Category Archives: ENG 1101

Affect of happiness on abused children in foster care

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Happiness is something so broad. So picking just one topic was kind of difficult. Until I came up with the happiness in foster children. I chose to focus on abused children in foster care, because that is something that’s is going on a lot in thia century. When it came down to researching my topic ally of things came up. Out of all the topic their were about happiness I chose this one. Children are a big part of society because they are the future generation. To know that children in foster care; put their by the government are being abused it disturbing. Children put to live with all these different families with no questions asked.
I want to focus on the environment he foster children in on a daily basis. Whether or not they have friends or if they or antisocial. How they are in school. All these things can be a affected if a child has been abused. It doesn’t what kind of abuse it may be;mental, verbal, or physical. Abuse is abuse. There are so many children in the world being abused in foster care. But what I don’t understand is why you don’t see it in the news, or at least see arrest being made. Children are missing out on their youth and happiness all because of the situation they are in.

Reference
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022989411119

I found an article on Google scholar based on abuse in foster care children. A test was constructed about mental health problems in foster children; an affect of them being abused. It showed how their was behavioral changes in the children. A sign of mental health issues in the children. Being abused can have an impact on your life.

Research Proposal

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America is the home of many different ethical  minorities. The minorities seem to be growing in America. These minorities include Asian Americans and Hispanics. These 2nd generation immigrants suffer from different barriers that leads them to a lack of financial well-being. The barriers include the lack of education, negative stereotypes, and family dynamics. The lack of education is impacted by procrastination and the drop out of school. Many Hispanics and Asian American miss out in college because the need to work to support their family. These minorities are being racial profiled in jobs interviews and questionnaire. Asian Americans and Hispanics are judge because of the pigment of their skin, or where do they look like they are from. Most of these second generation immigrants are experiencing different family dynamics situations. Situations include living in a single parent family. This paper is to research how and why the financial well-being of Asian America and Hispanic is the definition for their happiness, however due to negative stereotypes, family dynamics, and lack of education, these minorities are limited to achieving financial well-being even in present day America.

 

Annotated Bibliography:

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/report/2010/01/15/7131/the-state-of-minorities-in-the-economy/

Reidenbach, Luke, and Christian E. Weller. “The State of Minorities in the Economy.” Name. N.p., 15 Jan. 2010. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

“The State of Minorities in Economy” pointed out statistics and facts about different types of minorities including Asian American, African American, and Hispanics in employments, incomes, etc. The statistic shows that the minorities income and employment rates are decreasing. It also shows that there are a huge gap between the minorities and the White Americans when coming to having financial well-being.  It provides what are the barriers.

How does the incarceration of a parent affect the well-being of child’s education

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The affect that an incarcerated parent has on the well-being of a child’s education interests me. Being that an incarcerated parent has many affects on a child, I’m choosing to focus on their education. An incarcerated parent can have both negative and positive affects on a child. I would like to further explore them all. This is a very sensitive topic for me. While doing my research for this assignment, I’ll be able to make a few assessments about my own children. I was recently incarcerated. All I could do was think about the negative affects it played on my children. When in fact, it went both ways, negative and positive. The loss of a parent, whether it be temporary or not can affect the child. It can affect the child physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. i just can’t help to think about how this all plays a part on a child’s education. If a child develops physical restraints such as bad headaches due to the stress of losing their parent. They won’t be able to focus in school, because their in so much pain. A child may experience mental issues like (PTSD) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That can ultimately lead to an emotional problem such as depression. These problems affect the way the child may think and learn. It affects the child’s ability or motivation to wanting to get a proper education. Those factors even lead to the way the child socializes. The child may be withdrawn and unable to interact in class discussions or group activities in school. Then there are children who are affected in a total opposite way. The incarceration of the parent can actually be what inspires them to do the best with their education. The affect of wanting to be the total opposite of what their parent became. A child might even push hard on obtaining their education to become a lawyer, in hopes of defending their parent with legal issues at hand. So many possibilities with this situation raise my interest in doing this study. I don’t exactly know what resources I will be using, other than the internet.I’d like to collaborate the knowledge that I have already on my children. Such as report cards during my incarceration, and the ones I have now since my release. Tomorrow is actually parent teacher conference, so I’ll have an updated piece to study.There is a substantial amount of evidence there that would help me to draw my conclusion. This proposal wouldn’t even be an argumentative one. It would be an informative one. I want to educate others while educating myself about the affects incarceration has on a child’s education. The fact that if a child’s education is tarnished, there could be room for a repetitive cycle of the child becoming incarcerated in their later years. What are the statistics?! How can we change this?!

http://crcw.princeton.edu/workingpapers/WP08-10-FF.pdf

This is one of the sites that I recently visited. It provides similar studies. They identify the risks particular to the children of incarcerated parents. They use surveys and studies done on the demographic. showing the results of their study, that the children are more likely to face more difficulties overall in life than their counterparts. Listing the barriers and hardships the children face. I can really use the data collected and the statistics shown.

 

Technology effects on Teens and Social Behavior

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I chose to look up about how technology effects teenagers. Many different things came up about how it could effect their health and behavior. The reason I decided to choose this topic is because lately a lot of teenagers have cell phones use the computer a lot and etc. I want to find about how all this technology can effect us as teenagers. Since I myself am a teenager still I would like to know how technology effects us. Since so many articles came up about this topic their must be a lot of information that I don’t know about just yet. This topic should interest so many people because their are so many teens in this class and in the world that could learn from all these effects. They could also maybe learn how to prevent these effects by maybe using less of it.

I can mostly talk about how technology effects health in teenagers to make the topic less broad. I hope to address questions like how is it that technology effects our health. Is there ways in which we could reduce our use of technology by getting involved in other things. Can we get severe health issues in the long term by using so much technology. I want to learn what causes these health issues how can we really be affected so much by technology in this kind of way. My argument is actually just a statement or fact. There is no possible way in which we could argue against this. This is just stating something not really giving an opposing view. So should it be more of a argumentative research essay so like that you can have views on whether technology could really effect our health or also help us.

“Teens’ Excessive Use Of Texting, Social Media Linked To Risky Behavior.” Annals Of The American Psychotherapy Association 13.4 (2010): 8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

This article I found showed studies and statistics in which they mention how technology effects the health of these teenagers. They explain how using more technology could probably result more in teenagers smoking, drinking, fighting, and having sexual contact. I guess the more technology you use you get more involved with the internet and texting and learning new things that you than want to go ahead and try. They also have reported how using more technology students spend about three hours per school day which could lead to higher levels of stress, depression, suicide and etc. They give you good statistics in which we could learn how much teenagers are not being productive towards trying to stop this epidemic of health risks. From this you could learn how much teenagers really spend their time on technology rather than on school work. All of the really bad health risks people can get from smoking and drinking teenagers are starting because of technology.

Brief Class Notes 11/11/2014

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Announcements for Essay 2:

– For individual feedback from Professor Belli, make an appointment for Wednesday or Thursday.

-Every essay needs a tittle. (Specifically a two part tittle with a colon ( : ))

-Work cited page: make sure to have one for the final draft. (All the sources used HAVE to be cited including the apps)

-The essay is 3-4 FULL pages. It has to be a fully developed essay.

-Cover letters should be fully revised with a reflection of the whole process took to write the final draft. (Mention changes, meeting with the Professor and writing what you worked on, etc.) Also a short cover letter won’t give you full points.

-Remember to edit and proofread. (Professor Belli is looking for a well polished essay and if not done, points will be taken off)

-Even though you might be talking about a different number of apps, make sure that your not just summarizing the apps but you need transitions and you need to show how & why all these apps fit together in your argument.

-Also review the Essay 1 assignment because it is relevant to Essay 2.

Announcement for the Research Essay:

-You have your choice of topic and it has to have something to do with well-being/happiness but you have full liberty on your topic.

-The first draft of the research proposal is due Wednesday night at 12am because it is a blog. It is the hardest part of the essay but it is a really important process to go through. (Professor Belli wants a 100% participation on the blogging this week because if its not done, you’re going to fall really far behind in class)

-In addition to the proposal, you also have to write an annotated source. This is an annotated bibliography in which you have to annotate the sources you used. It is important because it makes the reader know what were the sources about and it also forces you to think about the sources you are using. When doing it, you have to have the summaries of the sources and you have to have a critical evaluation. Remember to do both.

-Mandatory individual conference next week with the Professor about the research paper. It is to make sure that you’re on the right track on your essay. (Look at the time available and pick choices on the sign-up sheet that will be given on Thursday)

-Read the assignment carefully.

-Remember that the essay is 30% worth of your final grade.

I hope I covered everything and that you can understand what I wrote. Farewell!

Class Notes Nov.6

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Todays class was held in the library. We went over basic services that are available and for the most part free. We were also given a brief tour and were shown how to uses references within the City Tech Library Website.

                                                                      1st Floor

Activating you library card

  • Can get you books
  • Access to computers which are located all around the library. Including the multimedia lab up the stairs towards the back of the library near the exit sign.
  • You can also print up to 25 copies per day 

Copy Machine

  • Is the only service that is not free
  • It cost $1 to purchase copy card
  • 10 cents per copy

“Reference Desk” Where librarians are located

They can help with

  • Research
  • Finding references
  • Detecting plagiarism

                                                                              2nd Floor (quite place)

  • Outlets are available along the walls and some between book selves
  • Group study rooms are available with 3 or more people( ask librarian for key)
  • Class room space available as well

                                                                          Discussions

Handouts

  • Avoiding plagiarism
  • Good internet/research sources

City Tech Library Website

  • Why is Google a good search engine ?

– “It has EVEYTHING”

Wikipedia

  • Why not ?

– Anyone can edit it

– Sources aren’t reliable

– People make mistakes its only natural

What can you find in the library that you cant find on Google ?

  • Free books/text books are available (some for 2 hour periods in library use only)
  • Its part of tuition use it !
  • It is legal

Essay Topics

  • If your topic is too general you will be overwhelmed with hundreds of results
  • Narrow down your topic
  • Be specific !

Books

  • Every book has a call number ( Letter followed by number on the side of the book)
  • You can find books by

-Looking it up on library website

-Ask a librarian

– Look it up on iPads around the library

  • Why are book a better reference?

– They are written on one specific topic unlike general articles

Library Catalog

  • Use specific key words
  • you will receive irrelevant answers if key word is too general

EBooks

  • Search for book
  • Click on the book you want then

Click CUNY→  URL and DOWNLOAD

  • Can download full book or specific chapters
  • You can also Email wanted chapters or entire book

Subject Headings

Gives you different words to look up according to the topic you are already searching. Its sort of the synonyms of the topic.

More Results

In order to get more results from other than the City Tech library

at the bottom left corner Click LOCATIONS Select ALL CUNY LIBARIES

  • If the book you need is located at a different CUNY school you can have it delivered to a location near you (if its not City Tech)

Click LOCATION →CALL NUMBER→ REQUEST A COPY

  • You will need

– A library number which is located at the bottom left corner of you City Tech ID

  • You will receive an email at your City Tech email when the book has arrived

Data Basis ( When writing a research paper)

Click RESEARCH TOOL tab

select DATABASES (articles & more)

Click on ACADEMIC SEARCH COMPLETE

Type in KEY WORD and begin your search

  • ABSTRACT: gives a 3-4 sentence description on article/book

Source Types

  • You are able to chose where you receive articles/books from ( magazines, academic journals etc.)
  • You can also limit the publication dates to more current or older texts

Citations

  • To cite your source look on the right side of you screen and click on CITE once you have selected this a list of formats, including MLA, are available Copy and Paste into your paper ( some of the formats might be incorrect recheck formatting on Openlab ) https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

 Vocab

Serendipity– When something happens almost by accident

 

 

 

 

Class Notes for November 4th

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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

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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 .

Happiness apps

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There is literally an app available for everything. There are apps to help you find the nearest starbucks to apps that deliver food right to your door. With these apps you are able to get anything you need with in minutes. It is even arguable if such apps make us lazy or if they are actually designed for convenience. If you’re an extremely busy mother that can barely make it to the market for tonight’s dinner or a disable person who isn’t even able to make it down the block these apps are life savers. Apps that can help you study for a huge exam or even apps that can keep you entertained are available with in a few clicks of your phone.

So of course there has to be apps available to track your happiness. Or to even promote happiness and well-being. It might have seemed somewhat silly a few years ago to have your phone ask how you’re feeling at that very moment or to even have it tell you who you’re the happiest with. But now a days that something typical and available with apps such as Mappiness. With Mappiness researches from the London School of Economics are able to track you anonymously through GPS. They are also able to graph your happiness out with just answering a few questions a few times a day. Their primary interest is to figure out how your environment affects your happiness.

But not only are you able to use apps alone but you can use these apps more socially with groups of friends with what’s called a buddy system. With the app called Headspace you are able to share your experience and other fun content with your friends what have similar interests. Headspace focuses on treating your head right through techniques that fulfill their mission of a healthier, happier world one phone at a time. Within this app there are techniques available to deal with stress, relationships and even creativity. This app even uses ethos to establish their reputation by using Emma Watson as a sponsor she states how genus this app is. They also use other former anonymous clients that speak on how amazing this app is.

Apps & all the other interesting things.

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After looking through all of the apps and checking them out. I signed up for most and try to test my happiness earlier today on happily first, but that didn’t give me much info at all on my happiness it wanted me to sign up to see how Im feeling. Then I looked at the other apps and downloaded especial and in-flow because those were the main apps that caught my eye and the others I signed up and played around with them especially headspace because it was more about meditation and relaxation which I didn’t understand how to work. Then I played around with espereal and it was cool although I didn’t have any friends, but I was playing with the mood changer and I saw what all of the colors meant, one color meant jay-z which I thought was cool and weird at the same time because why does the app have a mood feeling as if their Jay-z.

Then as I waited for in-flow to down load I played around with it and the way that works is it goes buy face expression based on how someone is feeling whether it is sad,happy, or angry at the time I downloaded it and was doing my homework I was feeling ok and calm at the time. Then they track it on a line graph by the date and I’m supposed to track how I am feeling for the week, then it will tell me what is my mood through the day whether it changes or stay the same. Which I thought was cool and it gives you advice as well such as taking a shower, donating, and exercising to make you feel more happier during the day?

Also I have received numerous emails from all the apps and so far I enjoy them because I am bored half of the time and I play around with them. I think I have to understand how to work them more, most of them consist of a lot of reading to get to the next step and some apps did, some didn’t I want to get straight to the point with the app. Also I thought some apps I didn’t like that you had to use Facebook in order to signup and I am a person who don’t trust apps and I don’t use Facebook and the type of apps that ask for access for your Facebook I dont know why they did and don’t see the point, but overall they were cool and most of them you needed to pay something in order to get the full access of the app or the website. Overall trying something knew on my phone wasn’t a bad experience and looking at something different on the internet was fun and different as well and made me think more about happiness anyhow release stress more and cool out more instead of overthinking things and getting myself worked up and listening more.