Month: September 2020

The first reading assigned for this week was “How Coronavirus Could Make People Move” by Paragraphed Khanna and Kailash K. Prasad. This reading challenged the reader to consider the different reasons people may find to migrate during or following the COVID pandemic. The authors illuminated the idea that many profession individuals might not opt to move into wealthy cities, due to how they handled the pandemic.

“Milan, Madrid, Tokyo and Seattle are other wealthy, modern cities that have nonetheless become virus hot spots. Their appeal to professionals may diminish given their high cost of living and potential under-preparedness for the next virus wave.”

The Covid-19 pandemic is leaving people with the mindset of weighing their options and considering multiple variables. In the case of wealthy cities, like the authors said, professional won’t only consider how they handled the pandemic — it might also lead them to consider how much they’d be paying to live in a place that also can’t handle a pandemic properly.

“America’s smaller second-tier cities and towns might be less dangerous if you’re worried about a pandemic spreading, but they don’t offer better medical care than wealthier cities.”

Here, the authors were highlighting another issue that migrators may run into:

• Big cities are too dense and viruses can spread easily.
• Moving to a small town in the ‘middle of nowhere’ might work.
• However, healthcare in “second-tier” cities is far inferior to healthcare in premier cities.

“The many awakenings the coronavirus has brought may well inspire millions of people to eye Earth’s bounteous and uninhabited places as ideal for a fresh start.”

The second reading for this week was “The Importance of Effective Communication While Working from Home” by Charlotte Arnold. This article focused on the lives of two individuals — one who was used to working from home but was faced with new challenges thanks to the pandemic, and another who wasn’t used to working from home at all.

“Normally, he would have a quiet space with monitors, but working from home during the pandemic means that his kids and spouse are home as well.”

The first person, Joseph Rix, has worked from home before. His main problem now is that he doesn’t have his working space (home) to himself anymore. He needs to learn how to coexist with everyone else while being able to get his work done.

I personally can empathize with Joseph Rix, because learning how to handle coursework at home has been quite a task, while coexisting with others in my house who I’m not used to seeing while I work.

“She said that working remotely was a difficult adjustment at first because her job is events-based. She is still planning events but changing the format of in-person events to virtual platforms.”

The second person, Ella Barton, is not used to working from home at all, as she’s an event coordinator. This of course presents a huge issue for her.

I can personally understand this because I’ve had to attend many events (Job, Clubs, Church, Parties) over Zoom and it isn’t the same effect as being in person. I can only imagine how it is for someone with a job like Ella’s

Weekly Prompt:

I wouldn’t personally say that we’ve had many positives when it comes to daily migration in New York City if anyone were to ask me. However, one of the largest benefits that NYC in particular has taken from this pandemic has been a greater interest in general cleanliness of our public transportation system. The fact that our metro system hasn’t taken a  dedicated cleaning break in decades is pure insanity. I’m very glad we were able to get that. I am not sure if that counts as “Migration” instead of regular transportation, but that has been great.

As far as people migrating, I like the ideas presented in the first reading; that people will begin to consider a wider array of areas to live in during and after the pandemic. Urban population density can lead to much lower living conditions with great disparities between rich and poor.

Now, unfortunately many people will be displaced on a daily basis because of people moving in and out of their communities and constant housing pricing hikes and dips. That might be the largest disadvantage we have.

My Home Life

Being home this much has made me develop much different patterns

• I don’t want to be in my bedroom as much as I did before.
• I find myself sleeping more, for sure.
• Some days I’m extremely productive, while other days I do close to nothing because I’m ‘home.’
• I’ve studied Stock, Options and Forex trading much more than I was prior to the pandemic.

I would say the largest problem with social interaction I’ve had has been the lack of interaction with classmates. Not being able to study together, talk and discuss things in person has been difficult. Students try to start group chats with entires classes so that we can stay connected, but it ends up turning into a chat with test answers — effectively making the group chat a crime. These things weren’t as prevalent beforehand.

My Questions:

1. Is it morally okay to ignore the migration affects that Covid-19 is having on people, If it’s not affecting you? Do people have an obligation to help in some type of way?
2. With unemployment hovering at 20%, our homeless population could possibly increase as well. Much like question #1, do those who aren’t affected by the pandemic obligated to help those around them or in dire times like these is it okay to say “Every man for himself?”

Grade: 5/5

Narrative Analysis is a type of analysis where individuals dissect a story that is told by way of a variety of mediums. It could be through pictures, verbal story telling, a lecture, documentary or etc. Through narrative analysis, the analyser attempts to discover the motives, values and story that is being conveyed by the story teller. Sonja Foss’ “Narrative Criticism” goes over different techniques that viewers and listeners can use to be more critical of the stories and media that they consume.

Sonja Foss defines a narrative as something with multiple characteristics. One of these being an artifact. An artifact is the means by which the narrative I being portrayed. The narrative must contain multiple components:

• Comprised of events that are Active or Stative
• Events are organized in time order
• Includes some form of casual or contributing relationship among events in a story
• Must be about a unified subject

Reading Ross’ excerpt before reading “Narrative Analysis Guidelines” document, I wasn’t really comprehending what Narrative Analysis and Artifacts were. The guidelines gave me a better idea of what everything meant.

By searching the term “Migration” on BBC’s website, I was directed to this thread of news reports:

https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cz4pr2gdg1et/migration

“US fires: will climate change lead to the next ‘great migration’?”

“Moria migrants tear-gassed by Greek police in protest over new camp”

“Moria migrants protest in front of burnt-out camp”

Those are a few examples of artifacts that I could conduct a narrative analysis of.

The Artifact about seesaws at the U.S-Mexican border stood out to me and the following are my questions and answers to it:

Does the narrative encourage a particular interpretation of a situation? – Yes, it gives an impression that the lives affected by the U.S.-Mexican border are completely innocent in this situation. It primarily shows adolescents.

Does the narrative embody and advocate any values? – Not necessarily, because it doesn’t explicitly promote or demote the border or the people involved.

What does the narrative reveal about the culture in which it appears? What does this culture value and/or repress? – It shows that the children who affected by this situation are still adolescent at heart and want to live regular lives of children.

My questions about this week’s theme:

• Is narrative analysis something that should always be used in day to day conversations and media consumption, or is it sometimes okay to take things at face value?
• Is narrative analysis something that is objective or subjective?

Grade: 4.5/5

The portions of this podcast which mostly impacted me would be the parts where the immigrants are giving their personal stories.

The first of these was a story of a woman who was staying at a migrants camp, right outside the US/Mexico border. The narrator told of the horrid living conditions that the people had in that camp — thousands of people living in that camp with little to no access to running water. Many of the people there take baths in a nearby river or lake. However, the problem is that people travel up into the mountains and forest areas to urinate and defecate. When it rains, the water washes all the bodily waste into the only water sources that these people have, causing anyone who gets in contact with it to get horribly sick. This is reoccurring because they have no choice but to bathe and drink to survive. The woman who was talking about all of this also mentioned that some women get contraceptives to keep on their person, just in case they get sexually assaulted. That way, they can at least ask the assaulter to wear it. I can’t imagine sexual abuse and rape being to prevalent to the point where it becomes common place among everyone and it becomes normal behavior for women to bring contraceptives with them FOR their abusers.

The story about David and his son’s kidnapping with also stick with me forever. It was very alarming that they departed from the US border and within hours they were kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo. The kidnapping problem seems to be extremely commonplace as well. The men who run these kidnapping “organizations” run them like legitimate businesses. They keep track of everyone that they kidnap, how much their families have paid, their pictures and who they’ve released. It has become such a huge issue that the United States seems to turn a blind eye to.

I think they let listeners hear the Spanish speaking individuals for authenticity purposes. These stories seem so extremely outlandish, that many wouldn’t believe what was being told, unless they heard it straight from the mouths of the victims. It is also to capture the real emotions of these victims. Although I don’t speak any Spanish, I am still able to pick up on the tones that these victims speak with, and it gives me a better idea of how dreadful the situation currently is.

I think they won the Pulitzer Prize because they weren’t afraid to tell the true unabridged stories of these people. This is something that is so easily covered up by our government, but they were able to give people a glimpse into the truth.

I chose this image by Chris Gash to represent ‘Migration’ because I like the positive outlook that it gives to migration and immigration. It shows that when people leave their homeland and travel to other places to live, they bring little pieces of their home with them. This is illustrated by each character in the image having their country on their back. I also see it as illustrating their homeland as somewhat of a burden, which is realistic. When people go to different countries, they deal with biases and prejudice as well.