Dear portfolio readers:
The essays that I wrote in my Writing 102 class have taught me a valuable lessons that will be useful for the rest of my life. The rhetorical analysis essay and the comparative analysis showed me how to differentiate from summarizing and analyzing. With these papers, I learned to analyze beyond writing. While I talk to my peers or watch a movie, I find myself analyzing the tone that these people use and their surroundings. The rhetorical paper and the comparative analysis basically taught me to be more aware of the small details that people often miss. With the research paper, I was able to develop my debating skills and learn the valuable process to obtain credible materials for research. This might be useful to me, considering that I am planning on going to the Health professions.
I came in Writing 102 afraid that my writing skills were not good enough. I was nervous about posting my first blog because I was afraid that my writing skills might be below the writing standard. But with the help of Professor Lucenko and the weekly blog post she made us do, I realized that I was improving day by day and this motivated me into finding my areas of weakness and trying to improve on them.
I had a lot of idea about what I wanted to write about and I also learned a lot through my research. My biggest challenge was bringing my ideas together as whole when I started writing the research paper. I also had some troubles citing some of my articles. For example, this article I have, which was an academic journal has no author in it. The name of the research and where the research was don is in the article but I am having trouble citing the article. I ended up citing the title of the article so that I can distinguish it from my other articles. Another problem I had was citing videos inside my texts. I ended up citing the name of the video: for the one video I used, I cited it as ( CNN,WEED) because WEED is the name of the video I wrote about. As far as my ideas, I tried to bring them together so that I can educate my readers about marijuana and epilepsy and my reasons as to why children should be able to try it if their prescriptions does not help reduce their symptoms. Adding to that no research has been done as to the long term effects of marijuana given to children with severe epilepsy so I have to make a decision based on the things I learned from my research.
Steinmetz,Katy. “‘Cannabis Madness’ Revives Debate Over Medical Marijuana And Epilepsy.”
Time.Com (2014): Business Source Complete.
Summary: This article talks about legalization of Marijuana in Colorado and how one family named the Wilson family moved over there to provide their daughter medical marijuana because she has severe epilepsy. This family is officially from New Jersey but since marijuana is not legalized over there yet and the medicines prescribed to their daughter do not work, the Wilsons decided to move to Colorado and seek if marijuana will help their daughter from experiencing severe seizure.
Using: I am planning on using this article to show how many parents are willing to give their child this medicine so that they can have a better life. Some families from states where marijuana is illegal are also moving to Colorado so that they can provide a ‘Charlotte’s web’ for their daughter. ‘Charlottes web’ is a medical marijuana tree high on CBD and low on THC and it is named after the first child, Charlotte, who tried medical marijuana for her severe epilepsy.
Cannabis such as marijuana have lately become a controversial topic due to the fact they are proven to help cure certain diseases. Some people don’t think that they will ever associate marijuana in their lives but what if your child has severe epilepsy and is constantly having seizures and the prescriptions prescribed by the doctor are making the seizures worse? Would you watch your child’s life had drift away or would you give your child medical marijuana if given the opportunity, knowing that the marijuana could reduce the seizure and bring back the joy your child had? You might think that this insane but it has been proven that marijuana helps with these types of diseases and the children who were given marijuana in cases like these seems to be doing fine. Some people are against the idea of giving marijuana to children because the long term side effects are unknown but the fact of the matter is the medicines given to kids with severe cases like epilepsy are not helping these children at all. They tend to make the conditions of the kids worse. Because of this, medical marijuana should be given to kids with severe epilepsy and other related diseases.
Rationale
I have read several true cases where children are suffering from seizures due to epilepsy and the medicines prescribed to them are not doing them any good. This same thing also happened to my aunt’s son. He constantly had severe seizures and the medicines prescribed to him were not doing him any good; they made him worse. Not only were they making him worse, they were also damaging his brain. He couldn’t speak nor move around after and he was prescribed not only one but plenty of medicines that were too strong. He passed away a year later after experiencing seizures constantly every day. Marijuana is a single medicine and the long term side effects cannot be worse than the medicines prescribed to these children.
Research Plan
I already know that marijuana is in the process of being legalized by many states. It also reduced the amount of seizures suffered by a little girl (http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/health/gupta-marijuana-entourage/). I know that the CBD in marijuana is the medicine part that can be used for medicine purposes while the TCH is what gets people stoned. The plants can be interbreed in order to create hybrid plants that are high in CBD and low in THC.I need to learn more about the history of marijuana and the side effects it have. Mr. Turner’s research will help me understand marijuana.
(Turner, C. F., Ku, L., Rogers, S. M., Lindberg, L. D., Pleck, J. H., &
Sonenstein, F. L. (1998, May8). Adolescent sexual behavior, drug use,
and violence: Increased reporting with computer survey technology.
Science, 280, 867– 873.)
Implication
Cannabis such as marijuana has been viewed as having negative influences on people by society. This views were on place decades ago and they cloud the judgment of people when it comes to people. When you ask people what they think about marijuana, most of them would say that marijuana is bad for you. The fact that marijuana helps people manage pain associated with certain diseases is unbelievable to these people due to the views that they are used to. This research would help explain that marijuana is an actual medicine and it can be used to cure epilepsy. The public should care about this because there are a lot of kids that are suffering from epilepsy and giving them the opportunity of not suffering with pain and enjoying their childhood is really important. Sure there might be side effects to marijuana but these side effects (if they exist) have not be proven yet and the medicines given to these kids have horrible side effects too.
first topic
Since it has been seen that marijuana has prevented certain reactions such as seizures from occurring, should it be given to children that have epilepsy and has severe seizures.
I watched a video that concerned a little girl who had severe seizure due to her epilepsy. She was heavily medicated and the medications did not help prevent her seizures. The doctors wanted to put in this medication that would put her in a coma but her parents wanted to try marijuana after doing several research. They found a doctor who agreed to prescribe medical marijuana low in THC and high in CBD. The marijuana helped prevent the girl from having any types of seizures but the question that rose was should marijuana be given to kids and what effects does it have on them.
Second topic
Is the advancement of technology making us dumber and lazier?
Some people argue that our generation is dumber and lazier than the previous ones; we can’t write properly. The blame is put on the advancement of technology. It is true that the advancement of technology gives us more advantage than the previous generations when it comes to writing and other subjects but is it making us dumber and lazier and are we better off without them?
Third topic
Does educating a mother help prevent diseases such as malnutrition from children?
This question rose in a sociology class when we discussed about gender and inequality. My professor showed us a graph that showed that women who were educated were more likely to raise healthy children than those who were not.
Out of all the characters that were presented on the comic show, the character that strikes me the most is “The Brain.” Even though Asians are stereotyped on other ways, the one that I usually encounter is their intelligence. Instead of assuming that Asian students passed the exam because they studied and prepared for it, most of the explanations you heard from people is ” he/she got one of the highest scores because he/she is Asian and Asians are smart.” This type of stereotyping focuses mostly on math, science and art.
Not only are Asians stereotypes as “the smart race” they are also viewed as “the talented race” when it comes to art.
I usually hear people say that “you must have some artistic talents since you are Asians.” These types of stereotyping leads to some judgments that associates Asians with geeks and nerds that are “more comfortable interacting with machines than people;” the outcasts who “may rule the world but never get the girls.”
This type of view is destructing to our society. People assumes that they are not culpable of achieving something because they are not smart enough. Instead of studying and seeking their dreams they use the ‘I’m not smart enough excuse’ to make themselves feel better. But when they see an Asian achieve something not because they are “smart” but because they put their efforts and times into it, people would want to use the ‘you’re Asian so you are smart’ argument and they also get jealous. I believe that if these people put in the effort into achieving whatever they want to achieve, they would achieve it. Their race and ethnicity does not really affect their literacy.
The articles “Man discovers a new life-form at a South African truck stop” by Rob Dunn and “Saving Ethiopia’s Church Forests” T. Delene Beeland are both similar in that they are both discussing the issues concerning animals and how they should be protected with different approaches. While ” Man Discovers a new life-form at South African truck ” focuses on German biologist Oliver Zompro’s findings, Saving Ethiopia’s Church Forests talks about how protecting forests are part of Ethiopians’ culture. Both articles use background history, ethos and different writing styles in order to grab the attention of readers.
In Rob Dunn starts his article by describing Oliver Zompro’s hobbies. This would attract readers that share the same hobbies as Mr. Zompro or have an interest in animals. Rob Dunn also mention’s that Oliver Zompro is a German biologist and this would persuade readers that the article they are about to read is credible. Dunn also gives some background history on the insects that Zompro and his team went to search for. This new set of adventure would make readers want to discover the problems that Zompro faced through his journey to discover new species. For example, when Zompro and his team discovered some Mantophasmatodes, they faced some issues where they couldn’t walk down the hill with their heavy equipment and one of his colleagues was injured. They kept on going with the mantophasmatodes they discovered anyway because they were very important to them. This part of the article shows readers how determined Zompro and his colleagues on finding new species.
T. Delene Beeland’s article ” Saving Ethiopia’s Church Forest” focuses more on how important it is to preserve forest since it is the habitat of most species. Just like Dunn, Beeland uses some background history on the ” Church Forest” and why it is important to Ethiopians. “Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches believe they should maintain a home for all of God’s creatures around their places of worship” mentions Beeland in her article. This would make readers brainstorm and question about why can’t the same thing be done. Beeland also uses geography and description to describe the location of the forests and how big the forest are.
Both articles discusses the importance of preserving animals in different ways. They both use background history, narrations, ethos, geography, pictures and descriptions about rare animals in Dunn’s article and the “church forests” in Beeland’s case.
In both articles, ” Conservation Triage” and ” Which species will live” by Michelle Ninjhui, Ninjhui is telliing readers that there is still hope for these animals. She is saying that endangered species can still be saved by quoting Professor John Nagle in ” Conservative Triage” and mentioning Noah’s choice in ” Which species will live.” The purpose of this is to suggest to readers that solutions can be reached if people work together in aiding these animals. How can they do that? By limiting the amount of resources they use on their everyday lives because some of those resources are not really necessary.
Ninjhui ended both essays in different ways. She ended ” Conservation Triage” by posing a question for readers to think about.” So perhaps it’s time to make your pick. Who gets to board your ark?” is asking the audience which animals they would choose to save if they were the ones making the decisions? This questions appeals to people’s emotions because most of them don’t want to face this decision making. It would make some people sad or perhaps angry since some of these poor animals are endangered due to the choices humans make. The other article ” Which species will live” ends with an statement that makes people think about their choices that affect these animals. But Ninjhui is telling everyone that there is hope for these animals if everyone works together on preserving them.
“Which Species will live” and ” Conservation Triage” by Nijhuis both send the same message using different tone and language. While “Which species will live” seems to be more formal and directed to audience members who seems to know a lot about the topic, ” Conservation Triage” seems to inform people that are not really fond about this particular subject about the decisions behind which species should be saved.
According to Nijhuis on the “Conservation Triage”, people are directly or indirectly involved in the decision making when it comes to which species should be conserved and which ones should not be, every time they decide “what to buy, where to build, or who to put in charge of spending our tax dollars.” ( Conservative triage). While this decision making might mot affect us directly, it affects other species because their habitats are taken away from them due to the increase of the human population. Since the human population is continuing to increase, more and more species are losing their homes and possibly on the verge of becoming extinct. This article raises awareness on how our decisions affect the lives of other species and how certain species are chosen to be saved while others are not.
The article, “Which Species will live,” makes an argument similar to the to ” Conservation Triage” but uses a formal tone. I feel like this article is directed to that are involved on making the decision of which animals should survive and possibly people with power( politicians…) while ” Conservation Triage” focuses more on the general public who needs to be educated about this particular topic.
Both articles are persuasive in their own way. People who don’t really like to read or don’t have time are more likely to read ” Conservation Triage” due to its easy read and shortness. People who would like to have more details available to them and enjoy reading about animals are more likely to read ” Which Species will live” due to its detailed and informative analysis.
WRT 102.22: Science & Society 