Day 978: In Their Defense

College is hard, although that probably isn't any news to you. After all, college students are burndened with tons of work, giant exams, real life decisions, sometimes multiple jobs, very real debt, and often times...little sleep. I somehow manage to put up with all of it though, even with the crazy schedule I'm running on this semester, but I have found one thing that makes class just a little bit harder than it really needs to be.

It seems that people really like to put the blame on Disney. It honestly doesn't even matter what it is, but it comes up all the time, particularly in the social sciences. I mean, really, how many times do I need to listen to the same lectures about Disney? Just a couple of weeks ago we ended up watching a video in class on poverty in the Orlando area, and somehow they managed to bring Disney into the conversation, and it happened more than once. Like a good person, I've learned to maintain my cool in situations like these, but I do believe it's something that many Disney fans can relate to: that moment when someone has gone against Disney and all you want to do is defend.

Instead of yelling and screaming, most of us sit quietly, biting our lip and clenching our fist into a ball, until the topic has passed. Every once and a while we do get a chance to go on defense, like I did only about a week after the poverty video when we discussed Disney World and the families abusing diability services. There was no way my class would get the wrong idea about Disney, and my professor just let me know. And while she'll probably never read this, I'd like to thank her for just letting me explain, because I obviously cared deeply about it and understood what had happened since the initial article. If only there were more people like her in this world...although that might be why this social inequalities course is offered as a Gen Ed.

I'm not about to say that Disney isn't responsible for some things. After all, the princess culture does exist, even if I can say for a fact that I wasn't really impacted by it as a kid, and that's just one example. There are real life issues out there, but I'm certainly not one to suggest we should blame any one person, company, or thing as responsible for them. After all, there's a certain point where we all have to live up to our mistakes and accept that we too might be part of the problem. I'm working on getting to that point in my life, sort of like where my professor is, but until then I'll be sitting at the ready for the next time Disney comes up in our class discussion.

Have you ever had a moment where you despretly wanted to defend Disney? Let me know your story in the comments below!

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on September 25 due to a tight schedule).