Daquan Johnson

Prof. Penaz

ENG 2150

05/18/09

May 19, 2009

The Truth about Success

            What is the key to success? Can one really narrow it down to a single technique used to be successful? When I ask people what they think is the key to success is most people say determination without giving it a second thought. Determination can’t be the only key that opens the door to success. Though being determined opens up one of the locks to this door, I believe there is one more lock that needs to be unlocked. That lock can be unlocked by knowing the right people.

Before telling you how who you know and determination can lead to success, I should verify what success is. To be successful means a wide variety of things to different people.  For some people the amount of money you make defines your success. For others being successful has to do with having a loving family, having a career that is fun, or having a title. I believe to be successful is to be happy; however, there are many things that go into defining happiness. To name a few, being happy is to be independent, having true friendships, a loving family, and being financially secure.

The first step to being successful, especially in a Place like New York City, is determination. It can be seen as a major building block to being successful. I believe making it in New York City is the ultimate success. Frank Sinatra once said “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” Yes, frank Sinatra’s statement is just an opinion, but it’s an opinion that is shared by lots of people. This is a common opinion because nothing in New York City is given freely. You either have to earn it or you have to go out and take it. Since hard work is just a building block, it is not enough alone to facilitate success. Along with determination, one must also have a strong work ethic. These two qualities, determination and work ethics, are essential to success. Most successful people are known for having unique personalities as well as some sort of leadership quality that allows them to rise to the top. In addition to being determined, their leadership qualities allow them to execute their plans to success.

Conversely to what degree can one say determination play a role in making success possible? It may be argued that it is solely who you know that determines whether one is successful or not. In fact, there are many average workers with no ambition and all the connections in the world that are not successful. This can be to fact that they don’t know the right people. While having connections can be the difference between being a minimum wage worker or another Bill Gates, hard work is important to being successful. Relying on other people to get you into a good job is in all reality the loser’s road. Not only are you cheating your employer, but you’re also cheating yourself. It’s practically impossible to truly understand what it takes to be successful. Therefore if you were to lose that job you would have no idea how to pick yourself back up. Success is much more rewarding and self gratifying when you can say you worked hard to get where you are. When you work for things it seems to hold a higher value to you. By getting an education and working hard to obtain your success you’ll learn the true value of the money you earned in the process.

Daquan Johnson

Eng 2150

May 12, 2009

Evaluative Essay

Throughout life one learns how to be successful by watching what other people did to become successful. I agree with Jonathan Field’s blog about the limitations that come with modeling oneself after a “successful” person. Modeling a person’s behaviors and responses may be an easy thing to do, but stepping into that model is definitely hard being that a person’s personality is developed through past experiences. I believe that instead of trying to completely model ourselves after successful people, we should see what that person did right and what s/he did wrong and learn from them. This is hard being that there is a fine line between modeling ourselves after someone and emulating them. In Fields blog he poses questions to the readers to make them think about what s/he just read. This style of writing was able to pull me in deeper, and leave me wanting more of his thoughts on the issue of emulators believing they’re actually modeling themselves after someone else.  Another thing I liked about this blog is the way Fields ended the blog. “So, study the greats, but don’t surrender the quest to cultivate your own intelligent processes to often-fabricated half-pieces of the puzzle divined by reverse-engineering someone else’s journey.” This can be considered a quote to live ones life by.

http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/model-this/

Daquan Johnson

Prof. Penaz

May 4, 2009

Arteries of the City

Trying to narrow a search for something that is truly New York is a difficult task. This is because the city is a very big and diverse place. So what can we say is actually New York? Is it the Italian immigrant owned restaurant, the Chinese restaurants on every block, maybe it’s the great jumble of people in Time Square? All of these things are apart of New York, but they aren’t quintessentially New York.

As a lifetime citizen of “The Big Apple” I found that the most unique thing about New York City is that it truly never sleeps. Another fact about New York City is that it is monopolistic in nature. For those that don’t know a monopoly occurs when a specific enterprise has ample control over a particular product or service, and is able to notably determine the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. New York can be seen as a monopoly because of it dominance in the world financial market. While thinking of New York in this manner I realized that there is actually a NYC based company that is similar characteristically. The company that comes to mind is the Metropolitan Transit Authority, known in New York as the MTA.

New York City Transit started out with a 12 seated horse-drawn carriage that ran from Battery to Bleeker Street. Roughly three decades later (in 1855) there were nearly 600 “omnibuses” running 27 routes in Manhattan, and horse-drawn carriages ran on multiple avenues such as Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Avenues. The elevated train had also been put into service. This service rapidly expanded and dominated rapid transportation for many years to come. By the end of the century the horse drawn carriages were replaced by trolley buses. 60 years later, 1960, trolleys were completely replaced by motor buses. In the nineteenth the people witnessed New York City transit go from being privately owned by multiple companies such as The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), The Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), and The Independent Rapid Transit Railroad (IND), to being owned by a sole company in 1953. This company was initially called the New York City Transit Authority. It’s now called the MTA (the Metropolitan Transit Authority) New York City Transit. The MTA now controls New York City’s buses, trains, bridges, and tunnels.

Your probably wondering how this leads to the Metropolitan Transit Authority being compared to New York’s characteristics. To answer that question shortly, the Metropolitan Transit Authority executed a gracious takeover of its market just like New York City took control of the financial market. Honestly it’s safe to say that the Metropolitan Transit Authority is actually more powerful than New York City’s world financial market. It is safe to say this because New York City’s economy and reputation as “The City That Never Sleeps” is in the hands of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. In December of 2005, MTA workers decided to go on strike on strike. According to CNN the TWU strike, which lasted three days, cost the city an estimated one billion dollars. The fact that the MTA strike occurred during the Christmas season and was able to bring the city to its knees is good enough reason to acknowledge the MTA’s economic influence in the City. Another example of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s monopolistic economic influence on the city is the way in which they (the MTA) can set the fares as high as they want. Every two to three years the MTA raises the fares by up to thirty five percent. The next fare rise, which is scheduled to go into effect on May 31, 2009, is going up twenty five percent, and the thirty day unlimited pass is increasing twenty two dollars

When it comes to New York City being “The City That Never Sleeps”, the Metropolitan Transit Authority can take credit for that also. It’s the only public transportation company that stays open 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.  The MTA truly never sleeps. Consistent traveling methods help the city maintain its status as “The City That Never Sleeps”. If public transportation was to stop running at a certain time, that would be like putting a curfew on all the people that don’t drive automobiles regularly.

The New York City MTA is so important to the livelihood of the city that it can be considered the arteries of the city. Like arteries deliver oxygenated blood throughout our bodies, the MTA of New York City delivers people to places in the city where they are much needed. As stated earlier, without the MTA New York City wouldn’t be so different from any other big city in America.