Author Archives: Carinaflores

Second Proposal

Posted on by
Reply

After giving it some thought , the proposal of the topic chosen, has definitely made a turn around. Realizing that my source last time listed doesn’t really have to do with what I had stated, I decided to pursue that lead instead. The topic I decided to choose now is happiness in marriages, how to obtain it and how to keep it. There are several factors that make up a marriage, trust, communication, love and desire for one another. How does one achieve happiness in a marriage is the question in play. Many people to keep a marriage happy, you need communication while other say it’s keeping the romance alive. In this research project I intend to research and define what a marriage is, why people get married, how does well-being of people factor into everything. It is interesting to see the different kinds of marriages, for example there are some people who are married to more than one person why could that be? Is one person not enough for them, do they not satisfy them?
This topic interest me because I’ve always said that I would never get married, but after reading in an article that married people are more happier than the single person, I began to question why. In sociology there’s a famous figure that’s always talked about, by the name Emile Durkheim, who wrote a book on suicide, exposing the number of people who committed suicide between two larger groups Protestants and Catholics. He also found that people who were married were less likely to commit suicide, marriage probably kept them from it, so maybe marriage does aid us in our well-being. In this project I plan to use books, articles and even videos. I think it is important to take a closer look at Durkheim’s book, statistics on marriages, articles on how to keep a healthy marriage, and what marriage even really is. I think marriage on its own is a big topic but well-being in marriages is an outlet from it. I think it’s the right topic to choose because some of us are planning to get married in our future that is if we aren’t already. I think it’s important to discuss the benefits of being married and why its good for us to in the future get married. I believe my argument would be that it is beneficial for a person to consider marriage and some day in the future get married.


This video is a speech given by Jenna McCarthy where she speaks about the topic of marriage. In a comedic style she explains the ins and outs of marriage. She also speaks on her own personal experience. She answers the question on why married people are so happy, or at least why they appear to be. She lists some reasons why people seem to be happier, and how a person could prevent a divorce.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/snow-white-doesnt-live-here-anymore/201410/getting-married-and-staying-married
This is an article found in psychology today that speaks on the troubles of marriages. Barreca speaks on her own experiences , she’s been married for 23 years. She states that getting married and staying happily married is a sensitive topic. She has her own views on marriage that she feels aren’t recognized as they should be. For example that couples should celebrate their anniversaries and be proud of themselves for staying married, always in big ways. She doesn’t believe in the gifts advertised people should give to each other every 10 or 15 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/marriage-advice_n_4823414.html
This article is more of a to do list to keep a marriage alive & well. It recognizes flaws that are often seen in troubled marriages, lacking in something like communication, romance, or problems. It offers 11 friendly tips on how to keep a marriage going. Being married for a long time is something to be proud of because it’s a hard thing to do. Many people get divorced but appraisement for the people who decide to stick it out even in the hard times should be made.

The relationship between happiness and sex

Posted on by
Reply

The goal of this paper is to make a reader gain a new perspective on the relationship between sex and an individual’s happiness. When asking about what feelings are related to sex, a person often answers good, or happy. Many wonder why this connection is so often made. This paper will explore this idea through a series of online articles and studies. This level of importance is seen in teenagers and adults lifetime. What is more surprising is the age that people are starting to have sex, as early as 13. But nobody really understands why. It is easy to say that teenagers don’t make the right decisions that they don’t look at the long term situation and only focus on the temporary feelings it may produce. But it is difficult to comprehend why, and that’s what this paper is aimed to do, to help the audience comprehend the why’s.
This topic interest me because teen pregnancy was something I saw a lot in my high school and I always thought why engage in risky sexual behavior that has serious consequences. When asking my 16 year old friend, she answered because she wanted to make her boyfriend happy. This statement left me thinking, does sex really make a person happy? Or is it something else? Why is sex advertised so much now a days? Birth control and free condoms are available for easy access to adolescence. There are so many factors that come along with sex, if a person expects to receive happiness from having sex, you might be let down. So I want to look at all these ideas and see why the feelings are associated. Also I feel like this is the elephant in the room while people think about it, talking about it may sometimes be awkward but definitely necessary.

Dr.Charles. Schmitz, Elizabeth.” Why touch is so important in a loving marriage”. Huffingpost.2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/16/sex-how-important-is-it_n_4275969.html
This article speaks on the relationship between happy couples and sex. The emphasis is put on sex, stating its necessary for a successful and happy couple. The article speaks on why this is, with evidence from a study conducted on happy couples. It explains why affection and touch from another person is essential to a person feeling good. The article is written to highlight sex as something good and necessary to a happy couple.

Class Notes for November 4th

Posted on by
Reply

Class Announcements :

  • Thursday November 6 will be our library session . We will meet in front of the library, entrance found on the fourth floor. Brief orientation on library uses, and resources.
  • Think and brainstorm some ideas for research project that’s coming up . You can relate it to career interest etc.
  • First Draft of essay #2 is also due tomorrow ! Don’t forget to bring in 4 printed copies. Peer review will be Tuesday.
  • Professor Belli will be available during her office hours to meet with individuals to discuss essay 2 and get some feedback.
  • Midterm grades were also handed out , refer to rubric for blogs & how they are graded.
  • If your thinking about withdrawing from English or HUS speak to professor Belli , this decision has a lot of implications.

Getting Started On Your Essay :

  • If you’re having trouble getting started on your essay, refer to your blogs and ideas you’ve already written about. This is Fair Game !
  • Read through blogs posted.
  • Think about our class discussion.

Class Discussion :

  • The class started talking about the app – T2 Mood tracker. An app that asks you to asses yourself daily, and rate yourself on certain areas.
  • You have to critique yourself
  • The vision of this app was believed to be “to show you whats wrong with”, but app doesn’t offer suggestions or “tells you what to do” to change behaviors.
  • The idea is to change what were doing , based off results produced.
  • Rhonda Byrnes : Self help, positive thinker. She believes that we just need to think that good things will happen, and they will just sort of appear or happen with no real efforts made.
  • Faults with this app were noticed by classmates
  • The issue of temporary came up, Your answers  really depend on your current mood at the time your answering ?
  • Another App looked at was Headspace
  • Questions were raised of apps being pure nonsense ? Do apps for feelings really work ? Is there really a need for them ?
  • Professor Belli suggested a “believing game” when looking at apps. Even if we dont agree with the functions or visions of apps, we must look at them with an open mind, and make criticism without pre- judging.
  • After all many copies of Rhonda Byrnes “The Secret” were sold and believed by many
  • Visions talked about by governors, government are believed by voters.
  • Bringing it back to essay 2, we have to be careful on the tone we portray in our essay. Trying to make it as formal as possible.
  • When looking at apps thinking of Audience, Definition, & Value
  • Think about the about page of Apps, Consider the language.
  • Many of us were surprised to hear that the T2 Mood Tracker was originally made for ex-military. So they could track their moods and get help if they seemed to have problems.
  • We have to understand certain things like the intentions of the apps, in order to be able to really analyze.
  • The last app talked about was Emotion sense. Where 4 quadrants were involved. And you pin point where you feel you land on the radius. More people felt less annoyed with this app in comparison to the previous ones.
  • The issue of privacy came up with this one, because of the app’s about page. able to invisibly see information on your phone.
  • Many felt this was an invasion of privacy and kind of scary.
  • While others said that now a days nothing is really private. Most things on your phone are already available to the public. There is no real privacy.
  • One must be careful before downloading anything , suggested to read terms and agreements,legal.
  • Do these apps provide false advertising was another important question.
  • How much of ourselves can be revealed in data ?
  • Some argued that Data t a certain extent worked
  • while other said these apps were just annoying.
  • So engage yourself in the Apps, Ask yourself questions and be critical !

Vocabulary

asses- evaluate

objective – unbiased, able to report same thing

Subjective – bias , different things may be reported

Track – keep notes/ noticing

 

Apps for me

Posted on by
Reply

This past week has been pretty stressful. I was busy planning a party for my little brother. So when this happy apps assignment I thought oh great something to add to my load. I went through the list of apps and decided to focus on two specifically. I downloaded T2 mood tracker and GPS for the soul. T2 Mood tracker is an app that basically graphs some of your emotions you have daily. From you input every day, so you are able to see your feelings and how they’ve gone up or down. You can notice certain patterns and changes. There are 6 major categories , Anxiety, Depression, General well-being, head injury , PTS, and stress. In each existing category there are sub questions to follow. Giving you a scale between two extremes such as hopeful, to hopeless, unsafe to safe, panicked to content and asking you to rate yourself on where you believe you fall into on that spectrum. I found this pretty difficult, because they were such extremes, it really made me question myself, and I thought maybe if they had other categories or some mid-way kind of thing that would also be helpful. For instance instead of just having two categories having something like, a little, a lot, middle etc. After using this app for 4 days my results were all over the place. I guess that’s kinds true, I was all over the place this weekend. I had some ups and downs, I was at a point extremely content and then I also felt sort of sad. And the graph does represent that. Although I think I’m going to delete it , I don’t find it useful at all. Honestly its burden to be answering all those questions every single day, its repetitive and instead of being helpful it just becomes a task.
The second app I chose to look at was GPS for the soul. I also didn’t have a clue what this app was going to be about , but the app’s name caught my attention. I also downloaded this app on Thursday. On Friday I was beginning to feel a lot of stress and I decided to open the app and sure enough it was a pleasant surprise. The app offers small inspirational type of slideshows/videos. These different tracks are aimed to help you out during some tough times. Its sort of like having yoga on your phone. I opened up a couple of guides “ Finding Calm during the times of change” , the sound that comes along with each guide are very peaceful and make you feel relaxed. On Saturday I got into an argument with someone and I didn’t know how to handle the situation I automatically went to my phone. My first thought was to post something on my social media but just as I was about to open up my Facebook I saw the app and I opened it up instead. There I opened the guide called “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Smile” the name sounded extremely corny but I thought sure why not. And after reading the little messages and replaying it a couple of times it actually did help change my mood. So do I think that these kinds of apps work, sometimes, if your desperate enough . But then again I don’t think I can tell from only a couple of days, I’d have to use them for at least a month to really see .

My favorite place to be is…

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s talk places! Being from Brooklyn, New York there are so many places to visit and explore. There are coffee shops to museums, thrift shops and so much more. But I’m more of a quiet person, I like spaces that are calm and I can just be myself in. Brooklyn is known for its urban culture, there is so much around to appreciate. There’s a little bit of everything. I mean come on, Brooklyn is where it’s at !
My favorite place is just a couple blocks away from where I live. That place is Dunkin Donuts. Yes I love going to Dunkin donuts. I think I first started drinking coffee when I was like 14 years old, when I started high school. Ever since than coffee has been a necessity to me. I know that if ever I need a place to kill time it’s Dunkin Donuts. I have made so many memories in the Dunkin donuts near my house. I’m there at least once a week, every week. I make sure I always have some money for coffee. When my cousin first came from Mexico, Dunkin Donuts was one of the first places I took him. There I ordered an iced mocha latte and he had a hot chocolate. We sat down at a table for two and talked for about two hours. I love going to Dunkin with different people. Everybody has their own reaction to the same place. You can go to a place a thousand times, and experience something new every time . I have a best friend named Tabitha, and during our senior year in high school Dunkin was our place to go. We spent almost every day there. Always venting and talking about different situations we were going through. I remember taking a college now class with her at Brooklyn college, and before every class we were sure enough to make a stop at Dunkin. Dunkin just makes me feel comfortable. I’ve had problems before, and didn’t really know where to go to get some clear thinking. I found sure enough that Dunkin was my safe haven. It’s a place where I get tranquility and the smell of coffee just makes a person feel good. There are so many memories I can talk about. I’ve had some extremely good times but I’ve also had some not so good times. I guess you can say it’s kind of corny to say that an orange and brown painted place is really corny. But I frankly don’t care. The dunking that’s around my house is also near a train station, a liquor store, a food market and a pizzeria. I find it interesting to just sit there and appreciate everything around , to see all the different people who walk by there and try to figure out where there going , what they’re doing, it’s fun to make up stories about them. After all there are so many unique people in Benson Hurst. I guess I can speak a lot about things that have happened there. I think it’s safe to say, you know it’s real if I take you to the Dunkin. This is because well all have things or places that are special or personal to us for our unique reasons. And when building a friendship or relationship we only choose certain people who we feel are worthy enough to share these things with. Dunkin has become a personal favorite of mine, and I don’t just go with anybody, and I know that if need a place to go I can order an iced latte and sit in my favorite coffee shop.

Online sources for happiness do they really work ?

Posted on by
Reply

Well after going through the links I am even more confused on how to achieve happiness, just kidding. Basically two of the links were measuring well-being based on social networks and what people posted. One focused only on twitter to measure how much people tweeted about it. And the university of Pennsylvania looked at various things including Facebook and twitter. Then there was Happify and Happier, both pages suggested they could help a person feel “happier”. Honestly I didn’t know such pages even existed. The measuring pages weren’t really surprising though, I feel like now a days people think they can tell a lot from what people post on their social media. Which I don’t think is true at all, some people don’t post their whole life on Facebook you don’t know when there happy or when there sad, so how can we really use social media to get results. Also I think that kind of brings up privacy issues. If I know that what I’m posting is going to be looked at as a measure, I’m not going to post it, that just weird, in my personal opinion. I think there was actually a whole thing on the news about how Facebook was monitoring people’s statuses for some study. Kind of makes you think twice about what you post. Well at least that’s what I think.
Happify is a site that offers different plans on how to become happier and more positive after answering a few questions. After signing up because I wanted to really get a feel for it I was offered to start with a “Conquer your negative thoughts” track plan. Well that doesn’t sound too right; I don’t have any negative thoughts. This is where I find an issue with this cite. I have a problem with these kinds of things because they give you a questionnaire of 10 or so questions and then tell you how you can fix yourself. Well that doesn’t seem too legit. How are you going to know about a person from a couple of questions? This track is free but if I wanted to try something like “Get out of rut & live life to the fullest” that would be a premium and I would have to pay about $4.74 a month. Hmmm buying happiness? I don’t know, this looked a bit suspicious to me. But if I take the two year discount I would only pay $3.16 a month, all this to be able to use other tracks that are too good to be free. On happier there are also courses offered. Free forever? But what about that premium? There it is again. If I wanted to take the course happier makeover I would have to pay $4.99. Now I’m not complaining about the prices. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t false advertise. I feel as though the site is making the argument that they can help me feel happier if I take these course or pay. Who’s to assure me that those 4 or 5 dollars spent on the course will actually benefit me? Although I can purchase one right now, I can’t help but wonder that after someone takes a premium course, other premium course are probably suggested to take also. So is it really just all about business and advertising? I don’t know, What do you think ?

“The Secret” or Common Knowledge

Posted on by
Reply

In our last two classes we took a look at something called “ The secret”. Rhonda Byrnes is credited for revealing this secret or further developing it. She believes she has a discovery of her own. She creates a film to showcase this secret, with several people giving her support for this idea and theory. Some of these people include visionaries, who speak about how the law of attraction works. What the law believes is that if you think good things and have positive thoughts than good things will come to you, but if bad things happen to you it is because you have called them on upon yourself. In other words a good attitude can get you a long way, basically hours are spent speaking on this law trying to convince the audience that they are missing out on something and really need it in their life.
We also watched parodies of the secret. Although these were funny to watch there were some ideas brought to our attention. For example the fact that Rhonda Byrne isn’t a scientist, she didn’t really discover anything. These ideas are considered to be common knowledge for people. We know that good vibes and good attitudes lead to good things. If a person has a negative look on their life well than there only attracting bad things to themselves. They have the power to change their lives and make decisions on what to do.
I think it’s up to each person to choose what they believe in. The Secret can be compared to a religion. People believe in it because they choose to and based off of this they make certain decisions differently. Honestly When I first saw the secret I thought, this isn’t really a secret at all. Maybe the term was new, because it was to me I didn’t know what the Law of attraction was considered to be. But that’s basically it. Just a new title. Besides that I think we all kind of knew some of the information shared in the first 20 minutes of The Secret . Also I think it can be compared to seminars, where there’s a person telling you what you already know but since you paid money to hear it , it makes more sense to you now. I think that’s what the secret is. Something that is dolled up and made to look really intriguing and smart. Even in the actual video everything is set up carefully, the backgrounds the fonts, the titles of the professions. Or how about the whole whispering thing, its appealing to an audience because it sparks curiosity. It appeals to an audience egos, pathos, and logos, using peoples experiences with the secret. Having smart looking people talk about the secret , makes it more appealing to the brain, we think because they look a certain way or sound a certain way we believe it to be true and makes it easier for us to believe. The fact that they look the way they do alone establishes credibility.

Chapter 4

Posted on by
Reply

Chapter 4
1. Describe the three models of service delivery in terms of how each
impact well-being to either individuals, families and /or communities.
a. Medical. B. Public Health c. Human Services
Medical means that that mental disorders are diseases so they are treated as such with medication, therapies and laboratory studies. This focuses more on the individual.

Public health focuses on groups of people who are facing some of the same problems. Problems they have in common because of where they live, the environment they’re in. This model sees mental disorders as pressures created by society. They educate the population to prevent them.

Human Services focuses on the relationship between a person and their environment, they believe they’re needs to be a balance, failure to do so results in mental disorders. This model helps both the individual and environment.

2. Describe how Philippe Pinel impacted the well-being of those
with mental illness.
Pinel is credited with the introduction of the medical model. It is because of Pinel that patients were treated better and with the care they needed. Before an insane person was believed to be a danger to people, and should be locked up away and forgotten. Pinel made it known that the disorders people had could be treated with medical treatment, their problems had origins that medicine could help with.

3. Describe how the psychodynamic model promoted the well-being
of the human service profession.
The psychodynamic involved a lot of communication between the patient and the therapist. This involved a lot of time. The patient had to share all thoughts with their therapist than the therapist would determine from that information why the patient was experiencing the problems and repressions. This put a lot of responsibility on the human service professional. And was just another way they could help people.

4. Describe how medications promoted the well-being of those with
mental illnesses.
Medication is a method used more widespread. It has many different options. Many feel there are many type of medications that can help a lot of people. For example psychiatric drugs act on the brain, these are mainly used for mental disorders. There are four main groups antipsychotic, antidepressant, anxiety and narcotic pain. Each help with a different mental illness such as depression, relieve anxiety, fear, psychotic disorders and used to relieve chronic pain.

5. Describe how electroshock treatment can promote the well-being
of a person with severe depression, catatonic states.
Electroshock memory involves giving a person a shock of about 70-130 volts to the brain. This therapy was helpful to a person with severe depression because as a result of this therapy a person would experience confusion and memory loss, this helped the professional help the individual because it was as if they could help mold them back to a individual with a well-being.

6. Describe how the “strengths based” model approach promotes the
well-being of clients/society.
In this model approach the person is encouraged to think about problems they had before , what steps they took to resolve them and see that they do have the power it takes to resolve problems on their own. This promotes well-being because it helps the individual feel confident about themselves, reassuring them of their strengths and abilities.

Thoughts on Revision

Posted on by
Reply

The process of this essay has been difficult for me. When i wrote my first draft I felt very worried. I didn’t know if i was rambling or not saying enough, if my draft was clear and concise. I wanted to say a lot but i also knew that overloading the reader with information wasn’t going to benefit anybody. I tried to follow the guidelines. I also wanted my argument to be clear. I tried to back it up with claims that supported it the best. After the first workshop i felt like i already knew some of my faults like starting my essay off with too many general statements and not having strong enough topic sentences. So i was curious what my peers would add on or say about it .
After meeting with my partner for peer review i realized this step was necessary and very helpful. Most of the time when we look for feedback we only think of our professors. We think that because they are the ones giving us our grades that only their input matters. At first i was skeptical in having my peers look at my essay, but after Tuesday I realized that this was only to help me and improve my essay. After engaging in a discussion about our work on Tuesday we were able to touch on key points relevant to our essay, such as arguments, topic sentences and structures. My partner helped me realize that my argument needed some tweaking, that my own experiences were something that should be mentioned and that I needed to do some clarification in my essay. There were some ideas that weren’t fully developed and explained.
I took my partners comments and critiques in mind when peer reviewing my own. I went over my essay as if I didn’t know anything, would someone who wasn’t in this class be able to understand my essay and take something away from it ? I realized i need to work on the flow of my essay and not just have information and citations included. My input also needs to be included. Also fix things like the title. My partner had suggested that my title seemed too general and not specific enough. I want to try and come up with another one that will represent my essay best. My next steps for essay 1 are another draft. I am going to try and fix my argument and include my own personal experience. I think that peer reviewing is also a good thing so after I finish my next draft i am going to have someone else look at it and let me know what they think. And once i do corrections after i am going to try and do another draft before my final piece.
But for starters I know that my topic sentence could use improvement. One of them is “In order to achieve happiness a person must have experiences” would it sound better if it said “ Experiences are the foundation every person needs to be happy” or is that the same ? I want to emphasize that experiences are a big part of what makes a person happy. It is what my paragraph is all about. Another sentence is “Actions are a very big part of happiness” I think it’s too short and could also use work would a better sentence be “What we do, the choices we make , affect how happy we are” In this paragraph I talk about what we do with our money, how we use it to create our happiness. Looking forward to receiving feedback.

rough draft

Posted on by
Reply

Happiness is what you want. It’s what everybody wants right. How do we come to achieve it though? It is not about buying the new iPhone or the latest Jordan’s. After all these are just materialistic things. What really brings person happiness is an experience a memory. Who did you go shopping with; remember what happened, that funny incident, that unbelievable thing. Money cannot buy happiness? Well that depends what you put your money towards. How you spend that dollar makes all the difference. Happiness is achieved through experiences, through thoughts, and actions.