What I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving

As I sit here in my apartment, 1800 miles away from my family, I contemplate on life. How much things have changed recently. People who have came into my life, and people who have gone out of it. Would I have guessed in a million years that I would've left California to go to school in the midwest? Never.

So, in honor of Thanksgiving, I think about what I am thankful for in my life:

I am thankful for my family and friends. Now most people would say that first as well, but I think that's because these groups of people are so influential in our lives. I know mine are.

I come from a large Portuguese family. I have 4 aunts, 3 uncles, 14 cousins, and 15 second cousins. We are a very loud, opinionated bunch, because we have to be, it's the only way people could hear us. In fact, if someone new came into this environment it would be very strange for them. The decibel level at our parties are at near stadium audience levels. Thanksgiving and Christmas sound more like concerts than family gatherings. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

These three guys have been the core of my friends as long as I could remember. We have over 48 years of collective friendship between us. We have been through a lot, from having walnut fights, burning our foreheads on hot-wire, charging at my bathroom and bedroom doors, effectively breaking them off the hinges, and all other sorts of shenanigans. The list can go on forever.

I am thankful for my education. If you were to ask me a year ago if I would even be going to college, I wouldn't have had an answer for you. At the time I was just working, trying to save up any money I could. I was afraid I was going to fall into mediocrity, even though I knew I was meant for bigger things. I just took a shot in the dark and started looking at out of state colleges that would have an agricultural communications major. I applied to Kansas State and to my surprise was accepted a few weeks later. I went to visit a couple months after that and realized these people here aren't just faculty, not just students, they're family. So essentially I have two families. Some don't even have one, and for that I am thankful. Not only that, but I'm thankful for a great athletics program here at K-State and being able to watch such an exciting football season. I can't wait for it to be basketball season!

I am thankful for being involved in agriculture in this country. According to Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe, everything comes from two industries: mining and agriculture. I happen to agree. In my opinion, the three noblest professions are being in the military defending our freedoms, teaching children and passing on knowledge, and growing food to feed the world. I genuinely enjoy working as an ambassador and representative of agriculture. This is definitely something I want to have a career in.

So while you are eating your turkey tomorrow and hanging out with your family watching football, take a second to think of what you are thankful for.

Manhattan, KS: A little slice of Americana

So I know it has been a couple weeks since this event took place, but I want to talk a bit about the K-State homecoming parade. I stumbled upon this by accident (I was doing some shopping in the town center when I walked out and saw a parade going down Poyntz). I was pleasantly surprised.

I guess coming from a place like Modesto, CA, I have gotten used to parades being a thing of the past. When I was a kid, the 4th of July parade was a HUGE deal. I remember getting up at 8 am and sitting downtown with my family waiting for the parade to start. Over the past couple years, support for that parade back home has been dwindling, and they have barely made it work. What started off as a two hour or longer event is now only around an hour if we are lucky.

That's what I love about this place: it still has pride and tradition. Maybe it's because of the fact it's a smaller town, but I don't believe that. I think that it has to do with the people.

If you walked around town, you would see this. People were helping other people paint displays on the main street.

I came out with some good pictures. This parade had everything: shriners, Smokey the bear, floats, bears in cars, old time-y cars and even a cow statue.

Even in Kansas there are still segways. How disappointing.

It was definitely a fun time, and it lasted longer than my 4th of July parade back home! I guess bigger cities just don't have that Americana that smaller towns do. It's funny because American Graffiti, one of the best movies about americana, is based in Modesto, CA.

Facebook: Why I will return and do it right this time

Go ahead and say it. I'm a hypocrite. It's not something that I am proud to say in the first place, but I shall be making my return to Facebook. Not because I miss it, not because I am having withdrawals, but simply because I was blaming the wrong person for my problems with the social media giant. Everything I said in my last blog about Facebook were my honest opinions. I do believe that Facebook is used too much nowadays to just rack up friends and stalk people legally, but instead of looking at my own lack of self responsibility I blamed the site itself. I stated that Facebook caused me to become antisocial and not using the site because it forced me to become overly social. That simply isn't true. My own behavior caused this. I have no one to blame but myself. It's like saying that you cheated on your significant other because you were forced to. You weren't forced to have an affair, you CHOSE to do it for your own reasons. You chose to ignore responsibility for your actions. This is happening all over the world right now, not just with Facebook.

My friend who left Facebook stated in his letter that he is sick and tired of Facebook and how it contributed negatively in society. The problem isn't Facebook, it's the people who use it. It's like owning and using a gun. If you are trained and certified to use it responsibly, no problems will occur. Put that same gun in a curious and uneducated child's hands, and that spells disaster. In the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, "(Genetic) power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun." Facebook doesn't contribute negatively to society, all it does is allow those "children who found their dad's gun" to have a larger platform to express their ideas and opinions on a broad scale.

Why did I decide to go back to Facebook all of a sudden? It wasn't because I was missing it per se. At first I did find myself going on the computer to check it, only to remember it wasn't there anymore. No, I want to go back to it so I can show how a responsible person SHOULD use it. It's all about BALANCE and MODERATION. Obviously checking your Facebook every two minutes is a bad thing, but you also don't want to wait an entire week before you return people's messages.

The final factor that played into my decision to come back was actually a presentation in my agricultural communications class by a man named Jim Langcuster, who works as an extension communications specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service. He talked about platforms and how important social media will be to the future of journalism and agricultural communications. After his presentation, we asked him questions. I raised my hand and asked him "how would you address critics (which was really just me) who say that social media such as Facebook and Twitter actually degrades communication and takes away emphasis from personal communication?" He chuckled and said that he didn't believe that. He believes that Facebook actually DOES encourage face to face communication. After he gave his answer, multiple students in my class defended Facebook and gave specific examples of incidents where Facebook has given them a new process to communicate with people. After class, I took a look at myself and I realized something: the blame shouldn't go to Facebook, it should go to ME. I wasn't angry at social media, I was angry at myself for my behavior. And to be honest, it's a lot easier to blame a website than look at your own faults. To be honest, I have a security blanket, and sometimes instead of doing things that push myself or requires a lot of effort on my behalf, I just go hide under my security blanket. It's something I need to work on, but I realized not having a Facebook is actually leaving me worse off. If I need to push myself to be more social and meet more people, Facebook is a fantastic tool (if used responsibly). Not to mention the fact that I'm a communications major and social media is something that I will not only encounter in school, but also in my career. If I leave myself out of the loop, technology will pass me up and I will not be an adequate communicator in my career. This is not a smart business strategy.

I will gladly take the verbal bashings from people. I now understand the truth, and that empowers me. I know that if I want to use Facebook I can. I shouldn't punish myself because I'm not happy with my own behavior, I should strive to correct it. I also will be responsible for myself on the web and off. If more people followed that equation, maybe Facebook wouldn't be so bad after all.

Home Came To Me Last Weekend

Last weekend was a great weekend. My sister Renee, who is quite the traveler, decided to come visit me. I hadn't seen her for almost 5 months, so it was very nice to see her. I kind of felt bad because I completely took advantage of her having a vehicle, having her take me to run errands on the first and last day she was in town. I also got to eat at the Little Apple Brewing Co., one of my favorite steak places ever.

Probably the highlight of the weekend was going to the K-State/Missouri football game on Saturday. It's quite amazing to see the color purple completely covering the stadium.

Tailgating is obviously huge here. I was told at school the next week that most of the stadium's parking lots were filled by 10 am, and the game wasn't until 2:50 pm.

The man with the white hair in front of the team is Bill Snyder (the stadium is named after him, with good reason). This man singlehandedly pulled K-State out of the depths of mediocrity, twice. He will definitely be a hall of fame college football coach. We are now currently ranked 17th and 18th in the college football rankings, and will hopefully be undefeated when we play Oklahoma on the 29th.

It's amazing to see the pride in this school, and I can say that while I am not from Kansas, I feel a sense of belonging here to this university. I have nothing but good things to say about KSU and being K-State PROUD!

This is our mascot, Willie the Wildcat. From what I've heard, the identity of the person who is the mascot is kept under wraps. He is not allowed to tell anyone. If you're asking yourself why is he wearing biker gear, that's because that day was Harley Day, so he rode in on a harley.

On Sunday my sister and I went to the Sunset Zoo here in Manhattan. It's funny because while being in a smaller town, it actually has pretty cool animals including bengal tigers, red pandas and sloth bears. There were other animals too.

This bird didn't move once. It looks like the William Howard Taft of birds.

I was surprised to see one of my favorite animals, the otter. These were quite a bit smaller than the sea otters one would see at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

All in all it was a great weekend. Renee got to see a little bit more of where I live, we got to see the Wildcats beat Mizzou and we got to go to the zoo.

Why I'm Quitting Facebook

Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to a conclusion. Things were better in my life before the introduction of things such as Facebook, Myspace and Google Plus. For those of you telling me to get off my high horse, hear me out. Do you remember when you were a kid (by that I mean junior high through high school) and you called your friends or a person you had a crush on? Remember how exciting that was? I remember calling my friends and feeling like it was an olympic event, usually it was to plan who was coming over whose house and what we wanted to do while we were there. Or calling a girl I had a crush on, when I had to muster up some courage to finally dial her number and wait for someone to answer (this was before we all had cell phones, so occasionally her mother, or worse, her father, answered the phone). I now realize that came with a rush of adrenaline, which is something I don't receive anymore because I don't make phone calls. Facebook has sucked all of the excitement out of communicating with people. All it allows you to do now is rack up people in your friends list, play mafia wars and farmville, and stalk people in a non creepy way (by the way, it's still creepy, but I must admit, even I did it). I forgot to mention how Facebook uses all your information to sell ads on their website also, same with Google Plus I'm sure.

I have been planning to leave Facebook for a while now. I waste so much time everyday just checking the dang thing (and getting no new notifications in return), that I could use that time towards doing something new like going outside and exercising, or calling a few people, or god forbid, studying. For those of you who may not understand, here's a little research for you. According to Nielsen, an international advertising and marketing company, US internet users spent an astounding 53.5 BILLION MINUTES on Facebook, and that was just for May of 2011! That's 891,666,666 HOURS! There are about 95 million US Facebook users, so that would equal out to about 9.5 hours per person per month on the Facebook site, and I know that the number is even higher for some people. Don't believe me, here's the link: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/americans-spent-535-billion-minutes-on-facebook-in-may-2011/3566.

At first I kept defending my actions by stay saying lines such as "How will I keep in touch with people?" or "Facebook keeps me in the know." I now believe that those who care about you will stay with you or find their way back to you, and the ones that lose touch either don't care or simply don't want to talk with you anymore. I have had it, and one of my friends named Rich put it so eloquently in his message to all his friends regarding why he was leaving Facebook:

"Hi Friends,

I am tired of Facebook. I am tired of the way our society is turning and how Facebook contributes to it. I hope to stay in contact with all of you, but I would rather get an email or a phone call from you, instead of impersonal, yet all too personal sometimes, Facebook posts about your life. Please take down my phone number and email address, or even write a letter to me the old fashioned way, so we can stay in contact. In a week I'm leaving Facebook and probably never coming back. If you want, please reply with your contact info so I can stay in touch with you.

Hope to hear from you soon. I'm going to enjoy life in a little bit more good old fashioned, traditional American way."

I couldn't have said it any better myself. Somewhere along the way, Facebook has stopped being a tool to communicate for me and become a way to make people become antisocial by being OVERLY social. Some of you are outgoing and social enough where you can make Facebook, Twitter and meeting people out in public all work smoothly, but that doesn't work for me. If I put more energy into one thing, the other suffers. For example, I put so much energy into Facebook, eventually my social skills are going to suffer, and I've noticed this happening to me already. I'm so used to talking with someone behind a computer screen that I forget how to properly interact with people.

I'm not against technology one bit. In fact, I think it's crucial to embrace technology. I currently have an email account, Skype, this blog of course, and even a twitter account (which I do not post on, I use it to receive news and information quickly from people/groups/organizations/media outlets that I follow). In fact, I encourage everyone to communicate with me, whether it's by phone, by email, Skype, Facetime, or heck, I may even start up an AOL Instant Messenger account! As long as it's personal, I'm more than happy to chat. Speaking of chat, that was the only feature I really used on Facebook.

So my message to everyone is, enjoy your Facebook. Enjoy your timeline, your ticker, your private profile not being private. Enjoy summarizing your thoughts in 480 characters or less. I'm going to do something a little more worthy of my time.

All are welcome and welcome all!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog "Mark My Words". I have some very exciting things planned out for this blog. Whether it is agriculture news and topics, film news/reviews, music discussion, or just normal opinion pieces, there should be something of interest to everyone! Stay tuned...