I was talking with my sister, Lorinda, this afternoon and came up with a great idea for the next Reality TV Show. I wrote a letter expressing my thoughts and have submitted it to 3 production companies for review. Get your voice out there and change the world for the BETTER!! See below for full transcript!
Proposal
For a New Reality TV Show
Heather LastName
Address
Address
To Whom it
May Concern:
My name is
Heather LastName. I recently came up with what I believe would be
an excellent idea for a Reality TV show. Before I go into detail
about the concept I would like to explain to you the back-story of
this idea. Why it is so important to me. I will try to keep this
section as succinct as possible while still expressing myself
effectively.
When I was a
child I did not know that we were poor. I am one of eight children.
My father was a kindergarten teacher and my mom did an excellent job
at home raising us. When I was eight years old my family moved from a
small town to a slightly larger town in another state. The culture
there was drastically different than what we were used to. By our
second Christmas in the bigger town, we had noticed what “the
Jones” kids had and we wanted more or brand names for Christmas,
birthdays, and anything we else needed through out the year.
When I
became an adult, I looked back at my life and realized that we were
not wealthy by any means. As a matter of fact, after a recent
discussion with my mom, I calculated how much our family's income
was. After doing some further research I discovered that we were
barely above the National Poverty Level at the time. We had no
Medicaid assistance. We just made it work with what we had.
Going to college was never a question for me, because my grandmother had encouraged it for so long. Because her mother was very ill with breast cancer, my grandmother had forfeited years of her childhood education to be a homemaker for her nine siblings. I worked my way through my Bachelor Degree in Psychology. Psych introduced me to how society and culture changed over time. I saw so many things that were hurting American society: pride, selfishness, laziness, anger, hatred, disrespect, and entitlement, just to name a few. After much time pondering what I could do to help this world, I realized that in order to help America live up to the pride we have as Americans—we need to be a people worth being proud of. Whether or not we as individuals are becoming something worth being proud of determines whether or not America is worth being proud of. The behaviors and attitudes described above all seem to be due to either encouragement or neglect in the home. So, I thought long and hard about what position in society would allow me to improve American family's lives through instilling the positive characteristics worth being proud of. I knew from my studies and personal experience that the source with the strongest impact in our society is media. But that's still not quite where you come in.
I decided that if parents couldn't be there for their kids to teach them correct values and attitudes I would be there for them, and I decided to become a teacher. I began a teaching program and obtained a teaching internship at an urban public school just outside of Dallas, Texas. Boy, was I in for a huge culture shock. I grew up in Idaho, and it seemed like there was very little disturbance in classrooms. For the most part kids sat I their seats, listened, raised their hand when they wanted to talk, and returned their homework completed when due. In this school...it was a completely different story. I quickly discovered that I could not help these kids in the way I wanted as a school teacher. I still needed to get into the family somehow.
I taught an year of English in Japan and noticed many cultural differences. Some positive and some negative. Some were things I thought we should implement in America, and some where things that I felt Japan could learn from America. Something I noticed about Japanese culture is how hard they work for what they have. Even the most wealthy families I met did not have the “newest” and “latest.” Their children did not have everything they wanted. They were expected to work hard so that what they gave to society was worth being proud of. On the other hand, not long ago I decided that I needed extra income above and beyond my full time job to pay some unexpected bills. I got a second job at a very well-known retail store that I had worked at before and had quite enjoyed. My experience at this Plano, Texas location was completely different than the small town in Idaho. The workers at the Plano store avoided customers. They did the bare minimum to get paid. When a customer needed something, instead of walking with them to where it should be they just said “it should be over there” (with a gesture) “if it's not we don't have it.” The dream-inspired founder of this international company would be ashamed of this kind of work ethic. I am a “go above and beyond” worker. I do everything I can to satisfy and help my customers. After doing so at this store I was told not to anymore. I could not believe it! They were telling me not to do my job!! If we expect minimum wages to go up then our minimum wage workers need to show us that their position is worth the raise. My attitude and work ethic deserved a raise. The people I worked with deserved to be fired, because they weren't fulfilling their job duties as outlined by the founder.
Now, we are getting to my idea for a new Reality TV show. One of the greatest things that we as Americans are lacking in the coming-up generation is the concept of hard work to get what you want. Everyone seems to think that they are entitled to everything that is being sold, and that they don't have to do anything to get it.
My idea is to take this concept of entitlement and show today's adolescents what it means to work for what you want. Take them into a working situation where there are requirements that need to be met for quality production and give them a drill sergeant boss to push them. Whether it be manual labor, production, analysis, it doesn't matter as long as they are treated like a professional with professional output expectations. They get none of their toys or “wants” unless they meet the expectations of their boss. This can run over into the home also. Follow them home and train their parents how to have expectations to help out and do their part to get what they want. I'm sure that parents would be greatly appreciative of this and the ratings would be great as they follow techniques and tips given by experts in the areas of psychology, sociology, business, and others as necessary. Take a teen and put them through the ringer of responsibility, respect of self and others, expectation for greatness, willingness to dream and then to hard work to accomplish a dream, and any other social deficiency they seem to exhibit. When you are satisfied with that candidate's makeover...move on to the next one and instill in them characteristics of greatness. As you can see this new concept can be morphed into so many topics from episode to episode. New experts can be brought in depending on the situation.
Going to college was never a question for me, because my grandmother had encouraged it for so long. Because her mother was very ill with breast cancer, my grandmother had forfeited years of her childhood education to be a homemaker for her nine siblings. I worked my way through my Bachelor Degree in Psychology. Psych introduced me to how society and culture changed over time. I saw so many things that were hurting American society: pride, selfishness, laziness, anger, hatred, disrespect, and entitlement, just to name a few. After much time pondering what I could do to help this world, I realized that in order to help America live up to the pride we have as Americans—we need to be a people worth being proud of. Whether or not we as individuals are becoming something worth being proud of determines whether or not America is worth being proud of. The behaviors and attitudes described above all seem to be due to either encouragement or neglect in the home. So, I thought long and hard about what position in society would allow me to improve American family's lives through instilling the positive characteristics worth being proud of. I knew from my studies and personal experience that the source with the strongest impact in our society is media. But that's still not quite where you come in.
I decided that if parents couldn't be there for their kids to teach them correct values and attitudes I would be there for them, and I decided to become a teacher. I began a teaching program and obtained a teaching internship at an urban public school just outside of Dallas, Texas. Boy, was I in for a huge culture shock. I grew up in Idaho, and it seemed like there was very little disturbance in classrooms. For the most part kids sat I their seats, listened, raised their hand when they wanted to talk, and returned their homework completed when due. In this school...it was a completely different story. I quickly discovered that I could not help these kids in the way I wanted as a school teacher. I still needed to get into the family somehow.
I taught an year of English in Japan and noticed many cultural differences. Some positive and some negative. Some were things I thought we should implement in America, and some where things that I felt Japan could learn from America. Something I noticed about Japanese culture is how hard they work for what they have. Even the most wealthy families I met did not have the “newest” and “latest.” Their children did not have everything they wanted. They were expected to work hard so that what they gave to society was worth being proud of. On the other hand, not long ago I decided that I needed extra income above and beyond my full time job to pay some unexpected bills. I got a second job at a very well-known retail store that I had worked at before and had quite enjoyed. My experience at this Plano, Texas location was completely different than the small town in Idaho. The workers at the Plano store avoided customers. They did the bare minimum to get paid. When a customer needed something, instead of walking with them to where it should be they just said “it should be over there” (with a gesture) “if it's not we don't have it.” The dream-inspired founder of this international company would be ashamed of this kind of work ethic. I am a “go above and beyond” worker. I do everything I can to satisfy and help my customers. After doing so at this store I was told not to anymore. I could not believe it! They were telling me not to do my job!! If we expect minimum wages to go up then our minimum wage workers need to show us that their position is worth the raise. My attitude and work ethic deserved a raise. The people I worked with deserved to be fired, because they weren't fulfilling their job duties as outlined by the founder.
Now, we are getting to my idea for a new Reality TV show. One of the greatest things that we as Americans are lacking in the coming-up generation is the concept of hard work to get what you want. Everyone seems to think that they are entitled to everything that is being sold, and that they don't have to do anything to get it.
My idea is to take this concept of entitlement and show today's adolescents what it means to work for what you want. Take them into a working situation where there are requirements that need to be met for quality production and give them a drill sergeant boss to push them. Whether it be manual labor, production, analysis, it doesn't matter as long as they are treated like a professional with professional output expectations. They get none of their toys or “wants” unless they meet the expectations of their boss. This can run over into the home also. Follow them home and train their parents how to have expectations to help out and do their part to get what they want. I'm sure that parents would be greatly appreciative of this and the ratings would be great as they follow techniques and tips given by experts in the areas of psychology, sociology, business, and others as necessary. Take a teen and put them through the ringer of responsibility, respect of self and others, expectation for greatness, willingness to dream and then to hard work to accomplish a dream, and any other social deficiency they seem to exhibit. When you are satisfied with that candidate's makeover...move on to the next one and instill in them characteristics of greatness. As you can see this new concept can be morphed into so many topics from episode to episode. New experts can be brought in depending on the situation.
This
will benefit not only television ratings but also society in many
ways. First, it will teach respect and a level of humility to today's
teens. It will teach parents guidance skills. It will train today's
youth to be tomorrow's leaders. With tomorrow's driven leaders comes
an increase of production and economic well-being for all Americans.
We drive the economy! Let
this show drive not only ratings but also family improvement,
societal/cultural responsibility, and economic growth for generations
to come. We need to get both the low-income and the average
free-loading teen off the couch and driven with dreams and
expectations to change the world.
Let's
change the world. Let's take what reality is and make it what reality
needs to be to truly and proudly be able to call America the Land of
Freedom and Opportunity.
