Self Analysis Post

Hello again bloggers…
It has been a great journey telling you all about the different aspects of the drinking age and informing you all about my opinions on it. This has been a great experience for me because I feel that this form of writing has helped expand my writing expidentures. Not only did I get to write in a brand new way I also feel as if blogging about the debate on the drinking age helped to improve my argumentative writing skills.
When my professor first gave me this assignment to pick a controversial topic and blog about it, I was a bit hesitant. My initial response was, “What the heck how do I even blog and how is this going to aid me in writing about the drinking age?” Little did I know how interesting it would be to complete this assignment. In addition, I feel that blogging has many unknown benefits that I never truly knew about. One benefit that specifically helped me grow with my topic was the direct connection with other bloggers. I found it extremely helpful to hear their feedback on my blog posts, and have them bring up questions and topics that I had not thought about before. Therefore, this caused me to have even deeper thinking with my topic.
I chose the topic of the drinking age because I have always felt passionate about this issue, but as I continued to research this topic my reasons for being so passionate and actual knowledge about the topic strengthened and diversified immensely. Originally I believed that the drinking age should be lowered because I figured if you are 18 and can fight and die for your country why can’t you have a beer in a bar? Along with this common reasoning I believed in others such as being able to buy cigarettes, one can be put in jail at age eighteen, etc., but do not get me wrong I still believe these are extremely valid arguments I just expanded these arguments with my research. Now I feel that the most important reason as to why the drinking age should be lowered is to help decrease bad drinking habits and the amount of overall deaths from activities such as binge drinking.
Not only did I state my opinion of the argument through this whole blogging process, but I also learned about the other side of the debate and somewhat sympathized with what they believe in. Having to write two different blog posts a week allowed me to cover every aspect possible about drinking. From this journey I discovered the psychological aspects of drinking (why younger people want to drink and what causes alcohol dependency), as well as general facts and statistics that I had never truly known about before. I got the opportunity to learn about other groups that are in favor of lowering the drinking age to eighteen such as Choose Responsibility and the Amethyst Initiative. I also heard the voice of the opposing side in favor of keeping the drinking age at twenty-one with groups such as MADD. In addition to covering different aspects of my topic I was able to form my own theories and ideas about what would happen if this debate would have no end, and predict what the future would hold. This whole blogging process has been a long one folks, but I do believe that it has been a beneficial one as well. I feel as if I have a whole new respect for bloggers/blogging, and I have been able to fully connect with my topic because of it. It is also extremely convenient to be able to connect my newfound knowledge/research via hyperlinks in my blog posts! So if anything I have learned how to make hyperlinks J just kidding, but on a more serious note I want to thank all of you for leaving me comments and helping me consider new angles to my argument

A Sobering Experience

I wanted to write my last regular blog post about a true story that happened to one of my good friends. It was a Thursday night, which is a typical night to go out in college, and my friend got invited to go out with a bunch of people. They were all going to go to a bar to hang out, but of course they were not twenty-one yet so they were not going to be able to drink while they were there. One girl out of the group decided to have everyone come to her place to “pregame” (drink a lot) before they headed out to the bar. My friend decided to go to the pregame, but she got there a little late and everyone else was ready to go. Therefore, she ended up drinking wayyyy too much and way too fast because she knew she was not going to be able to drink anything when she was at the bar. It turns out that my friend lost complete control over her body when they arrived at the bar, and was falling around everywhere and they kicked her out of the bar. Her eyes began to roll in the back of her head and she continued to go in and out of consciousness; her friends decided that she needed to go to the hospital. She got there and she was okay but her BAC was ridiculously high and she had to get IVs in her arm to help her stay hydrated; she ended up having to spend the night in the hospital.
My friend got very lucky that she was okay, and she was with people that cared about her. If she had taken one more drink or one more shot of alcohol who knows how things could have turned out for her. These types of experiences are becoming more and more popular among college drinkers and underage drinkers in general. Groups such as the Amethyst Initiative and myself believe that lowering the drinking age along with alcohol education will reduce these bad habits.

Implications Post!

Whats up Blogggers??
As you all know I have been blogging about this debate on the drinking age for quite some time now, and you all should also know that this debate is still unresolved. The question now is what will happen if the issue remains unresolved? Technically right now this issue is not really open because currently the law is that people must be 21 to drink legally. Therefore, if this debate continues with no resolution then nothing is going to change; the law will just remain for the drinking age to be and stay at age 21. Unfortunately, I believe that if this situation were to occur there would still be tension with the issue and the debate would still somewhat go on. I also predict that if the issue remains unresolved then more groups such as the amethesyt Initiative and others will continue to grow and gain more strength.
If this issue continues to have no end then the affects are not going to be that devastating. On the other hand, I do believe that bad drinking habits will continue to be an issue among underage drinkers and could possibly start to get worse. According to these binge drinking statistics it is already a major issue, and causing many problems, are we just going to sit around and let it get worse?

Interesting Political Cartoon

Hey Bloggers!
So I just found this interesting political cartoon about the drinking age online. My interpretation of this image is that drinking at age 21 and drinking at age 18 do not really look that different. Yes it is different in the sense that drinkers at age 21 are legally allowed to drink, and drinkers at age 18 are not, but the manner in which they are drinking really are not that different. I think this cartoon is sending out the message that what is the point of having the drinking age at 21. Do you guys think that this cartoon is bringing up any other specific points or ideas?
I also noticed a small detail of this political cartoon in which one of the males in the front row has on a shirt that says “alpha” which makes me infer that it is supposed to represent a fraternity or Greek life in general. In addition to that, another boy in the cartoon has on a shirt that says “OSU”. Thus, I do not know if that is important at all or of this cartoon is specifically pointing to drinking in college, but I just thought it was an interesting detail that I noticed. If it is referring to drinking at college, I definitely have to agree that the drinking habits of an 18 yr old and a 21 year old are extremely similar, based what I have observed in college thus far. Do you all you bloggers out there think that there is such a big difference in maturity level from an 18 year old to a 21 year old that it makes it necessary to have the drinking age at 21?

Annotated Links Post

This post will offer specific descriptions of the websites I have been using for my research and in my blogs

Underage Drinking
This website basically points out all of the issues with underage drinking and does a great job of defining it. This website is broken up into five different sections entitled the issue, a solution, alcohol and society, scare tactics, and a better way. I really like this website because it takes a realistic approach to the issue and it has great information, facts, and statistics. It even has specific information about drinking at UNC!

Minimum Age Limits Worldwide
This website was extremely useful in my research because it offers a chart of the different drinking ages around the world. This website allowed me to compare and contrast the different ages and connect that to different drinking cultures. If you are planning a vacation any time soon or if you are just curious you should definitely check out this website!

Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to a younger age?
This website offers a chart of pros and cons of lowering the drinking age to eighteen. I found this website extremely helpful when trying to explore each side of the argument and helping me form my own opinion. Even though I am a firm believer in lowering the drinking age this pro/con chart helped me sympathize with the other side and understand why they might want to keep the drinking age at twenty-one .

Debate Over Legal Drinking Age in South Carolina Far From Over
This article does a great job of explaining South Carolina’s efforts to lower the drinking age to eighteen. This article also provides more information about the Amethyst Initiative and their efforts to lower the drinking age. This article is also extremely informative because it provides specific examples of underage drinking penalties.

Why Do Adolescents Drink, What Are the Risks, and How Can Underage Drinking Be Prevented?
This website offers more information about the psychological aspects to drinking and why younger people are so attracted to it. In addition to that, it offers some great statistics related to drinking, which is sometimes important to consider. This website also discusses some major effects of drinking specifically how it affects the body.

The Debate On Lowering The Drinking Age
I found a lot of useful information from this CBS News article. This article is a bit lengthy, but it is worth reading because it goes in depth with the debate on lowering the drinking age. This news article also tells a frightening story about a college student that died from binge drinking. This article outlines the theory that lowering the drinking age will be beneficial by eliminating all alcohol related deaths rather than just ones related to drunk driving accidents.

Class Links Post!

Hey everyone! If you have been enjoying my blog then you should check out some of my classmates blogs too!

Cheers!
If you guys like my blog then you will definitely enjoy this one! This blog deals with the same issue as my blog, the drinking age. This blog is also in favor of lowering the drinking age which is why I enjoy following this blog because I like to see what this bloggers reasons are for supporting this side and some different forms of exploration on this topic. The links throughout this blog are very helpful and relatable so you guys should definitely check this blog out if you want to learn even more about the debate on lowering the drinking age.

nonlinearperspectives
This is another blog that I loved to read and I highly recommend all you bloggers to start reading and following as well. This blog explores the topic of legalization of marijuana. The blog posts on this page are highly thought-provoking and bring up new topics to this topic that are extremely interesting, new, and refreshing. The language of this blog is highly intellectual and it is clear that the writer has a complete grasp on his subject and has done much research. Check out this blog for yourself and learn about the pros and cons of the legalization of marijuana and deep pondering about this subject.

Drinking Age
Another great blog to check out is this one! I follow this blog for the same reasons that I follow Cheers! I follow this blog because it has to do with the same topic I have been so avidly blogging about. This blog also supports lowering the drinking age to eighteen. I have really enjoyed these informative blog posts, and I have noticed that we have been finding out similar information about our topics, but this blog still offers different examples and explorations as well which makes it interesting to compare to mine. This blog also offers a lot of personality in it tone which makes it that much more enjoyable to read!

Theory Post!

Hello again bloggers! This post is supposed to provide my theory as to why the drinking age became so “contentious” in the first place. Well… let’s start with history of drinking alcohol. According to this website that alcohol has been around for tens of thousands of years and has only gotten more popular over time. Therefore, the issue is prevalent and has been around for awhile. Let’s consider another fact, people like to drink, and a lot of people do it (some people drink legally and others do drink illegally). It is becoming a common trend that underage drinkers are participating in bad drinking habits. Thus, this ongoing battle of lowering the drinking age to 18 or keeping it at 21 is just a continuous and vicious cycle because of all the gray areas and contradictions (mentioned here: “…double standard between 18-year-olds being able to vote, sign contracts, serve on juries or enlist in the military, but who are then denied the ability to legally drink alcohol”). One major issue with the debate is that it has been proven that raising the drinking age to 21 has decreased alcohol related car fatalities. On the other hand, the belief that lowering it to 18 will decrease all alcohol related deaths in general is just a hypothesis, it has not yet been proven, and some people just do not want to take that chance. Personally, I believe that people are always going to have their opinions on this subject and it does not matter if the government continuously changes the age or they never change it this argument is still going to continue.