teach us anything relevent to our lives, buy books that we don't need, and if it's true that we learn what we do, we are paying for classes where we are learning to sit and take notes. The education establishment is so systematic that it gave me a number, I'm not even Drew to them, I'm an eight digit number that gets processed through the system and if I don't fit into the system, I either change or it spits me out. The only excuse that I can think of for doing it is because it's just what I'm suppose to do. I'm suppose to go through college sit through useless classes, buy useless books, and memorize things I'll never need, to get a degree and a better job. But why do people put so much faith in a degree? I know I do, and to my understanding a lot of employers do, but when you take away the meaning that people put behind that degree, if it wasn't viewed as a sign of higher education, is it really anything more than paper and ink? Once again could culture be the reason we put so much faith in this piece of paper?
Taking a closer look at culture I found a definition on wikipedia that said cultures are "systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another." So culture is anything and everything people put meaning behind, a degree is a symbol that means higher education, and the education system is a symbol that means an establishment based on organization. Even the world culture is a symbol that is associated with civilizations being more civilized. --This is a really powerful statement, it really compliments the quote you chose-- So this brings me to the question why do we go along with the meanings put behind these symbols, often times they are not nearly as great as we think they are. This question brings me back to my rural sociology class. On the first day I walked into class and on the overhead there was one word in bold with it's definition under it. The word was Thomas Theorem; "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." So if we believe things like degrees mean higher education and education systems are suppose to be organized establishments, whether either of those are true or not is irrelivent, they still have real effects on our society. So if everyone believes that having a degree makes a person more qualified for a job, people will go to school to get a degree, and if everyone believes that an education establishment must be systematic, that's how the education system will be.
If things like this are only true because we believe they are, why don't we just believe differently to make things better? I think the main reason is because, as Edward put it, we've been shot down. To function in society one must have at least some cultural literacy. Cultural literacy is how well a person can interact with thier culture. Cultural literacy is everything from understanding the writing and language of a culture to sharing views on things like education establishments. If a person is born and raised in a certian culture, they are around people that see things like systematic education establishments as an obvious requirement for higher education and they in turn begin to this kind of establishment an obvious requirement also.--this sentence is a little confusing-- Culture spreads like wild fire, some parts of it linger longer than others, but it is constantly changing, and it causes us to do a lot of illogical things that we never see illogical. This applys to every aspect of our life, not just our views on education. I want you to think about one of the most obvious things a person needs to do before leaving their house; putting on cloths. I've never thought twice about walking out that front door naked, but if it were about eighty five degrees out with a nice breeze and our culture hadn't labeled nudity as innapropriate and offecive I'll bet alot of people would really enjoy it. On the other hand, our culture has labeled things like theft and murder wrong. Although some people do, most would not pick up a candy bar or soda from a gas station and walk out without paying even if the cashier wasn't there.
So if culture is this tank or cop about ready to shoot a young man. Who is the young man, the civilization? Wikipedia defines civilization as a society or cultural group, so in the case of student ecology I would say students are the "civilization". This makes me wonder, what if there was no tank or cop to stop this youth? What if civilization had no culture? Is Edward trying to say this young man with a bomb is a rebel trying to fight for a better way, or simply a rioter that would loot and steal? On one hand without culture we could maximize human development by fixing the education system, but on the other hand we may turn to savages with no morals. I do not know the awnser, but in the end, when a young man with a bottle of gasoline picks a fight with a tank, he loses. Culture will always be, it's against human nature to not have culture. Ever since the beginning of time, people have formed groups and have bonded from common beliefs. So in the end the only thing a person can do is try to understand the culture they live in and the ones around them and use that information to the best of their ability.
---=Chelsea K This paper was really well written and came full circle from the beginning to the end. Besides a few spelling errors here and there, the argument was presented clearly so I was able to see where you were going with it. You also backed your argument with a few well placed quotes. The only issue there might be is that some of the sentences tend to run on getting slightly jumbled, other than that it was entertaining and interesting to read.
- Myron- When i first read it i was a little lost but once i started to read the whole thing it was a good paper. All the comment you had about culture and degree were back up by good facts. You were able to use different things to tell how if that what you are taught and that what you live around then your going to do what was taught. You were able to bring common thing into the paper and make them really stand out.**
Revised
"Civilization is a youth holding a Molotov cocktail. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down." -Edward Abbey
I've never really thought of civilization as a young man carrying an explosive, and I can't remember ever viewing culture as a tank or cop shooting at someone. I always thought that culture was supposed to help a civilization, not suppress it? I started to look at how culture and society interact a little differently after watching a video made by some students at Kansas State. This video's topic was student ecology and addressed culture and society by taking a closer look at some issues brought up when studying how students interact with their environment.
One issue addressed by the video was stated in a quote, "Today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the education establishment where information is scarce, but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects and schedules." -Marshal McLuhan 1967. When looking at this quote you get the feeling Marshal wasn't too fond of the 19th century's definition of an education establishment. Looking a little closer at the 19th century's definition of the education establishment I found that Wikipedia defines formal education as "systematic instruction, teaching, and training by professional teachers." It even goes as far as to name the different systems of formal education. Looking back at McLuhan's description of the education establishment I'd say he pretty much said the same thing with a little more distaste. So if the education system is too focused on organization and not focused enough on learning, why don't we change the education system? Could it be culture, if so, why would our culture stop us from improving the education system?
Another question to ask would be if our education system isn't up to par, why do we put so much faith in it? We all go through some classes that that don't teach us anything relevant to our lives, buy books that we don't need, and if it's true that we learn what we do, we are paying for classes that teach us to sit and take notes. The education establishment is so systematic that it gave me a number. I'm not even Drew to them; I'm an eight digit number that gets processed through a system. On most of the tests that I've taken, it's more important to put down your number correctly than it is your name. The only excuse that I can think of for doing it is because it's just what I'm supposed to do. I'm suppose to go through college sit through useless classes, buy useless books, and memorize things I'll never need, to get a degree and a better job. But why do people put so much faith in a degree? I know I do, and to my understanding a lot of employers do, but when you take away the meaning that people put behind that degree, if it wasn't viewed as a sign of higher education, is it really anything more than paper and ink? Once again, could culture be the reason we put so much faith in this piece of paper?
Taking a closer look at culture I found a definition on Wikipedia that said cultures are "systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another." So culture is anything and everything people put meaning behind. A degree is a symbol that means higher education, and the education system is a symbol that means an establishment based on organization. Even the word culture is a symbol that is associated with civilizations being superior. So this brings me to the question why do we go along with the meanings put behind these symbols? Often times they are not nearly as great as we think they are. Asking myself this question, I was reminded of my rural sociology class. On the first day I walked into class and on the overhead there was one word in bold with its definition under it. The word was Thomas Theorem; "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." This means if we believe things like degrees mean higher education and education systems are supposed to be organized establishments, whether either of those are true or not is irrelevant, they still have real effects on our society. So if everyone believes that having a degree makes a person more qualified for a job, people will go to school to get a degree, and if everyone believes that an education establishment must be systematic, that's how the education system will be.
If things like this are only true because we believe they are, why don't we simply believe differently to make things better? To answer this question the only explanation I could think of is because that's the way it's always been. I never really thought to believe any other way until recently; this brings me to cultural literacy. Cultural literacy is the ability to interact with a dominate culture, and it is learned. To function at all in society one must have at least some cultural literacy. Those who have minimal cultural literacy may only know basic speech and little on to nothing on appropriate thought and behavior for that culture, such as babies. Those with more cultural literacy know how their culture views most symbols. For example, if a person were born and raised in the American suburbs by the time they were in high school they would know that a degree is viewed as an obvious sign of higher education. Cultural literacy is what spreads culture. Someone somewhere decided a long time ago that education establishments need to be systematic and the idea went from generation to generation by subconsciously teaching our children cultural literacy. You see, if a person is born and raised around people that see something as obvious, they begin to see it as obvious too. This applies to every aspect of our life, not just our views on education. I want you to think about one of the most obvious things a person needs to do before leaving their house; putting on cloths. I've never thought twice about walking out that front door naked, but if it were about eighty five degrees out with a nice breeze and our culture hadn't labeled and convinced everyone that nudity is inappropriate and offensive, I'll bet a lot of people would really enjoy it. On the other hand, our culture has labeled things like theft and murder wrong. Although some people do, most would not pick up a candy bar or soda from a gas station and walk out without paying even if the cashier wasn't there.
So if culture is this tank or cop about ready to shoot a young man. Who is the young man, the civilization? Wikipedia defines civilization as a society or cultural group, so in the case of student ecology I would say students are the "civilization". This makes me wonder, what if there was no tank or cop to stop this youth? What if civilization had no culture? Is Edward trying to say this young man with a bomb is a rebel trying to fight for a better way, or simply a rioter that wants to destroy something? On one hand without culture we could easily maximize human development by fixing the education system, but on the other hand we may turn to savages with no morals that steal and murder. I do not know the answer, but in the end, when a young man with a bottle of gasoline picks a fight with a tank, he loses. Culture will always be. It's against human nature to not have culture. Ever since the beginning of time, people have formed groups and have bonded from common beliefs. So in the end the only thing a person can do is try to understand the culture they live in and the ones around them and use that information to their advantage.
Final Draft
Student ecology is the study of how students interact with their environment. Michal Wesch, a professor at Kansas State, had two hundred of his students survey themselves to better understand some of the problems that college life gives students. After analyzing the information they found that our current education establishment is set up in a manor that may not reach the needs of students. Wesch and his class then created a somewhat abstract video that addressed the issues that these students found with our education system.
The video begins with a quote, “Today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century learning environment that still characterizes the education establishment where information is scarce, but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects and schedules.” -Marshal McLuhan 1967. After informing the viewer that the information in the video was gathered from student surveys, the video brings up some of the issues with student life by showing students holding signs describing some of the trends that they found from their surveys. The first issue covered by the video related to the way that college is systematic and impersonal. The students described things such as large class sizes, teachers that don’t know their students, and needing to learn things that aren’t important to them. Next, the video touched on how time consuming being a college student is. The students held up signs that described how many hours students spend doing different things throughout the day and the total came to be twenty six and a half hours. The video goes on to show a girl holding a sign that says “when I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist today”, then it shows a student holding a Scranton that says, “Filling this out won’t help me get there”. Wesch and his students are saying that the education establishment is not as good as it could be. Students sit in lecture halls and take notes or tests, but they aren’t getting the experiences they need to fully prepare them for life outside of college. Near the end of the video another quote appears on the screen that says, “The inventor of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind.” –Josiah F. Bumstead 1841. The video puts emphasis on the fact that this quote is from 1841 by making it appear after the viewer has time to read the quote and putting it in larger font. When comparing McLuhan’s quote about how bewildering the 19th century’s learning environment is to Bumstead’s about how wonderful the system is, I think Welsh is trying to show the viewer that our model of a ridged and systematic education establishment is out-dated.
I feel like overall Wesch’s video did an excellent job of provoking thought. It was formatted in a way that gave me credible information but allowed me to make conclusions on my own about that information. As a student I think I can understand most of the points that Wesch was trying to make, but I felt like he made a few issues seem more important than they really were and left out a few rebuttals that I feel weaken his arguments. The first quote by McLuhan introduced the topic of the format of the education system. Wesch tried to portray this “19th century education establishment” as too systematic and impersonal. I can understand where Wesch is coming from, but I’m not sure if I agree with the point he is trying to make entirely. My experiences in college have proven, in my mind, that there is a big emphasis on organization in our programs at MU. Most of my classes are organized based on chapters in a textbook and I know what chapters are covered when and when tests or homework is due because a schedule is made weeks in advance, but I don’t feel like organized information is as bad of a thing as Wesch made it seem to be, and I don’t think that “information is scarce” in any class I have taken so far. If anything I would say that information is abundant. Most of my classes cover around one chapter from that course’s textbook every day and I have spiral notebooks that have been completely filled with information in the form of notes, so I cannot see how information can be seen as scarce. I can understand how college can be seen as impersonal as implied in the video. I have had a few smaller classes or labs that were more personal, but most of my classes are lectures in auditoriums with more than a hundred other students and most of my teachers don’t know my name. I feel like MU is trying to solve this problem by having RSDs for some large lectures where students get in smaller groups with T.A.s or teachers and use that time to clarify and discuss things learned that week.
The next topic discussed by Wesch is how time consuming being a student is. The students in his video covered all sorts of different things most students do and told us about how many hours daily they spend doing them. I can relate to this issue entirely. I have never been on the move as much as I have been since I came to college. It seems like there is always something that needs to be done, whether it’s social or academic. Last semester during finals week I had so much I felt like I needed accomplish that I didn’t sleep for two nights in a row. Wesch tried to make all of this seem bad, and I can see how a lot of people would hate it, but I really enjoy it. I love having something to do all the time and even though I don’t really have a lot of time to relax I don’t think I would trade my fast paced lifestyle if I could.
I don’t agree with Wesch completely when he implies that the college learning environment doesn’t prepare students properly for their future jobs. Nearly our entire grading system is based on testing in one way or another and I feel like the video implied that we should do away with tests. The problem I see with doing this is that it leaves us no way to prove that we are qualified to graduate. If med schools didn’t test their students I can only imagine that as a society we would have a lot more people dying and a lot more mal-practice law suits. I think Wesch was trying to imply that a more hands on approach to learning would be a good idea, but Wesch failed to talk about internships. I don’t know how it is in other colleges on at MU but at the college of agriculture, food, and natural resources internships are readily available, widely advertized, and provide the hands on experience Wesch implied college doesn’t have. Technology was brought up as an alternative to traditional teaching, but I don’t know if traditional teaching is such a bad thing. Some teachers are very good at getting information to students through lectures, and some students retain information best when it is heard. Personally, I don’t really care. I know that sounds bad, but I have had classes that are traditional lectures where I sit for an hour and write down what the teacher is saying and I have had classes that teach in a more alternative way, like doing the entire course on a wiki, and I think that I can pretty well retain information either way. I can understand how some students would have a hard time with traditional teaching, but I’m sure that quite a few students would have just as hard of a time learning in a different way.
When Wesch implies in the video that our education system is out dated, I agree with him to a certain extent. The focus on organization is there, just like it has always been, but with the advances we have made in technology our education system has become more flexible and less systematic. Technology has allowed us to take tests or do homework online, at our leisure, and look at PowerPoint slides used in during the lecture whenever we want.
The last topic brought up, in relation to college, is the idea of cultural literacy and cultural competency. Cultural literacy is a person’s ability to interact, understand, and fit in with a dominate culture. I wouldn’t say that college life has provided me with this, but I would say it has enhanced it. Things like having everyday conversations, reading the news paper, or going to a party gives us a better grasp on how our culture works and lets us fit in or interact and I did plenty of these things long before I came to college, but I feel as though college has given me a different view of the world and what is going on around me. I never realized that living with my parents was as sheltering as it was until I came here. I don’t mean sheltering in that my parents wouldn’t let me go out with friends or to parties, I mean that until I moved out I didn’t know things that I need to know to survive in this society on my own. For example, it never really hit me until I came to college that I have to shop for groceries. Obviously I understood that someone has to go out and get food, but I had always viewed our fridge as my grocery store that fills up once a week. Things as simple as how to shop for groceries are the parts of cultural literacy that college has provided me with. Cultural competency on the other hand is a person’s ability to interact with other cultures and I think I’ve gotten a lot more of this than cultural literacy in college. I was born and raised in the KC area and I’ve spent my fair share of time in the rural, the urban, and suburban areas, so I thought that I had a grasp on how to deal with different cultures, but I had no idea until I came here. There are people from all over the world here, and I have to learn how to interact and deal with them. For example, in Liberty, and a lot of the KC area, yellow lighters are considered bad luck, and a lot of people, including myself, will go out of their way to avoid them. But my roommate is from Illinois and he bought a yellow lighter recently. I’m not saying I’m going to start buying yellow lighters, but that made me realize that things like yellow lighters being bad luck may be a big deal where I come from, it may not be someplace else, and even though I’m not too comfortable with even having one in my house, it’s something I’m learning to deal with.
