Research on Human Migration Patterns

     During class today, I did research on how people move around the world. Some of what I found was actually very surprising. For instance, based upon data from just 2 years ago, the United States has one of the smallest populations of refugees. This really surprised me because of all of the wars going on in the world, I had always thought that people would at first flee to a neighboring country to escape but then make an attempt to get to the US. I can see now that this was a naive assumption, because not everyone can afford to come to the US, and not everyone wants to run that risk.
     I also took a little quiz on "Human Sorting" which again surprised me, but also in a way was not surprising. Now I know I just completely contradicted myself, but allow me to explain. This quiz asks you to classify people based solely on their looks, and to guess their ethnic background. I got mostly incorrect answers which initially I was shocked to see that answers which I thought through carefully were incorrect. But at the same time I wasn't very shocked to know that I was wrong. I'm sure that my answers were very common misconceptions, which goes to show that we can't judge a book by its cover. behind every person's face and skin color is a whole family history.

Philanthropy Research Summary

     Today we discussed what philanthropy is and how different it is from charity. I heard Alexa say something that really made the difference clear to me. She said something along the lines that charity is to fix a problem in the moment, and philanthropy more about the future and how to make it better. If I had the money, I would be a huge benefactor to trying to help people, not just in the US but around the would, to get a safe and affordable home and to help them put food on the table. I believe that there are too many people in the world who can't afford basic human necessities. What ever I could do to help to fix that would be one of the most amazing feelings in the world to me. I strongly identify with why Carnegie wanted to "benefit all mankind"

Thinking About Success

     When given these four words: luck,opportunity,skill and hard work, it isn't hard to discover how I would rank them. I would rank them the following way: luck, opportunity, hard work, and skill.
The reason that I rank them this way is because I can apply this ranking to every aspect of my life. For example, I have a job as a hostess and curbside server at a restaurant. The way I got to success in my job was first by being lucky enough to have known someone who was leaving their job at the restaurant, and to have them put in a good work with my application. By being given the opportunity to have the job, with hard work I developed a skill and become good at what I do around the restaurant. I believe in working for what you have. This same order can be applied to my school work.I was lucky enough for my family to have moved to Huntsville in 2009. From that luck,  I was given an opportunity to go to Randolph, and after lots of hard work I have developed certain skills or aptitudes for certain subjects. At other subjects I have to double the amount of work I apply.
The process for analyzing the success and happiness in my life is really owed to these 4 simple words and the concepts behind them. I can apply this to my friendships, to sports and even to my life at home.

This is a picture of what I find to be the symbols of my hard work that ultimately yield success

Industry and Innovation

     I spent this class period reading a few articles about how the fashion industry, specifically Zara and H&M, have done so well in such a competitive retail market. They accomplish this by having strong company to lay the foundation that gets their product our into the world. while have a solid brand is very important, it is also key to have a company full of people that can get the job done and work cooperatively as a network. 
     As explained by a Forbes article I read about H&M, "An all-important shared pursuit of the three companies is a deep understanding of their customers’ wants and needs. All three have built systems for identifying consumer preferences." The pieces are designed and reviewed over and over again until they are deemed high enough quality to be hung on racks for consumers to buy. The lower prices in combination with their quality of clothing is what makes them such a success. 
     Zara has a similar network to that of H&M, but they do have one more advantage, a technological advantage. Zara has technology that allows them to produce new items at an extremely fast rate. With constantly changing collections, they have the edge of bringing in consumers more frequently to