“The truth about online shopping” is about the impact increased online shopping is having on the environment around us. Since people want things in two days they prefer online shipping which increases the amount of waste product in the packets… Not to mention the excessive amounts of fuels being used to transport consumers packages. In person purchases will have an impact on the environment by stopping the need to ship packages, utilizing your own transportation to get there. If you choose to purchase your products online it is encouraged to select the slower shipping route. This allows retailers to take their time in selecting routes with fewer miles, so they can save fuel. 

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“Many babies and toddlers use mobile devices everyday” by Claie McKathy is about the increased use of screens at young age causing developmental problems. Parents use these devices to their own advantage to keep their kids quiet, help put them to sleep, and even get them to do chores. At a restaurant it was observed that the majority of parents were on their phone and ignoring their children. A parent’s interactions with their children are vital to them for the development of their brains. It is encouraged to stick to color books, reading spy books, or interacting with their kids instead of using a screen to “keep them calm.”    

Reflection on Revision 

A rough draft for me is always something just to have ideas on a paper. I am the type of writer to have a bunch of ideas in my head, but it’s hard to organize my thoughts. Through the revision process and having someone read my work and give me recommendations it really helped me to give me an idea on what to put my main focus on. In my rough draft, I didn’t focus on one specific part of my life. I focused on one year in my life and it was too general I realized. After writing my final draft I felt more confident in my writing and knew it was so much better. I also really enjoyed peer reviewing someone else’s work too!! It gave me a perspective of some else’s trials, and how they dealt with them to better themselves. This process really helped me as a writer because I got some ideas about transitioning into paragraphs and usage of different words.

• https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-02-19/lockdowns-are-leaving-kids-with-adhd-in-crisis
• By:CARA MUREZ HEALTHDAY
• The article I chose for this week was about how kids with ADHD are having an increased amount of troubles with the lockdown. Clinical psychiatrist Maggie Sibley expressed her concern on the matter and since the pandemic and the “new normal” is causing kids with ADHD to have so much trouble she thinks there will be an increase in drop outs. A study of 134 adolescents and young adults was conducted and found the problems with social isolation,difficulties engaging in online learning , and motivation. These results are not shocking! As someone with ADHD and not taking any medicine for it all of these things are true. Not having the discipline of going to school everyday where if you get bored you can’t just go for a run. You ask questions when you have them. I know for me when I am with other people I stay ontrack more. Another issue they noticed with remote learning is since online school is not as engaging as in person school kids with ADHD tend to struggle more and get more side tracked. It has been proven that kids with attention deficit disorder learn better when they are engaged in the class. A problem doctors are running into however is diagnosing kids and adults. The problem with diagnosing people at this time is ADHD is a lifelong illness it’s not something that just comes up in certain situations. With all of these bad things going on with people with ADHD the good thing about the pandemic is they have time to learn new coping skills!!     

• Some things that interested me about this article is finding out that ADHD is a lot more common than I thought. I’m happy to find out not just my symptoms have been acting up during the pandemic. I think it is interesting that doctors are confused on whether to diagnose people with or not at this time. It makes sense though because they do not want something to go on someones records forever and it not be true.      

• A thing I noticed about the writer’s style: her essay went in the exact order of her thesis. “they reported problems with social isolation, difficulties engaging in online learning, motivation issues and boredom that increased during the pandemic.” She states what the findings from the experiment are and then for everything they found she has information about. She also adds a positive in there too which I like.    

• Overall I would give this a rating of a thumbs up because I can relate to it and shows the struggles that people with ADHD go through. 

I have honestly not done a lot with peer reviewing in the past. Most of the time I would just have to turn my rough draft into my teacher and whoever my teacher was would give me feedback on it. That alone has helped me tremendously with writing my final drafts. A big reason is because having another person read your work they can catch things that you didn’t and if anything is confusing to them you can fix. One peer review I did in middle school was we sat in a circle of 5 and everyone passed their essays around till they got there. That way not just one person is reading it but 4 others are too. I found that one to be very helpful. Obviously this one has to be in person, so we can’t really do this one now. I honestly liked doing the review because I got ideas for myself to do with my next writing. For example, focusing on my transitions because that can really be the breaking point of keeping a reader engaged. I appreciated reading her whole memoir first and then a second time writing down things I liked and found confusing the 2nd time.  The challenges of doing it was trying not to sound rude when giving a suggestion because I feel like anything over text or online comes off WAY different if it was on the phone or in person.  A thing I learned from doing this peer review is I learned something about someone in my class that I really would not have known. It is inspiring to read someone’s trials and see how they bounce back from it. With all of this online school you don’t know who anyone is. I don’t even know most of my classmates’ names, so it definitely feels nice putting a story with a person. I definitely want to work on my transitions and word usage because her transitions were great as well as her word usage. I hope to do peer reviewing again because it was something I really enjoyed :):)

As many of you know we have been in a pandemic for quite some time now. It has brought a lot of fright to people, wondering what’s going to happen, seniors missing out on proms and graduation, and kids missing out on education. Well with all this going on mental health has been on a rise too! I never thought much about mental health because I never really thought much about “feelings”. I always said to myself “someone has it worse, so I have no right to be sad.” Well when March 13th my senior skip day, not having the thought that I was missing my last day of school it didn’t really hit me because no one knew how bad it was going to be.  

        During quarantine, I was already going through a hard time because my mom was in the hospital, and my dad was constantly working so it was just me and all my thoughts. Once again, recall I voided out all of my feelings because I never thought they were valid. Through days and days of staying in bed and not doing anything because let us be honest what could really be don’t then anyways. One of my teachers reached out to me because she knew what I was going through and I talked to her a little. Still not realizing the importance of talking about my feelings I just kept on hiding the fact that I was not okay. My car parade graduation came and went without my parents. For your information the parade was awesome, but that’s beside the fact. Summer came and I started to feel a little better because the weather was warm and I hung out with my friends every day. What I didn’t know was that you aren’t truly happy if you have to distract yourself from your life. If you aren’t happy alone you aren’t truly happy, BUT I thought I was. As summer went on I was having a great time spending it with my friends because it was my last time having fun with my friends before I left for basic training. 

       I left on August 31st thinking it is what I need to get away from all that is going on with my life. I was so happy to be going, but still sad because I was leaving my friends and their families and also my family too. Fast forward to getting to Fort Leonard Wood Missouri and having to quarantine for 2 weeks because of Covid. I was only allowed to come out of where I slept with 70 other females for 3 Neal otherwise I was up there the whole day. No phones, no exercising, no going outside, and no talking to someone if you were having a problem. You can only imagine how that went. Well through those 2 weeks I started to get very anxious and I would just pace for hours upon hours and I didn’t know why I was doing it and what was going on with me. That led me to get very sad and just want to be anywhere, but there. We get out of quarantine and. My battle buddy talked to the Drill Sergeant about how she was concerned about me and the next thing I know I am in a psychiatric ward. I knew I wasn’t in the right headspace but never that bad of the wrong headspace. 

Through my stay there (2 weeks) I learned that all the things I was doing at home: excessive planning, exercising, making everything perfect, and trying to control everything I could were all symptoms of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder otherwise known as OCD. When I was there I was convinced I was fine and could go back to training. Through my 2 week stay, I learned a lot about myself and the importance of mental health. Like I said I was convinced it was fine and whatnot so I kept refusing medicine for my anxiety. I don’t know why I thought there was always a taboo about taking meds for mental health illnesses. It wasn’t like it was a bad medicine either it was a super light one that would just help me. After I was done being suborn I took it and had a chance. It helped me a lot and still does today. I met a lot of great people there who weren’t “crazy” they were like me. They went there not knowing they had something wrong with them. Some of those people I am still friends with today. 

Through this experience, I learned the importance of mental health and that talking to someone who is a “therapist” isn’t bad. Sometimes you need to, so you know you are okay. Never in a million years would I have thought I would be talking to someone about my “feelings”. The same goes for being on medicine. If this whole thing didn’t happen I don’t think I would have gotten the help I didn’t know I needed. Everything happens for a reason. The outcome of that experience is I went home not being able to continue training, but I found a love for psychology and hopefully will get to pursue the job of being a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Things may not go the way you want, but you can’t let that hold you back. I am grateful this happened to me because who knows what would have happened if it didn’t.  

      To relate this back to my theme which is health and medicine. The power of talking to someone for your medicine is underrated because it has helped me tremendously and I help my friends through this experience because they come to talk to me about how they are feeling. I will also bring up taking medicine for a mental illness isn’t something ANYONE should be ashamed of! I know it is easier said than done trust me. If you should trust anyone on that it should be me because my whole life I always thought being on medicine was bad. I have had ADHD my whole life but have gone I medicated my whole life because I could control it well with exercise and whatnot. I am still controlling it without medication but for my anxiety, I do not think I could control it without medicine. So, if you take anything for this please know that it is okay to get help and be on medicine. Nobody will judge you, trust me!

• Title: What makes a great teacher?
• Summary: Test scores were evaluated of kids in Washington DC and Obama’s secretary of education compared them. She found that based off the teacher the kids had impacted their test scores. She looked at one school in particular and found that the kids who had Mr. Taylor for math had increased their test score drastically. She noticed kids went form below average to above average just in one year. Why is that? She noticed that Mr. Taylor cared about his students as people too and he was young and brought a lot of energy everyday. They decided to find good teachers it would be by test scores which I do not agree with at all.
• Surprising: The new education system for young learners judges a teacher on their ability based off of one test.
• Writing Style: I may have not agreed with the things in the reading, but I did notice the way the writer transitioned from paragraph to paragraph. The transitions flowed nicely and it all made sense the way the information was put into the reading. Also, I did notice a lot of evidence was expressed in the article which backed up all of the writers points.
• Rating: 6/10 side way thumb because I did not agree with it and it made me mad.

The Gas Station

It was 11pm on a Friday rainy, nasty night on my way home from a soccer tournament. I was with my friends family while we were driving by at pretty seedy speed a sketchy gas station. While driving by we noticed a guy on the wet ground. It was hard to see because it was pouring so badly. All we could see was a figure on the ground. We noticed it was a person once we saw the shadow of him moving like crazy. He was seizing . We pulled into the gas station, but the owner of the gas station was already aware of the matter. We had pulled in to make sure everything was okay and the police were called. In the city where we were we heard sirens left and right, so we could not tell if it was the sirens coming for the guy on the ground or not. I had knots in my stomach and my hand was shaking I don’t know why because nothing was happening to us, but it felt like their was. Finally, what took like forever the flashing lights and sirens were there. The guy ended up overdosing, and once they got there we left, What felt like an hour was only about 5 minutes.

As a kid who stayed back because my writing and comprehension skills were lagging I never really enjoyed the whole subject of English. I have found a love for it however ever since my Jr. year of High School. I like to think it was my teacher that made me fall in love with it. I learned so much about myself as a writer that I never knew I could do!! With that being said I still do struggle with things. The article 10 ways to think about writing talks about different aspects of writing that are pretty vital to make you a successful writer. One major point is writing to an audience. Ever since I was in middle school I have been told to keep the audience entertained with my writing. It was not really till High School till I knew what that meant. Most of the time of the “audience” is the teacher grading your paper. An easier approach to take is writing like you are writing to a loved one or your best friend. A lot of times without you knowing it you will write better if you approach it like that. Another the article talks about is putting details in your writings. Details can add so much to your pieces. Just by putting details in your writings it can make the reader feel like they are there. I would not say I am the best at putting details into my writings, but there are definitely things I need to work on more. The last major put in the reader that I found interesting is keeping the reader with you. This is a big one for me because I am very bad explainer. I will explain something and end up talking about something else. I have to remind myself what I am writing about constantly because I have the tendency to go off track a lot. This can make it confusing for readers because they will be wondering what your dog as to do with what you are trying to say. Also with keeping the reader on track I feel like I need to work on not repeating myself in my papers because I do that a lot. As a writting I like to write about different things my favorite style, however is defiently argumentive. My mom always said I was a good arguer, so maybe that could be why. One of my favorite pieces I have ever wrote was my Jr. years when we got to pick our prompts.. I picked to write about knowlege vs intelligence. It was my favorite because I never realized I was capable of writtig that well. I will attach the link at the bottom, so if you want you can take a look at it!! Now, English may not be my favorite subject through the years I have defiently grown to like it more. This semester I hope to work on all of those things mentioned.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18Po5gMg1TcCysUprxGa3pKCeAE6QYbeXTzY14MEQl_E

In my life, I never actually knew what I wanted to be, and still do not exactly know what I want to be. I always thought it would be something with sports because it is something that has been apart of me for so much of my life. My original plan was to actually be a high school gym teacher, but looking back on the pandemic I do not think that is the best job to pick right now! I looked back at my life once I made that decision to change career paths, and reflecting back on it I realized something in the medical field would best suit me. From numerous concussions, surgeries, and my dad having diabetes I feel like I can relate to a lot of things in the field of health and medicine. The theme of health and medicine is a perfect theme for me because I have an abundance of personal experiences, there are so many controversial topics in today’s work about it, and I am into sports injuries.

Through playing sports my whole life I have had several injuries. One of which was a very severe concussion that took me several hospital stays, appointments with neurologists, and a lot of sleep to recover. I have also had a lot of experiences with my family I could also write about. For example, my dad has diabetes and has had some complications with it. That tragic situation taught me a lot about health and medicine. Another thing I could write about is my great-grandmother having Alzheimer’s. I have learned so much about the power of medicine and how big of power the brain actually is!!

Some argumentative topics I can write about are people vaccinating their kids, should football be banned, or about mental health being a threat in the 21st century or not. There are so many argumentative topics I can write about that can be tied to health and medicine. The one topic I partially have a lot of interest in is whether football should be allowed to be a sport or not. Due to the risk of concussions, and long-term Brain damage the game brings it is a very controversial topic. Having a past with concussions I believe that would be a topic I would really enjoy.

Not only is sports interesting to me, but so is how everybody’s bodies work because they all work differently. For example, type 2 diabetes is at an all-time high right now, and doctors and researchers are lost for an explanation. Type 2 diabetes is a genetic disease where a person’s beta cells are destroyed by their immune system. Basically, their immune system attacks all of the cells they want. Researchers and doctors think this is from the rise of the obesity rate, but they can’t put an explanation as to why it is showing up in people as type 2 and not type 1. All of the unknown with type 2 diabetes really interest me, if you can’t tell! Another topic that interests me is how sports and eating disorders correlate in some situations. Finding out what sports have a higher rate and whatnot. The why behind it is what really gets me to do my research.

It is quite evident that health and medicine are a good choice for me as a theme. Not only from my own experiences but others in my family too! My interests in the medical field and all the different things that spark my interest will motivate me too.