One of the Problems Migrant Workers Face

Since this week is a free blogpost (the ones I hate because I have no imagination) I will discuss what we are learning in IHSS (Integrated History and Social Sciences). 

In IHSS we are learning about migrant farmworkers, and my project is on one of their biggest issues: lack of money. Migrant workers don't earn enough money to make a living. They can't afford the food they pick when they see it at grocery stores, which I find very sad and unfair. They are paid less than minimum wage (not cool) because some of them are not legal citizens of the United States, so it is not illegal for them to be paid that little. A lot of them are citizens though, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 

There was a riot some time ago that asked the corporations to raise the price of the produce they were picking by 1¢. One cent! One penny! It would give the migrant workers around $50 more a week, and not that many people would notice, and care, if it was raised by only one cent. But the corporations refused because they're a bunch of greedy swine who don't care for their workers who do the real back-breaking (literally) work. 

Some of the other big issues are how the migrant workers stay in the same economic situations for generation after generation, they don't get a good education (considering 65% of migrant workers drop out of school), they have terrible living conditions, and they don't have healthcare. I feel like all of these problems could be solved if they earned more money. The world is an unfair place, so why not do what we can to make it better?  

Gatsby's Love For Daisy: real or not real?

Choose any topic of interest that we have discussed in class (or not discussed, if you have a new one) in relation to The Great Gatsby and explore it further. Use textual evidence to support your ideas.

One thing that we discussed in class that I really liked was how Gatsby only loved the idea of Daisy. Gatsby loved the idea of the girl he'd had a fling with when they were young, not the actual Daisy. Some reasons that are proof of this are: the fact that he "loved" her even though he hadn't seen her for a decade, he was so nervous to re-meet her because he had been in love with an idea of her for so long and not an actual physical being, and because he was so convinced that she hadn't changed, that she still loved him as much as he loved her.

Gatsby claimed to be "in love" with Daisy, yet he hadn't seen her since before the war. I'm not sure he even loved her then; he probably also just loved the idea of her, a rich, beautiful girl who would hook up with all of the soldiers. They might have felt something deeper than just like towards each other, but they couldn't see what could become of it; he had to go to war, and just writing letters isn't enough to fully love someone. Yes, you can love the idea of them, but not their full body and mind.

When Gatsby convinced Nick to invite Daisy over for tea, and have Gatsby there, Gatsby was incredibly anxious. He cut Nick's grass for him, when Daisy was one minute late he freaked, and when she finally showed up, he walked out of the house and back in. I think it was because since he hadn't seen her for so long, he was nervous to be with just not the idea of her, but the real her. Like I said before, he had been in love with the idea of her for so long, he had forgotten what it was like to actually love someone's physical being.

Gatsby was convinced during his whole affair with Daisy that she was still in love with him, even when he was arguing with Tom, Daisy's husband about it. He was so in love with Daisy that he couldn't even possibly imagine that she wasn't still in love with him after all this time. But she wasn't, she was also just in love with the idea of him, someone who would actually love her, someone that did love her, at least, in her past. And that's why this relationship would never have worked out because even though the other person is a lovely idea, being in love with that idea is never enough to maintain a healthy, strong relationship.