maggiemanning13

The film, Real Genius is centered around a small group of supremely intelligent young men who are commissioned by a professor from their college to create a laser known as the crossbow project. The story centers around Mitch, a 15 year-old genius who is brought to the campus to help fix a unworkable problem with the laser. He is befriended by another genius, Chris, played by Val Kilmer. The movie portrays Mitch as a play by the rules character and is much different from the party personality of Chris. Throughout the movie Chris tries to get Mitch to loosen up and enjoy his college experience, but Mitch is extremely focused on his studies and the laser. One theme that I saw throughout the movie was work hard and play hard. Chris is constantly trying to get Mitch to enjoy himself from ice skating through their dorm hallways to indoor pool parties. Since Mitch is a young genius, everyone is focused on harboring that and turns away from the fact that he is still a kid. But Chris sees this and convinces Mitch to loosen up a bit and while doing so, he falls for a co-ed named Jordan. Another theme which ties into the original would be to take time and act like a kid, there may be a lot of work to be done, but who doesn’t love a pool party every now and again?

So this week we all had to comment on the two televisions shows that we had to watch in class on Friday. The two shows differ greatly in their styles and messages but they also have a few similarities. The first show, Community, is set at a community college with characters that appear to be way too old to be typical college students. This episode focused on men and women and their relationships between one another. Most of the messages I got from the show were based on gender and the roles that accompany that gender. In the show, the females had signed up for a women’s studies class. During this class, some females chose to get into an argument over class seating which in return causes the school to turn into a total bitch zone. The messages about women that I took from this episode were that women are caddy and insecure and chose to pick on each other’s appearance to make themselves feel better about them. Men in the show are depicted as being very masculine and make fun of each other’s lack of masculinity. They chose to challenge each other in sports to prove to be more dominant and masculine. Another message that came out of nowhere was a message of racisms. At the end of the episode it turns out one of the characters was a huge racist and his message was that black people ruin everything. The Boondocks is an animated television show about a black family, specifically about a young boy in this family. This episode was centered on BET. In the episode, the little boy is forcing himself into a hunger strike as away to speak out against BET and their poor depiction of black people and black culture. The messages that I came away with from this show were ones directly linked to BET. Messages like BET are detrimental to black people and that BET is run by white men, are just a few I am going to touch on. Though BET is in ways thought of as a positive media form for black people it also stereotypes the race and undermines it in a lot of ways. Music videos on BET exploit black women and objectify them and reality based television shows do not help either. With the message that white men run BET, this message is even crueler because it is saying that white men are doing this by objectifying and demining the black race through such programming. I thought there were many more differences between the shows those similarities. The two shows were comedies and both touched on issues of race, but that is where the similarities end. Community’s episode was more based on gender and sex and Boondocks was focused on race. The two comedies were also similar in that they used comedy to deliver messages that are not funny to us in society and messages that are very emotionally driven and hold very emotional places in society. Though I might not have chosen to show these episodes, I thought their messages were important and was surprised to see them addressed in both shows.

This week went pretty well some as far as my leisure goal/s were concerned. I spent most of my week cooking instead of dining out. It is super hard for me to cook dinner every night considering I work most nights and weekends. I decided to pre-cook 3 meals and keep them stored in the fridge for the rest of the week. Though cooking like this is not exactly what I would consider a leisurly activity, I spent some of my free time doing this and found it sort of relaxing. I cooked my favorite baked chicken and Italian dressing and also made some baked eggplant to serve with it. My second dish I made twice baked potatoes with bbq chicken. I have not tried this recipe before but It looked really good and I am excited to eat it later this week. My last dish I made a slow cooker turkey taco meat. This is one of my stand by dishes that are easy to make and it always turns out great. I am having a hard time finding great recipes online that also meet my health standards so if anyone knows of any good sites or cook books, please let me know. This week I want to try and make a super healthy pumpkin bread and maybe some bran muffins. I started baking last year and have put it off throughout the summer because I hate being by a hot oven when it is hot. So now that the weather is cooling off it is the perfect time to bust out the baking pans and get baking. Baking is a completely different process than cooking. With cooking you can improv a lot with tastes and ingredients where with baking everything must be calculated and followed exactly like the recipe. I have learned quite a few baking secrets and techniques over the past year and I am very excited to see if any of them actually work and improve my baking. Along with my cooking, I have switched yp my workout routines a little bit. I am hitting the cycles at the Rec more and taking some of their classes. I enjoy the cycle yoga class and the instructor is really great also! I have been trying to do more cardio intervals because I heard that you burn more calories that way. It is definitely a more intense workout than my old cardio routine. I have completely quit my weight lifting regimen and I am not sure when I am going to pick that back up again, probably this winter. I have also completely quit swimming at the pool. I wanted to take one of their instructional classes but I will have to wait until the next sign up date. I have also been running on the treadmills in the front workout room. I enjoy the t.v.s that are in there and watching t.v. allows me to zone out of the pain I may be feeling but still allows me to have enough focus on my running. I have the following 3 days off of work and I am looking forward to spending at least 2hours a day at the rec and focusing on really burning my body out.

I had a very hard week last week and am trying to catch up with all of my work now. I had to go back home for a family emergency so there was little time in between then to work out and cook. I pretty much lived off of broccoli and cheese for the past few days, which is not a very nourishing diet. My work outs have helped a lot with the stress that I had to endure this past week and running in particular acted as an escape from the stresses of my life. As someone who was very out of shape all through out high school and the earlier part of my adult life, I would have never thought I would be able to run let alone find any kind of enjoyment out of it. this is just proof in how my idea of leisure and leisure goals has changed through out my life. Something that I use to dread 10 years ago has now become something I love. Music is one motivator for me when I run. It helps me zone out physical pain and push through when my body starts to get tired. I also notice a difference in my body physically. I am seeing more muscle development in my legs and glutes, which is welcome change. The physical changes also act as a motivaton to keep pushing me forward with my routine. The only problem I am having now is trying to switch up my routines so that my body doesn't adapt to the work outs. i get stuck doing the same routine because I like it, but I know that my body will benefit more from constantly doing different routines.

my progress with my leisure goal is coming along steadily. I have been switching up my cardio workouts and trying different routines to switch it up. The problem I am running into now is simply having the desire to write about working out. When I am at the rec I am not focused on observing and dissecting the enviornment and activites around me. I am focused on getting in and getting out. For this reason I am going to try and switch my leisure goal, so that I have something worth writing about. What I do at the gym is something for myself and I dont feel any desire anymore to talk about it. Relating last sessions lecture in to my leisure goal, I think there are many constraints to working out and workig out at the rec. Status can be applied here because you have to either be a student or faculty member to attend the rec, or someone who is a community resident and is able/willing to pay $400.00 for a yearly membership. One thing that was also mentioned in class was the racial divide at the rec. Someone had mentioned that the basketball courts were segregated, which I personally could not disagree with more. As someone who frequents the rec 5 or 6 times a week, from what I observed the basketball courts are extremely integrated. Intramural basketball leagues hosted my the rec center help to promote this. During mid day and around 8 p.m. the basketball courts are filled with students of many races who are activly participate in these group games. Casual pick up games may reflect a more racially divided picture but to say those courts are racially divided is false. Disability contraints are another aspect that I would like to touch on. I think the rec does a great job of trying to dimminish these constraints for persons with physical disabilities. The adaptive Inclusive program at the rec helps train therapy students while also offering physical theraputic techniques to disabled students. Therapy students work alongside these students with disabilities to help facilite excercises dealing with range of motion. I have never heard or seen this at another university before and I really enjoy seeing this program at our university.

This week has been a good week as far as my leisure goal. I was able to workout everyday throughout the week except Saturday and Sunday. Since I work every weekend, it is hard to get into the Rec with their shortened weekend hours. I found that last lecture had a lot to do with my personal goals. I find myself doing these activities so that I can maintain an active lifestyle and specifically, I do cardio workouts to remain heart healthy and build endurance. I tried to really switch up my workouts this week, just to ensure that I'm not getting burnt out. I am starting to see some nice definition and find I am getting more toned all over. I have also introduced supplements into my diet to see if that will have any impact in how I feel and look. I also tried the Rec's new "green" treadmill last week and hated it. I am not sure about the construction of the treadmill and how it it slightly bowed in the middle, but it seems to be above me as far as running goes.

Though the Rec has cleared out a little bit from the large crowds of the first week in the semester, there are still a large amount of people visiting there. Unfortunately, my schedule only allows my to go in the later afternoon/evening hours when everyone else seems to be working out. I have stayed away from the weight room completely due to the crowds of young men who infest the area, making it very intimidating for a women to go in and work out there. I am going to try and get up early to go lift weights when not so many beef cakes and wanna be beef cakes are there trying to get pumped. I also observed a ton of people who seem to be trying out machines or casually working out. But it seemed like the crowd in the summer were serious about working out where as now, its more of being seen at the Rec "working out". To me it is kind of annoying, but I know as the weeks progress more and more students will drop off of their work out routine, leaving more room and equipment for me!

For my semester long leisure goal, I am planning to complete a semester long workout regimen.
I just starting getting into physical fitness this year and it has become a passion of mine. I feel this goal is important for my physical and mental well being. In order to achieve this, I plan on working out at least 5 times a week for at least one hour a session. By doing this, I hope to lower my body fat percentage, gain muscle and build endurance. Each week I will be tracking my progress by detailing physical changes as well as internal progress that may happen. The barriers to achieving this goal would be hitting plateaus in my work out regimen and getting burnt out on workout routines. I hope to break these by stepping up my workouts and also changing them up so I won't get bored.