End of the Year Recap about Paying College Student-Athletes

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My Topic:  My topic for the semester was simply, whether or not the NCAA should be paying college student-athletes

My Essays:  My first essay was a definition/evaluation argument in which I explained not only the college sport industry but, as well as define the intense regimen that a college student-athlete must go through on a near daily basis. in my second essay, was an attempt at an Rebuttal argument in which I’ve listed numerous reasons as why college students should not be paid and attempt to find the fault in their reasons. lastly in my final paper, I wrote a proposal paper in which I believe I was able to find an alternative to paying college student athletes.

My Research Methods:  my research really came down to primarily my own knowledge of the topic with continuous research being the secondary. for the first paper however I found myself researching and looking for new information early on. When researching I usually found myself looking mainly for statistical facts that could aid me in writing my paper.

Sources:  here’s a few sources from my paper that helped me in writing my papers

• www.ncaa.org/about/resources/finances/revenue.
• www.listland.com/top-10-reasons-college-athletes-not-be-paid/
• ncaa.org/about/where-does-money-go.

Final Details/Observation:  After this semester of Comp and writing these papers, along with all the other work assigned in the class I’ve learned about my topic that being a student-athlete isn’t all glory and fame. its over fantasized due to the media but, when actuality  college student-athletes deal with a lot and sacrifice a lot in order to play the sport that they love. After diving deeper into the topic I gained a new perspective in that I’ll always respect someone who is attempting a sport and adding that hard work to their life. hopefully in the near future the NCAA will find a way to start paying student athletes because that’s truly what they deserve.

End of Semester Recap of Veganism

My Topic: For this semester, I chose to research the controversial vegan movement in an effort to find out how it benefits society, the individual, and the animals.

My Essays: For my first research paper, I focused on whether or not a vegan lifestyle is truly a healthy way to live, and how it may be more beneficial than any other diet. I learned that veganism can be the healthiest way to live if the proper foods are being consumed, but can also be unhealthy if the diet is heavy in carbohydrates and fats. In my second essay, I researched how animal production has changed as a result of the industrial revolution, making veganism a more favorable lifestyle than ever before. Not only are the animals being harmed due to production, but the earth’s environment and atmosphere is as well. My final paper will inform readers how they can go about making changes in their everyday routines to lessen their impact on animals, the earth and their own bodies. It may be quite challenging to go vegan all at once, but taking baby steps allows people to ease into the transition at a pace they feel comfortable with.

My Research Methods: Researching my topic was an enjoyable and unique experience because veganism is discussed throughout different sources of media. I was not limited to only scholarly sources, and instead had the freedom to access social media content, advertisements, popular news sources and campaigns. Having a variety of different types of sources to integrate within my work created a diverse platform to support my arguments and provided multiple perspectives. My findings ranged from a Stanford University publication to a dairy company’s Twitter advertisement, but each and every one I found was beneficial to my writing in some way.

Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13h6o533T8SroDVfd6CXySGqUZfPSPjzyTvOmrCutcic/edit

Final Observations: Researching this topic over the course of the semester was a fascinating journey, because I have wanted to learn more about veganism for the past few years. By studying it from an academic standpoint, I focused a lot more on the facts and evidence than I would have doing personal research, which likely would have consisted more of opinions. Reading both opinionated and factual sources gave me a better ability to form my on opinion and learn more about what veganism has to offer as well as some of the drawbacks that come with it. For example, I learned that eliminating animal products from the diet can reverse prostate cancer in men. This was astounding information for me to land upon, and was something I cared about personally since this cancer has affected previous generations of my family. My perspective on veganism has become much more positive after this semester’s research, and I have even begun taking small steps to eliminate animal products from my diet and lifestyle. I no longer have dairy milk in my daily iced coffees, and have refrained from buying any new belts, shoes or wallets made of leather. While these adjustments may seem small, if society as a whole could make these minor changes, the positive results would be huge.

https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/vegan-underground/

End of the Year Recap

 

 

My Topic- My topic focuses on nutrition and the role it plays in our children’s lives.

My Essays- My first essay, an evaluative argument, talks about how our schools play an important role in our children’s health and the many reasons we should support nutritional meals and programs. My second essay, a causal argument essay, speaks about the consequences of skipping breakfast and the lifelong issues people face when not eating healthy. My last proposal will focus on why there is so much obesity in the United States and how nutritional programs in school and at home can help reduce those rates. My father Plinio González was my inspiration during these writing processes.

My Research Methods- My research process was different every day. Some days, I would ask my mom or brother to recall some memories or details about my father because I couldn’t remember. Often, ] I browsed the Center for Diseases and Control prevention website to educate myself enough of the different diseases and statistics so I can have a general sense of how serious the problem really is. Some websites I read daily in my own spare time that I was also able to apply to the essays were mindbodygreen.com, livingstrong.com, and chopra.com.

Sources- https://www.livestrong.com/article/339349-why-did-obesity-increase-so-much-in-america/

https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/health/school-nutrition-program-benefits/index.html

Final Details/ Observation- Throughout my writing, I knew that schools were the basis for providing our students the best education, but I never realized how their environment is incredibly important to what they would consume. Most children spend more than half their days in school, and whatever we are teaching or feeding them will either mold or break them. We have to be more responsible for what our children eat at home and at school. I’ve also been aware that not many families have the resources to provide the basic necessities for their children thus making it harder to provide them the nutritional necessities. In the future, I hope to see nutrition and health classes as a yearly requirement for every student. Not only do schools need nutritional classes, but children also need to learn how to grow their own vegetables and fruits so they can get excited to nourish their bodies.

End of Semester Recap about Racism Being a Mental Health Issue

My topic is about whether or not extreme racism should be considered a mental health illness.

In my first essay I focused strictly on introducing the topic and defining the terms that were frequently associated with the topic at hand in order to allow the reader to have a thorough understanding of my position without vocabulary affecting their intake on the matter. For example, I defined what racism was and later emphasized the difference between extreme racism and everyday racism. This was important to do in order to make it clear why extreme racism should transition from being just a social problem to being considered a mental illness. In my second essay I did a rebuttal argument. Because my position had been introduced and briefly explained in my first essay I was able to get straight to attacking and arguing the arguments made against my claim. The main argument made against my claim was that if racism is accepted as a mental illness then people who do not actually suffer from a mental condition will begin to use it as an excuse to justify their acts of discrimination toward other people. I argued that this would not happen if the disease is examined deeply to the point where it becomes easy to diagnose.Being able to diagnose the disease will ensure that people who do not have the disease do not claim that they do.  In my third essay I introduced solutions to the main conflict pertaining my topic, which was that many health professionals refused to see extreme racism as a mental illness. My solution to this was introducing situations where medication have been used to try and treat extreme racism in a patient. These situations resulted in less tension and proved to be effective in lessening the negative affects that come with being an extreme racist. Seeing this should be enough proof to mental health professionals that extreme racism should be taken a lot more seriously. After this step was completed it needed to be ensured that the people who were possible suffering from the disease knew that they could seek help and this would happen through proper and professional display of information regarding the mental health issue.

It was really hard to look for articles that were in favor of my position  because a lot of people were against the idea that racism could be classified as anything other than a social problem. What I had to do to work with this was divide the research. So I researched mental illnesses separately instead of researching a specific mental illness and analyzed how mental health professionals would go about diagnosing mental illnesses or further researching these mental illnesses. I then made sure I understood racism thoroughly. I researched the different types and decided that not all levels of racism could be resulting by some kind of mental illness. I learned that everyone is a little bias because it is human nature, it is how these people react to these natural biases that determines their level of racism.I then researched a lot of the incidents where an extreme racist had resulted to killing or causing mass destruction, in order to analyze what was causing the offender in engaging in their hateful action.  I also reached out to my Treatment of the Offender professor, Dr. Friedman. Aside from teaching he is also a psychologist at a prison, so I asked him what he thought about extreme racism as a mental illness. He expressed that doing this kind of insulted victims of mental health a little, but that it could be possible. He told me that I may not find a lot of research in support for my paper but that there are other mental health illness listed, not by the name of extreme racism that actually imply that racism could be a mental illness. He told me to research Pathological Bias and see if I could make any connections between my claim and this mental illness and I did.

Here are a few articles that helped me with gaining some background knowledge on my topic:

• https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness
• http://bigthink.com/articles/is-racism-a-form-of-mental-illness
• https://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-turner/is-it-racism-or-unconscio_b_10927982.html
• http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199735013.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199735013-e-32

 

I learned that there ARE a lot of issues that could arise from allowing extreme racism to be seen as a mental illness.  That these issues could actually cause setbacks in the progress we have made over the years toward eradicating racism. I also learned, however, that it takes trial and error to eliminate the possibility. Mental illnesses that exist today required a lot of experimenting and research in order to know that people with the condition could be provided treatment and medication. I strongly believe that the same should apply in discovering whether or not extreme racism is a pathological issue. What I haven’t quite grasped about everyone who seems to refute this idea is their argument that extreme racism should not be considered a mental illness because there has been no biological breakthroughs in its favor. This confuses me because in researching other mental illness I have found that not all mental illnesses result from something biological. What I would like to see in the future is mental health professionals thoroughly researching this idea with open minds in order to ensure that there aren’t people out there being denied mental health treatment when they in fact really need it.

End of Semester Recap about Prenatal cocaine exposure

A) My topic: My topic for my research essays for college composition II is prenatal cocaine exposure.

B) My essays: In college composition II, I wrote three essays, definition, ethical, and a proposal paper. In my definition paper I defined what Prenatal cocaine exposure was as well as the effects the drug does to the body of an adult and a baby. It was the hardest paper out of the three papers because it was strictly proven information, no opinions. The ethical paper on the other hand was a tad bit easier. In my ethical paper, I touched more so on the ethical and morals behind the mothers decisions. It involved a lot more of my opinion because it allowed me to share my point of view on the situation at hand. Lastly, In my proposal paper, I came up with two solutions that I feel is best for a decrease in prenatal cocaine exposure which was rehab and imprisonment. In this paper I had to place all of my thoughts together to compose a well balanced paper that exemplified why my solutions are best fit for my topic.

C) My research methods: Throughout my three essays, I only used online databases. I think they are some of the most reliable sources. I tried to stay far away from the internet because essentially it is harder to detect a reliable source from an unreliable source as well as properly citing them. I used academic complete and jstor the most because in my opinion they had the most articles on my topic. What I wish I would have done was actually go out and talk to mothers who used drugs while pregnant or their families, clinics, or even called up rehab centers who encountered prenatal cocaine exposure.

https://sites.google.com/site/teratogencrackcocaine/symptoms-of-abuse/prognosis

D) Sources:  Springer, Kristen W. “The Race and Class Privilege of Motherhood: The New York Times Presentations of Pregnant Drug-Using Women.” Sociological Forum, vol. 25, no. 3, 2010, pp. 476–499. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40783512.

 

 

GRAY, JAMES P. “Drug Treatment.” Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, Temple University Press, 2012, pp. 193–220. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bt7cr.13.

 

Phibbs, Ciaran S. “The Economic Implications of Prenatal Substance Exposure.” The Future of Children, vol. 1, no. 1, 1991, pp. 113–120. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1602621.

E) Final Details/ Observations: Ultimately, I learned a whole lot about Prenatal cocaine exposure and crack babies. I learned significantly about the effects of the drug on the body and predominantly what group of people fit in the criteria which is poorer, urbanized, minorities. I didn’t get the chance to learn why mothers do drugs while pregnant of their thoughts which I wish I did. Or the involvement of dyfs after the child is born. It blows my mind that cocaine is so accessible to people who are poor and live in love income urban cities. It shows a lot about our society and how much is hasn’t improved and how America is still in the system of corruption. It changed my perspective so greatly not just on my topic but also on how much changes needs to come in order to make America safer for everyone. In conclusion, I would like to see more public discussions on Prenatal cocaine exposure so it could get more notice worldwide.

 

End of Semester Blog Project About Subliminal Messaging

My Topic:

My topic is subliminal messaging. I talked about how it started and the effects of it.

My Essays:

I decided to use two different point of views throughout my three essays. In my first essay, I discussed the history of subliminal messaging and the different types of subliminal messaging and how they can be dangerous. In my second essay, I changed my perspective and discussed how it can be beneficial to business owners when they are trying to sell their products through the use of subliminal advertising. It was a causal argument. In my third essay I discussed how there can be a solution to the controlling the use of subliminal messaging. I discussed how other countries have come to a solution of banning the use of subliminal messaging and how the United States should do the same because subliminal messages have gotten in too extreme use especially I children television and movies in a negative way.

My Research Methods:

I first started my research by looking in academic databases to find scholar articles about  my topic. I then turned to looking on news websites and other websites that have discussed the issues in different articles where they would give and show examples. I also looked at movies and songs and used those examples in my essays.

Sources:

“FACT CHECK: Is the Word ‘Sex’ Hidden in ‘The Lion King’?” Snopes.com, 7 Jan. 2018,

www.snopes.com/disney/films/lionking.asp.

“What are Subliminal Messages? Explanation & Evidence.” Mindfit Hypnosis and

Subliminal Message MP3 Downloads, 3 Jan. 2018, www.mindfithypnosis.com/what-are-subliminal-messages/.

Final Details:

I learned that subliminal messaging is banned in different countries, but not in the United States. I learned about the different types of subliminal messaging and how it started. I have changed my perspective about subliminal messaging and I feel like it is a good tool to use, just as long as it is not used in a negative way. I have always loved looking at different children television shows and seeing the different subliminal messages they have in them just to be aware of the situation and this was fun to research about.

End of Semester Recap about College Students with Disabilities and the ADA

Topic:

The topic I wrote about all semester was about how college students with disabilities don’t have any rights in college.

Essays:

This semester I wrote 3 essays about my topic. I chose to write about my topic because it effects me personally, I know what it’s like to be a college student trying to get an education with no help from anyone. The first essay was a definition paper, in this essay I stated and explained the issue. The issue is that after high school students with disabilities are on their own when it comes to continuing their education, they have no rights and no one to guide them through getting help with their disability in college. The second essay I wrote was a causal essay, in this essay I explained why college students with disabilities have no rights and what happens without those rights. The third and final essay was a proposal paper. The point of this paper was to explain ideas on how to fix the issue. My ideas to fix the issue are to amend the ADA to add a section for college students and give funding to disability resources on college campuses.

Research Methods:

For my topic I had to do a lot of Google searches because there was not a lot of information about it on the internet because no one has done a lot of in depth research.  The majority of the information I found was blogs of people telling their story of how they were struggling. Most of the information in my essays was my own because I’m actually experiencing it.

Sources:

https://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm#anchor62335

http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2014/03/05/school-and-health-laurie-edwards

Final Details:

When writing all these papers I was surprised when I learned there was not a lot of information out there because it’s so important to me I thought more people would feel the same way. After writing all these essay I now have more sympathy for groups of people who feel like they have no rights and that they are alone, I never really thought about it that way before, I always thought that’s the way it is and I have to find a way to work around it, just like I find ways to work around my disability.

End of the Semester Recap on Human Trafficking

My topic is on what human trafficking really is.

In the first essay I used the arguments as to what human trafficking is and how bad it really is to define what this business is. Next, I implemented the legal definition of human trafficking and multiple personal accounts of survivors to tell why human trafficking is morally/ethically wrong. I then used both of these essays to come up with a few proposals to ending human trafficking that all tie into the idea that we have to take a step out of our own worlds to see things from others’ perspectives. My writing process was inspired by me being scattered in putting my ideas together, so I start out writing a skeleton of my essay and then go back to fill it in.

As for my research, this was mostly me going into Google to look for news articles, pieces ending in .org, .gov, etc., and there were also a source from the EBSCOhost database. I looked for new articles when an idea popped into my head of what to add to my essays, as well as when I wanted to back up what I was saying with legitimized sources to strengthen what I was saying. My third essay was very heavily inspired by my History of American Education professor, who was also a psychology major in college, in that the core of this essay was on how in order to end human trafficking, we have to open our eyes to what’s going on around us and not just live in our own worlds. That whole idea of making change happen came from her in one of our class discussions, I just applied it to changing human trafficking.

Image Website

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35846207. This article was one of the main personal accounts that I kept referring back to in all three of my essays to emphasize what human trafficking does to people.

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html.    This article gave me the legal definition for human trafficking, which was brought up and referred to in all three of my essays.

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=74701222&site=ehost-live.       I referred to this article in my first and third essays. I feel like it gave me some statistics about how many victims human trafficking claims. It also gave me a lot of information on why there is an argument about what human trafficking is and how bad it really is and what the argument is.

When I first started planning for the first essay, my topic was the argument on the mental health of millennials, but I couldn’t feel a real strong connection to it. Then, when someone started talking about human trafficking with me, I realized that this is what I want to write about because I’ve always been interested in the topic. I felt a strong connection with this topic, so I didn’t mind the research because I just wanted to know more about it. This led me to learn why human trafficking victims often don’t come forward, why people think human trafficking isn’t the worst thing, and just how prevalent the crime truly is. My new perspective on human trafficking is that I want to work towards helping stop it because it causes more damage than I once thought and people need to know what it is and what it does to real people. This led me to take the chance to email a colleague of my History of American Education professor that she recommended I talk to because she is a graduate student here very involved in the fight against human trafficking. I told her colleague that if she was interested, I was interested in helping her fight the major crime. Human trafficking surrounds us whether it is living around the actual ongoing crime or us living with the victims, and we don’t even know it. This is why one day I hope to see people look at the world from a different perspective outside of their own to help bring human trafficking to an end.

 

End of Semester Recap: Law Enforcement in the United States

End of the Semester Recap of Mental Health Stigma

My Topic: My topic for this class was mental health stigma. Stigma is any negative stereotype and for my essays I focused mainly on negative stereotypes on mental health.

My Essays: My first essay was a definition paper. In this paper I discussed what mental health stigma is and the different types of stigma. There are two types social and perceived stigma. I wrote about the differences between the two and how it relates back to their illness. I also mentioned other types of stigma in my first essay to really get my point across that individuals do not look at the mentally ill as people. They look at them as things and treat them that way too. For my second essay I did a casual argument paper. I wrote about what in our world is putting down mental illness. The media was a big topic in my second essay. I talked about how they portray a lot of false messages about mental health. They make them out to be much more violent than they really are. I spoke specifically about Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school shooter and how he could’ve been helped. Also how the media mad him out to be a monster and linked the shooting to his mental illness which then drives people to believe that all mentally ill people are violent. My last essay was a proposal. I wrote about the different ways mental health stigma could be eliminated and how the mentally ill deserve to live a normal life just as much as anyone else does. I proposed that if we get rid of all the negative stereotypes people would stop feeling embarrassed and guilty about themselves and be more open to getting help.

My Research Methods: Throughout this semester I would always look up my topic on google and read a bunch of different articles about it. The ones that I most frequently used were Psychology Today, The Guardian and Washington Post. All three of those websites all have very creditable information and also taught me a lot of things I didn’t know about my topic. Also my mom is a social worker and she used to work with the mentally ill so I talked to her about my topic a lot. She gave me some good advice and also helped me better my research too.

Sources: Annotated Bib link —-> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vft-F_3XS6Kj1ujlrTN7yP3be-Q3XXeiRzvjv5YQ6eI/edit?usp=sharing

Final Details: Over the course of the semester I learned that mental health stigma is not something that can just go away overnight. It is something that has to gradually be lessened and lessened. I also learned that this stigma has very detrimental affects on the mentally ill. Overall is makes them even worse and they will refuse to get treatment. I did gain a very high respect for t he mentally ill by researching this topic. I never realized how much people put them down. As for the future I hope one day we can finally stomp the stigma once and for all.