Ingrid Illustrated

  The trend for drinking plant milk in place of cow milk is on the rise, but why should you, specifically, make the switch? Firstly, there are many cons and setbacks to drinking cow milk. Dairy production largely affects climate change due to emissions of many greenhouse gases including methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. Many dairy operations can also be harmful to air emissions, water pollution, and soil degradation. Furthermore, cows in the dairy industry are treated terribly. They suffer their entire lives just to be slaughtered and even go through tragedies such as braiding, dehorning, and tail docking. Also, dairy doesn’t even benefit us as much as you would think. In the past, experts have advised us to drink cow milk to build stronger bones and prevent fractures. However, this theory has actually been disproven, and there’s no longer strong evidence to show the benefits of drinking dairy to reduce fracture risk. Lastly, about 70% of the world's population is actuall...

  Trauma is something that is inevitable to humans, something everyone has to go through in their lifetimes. Big or small, trauma has an impact on everyone’s life. After reading about the horrific PTSD that affects war veterans, I started wondering what other kinds of trauma men and women have to go through daily and how they cope with it. Women are actually more likely to develop PTSD during their lifetime (although it is not a competition and we should never try to diminish someone’s trauma). Unfortunately, as we probably all know, women are most likely to develop trauma from rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse as a child. Something that plays a large role in this devastating fact is actually gender and culture roles. Women in this type of culture feel more emotionally vulnerable, which could be the reason why for the high prevalence of PTSD. Women, interestingly enough, use the “tend and befriend” coping strategy with trauma. This means reaching out to others and tending those...

This week in class, we focused on two essays about stances on gender. One of them was about how a woman carried around a gun wherever she went, despite being a peaceful person. This is because she had been in many dangerous situations with men and wanted to balance the power out. The solution in this essay was to arm women with protection against men. The other essay took a stance on educating men psychologically to make them less drawn to “toxic masculinity”. It claimed how men earned their place in society by seeming aggressive and dominant, which was actually damaging their mental health and self-esteem. With new guidelines in place, this article suggested changing the root of the problem, rather than providing protection against it.  Though these were interesting and informational stances on gender, I began to wonder why gender norms are so prominent anyways. I believe that the media has a big impact on the way we view genders. Powerful, influential women are seen as threatenin...

  The dictionary definition of being lost is “unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts” (Google dictionary). Especially at this stage of our lives, I believe “lost” is a word that describes what many of us are feeling. We feel lost in the huge school we only attended for half a school year. We feel lost in our academic lives, taking hard courses that we were told to take in order to get into the right college. We feel lost with our own identities; we don’t know who we are. We feel lost mentally in this draining pandemic. We feel lost in our future; we don’t know where we’re going or what’s going to happen.  For me at least, all of these things are true. I feel lost in the giant building I call my school. I feel lost in my classes, taking AP this and advanced that, with everything being online this year it is twice as hard to learn. I feel lost with myself. Who am I? What defines me? What is my impact? Where do I belong? I feel mentally lost. This pandemic has hi...