Critical Response- George Orwells Shooting And Elephant :: essays research papers

Critical Response Essay I class, we read a short story by George Orwell called Shooting an Elephant. It was a story about courage, judgment, and the pressure of peers. I personally did not like this story. I found it boring, pointless, and just another "hasn’t -this -happened -to -you" story about nothing. However, it was very well written, and if I had to critically respond to this story, I would praise the author on a number of things. The story opens by describing the relationship between the town and himself, a sort of sub-division police officer of the town. Description is definetly not lacking in the opening, as words such as "aimless", and "petty" are used to describe the town, and the way it treats it officers. It descriibes the kind of ignorance the town has to outsiders and anyone they do not "approve of". The story opens well, and clarifies right away, the who, what, where, when, why and how. No questions are asked and all confusions are quickly abolished. The second paragraph describes very vividly how he the narrator feels about his job choice, and his views on the village. He says "†¦I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible". The narrator not only is in a place where he hates, but he also hates the people he works with, and works for! Wow, how’d he end up there? Basically, the story line goes along to tell the tale of an elephant that needs to be killed, because it got out of the zoo and endagers the community. The story describes how the main character feels about himself and the pressures of the community. A showdown climaxes the storyline between the elephant and the narrator, and the entire village is there to witness and entice the main character. Critical Response- George Orwells Shooting And Elephant :: essays research papers Critical Response Essay I class, we read a short story by George Orwell called Shooting an Elephant. It was a story about courage, judgment, and the pressure of peers. I personally did not like this story. I found it boring, pointless, and just another "hasn’t -this -happened -to -you" story about nothing. However, it was very well written, and if I had to critically respond to this story, I would praise the author on a number of things. The story opens by describing the relationship between the town and himself, a sort of sub-division police officer of the town. Description is definetly not lacking in the opening, as words such as "aimless", and "petty" are used to describe the town, and the way it treats it officers. It descriibes the kind of ignorance the town has to outsiders and anyone they do not "approve of". The story opens well, and clarifies right away, the who, what, where, when, why and how. No questions are asked and all confusions are quickly abolished. The second paragraph describes very vividly how he the narrator feels about his job choice, and his views on the village. He says "†¦I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible". The narrator not only is in a place where he hates, but he also hates the people he works with, and works for! Wow, how’d he end up there? Basically, the story line goes along to tell the tale of an elephant that needs to be killed, because it got out of the zoo and endagers the community. The story describes how the main character feels about himself and the pressures of the community. A showdown climaxes the storyline between the elephant and the narrator, and the entire village is there to witness and entice the main character.

Plot Summary I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings follows Marguerite's (called â€Å"My† or â€Å"Maya† by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and crippled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage. [20] The community of Stamps, Arkansas, is the setting for most of the book. Many of the problems Maya encounters in her childhood stem from the overt racism of her white neighbors. Although Momma is relatively wealthy because she owns the general store at the heart of Stamps' Black community, the white children of their town hassle Maya's family relentlessly. One of these â€Å"powhitetrash† girls, for example, reveals her pubic hair to Momma in a humiliating incident. Early in the book, Momma hides Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin to protect him from Ku Klux Klan raiders. Maya has to endure the insult of her name being changed to Mary by a racist employer. A white speaker at her eighth grade graduation ceremony disparages the Black audience by suggesting that they have limited job opportunities. A white dentist refuses to treat Maya's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him that she had loaned him money during the Depression. The Black community of Stamps enjoys a moment of racial victory when they listen to the radio broadcast of Joe Louis's championship fight, but generally they feel the heavy weight of racist oppressions. A turning point in the book occurs when Maya and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears in Stamps. He takes the two children with him when he departs, but leaves them with their mother in St. Louis, Missouri. Eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. He is found guilty during the trial, but escapes jail time and is murdered, probably by Maya's uncles. Maya feels guilty and withdraws from everyone but her brother. Even after returning to Stamps, Maya remains reclusive and nearly mute until she meets Mrs. Bertha Flowers, â€Å"the aristocrat of Black Stamps†,[21] who supplies her with books to encourage her love of reading. This coaxes Maya out of her shell. Later, Momma decides to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California, to protect them from the dangers of racism in Stamps. Maya attends George Washington High School and studies dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. Before graduating, she becomes the first Black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. While still in high school, Maya visits her father in southern California one summer, and has some experiences pivotal to her development. She drives a car for the first time when she must transport her intoxicated father home from an excursion to Mexico. She experiences homelessness for a short time after a fight with her father's girlfriend. During Maya's final year of high school, she worries that she might be a lesbian (which she equates with being a hermaphrodite), and initiates sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. She becomes pregnant, and on the advice of her brother, she hides from her family until her eighth month of pregnancy in order to graduate from high school. Maya gives birth at the end of the book and begins her journey to adulthood by accepting her role as mother to her newborn son. ird sings

Are We an Overmedicated Society Essay

Are we an overmedicated society? Have you ever opened your medicine cabinet, and really looked at its contents? Have you ever stopped to wonder exactly what is in those bottles, and what it is doing inside your body? Do we really need all of those drugs? These are the questions I began asking myself a few years ago, and I feel most people should be questioning these things more often. Every time that I see a new commercial or advertisement that highlights a dangerous drug and the resulting lawsuits, I have to wonder how many drugs out there are just as dangerous, but haven’t been documented yet. How many diseases are fabricated so that more drugs can be sold? We have been engineered to believe that every human emotion and condition is a disease and should be medicated. But how much is too much? My first argument is that society today has become much too reliant on prescription medications and it has gotten to be out of control on many grounds. The two groups of individuals I feel are most at risk for this type of over-indulgence are children and the elderly. A third group of concern involves the mentally impaired or depressed segment of society, which I will get to. But first, I will divulge my assessment of children’s psychiatry from my viewpoint. A century ago, parents were free to discipline their children in the way they saw fit. As a result, children grew up to be respectable adults with jobs and accountability for their actions. There were still those who deviated of course, but it seems it was much less prevalent than it is today. Now, we have become a society who is afraid to discipline their children for fear of repercussion from social services and the threat of losing their children. As a result, we now have many children growing up who learn that they are in charge of their parents. These children are not required to respect their parents, and this results in a lack of respect for humans in general. This has consequently led to a rise in sociopathic behavior among teenagers and young adults who have been raised with absolutely no accountability for their actions or respect for human life. For those parents whose children have gotten out of control, they customarily turn to their family physicians for advice. I believe this has led to a rise in the creation of childhood diseases and medications to go along with them. In recent years, there appears to be a huge increase in the number of children diagnosed with ADHD and different levels of the Autism spectrum. These children are being sedated with pills instead of learning how to behave in a socially acceptable manner. They then grow up never learning how to properly integrate into society, and from there we have mentally impaired, depressed, and often sociopathic adults who are told they will require more medication and sedation for their entire lives. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a second segment of society that is suffering from pharmaceutical negligence is the elderly population. You may have noticed the number of medications typically found in your grandmother’s medicine cabinet, and this scenario is not atypical. Seniors are taking medications for things that don’t need to be medicated. As a result, they need additional medications to combat the side effects of the original medications prescribed. It is like a domino effect, each one building on another. One drug might be taken for low glucose levels. This drug may cause high blood pressure and high cholesterol, giving rise to the need for additional medications to counteract those two life-threatening conditions. In turn the secondary medications might have adverse reactions requiring additional medications and so on, creating a dangerous level of chemicals taken daily. Having to take so many medications, and often on a low or fixed income, puts a huge strain on the average elderly patient, and significantly lowers the quality of life experienced in the last phase of life. In addition to young children and senior citizens, my third area of concern is the mental health arena. We are currently diagnosing illnesses and prescribing pills for every range of normal human emotion and behavior. Feelings of anger, elation, sadness, and anxiety are all normal human responses to different stresses issued from the natural environment around us. But we have been manufactured to believe that any one of these can signal the presence of serious illness and disease, and if we are experiencing these we had better hightail it to the nearest doctor and get a pill to erase it all. This is what the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe, and it has been working amazingly well for them so far. The doctor is not programmed to tell you that you are experiencing normal human emotions, instead, they get you very upset and worried that you are actually suffering from a major mental disorder that requires immediate action and medication. Now, I agree that therapy is often needed for excess amounts of any one of these emotions. However, I feel that in most cases medication is simply not needed. Would you apply a Band-Aid to a surgical wound? That is what I feel the value of most of these medications really is. It never solves the root of the issue, so the patient continues to take these medications that their body becomes dependent on, thus supporting the drug companies for the rest of their lives. One of the main issues when it comes to mental health in patients of all ages is the subject of anti-anxiety medications. I recently discovered an article which was penned with regard to the use of anxiety medications in the United States and internationally, and whether or not it is a concern. According to Armstrong, â€Å"their use has increased in America at the rate of 7 million prescriptions a year† (1). This raises the concern that the exponential growth of these drugs will eventually lead to an entire country of sedated citizens. Despite popular belief, however, most of these prescriptions are written by family physicians and not psychiatrists, to deal with patients who believe they have a disease they don’t have and are demanding pills. Despite reassurances of the safety of the use of benzodiazepines, concerns still linger as to how much is too much. The pharmaceutical industry is greatly to blame for fueling this negligent over-use of harmful chemicals. It really is all about money, when it comes down to it. It seems like they are eager to produce any concoction that they can market to the American public that will sell in mass quantities, whether or not it is actually necessary for anyone’s health. It is possible, even, that they go as far as to manufacture their own illnesses so they can capitalize on it any way they can. As a result, there doesn’t seem to be enough research going into many of the drugs that are approved by the FDA and take up space on a pharmacy shelf. They might run it by a group of not-so-randomly selected individuals for a quick test-run. Then, even if adverse reactions are found, they are justified and dismissed and the public never even finds out. If they do, it is usually in small print at the end of a drug advertisement, and the public never even takes notice of it because they are so hyped up about the possible positive outcomes this drug may have in store for them. The marketing is so intense that it convinces many people they have diseases they don’t even have and they rush to the doctor to fill their demands. According to Strand & Wallace, â€Å"†¦fewer than 50% of all of the serious adverse reactions to a new drug the FDA releases are identified prior to its release into the marketplace† (2, pg 46). This is a very alarming statistic that needs to be taken seriously! The doctors, in turn, are often pressured by the drug companies to market these drugs to patients who do not even present with symptoms which would call for such drugs. These doctors are often enticed by incentives and benefits offered by these companies to convince them to dole out these unnecessary medications. Essentially, they are â€Å"wined and dined† by the pharmaceutical companies. The other issue facing doctors is that these patients show up in droves with complaints and expect pills. If they are turned away or refused, the doctor faces possible legal actions, possibly law suits or malpractice claims. So, the easy solution is to give the patient what they want, not what they need. Essentially, the conventional doctor/patient relationship has eroded almost entirely. Patients are now doctoring themselves, deciding which drugs they need, and then going to the doctor with their demands since they cannot fill their scripts without a prescription. The book, â€Å"Death By Prescription†, has an excellent example of this. The author provides a story of a patient named Cynthia who goes in for her annual exam, confirms the presence of menopause, and against her better judgment is prescribed hormone replacement therapy. Everything seems to be going well for a few months, and then she unexpectedly collapses one day, completely at random, from acute cardiac arrest. After she has been put to rest, the husband then discovers that there were concerns about heart related problems for a year before his wife was initially prescribed this medication. (2, pgs 3-7) The doctor who wrote this book speaks of his dismay that potentially life-threatening drug reactions are never brought to the consumer’s attention until it is too late. Since these drugs are hitting the market without adequate research to possible drug reactions or interactions, more and more lawsuits are being filed. Every time I see a new lawsuit for a drug that was heavily marketed, I wonder which one will be next. I take a few prescriptions myself, only because they are necessary to control severe acid reflux which could erode my entire esophagus and to keep allergies in check which have a tendency to cause ear infections with me. I wouldn’t take them if I didn’t absolutely need to. One that I’ve seen recently is a lawsuit for a popular birth control drug, Yasmin, that I clearly remember advertisements for which involved many women in bright yellow bathing suits. Other examples that I can think of just off the top of my head are Avandia, Phen Phen, and Thalidomide. A famous example, though, is the whole Vioxx fiasco. Vioxx was a popular pain reliever that was touted as more effective than ibuprofen and naproxen sodium, but little was known about its potentially fatal side effects, mostly related to heart problems. According to Carey, Barrett, and Cropper, â€Å"†¦society needs to understand that drugs are a double-edged sword. Doctors should do a better job of keeping up with pharmaceutical findings. And patients should know that all medicines are potentially dangerous and should be used cautiously. In the past, â€Å"people accepted that there was no such thing as a totally safe drug,† says McKillop. Today we have become much more risk-averse. † Adds Dr. Mary H. Parks, a top FDA drug-approval official: â€Å"Even in the best case, with full due diligence, we will never know everything about a drug. † That’s why it will always be a struggle to hit just the right balance between help and harm. † (3) This lends credence to my belief that most drugs that have b een on the market less than 10 years should not be trusted. Hopefully, this paper has influenced the general perspective on the pharmaceutical industry itself and how many drugs should be taken by the average consumer on a daily basis. How many times have doctors prescribed brand new â€Å"cures† for diseases that no one has ever heard of? Consumers should be taking note of just how many drugs are being over-marketed and should be aware of the dangers posed by the chemicals ingested on a daily basis. If it is something that is not needed for normal daily functioning, should it even be prescribed? Is it doing more harm than good? How much research has been conducted for this particular drug? Whether the individual is a young child, a middle-aged adult, a psychiatric or geriatric patient, these are the questions that each person should be asking every day.

Professional Career Action Plan Essay

When I first started out going to school after college I thought that I wanted to be a teacher and so right after high school I started going to school to be an elementary teacher. I quit school because I wanted to move out of my parent’s house and be on my own so I got a full time job. After I moved and got stable I went back to get my early elementary degree. After about a year and a half I got pregnant and had my son and couldn’t go to class in the morning after being up all night with a toddler and then to work so I quit school again until my son got older. My son was able to start school when he was two so I decided to go back to school and get my educational degree. As I was going to school I was also volunteering at my son’s school and that is when I decided I really didn’t want to be a teacher and I was undecided what I wanted to do and I knew I was wasting my money and time going to school so I quit once again. I got a job at a temp agency working for the temp sending people on assignments and after a year the company decided they were going to close the company in my location but my supervisor got me a job at Advanced Radiology Services doing data entry putting in codes in the system. After a few years I realized that I really like being in the health care field and wanted a career in it and I tried to move up doing different jobs in the field but I realized that in order to really move up and eventually become a director I would need a degree so I decided to get my degree in Healthcare Management so I went back to school, this time determined to make it work. My Job in the Health Care sector In the health care sector my career job is to be the Director of the billing department of a health care facility. As a director my job would be to work with a team or staff to establish and maintain the skills which are necessary for the facility. I would need to display a personal commitment and courage and in doing that I will be keeping the staff working as a team. I would be developing as well as improve the performance of myself as well as my staff and I will need to do this through training, coaching and feedback. In order to achieve this I would have to further my education by obtaining a baccalaureate degree in a health related area and have experience in an allied health field. (eHow 2013) I have worked in the health care field for over ten years and have done billing front end and  back end, customer service, demographic edits, payment poster, and issue refunds. I have also trained new and current employees and served as a lead. I also have my schooling that can qualify me for the director position. Although I have all of this I feel I would still need to get certified in and get my dual certificate in CPAT and CCAT and what this is the CPAT is designed for people who work on the hospital side of patient accounting and the CCAT is for people who work on the clinical/physician side. Having this certification will help keep me in pace with the industry and also will allow me to gain recognition by the industry by letting me get the job or a promotion that I would want. (illinoisaaham 2013) I also would need to get a Master’s degree in a health management related field. I feel that I need this degree so I can learn more on being a director and learn more on directing a facility. Achieving my professional Goal The steps that I will need to do in order to achieve my professional goal are to continue to go to school and receive my master’s degree in Master of Health Administration with a Concentration in Sustainability Management. Obtaining this degree I feel will be a benefit for me in my role as Director. I also plan on taking getting my certification in CCAT and CPAT. I also feel that before I can achieve this I will need to be a supervisor and manager for a few years so I can have a better understanding of leadership roles. Being a supervisor is the start of being a manager and then a director those are the steps that I will have to take in order to achieve my goal of being a Director. I am now employed at Spectrum Health Hospital and I feel that I can go far in this organization and eventually be a director for this organization. This organization will help me get the certification that is need because it is something that they off and also will allow me to go to school and furth er my education. If I get the certification and the degree that is required then I will be able to get a job as a director at any health care facility or organization. With the career action plan that I have done I feel this will help keep me grounded and on track with the steps I need to obtain in order to achieve my goal. Completing a goal maybe harder than it seems but if you have steps in place that will help keep you focused you can get through your goal and you will want to achieve higher goals in the process. This is a step by step process  and may not happen overnight but with dedication and hard work you can successfully complete the goal you set out to achieve. References American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management AAHAM Retrieved from http://www.aaham.org/Certification/CPATCCAT/tabid/90/Default.aspx CPAT/CCAT Frequently Asked Questions Retrieved from http://www.illinoisaaham.com/images/Technical_Certification_FAQs.pdf Edwards T, Job Description of a Health Director eHow Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/about_5347304_job-description-health-director.html Setting goals and objectives Retrieved from http://www.time-management-guide.com/goals-and-objectives.html

Professional portfolio Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Professional portfolio - Essay Example To the contrary, I consider my service a priceless gift to people who need it. Diligence in delivery of care, advocacy, and awareness are my fundamental principles into practice. As an advocate, I strive to learn health care needs for better quality of health and collaborate with professionals from other fields to identify possible strategies for meeting the needs. I then strive to influence policy changes at different levels of the health care sector such as at facility level and local government levels. I also participate in research for efficient and effective prevention and management of diseases through direct delivery of care and through community empowerment towards self-care. I have worked as an emergency room nurse for 12 years, an experience that has exposed me to the need for sacrifice for patients’ lives. I am currently a clinical coordinator in liver transplant where experience motivates my nursing values. My priority growth areas are policy development, leadership, and scientific research because of their significance to generation of contemporary knowledge and strategies and mobilization of resources towards policies and policy implementation. Developing and implementing SMART goals is my plan for improving my leadership, research, and policy development potentials (Powers, 2013). My goal on leadership development is to be competent in transformational and charismatic leadership styles. These are important to my advocacy and leadership in policy development that are collaborative initiatives. I plan to attend trainings and workshops o leadership and to seek mentorship from distinguished leaders. A six-month period, beginning from next month, will be dedicated to the goal that I will evaluate monthly using online assessment tests and observation on successful leadership based on the two styles. I currently have knowledge and experience in research but improvements are necessary. I plan to attend part time classes on statistics and research

Sociological factor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Sociological factor - Essay Example They were housewives and their sole purpose in life was to please their man and do as he pleases. They essentially lacked basic rights and chained to the circumstances of their lives. They usually did not even get a say in who their husband is going to be, as their husband was chosen for them by their husband. A change has happened in the 20th century, when in the 1920s millions of people in the US migrated from the countryside to cities, where more modern views were held and practiced. This was a pre-step in getting more acknowledgement, freedom and equal treatment. Later on, in the 1930s and 1940s, as World War 2 raged on and resources and manpower were low, women were incorporated in the labor, preparations, assistance of the soldiers in the frontlines and at home. They were given primary positions which were very important to the remainder of the war. Their positions were mainly those of nurses, seamstresses, food suppliers and many other positions traditionally associated with women, but it was a big leap when they were incorporated in the war effort because until then it wasnt allowed. The totality of the war actually brought about their incorporation in the war, and sometimes even in crucial positions. After the war had ended, women realized that if they were good enough to help th e war effort and do their jobs just like men did, why shouldnt they be able to do these things and other things in their everyday lives? The movement of the liberation of women began to sprout. Women claimed that if they were good enough to participate in the war effort and do their jobs exactly like men, they should also be able to do any job in real life and be acknowledged as equal to men. They also stated that without their help, the soldiers wouldnt have their supplies, their clothing, their medical assistance and so on. This notion of gender equality continued

Educational Reform from a Personal Perspective Essay

Educational Reform from a Personal Perspective - Essay Example That is, I plan on becoming a better person so as to facilitate the introduction of a better educator that I believe I can become given the opportunities and challenges that are certain to come my way. For the next few years I will strive to apply the proper level of knowledge in creating different approaches in teaching that are constructive and applicable to my students. I will endeavor to incorporate technology and current trends in carrying out my academic goals and will constantly be on the lookout for current and up to-date methodologies and tenets in teaching. I will be more conscious to differences in culture, levels of perception, behavior and other factors that mark the individuality of a student and will be more receptive and responsive to the needs that such distinction may call for. Most importantly, I will work hard to prepare my students to think critically and take on responsibilities in the context of life in general and not look at the school as an indispensable ins titution that must be hurdled as an entry-way to life, but as a celebration that will mark their readiness to take on a more complex journey. †¢ What steps are necessary to get you to your goals? What obstacles might you foresee and how will you overcome them? For the following years, I plan to develop a personal teaching style that would integrate cultural, academic and behavioral diversity by establishing a learning environment that highlights personal dignity and acceptance. That is, this method would take into consideration the geographic communities around the school and will engage the students in a multi-faceted education which would bring about character formation and social awareness (Dana 2009). This method would likewise teach my students to be conscious of verbal, non-verbal, as well as verbal underpinnings in communication so as to attain a more open and interested schoolroom where the students will be conscious of their peers which would foster community collabora tion and peer support (Dewey 1997). I want to be able to establish a teaching method where the classroom is a place where the students learn and not just from their teachers, but from themselves as well. I am envisioning a transformation of the schoolroom from a place where the teachers teach and the students listen into a ceremony where everyone will take part in the teaching and everyone will benefit from learning. †¢ What is one principle from the INTASC Principles website that you feel you must improve the most to be effective in the education profession? What existing professional development programs might you pursue to address the need to improve in this area? The tenth principle under the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) stresses the importance of fostering interpersonal relationships in order to promote the well-being of the students and place them healthier environment that would facilitate a better academic and personal growth. I hav e always believed that learning is a process more complex that having to listen and perceive (Dana 2009). I have always believed that several factors affect learning ability and that it could not be blamed solely on state funding, federal government priorities or even the quality of the educators (Gorton 2008). After all, the government may devote billions of dollars to education and the