Final Exam Essay

Where have all the parents gone? It’s true that with each new generation, the child becomes more and more independent until eventually the parent is a merely a person they have to cope with and get on with life. The parental control over children is losing its grip fast and if nothing is done to prevent it, parents would lose their children who then have to live and learn on their own. I remember being scared to death of my father when he would take his belt out and punish me. Now, I see my little brother causing mischief and my dad is nowhere to be found. My dad has left the responsibility of controlling and teaching a child the proper way to someone else. Now the question is to whom did these parents leave this enormous responsibility to?

This quote gives us a theory on what’s happening with the parents and their control over their children. There is a shocking end to this quote. It states, “As a result, we ignore rather than address one of the most important changes in American life: The decline in the power and standing of the nation’s parents.” While reading this quote I thought to myself, “How could this be?” Further on, the quote tells us how, “Increasingly, kids are portrayed as standing alone out there somewhere, cosmically parent-free.” These two quotes summarize the whole quote in a simple way. They are saying that around a dozen years ago, the power of America’s parents declined which caused their kids to be seen as alone, almost parent-free. I agree with this statement because it is true in my personal life.

My personal life experiences are quite comparable to this theory. For example, I used to do everything my dad ever told me when I was younger. Now that I’m older, I watch as my little brother has a hard time listening to what my dad tells him to do. My dad is slowly losing his control over my brother because he neglected to raise him like he raised me and my older brother back in Ukraine. Living in Ukraine was tough and we worked hard as a family to get to the next day. My dad made us do plenty of chores around the farm. Now, here in America, my little brother never does any chores. He sometimes has trouble doing something as simple as taking something to the garbage. My father promises to punish him nearly every day but he would usually forget. This is why I think that it’s the true that as the generation becomes newer, the less control the parents are having.

My personal life experiences somewhat support this theory. This is true because in a span of 10 years of my life, my parents went from 100 percent control to about 75 percent. This is not good, but it does back the theory that parents are declining in power and standing. My parents went from having little kids doing what their parents told them to do, to little kids causing mischief, half-knowing that they will probably get away with it, punishment free. This is not good for the parents and their children because the children will be drawn to the evils of this world and by then it might be too late for the parents to fix their mistakes.

I have also heard of many experiences that show the consistent decline in the parent’s power. There have been many times where my cousin would come over to my house really mad. I would ask him what happened and each time he said he got in a really big fight with one or both of his parents. I know I get in a lot of fights with my parents but they usually end when they threaten to take my phone or one of my privileges away. My cousin on the other hand apparently has bigger fights with his parents. They have lost the control and power in his life because he currently has his own life and his parents don’t affect his life in a major way anymore.

This theory certainly doesn’t have a happy ending to it. If this theory were to be true, then the children of these powerless parents would be forced to find a different role model. This is not the way any parent would want their child beginning the transition into this world. This role model most likely won’t be very involved or positive for this child. I know this for a fact because my little brother looks up to me. He would always want to do what I was doing. I even got him interested in sports as much as me. I would have liked it better if my little brother looked up to both me and my father. This way he gets to choose whether he wants to grow up like his father, a reliable and responsible man.

In my opinion, a different way to help the parents help their children is to support the parents. This way the parents can use this support on their children and if a child is supported by their parents in all aspects of their life, then the parents have become powerful role models. A supporting quote says, “The best way to help our children tomorrow is to support parents today.” The problem is that the society does not support the parents because they draw the children away from them. For example, a child would rather stay inside and watch some cartoon than go outside and play. The society needs to change the way they communicate to the children. They need to find a way to show the children that they need their parents. The parents, of course, need to know the right way to raise their children also.

I think that there is a way for parents to start getting some control over their children’s lives. They will need to start at the beginning, the younger the child, the better. They also need to find a way of always incorporating their ideas and ways, so that the child may see a responsible and correct way to handle or do something. Also, parents need not to argue with their kids on a daily basis. It is hard to start making something positive out of a parent to child relationship when you are constantly in a fight. Start with these first couple of ideas and the rest will be history.

Essay 4: Argumentative

They Say, I Say

I choose to write about the subject of steroids in sports because I am extremely interested in sports and when something like steroids gets involved with sports, I like to know about it. Steroids are a certain drug that causes growth in a human being hormone when it is taken. That’s why they are sometimes called HGH or human growth hormone. They are illegal to high school students and players that are involved in any professional sports organization that does not allow their players to take steroids. Yet both students and players have broken the rules now and in the past. This is where we get the problem of steroids in sports.

Using steroids on any professional or nonprofessional sports organization classifies in the same category as cheating. This can be compared to any other interest one might have. For example, if someone is interested in cars, then someone using steroids in sports can be compared to someone stealing a car. Now that person has a better car than just like a player using steroids would be stronger than his opponent or competition. This is my opinion of course and because there is another side to this subject, using steroids in sports is an argumentative problem. I picked out three different articles with three different perspectives on steroids in a particular sport. I will show you what I thought of steroids before and after I read and analyzed these articles.

My view on steroids before I read these articles was laid back because I thought it was a minor problem that would be fixed immediately. One of the articles, “Sports and Drugs,” has a sub article that is focused on steroid use among younger teens. This article got me thinking that maybe steroids are becoming a bigger problem as time moves on. The first line just summed up the whole article. It says, “Forty percent of high school seniors say steroids are easy to obtain (618).” I think that in order to fix this problem, you must start at the beginning. In this case, the roots of steroids begin in high school. First, school officials or someone else needs to make it hard for students to obtain steroids and if they happen to use them, they need to find a way to catch these students. After that, they need to be punished enough so that the next time they will think twice before making the same mistake again. I believe that if you start in high school, the next levels will be easier to handle.

My view on steroids has changed considerably mainly due to a particular article. This article is called, “High School Testing Loses Momentum.” There are a couple of reasons why this article has changed my perspective on steroids. One reason is the fact that Texas, Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that currently have random steroid-testing programs. This article states that even these last three programs haven’t had much success lately. My opinion is that steroid users are getting much smarter. They are looking for the steroids that can’t be tested yet. To back my opinion, the article also shows that, “Texas reported seven positives out of 19,000 tests done through the school year.” Clearly, the reason all these programs are being thrown away is because they are not finding enough positive tests. Steroid users are still out there according to article, Sports and Drugs.” On page 618, it says, “The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the number of boys who have used steroids at least once increased from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent between 1991 and 2003.” Combined with the female steroid users, it comes out to roughly one million high school steroid users. A problem it certainly is, these steroid-testing programs need to toughen up and find some better ways of catching these illegal substance users.

“Poll: Economy Bigger Problem for MLB.” This is an article which shows the audiences’ view on steroids in Major League Baseball. According to the sources, “more than 80 percent of people who follow sports believed there is current use of human growth hormone in baseball, but those same fans perceive the economy as a much bigger problem for baseball than performance-enhance drugs.” This is the first sentence of the article and it nearly summarizes the whole article. They are saying that Major League Baseball needs to be worried about the economy affecting their teams rather than the players that are using illegal substances. I think that Major League Baseball officials have less control over the economy than they have over the players. The economy will get back up soon but if the officials ignore steroid use, than pretty soon everyone baseball player is using steroids just to be able to compete. I don’t think that the Major League officials, other sports organizations and even fans want this because it affects nearly everyone in a negative way. Baseball won’t be fun to watch because everyone is hitting home runs and the officials would have lost control of the league by then. I think that most people don’t want that to happen and the Major League Baseball organization needs to step up to this problem.

I believe I have shown what the people, experts and I think about steroids in sports. The people seem to looking on at this problem as something that’s not their business. The experts are trying to find bigger problems that professional sports organizations and high school sports programs need to be addressing before they start dealing with steroids. I think that everyone involved with steroids one way or another should be doing something to prevent it. Steroids are a bigger problem in sports than you might think.

Reflective Letter

This has been a good quarter for me and Writing 101 is a big part of the reason. I came into class knowing how to write a good essay the high school way and now I am able to write a college level essay that even I enjoy reading to myself. After learning the basics, my essay’s got much better as the weeks went by. My first essay wasn’t horrible but I remember having a lot of revision to do. Now, I can write a good quality essay and revise it under a normal time and these essays turn out to be much better because of the skills I adapted to over the course of this quarter.

I think that there is something particular about my essays that I would to draw attention to. The final draft and rough draft of my essays stay somewhat similar. I revise the grammar, spelling and the other mistakes that I make while writing a rough draft. In the end though, both the rough and final draft are nearly the same essay. This can be looked at in two different perspectives. I look at it as; a good writer will freely write a rough draft and after that revise any errors, but if the writer is confident in his paper, then he will keep the essay in the voice that it was originally written in. I think that a common mistake made by many students is when they pick-a-part their rough draft and when they are done putting it back together, it sounds nothing like the voice that they had when they were writing the rough draft. I look at this as a strength that I have in my essays. My essays come out to be in my voice and my voice only.

I have a couple of other strengths that I tend to easily incorporate into my essays. As I recall, my essays have always had a strong introduction. I have a nice first sentence, thesis statement and hook. These three parts are crucial to have in the introductory paragraph. Without them, any essay can start out flat and boring. In my body paragraphs, I have pretty good topic sentences and in my opinion, really good commentary to back them up. I look at this as a strength in all my essays. Finally, good grammar, good word choice and nice sentence structures are some of the aspects that tend to be adequate in my papers. These can be fixed with some work and I am glad to say that they are becoming a smaller problem the more essays I write.

As I have strengths in my essays, I have a couple of weaknesses also. Transitions have always been a problem for. After learning that using high school transition phrases is not acceptable in college, I struggled to find a way for the flow of my essay get from one paragraph to another. I am working on this problem but it has become a bigger problem than I had originally thought it would. Also, having weak transitions takes a toll of the flow of an essay because when you can’t get the rhythm of an essay smoothly from one paragraph to another, it comes out sounding confusing. The reader ends up having to scramble thoughts around trying to make any sense of what is going on in the paper. This is a major problem but lately I have shown some positive progress.

To sum up a whole quarter of this Writing 101 class would take many sheets of paper. I learned everything I needed to know about writing to continue my journey through college and beyond. This class was a bumpy ride for me due to the problems that I had to overcome to write a successful paper. I am personally glad that I took Writing 101 in Highline Community College.

Article Summaries for Essay 4

Sports and Drugs

This is an extremely long article because it touches on every possible thing that ties in with steroids and just the overall use of performance enhancing drugs. There is a certain part of the article that really got my attention. Cracking Down on Steroids is the subtitle. This part of the article shows all the major sports leagues the NCAA and how they have a list of the penalties and consequences that they came up with in case they catch someone using steroids after being tested. For example, in the MLB, they have unannounced testing of all players once during the season, with a follow-up test 5 to 7 days later. After the first positive test - they penalize the player by putting them in a drug-treatment program. After the second, they get a fifteen day suspension or up to a $10,000 fine. This goes on and they other leagues have similar penalties.

Poll: Economy bigger problem for MLB

This article is all based on the statistics they use. They show stats like more than 80% of people who follow sports believe the baseball players are currently using steroids and other human growth hormone. Also, the same percent believe that the economy is a bigger problem for baseball than steroids. The famous stars that are caught up in all of this steroids are Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens. The poll shows that more than 75% said that players that use or used steroids should be allowed to continue playing. These are just some of the statistics in the article.

High school testing loses momentum

This article shows us how high school testing began when George W. Bush addressed this topic in his 2004 State of the Union address. He said that Americans needed "to get tough and to get rid of steroids now". It has not been a great success in these four to five years. A good example is Florida who gave up it's $100,000 program after finding one positive case out of 600 tests. Now only Texas, Illinois and New Jersey have random-testing programs and even they haven't had much success. The average is 1 positive test out of 500 tests and these tests don't come cheap. They come out to about $150 to $200. Texas is feeling the hit because their program has a $3 million annual price tag. Still these states are going strong and they are committed to getting rid of steroids in their high schools.

Statement about articles: My statement about these articles is that they all show one important message to their readers. The message is that steroids is a problem that can escalate into a crisis if its not stopped soon. These articles show steroids in baseball and high school. These leagues or programs have had the biggest problems with steroids which is why they are important when you are talking about steroids. My view on this subject is that taking steroids should be allowed to just people but when you are in the MLB, high school or any league in this case and they don't allow steroids, then I totally agree something should be done about it. This is just like cheating and it makes the game unfair to the people that don't take steroids.

Reflective Essay Rough Outline

What is it among the papers that you would like to draw attention to?

My papers have been well written in my opinion and if I fix my mistakes or weaknesses, my essays will be near perfect.

What qualities in the included papers reveal your strengths as a writer?

I have good grammar, good commentary for my topic sentences, good introduction with a nice hook.

What do you think you still need to work on?

I have some things that I still need to work on but I personally think that I am getting better with those things. My transitions in my essays need work and the flow of my essay. These things are important to have if you plan to have a nice essay. Also, my overuse of some words is a smaller problem that needs to be fixed.

The Catch

The greatest catch in Super Bowl history! Obviously this statement is arguable to football fans but many football analysts have agreed to the fact that it is the greatest catch and nearly all agree that it at least ranks in the top four. Steve Sabol of NFL films said that David Tyree’s catch goes down as the best play in Super Bowl history. I personally think that it is truly the most amazing Super Bowl catch I have ever seen. When I looked it up on the internet, I found out that this photograph was taken by a professional photographer, Andrew Mills. He works for Star-Ledger Photography. This is a New Jersey based news, sports and entertainment photography company. Whenever I look at this picture, I think of the heart, courage and passion for the game that David Tyree had in order to make this catch.

The message of this photograph is incredible to me. It shows me that this man had a lot of passion for the game. He was willing to put his body in a injury vulnerable position because he wanted to help his team win the biggest game of their lives. This was not only an amazing catch but a catch that his teammates will never forget. Also, David Tyree’s courage should never be forgotten because he saw the challenge arise and because he took on the challenge, he was paid off with a marvelous result. Another message that this photograph shows me is that when an opportunity flashes itself in front of you, it’s important to take it because there might not be anymore like it. In this case, if he didn’t make that catch, the other team would have won because he made this catch in the final two minutes of the game and it set up the winning touchdown catch by his teammate Plaxico Burress, seconds later.

This picture is arguable for one reason. You can debate whether this is the greatest catch in history. Some might say that it’s not because the player didn’t really catch the ball. I see where one would think that way because if you look closely, the ball is on the helmet and he has only one hand on it. In this case, the ball is insecure and vulnerable to the defender or to falling out when the player eventually falls down. The result was that he managed to keep the ball secured on his helmet while landing without the ball touching the ground. If the ball touched the ground, it would have been an incomplete pass and football history would be different. Showing the different perspective, I would say that this is an amazing catch. Some reasons to back my view are that David Tyree has a defender all over him and that he is nearly parallel to the ground in mid-air. Even with both of these preventing factors, he manages to concentrate on holding on to the ball. It’s a great accomplishment and I acknowledge David Tyree for pulling it off.

I think that this picture was clearly not staged in any way. This is because it is impossible to stage a catch of that magnitude. For example, football receivers run particular routes that are designed for them to go a certain way with the quarterback knowing where they are going and where to throw the ball. Here the receiver was running his route but when he realized his quarterback was about to get tackled he came back and became a target for the quarterback who threw it to him and it resulted in the amazing catch. The photographer had to follow the play and focus on how it was unfolding. I think it's hard for the photographer to predict what a wide receiver might do and if the photogrpaher doesn’t react quickly, the play might be over and it would be too late to get any picture. Also, since this happened extremely fast, staging the play is nearly impossible. I think that the photographer was in the right place and at the right time to snap this picture.

In my opinion, this is an amazing picture taken by a professional photographer. This picture is more than just the catch. It has passion, courage, guts and athleticism all involved in one way or another. That's what makes this catch the greatest in Super Bowl history which is saying something because there were many great changes over the years. It changed the course of the biggest game in sports history and that is why I agree to the fact that it is truly the most incredible catch!

Essay 3 Rough Draft

The greatest catch in Super Bowl history! Obviously this statement is quite arguable to football fans but many football analysts have agreed that it is the greatest catch and nearly all agree that it at least ranks in the top four. Steve Sabol of NFL films said that David Tyree’s catch goes down as the best play in Super Bowl history. I personally think that it is truly the most amazing Super Bowl catch I have ever seen. When I looked it up on the internet, I found out that this photograph was taken by a professional photographer, Andrew Mills. He works for Star-Ledger Photography. This is a New Jersey based news, sports and entertainment photography company. Whenever I look at this picture, I think of the heart, courage and passion for the game that David Tyree had in order to make this catch.

The message of this photograph is incredible to me. It shows me that this man had a lot of passion for the game. He was willing to put his body in a injury vulnerable position because he wanted to help his team win the biggest game of their lives. This was not only an amazing catch but a catch that his teammates will never forget. His courage should also never be forgotten because David Tyree saw the challenge arise and because he took on the challenge, he was paid off with a marvelous result. Another message that this photograph shows me is that when an opportunity flashes itself in front of you, it’s important to take it because there might not be anymore like it. In this case, if he didn’t make that catch, the other team would probably have won because there was only one minute left it the game. This catch set up the winning touchdown catch seconds later.

This picture is arguable for one reason. You can debate whether this is the greatest catch in history. Some might say that it’s not because the player didn’t really catch the ball. I see where one would think that way because if you look closely, the ball is on the helmet and he has only one hand on it. In this case, the ball is insecure and vulnerable to the defender or to getting loose when the player falls down. The result was that he managed to keep the ball secured on his helmet and landing without the ball touching the ground. If the ball touched the ground, it would have been an incomplete pass and football history would be different. Showing the different perspective, I would say that this is an amazing catch. Some reasons to back my view are that David Tyree has a defender all over him and he is nearly parallel to the ground in mid-air. Even with both of these preventing factors, he manages to concentrate on holding on to the ball and landing on his back without the ball touching the ground. It’s a great accomplishment and I acknowledge David Tyree for pulling it off.

In my opinion, this picture was clearly not staged in any way. This is because it is impossible to stage a catch of that magnitude. For example, football receivers run particular routes that are designed for them to go a certain way and with the quarterback knowing where they are going and where to throw the ball. Here the receiver was running his route but when he realized his quarterback was about to get tackled he came back and became a target for the quarterback who threw it to him and it resulted in the amazing catch. The photographer had to follow the play and focus on how it was unfolding. I think it's hard for the photographer to predict what they might do and if they don't react quickly, the play might be over and it would be too late to get any picture. Also, since this happened extremely fast, so staging the play is nearly impossible. I think that the photographer was in the right place and at the right time to snap this picture.

In my opinion, this is an amazing picture taken by a professional photographer. This picture is more than just the catch. It has passion, courage, guts and athleticism all involved in one way or another. That's what makes this catch the greatest in Super Bowl history and that's saying something. It changed the course of the biggest game in sports history and that is why I agree to the fact that it is truly the most incredible catch!