Category: Portfolio & Reflection

Being away from parents and responsible adults can cause stress and problems with their mental state. Students without stability from their parents can cause them to lose focus and be unstable. Being at a new place where nobody will help you unless you ask can be frightening. Also, the influence in college can cause stress and mental health problems in school. Being in school with and other students taking drugs and alcohol can influence more students to start taking drugs and alcohol. Yang, Chunjiang, Aobo Chen, and Yashuo Chen. “College Students’ Stress and Health in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Academic Workload, Separation from School, and Fears of Contagion.” PloS one 16.2 (2021): e0246676–e0246676. https://go-gale com.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=cuny_nytc&id=GALE%7CA651393565&v=2.1&it=r The article shown explains how students being away from parents in college can affect the development and productivity, and when productivity is affected so is grades and efficiency. That then leads to problems with the school which then causes students to turn to more drugs and alcohol. “The third research stream emphasized the importance of psychological separation and attachment. According to this point of view, a balanced parent-child relationship between psychological separation and parental attachment is the best choice for students’ development [37,40]. Finally, a fourth research stream focuses on attachment to a group or group members in a campus environment and suggests that this attachment may influence students’ affective and behavioral outcomes [41].” Taking students away from their parents will affect their mental health and stress rate. Not allowing them to have the stability and security that come with parents will increase the amount of stress they have. Further in the article, the author explains how COVID-19 caused people to be at home all day giving them anxiety. Then students being away from their parents in a new environment made them even more anxious.

One of the main problems that I would like to revise in this paragraph is explaining the evidence better. When explaining the paragraph, I basically just rewrote points that I have been stating throughout the entire essay instead of better explaining the point of the evidence and the message the author is trying to portray. I also believe that when I said further in the article, I could have explained that part or at least given a better summary of what the author said.

“One’s initial environment is based upon the predetermined circumstances given to them and how they choose to react to them. But ever so often people choose to defy the circumstances and create an environment for themselves. In America, there have been negative views on the education system, but my journey through that same system allowed me to elevate beyond the flaws and learn beyond what circumstances were allotted to me. In my life, I was taught that to get anywhere you had to be smart and to be smart you had to learn. But I was also taught for you to learn, you could not turn to the schooling system because it was not going to benefit you. As a younger person hearing that I was intimidated by the thought of not being able to put my faith in the teachers who were there to educate me. Which then put the idea in my head that I’d be alone throughout my journey, being just as confused as my peers due to a lack of education quality. But as time went on, the deuteragonists showed up in the form of teachers who took extra initiative to teach and never skipped the chance to show just how they cared” (The Deuteragonists 1).

I chose this paragraph from my paper because although I had a point that had the potential to be strong, I don’t think I was as concise as I could’ve been. One problem I have when writing is my ability to organize and convey my thoughts. Also as I read it it’s too wordy to me so to improve this paragraph I would speak more about the title “The Deuteragonists” to introduce the focus, and leave my personal experiences to the body paragraphs so there’s a bit more of a connection and in the end, limits redundancies.