How much of what I know is influenced by my parents, high school teachers, and my community, and how much of what I think are my own opinions? When it comes to everything from politics to religion to what books I read, where do my opinions come from and how are they formed? According to Farhat Shahzad, we learn and remember from our interpretive communities, but I guess up until now I thought I had more sway in my own likes and dislikes. Reading the scholar’s essay however, I came to realize that maybe I don’t give enough credit where credit is due. One example that made a lot of sense to me was in a recent Politics 100 lecture by Dr. Erikson. Listening to the views of Karl Marx’s influence given by Dr. Erikson is very different to what I learned from my parents. In retrospect I didn’t think I had views about Marx, but learning more about him from Politics class made me realize that I had a preconceived attitude against him. In a more every day sense, I think of social media, commercial advertisements and popular culture. I used to argue that Facebook and what trends my friends are buying into don’t have that much of an influence on me, but there seems to be some pretty hard evidence saying otherwise. Shahzad found in his study interviewing a wide demographic of high school students, that communities with more of an emotional attachment play a higher role in the processes of remembering a learning. Thinking about it this way, how much time do we casually spend of Facebook? At least for me, I would classify this as an emotional attachment. I think that this point could be used in arguing that social media is a very powerful tool in how student’s today remember and learn.