Blog#9

Today I’m planning to write about how two articles are connected together. The first article is “Confessions of a Quit Addict” by Barbara Graham and the second article is “The epidemic of Worry” by David Brooks. The first article by Graham talks about how you can learn from quitting and failure in your life and how those experiences teach you to stay strong in your life. The second article by Brooks was about how the election affects the people and makes them worry. Also, he separates the people into two sections. The first people are educated class and the other people are less educated.  The connection between these two articles is that Brooks’ article says “Today, when you hear affluent people express worry, it’s usually related to the fear of missing out, and the dizziness of freedom.”  Also, Graham says “It had taken thousands of miles and one child for me to understand that the quitting I took for freedom was as much of a trap as the social conventions we were trying to escape.”  Both articles mention about freedom and how people are looking for it.  In Brooks’ article, he talked about how the anxiety of losing the freedom as a main problem and worry for their future. In Graham’s article she was using quitting for searching for freedom, but that was a trap for her. The interesting part in those two articles is that every person is looking for a freedom that connect in what does we wan in his or her life. Also, Brooks was talking about freedom in general, but Graham was talking about freedom for her personal life.

The discussion in class was helpful for me to clarify and understand how to search for connection between two different articles. Also, it helps me to understand exactly what the author trying to saying about it. The group working is a very great idea to share our knowledge about the article, and how to figure out the main point about different articles. I really like to work with group to better understand and share our knowledge. I hope to do this exercise again to help us deep understand the articles. Also, it is helping me connect two articles together.

In sum, this is the main connection I found between those two articles. I think there are many other connections I can find. I would like to know what other student found and wrote about. 

Blog#8

This is my first US presentational election here in the state. I came to the U.S.A three years ago. Also, I don’t have enough experience about how is it or how it is working. It is a little bit complicate for me.  I saw some of the debates and read some of articles. However, the David Brooks article is very interesting. I don’t know that a lot of people have anxiety because of the election. He said in his article “some mental health therapists are reporting that three-quarters of their patients are mentioning significant election-related anxiety. An American Psychological Association study found that more than half of all Americans are very or somewhat stressed by this race.” This is scary me very much because this is going to effect their lives. Also, this is going to effect the way that they are thinking, and effect to their family and children. The relationship between their families becomes more stress in a negative way.

On the other hand, David Brooks mentioned two types of people in this election. The first one is the educated class. He said “educated-class anxiety can often be characterized as a feeling overabundant of options without a core of convicting purpose.” The other type is less educated. He said, “Among the less educated, anxiety flows from and inflames a growing sense that the structures of society are built for the exploitation of people like themselves. Everything is rigged; the rulers are malevolent and corrupt.” I like the way that he separates those two groups. I believe this is exactly what is going on now. 

            Also, he said, “According to the World Health Organization, 18.2 percent of Americans report chronic anxiety while only 3.3 percent of Nigerians do.” I some agree with this. I think the rich people are more thinking about how to earn more money and not to lose it. They keep thinking a lot. This thinking is harmful for them and can cause anxiety. Poor people don’t have anything to loose. They don’t have money to loose it. They don’t think about what is going to happen if they loose their money. As you can see, they live their lives with less worry.

            Finally, I don’t like to watch or talk about politics. It makes me feel stress and worry. I prefer to live my life as a peaceful person. I believe that politics have a lot of lies. You can’t know which is true or wrong. Each candidate wants you to get your attention and vote for him. As the result, I kind have agree what the author said about how this election or even any election make people feel anxiety and worry about their future. I was thinking that I’m the only person who fell worry about the politics.