EXISTENTIALISM - Who are you?

You are in charge of your own life. You are responsible for giving your own life meaning. If you don't YOU are ruled over by other people. This is existentialism. Well not just that, but that is one of the general views. You're in charge of giving your own life meaning and being passionate about it despite certain obstacles that may drag you down, like grief, boredom, despair etc.
One of the main themes in existentialism was "existence before essence" which meant that a persons actions and what they did or their 'actual life' defined who they were instead of some predetermined 'wish to be' that lead them to behave in a way that was human.
Essence is therefore not what makes you human but your own decisions and actions. The way you are creates your meaning in life, your desire to be something does not. Existentialism relates alot to news. "News is about people doing things", rather than what people are thinking or feeling to do. Existentialism, is about people 'doing things' to give them a purpose, not about their desire to be something. Thus through your own choices and actions you give purpose and value to your life. Nothing else can affect this, nothing outside the person himself can dictate his own essence, so existence defines essence.
But once people have defined themselves, Sartre (a philosopher who followed existentialism) said that as humans we must then be responsible for the essence or profile that we create for ourselves only then can man be trully free.

WINOL week 4.

So, haven't blogged for a bit. I'm getting stuff together to blog on HCJ at the minute. I thought I would update you on the most recent WINOL. So. I had gone out and filmed my package before the news meeting had come round. I had followed the volunteers on the 'Big Tidy Up' which is an event organised by the university to clean up the local area. I had spent ages thinking about what shots I wanted and the interviews I should get. It took a couple of hours to get together and finding that only SEVEN students had volunteered I decided that that should be my angle. I've realised, doing journalism in Winchester, NO ONE will bad mouth anyone, especially not at the university. So explaining my footage at the news meeting on Monday, we decided it wasn't strong enough and went to film fair trade instead. Making the 'rubbish flop' story a nib. I went out and filmed and edited both, but as i was presenting could not voice the VT which Kayleigh James did for me instead, a very good job too! I feel like I did a really good job on filming the nib, but as fairtrade was really rushed and last minute I didn't put as much thought into the detail. The story was better for fairtrade than for the big tidy up though. So I clearly have to work on my putting together of stories.
I had finished and handed in all the times in/out words and links with fifteen minutes to spare. Now all I had to worry about, was presenting.
To be honest, I wasn't as nervous about presenting as I had been the previous week. I think confidence helped me as well. Over coming my 'glottlestop' is something that will come with practice but I feel like I tried extremely hard throughout my own part in the bulletin. Everything was very calm in the gallery and having time to go over and over the bulletin made me feel a lot better and a lot less rushed. I found myself really enjoying it this week, and hope next week goes even better! Especially as the BJTC are in!