El Dia De Los Muertos

                Friday 10/30 I was fortunate enough to attend an event called “el dia de los muertos” or the day of the dead for those without a Spanish background. Initially the title was enough to scare someone off and then the first impression when I walked in didn’t help much either. The altar was full of skulls and candles and in the dimly lit room it gave a somewhat eerie feel. It looked like a somewhat dark celebration, however, when the ceremony began I realized that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

                The first speaker introduced the main idea of the ceremony. This was not a ceremony of evil and mischief but instead an appreciation of the dead. He had said “This ceremony is intended to open a space where the living can be visited by their loved ones that have since passed.” It was an extraordinary way to view how those who are alive and those who are dead can exist together. It was explained the in ancient Spanish culture death was not known to be a scary thing but instead a check point in existence. They saw it as the spirit leaving the body and continuing to a new level of living where one could visit the earth at any given time.

                The altar was instantly noticeable. It was covered in skulls and paper flowers as well as candles and photos of lost loved ones. The skulls initially looked odd and unnerving but I later found out that this was a part of the ceremony. The skulls were made of sugar and were eaten to symbolize being one with the dead. The flowers and other arts were put out to show the love and care towards the lost loved ones and the pictures were simply to commemorate these people.

                In the ceremony they showed a sample of what would be done in an actual ceremony. They gave a sample of a dance that would occur during the evening. It was a traditional dance between a young pair. There were also two authentic songs about love of family. After all of this anyone who wanted could come up and set a flower on the altar for a loved one.

                This ceremony opened my eyes to a new way to view the afterlife. The way that they showed affection for the lost loved ones instead of mourned was a refreshing way to look at death. Not only was this an interesting view at a different culture but a doorway to a different perception of life and afterlife.

Twitter

                The idea of twitter wasn’t necessarily appealing to me at first, however after using it I could see the purpose of having it. This, like every other social networking cite publicizes the events in your life for the purpose of keeping in touch with friends and other contacts. My Twitter page (http://twitter.com/#!/peytonth) is an example of how it is a good way to let everyone know how your day is going or what you are up to at any given moment but there is another extremely important side to it: The way you are viewed as a professional. It is the topic heard in every college classroom at least once and it is nothing to shrug off. How you look online affects how potential employers view you. Pictures at parties or with illegal substances on things like Twitter or Facebook could ruin someone’s opportunities as a professional. This is where things like Twitter become less about letting the world know you just bought new shoes or finding out what Justin Bieber is up to and more about being successful as a young professional as stated in the following reading (College Students Guide: Twitter 101).

                The hiring process must be very daunting. The idea of having a mountain of papers that are supposed to summarize the person’s life on one page and then deciding on the final candidate after just a few short interviews seems like a risky situation. It is only logical that an employer would want to have the most information possible on potential employees. This makes it important to have at least one social networking cite. Without one account in something like twitter employers could easily be scared off about their lack of knowledge about a given person.

                Even though it is true that social networking cites have become important to help employers find more about potential employees I would like to say that I still find the current system to be somewhat broken. The idea of everyone enthusiastically telling every single detail of their life to as many “friends” as possible was, in my opinion, bad enough but now with employers looking at these web pages it has brought a whole new issue to the system. Now instead of freely speaking about how they feel about things they are censoring everything and getting rid of photos that look even slightly similar to a party. The whole system of looking at a person’s photos (which are completely out of context) and viewing a few pieces of a conversation between friends is no way to find out how someone will perform in the work place and ultimately it is becoming irrelevant in my opinion. Due to all the warnings about keeping social networks clean they no longer have the true personal thoughts of a person. Instead the new system had defeated the purpose and turned it into something similar to an interview where everything just shows the side that people want to show. Ultimately the difference between a bad looking Facebook or twitter page and about half the clean ones is that the person with the bad looking page hasn’t left anything out about his or her self. That, in my opinion, is the ultimate flaw about this system. It credits those who keep all the things that they don’t want anyone to know a secret while discrediting someone who may have done the exact same things as the other person but publicized it due to the new social networking craze.