Being identified as a consumer in this world today is second nature. Everyone is a consumer in today’s world and it isn’t always a bad thing. It can mean a multitude of different things in today’s society. One definition is someone who uses or absorbs, or the more common way we describe a consumer is as a buyer. Buying something that you might not necessarily need is another way of being a consumer. Today the majority of what we do depends on the type of consumer we are.  There are consumers who can keep buying the next new thing with no second thoughts. There are consumers who actually think about the purchase and decide if they really need the item. There are those who can point out that they do not need the item right now, and can wait a few months until the price of the object has dropped significantly so it is at a more reasonable price. Being a consumer is a social aspect. Shopping has been a part of our lives since we were at a young age, so we have come to know what brands and types of products will fit best for ourselves. We know which brands are the higher ends, but not always the best quality product.

As I said before there are many different types of consumers that categorize every individual. For example, if I am looking at myself, I would say that I am a conservative consumer for a number of reasons. First off, I may always want the next new thing, but who doesn’t? A personal example for me is I have wanted the iPhone since it was first released. Unfortunately, the price of the phone was so high that there was no way my family could afford to purchase it for me. Then the next one came out, and I thought, hey, maybe I could get the old one since I don’t need the new features the new one has. The old one is much cheaper now, but I still was not able to get it. Once I started paying my own phone bill and the next new phone came out, I thought that maybe I could afford it. I know what I want and now no one is telling me I cannot have it because it is my money and I can spend it the way I want. But I still refused to buy the phone because I knew it was not a smart purchase. I had other bills that I needed to continue paying that I would not be able to pay if my phone bill was to if I switched to the “iPhone family.” But this just shows how I see myself as a consumer. I know what I want but I also think about if I really do need the product at the time. I would rather use the money to get my car fixed instead of getting a new phone. But after all that waiting, I finally was able to purchase an iPhone this year. I had waited long enough and it ended up working out in my benefit where my bill would not increase at all and I was able to get more out of the purchase than normally intended.

When I decide to discard my purchases, I usually have a good reason for it. For one, I don’t throw anything away that I have spent good money on. I will sell it, donate it or give it to my sister. Growing up, I would say that I lived a very controlled life. I never really got new clothes, new electronics, or anything new. It was always hand-me-downs from my mom. Note that they were good quality, but nothing was ever “new” to me. Growing up, I was okay with that. I appreciated what I got because I was getting things that were new to me and I didn’t have to pay for them. But I still took for granted the quality they were and didn’t take care of them the way I should have. So I tend to give them away to someone else that really needs them. Now that I actually purchase good quality “higher end” brands I respect and take care of them much more than I would have if it was given to me.

Another method that certain brands and organizations use to get us to buy, or desire their products is how they advertise it. They will put commercials on multiple stations on T.V. so their message gets out. In the commercial, they will put in the most effective pieces of information that they can fit in the small amount of time that they are allotted. The information they choose is going to be the most exciting and is going to persuade people to want to buy their product. One thing I have noticed about these ads on T.V. is that sometimes they will not include the actual price of the product. They might say the base price, but once you go to buy it, you will have tax fees, service fees, and other random fees that you had no idea about when purchasing the item. Some people don’t care because they just want the item. Another reason they don’t mention the little fees is because we want to hear the lowest price because when it comes to money, most people care a lot more. They want to know where their money is going.

So is being a consumer a good or bad thing? In my opinion it can be a good thing if you know how to handle it. Being smart about what you purchase is the most important thing I am trying to get across in writing all this. Knowing that advertisements are meant to manipulate you into buying their items is key. They are going to say or do anything to try to get you to buy the item and make you believe that it was your idea to buy it, not theirs. This doesn’t always have to be a bad thing if you are knowledgeable and think about if it is going to benefit you in the long run.

Being identified as a consumer in this world today is second nature. Everyone is a consumer in today’s world and it isn’t always a bad thing. It can mean a multitude of different things in today’s society. One definition is someone who uses or absorbs, or the more common way we describe a consumer is as a buyer. Buying something that you might not necessarily need is another way of being a consumer. Today the majority of what we do depends on the type of consumer we are.  There are consumers who can keep buying the next new thing with no second thoughts. There are consumers who actually think about the purchase and decide if they really need the item. There are those who can point out that they do not need the item right now, and can wait a few months until the price of the object has dropped significantly so it is at a more reasonable price. Being a consumer is a social aspect. Shopping has been a part of our lives since we were at a young age, so we have come to know what brands and types of products will fit best for ourselves. We know which brands are the higher ends, but not always the best quality product.

As I said before there are many different types of consumers that categorize every individual. For example, if I am looking at myself, I would say that I am a conservative consumer for a number of reasons. First off, I may always want the next new thing, but who doesn’t? A personal example for me is I have wanted the iPhone since it was first released. Unfortunately, the price of the phone was so high that there was no way my family could afford to purchase it for me. Then the next one came out, and I thought, hey, maybe I could get the old one since I don’t need the new features the new one has. The old one is much cheaper now, but I still was not able to get it. Once I started paying my own phone bill and the next new phone came out, I thought that maybe I could afford it. I know what I want and now no one is telling me I cannot have it because it is my money and I can spend it the way I want. But I still refused to buy the phone because I knew it was not a smart purchase. I had other bills that I needed to continue paying that I would not be able to pay if my phone bill was to if I switched to the “iPhone family.” But this just shows how I see myself as a consumer. I know what I want but I also think about if I really do need the product at the time. I would rather use the money to get my car fixed instead of getting a new phone. But after all that waiting, I finally was able to purchase an iPhone this year. I had waited long enough and it ended up working out in my benefit where my bill would not increase at all and I was able to get more out of the purchase than normally intended.

When I decide to discard my purchases, I usually have a good reason for it. For one, I don’t throw anything away that I have spent good money on. I will sell it, donate it or give it to my sister. Growing up, I would say that I lived a very controlled life. I never really got new clothes, new electronics, or anything new. It was always hand-me-downs from my mom. Note that they were good quality, but nothing was ever “new” to me. Growing up, I was okay with that. I appreciated what I got because I was getting things that were new to me and I didn’t have to pay for them. But I still took for granted the quality they were and didn’t take care of them the way I should have. So I tend to give them away to someone else that really needs them. Now that I actually purchase good quality “higher end” brands I respect and take care of them much more than I would have if it was given to me.

Another method that certain brands and organizations use to get us to buy, or desire their products is how they advertise it. They will put commercials on multiple stations on T.V. so their message gets out. In the commercial, they will put in the most effective pieces of information that they can fit in the small amount of time that they are allotted. The information they choose is going to be the most exciting and is going to persuade people to want to buy their product. One thing I have noticed about these ads on T.V. is that sometimes they will not include the actual price of the product. They might say the base price, but once you go to buy it, you will have tax fees, service fees, and other random fees that you had no idea about when purchasing the item. Some people don’t care because they just want the item. Another reason they don’t mention the little fees is because we want to hear the lowest price because when it comes to money, most people care a lot more. They want to know where their money is going.

So is being a consumer a good or bad thing? In my opinion it can be a good thing if you know how to handle it. Being smart about what you purchase is the most important thing I am trying to get across in writing all this. Knowing that advertisements are meant to manipulate you into buying their items is key. They are going to say or do anything to try to get you to buy the item and make you believe that it was your idea to buy it, not theirs. This doesn’t always have to be a bad thing if you are knowledgeable and think about if it is going to benefit you in the long run.

The transition from high school to college can be a very stressful time for any college student. Being stressed often causes us to make decisions that we would not normally make in our day to day lives. Sometimes we act on impulses and don’t realize the decision we had made until after it is over. Dealing with the stress or trying to find a way to handle the stress could add even more stress that that poor student so they could resort to making some very poor decisions. They are going to go for what they believe will calm the down the most and have the biggest effect on them. Many students would resort to smoking as a stress reducer in hard times. Nicotine is one of the worst substances you can put in your body because it is the most addictive substance there is. Students need to realize that there are plenty of other methods that can be done that are a more responsible choice for dealing with stress.

Our overall goal for this assignment was to inform students the different ways that you can de-stress. We also were wanted to find out how our fellow peers and some random students de-stressed. Using these results we were able to come to a conclusion that not as many students resorted to smoking as we initially thought.

Since it is very likely that the majority of the WSU campus has a Facebook that is where we started when we were trying to get random submissions from students. We created a Facebook group about our project and we all added as many people as we could. We put up an explanation on why we had created the page and gave them an email address they could send the picture of them doing their method of de-stressing if they did not want to post the picture publically. That method of trying to collect information was not as effective as we thought it would be. We thought that more people would be willing to send in a picture because they would be able to choose the picture, we were not going to put them on the spot and take a photo of them.

Surprisingly that technological choice was not in our best interest. To make it more effective we could have mad the group sooner and posted some existing pictures in the group so someone did not feel as though they were going to be the only one submitting a photo. Instead of having our Facebook page for gathering information we decided that we were going to create a survey asking how do you de-stress and the answer options were going to be the submissions that we had already received earlier. We created a small survey and one of our group members took it to her criminal justice class that had well over 100 students in attendance. With all the results we gathered with just that little survey, our project was nearly complete. We just needed to write up and create the visual describing all the information and conclusions that we had come to.

This is the goal and project we chose to pursue mainly because it was the one project we all agreed on and had some piece of our original projects that we wanted to be a part of in it. We took all 3 of our ideas and found a way to merge them into one big idea that ended up being very successful. We chose a goal that we knew we would be able to achieve with some hard work but we also knew that it was not impossible. After we started discussing our initial idea more and more we began to create a vision in our heads of what we wanted our final project to look like. We first wanted to create a video power point and have the top 5 ways to de-stress be the only pictures in it, but we decided that we wanted to include more of the picture submissions that we received because we got about 20 submissions all together. We ended up creating two different poster boards. One had our data and pie chart that showed the biggest results that we received through the survey and on the other we made a collage of all the photo submissions that we had received.

My thinking about writing has not really changed over the process of this assignment. We did not do a whole lot of writing when it came to the type of project we were pursuing. One thing that I did learn that I need to improve on that I know will benefit me in the future is to create an action plan when it comes to big projects like this. It would make everything so much easier if I was able to physically see and plan out each and every step and task that needed to be done and when they needed to be done by. But an action plan does not account for the big changes we were forced to make. No plan in our entire project was set in stone. We made changes and modifications every day and everything turned out to work out perfectly.

As described earlier, our project included many random students that helped us reach our overall goal of getting as many random submissions as possible. This was all thanks to our idea of creating a survey. Our project also required friends of ours, and friends of our friends to send in photos as their submissions of them performing their method of de-stressing. This was not as successful as we thought it would be. We believe it was because people were not comfortable posting their picture of a Facebook page where a bunch of people they did not know where a part of, which is why we added an email to the page that you could send your photos in anonymously. This ended up somewhat working, we got only about 5 submissions this way so we mainly had to depend on our friends who would let us take pictures of them or send pictures of them doing their de-stressor action.

The first blog post we were required to do was about Communication is the 21^st century. I mainly wrote about most communication these days being through some sort of technology or cellular device. Over the course of this semester I can’t say that my personal description for communication has really changed that much.  I wrote about how the most effective ways of communication with loved ones or people you do not see for long periods of time is either Skype or Facebook. That is still true even after everything I have learned this semester. Anything on the computer is going to be way more effective than any other type of communication. Plus, it is going to be way fast than other methods, and that is what everyone wants these days, they want the speed when it comes to communication, that and that the message gets through correctly and clearly. What I did not write about what could essentially be considered a bad form of communication or what bad could come out of only technical/cellular communication. First of all, if you are going to communicate mainly through text messaging and Facebook messaging, you are not going to get the emotion in that persons voice, so you could interpret the entire conversation wrong. As well as, people who stay behind a computer all day can really become a different person. They become so reliant on that computer and that form of communication that they could have a hard time existing in the real world because they have been in the computer world for so long.

My two favorite blog posts are going to have to be my consumer essay and the TED talk power point. My consumer essay is one of my favorite posts because I really was talking about something that I could really relate to. Consumerism is so high and mighty right now everyone is going to be a part of it and it going to have an opinion on it. I believe that I had had a childhood to where I could talk about my personal experiences about not getting what I initially wanted whenever I wanted. I had to work for what I got and it made me appreciate everything I got so much more. It also was my favorite post because this was the first post that we did that we were able to get feedback from our peers about. When the 4 of us met in the professors office in the morning and discussed the essays that we were supposed to read, I found it very effective when they were giving me feedback and I was able to use that information to make my essay even stronger and make it that much more enjoyable to read.

My second favorite blog post was the TED Talk power point. Being able to pick a topic about whatever I wanted to talk about also made it that much more fun for me to put extra time and effort into. Being able to come up with examples about each side of my argument and reading into them while finding other examples that could relate made the post that much more enjoyable for me. The only problem I ran into was not finding out the way to post it as a power point so I ended up having to post each slide as a picture which was kind of a hassle but everything worked out okay.

Over the semester there have been blog posts that I love doing and then some that I really cannot stand or want to do. For example, one post that I did not complete was the annotated bibliography.  I have used that database so many different times for other projects that it was very unclear to me how to find a useful and resourceful article that I could use for my research essay.  I spent so much time on it and the entire time I was working on it, I was angry. So I was already not working to my fullest abilities so there was no way I was going to be able to finish it. But the posts that I actually enjoy posting and writing about are a completely different story. If I am passionate about something that I am going to write about, I am not going to stop writing about it until I either have said everything I want to say and you agree with me, or until you tell me to stop. Writing about something that you are passionate about and something you actually enjoy is going to make writing that post you are required to do, so much better for you, and since you are enjoying writing, it is going to make finishing so much easiest and it will happen so much faster.

Describing myself as a writer, thinker and an inventor could be more difficult that I thought. A writer is someone who can describe the situation, paint a picture for you to see exactly how things would be happening using just words, and I believe that I am very good at that. If I know what I am talking about and have a decent knowledge about whatever it is that I am discussing, I am able to create that image for people to see so they have a better understanding of what I am talking about. I would define myself as a thinker because that is one of my biggest flaws, I over think everything. If something is not perfect in my eyes, I will keep fixing it and fixing it until I decide to either start completely over or until I feel it is perfect. I wouldn’t exactly know how to define myself as an inventor. Maybe someone who can create the physical part of the assignment or visual which I also could see myself being a part of. I am very create when it comes to putting together projects so being an inventor is also something that I could see myself being a part of.

After specially writing out exactly how I see myself as a writer, thinker, or inventor is I believe that I have come to a point where I have actually utilized myself skills that I have developed over the semester. I have learned how to trust others with parts of the assignment so I do not always need to be worried about not turning in a finished piece of work. Doing all of these projects has really expanded my knowledge when it comes to writing and I know that I will continue to use these skills in my future wherever and whatever I end up going with my life.

Being identified as a consumer in this world today is second nature. Everyone is a consumer in today’s world and it isn’t always a bad thing. It can mean a multitude of different things in today’s society. One definition is someone who uses or absorbs, or the more common way we describe a consumer is as a buyer. Buying something that you might not necessarily need is another way of being a consumer. Today a lot of what we do depends on what type of consumers we are.  There are the types who can keep buying the next new thing with no second thoughts. There are those people who actually think about the purchase and decide if they really do need the item. Then there are those who can point out that they do not need the item right now, and can wait a few months until the price of the object has dropped significantly and is at a more reasonable price. Being a consumer is a social aspect. We have been shopping since such a young age that we have come to know what brands and types of products we see fit best for ourselves. We know which brands are the higher ends, but are not always the best quality product.

As I said before there are many different types of consumer categories that every individual is put in to. If I am looking at myself as an example, I would conclude that I am a conservative consumer for a number of reasons. First off, I may always want the next new thing, but who doesn’t? A personal example for me is I have wanted the iPhone since it first came out. Unfortunately, the price of the phone was so high there was no way my family could afford to get it for me. Then the next one came out, and I thought, hey, maybe I could get the old one since I don’t  need the new features that the new one has and the old one is much cheaper now, I still was not able to get it. Once I started paying my own phone bill and the next new phone came out and now that I was paying my own bill I thought again, that maybe I could afford it.  I know what I want and now no one is telling me I cannot have it because it is my money and I can spend it the way I want. I still refused to buy the phone because I knew it was not a smart purchase. I had other bills that I needed to continue paying that I would not be able to if my phone bill were to increase as it would have if I switched to the “iPhone family.” But this just shows how I see myself as a consumer. I know what I want but I also think about if I really do need it at the time. I would rather pay to get my car fixed than to get a new phone.

When I decide to discard my purchases, I usually have a good reason for it. For one, I don’t throw anything away that I have spent good money on. I will sell it, donate it or the most common one, and give it to my sister. Growing up, I would say that I had a very controlled lifestyle. I never really got new clothes, new electronics, new anything. It was always hand me downs from my mom. Note that they were of good quality, because that is how my mom shopped but nothing was ever “new” to me, and growing up, I was okay with that. I appreciated what I got because I was getting “new to me” things and I didn’t have to pay for it. But I still took for granted the quality they were. So I tend to follow the same lifestyle as she did, just give them away to someone else that needs it more than me. Now that I have actually purchased on my own, good quality “higher end” brands, I respect and take care of the item way more than I would have if it was given to me.

Another way that certain brands or organizations get us to buy, or want to buy their products is the way they advertise it. They will put commercials on T.V. on multiple stations so they know their message is getting out. In this commercial, they will put in the most effective pieces of information that they can fit in their small amount of time that they are allotted for the commercial. The information they choose is going to be the most exciting part and is going to get people to want to buy their product. One thing I have noticed about these ads on T.V.is that sometimes they will not include the actual price of the product in the commercial. They might say maybe the base price, but once you go to buy it, you will have tax, service, and other little random fees that you had no idea about going into the process of purchasing this item. Some people don’t care because they just want the item. Another reason they fail to mention the little fees is because we want to know the positive aspects of the product, not the negative aspects. When it comes to money, people are definitely more serious. They want to know where their money is going. As I said before, some products that are known as the “higher brand” are not always the better quality; it could be a social status problem that some people have today.

So is being a consumer a good or bad thing? In my view it can be a good thing if you know how to handle it. Being smart about what you purchase is the biggest lesson I can try to get someone to understand in writing all this, knowing that advertisements are meant to try to manipulate you to buy their items no matter what is key. They are going to say or do anything to try to get you to want to buy the item, make you think that it was your idea to buy it, not theirs. This doesn’t always have to be a bad thing if you know what you are doing and figure out if it is going to benefit you in the long run.

Being identified as a consumer today in this world is just second nature. Everyone is a consumer in today’s world and it doesn’t always mean that it is a bad thing. Being identified as a consumer can mean a multitude of different things in today’s society. It could mean someone who uses or absorbs, or in a way that we use it most now, a consumer is a buyer. Buying something that you might not really need is another way someone can be a consumer. Today a lot of what we do depends on what type of consumers we are.  There are the types who can just keep buying the next new thing with no second thought. There are those people who can actually think about the purchase and decide if they really do need this item. Then there are those who can point out that they really do not need the item right now, and can wait a few months until the price of the object has dropped significantly and is at a more reasonable price. Being a consumer is a social aspect. We have been shopping for so long that we have come to know what brands and types of products we see fit best for ourselves. We know which brands are the higher ends, but are not always the best quality product.

As I said before there are many different types of consumer categories that every one of us are put in to. If I am looking at myself, I would conclude that I am a conservative consumer for a number of reasons. First off, I may always want the next new thing, but who doesn’t? A personal example for me is I have wanted the iPhone since it first came out. But the price of the phone was so high there was no way my family could afford to get it for me. Then the next one came out, and I thought, hey, maybe I could get the old one because I do not really need the new features that the new one has and the old one is a lot cheaper now, but I still was not able to get it. Then I started paying my own phone bill and the next new phone came out and now that I was paying my own bill I thought again, that maybe I could afford it because I know what I want and now no one is telling me I cannot have it because it is my money and I can spend it the way I want. But I still refused to buy it because I knew it was not a smart purchase. I had other bills that I needed to continue paying that I would not be able to if my phone bill were to increase as it would have if I switched to the “iPhone family.” But don’t worry, I have not given up yet on getting one! I will get one no matter what! But this just shows how I see myself as a consumer. I know what I want but I also think about if I really do need it at the time. I would rather pay to get my car fixed than to get a new phone.

When I decide to discard my purchases, I usually have a very good reason for it. For one, I don’t throw anything that I have spent good money on. I will sell it, donate it or the most common one, and give it to my sister. Growing up, I would say that I had a very controlled lifestyle. I never really got new clothes, new electronics, new anything. It was always hand me downs from my mom. Note that they were of good quality, because that is how my mom shopped but nothing was never “new” to me, and growing up, I was okay with that. I appreciated what I got because I was getting “new to me” things. But I still took for granted the quality they were. So I tend to follow the same lifestyle as she did, just give them away to someone else that needs it more than me. Now that I have actually purchased on my own, good quality “higher end” brands, I respect and take care of the item way more than I would have if it was given to me.

Another way that certain brands or organizations get us to buy, or want to buy their products is the way they advertise it. They will put commercials on T.V. on multiple stations so they know their message is getting out. In this commercial, they will put in the most effective pieces of information that they can fit in their small amount of time that they are allotted for the commercial. The information they choose is of course going to be the most exciting parts and is going to get people to want to buy their product. One part I have noticed about these ads on T.V., sometimes they will not include the truthful price of the product in the commercial. They will say maybe the base price, and then once you go to buy it, you will have tax, service, and other little fees that you had no idea about going into the process of purchasing this item. But some people don’t care because they just want the item. Another reason they fail to mention all the little prices is because we want to know the positive aspects of the product, not the negative sides. When it comes to money, most people are definitely more serious. They want to know where their money is going. As I said before, some products that are known as the “higher brand” are not always the better quality; it could be as I said before, a social status problem that some people have today.

So is being a consumer a good or bad thing? In my view it can be a good thing if you know how to handle it. Being smart about what you purchase is the biggest thing I can try to get someone to understand in writing all this, knowing that advertisements are meant to try to manipulate you to buy their items no matter what. They are going to say or do anything to try to get you to want to buy the item, make you think that it was your idea to buy it, not all the ways and words they said to persuade you. This doesn’t always have to be a bad thing if you know what you are doing and figure out if it is going to benefit you in the long run.

About 30 billion packs of cigarettes are sold annually. People today will tell you that a way that they relieve stress or a method for them to cool down from a long day will be to smoke a cigarette. Smoking a cigarette gives you the satisfaction of cooling down after a long day. Being able to go outside, sit down and have a cigarette makes them feel better after a hard day. Some could even say just the motion of bringing the cigarette up to your mouth, inhaling, then exhaling the smoke gives them the satisfaction they need. But you only need to smoke one cigarette to get addicted to them; you could realize how much you enjoy the sensation and keep going back to it and doing it until it is too late. Quitting smoking is one of the hardest habits to do because Nicotine is the most addictive substance there is. People do not realize how terrible smoking can be for their bodies. They would rather have the sensation of Nicotine than having a healthy body, lungs and suitable area around them.    

            Smoking is not only harmful to the person smoking but it is just as harmful to the people around who is breathing it in. Second hand smoke it just as harmful as sucking on a cigarette. Cigarette smoke is the leading cause of lung cancer, which can end in death for anyone. The question is if it is the leading cause of death and lung cancer globally, then why do we continue to do it? An estimated 443,000 people die from smoking and inhaling cigarette smoke.  Not only does it do damage to everyone around, it is a terrible smell to be around. Many do not want to smell like that or be around that smell. In fact, a lot of bars and public places around the country are banning the use of cigarettes from their establishments because they see how much business it takes away from them.

            I cannot speak from personal experience about how it is to quit smoking, but I can speak from very personal friends of mine who have gone through it. It all happened very perfect actually; when we were assigned this essay I had two friends of mine who were going to quit smoking within the week. Carley was going to just quit “cold turkey” as some would say, but Shawn eased himself into it. They both will tell you that it was the hardest habit to quit. This is how it was going to work. They agreed on a day where they were no longer going to smoke anymore cigarettes. If they had any leftover, they needed to get rid of them rest of them by this day so they would have no temptations whatsoever. A week before they quit Carley was smoking as much as she could because she knew she was not going to be able to anymore in just a few days. She knew she was going to miss the sensation of smoking, the feeling of it, so she continued to smoke as much as she could before she had to stop. But Shawn only smoked about one or two a day up until the last and final day they were allowed to smoke. So cutting down for him was a lot easier because he wasn’t as addicted to the Nicotine. When the day came for the two of them to quit, Carley was obviously having a much more difficult time with everything than Shawn was. Although neither of them have given in to their cravings at all, if you were to ask them about it, they will tell you that it may be one of the hardest things that they have ever done. 

            When I asked Carley why she began smoking in the first place she said it was because it was what her parents did. So since she was always around it, it just became a habit for her to be around, smell, and inhaling the smoke. So when she finally took her first “drag” of a cigarette it almost did not affect her at all, because she was so used to being around the atmosphere of a cigarette. When I asked Shawn why he first began smoking he said it was because he started working at such a young and he was just around it very often. He also used it as a way to de-stress because of the busy work environment. Since he was not as used to it, his first “drag” was a harsher than Carley’s.

As it was said before, smoking is used as a form of relaxation. With the way that the economy is going right now, jobs are getting harder to find, so a college degree is something that you need to have these days to be able to get a decent job. With that in mind, going through about 4 years of college can be very stressful for some students. As a form of relaxing after a long day some students could resort to smoking. What they should do instead is a find another way of calming down and relaxing. Some examples could be, taking a nap, going to work out, listening to music, anything that is not doing great harm to their body.

“It’ll make you cool.” “Everyone is doing it!” “It’s not that big of a deal.” Its phrases like these that cause younger people to start smoking cigarettes in the first place. It can be used as a form of relaxation for some, but for most it is used as a social stigma. Once you start smoking, the harder it is to quit. It only takes one cigarette to get addicted.

            Nicotine is the most addictive substance there is. It causes more damage to your body than just in your lungs, although the lungs are where the most damage is done. It also does damage to your mouth, causing you to have a dry mouth, teeth yellowing and your respiratory system to break down. It also affects your brain it affects your sleep schedule by causing disturbances and abnormal dreams. It also causes you to have dizziness, lightheadedness and makes you much more irritable. It also does a lot of damage to your heart. It can increase or decrease heart rate as well as give you high blood pressure. It also can cause you to have joint problems very early in life.

            Smoking is one of the worst habits that you can pick up as an individual. It is also the hardest habit to quit. I do personally believe that it can be used as a relaxer or a stress reducer, but there are so many other ways that you can handle those situations without putting your body in a bad place. Some examples could napping, listen to music, be with friends, be with pets, get pampered, or maybe play video games, do some crafts, etc. There are so many different way of de-stressing that you could do besides smoking. Once you start, it will be very difficult to quit. It also creates second hand smoke which is just as harmful to others. No one wants to smell the cigarette smoke as they are walking around. In Fact, all many and most bars and other public places have made smoking inside their establishment against their rules because of how much business they lose because of it. It not only ruins pieces of furniture but leaves behind a smell that is very difficult to get rid of.

Smoking is the leading cause of death globally to this day. We as a nation have done a lot in trying to prevent people from smoking in public or even in the comfort of their homes. The two biggest attempts have been, making it illegal or against the rules to smoke in a bar or public places along with the prices of cigarettes going up tremendously in the past few years. We will never be able to make people stop smoking cigarettes completely, it’s just impossible, being that is it legal people are going to continue to do it, even if they know what it is doing to their bodies. All we can do is educate them on what exactly it is doing to their bodies and present different ideas and different methods that  they can use to relieve stress so that they possibly could quit smoking all together.

A lot of people today will tell you that a way that they relieve stress or a way for them to cool down from a long day will be to smoke a cigarette. Smoking a cigarette gives people the satisfaction of cooling down after a long day, just being able to go outside, sit down, relax, and have a cigarette makes them feel so much better after a hard day. Some could even say just the motion of smoking, bringing the cigarette up to your mouth, inhaling, then exhaling the smoke gives them the satisfaction that they need. But you only need to smoke one cigarette to get addicted to them; you could realize how much you enjoy it and keep doing it and doing it until it is too late. Quitting smoking might be one of the hardest things to do because Nicotine is the most addictive substance there is, which makes it the hardest to quit. People do not realize how terrible smoking can be for themselves, and if they do they don’t care or just like the satisfaction of smoking more. They would rather have that way to relax than having a healthy body, lungs and area around them.   

The transition from high school to college can be a very stressful time for any college student. Being stressed often causes us to make decisions that we would not normally make in our day to day lives. Sometimes we act on impulses and don’t realize the decision we had made until after it is over. Dealing with the stress or trying to find a way to handle the stress could add even more stress that that poor student so they could resort to making some very poor decisions. They are going to go for what they believe will calm the down the most and have the biggest effect on them. Many students would resort to smoking as a stress reducer in hard times. Nicotine is one of the worst substances you can put in your body because it is the most addictive substance there is. Students need to realize that there are plenty of other methods that can be done that are a more responsible choice for dealing with stress.

Our overall goal for this assignment was to inform students the different ways that you can de-stress. We also were wanted to find out how our fellow peers and some random students de-stressed. Using these results we were able to come to a conclusion that not as many students resorted to smoking as we initially thought.

Since it is very likely that the majority of the WSU campus has a Facebook that is where we started when we were trying to get random submissions from students. We created a Facebook group about our project and we all added as many people as we could. We put up an explanation on why we had created the page and gave them an email address they could send the picture of them doing their method of de-stressing if they did not want to post the picture publically. That method of trying to collect information was not as effective as we thought it would be. We thought that more people would be willing to send in a picture because they would be able to choose the picture, we were not going to put them on the spot and take a photo of them.

Surprisingly that technological choice was not in our best interest. To make it more effective we could have mad the group sooner and posted some existing pictures in the group so someone did not feel as though they were going to be the only one submitting a photo. Instead of having our Facebook page for gathering information we decided that we were going to create a survey asking how do you de-stress and the answer options were going to be the submissions that we had already received earlier. We created a small survey and one of our group members took it to her criminal justice class that had well over 100 students in attendance. With all the results we gathered with just that little survey, our project was nearly complete. We just needed to write up and create the visual describing all the information and conclusions that we had come to.

This is the goal and project we chose to pursue mainly because it was the one project we all agreed on and had some piece of our original projects that we wanted to be a part of in it. We took all 3 of our ideas and found a way to merge them into one big idea that ended up being very successful. We chose a goal that we knew we would be able to achieve with some hard work but we also knew that it was not impossible. After we started discussing our initial idea more and more we began to create a vision in our heads of what we wanted our final project to look like. We first wanted to create a video power point and have the top 5 ways to de-stress be the only pictures in it, but we decided that we wanted to include more of the picture submissions that we received because we got about 20 submissions all together. We ended up creating two different poster boards. One had our data and pie chart that showed the biggest results that we received through the survey and on the other we made a collage of all the photo submissions that we had received.

My thinking about writing has not really changed over the process of this assignment. We did not do a whole lot of writing when it came to the type of project we were pursuing. One thing that I did learn that I need to improve on that I know will benefit me in the future is to create an action plan when it comes to big projects like this. It would make everything so much easier if I was able to physically see and plan out each and every step and task that needed to be done and when they needed to be done by. But an action plan does not account for the big changes we were forced to make. No plan in our entire project was set in stone. We made changes and modifications every day and everything turned out to work out perfectly.

As described earlier, our project included many random students that helped us reach our overall goal of getting as many random submissions as possible. This was all thanks to our idea of creating a survey. Our project also required friends of ours, and friends of our friends to send in photos as their submissions of them performing their method of de-stressing. This was not as successful as we thought it would be. We believe it was because people were not comfortable posting their picture of a Facebook page where a bunch of people they did not know where a part of, which is why we added an email to the page that you could send your photos in anonymously. This ended up somewhat working, we got only about 5 submissions this way so we mainly had to depend on our friends who would let us take pictures of them or send pictures of them doing their de-stressor action.  

Being identified as a consumer in this world today is second nature. Everyone is a consumer in today’s world and it isn’t always a bad thing. It can mean a multitude of different things in today’s society. One definition is someone who uses or absorbs, or the more common way we describe a consumer is as a buyer. Buying something that you might not necessarily need is another way of being a consumer. Today a lot of what we do depends on what type of consumers we are.  There are the types who can keep buying the next new thing with no second thoughts. There are those people who actually think about the purchase and decide if they really do need the item. Then there are those who can point out that they do not need the item right now, and can wait a few months until the price of the object has dropped significantly and is at a more reasonable price. Being a consumer is a social aspect. We have been shopping since such a young age that we have come to know what brands and types of products we see fit best for ourselves. We know which brands are the higher ends, but are not always the best quality product.

As I said before there are many different types of consumer categories that every individual is put in to. If I am looking at myself as an example, I would conclude that I am a conservative consumer for a number of reasons. First off, I may always want the next new thing, but who doesn’t? A personal example for me is I have wanted the iPhone since it first came out. Unfortunately, the price of the phone was so high there was no way my family could afford to get it for me. Then the next one came out, and I thought, hey, maybe I could get the old one since I don’t  need the new features that the new one has and the old one is much cheaper now, I still was not able to get it. Once I started paying my own phone bill and the next new phone came out and now that I was paying my own bill I thought again, that maybe I could afford it.  I know what I want and now no one is telling me I cannot have it because it is my money and I can spend it the way I want. I still refused to buy the phone because I knew it was not a smart purchase. I had other bills that I needed to continue paying that I would not be able to if my phone bill were to increase as it would have if I switched to the “iPhone family.” But this just shows how I see myself as a consumer. I know what I want but I also think about if I really do need it at the time. I would rather pay to get my car fixed than to get a new phone.

When I decide to discard my purchases, I usually have a good reason for it. For one, I don’t throw anything away that I have spent good money on. I will sell it, donate it or the most common one, and give it to my sister. Growing up, I would say that I had a very controlled lifestyle. I never really got new clothes, new electronics, new anything. It was always hand me downs from my mom. Note that they were of good quality, because that is how my mom shopped but nothing was ever “new” to me, and growing up, I was okay with that. I appreciated what I got because I was getting “new to me” things and I didn’t have to pay for it. But I still took for granted the quality they were. So I tend to follow the same lifestyle as she did, just give them away to someone else that needs it more than me. Now that I have actually purchased on my own, good quality “higher end” brands, I respect and take care of the item way more than I would have if it was given to me.

Another way that certain brands or organizations get us to buy, or want to buy their products is the way they advertise it. They will put commercials on T.V. on multiple stations so they know their message is getting out. In this commercial, they will put in the most effective pieces of information that they can fit in their small amount of time that they are allotted for the commercial. The information they choose is going to be the most exciting part and is going to get people to want to buy their product. One thing I have noticed about these ads on T.V.is that sometimes they will not include the actual price of the product in the commercial. They might say maybe the base price, but once you go to buy it, you will have tax, service, and other little random fees that you had no idea about going into the process of purchasing this item. Some people don’t care because they just want the item. Another reason they fail to mention the little fees is because we want to know the positive aspects of the product, not the negative aspects. When it comes to money, people are definitely more serious. They want to know where their money is going. As I said before, some products that are known as the “higher brand” are not always the better quality; it could be a social status problem that some people have today.

So is being a consumer a good or bad thing? In my view it can be a good thing if you know how to handle it. Being smart about what you purchase is the biggest lesson I can try to get someone to understand in writing all this, knowing that advertisements are meant to try to manipulate you to buy their items no matter what is key. They are going to say or do anything to try to get you to want to buy the item, make you think that it was your idea to buy it, not theirs. This doesn’t always have to be a bad thing if you know what you are doing and figure out if it is going to benefit you in the long run.