Nicole and the Mass Media...

Most people have no clue how much time they spend consuming the media. If you were to ask someone how much time they spend watching TV a week, or if we were to ask college students how many hours do they usually spend on Facebook their numbers are skewed.

Did you know that the time you spend consuming Mass media is greater than the amount of time a college student spends in class and studying, eating, and taking a shower. Media consumption is the number one thing we spend our time more than anything else next to sleep.

This is because it is everywhere around us, we can't stop it Sometimes we are even consuming more than one media at once.

As we walk to class we have our Ipods plugged in, or are texting someone. The advertisement about Guitars Unplugged catches our eye. We take a look at the scroll on our way into class. The Fight the Frown Commercial is playing in the Cross Roads.

The TV may be on at your apartment, and if it is not most likely the radio is. Media is all around us.

Who Says it's a bad thing?

I definitely don't. I believe the media is good."If there is anything virtuous lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things" (Article of Faith 13)

Of course there are many things that hurt the world, such as the immorality, and manipulative pictures on TV and shows that give young girls and boys wrong impressions of what they need to look and act like

It has also been brought to my attention that there are some things that are praiseworthy, but not virtuous, for example a movie may be awarded 'best picture' but that does not mean it is a virtuous movie. .

Not everything on the media is bad though There is opposition in all things. (2Ne 2:15)

This is Dr. Call's Media Model

I love the media. It can serve as a social binder, it can uplift and give hope. It serves as a check to the government, it is a tool for us to exercise our freedom, it can inform us and connect us with the world abroad.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day-Saints, and a communications major at BYU-I I have learned that it is up to me to consume media that is uplifting, and follows the guidelines in the 13th article of Faith so that I can always have the Spirit to with me.

For my Family Foundations class I taped my family over Thanksgiving break to show appreciation for my Dad. I am not a broadcast emphasis so it is not professional by any means, but this is an example of how we can use the media for good. For his Christmas gift I plan on showing my dad what the family loves about him through this video.

President Kimball said:

“The title Father is sacred and eternal”

I love my dad.

I also have a website to help me with my future plans in my college career as a comm major, as well as for a future career feel free to take a look

http://nicolemrios.weebly.com/

This was the website I made for my Comm 100 class. I wanted to make sure I knew what classes I wanted to take so I talked to the advising office again today and figured out which classes I wanted to take. The Home page explains the direction of my major, with the empahsis and clusters and stuff. As of today I declared my cluster!

I also have been inspired to read continually for the rest of my life. So I am attaching the book list that was given to me by my professor:

Inteliquest’s 100 Greatest Books

Listed in chronological order

Novels, Epic Poems & Legends

1. The Iliad by Homer

2. The Odyssey by Homer

3. The Aeneid by Virgil

4. Beowulf by Unknown

5. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

6. The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo

7. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

8. Don Quixote by Cervantes

9. Paradise Lost by John Milton

10. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

11. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

12. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

13. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

14. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

15. Candide by Voltaire

16. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

17. The Tragedy of Faust by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

18. The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott

19. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

20. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

21. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

22. The Red and the Black by Stendahl

23. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

24. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

25. Carmen by Prosper Merimee

26. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

27. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

28. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

29. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

30. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

31. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

32. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

33. Camille by Alexandre Dumas Fils

34. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

35. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

36. Idyls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson

37. Silas Marner by George Eliot

38. Middlemarch by George Eliot

39. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

40. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

41. Crime and Punishment by Fedor Dostoyevsky

42. The Brothers Karamazov by Fedor Dostoyevsky

43. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

44. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

45. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (re-read?)

46. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

47. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (re-read?)

48. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

49. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

50. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

51. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

52. Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

53. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

54. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

55. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

56. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

57. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

58. Dracula by Bram Stoker

59. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

60. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

61. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

62. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

63. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

64. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

65. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

66. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

67. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

68. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

69. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

70. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (re-read?)

Science & Civilization

71. The Republic by Plato

72. The Prince by Machiavelli

73. The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau

74. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

75. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

76. Das Kapital by Karl Marx

77. The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler

Plays

78. Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

79. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

80. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

81. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

82. Othello by William Shakespeare

83. Macbeth by William Shakespeare (re-read?)

84. The Tempest by William Shakespeare

85. Tartuffe by Moliere

86. Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen

87. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

88. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

89. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

90. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

91. Our Town by Thornton Wilder

92. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Philosophy

93. The Nicomachaen Ethics by Aristotle

94. Meditations by Rene Descartes

95. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

96. The World as Will and Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer

97. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

98. Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

99. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

100. How We Think by John Dewey

I wonder how long it will take me to read all of these :)

College life at BYU-I

I love BYU-I

Halloween costumes... #82 is my FHE brother's Jersey...
At the Haunted Hart, there was a dance.  Someone stranger would yell "BLUE 82 BLUE 82" out of no where, during the dance, and I would hike the imaginary football to him and then go long. I would score everytime! 

Nicole with brown hair? 

Photographics Society - adventure

Learning how to take ghost shots for halloween

Down town old Rexburg,

I'm still learning how to use the settings, (it's a little blurry)

This was at a football game that we went to a few weeks ago. My roomates on the left of me, and my next dorm neighbors to the right.

Halloween night, after a party at the Hart auditorium. This is Elisabeth, she lives next door. She is from DC (virginia actually) but she wishes she was a country girl,  I'm a football player.

Yup! this is my school :D 

GRAVITY can't slow me down!

 I love this place! so much fun... and learning (i just don't like to take pictures of the learning part) 

BEFORE

AFTER

before

after

Before After

Before

After

WASHINGTON DC

SO I just made this blog... I think it will be cooler than facebook. so yeah, umm lets see... my mommy wanted me to write about my trip to WA DC.

I went with 11 other seniors from my High school to join other students from places like Nebraska (where my roommates where from... the coolest roommates ever!), Minnesota "Wiscawnson", North Dakota, and California. I had a blast, thanks so much to everyone who bought tickets from me to help me go.

My trip started Saturday. I went to prom, was crowned prom queen. (I was the only girl there who wore a modest dress) I danced the night away, and at 2:00am we all met at the high school to catch the 3 hour bus ride to the Spokane international airport where our plane left at 7:00am.

(I had taken all of the bobby pins out of my hair in the bus, so that i could sleep, but two of the girls who didn't, got stopped through security :)

Throughout the week the highlights were seeing Obama drive by in his entourage, watching the senators vote, (I saw McCain, and John Kerry in real life person!!!), Meeting Mt's house reps, and senators. seeing all of the awesome memorials, I love LINCOLN! and Jefferson! and I really liked china town.

I didn't get to see Obama in person, although I did miss a lunch one day because I was waiting for him to arrive at the capitol building. ( he entered on the senate side of the building, and I was on the House side) The security guards with their big guns were annoyed with all of the people gathered around (" what are yall doin here!? he's already inside.....!!!) It was pretty funny when some people walked by and asked the security "who is coming" and he obviously didn't want to tell them who was coming so instead of saying President Obama he said " The Head of State is coming"... as they walked away I heard them say "Oh, who is the head of state?"

It was refreshing to be able to get out of Libby for a little bit. China town actually scared me a little bit, because we were all told to get in groups of four, they then kicked us out of the bus and told us to be back at a certain time. what if we got jumped... don't worry we didn't.

We had to ask people on the street if they liked the old ghetto china town, or the new rejuvenated china town. I stayed in a little bit bigger group with 2 really tall football player type guys so I felt safer. We tried to talk to some Chinese in china town, but they didn't understand what Rejuvenated meant, they just ran away saying "I don't know, I don't know!"

and then I asked a shoe shiner guy on the street what he thought. He talked to us for 5 minutes, it was sorta hard to follow, but my buddy from "wiscawnson", as he says it, filled me in that this guy used to hide his pot in his little tin cans, so the police wouldn't catch him dealing. He said new china town was way better because all of the crime and gangs, and shootings, the gays and the lesbians on the street, are now gone. He told us how its better now, because he had to stay out on the street, and he used to have to

"stay out in the 30 degree weather.... 20 degree weather, 10 degree, 0 degree, 5 be-lo, ten be-lo... FIF TEEN!!!! be-lo!!!!!!!"

I wonder if it even gets that cold in DC... I don't know.:) I'm not really sure where he was gettin at either, then he told us that he found God, and then asked if we had any spare change to give him for his sermon .... he was pretty funny....

Senator Nicole in the Committee on Finance ... don't talk into the microphones, or they might kick you out...

I also got into a "senator's only" elevator!!!! Rachel had to "go" so bad, and the janitors were cleaning like every bathroom except for the one on the 4th floor. (we couldnt take the stairs... and after pushing the button alot of times we didnt need a key to get onto the elevator) Pretty cool!

I love the Lincoln Memorial... and the Jefferson Memorial, those were the best memorials, just being in there, and reading the quotes, you could feel that these men were inspired from God, but it also seemed like when I walked through other parts of DC, that the capitol of the US is not the most uncorrupt place. If that makes any sense. "corruption sown in uncorruption" is what it felt like or something like that... made me think of Mosiah 29:26-27

Jefferson Memorial

Lincoln memorial

In the Library of congress...

We also went to the pentagon because one of the guys from my school has a cousin with connections, so we got to tour there. that was pretty cool, we saw the secretary of defense's office, and went in the briefing room that you see on TV. We also saw the part of the pentagon that got hit by the plane... ( shhh... I actually didn't know that on 9/11 the pentagon was hit too.. i had always thought that the twin towers were the only thing that got hit-and got confused when the pentagon was sometimes two huge towers, and other times shaped like a pentagon... and I'm just glad i finally got that got straightened out)

If you look at this side of the pentagon, this is where the plane hit, you can see where it hit because there is a difference in color between the old brick, and the new brick.

One of the guys in our group took a picture as we were waiting in line by security, even though there were "no photography signs all over"... he got pulled into room, and had to delete the picture.

Riding the metro was pretty fun. I got so tired by the end of the week though, and my feet hurt pretty bad, and the long days got me so tired, that it was better if you didn't talk to me during the last few days because I thought I might strangle someone. As we were riding on the metro one day I tried to stay away from my group because I was getting so annoyed with them, and then these 3 big scary black guys all got on at the same time and squished around me, separating me from the rest of the group...this little white girl got so scared riding, I wanted my group back real bad real fast.

Well to sum it up, DC was so much fun for me. Especially since it goes right along with what I am learning in my Senior Government class. I loved being around DC and actually knowing what was going on, the law making process, and actually knowing who Head of State is. :)

So awesome.