BlakeReadingResponse2

__My Freshman Year__ I still enjoy reading this story by Rebekah Nathan. I can relate to almost everything she observes during her first semester as a student. When I came to college, we were also introduced to the thought of the campus being a community. All the ice breakers and meeting available to her were also available to us as a freshman at Bloomsburg. Most every student is the same in the fact that they all left home to live with people they don't know in a place they are not familiar with. I thought it was interesting when the RA tried to get the residents on the same floor to get to know each other more by having movie nights and interesting bonding activities. In my personal experience, I spend little time in my room because I hang out with friends, so I don't even know everyone who lives on my floor. It's weird that I haven't even seen the girls who live a couple rooms away from me even though we've been in school over 3 weeks now. I have also walked down hallways on game days and heard the same football game coming from different rooms wondering why they don't just watch it all together. I thought Nathan's findings while observing different races were inconsistent with my personal observations. I do see people of the same races hanging out with each other often, but I equally see people of different races communicating as well. I think we are now in a generation where race doesn't matter and no one really takes into account a persons race when they chose friends.

__The Mind at Work__ I enjoyed reading this story more than the one we read last week because I could understand and relate to it. The introduction to this story showed an interesting perspective on the way people judge each other based on their careers. When someone tells you what they do for a living, they are only telling you their main job. They do not include all the work they have to do outside of the office or how hard it is to get to or from work on time and many times people overlook those types of things. If a person really loves what they do for a living or if it's the only thing they can do to support their family, they shouldn't be judged based upon how easy or difficult the job seems. Jobs that require little physical labor may entail a higher level of intellectual thought. Oppositely, jobs that require little intellectual thinking could require more hard physical labor. There is no standard for what makes a job hard and there are too many factors to really compare which jobs are harder than others. Every job requires some form of skill no matter how big or how small. I believe that even people with little skilled jobs are still educated since they are able to maintain their job and have the knowledge to get a job to maintain and stabilize their economic income. After reading the introduction, I would be interested in reading more of the book to read more views on the way we judge and perceive others for their job skills.