jenna tynan's blog

So this one is really out to all you high school students wondering about some of the things you don't expect to find in college.  Also, you college students can refute my claim because I come from a pretty large college so it might not be prevelant in smaller colleges.  I have found that honestly, you don't really need to go to college to get a collegiate level education, all what you need is a computer with internet access.  Read More »

Yeah, so I was justing thinking about something as I decided to take a short study break from my economics book, my human development book, and so forth.  I really haven't been able to do any pleasure reading.  I can't open my favorite Jane Austin novel or good ole' Charlotte Bronte, or even some of the contemporary writers. 

I am a little bit curious if you all face my same dilema.  Do you find that you have to give up readig you're favorite magazine, Newspaper, or literature of any kind so that you can read hundreds or even thousands of pages of nonfiction that you're going to be tested on? At least I know I do.  I sometimes feel that if I really just had a few hours a day to sit back and enjoy my favorite books, I'd actually do better in my classes.  Read More »

So again, sometimes what you have to read to class is really amazing and pertinent to your life.  I'm a freshman in college right now, but there are already resume clinics and internship clinics and all of that other stuff instructing us how to best market our education.  I definitely see the importance of getting a good job by looking around at all this stuff.  However, I really saw the importance when reading Mark Rank's book One Nation: Underpriviledged.  Read More »

You know, I was just thinking about this as I was cleaning some of the dishes from Thanksgiving dinner.  It seems like when we enter into college that even though we try to be prepared as possible for everything, we're not.  You wouldn't believe how many seminars have to be offered about sexuality in college because there are just some things that they don't teach you in high school.  Read More »

Have you ever seen Minority Report with Tom Cruise?  Well, I did for the first time last year and though our world isn't getting that bad, it's getting close.  It seems like each day, there is some new form of "surveillance" that actually is just used to infringe upon our civil liberties.  The really weird thing is that even with all the anti-terror increased surveillance, it seems like private companies are tapping into our privacy more.  Read More »

So, except for the past few years, sexual abuse (especially when considering children) has been sort of thought as one of those minimal problems.  Well, finally its come to the forefront.  With an alarming 14,000 cases of sexual abuse of children in Canada and 90,000 in the U.S. just for 2003 alone, I think we are finally starting to realize how serious the issue is. 

What's even more serious is that the children who are at risk already face many challenges in society and this just adds to it.  Usually, the victims of child abuse are young girls who usually have some physical or mental incapacity such as blindness, deafness, or mental retardation.  This increases the chance that adults won't believe them when they say they were abused (or in the case of deaf children, they might not be able to communicate it).  The abusers are usually male family members or close family friends with addiction problems such as alcoholism and drug addictions.  Read More »

Alright, so this one is to progressiveu and to bloggers also.  So I don't know about you, but sometimes, there are just those blogs that really stand out.  Usually, progressiveu notices these blogs and will feature them on the homepage, but I have an idea that could up the anty and really push us all to be really progressive and insightful in our blogs.

I'm recommending that progressiveu start a "blog of the day page"  Bloggers could access that page just like the other main categories and read really interesting blogs by featured bloggers.  One blog could be picked for each day, an just to make sure that one blogger wasn't monopolizing, it could be limited to like one blog per person on that page per week.  Now here's the point incentive for bloggers.  They first get more points because by putting it on the blog of the day page, more people are likely to read it because progressiveu saw it as especially spectacular.  Second of all, I think that featured bloggers should get maybe 100 points for the post to really reward those who are progressive.  Read More »

So with the new election results, now that the democrats have taken control of the house, there has been a lot of talk about social security and medicare reform and if Bush's privatizing of social security has any way of surviving.

Well, I'm not really focused on that, what I'm focused on is how all this talk has increased my social security phobia.  There are reports that the social security "trust fund" is going to be clearly tapped out as early as 2012.  All what I can say is "what's going to happen to us?"  Birth rates continue to decline so the dependency ratio is getting greater and greater where more elderly are depending on each worker.  More and more people are opting to retire early thus depleting the trust fund in two ways: by not contributing and by taking out.  Also, I don't know about you but raising taxes to fill the deficit seems just about as feasible as privitizing accounts.  Read More »