Research Prospectus (10%) 

1. Building Critical Mass 

The first part of building critical mass involves infotention — the practice of filtering through large quantities of information from the “collective intelligence” of the web and distilling the good stuff. 

This means reading, re-reading, and more reading. 

This process is by far the most arduous. You will encounter multiple false-leads, dead-ends — it is all part of the research/writing process.  

Part of the frustration is non-linear nature of this process. Think of it as building the haystack before extracting the needle. However, once you reach critical mass, the process (including writing the essay) is mostly downhill.  

Another way to look at it: Reaching critical mass means that you will have sufficiently digested the materials you have gathered and are ready to argue your position. 

Exercise: complete at least five tables (one for each source).  

What is the title of your source?

Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions. Perspectives on Psychological Science

Copy and Paste the Abstract of your source. If no abstract is available, summarize in your own words what the source is about.

In 1978, when the Task Panel report to the U.S. President’s Commission on Mental Health emphasized the importance of improving health care and easing the pain of those suffering from emotional distress syndromes including loneliness, few anticipated that this issue would still need to be addressed 40 years later. In 2011, a meta-analysis on the efficacy of treatments to reduce loneliness identified a need for well-controlled randomized clinical trials focusing on the rehabilitation of maladaptive social cognition. We review assessments of loneliness and build on this meta-analysis to discuss the efficacy of various treatments for loneliness. With the advances made over the past 5 years in the identification of the psychobiological and pharmaceutical mechanisms associated with loneliness and maladaptive social cognition, there is increasing evidence for the potential efficacy of integrated interventions that combine (social) cognitive behavioral therapy with short-term adjunctive pharmacological treatments.

In your own words, what is the author’s thesis (position)?

Loneliness is a serial mental and physical problem which can cause significant problems to a human life.

In your own words, what are the subclaims made by the author? In other words, how does the author substantiate or defend their position?

He provides the reader with quotes and experimental results to prove the claim.

Key quotes: list and cite (page ref.) at least three quotes from the source that you think may be useful for your essay.

Although this crucial component of loneliness helps better differentiate subjective social isolation (loneliness) from objective social isolation, it has led occasionally to a conflation of loneliness and other dysphoric states (e.g., social anxiety, depression) in which a person’s subjective experiencing of their social environment also plays a crucial role.( well, its more like a just a long page than pages)  Increased recognition of loneliness as a risk factor for adverse psychological and physical health outcomes has elevated interest in interventions to reduce chronic loneliness. For instance, the British government is developing several initiatives aiming to improve the life quality and satisfaction of people suffering from the (real or perceived) absence of social relationships

What key sources does the author rely upon? List at least three. (Useful for further research)

2. Developing your Research Question 

By now you’ve settled on a research topic — your topic is sufficiently controversial (rhetorical) — and have commenced initial research (above). Here is when the real work begins.  

Developing the research question is just as important as the thesis statement; in fact, you can think of this process as the precursor to developing your thesis, and like the thesis, your research question may be continually fine tuned as you research/learn more about your subject.  

What makes a good research question? 

In general a good research question will demonstrate that you are clear on the various positions surrounding your research topic and have a focused basis for pursuing the research (the why). Remember rhetoric is about creating value — consider how your essay may be valuable to your intended audience (changing beliefs OR creating action) 

The three pillars of a good research question: 

Clarity + Focused + Appropriately Complex 

Clarity.   

• Unclear: Why are social networking sites harmful?  
• Clear: How are online users experiencing or addressing privacy issues on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook? 

Focused 

• Unfocused: What is the effect on the environment from global warming?  
• Focused: How is glacial melting affecting penguins in Antarctica?Concise: 

Appropriately complex 

• Too simple: How are doctors addressing diabetes in the U.S.?  
• Appropriately complex: What are common traits of those suffering from diabetes in America, and how can these commonalities be used to aid the medical community in prevention of the disease? 

Your research prospectus is a step by step approach to deriving your essay question: 

What is your research subject?

Loneliness caused by migration

List the resources you have so far (at least 5):

VICTOR CHRISTINAR, SCAMBLER SASHAJ, BOWLING ANN, BOND JOHN. The prevalence of, and risk factors for, loneliness in later life: a survey of older people in Great Britain. Ageing and Society. 2005;25(6):357-375. doi:10.1017/S0144686X04003332  Cacioppo, S., Grippo, A. J., London, S., Goossens, L., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2015). Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 238-249. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615570616   Koelet, S., & de Valk, H. A. (2016). Social networks and feelings of social loneliness after migration: The case of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium. Ethnicities, 16(4), 610-630. https://doi-org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/10.1177/1468796816638398   Schroedter, J. H., De Winter, T., & Koelet, S. (2015). Beyond l’Auberge Espagnole: The Effect of Individual Mobility on the Formation of Intra-European Couples. European Journal of Population, 31(2), 181–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-015-9343-3  Anderson C. A., Horowitz L. M., French R. (1983). Attributional style of lonely and depressed people. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 127–136.   ﷟HYPERLINK “https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691615570616#body-ref-bibr3-1745691615570616”

In your own words, how would you characterize the present controversy of your research area? Another way to look at it: why is this research area important?

There are many wars around the globe that happen right now and cause people to leave their home for a better life.

What are the possible outcomes/resolutions? Are outcomes binary (yes/no e.g. should we ban the death penalty) or relative (e.g. how much should the annual state budget be allocated towards education)?

Relative

(If any) What are the conditions, qualifications, externalities, contingencies that may affect outcome (i.e. is there a legislative bill down the pipeline?)

What is your preferred outcome? (Your position)

Loneliness is the mental and physical issue

Why?

Because people abandon all their lives and throw themselves into a new pool full of new culture, new people, new environment etc.

Who is your intended audience?

Readers of science journals

What is your research question? (Try to state this as simply as possible)

How does the loneliness caused by migration into foreign land affects migrant’s mental and physical wellbeing?

Notes/Things to look into which may improve the overall clarity, focus, complexity of your question

Uladzimir Dabravolski  

Eng 2150 

Professor Ding 

December 7, 2023

The question of moving abroad is one of the major life changes which a person can experience through their lives. There are countless people who decided to abandon everything — their home, their friends, their families, their environment, their lives. People who never went through this process, might think “Was that a good choice?”, “Is it worth it?” Or “Leaving behind all the things worth it?” People experience loneliness, abandonment, and separation in a new land. One story is to travel and enjoy living in another place, but the other story is to leave all chains and completely move yourself in the new place. In networks and feelings of social loneliness after migration: The case of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium” by Suzana Koelet and Helga AG de Valk and “Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions” by Cacioppo, S., Grippo, A. J., London, S., Goossens, L., & Cacioppo, J. T., the authors share in detail the struggles of surviving in isolation from society.  

In the article “Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions” authors use a scientific approach in explaining the issue of loneliness. It is a scientific article in the Psychological Science area used to explain the issue of loneliness affecting people’s mental and physical well-being. In the beginning authors showing us a time shift, on how the society of the United States changed over time and they use the quotation from other science article to support their claim. After showing us how society changes over time, the authors of the article are trying to give us a clear explanation of what loneliness is. They give the readers a few explanations from other scientific articles as quotes, and paraphrase the definitions given by others in their own words.  After explaining what loneliness is, they are going deeper into explanation and break up the term into three other sub terms – intimate, relational, and collective and explain them using scientific methods and quotes from other scientific articles. Authors provide readers with information on results which can be caused by loneliness – alcoholism, suicidal thoughts, obesity etc., and supporting the claim with other scientific articles. After stating the definition and issue, authors decide to provide us with several ways to treat the issue and provide the readers with credible quotes and results of a valid experiment. To summarize, the authors clearly used logos approach throughout the text. They used quotes from other scientific articles and did experiments to support their claims. By using quotes and evidence, I can clearly say that authors use persuasive styles of writing. 

On the other side, article “Social networks and feelings of social loneliness after migration: The case of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium” gives a different approach to the problem of loneliness. Similar to the other article, in introduction this article explains how the writers of the article explain the term “loneliness” and what they are going to examine through the research. To summarize, this article examines the binational pairs and analyzes their social networks and feelings of social loneliness. Through the text you can see countless number of citations used to support the credibility of the research. This entire article is the analysis of the data coming from EUMARR project, an international study on European binational pairs. As we read through the article, we can see that the article doesn’t sum up all migrants into one category. The results for men and women are different, as well as the migration outcomes for some specific ethnicities and nations. It clearly explains the reasons for such outcomes as language, social integration, ethnic social attachments etc. They clearly explain the steps of experiment, state the place where data was taken from and explain results with providing the tables.  However, the article doesn’t provide us with a way to overcome the problem of loneliness. Basically, it is just an analytical report which used reliable sources to analyze the data. Throughout the reading we can see authors’ use of logos through quotes and experiments. But the writer doesn’t state the claim. In general they don’t give us a claim, they give us data and explain it. They let us decide what we are thinking giving us reliable information. In the end, both articles give the place the research was financed from. It is an especially important point to add credibility to the paper. If the reader doesn’t see where money came from, he cannot understand was the paper biased or not. And both articles give us the sources. 

In conclusion, “Social networks and feelings of social loneliness after migration: The case of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium” by Suzana Koelet and Helga AG de Valk and “Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions” by Cacioppo, S., Grippo, A. J., London, S., Goossens, L., & Cacioppo, J. T. vividly convey the authors’ researches. In case of “Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions” authors give us a research which can be used to fight with the issue, while in the “Social networks and feelings of social loneliness after migration: The case of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium” authors provide us with reliable information and let us decide on our own what do we think about it. 

Bibliography: 

Cacioppo, S., Grippo, A. J., London, S., Goossens, L., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2015). Loneliness: Clinical Import and Interventions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 238-249. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615570616 

Koelet, S., & de Valk, H. A. (2016). Social networks and feelings of social loneliness after migration: The case of European migrants with a native partner in Belgium. Ethnicities, 16(4), 610-630. https://doi-org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/10.1177/1468796816638398 

Baldwin part:

James Baldwin builds himself as a representative of African-Americans, ” I find myself, not for the first time, in the position of a kind of Jeremiah.” That’s a first sentence of the speech and right from the start he shows that he is here to present the point of view of all African-Americans. Then he says that the main problem is the system of reality the people live in. That’s appeal to ethos. If a human being really strongly believes that a person of the specific race is slave, you can’t do anything about it. He was told for all his life that negro is a slave, and whatever Baldwin says he will ignore it because he believes that slave got no right to gain rights, that’s a difference of thinking. Then he says “…I, have to speak as one of the people who’ve been most attacked by what we now must here call the Western or European system of reality”. Here he tries to support his argument by showing that he the one who experience it in fact, so he is trying to use his experience as a support ground for his credibility. Then he speaks about differences in cultures using an ethos appeal again by explaining that there is no superior culture or civilization, that European system has no right to destroy other cultures way of thinking. He doesn’t say “american”, so he kinda trying to make europeans guilty, not the americans. With this he is trying to decrease the amount of hatred towards him and put initial guilt on europeans. After that he continues his appeal to logos explaining that american “equal for all” is given only for whites but not anyone else, and gives the examples to support his claim. He uses ethos by explaining how just a mere fact that because of the skin color the person has limits to gain success and he loses motivation because of it to achieve hapiness. He speaks about differences of cultures and how whites and african-americans have different live experiences and that they can’t understand each other because of it. And united states is trying to cancel african american culture because whites believe that european way of thinking is superior. By Baldwin opinion, the think that american society needs right now is a dialog to make a connection between ideas of wties and african americans. To summarize it, James baldwin through his speech was trying to show the difference and disconnectedness in white and african-american way of thinking., through the use of ethos he was trying to show the difference using the experience and words rather that clear facts. For me it looked like he was trying to prove it by making people think ” oh yes it is true, he was one who experienced it and he is credible enough to share the opinion of american negro.”

Buckley part:

I feel like his is trying to criminalize baldwin from the start. He is saying that Baldwin is trying to say we need to throw away the way american society is going, which is certainly not true. He kinda shaming Baldwin for using the pathos style of speaking by calling him a “posturing hero”. Then he says that “to deal with the indictments of Mr. Baldwin unless one is prepared to deal with him as a white men”. Just this one sentence supports the whole Baldwin speech. Buckley didn’t seem him as equal person from the begging, he saw him as “negro”. Everything Buckley says is fueled by pathos with no much sense behind it. After it he is saying that why amercans should pay for buying africans centuries ago and he is saying thatjust few decades ago the life of africans americans was way worse and now it greatly improved from the past. The solution Buckley is giving is to wait. Life of africans was way worse few decades ago and now it got better, so you guys please wait 40 years and probably you might have a black president( ironically, Kennedy was pretty much accurate in prediction). Negros already have a lot of opportunities and they need to use them for full and wait. So basically all he is saying is words that negros must try hard and be patient until whites come with the fact that negros are equal to them. Compared to Baldwin solution, the dialog to make a connection between white and black systems of reality. Buckley’s solution is to keep stability and keep a positive trend of improving, but he is not taking in account the lives aff african americans who need help now, who live in ghettos and losing opportunities because of inequality.

Describe your overall ability to pay attention when it comes to school work (<100 words)

On a scale of 1 – 10, indicate how addicted you are to you phones
8

Well, I think my ability to may attention is somewhere at 80% during a class. The remaining 20% I took off because I need to take small breaks each 15-20 minutes to stretch Mt arms and legs. I always want to check are my wallet, ear buds with me. If they are with me I want to check is everything inside. Some kind form of paranoia

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While reading “My Distraction Sickness” please note how long it takes you to get through the piece (Google says it’s a 45 min read); also, count the number of times you get distracted (for whatever reason) and tally them at the end.
Two times, 35 mins

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Describe the tone of all three articles, how do they differ? (<100 words)

Distraction sickness, speaks like in his experience and personal opinion style. Distracted student mind absolutely informative one, just pure science. When I read Anderson’s worksheet I had a feeling like a grandpa speaks with the grandchildren
What are Sam Anderson’s primary arguments in defense of distraction? (see part III of In Defense of Distraction) Do you find them convincing? Why or why not (<150 words)
That distraction isn’t an absolutely bad thing. The ability to distract, is an ability to absorb more information. It’s in a nature of a human being to absorb and absorb more information. The distraction is a soil for creativity because due to this it makes you more open minded and you can find inspiration in many different areas.

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After reading all three articles, what are your thoughts on this “epidemic of distraction”? (<50 words)
Too much yelling about it. People of 50s where yelling that hippies of 60s are going to ruin the society. Nothing changed. Our grandparents where yelling on our parents that they are playing into PC instead of reading books. Society survived.

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Please annotate “My Distraction Sickness” – highlight at least three instances for each of the following rhetoric concepts:
● Invention:
1)think about, he was a homesitting guy for decade having his, and he got lung problems. I think that Invention of internet addiction disease cases, that’s an invention of him)
2)translation of Bible. Before it Rome had a monopoly in religion, because Latin was a nature language for them, so they sent people everywhere saying what Pope wanted. After translation Bible became free for everyone which weakened Rome for sure.
3) He compares the desire for being online with addiction, showing it as a disease.
● Style :
1)First 3 pages he speaks how his life was going into hell, and then he says “I WILL CHANGE!”, common style to begin a story
2)no counter argument, he says only that you need to get rid of addiction towards phones, connection, etc.
3)Author uses his experience of addiction to kinda show that he is a reliable source.
● Memory:
1)Basically the whole story is a self-analysis where he portraits his failures and how he overcomes them

● Pathos:
1)when he speaks of how many iPhone ppl were having 10 years ago and today. Well it’s actually exaggeration, 10 years ago world was different as well, and usa doesn’t have such giant population, so like another 30-40 percent is something normal. You know cars in a beginning where would commonly described as devil-machines by countryman, now living outside nyc and having no car is something almost impossible.
2)when he speaks about meditation. Well, first of meditation, it just a way to bring your mind something from distraction, but driving you away from it doesn’t make you supernatural. Have you heard that any Buddhist invented something revolutionary? And meditation was never an invention of Buddhism in fact. Why when everyone talks about meditation they think about Buddha. Hey, Buddha was a Hindu follower before he started his journey, so it’s Hindu thing.
● 3)when he says that we became dependent from internet just to survive. He brings GPS into it. So he is going to find a route in Manhattan by on moss on tree bark.just because we made our life easily doesn’t Ean we became less autonomous. You know, syone age ppl invented the wheel(or whoever it was) but that doesn’t Mena that they became less autonomous. It’s a nature of humans to adopt the world for our needs.
● Ethos:
1)well he is part of internet development culture of 00-10 which started the sociality of internet. Youtube, blogs, Tumblr etc., became popular due to such people. And now he wants to get rid of his addiction from this culture.
2)he got damaged from internet so he now argues only toward “distraction is bad”. No counter argument. Pretty much the whole text is his one sided opinion.
3)

1)Doesn’t leaving the roots and embracing new challenges make the decision of migration a dangerous journey?

2)My connection to the topic is simple. I left my homeland years ago and looking back in the past I realize that us, my family, had choices beside migration. I wonder what could be different if we didn’t migrate to the USA.

3)Personal blog for sure.

4)People who read blogs obviously. It may sound like sarcasm, but seriously, people who are reading blogs are quite a specific social group. Majority of people never read blogs. P.s here I mean people who read personal blogs, not Twitter members who read posts, but rather people who read other lives.

5)letter. I don’t totally understand what professor means by this, but I think it is writing my text to someone specific in a semi-professional style. I think I need more clarification on it. But it is clearly not research paper or script, possibly narrative if I wouldn’t like letter in the end.

6)research, script, narrative it is writing into nowhere. While a letter means you are writing it to someone with a goal to share. This goal makes a writing meaningful.

7)that before doing something that sounds cool, you need to think twice about it. You should do all the check ups and clarifications. If my family did them in a past we would save thousands of dollars and thousands of neuro cells.

The question of moving abroad deems to be one of the major life changes which a person can experience through their lives. There are countless people who decided to change everything — their home, their friends, their families, their environment, their lives. People who never went through this process, might think “Was that a good choice?”, “Is it worth it?” or “Leaving behind all of the things worth it?” First, let’s point out, I’m not writing about life or death situations, where if you don’t leave your home you might be killed. It’s not about having a choice, it’s about survival. The ways to adapt in new environment is an another major rhetorical question. One story is to travel and enjoy the living in another place, but the other story is to leave all chains and completely move yourself in the new place. In the articles “My Story – Women Who Moved Abroad Series: Stories on How they Improved Their Career & Life” by Hannah Teslin and “Living abroad: The struggle is real” by Vinshu Jain, the authors share in detail their struggles in adapting to a new environment after their migration abroad.

Trips, travels for education and vacations are always entertaining and fun but when it comes to a real migration things change. When you are leaving all your connections, things and roots you lose something for yourself. Your life changes drastically. When you live in your home place for all your life you form some kind of a terrarium, where you adapted. Everywhere you look around have the people you know, where you every day wake up you see the same clocks on the wall, the same kettle you use to make a coffee, with still closed eyes you going in a shower before the start of the day, and as it goes in. When you leave your terrarium, you lose all of it. The environment which was adopted by yourself for decades can’t be achieved again. You lose a part of yourself in a moment when you take a seat in the airplane. In the article “My Story – Women Who Moved Abroad Series: Stories on How they Improved Their Career & Life”, the author speak of how she was adopting to a new environment and how she faced the struggles of doing it. You don’t know where you are, you can’t understand the people around because they speak different language, those people have a different culture. Some things that where normal at your home might be inappropriate in the new place. These things can be related to speech, handshakes, how you throw garbage out, and many other things that are where common in your old life but the people in your new live see them inappropriate or weird. However, Hannah Teslin was never alone in her new experience — she moved to her boyfriend, so there always was someone to support her in the end. The author of “Living abroad: The struggle is real”, faced a harder reality. He was the worst example of hothouse plant. All his childhood he was greatly cared by his parent, and when he moved to a new place he wasn’t able to act by himself. Everyone around him was unique and intelligent, while he was standing and understanding what is going on around. When you form relationships in adulthood people act differently, the seek for profit rather than pure friendship. No one is going to help you, you got no friends or family around, you are absolutely alone, that’s how Vinshu Jain felt himself.

In both articles authors share how complicated it can be to change your life. But the authors in them have one difference. Whether they where alone in their experience or not. Vinshu Jain uses Pathos to describe how he struggled to survive in a new place. While trading his article you feel yourself that he have a lot of problems adopting to a new environment. “The loneliness of living independently in a foreign land hit me hard. Real hard. I broke down a lot of times. In fact, I still do. I will shut myself out, cut communication from everyone else, and just sit and cry.” Hannah text has a different style and tone of writing. First of her article is rather an interview than an article. The technique she uses the most is ethos. She is trying to show the difference between the way she lived before and now. When you are reading her interview you don’t feel the pressure which you had when you were reading Vinshu’s article. “However, to this day I can’t say being an expat is easy, I am very frustrated by the different mannerism people to have, how I never feel like I fit in, and how some things which are done here just don’t make sense to me.” The tone of speech is enthusiastic and warm rather than stressed and tired compared to Vinshu’s article.

In conclusion, “My Story – Women Who Moved Abroad Series: Stories on How they Improved Their Career & Life” by Hannah Teslin and “Living abroad: The struggle is real” by Vinshu Jain vividly convey the authors’ emotions, struggles, and experiences during their journey to a foreign land. One experienced critical losses while changing his environment, and other experienced cultural differences in the foreign lands. Both articles offer relatable insights into the authors’ diverse experiences.

https://hannahteslin.com/expat-life-and-tips/the-story-series-how-woman-who-moved-abroad-advanced-their-career-post-1

https://medium.com/@jainvinshu94/living-abroad-the-struggle-is-real-3fdc35f69ebc

Frida Kahlo v. Van Gogh

Uladzimir Dabravolski 

Professor Ding

Eng 2150: Writing II

Oct 13, 2023

Rhetorical analysis

 The artworks I picked for rhetorical analysis are the self-portrait made by Frida Kahlo “Fulang-Chang and I” and the  self-portrait made by Vincent van Gogh (here I need to point out that assignment never told us to use only painting and artifacts presented in MOMA, it only been said that they must be of the same medium and genre, never a museum.)

   Well, if I’m going to think about the reason why I picked those artists, not the name of a painting caught my attention, but rather the names of the artists. I’m a human being who is as far from art as I’m from the moon; so the artists who I know something about, who were producing their artworks in similar periods of time and have artworks of the same genre, make the variety of my search very thin. So the artists I stopped on were Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo, and I know both of them were making self-portraits in Modern art style.

  As there is no text in the artworks, I will skip it and proceed straight to colors and composition. Van Gogh mainly uses a cold blue color for the background and his clothes. Usually blue represents things like sadness, depression and loneliness, however it might also symbolize personality traits such as rationality and calmness. So out of this I can make an analysis that based on his color choice he is trying to show that his life is not really happy, he feels sad, however he still kept some beige(I don’t know how to call it the best way) color which shows that he still keeps himself on something away from sadness and depression. Based on composition, I can see that his coat’s color isn’t very different from the background. The coat is his property so this might symbolize that his property isn’t his anymore. However, his brush, palette and head have similar colors and it shows that he still has his head and he is working to go forward. Van Gogh’s eyes pointed at a viewer, in a style like “What do you want?” or “What do you think?”, like asking why people are thinking about him and his work. His expression is calm and emotionless, he shows his lack of interest in a viewer, like he doesn’t care about people who watch him. If we look on it, the blue lines on a background form some kind of “nimbus” or “cocoon” around Van Gogh to kinda separate himself from others, like he wants to stay alone and continue doing what he was doing. So out of composition, I can say he is trying to build a fence around “Van Gogh”, so he  could continue painting, and don’t care what things are going around and so the other people don’t interact with him as he is painting. 

  On the contrary, Frida Kahlo’s  painting was made with soft colors, expressing that everything is okay, there is nothing really bad going around, she is doing good, and all things like that. However there is no feeling that things are going wonderful, the green color she uses is a kind of one which appears when a leaf loses most of its moisture and is not far from its end. Frida Kahlo composition is made up to show what she got and she is not afraid and wants to share it with people of what she got. She doesn’t hide her monobrow like she was not afraid of what she is doing. On her hands we see a monkey with the same hair color as Frida’s hair is. Frida Kahlo was unable to have kids so she is kinda trying to  personificate the monkey, to make this monkey “her child”, to feel like she is the mother who came on a vacation with her family. So as a result she didn’t want to be alone. Drawing a self-portrait might mean that she got no one other to paint, that she is alone or other things don’t deserve her attention. 

Amd here I’m back. I couldn’t figure out how to change my password for a while, and I finally did it. Now I will upload my hw assignments as quick ad possible.

1)People have a choice where to go after high school ends, and many people (including me) have a choice whether to go to college or go to a business school.

Picking a way where to go after high school

What are the pros and cons of going to college v. business school?

2)All parents are trying to teach their kids lessons. If you read my assignment 1 paper, the result of my story was that my mother took my money away.

My mother took my two years of efforts

What are the borders of giving a “lesson” to your kids?

3)Many people in this class originated outside of the USA including me. Majority of people who are moving to the USA are having variety of issues with the beginning of a new page in their lives.

My mom moved to the US with me and has lived here until now.

What are the effective methods that can help people to move/begin in the USA more easily?

Baruch, what this college is about? I believe or at least I feel that 90% of people are coming here in order to get various education connected with the financial world. Economics, finance, international business, etc. The main thing that unifies those areas of study is that all people who work in those areas are trying to get a financial profit and get rid of financial losses. And my lesson, the lesson I learned for my entire life was given to me by my mother of how I should never spend my money. Actually, this lesson is pretty useful for everyone and will make everyone life much safer and won’t bring any disappointment, stress, possible suicides, etc. So the life lesson I learned was to “never set a bet on money if you’re not 100% sure of the result”. This lesson connects to gambling, casinos, bets and all stuff like that.

  Well, to begin with, the reason why my mother decided to give me this life lesson is basically because I have terrible, extremely terrible luck and I have a gambling habit which even now, years after taking this lesson I surely grasped (however I only buy $2 lotteries every week). For my whole 19 years and almost 2 months of life I never won a single lottery (I am still trying, never giving up), even 2 dollars to recoup 2 dollar lottery, funny right? Actually all this began when my mom noticed how “ineffectively” I spent the game currency in a game on our family PC. I didn’t spend real money (I was too young for this, I didn’t know that my mom’s credit card exists), but kids have time and freedom that they can easily spend on games and that will simply make your game currency statistic “a lot”. This game wasn’t something special, there was just an event with crates which you could buy and randomly get something. Okay I guess you know what I was speaking about and how you guessed you realize how unlucky I’m and what I’ve gotten. But I was still trying and trying, not giving up. And then my mom realized that she needs to teach me a good important life lesson which I will remember for my whole life until my kids will put my corpse in a wooden box and bury it in the graveyard. Well, some time after this game happened she proposed to me a bet . At first I declined but she was calling me a chicken, that I wouldn’t dare to take it and stuff like that. Actually, after so many years I can’t even remember what this bet was about. I just understand that it was something so unimportant, inconsiderable and inessential that even if I take it as my main life lesson (I don’t have many life lessons, believe me), I can’t remember what it was about. The whole situation could be cleared if I just didn’t take a bet and wait for a little bit of time. But who am I? I was a stupid kid who decided to double my $300 which I collected for 2 years which had money from 2 Birthdays, 2 New Years, saving on tasties and good education which I really tried hard. Even now, being a US citizen I think that $300 dollars is quite a good chunk of money, but think about what $300 dollars mean for a 9 years old kid who lives in Belarus. Even now, in Belarus, $300 dollars is considered a good monthly wage for a worker, it’s like 70-80% of the population will be satisfied with it. With such money which I got with really hard work, patience and a long, very long time, a kid like me could buy anything he wanted . But take a guess what happened. I lost the bet to my mother and she took all those efforts to herself. No cries or pleas helped me to regain these money. Well my mom can be a little criticized for this, however after 10 years I’m really grateful to her. The words she said to me were: “Remember, the money you lost today will still be in the family and I will spend it for you. But when you grow up and you’re gonna do stupid things like this, remember that the guy who might take your money won’t spend it for your good, only for his own good”.

  Her words she said this day forever burned into my head. The letters that make up her phrase penetrated and will remain on the subcortex of my brain for eternity, and I am for 100% sure that they will remain there as long as my mortal body is able to exist under the sun. Well, 10 years after it happened, I didn’t have any similar gambling or money betting issues or things that may ruin my finances thanks to my mother. I hope that you will find my story entertaining and helpful and you won’t lose your money like I did.

Guys, about the reflection. Professor also told us to upload the prompt we had to write to analyze our best writing conditions. I absolutely forgot to post it on Tuesday and Wednesday, so here it is:

It was a day in middle of a July. The heat outside was around a hundred degrees but the air conditioner was not working in a room. My mom didn’t want to stay in the microwave and went to the beach  to catch a breathe, but she left me assignments to do. However it was so hot that I decided to leave these assignments unfinished until the heat calmes down. All these hours waiting for sun to go down and I was scrolling through the social media. The time have blinked in a second. But when the time came to actually do the thing, I got so dehydrated that I chose to indulge my sloth and continue scrolling down the social media. When my mother came back, I told her that I fall asleep and woke up just now. Well, it was a good try however it didn’t go through. All moms’ senses work on super boost ehen deals with her children and all mom see through all lies. So it didn’t go through. This night I couldn’t sleep because of two reasons, first because it was hot as crazy, and second because my ass hurt. After this day, I prefer always complete my mother’s assignments before actually chilling down.

Sorry for posting things so late:)