What I have Learned

1. I have learned that prostitution is a difficult and complicated issue. Like drugs, porn, religion, and abortion, the world exists in shades of grey and no one looks at the world with pure logic.
   
2. I have learned that social media is difficult to set up and maintain. You have to devote time everyday to maintain it or else it will do nothing for you. And it can be either easy or hard to maintain based on your technical understanding and your drive.
3. I have learned that while I greatly enjoyed the theoretical aspects of the class, I struggled with maintaining a constant online presence. Overall, I found attempting to juggle all the elements of social media and the internet challenging especially considering my ongoing trouble with blackboard.
   
4. I have learned that I could find ways to apply what I learned from the Perspectives book in my real life. I work at a movie theater and we are currently doing renovations. I was excited about possibly using social media to promote the renovation. Unfortunately the parent company of the theater was not interested in allowing individual theaters and employees in using social media to promote the theaters.
   
5. I have discovered that social media marketing and it's associated skills and uses are the future for marketing and communications. I now see from being on social media how the internet permeates every aspect of modern life and that if people/businesses don't embrace it they will be left behind.
   
6. I have found that to success in communications as I intend to, you have to be able to competently use social media, both in your personal life and in business. While taking this class, I heard about several jobs that were hiring to do social media outreach for their companies, including the local newspaper.
   
7. I learned that the internet is so full of information that you have to sort carefully to find the information you want. Throughout the semester, I was constantly finding information about the perils of prostitution but struggling to find information about the moral, economic, legal, and rational arguments for prostitution.
   
8. I found that my opinion can be swayed by reading and being bombarded by information. While working on this project, I started out totally in favor of legalizing prostitution but as the semester progressed I found the same problem with legalizing prostitution that I do with changing other policies and societal paradigms. It's hard and painful and damaging to change the status quo and in a country that is free, there are some many things that are restricted based on fear and moral superiority.
   
9. I also found that the internet can be isolating. I felt this whole semester as if I was swimming in a foggy and polluted ocean, there was so much stuff and junk floating around the internet that I found it difficult to keep from drowning. And I was trying to find my classmates, the other fish in the sea but I felt like I kept running into reefs and barriers.
   
10. But above all, I found that the world needs people to share ideas and communicate. Right now, the internet and social media are the way in which we communicate and share ideas. And if we can use this technology to improve communications, we should be able to improve the world.