Hi all! My name is Kari Sheridan and I am a senior at UCF. I am a local, born and raised in Orlando, Florida. I am a Radio- Television Major and I am minoring in Sports Business Management. To be honest, I know nothing about women studies or feminism, and I am only taking this class to fill a humanities requirement for my major. There were many different classes to choose from to fill this requirement but I chose Women's Studies because I thought that it would be empowering to my future career goals.
When I think of the word feminist, I think of crazy, man-hating women who complain all them time about their rights. Being a woman, of course I think that we should have the equal rights as men and that there should be absolutely no discrimination. But when it comes to what I do about it, I can say without a doubt that I haven't done anything at all. I have never had the desire to make a change in the way women are treated and I think that is because in this day and age I have not dealt with discrimination as much as women did in the past. But, with my career that I have chosen, I know that that is going to be a major issue in the future. I have never researched or learned anything about feminism or women activists so when it comes to this class, I am excited to know that it will definitely be a learning experience.
Gender is important to me because it is what makes me a woman. I think gender has a lot of influence in everyone's daily lives. Gender is what separates men from women, and in some aspects how we act and think as human beings. I think that being a woman is very empowering. Like I said before, I am minoring in Sports Business Management. In my Intro class there are only seven girls out of roughly fifty students. I look at that as a challenge. I not only want to prove myself as a woman in the sports industry, but I want to prove myself as a professional. Any profession in sports, whether it be management, marketing, public relations, or if you're a professional athlete, it is going to be very competitive. There is a statistic that five out of ninety get to their dream job and achieve their goals in this particular field. How many of them do you think are women? Not a lot.
In saying that, I hope that this class encourages me to be a stronger, prouder woman. I want this class to give me a background of women's studies and to empower me to prove to my future employers, co-workers, employees, clients, friends, and family that gender does not matter. I want to be a living success story. I want to go where no woman has gone in the sports industry, and I think that this class will give me the boost that I need.
I, Kari Sheridan, read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols, which I see as a contract for our course.
