Counterintuitive Fall 2024

Defining a Perfect Childhood

Everyone one is raised differently. Not even siblings share the same experiences and standards their parents put them through. The definition of an ideal upbringing is interchanging between families, and continues to change with time. Most people don’t think that they have experienced the ideal upbringing if you asked them. They would come up with something that their parents may have done that has affected them negatively in their upbringing, and it may not be considered a serious issue to others. This is because most people have a pre-existing idea of what a childhood should entail. 

In many minds including my own, when thinking about an ideal upbringing the famous picket fence idea comes up . The picket fence idea concept is an iconic status in the United States. It symbolizes an ideal middle-class suburban life. The idea includes a family with 2-3 children and a dog, a big house and an overall peaceful lifestyle. The husband has a good job that pays well so the wife can stay home and take care of the kids. And the children are free to pursue the things they want including sports, music, anything that they show interest in. This may be what defines a perfect lifestyle, but not an ideal upbringing. There are many factors that go into the white picket fence idea that agree with the claims of Julie Noonan, author of “What makes a good childhood” for the publisher, Berry Street Childhood Institute Knowledge to Action, such as having children feel valued and respected for who they are. “A good childhood is characterized by stable, responsive, caring relationships in families and in the community. Children thrive in nurturing environments that encourage them to explore and engage safely with the world around them, and support them to fulfill their potential.” This is what pops up when “perfect childhood definition” is googled, and most people would agree that these factors would create the groundwork of a stable upbringing. 

Some factors mentioned that families and their children have little to no control over includes: the employment of young people and the pressures families feel when trying to afford housing and their everyday expenses. There are several outside factors that affect families, and the raising of one’s child. What should be discussed more is that if a family has something like a “white picket fence” life, and the child’s basic needs are being met, then there could be certain alterations made to better that child in the long-run. This idea is addressed in Julia Noonan’s chapter on Childhood Wellbeing: Good Childhood Domains, “For all children to survive, they need to have the very basic material resources in place – food, water and shelter. In order for children to thrive, they need much more than the basics.” Many families have a lifestyle that is more or less like the white picket fence fantasy, but they fail to realize the potential they are giving their children as well as the potential life lessons they could be teaching them. Most parents have the natural instinct of wanting to give their children everything they never had when they grew up, and this continues on through each generation. What some may not realize is that by attempting to give their children everything they could ever want or need, can cause them more damage than benefit them. As Julie Noonan would describe it as one of her main factors to her chapters, “Childhood wellbeing is not just about the immediate lives of children, but also the long-term outcomes.” What some parents fail to realize is that their children’s upbringing is a very brief, but very critical time in their lives where they must develop skills in order to better be prepared once they enter the real world. 

Some may say that an ideal upbringing would involve preparing one’s child for the world. This idea includes giving children responsibilities at an early age and having them gain a sense of self accomplishment through working hard in order to get what they really want. Some parents may want to focus solely on their academics, or maybe just their sports. Both of these things gives the child a feeling of self pride after making certain accomplishments in those fields. In which I believe is something that needs to be implemented into raising a child into a respectable adult. 

Ultimately someone’s upbringing does play a major part in the type of individual they grow up to be. It all depends on what that particular family values and what life lessons they want to pass on to their children. There are families that value education above everything else, others may view becoming a contributing member to society as the most important thing their child can do, and some believe that kids just need a chance to be kids. “The changing nature of how we have defined and understood ‘childhood’ over many centuries’ highlights that it is not a constant but an ever-shifting construct” as Julia Noonan perfectly states on page 14 in her book.  There are many different opinions on how to raise one’s children and it continues to change through the years as economical factors fluctuate and people’s morals change. Even though there are some things that can be agreed upon, the concept of an ideal upbringing will never be agreed on and will continue to change throughout families and time. 

References

Noonan, Julie “What Makes a Good Childhood?” Berry Street Victoria Inc. Childhood Institute, Knowledge to Action, 2017

Dolan, Michael“How Did the White Picket Fence Become a Symbol of the Suburbs” Apr. 2019

Needs a Title

Today more than ever, the word profiling is often thrown around as a means of accusation. Those who say or do something that unsavory in the opinion of a certain group of people are accused of profiling. This could be racial profiling, profiling based on gender, sexual preference, or behavior. In my research paper I plan to examine the policy of ” Stop and Frisk” disecting the arguments both for and against the policy. The common argument against the policy is that it is racial profiling. Therefore, it is important to understand what profiling actually is, and if all profiling is inherently bad.

According to Oxford, profiling is ” The recording and analysis of a person’s psychological and behavioral characteristics, so as to assess or predict their capabilities in a certain sphere or to assist in identifying a particular subgroup of people. ” When people today hear the word profiling, they immediately think of racism or sexism. They think of profiling as a means of discrimination. Not to say this is never true, racial and gender profiling do exist today, however to take a word that can mean many different things and turn it into a word that is directly associated with evil human behavior is irresponsible and unwarranted.

There are several types of profiling used in many different situations, therefore to throw all profiling under an umbrella labeled as evil is unfair. As a matter of fact I would dare to say there are some beneficial types of profiling. Psychological profiling is a detailed description of psychological characteristics of one known individual. This is not always criminal but it is often used in risk assessment. This is a type of profiling that has been very useful in preventing criminal behavior as well as preventing people from harm against themselves. Geological profiling analyzes locations associated with an unknown usually serial offender, it analyzes hot spots of crime. This profiling has helped law enforcement better identify future crime based on location and trends.

Profiling is science, it is mathematics, it is statistics. It is very hard to argue with data and statistics. However, if the narrative around the statistics offends people, it will lead to them ignoring the statistics and jumping straight to criticizing policy. In order to build a fair and complete argument around a policy accused of profiling, it is essential to know what profiling actually is. Profiling has been used by law enforcement, intelligence, healthcare professionals, and mathematicians for decades to improve the quality of their work. So to label all profiling as wrong is ill informed and incorrect.

When it comes to ” Stop and Frisk”, it does fit the definition of profiling. Several types of profiling were incorporated into developing and executing the policy. None of which were racial profiling. They used Geographic profiling to identify high crime at risk neighborhoods. Suspect based profiling was also used, a systematic of data on previous offenders to identify additional offenders. The intent behind the policy was not to stop and frisk every person in sight with darker skin. The complexity of the profiling used in creation of the policy was far more sophisticated than simply finding minorities and frisking them. When arguing against stop and frisk it is important to identify a specific aspect of the policy, whether it be in design or execution.

References

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/profiling

Click to access 89767_Chapter_3_Psychology_of_Investigations.pdf

Rob Manfred, Put on Your Thinking Cap

Every year, baseball fans preemptively get psyched for the upcoming MLB season. From the second that the World Series concludes until Opening Day, a majority of baseball fans have hope, both for a surplus of riveting offseason acquisitions and for a successful season. But there are also fans that are dreading their team’s future. These fans root for teams that seemingly have no shot at any sort of postseason contention, as well as teams that have no intention of spending any money or making any significant trades in the offseason. Why are some teams afraid to make moves while other organizations spend money big?

Major League Baseball actively enforces a luxury tax, rather than a salary cap, making it the only league of the four major American professional sports: National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NFL), to not have a salary cap on spending. Major League Baseball’s salary tax, also known as the Competitive Balance Tax, is an outdated model from 2002 that sets a limit of spending for teams before a tax penalty is distributed. The maximum spending number is declared in the Collective Bargaining Agreement each year, which is constituted by the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League Baseball’s commissioner. As Jerry Trotta notes in his 12up article “MLB Luxury Tax Explained,” the luxury tax is a boundary that causes teams to pay a tax if they exceed the payroll threshold, and the tax will increase in cases where a team repeatedly exceeds the predetermined boundary. In essence, staying below the luxury tax is only a recommendation, and it is a recommendation that is often disregarded by richer teams.

Meanwhile, the NFL has a “hard cap.” These hard caps, similar to MLB’s salary tax, are enforced by their respective leagues in order to maintain balance between all teams and to ensure that no team has a spending advantage. Preventing big market teams from “buying championships” by signing all the best available players is the primary reason why the caps and taxes are created. However, hard caps allow no leniency, because according to the NHL and NFL collective bargaining agreements, any team that surpasses the hard cap is subject to any of the following: fines up to $5 million, loss of future draft picks, suspension or dismissal of team staff (typically the general manager or owner), voiding of player extension contracts, and forfeiture of games for the duration of a team circumventing the cap. In addition, any attempt to sign or extend a player’s contract, subsequently putting them over the salary cap, automatically issues the team a $25,000 fine.

The primary dilemma with the luxury tax, versus the hard cap, is that the luxury tax does not have a finite limit for spending, inviting big market teams to exceed it and gain an advantage. Teams such as the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers are classified as “big market teams” due to their worldwide popularity, media market size/outreach, and city-based population. They are also some of the most valuable organizations in all of baseball. Nothing is stopping them from pursuing the premier and most expensive players every offseason, leaving the smaller markets to pick up the leftover scraps.

This cyclical process develops into an ugly mixture of tanking and dynasties, two concepts that many baseball fans are haunted by. Tanking teams discuss losing intentionally, behind closed doors of course, in order to receive better draft picks in the following year’s draft. Tanking severely impacts the quality of games and competition in those team’s respective leagues. Big market teams rarely tank because they have the financial means to add plenty of talent with the aid of their immense amount of revenue/income. Those big market teams quickly develop into dominating dynasties due to a lack of competition, often winning multiple championships within a decade or even just a few years.

Dynasties coexist with tanking teams, and as a result, attendance and tv ratings in the regular season and postseason decrease. Tanking teams eliminate the enjoyment and anticipation behind baseball games for fans of the tanking team and fans of the opposing team. Meanwhile, the same can be said for a dominant dynasty, especially when a World Series appearance is nearly bound to happen. The San Francisco Giants were in the midst of a legendary run that started in 2010 with a World Series title. They’d go on to win the 2012 World Series and the 2014 World Series, making them baseball’s latest dynasty. At the start of 2012 they were riddled with injuries, just as they were all of 2011, but everyone knew that they were going to be lethal after those players recovered. They ended up SWEEPING the Detroit Tigers, and according to the Baseball Almanac, that series had the lowest ratings (the percentage of households watching a program, game, etc.) of any World Series ever, even to this day. Of course, the Giants achieved this while the luxury tax system was already in full effect.

League parity, fan involvement, and team-construction are directly correlated. One of the main indicators of a sport’s popularity is team attendance numbers. According to the article “From Terrible Teams To Rising Costs: Why MLB Attendance Is Down Over 7% Since 2015,” written by Maury Brown of Forbes, “Since 2015, the last year that MLB saw a slight uptick, attendance has dropped 7.14%, or a loss of 5,265,268 fans purchasing tickets and attending games. For 2019, the league saw 14 clubs out of 30 with attendance declines from last season.” This drop in fan engagement is in large part due to widespread belief among general managers that their purchase(s) of players will not be enough to contend with the stacked big market teams in the playoffs. Revenues may be soaring, as his title reads, but the fans and popularity of the sport are more essential to the future of the game than revenue. And fans do not want to watch a league that lacks competitive balance, one where the current luxury tax rules benefit only a small percentage of teams while scaring the others away from improving the quality of players that they put on the field.

The NFL’s tv ratings and attendance is thriving due to their consistently entertaining and drama-filled regular seasons, postseasons, and off-seasons. These attributes are achieved via the hard cap because it encourages smaller market teams to spend money, thereby opening the door for them to compete on AND off the field with the bigger markets. Only 3 teams: the Cleveland Browns, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the New York Jets, have not made a postseason appearance since 2014. On the other hand, a whopping 8 teams in Major League Baseball, which is more than ¼ of the league’s teams, have experienced postseason droughts since 2014! Why is there such a difference? The hard salary cap. Less incentive to tank and more (but limited) spending due to the regulations of a hard cap creates parity in the NFL. As a result, they are the king of American professional sports while MLB continues to spiral downward in tv ratings and attendance.

References

Baseball Almanac (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2020.

Brown, M. (2019, October 4). From Terrible Teams To Rising Costs: Why MLB Attendance Is Down Over 7% Since 2015.

Trotta, J. (2019, December 13). MLB Luxury Tax Explained.

Never Enough Time in a Day

Being a full-time college student while working many hours throughout the week is like forgetting that the body is the temple. Trying to fit in extracurricular activities, trying to keep up with their social life, and other factors that play along in working-college students’ lives that keeps them busy is tough for them because their mind never rests. While not getting enough sleep, the brain is always on go-mode, and when it is time to sleep, working college students cannot even reset their mind for the next day because they’re essentially just taking a nap, only getting little hours of sleep each night. Fitting in all these hours into one day is almost impossible, and this struggle these students are experiencing is causing their overall performance to get worse. Mental health is very important, but for working-college students, that is the last priority they seem to worry about.

In the article, “College vs. Paycheck,” author Rainesford Stauffer explains her experience as a working college student who never had enough time for anything but school and work while struggling with peoples’ opinions and telling her to choose between her education or her job. For example, “It wasn’t just my jobless peers who thought I was doing college the wrong way. Well-meaning professors and administrators showed the same lack of understanding for the plight of the working learner.” Many people do not understand that most working college students get a job because they need the money, not because they want the money. Over thinking the idea that one cannot pay for college because they are a first-generation or low-income student automatically triggers stress, leading the student to be under pressure for finding a job to pay for their education. Imagine that added pressure of mentors and administrators trying to advise one to focus on their education more than the job that is paying for it. Stauffer emphasizes in her article that she felt guilty for picking her job over her education most of the time she was in college but also understanding that she needed the job to get an education. She also mentions that essentially the root of this mental health issue, stress, comes from the amount of tuition that students have to pay overall. For instance, “Much of the debate around higher-education inequity focuses on lessening the cost of tuition, Great, but the burden on working students is often left out of that conversation. We need affordable tuition, but also need to acknowledge other life expenses that are just as essential to learning.” Many people who are not in these working-college students’ positions do not understand what they go through on a daily basis and why they do it, leading those students to not recognize that their mental health needs to be stable before anything else, and Stauffer’s idea supports the main cause of those working learners’ mental health issues. 

Moreover, there are many examples of poor mental health such as depression, anxiety, phobias, and way more, but the most common of working college students is stress and sleep deprivation because they hardly get enough sleep throughout the week at the same time as their stress levels are rising. Carrying a busy schedule on their shoulders, completing assignments, fitting in their social life, and participating in extracurricular activities is like never turning the switch off. All of these priorities that one handles throughout the day leaves them barely any time for sleep. While going back and forth between all of these priorities, working learners forget that their body is the temple, and they will not perform well in their everyday activities if they do not take care of it. 

In the article, “Not Enough Hours in the Day: Work Study Students and Sleep,” author Zachariah Ezer informs his audience on many facts and examples of work study students struggling with sleep deprivation. For instance, “In 2014, an article in the Argus was published stating that ‘Farias, [an administrator], determined last year that nearly 80 students work above the recommended 20-hour limit, with some working up to 40 hours in a single week.’” Not only are working college students not getting enough sleep, but they also are handling the added stress of staying on campus if they are a low-income student and have a hard time paying for their education. Ezer explains that working students that are low-income or first generation feel like they do not fit in when it comes to their social life, especially at elite universities, because they are always busy or because they are “weeded out of friendships based on what [they] could afford.” This causes those students to feel intimidated or having sleepless nights because all they could afford is paying their tuition, not having enough money for much else. Ezer does mention some good examples of working college students experiences, and some people may believe that the author is exaggerating his words, but unfortunately, this is typical for working college students. 

Concluding this situation in many Universities, working college students forget that their body is a machine that needs to remain fueled and pure at all times, it is not a robot. When those college students tend to forget that , they do not sleep much, they do not eat healthy or not enough, and this greatly affects their performance in class, at work, and all other priorities that need to get done. One’s brain never shuts off and restarts for the next day because they are already thinking about their busy schedule, and their mind always remains with the power button on instead of getting a good amount of sleep and refreshing it. Yes, all college students may struggle from some type of mental health illness and experiencing their own struggle, but focusing on only working college students, mental health issues are very common. This is where time management takes place, where the population of working learners realize how to manage their time and are essentially just trying to survive at this point. This is unfortunate because college students should feel like they are living and not just surviving. However, there are just simply not enough hours in a day for these hard-working college students, and as time goes by, the mental health issues of this population is impairing.

References

Stauffer, R. (2018, August 28). College vs. Paycheck. Retrieved March 10, 2020.

Ezer, Z. (2017, March 30). Not Enough Hours in the Day: Work Study Students and Sleep. Retrieved March 10, 2020.

How Far is Too Far 

For many years now, I have questioned the effects that sports have on the human body, not just when you are playing them but also the effects they cause when you get older as well. Most people believe that playing sports,especially more than one, as you grow up is a good idea, and in fact at the time, it might be. But it also might not be. You can see how this might be counterintuitive. The fact that playing sports to be active as a child might lead to bad things later in life. As kids grow up around the elementary school age and start playing little league and pre-recreational sports we don’t really think about the minor injuries that they get because they are young and it will heal fast. But those kids often grow up and continue to play sports throughout middle school, high school, and some even go on to play in college level, and this is where it can get bad. The older kids get the more aggressive they get. And the urge to win increases, leaving them vulnerable on the field, court, etc. They also feel the need to be the best they can leaving them trying to constantly be better. Like Grant L Jones from Ohio State University, says in “Pediatric overuse injuries increase due to year round, one sport training,” ‘In most cases, our sources noted that excessive practice most likely leads to injury rather than perfection.”

I can remember growing up and playing recreational basketball in the 6 & 7th grade. I liked it and wanted to win but I didn’t really understand what it meant to be on a team, to have the fight to win with your team until I got into high school. It also wasn’t until high school that I started getting hurt playing sports. As you advance into higher level sports, you become more competitive because it means more to win not only for you but for your school as well. This means that some people will do whatever it takes to win, which might be being aggressive towards others or pushing your body to its highest limit, until it breaks. I was a 2 sport, 3 season athlete in high school and I remember how rigorous it was on my body. Just when I thought I was healthy and in shape I would get hurt, have to stop competing and I would fall out of shape again. This is not a healthy process for your body, yes it is good to be in shape, but what is your definition of in shape and healthy?

Some people, depending on who you are, would answer that with a textbook definition but in my opinion it is all up to the person that is being asked. If you were to ask a random stranger on the street what being healthy and in shape in sports meant that would be a totally different answer from an orthopedic sports doctor. And it would also be totally different depending on the person’s body you are talking about. Everyone’s body is different, especially when it comes to being active and fit, this is why certain people are prone to more injuries. Some people are made to play more than one sport growing up, but others are not, it is just simply too much. In the University of Vermont study, “Single Sport or Multi-Sport Athlete? Pros and cons,” author James Slauterbeck says that “multiple sport athletes often get injured if they participate in too many sports at one time.” He also goes on to say that “Overuse injuries can often occur because the body cannot rest as it is always practicing or playing a game.” If us young athletes start to over exert ourselves when we are young, imagine how that is going to affect when we are older.

I know for myself that the injuries I suffered running track will affect me for the rest of my life. I will forever have a backache because I over exerted myself and refused to say it. That is just one of the common injuries that athletes will face as they get older. According to “10 Sports Injuries with Lifelong Consequences,” by Tan Ken Jin from the Orthopaedic Surgeons of Mount Elizabeth Hospital, the injuries include “sprains, stress fractures, sciatica, and many others.” These are serious problems that can especially cause more harm for older adults who suffer from them. I didn’t say anything to my coach and trainer when I first started to feel pain because I  knew that my career could possibly be over, and that is very common today with young athletes, especially those who see a future with sports. But what they don’t realize is that there will be no future if you don’t say anything as well. And their future with these injuries will just be worse as they age. 

Although we have this idea that participating in afterschool activities, and sports from preteens to adults is a good way to stay in shape, be healthy, and show off our talents, it can have long lasting effects on our life to come. Yes, if you have a natural born talent for something and you enjoy it you should definitely continue it, but if you feel that your body is starting to take a toll, and you are starting to become prone to more injuries than it might be time to take a break. Because at this point you are no longer healthy if your body is suffering. But what is your definition of too much? Us humans have to realize that we only get one body and there’s only so many ways and things we can fix before it’s permanently damaged. We also need to understand that even if we are young and think that our bodies will heal fast, it will come back to hurt us when we get older. So all in all if you are a young athlete you need to really ask yourself is it worth it? Is playing 1 or 2 more games worth not being able to walk or enjoy my older years?

References:

Jin, T. K. (2017, April 21). 10 Sports Injuries with Lifelong Consequences. Retrieved March 10, 2020

Slauterbeck, J. (2018, June 27). Kids’ Sports: Pros and Cons. Retrieved March 10, 2020

Jones, G. L. (2014, July 1). Pediatric overuse injuries increase due to year round, one sport training. Retrieved March 10, 2020

What Really Is A Nutritional Lunch?

Thesis: Promoting the consumption of modern school lunches will benefit student health and education better than modern homemade lunches because of the well-balanced and variety being presented to students at school.

A school lunch or school meal is a meal provided to students and teachers at a school, typically in the and/or middle of the day. It is completely self choice whether or not a student chooses to eat their own homemade lunch or the lunches provided from the school. The feeling as if it has become a social norm that if you bring your own food for lunches it’s better for you rather than if you had bought the school lunch, but counterintuitively that may actually be wrong. 

A modern school lunch is the meals being provided to students currently. The argument isn’t involving what students used to eat 10 years ago or 20 years ago. The fact that school lunches are tremendously more nutritional these days than they were a decade ago isn’t very known by many in society. Some may have an ideal answer that they think they have gotten better, but they don’t know the extent to which they got better. Looking at what parents of students today had eaten for lunches back then versus what they eat now, anyone will flat out say that modern lunches are 10 times better. Although that argument could be presented, it’s not really thought about by parents because they are not the ones eating the modern lunches. They might remember lunch as a limited variety of food that was unhealthy and bland. That’s true though because they had no where near the technology and knowledge people have now. With the technology and education provided now there have been many programs created and introduced into schools that provide the proper nutrition with the right vitamins and minerals needed for daily needs. Therefore, these modern school lunches have different identities then just the term school lunches.

A school lunch according to society is constantly given a label similar to prison food. Lots like to present their opinion on the food as terribly unhealthy and trash. Lots of parents don’t even let their child purchase any school made food because they pride the thought of it being better to have their child bring food and not to waste money on the “unhealthy” variety provided by schools. Many see school lunches as being highly processed and lacking in vitamins and minerals needed daily. That being constantly being used causes the label for these lunches to suffer. Margaret Brown, NRDC’s staff attorney, argues for the protection of these lunches by saying, “Many schools are still hard at work increasing fruits and veggies and phasing out more processed foods,” in NRDC’s article “Getting a Better School Lunch.” The elimination of these processed foods and exchanging them with more nutritional snacks like fruits and veggies will provide a much more sturdy positive label for the subject of the healthiness of school lunches. 

School lunches to the government are extremely important and viewed to be getting better by the year. The government funds the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) which works hard to better the food presented in schools. The article, “NSLP Fact Sheet” on the USDA says that, “It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or no-cost lunches to children each school day.” As with their goal on well balanced nutritional meals, they have been increasing their assistance with students by millions and millions each decade. With the government funding programs that better school lunches the outcome is seeming to be great as the improvements of nutrition is prospering through more schools every year. 

Now understanding the school lunch aspect, let’s take a look at nutrition and what it means scientifically. Nutrition is the science that interprets the nutrients and other substances in food in relation to maintenance, growth, reproduction, health and disease of an organism. In simpler terms, it’s what goes in the body and how it affects the body. By saying modern school lunches are more nutritional than homemade lunches it’s scientifically implying the foods provided by the school are more positively affecting the body health and maintenance while the home brought lunches may not be hitting those necessities.

Nutrition often thought by society is the label slapped to the bag of everything pretty much eaten. If anyone ever wonders what in their food or how much of everything is in it you can find it right on the nutrition label of the package. Given most people don’t know what all the ingredients are and what they do for the body, but the main concern people think of when asked about nutrition is the calories, proteins, carbs, sugar, fats, etc. People consuming these products don’t know the nutrition of their food scientifically, but rather based on simple knowledge probably learned from the internet or from health class. Therefore, saying school lunches are more nutritional than homemade would interpret the idea that the food may have less fat/ less sugar and more proteins and vitamins.           

Pairing school lunches with the words nutritionally good may seem very wrong in many people’s eyes, but in fact they fit perfectly. The feeling as if the past of school lunches have completely controlled the perception of modern school lunches. No, the argument here is not if the food tastes bad or good, it’s not restaurant worthy food, but it’s just there for you to get your lunch intake in and the school is trying to make it the most nutritional to benefit students moods and academics. It’s known that food is your main source of energy and given that these modern school lunches are becoming nutritionally better each year, there’s definitely more energy being consumed into the body.                                                                                                                   

Now knowing that there are many different thoughts and ideas given to a simple term like modern school lunches and nutrition ,but how does it play into the idea being that these school lunches nutritional value are improving the academic success of the students consuming them? In the Wilder Research paper, “Nutrition And Students’ Academic Performance,” sources say, “Nutrition also indirectly impacts school performance. Poor nutrition can leave students’ susceptible to illness or lead to headaches and stomachaches, resulting in school absences. Access to nutrition that incorporates protein, carbohydrates, and glucose has been shown to improve students’ cognition, concentration, and energy levels.” That right there describes a academically-beneficial lunch perfectly and shows that having the proper nutrients and options given to students for lunch has direct correlation to how they do academically.

References

Graves, G. (2019, June 25). Getting a Better School Lunch.

National School Lunch Program (NSLP) Fact Sheet. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/nslp-fact-sheet

Nutrition And Students’ Academic Performance. (2014, January). March 9, 2020

Learning vs Reflexes In The Womb

Typically, people believe that babies begin to learn after they are born during the first few months they are alive. Another theory has popped up called the fetal origins hypothesis stating that babies actually begin learning when they are in their mom’s womb. In this case there is a fine line betweening “learning” and the fetus developing reflexes. 

In my hypothesis I had stated, “Babies pick up on things such as recognizing the sound of their mother’s voice, her food preference while pregnant, and all the traumatic stress she has while they are in the womb,”. Instead of saying the word “learning” I used the term “pick up on things”, by that I meant they soak up information. Some may argue that soaking up information is the same as learning. Learning is defined as “The acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught,”. Reflex is defined as “An action that is performed as a response to a stimulus and without conscious thought,”. These terms significantly differ, and deciding which factors of my hypothesis are evidence of  “learning” or not is the goal of my research. 

Babies who recognize their mother’s voice in the womb and outside the womb is evidence of learning. The child has learned the mom’s voice vibration in the womb and so that when it is born it knows her voice because of listening and memorizing it. Memorization and recognizing sound is learning to a fetus and would not be considered a reflex. The difference between a reflex and learning is that reflexes occur naturally to the human, like moving their hand from a stove when something is hot. Learning, to humans, is knowing that the stove is hot because there is a flame which I associate being the agent of burning and I do not touch it so I won’t get hurt again. Babies gain their reflexes through learning, they aren’t born with the reflexes of knowing voices and knowing what food they like; they learn this from their mother while still unborn. 

    Food preference is definitely learned in the womb and is not a reflex. Studies by Manella show that women who drank 300 mL of carrot juice 4 days a week for 3 weeks during their third trimester teaches their baby to gravitate towards the taste of carrots when they are born. This is a learned trait passed to the baby because they are taught that their mom likes carrots, or a certain other food such as junk food, so they must like that food as well. 

However, some may argue that passing down PTSD is not considered a learning trait, but rather an emotional disorder passed down to them through their mom, even a reflex to become distressed because of the trauma they also encountered . A study was conducted on women who survived the tragedy of 9/11 who also happened to be pregnant at the time of the incident. They tested positive for PTSD but researchers were interested in seeing if the now born baby also had signs of PTSD since their birth. It is estimated that there were about 1,700 pregnant women in New York during the attack, 38 of those women gave researchers their saliva to conduct a study. Their cortisol levels were significantly low and so were their childrens when tested a year later, as well as showing signs of great distress at just the age of one years old. This is evidence that the word “learning” doesn’t pertain to every aspect of the fetal origins hypothesis. 

Although there is lots of evidence to argue that the fetus is learning, there is also arguments made that the child has just developed reflexes or transmitted levels of their mothers health. The question is now, do babies begin learning these traits in the womb or are they just reflexes to them when they are born? Defining learning and reflex and comparing them was crucial to this research in order to understand which aspects of my hypothesis should be considered learning or not. 

References

Fleming, A. (2014, April 8). How a child’s food preferences begin in the womb.

Costandi, M. (2011, September 9). Pregnant 9/11 survivors transmitted trauma to their children.

    The Career Trajectory of Candidates Possessing Soft Skills

From Obtaining A Stem Degree   

In the 21st century, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) degrees have been the center of attention in terms of whether or not they are a good investment for candidates seeking long-term career success by providing them soft skills that employers demand. There is no doubt that technical and analytical knowledge are essential to the employability skills STEM candidates need to possess. However, soft skills are becoming increasingly important in STEM industries. In the University of New England study, “Critical Soft Skills And The STEM Professional”, author Elizabeth J. Kranz defines soft skills as “generic (non-discipline specific), transferable interpersonal skills that involve one’s ability to manage self, people, relationships and information.” Examples of soft skills include, communication, problem solving, teamwork and leadership- to name a few. Meanwhile hard skills which STEM candidates possess are “specific, objective and measurable skills.” Examples of hard skills include computer programing, foreign language and machine operation. 

According to Kranz, “the global society and economy has transformed into a knowledge and information based culture;” “the skills required to thrive in the marketplace have also transformed, placing significantly greater emphasis on soft skills.” STEM candidates have been criticized for lacking soft skills due to the fact that their learning objectives emphasize hard skills, which puts them at a disadvantage compared to liberal arts candidates. Therefore, there has been a call for making adjustments to the STEM education curriculum in order to involve a variety of soft skills needed to obtain long-term career success. 

Traditional roles of STEM candidates have changed due to the way careers develop overtime along with short job tenures. Thus the expectations of skills STEM candidates need to possess have changed as well. Employers now expect STEM candidates to employ soft skills that are essential to creating success in the workplace environment. As STEM candidates move up in the ranks over the course of their career, the more soft skills are required. According to The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be a projected “increase of nearly one million computer, mathematical, architecture, engineering and science occupations by 2026.” Thus, this will likely require STEM candidates to possess soft skills in order to fill in the influx of jobs and meet the employers demands.     

Furthermore, Kranz claims that “the definition of the employability of a college student has transformed,” in which “job-ready” and “career-ready are two different concepts.” STEM candidates acquire the hard skills learned at university to obtain an initial job after graduation but lack soft skills that are directly linked to long term success in a career. In the study, “An exploration of global employability skills: a systematic research review”, authors Isra Sarfraz, Diana Rajendran and Chandana Hewege claim that employers recruit candidates with soft skills because it is easier for them to teach the technical skills the job requires to an employee rather than soft skills. Soft skills take more time to develop and are more complex in nature compared to hard skills. Thus, employers tend to hire candidates with a broad range of soft skills rather than hard skills. 

According to the study, “employers use soft skills as the no.1 differentiator for job applications in all types of industries.” The study also reported that candidates possessing soft skills, increases their chances of successful employment. In particular, the most common reported employability skills that employers demand are “teamwork, problem solving, communication, computer skills, analytical thinking, leadership, time management, creativity, interpersonal and organization.” In addition, the researchers argued that the main reason for unemployment is not due to the lack of jobs, rather it is the lack of employability skills possessed by candidates. 

The importance of employability skills is directly related to how the way jobs in the 21st century are designed today, in which the workplace requires employees to interact with one another as a team in order to achieve goals that the employer demands. In Kranz’s study, she “illustrates the scale of the interpersonal interactions a STEM professional can expect to encounter in a professional setting.” Stem professionals can be expected to interact with others, ranging from large scale interactions with the general public to small scale interactions with colleagues.The study also reported that “the STEM professional will likely interact repetitively with colleagues and most intimately with direct teammates on a daily basis.” Furthermore, according to Kranz, “the level of expertise with which the soft skills are behaviorally exhibited can determine the success of the interactions.”  

Furthermore, due to the fact that the 21st century is characterized by innovation, in which companies are competing with one another to produce innovative ideas, employers are requiring candidates to possess the following soft skills of problem solving, creativity and critical thinking in order to succeed on behalf of the company. The increase of college graduates has also added pressure for employers to recruit candidates with the right balance of hard and soft skills. Employers believe that possessing a college degree and previous work experience are the basic requirements for a job while soft skills lead to long-term career success. 

When soft skills are employed in the workplace, STEM candidates will be able to adapt to change and gain a better understanding of people and the world around them which contributes to long-term career success. Soft skills are just as critical as hard skills but unfortunately they aren’t emphasized enough in the STEM education curriculum, which creates a skills gap between STEM and liberal arts majors. Each job requires specific hard and soft skills that are unique to that profession, in which candidates who develop both skills have an advantage in their careers. Even in professions where it would appear that the demand for hard skills outweighs soft skills, candidates need to have a balance of both. Candidates with the right blend of hard and soft skills become a critical component to the improvement and strength of the company that they work for. Incorporating soft skills should be a priority in the STEM education curriculum as well as organizations because those skills will be needed for long-term effective careers.              

References 

Kranz, E. J. (2019, July 1). Critical Soft Skills And The Stem Professional. Retrieved March 6, 2020,     

“An exploration of global employability skills: a systematic research review”

The comic book and the graphic novel

Works of art are considered art in what they can make viewers, readers, and listeners portray and feel within their minds. A painting can dispense certain emotions with its scenery and colorful display or wonders on how the artist was able to articulate certain brush patters in a certain area. A story book requires human imagination to take the wheel as the words build structures and exposition in the mind. Both are art, but both require something from the participating human in order to get the full effect. Movies require no effort from the human besides their attention and basic understanding to achieve their sensory goals. The beauty of film is what they can manage in terms of emotion given visuals, color, sound, music, artwork, and CGI. Comics, on the other hand, can do something no other work of art can: give the reader a choice.

Comic books are works of literature with artwork of varying detail and quality laid about the pages, typically confined in rectangular outlines known as panels. As of more recent times, the term “graphic novels” has sprung up as series of comics have begun to age and have multiple versions. See, comics are usually released in soft cover books, called issues, over a schedule. The stories are not released at once, instead having each issue be a continuation of the last, more-or-less. Think of it as releasing five minutes of a ninety-minute movie in sequential order on YouTube every week until it is over. When a plotline is over, the authors can release the next issue as if it were a whole-new beginning without the need to wait a few years, slap a number two on the end, and have a horrible “punny” subtitle.

Graphic novels have come into existence for multiple reasons. The first reason is that they are compilations, collections, and anthologies of already existing series. Take the character Spider-Man, for example. The Amazing Spider-Man series of comics has reached over eight-hundred issues as of 2018 and continues to this day. Tracking down all eight hundred just for the sake of the pleasure of reading is too much effort, so putting all of them into one binding and calling it a graphic novel works much better. The second reason is that authors and artists have been able to create comic books the length of your everyday novel. An example would be Maus, by Art Spiegelman, which is around three hundred pages. The last reason is the fact that comics and its characters have hit the mainstream and people want to justify them by giving a more mature name, like graphic novels. It recalls me to a cartoon where some snooty girl made fun of a boy’s toys and called them “dolls,” for which the boy replied saying “no, they are action figures.”

Thanks to the efforts of Marvel Studios and Disney’s acquisition of the brand (and other companies that owned Marvel’s intellectual property), comic-book movies have skyrocketed in popularity and quality. Superheroes and comic characters have become a normal thing in entertainment. This normalization and the rise of the web has led to comics being distributed digitally for all to enjoy. People have started drawing their own comic panels and teaming up with writers to incorporate dialogue and narrative to the artwork, proceeding to release them online.

Saturation in the medium provides options upon options for all. With more artists and storytellers, more comics are requiring different things from readers. Some artists have many movements happening between panels, only being supported by the before and after frames of the full movement. If you have a panel with a character walking down the street at night, have he or she be in front of a coffee shop. To encourage the sense of movement, create the same image, but remove the coffee shop and replace it with a bank. The reader must decide whether or not there are buildings between the shop and the bank or what color they are, etc. Unlike animation, not all aspects of movement are shown. The black lines separating the panels are the thirty frames missing from the animation of walking. This is the middle-ground between a movie (film, animated feature) and a novel. Hand-drawn animation, when each piece of paper making up each frame is laid out in sequential order, is a comic without the speech bubbles. A film, when shot on reels of film, is, once again, a comic. The difference between these are the fact that every bit of movement and detail is shown when every piece is present. Comics don’t do that. They leave bits and pieces, even large portions, to the intuition of the reader. It is exactly like how a novel creates images in your mind as you read it. The one difference is how quickly and accurately those images are created. The sentences “Mom washed the dishes in the kitchen. Joey snuck himself a piece of candy in the meantime” have the brain create the scenery in a certain order. Switching it around and saying “Joey snuck himself a piece of candy while Mom did the dishes” is a bit better in terms of the speed in which the brain constructs the scene. Still, there is a sequence. Words need to be in an order and need to meet certain criteria in grammar before introducing new subjects and prepositions. An image lets the brain download the entire scene at once, since comic panels are somewhat small most of the time. So, a comic doesn’t leave the reader entirely alone visually like a novel does, but doesn’t show everything like a film or animation does, giving comic readers some room to use their imagination, but gives a great sense of how things should look, displaying the comic illustrator’s artistic vision properly.

References

Durham, Meenakshi Gigi., and Douglas Kellner. Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Blackwell Publishers, 2001, https://we.riseup.net/assets/102142/appadurai.pdf.

The MIT Press. “Understanding Media.” The MIT Press, The MIT Press, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/understanding-media.

Can We Really Say Rap Music Is Music?

A lot of the youth today is consumed by rap music and many of them seem to enjoy it. Others do not and that could be for a number of reasons. It could be that it is simply not your taste in music, it could be  hard to accept the new wave of music, or you do not consider it to be music at all. What is music and how do we even categorize it? First of all, music stems all the way back to the 1st century. Though there is no record of well known composers at the time, we know chants were produced for the church setting by some kind of musician. The most well known early works from this time is the collection of chants from The Mass of Christmas Day. It consists of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei which are still used in Ordinary Mass in churches today. Even though these were sacred chants that had no harmonic or music sense as we know it today, they considered this music. 

In order to investigate whether rap is music, we must look at both proper definitions of music and rap. A later, but early 13th century definition of the word, music states, “a pleasing succession of sounds or combinations of sounds; the science of combining sounds in rhythmic, melodic, and (later) harmonic order.” The definition of the word, rap says, “talk informally, chat,” 1929, popularized c. 1965 in African-American vernacular, possibly first in Caribbean English and from British slang meaning “say, utter” (1879), originally “to utter a sudden oath” (1540s), ultimately from rap (n.). As a noun in this sense from 1898. Meaning “to perform rap music” is recorded by 1979.” 

By reading these two definitions, there could be one similarity to the background information of music, but let’s look into this a bit deeper than comparing that the music definition of combining different sounds in a rhythmic order just like the rap genre does. Connecting the background knowledge of music beginning with chants and then Gregorian Chants in the church, the answer is clear. The chants had one purpose only and that was to deliver the messages from God in the church through another medium, especially the Gregorian Chant. The origin of the Gregorian Chant occured in the 1st century when a dove representing the holy spirit sang a chant into Pope Gregory I ear. This was then considered the basis of all chant in the church since a form of God said so. The chant was never something to enjoy rather something to get a message from while attending mass. Eventually it evolved into a more harmonic sound. 

By studying the rap definition, it is easy to see that the term originally meant to utter an oath, something of distinct meaning. The meaning then evolved into something slightly more modern by the 1929 definition which was an informal chat. Though the meaning went from something as important as an oath to just chit-chat, there is still a message that is being conveyed in both senses. Eventually, the most recent definition of rap came to be because of the early productions of what is known as the rap music genre. Most rap songs consist of some type of message that they want to convey to their audience. Whether it be about a hardship, a political statement, or a positive message, it is all about the flow of poetry in a catchy rhythmic sense. 

When it is all said and done, rap seems to be the one genre that is the closest to what the origins of music entailed. Just like Gregorian chants, the purpose of rap music is to spread a message to a large group of people. The music element comes in when the rhythms are added to the words as well as some kind of melodic construction as the backing track. From exploring these definitions, the answer becomes transparent. Can we really consider rap music, music? Yes, and it seems to correlate to what the true origin of music is. 

References:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/music

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rap

History and Literature of Western Music I (Textbook)