Life is Strange 2 does a very good job of displaying how intense situations can affect teenagers emotionally. The game takes place in the year 2016. This time setting has a very significant meaning and impacts on the game. 2016 is the year that Donald Trump was elected to become the 45th President of the United States of America. In his campaign, he had many controversial speeches and actions that attacked people of different racial backgrounds and nationality. One of his big targets were Mexicans. This controversial political environment was a heavy emphasis in episode 1 of the game to the point where some of the characters you encounter as Sean will talk about what is going on in the political world. For example, one the characters Sean and Daniel encounter threatens to call ICE (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on them and even says that people like the Diaz brothers are the reason why America needs to build the wall separating the US and Mexico.

The game connects emotionally to its players through the brotherly bond between Sean and Daniel. A big aspect of the game is the relationship between Sean and Daniel as they deal with a tragic loss: the death of their father at the ends of an undertrained rookie police officer. Despite the overall sorrowful and heavy foundation of the game, there are plenty of moments where the brothers are having fun. For example, episode 2 of the game starts out with the brothers having fun testing out Daniel’s new powers by lifting rocks from the ground and catching snowballs in mid-flight. The game really does take you through a roller-coaster of emotions.

Dontnod Entertainment earned a lot of recognition from the first Life is Strange. According to https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4375662/awards, the first Life is Strange won the BAFTA award for best story in a game and the NAVGTR awards for best song, character designs, and Original light mix score in a game. On top of that, the game blew up on YouTube. Dontnod Entertainment became known as one the better companies at creating story-driven games.

On January 24, 2019, Dontnod Entertainment released the much-anticipated episode 2 to their most recent game, Life is Strange 2. Of course, many YouTubers began to post videos of them playing the new episode, which so happens to be how I learned about the new’ episode’s release. Life is Strange 2 is Dontnod Entertainment’s most recent addition to their famous Life is Strange franchise. The Life is Strange franchise is a series of story-based games where the player plays as a teenager dealing with the hardships of life in their most extreme forms. Each 3 of the games so far in this franchise leave the player with one profound thought and feeling: that life is indeed strange and filled with challenges and most of the time, we as human beings are forced to deal with multiple challenges at once The first Life is Strange game had the player deal with sexism and sexual harassment in a school environment by not only by the students but by some of the teachers and faculty as well. Something else the first Life is Strange did was give your character, max, the ability to manipulate time. This power made you feel like you had to power to fix the whole situation that was going on in your school, but as the game progressed from episode to episode, it seemed like Max’s time manipulation powers caused more problems than it fixed, making the whole situation much more complicated; I personally feel like this is a metaphor on how these discriminative situations we encounter will never have an easy solution to them.

• 

Episode 1 of Life is Strange 2 focuses more on a different concept: racism, more specifically in the form of police brutality. The story revolves around a Mexican family in Seattle, Washington – the year is 2016 – in the year 2016. The player assumes the role of Sean Diaz – a 16-year-old high school boy – as he takes care of his little brother, Daniel Diaz, who is 9 years old after an unfortunate tragedy that puts them on the run from the police. Episode 1 set up the whole situation of the brothers while getting into a fight with his next door neighbor for picking on his brother, Sean accidentally knocks him out in front of a rookie police officer – who thinks that Sean just murdered another person. Sean and Daniel’s father, Esteban Diaz tries to ease the tension with the police officer, but the police officer ends up firing his gun and killing Esteban; this event ends up triggering Daniel’s power, which seems to be some form of telekinesis that can create a shockwave, as Daniel activated it – without consciously knowing he had those powers – in self-defense after hearing the gunshot fire. This shockwave ends up killing the policeman and destroying the neighborhood they live. Sean, fearing how the police are going to react to the aftermath of the situation and seeing him and his brother at the scene next to 2 dead people and another unconscious, decides to take his brother and make a run for it to Mexico. Sean’s choice to run away from home to Mexico is not controllable by the player, and it is unclear to many who have played the game if he made the right choice here, but the goal of the game is not to make you feel like Sean’s choice was correct. The game is showing how scared Sean is because he is a high school student who just witnessed a cop murder his father – after his dad just talked to him about how the US is becoming a politically scary country towards people of their ethnicities – and his brother accidentally kill the cop with his powers; Sean was worried that he and his brother would be accused of these 2 killings and would be separated from each other, so he chose to run away thinking it was the best choice to keep his brother and himself safe. Despite how extreme this whole situation may seem, some teenagers have been forced to deal with situations that are really extreme for a young person to cope with.

Episode 2 takes place a few weeks after episode 1 did. The big difference from episode 1 is that Daniel is now fully aware of his powers and has much better control over it. Episode 2’s name is “Rules”, and the focus of this episode is Sean teaching Daniel when and when not to use his powers. As the player controlling Sean, the task is up to you. The hard part about this is that you are put in a situation were you are teaching Daniel about when and when not to use his powers while trying to keep a low profile, and the game will actively force you as the player to make decisions to allow Daniel to reveal his power to other people in public by saving them or let them get hurt by doing nothing. This is a bystander dilemma that people encounter every day. The example of bullying explains this concept quite well. Assume you witnessed a classmate of your being bullied by another kid. We have all been taught that the right thing to do is to go report that to a teacher or adult, but that can be a risky and difficult choice to make. What if the bully found out you tattled on him or her. In that case, you have essentially made yourself the bully’s next potential target. This potential threat is scary enough to make a good amount of people choose not to report what they just witnessed. Connecting this back to Sean and Daniel’s situation, they have the opportunity to protect or save some people’s lives, but that comes at the risk of freaking people out about Daniel’s power or giving clues to police of their location; it is up to you, the player, to decide if that’s a big enough risk to prevent from protecting other people or not. Overall, episode 2 adds another challenge, another dilemma that the brothers must overcome on top of the whole running away from the cops situation; This is a part of what makes life so strange. As human beings, we are called upon to deal with multiple problems at once. I have known a few people who had to concentrate on doing well in school while also dealing with the loss of a family member at the same time and there is no easy way to handle these situations. I believe that the Life is Strange Franchise does a good job at portraying how multiple intense dilemmas can affect young teenagers, and that is why I wanted to write a blog post about the new release of Episode 2: Rules for Life is Strange 2.

After drafting and publishing the previous post about the NFL’s diversity issue, I started to ask myself, “Why do I feel so strongly about this?”. The answer that kept popping up in my head was for the past 13 years, I grew up watching football and that I want to see the NFL continue to be a successful league. I am a very passionate fan of the sport. For passionate fans like me, Stephen A. Smith is a very relatable person. He is clearly a passionate fan and sports TV personality who is not afraid to be extremely vocal when he sees a problem with a particular player, team, or with the sports league itself, whether its American football, basketball, etc. His energy as a talk show host is very contagious and helps other people become passionate about sports as well. Stephen A. Smith is very well known for his over-the-top attitude and personality when talking about sports news. Whenever I want to watch a video about the most recent sports news, I turn to Stephen A. Smith because I know it is going to be fun to watch as well as informative. As for his credibility, Stephen A. Smith is a professional sports journalist and sports TV personality. His job is built around reporting news such as the coaching diversity issues in the NFL.
ESPN, the company that published those videos on youtube, is also a major sports broadcasting program for the country. It has been reporting breaking news for sports since 1979

Racial conversations and topics are not new things for the NFL have well. Only a couple of years ago, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started the kneeling movement. Starting in September 2016, Colin Kaepernick decided to start kneeling in games during the U.S. National Anthem. His goal with this movement was to spread the awareness of Police Brutality against people of color. He decided that the best place to gain the attention of all Americans was through national TV. As a San Francisco 49ers fan and US citizen, I was proud of Colin Kaepernick for this. I knew that this course of action would give the team so “unnecessary” media attention it did not need for the 2016 football season, but Colin Kaepernick had the bravery to sacrifice his social image to address an issue in the country. This along with the racial diversity in NFL head coaching spots shows that racial discrimination continues to be an issue today not only in the world of sports but for the whole nation as well. After all, these 2 events are not that far apart from each other chronologically.

The National Football League’s (NFL) regular season came to an end just a few weeks ago. We are currently in the Conference Championship rounds of the Post Season as the four remaining teams, the Los Angeles Rams, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, and the Kansas City Chiefs, prepare for upcoming games. As for the other teams who have already been eliminated from competing in the Super Bowl (the championship game for the NFL), they have already begun the process of modifying their teams for the next year. As a big-time football fan for the past 13 years, I love to keep track of each teams transactions, the players and coaching staff they choose to either hire or fire. At the end of every football, there are always a few teams who believe that they need a new head coach and end up firing their current head coach. When it comes to the market of finding new coaches, NFL fans know this time period as “the Coaching Carousel”. This year, there were 8 teams looking for a new head coach: the Arizona Cardinals, Green Bay Packers, Denver Broncos, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cincinnati Bengals, New York Jets, and the Miami. So far 6 of the 8 teams have found their new Head Coach, but this year’s “Coaching Carousel” has drawn a lot of controversies, specifically towards the lack of racial diversity among NFL head coaches. On January 3, 2019, ESPN published a video on youtube of Stephen A. Smith’s, a Sports journalist, TV personality, and radio host, thoughts on the recent firings of NFL head coaches. Stephen A. Smith is clearly livid at the lack of diversity in NFL head coaching positions, and the statistics show that he is clearly right. Out of the 8 head coaches that were fired, 5 of them were black; all 5 of those coaches were replaced with coaching candidates that were white. I am not saying that race is the only reason why that these coaches were fired and hired, in fact, I agree with most of the firings that occurred, but the way this “Coaching Carousel” went about is pretty suspicious. Combine this recent “Coaching Carousel” with the statistic that Stephen A. Smith presented that out of all 32 teams in the NFL, only 2 teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Los Angeles Chargers, currently have a Black head coach. These are startling statistics and proves that the NFL has a glaring racial diversity problem that it needs to fix. To understand this issue better, I feel like I need to provide an example of one of the teams recent head coach hiring. On January 8, 2019, the Arizona Cardinals hired former Texas Tech head coach and current (at the time) USC Offensive Coordinator, the coach in charge of running the offensive side of football), Kliff Kingsbury. Kliff Kingsbury was thought of to be a potential up-and-coming young head coach, for he is only 39 years old, but his resume as a head coach so far is nothing to write home about. Has the head coach of Texas Tech from 2013-2018, Kingsbury has only 35 games and lost 40 games. As someone who followed his coaching career at Texas Tech, I thought he showed flashes of brilliance as a coach when he was coaching current Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, but with his current resume, I don’t think he is ready to be a head coach at the NFL level. ESPN posted 2 videos on youtube on January 9, 2019. One is about Stephen A. Smith’s initial reaction of the Kliff Kingsbury hiring and the other is the NFL First Take’s debates on the Kliff Kingsbury hiring. A particular part that Stephen A. Smith mentioned that I did not already know or considered was how photogenic he looked. Stephen A. Smith talks about how Kliff Kingsbury photogenic look is the perfect face for a team like the Arizona Cardinals to promote their team because after all, a professional football is ultimately a business. I do not mean to show any disrespect towards Kliff Kingsbury, for I believe he has the potential to be a great coach in the NFL, but I just found it so startling that he was the Cardinals top choice of a head coach with the current resume he had. This was especially startling considering there were guys like Marvin Lewis, a veteran African American head coach who, despite his recent struggles as a coach, has had a fair amount of success in the NFL as the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, was still available, but the Cardinals showed pretty much no interest in him. I am not saying that the NFL is being racist or discriminative, but the statistical numbers behind these recent hirings and firings and the recent actions taken by some of the teams in the NFL are alarming facts that I believe should be watched over.

“Education is at the heart of achieving your dreams” — Patrice Motsepe

The academic environment is a space that can be very tedious and stressful for people. For me, it feels like there is pressure being applied from every angle, whether it’s from expectations from family and friends to competition from my peers to even my own self-doubt. It is very hard to put your blood, sweat, and tears, into your academic career; it is difficult to find any passion in a setting that can be very demanding. So why put in the effort at all? That is because our academic careers are a part of our personal journeys and just like any journey, we will face adversities that we will have to overcome.

My parents have always told me that they were ok with whatever career choice I make for myself. They said that the most important point of a good career is that I enjoy it. Life is meant to be enjoyed; life is meant to be lived. Throughout every adversity, hurdle, self-doubt, etc., I always remind myself that this is my academic journey; that this is my life. I want to be the type of academic that explores my own individuality. I entered my undergraduate years at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) without declaring my major because I had no idea what type of person I want to be, and I still do not have that answer. I have a general idea of what subjects I like to study, Like Economics and History, but I do not know what I am going to do with the knowledge I learn in my classes. I am also learning how to incorporate my knowledge in school with my social life. Ever since I was a child, I have always been a gamer. Games, both board games and video games, have influenced my style of creativity. They are a reminder to me that there are many different ways to express the same idea. Certain games challenge the players to use their imagination and creativity to solve certain tasks. For example, one of the games I grew up with was Paper Mario for the N64. Paper Mario had items called badges that gave Mario different types of abilities. It was completely up to the player on what badge combination they wanted to use to defeat certain enemies. This challenged me to find the perfect badge combinations for each enemy encounter in the game. This concept became my mindset in school. My goal was not to be as accurate as possible in school but to expand my way of thinking about certain subjects and topics.

Education according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary is “the action or process of educating or of being educated”, but education is much more than that. In the various schools I have intended in my life, I have met a diverse amount of friends and peers, both students and teachers, who each have their own opinions on the various subjects we have studied in school. All the numerous interactions I had with my peers helped make school enjoyable for me, despite how stressful school can be. In my first quarter at UCSC, I took a US History class that focused on the time period from Native Americans to the Reconstruction period in the United States of America taught by Dr. Noel Edward Smyth. In this class, Dr. Smyth highly emphasized the idea of Point of View. In this class, Dr. Smyth would have us do a quick 5-minute in-class writing assignment on a question about the lecture he gave us. It was incredibly interesting to listen to other people’s answers to the questions he asked and then compare them to my own. It is astonishingly fascinating to me how there were so many different answers to the same question. That’s when I realized what Dr. Smyth exactly went by the importance Point of View. He was teaching us that a key part of education is learning through interactions with the people we encounter and understanding our different perspectives.

Education to me is the study of one’s interests in life through communication. An academic institution is a community, and a community functions at its best when everyone within the community is cooperating with each other. It is a chance to grow your own opinions by listening to others’ opinions. Education helps us expand our thinking. One thing I remember every single one of my instructors and professors is how listening to my fellow classmates’ ideas and questions would also help me create and/or develop my own thoughts; they were 100% correct. In high school, I was part of the drama program for all four years. My instructors, Mr. Jeremy Kent Jackson and Mr. Dominic Catrambone, emphasized the importance of watching each other perform. As a freshman, I watched all the juniors and seniors in rehearsals perform, and it struck me immediately how well prepared they were and how connected they were to the characters they were portraying. Adapting their techniques of acting and preparations to my own style helped me grow as an actor for the next three years I was at Providence High School. I attribute most of my academic success to my communication with my peers. Whether it was through casual conversations, intense study groups, or classroom debates, the ideas of my friends and peers helped me shape my own thoughts and opinions. They also make learning fun. When learning is fun, education becomes more accessible and understandable.

• 

My idea of being an academic is being an active community member. I have learned the most about my self through my many interactions with other people. Life is filled with interactions, and so communication is key to learning your path in life. The people around us and the society that we live in are always changing, so it is important to be engaged with your peers. Something I have learned in my short career in college so far is that education goes far beyond what you learn in a classroom. Education is about applying what you learn to the world and the people around you. I still have a long academic journey ahead of me. There are many uncharted areas in my academic journey that I have not explored yet and as an academic, I am looking forward to exploring all of those areas I have never stepped foot in.