Ryder Reed's AMST 200 Blog

      To me home is much more than the place that I live. Home has more to do with where your heart wants to be which is a cliche but cliches exist for a reason. When I think of home, two places come to mind: my childhood home, and my current home. Currently, I live on campus and yet the place I would currently consider home is not campus, it would be where my family lives, where I have lived for the past five years. Aside from being better living conditions than on campus, there exists somewhat of a warmth to the place, as if I am looking at it through rose colored glasses. I believe this stems from the fact that my family lives there and I enjoy many memories with them, memories that are tied to that place . The second place I consider home, my childhood home, I believe is the same. Despite not living there anymore, I still have many fond memories of that place, so much so that in my dreams I actually gravitate towards that as my home rather than where I currently live.     In talki

                In film, prison is typically depicted as a place filled to the brim with violent criminals, run by gangs, and made to look as terrible as possible be it the brutalist architecture or the slop given as food. While some prisons might be this way, all are not. The majority of the people in prison are non-violent offenders and this exhibition brings a light to that. When you look at the pictures of people, that’s all they seem to be, people. They don’t appear to be savages or really any different from you and I, a person with hopes and dreams, a family, a life. When you look past the people you see spaces that while they may look similar to the movies but feel different. They are actually lived in, each made their own by the few personal belongings of the people residing in them, each differing from the last despite the overall conformity. The event did a great job of bringing a sense of humanity to the people in prison while contrasting that to their bleak surroundings

I tend to get my news from multiple sources, including the people around me, the internet, and even the radio. Despite a wide source of news, I tend not to seek it out, as if it is important enough, I will hear about it relatively soon. As a result, I fell that I only really get hard hitting and widespread news, causing my relationship with the news to be quite negative. Since the news is quite pervasive, it tends to be negative in nature. Only being bombarded with negative news leads to a negative world view. I also tend to miss out on smaller and happier stories including local area news. Due to this I sometimes must prevent myself from seeing the news to keep myself in a positive mindset. Because of this it is important that I consider alternative news sources. One such is the podcast “A View from Somewhere” of which I listened to the episode titled "Marvel Cooke, a Journalist for Working People". The episode explored the life of a black journalist from the early 1900s a

     Hi, my name is Ryder Reed. I am currently a student at UMBC and am majoring in computer science. I have always had an interest in computers and program since I was little. Because of this I learned to program (poorly) around age 13 - 14. I immediately fell in love with the subject and knew that it was what I wanted to do as a career. As I have grown up, that hasn't changed much but the specificity of the career has. At some point I also fell in love with space and rocketry. At the current moment I hope to combine the two and enter the field working as a software developer for an aerospace firm. Other than my career interests, I also have an interest in mountain biking, hiking, skiing, and video games.     As for the question of "What an American is?", I think the answer is quite simple. An American is a person who participates and is a part of American culture. The real question is actually what counts as American culture. The United States is extremely diverse and w