Selma

Selma, is a film based on events that occurred in efforts to end suffrage among African Americans.  Events were led successfully led by Martin Luther King Jr but not without much adversity. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Watching the film with not much prior knowledge but plenty of interest allowed me to watch the film with no biased opinions.

 Many of the history classes that I have been in over the years seemed to only scratch the surface on this curtail period in history. Of course, I have been introduced to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King JR but I found my ignorance to cause me somewhat of an issue.  While watching the film, I was unfamiliar with the characters and was only able to rate their importance based off of how it was portrayed in the film.  Hollywood tends to alter historical films for entertainment purposes, so because I had very minimal knowledge of the events and characters before seeing the film I had no way of differentiating fact from fiction.

I am one for equal rights so in no point in the movie did I ever disagree with Martin Luther King JR. Regardless of whether the extent of the violence was as severe as it was portrayed in the film I was still taken back by the severity of the cruelty. I found myself often becoming upset with many of the white authority figures and the corrupt government system. However, I was surprised to see the collaboration and cooperation that President Lyndon Baines Johnson had with Dr. King. I do think that measures could have been talking a lot quicker in regards to opening the poles to African American voters, but that is far beyond the filmmakers control because for all I am aware that is just how history panned out.

Overall I was very pleased with the film, to some extent I enjoyed watching the film with very little prior knowledge because it allowed to interpret the story as it was being told to me. 

"Where's Stevie?"

We started our journey to find Stevie on the third floor browsing for some CDs. We stumped upon a collection of great CDs. We were so excited because we haven't seen CDs in such a long time. We came across the letter “V”. We were very confused. So we thought, “Hey!! let’s take a photo!!, maybe this is some kind of clue to find Stevie!!!!”

We ventured up to the 4th floor to look for some more clues. The smart students we are, we decided to look in the PN section. Being extremely lucky we came across the call number PN 2287 C5 and we found another clue! We were super duper excited and came across the letter “A”. To keep all of this great evidence we took another photo, so we could remember our clue and find stevie!!

Next we ventured up to the fifth floor and all of a sudden we saw a pet otter in the zoology section. WHAT A COINCIDENCE?! So, we petted the otter because otters are cool. And since the otter was on a bookshelf we thought omg, an otter should not be on a bookshelf. So, we saved the otter and brought him to a nice body of water with all of his other friends. The otter gave us the letter clue of “R”

Since we were on a roll we headed up to the sixth floor. The six floor was filled with many very important government documentations. The sixth floor proved to be bigger than we had expected but we narrowed it down to the U.S. Publications sections which was on the south west wing of the 6th floor. We learned about the SuDocs call numbers on a poster. This quickly lead us to making the connection of SI for Smithsonian Institution and then moments later we came across the letter “SI” and knew we had yet 2 more pieces to our mystery.

When we heard there was a shark hanging around in the library it got us interested. A shark in the library was certainly a first for all of us. As we made our way down the stairs sure enough we all simultaneously spotted what appeared to be a life sized shark. As we approached it with caution we spotted the letter “H” on its fin. It was a relief to have found the 5th clue but more so a surprise to find a shark in the library.  

Well still on the first floor we decided to crack down on our next clue which was stated to be on the first floor as well. We found ourself heading to the reference section conveniently running across an encyclopedia on dogs. Since in today's day and age if we needed to know something we simply googled it, it was new for most of us to actually use an encyclopedia but it was actually beneficial because we ended up finding a picture of the pointer dog along with the Letter “E” our 2nd to last clue!!!

After being on the first floor for 2 clues we knew it was to good to be true to finish off our scavenger hunt there. And sure enough our final clue indicated that we had to go to the student newspaper and Stevie beginning with the letter S, and looking for current newspapers we knew we were headed all the way up a set of stairs past our friend the shark from earlier in the scavenger hunt. As a group we narrowed in on the final letter to our clue to finding our beloved mascot. When we spotted the “C” in the current issues location we knew we had the final piece to the puzzle and it was only a matter of time before we unscrambled it and saved our mascot before it was too late.

Obviously we are pure geniuses. We unscrambled the letters to make the word “Archives”   Since we are geniuses we knew that archives were located on the 5th floor. As soon as we entered the 5th floor we saw our main dog Stevie in the corner of a study hall. We were oh so excited to finally have Stevie back and to find out he was safe and sound. Since it is the 21st century obviously the first thing you have to do in an excited situation is take a selfie. So we did!!! And Stevie and our 3 amazing investigators lived happily ever after.  

Study Abroad

Not only did I attend the Study Abroad Fair to get some extra credit points, I also went because I have a strong love and desire to travel. The fair offered many tables that provided useful information and aesthetically pleasing pamphlets. I visited the tables for Australia, Italy, and Cameroon and I was impressed by what all of them had to offer. Both Australia and Italy offered amazing learning and  sight seeing opportunities but Cameroon offered something that no other table in that room could, the opportunity to make a difference. On the trip we would be volunteering for the Makah Water for All Foundation by building a pump well to provide the people of Cameroon safe drinking water. We would also be interacting with children and teaching them things that back at home we take for granted. Which is why I strongly believe that there are somethings in this world that you can't learn by sitting in a lecture hall.