Hi, I am Joseph Mrowca, commuting from
Mentor-On-the-Lake to John Carroll University. I don't have a
preference between being called Joe or Joseph, either is fine.
Hmm...hometown...kinda hard to say. I
have lived in five different U.S. States. I was born in Texas, then
my family moved to Vermont [my brother Michael was born there]. After
that, we moved to the Lehigh Valley area in Pennsylvania, and stayed
there for about 5 years. We then moved to Syracuse, New York,
specifically the Cicero suburb town. I lived there for about 7 years
[part of 3rd grade to end of 9th grade]. In the
summer of 2011, my family moved to Columbus, Ohio, [Dublin suburb]
where we stayed for less than a full calender year. The latest move
was to Mentor-On-the-Lake, a suburb of a suburb [Mentor is a suburb
of Cleveland].
For our purposes, let's say I am “from”
the Mentor area.
I've never really thought of myself as
unique to be honest, at least not for several years...
I guess I could say I am unique in the
sense that I have lived in 4 different areas that I can remember well
at the age of 18, given that some people never move from the
city/town they were born in, let alone the county or
state/province/territory...
I have an interest in history, as seen
in the rant later in this post.
As far as this course in Social Justice
and its intersection with digital media, it will probably take a
couple sessions of verbal discussions and seeing others succeed in
taking risks until I would really feel comfortable taking risks of my
own and saying what I think about something.
Most Important Invention
The most important technological
innovation in history is hard to distinguish because of the various
categories you could go with. One could easily argue for the printing
press, internet, or photographic equipment from the angle of the
expansion democratization of knowledge.
Basic energy control [fires], language,
or discovering that one can plant seeds to grow crops, rather than
just constantly move around and hope you will find some more [early
farming] , could be considered the most important, as they ultimately
acted as prerequisites for all other technological inventions.
However, they are not always considered to be technological
developments/inventions by some definitions. The modern connotation
that technology always has to involve computers somehow further
cements those definitions.
If we were to restrict ourselves to
deciding on the most important invention--not idea or concept--of the
20th and 21st centuries, I would argue for the
invention/acceptance of use of vaccines that have saved countless
lives and will hopefully eliminate more sever illnesses in the
future.
Social Justice
Social justice is about
fairness/equality to me. The mentality that it somehow isn't right
for someone who needs help to ask for and seek help is upsetting to
me. You take people that are already struggling to survive, and make
them feel even worse when they come to get help.
Another major issue for me is how
ridiculously expensive it is to get health care services without
insurance. I know slightly from experience with that, the 2 of the
moves were because my dad was laid off. He was out of work for more
than 2 years in New York... luckily that state had “good”
Medicaid, but once that was gone, it was a nightmare to go to a
doctor or get prescriptions filled.
I have called people out on making fun
of special needs people and specifically the use of the word
“retard[ed]”. My brother has high functioning autism, [you
wouldn't be able to notice it anymore easily], he hasn't been made
fun of directly in front of me, but I still take offense to people
making fun of others or using the word “retard[ed]” to describe
someone or something.
Class Question
The question I would pose would be for
the class to go around and share what they think social justice is
and/or their pick for most important technological invention.
