Author: Luis M (Page 1 of 3)

3 Things that I believe I am a master and have interests in

• Soccer
• Video Games
• Math (Calculations)

Soccer is what gives me happiness playing, watching, and talking about. I know that sadly the sport in the professional game has become more of a business, it’s basically rich people owning tv companies, tickets, stadiums to earn money and they do anything to gain more money, rather than caring about this beautiful sport. In an article at Forbes, the women’s USA national soccer team say that for their success in winning the most world cups,4 gold medals and 8 CONCACAF gold cups (During that time period), they would say that they were paid less than the men’s USA national soccer team, which never won a single world cup. While knowing so much about the men’s soccer team, I didn’t know a lot about this controversy with the female side of soccer. My question about this would be: How can they balance the players earning with a fair and equal amount of pay for both women and men with especially the recent pandemic, causing teams to lose millions of dollars?

It’s been a while since I have touched a video game, but I have that talent to play good in any game, and games are always fun. In an article by Game Rant, there has been recent controversy last year with Activision Blizzard as last year, there has been reports of sexual harassment, toxicity and gender discrimination from the workers in the company. This is absolutely terrible, and an investigation is being done to this day. I didn’t know about such terrible acts from a company like Blizzard, that are famous for many games. It made me think and question: What can we do to stop or lower the amount of toxicity and discrimination from video games, mainly multiplayer games?

Math is 50/50 for me, I like it because I am good with numbers and understand most of it.  For this topic, I decided to talk about economic problems, which I have some knowledge about. Most people talk about the war between Russia and Ukraine and the damages, refugees, etc. However, there has to be more attention put in the economy of both countries. This war, according to an article by CNN, says that Ukraine economy could drop by half this year and could be worse, depending on the duration and intensity of the war. While Russia being so powerful, there economy has dropped and is currently in a recession. These drops have affected Europe and Asia, which can cause a terrible decline to trade and value of things. My question would be: If war escalates, then how can we manage to save the economy from another great depression, and what’s the extent damage that a war can cause?

What I learned from this TED talk is what it means to be in a “filter bubble”, at first, I didn’t understand the topic, but the final conclusion at the end sealed the deal for me. The internet is not bringing us together, discover new ideas or give challenge, we get something that gives us all the answers and can take us away from the real world. Technology is moving at a very fast pace, and while making the new iPhone is cool, we have lost the purpose of a phone and other electronic devices. Back when phones were new to the scene, they were used for communication between people, allowing us to talk with someone from far away. Now, phones have a bunch of apps that distract you and we ignore the true purpose of a phone, making us lose connection of the real world. Hopefully, people start seeing the path that technology is taking, and to learn the true definition of why we use technology, as worded in the TED talk by Eli Pariser “We need it to connect us, we need to give us new ideas, people and different perspectives, but it’s not going to that, if it leaves all isolated in a web of 1”.

When I was around 1 or 2, I didn’t speak a lot, or tried to learn as I would just make a random noise and point to it if I wanted something. Then, one day, my mom and dad got a teacher or professional for this. This teacher would teach me that if I wanted something, to say it as she would tell me what it is, I just had to repeat. After a few months later, I couldn’t stop talking as even I mispronounced a few words, but I kept trying and learning from my mistakes. It was 50/50, in terms of language as I would speak mainly Spanish as I would also speak in English. I learned a lot of Spanish with my family and I’m happy to have it as my second language. When I started school, I went back to how I was as a baby, quiet, didn’t like attention or to speak. This is how I would be like all through my elementary school as I had friends, only a few best friends.

Through elementary school, my English teacher helped with most of the learning and reading, but surprisingly my parents had an effect on my readings and learning as my mom would teach me to write neat and other things like punctuation and grammar as she had gone through middle and high school, even though that was her worse class. My dad would just push me to learn and to write in a book a word and repeat as he barely knows English. I would also take ESL classes, even though I spoke good English but that would help me more. Then by middle school, I was not only improving my English, but also my Spanish as I would see a lot of classmates that only knew Spanish, and I didn’t want to leave behind my 2nd language, and with help from my family and a trip to El Salvador would greatly improve my Spanish and my English was already good from friends, class and using it in New York most of the time. Some struggles that I went through is that I become mute sometimes and I get stuck with some words in both languages but with help from translation, spelling and pronunciation, I am not afraid to fail, while I have gained confidence to talk more. I would learn a lot of English with pronouncing certain countries and would double check if I am not saying something correct.