6. April 2009 by student.

A lot of general education math classes are using a program on the internet by the name of MyMathLab.  It is a math program online that allows users to do homework, take quizzes and even tests.  This is my second semester using this program and I have some feedback regarding it.  I think that the program is a waste of time.  I have also talked with a lot of my fellow classmates and they feel the same way.  The first reason I strongly oppose using the program is because it is not that friendly.  Last semester Mac users could barely even use the program because it was not truly made for Macs yet.  If you could use the program on a Mac you would often be kicked off of the site and would lose all of your progress.  Another problem with the program lies with the general idea of the program.  The program was made in order for students to better understand math and be able to access it anywhere via the internet.  However the site allows people to get the answers without truly doing the work.  In a lot of the homework questions they have the multiple choice (also known as multiple guess) answers and this allows users to answer questions without even knowing one bit of information on the question.  I know that people do this because I have a lot of friends that do it.  I have even been known to do it occasionally as well.  Why shouldn’t I?  The program allows users to answer the question 3 different times in order to receive full credit.  However if you get one simple part wrong, such as not switching a positive number to a negative number, then you get that question, or in some cases, just that part of the question wrong.  Then you must completely redo that question in order to receive full credit.  Also another way around MyMathLab is other websites on the internet.  These websites allow users to plug in the question and get an answer.  This gives students easy ways to get a 100% on their homeworks, quizzes, and tests without knowing anything about that chapter.  This is not helping students to understand math, rather it is showing students that sometimes the best way to approach different situations is to take the easy way out.  Overall I think that this program makes a majority of the users put in a lot of effort trying to find shortcuts to get answers and not truly doing the work.  I think that this program should not be used because it is teaching a lot of students the wrong way to approach a subject that is not too difficult to understand if it is explained effectively.  I do not know what the solution would be to getting rid of MyMathLab, but I would love to hear some people’s opinions on what they think about MyMathLab. 

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 2 Comments »

6. April 2009 by student.

Popularity affects society in many ways. It is overlooked way to much in your high schools, and middle schools today. There is an extreme amount of social problems that come about from this overly important subject. It disrupts the way individuals view a person, or group of people, and it confuses them on their priorities.  It also destroys potential relationships for the future.

Popularity disrupts the way individuals view a person or group in many ways. It can be in a negative or positive way. A negative way would be for one popular individual to have a conflict with another popular individual, and for one of the two individuals to be each a member of a “popular” group. When this happens, the groups gets a bad reputation of not liking each other, and this can form future gangs, or rivals between Innocent people in each group.

Popularity confuses individuals on their priorities. This aspect of society really effects those in middle and high school. When people worry about popularity, they forget the whole reason their in school. A lot of students grades suffer due to trying to be in the popular group. I believe if there was no popularity, students would learn more about themselves, and they would be much better students.Most students try to be popular to fit in a certain group, or to look cool in front of the opposite sex.  It has been proven that sex segregated schools have better SAT scores than regular public nonsegregated schools.

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6. April 2009 by student.

As stated in the book Contemporary Social Problems: On an average day 84 people die by suicide and over 1,800 attempt suicide. Males are four more times likely to die by committing suicide then females. Although females are more likely to attempt suicide. White males account for almost three-fourths of all sucides. Suicide rates amoung young men aged fifteen to twenty-four years remain twice as high as the over all average in the United States. Suicide is a cowardly way of getting out of tough situations, fears, or decisions. Anybody can kill them selves and think that they are strong in doing so, but the only strong person is one who confronts their situations, fears, and decisions at hand. I have never thought of committing suicide and do not understand a person’s thoughts or motives behind doing so. I agree that men are more likely to die from committing suicide then women on the idea that men are more stubborn then women and some ahve egos that if they do not go through with it they will be looked at as more of a coward then before. Women tend to think things over a lot more then men and with that while committing suicide a mere thought of friends, family, or employment may set a trigger off in their brains to stop what they are doing.

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6. April 2009 by student.

Most people take medicines only for the reasons their doctors prescribe them. An estimated 20 percent of people in the United States have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons. This is considered prescription drug abuse. It is a serious and growing problem.

Abusing some prescription drugs can lead to addiction. You can develop an addiction to: narcotic painkillers, sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants.

Experts don’t know exactly why this type of drug abuse is increasing. The availability of drugs is probably one reason. Doctors are prescribing more drugs for more health problems than ever before. Online pharmacies make it easy to get prescription drugs without a prescription, even for youngsters.  Prescription drug abuse rarely happens in people who need commonly abused painkillers, sedatives or stimulants to treat a medical condition. It can be extremely difficult for a doctor to distinguish between a person who needs a larger dose to control his or her pain and a person who’s abusing prescription painkillers.  Most commonly, the following behaviors are warning signs of prescription drug abuse: Continually “losing” prescriptions, so more prescriptions must be written, seeking prescriptions from more than one doctor, taking higher doses despite warnings, stealing, forging or selling prescriptions, and excessive mood swings. 

  Most prescriptions are written for people who have a true medical need. But many households have a drawer filled with old prescription bottles containing leftover drugs. Because prescription drugs have medical uses, teens often believe they are a safe alternative to street drugs, they are sadly mistaken.  In some cases, a doctor’s prescription isn’t even needed. Some countries don’t require prescriptions for opioid painkillers or other commonly abused drugs, so they can be purchased from various Web sites without a doctor written prescription.

Ending the abuse of prescription drugs isn’t easy, if it were users wouldn’t become addicted.  A doctor may suggest that you be admitted to a residential facility that can provide specialized treatment for your specific problem.  Medications can be prescribed to ease withdrawl symptoms from opioid painkillers, such as Buprenorphine and methadone.  Drugs like these have very strict guidelines.  Other drugs such as clonidine, used for high blood pressure, can also be used to help manage opioid

In general, attenuating sedatives can be medically complicated and should be done only after a consultation with a doctor comfortable with assessing and managing these issues. If you’ve used prescription sedatives for a long time, it may take weeks or even months slowly stop taking them. Mood-stabilizing drugs at critical points in the withdrawal process may help. There are no approved drugs used for the withdrawal of stimulants. Treatment usually focuses on relieving withdrawal symptoms — such as sleep, appetite and mood disturbances.

Counseling is also used. Either the individual, group or family counseling is useful.  Aside determining what factors may have led to the prescription drug abuse, counseling can also help people learn the skills needed to help prevent its recurrence.

Prescription drug abuse is a widely growing problem mostly due to how easy it has become to obtain them.  Doctors need to begin to take extra precautionary measures before dolling out the highly potent drugs.  

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 1 Comment »

6. April 2009 by student.

I work in the customer service slash hospitality industry. Meaning that people are usually on vacation or business when they are arriving. I haven’t ever really been on a serious vacation so I wouldn’t know how crazy it makes someone but I am starting to see that it creats a level of stupidity for most. I am just appaled sometimes at how oblivious people are to their surroundings. The establishment that I work at (can’t mention name) it’s equiped with a restaurant on the backside between the building and the bay. Not an entirely huge eating area or kitchen for that matter but can handle a pretty hefty tourist season of Naples and a wedding reception if scheduled through management.

Upon checkin there is a registration card that the guet is instructed to fill out and is given details for each section of the card and what to put where. It is inevitable that 98% of all guests will fill out this form incorrectly! They are intructed to initial next to the source of the reservation, vehicle desciption “NO LISENCE PLATE” is the section across from the source, then it’s the no smoking/no pets policy initial section, and finally a signature at the bottom. From what I’ve noticed the vehicle description “no lisence plate” section seems to be hardest for people to understand. Example; I will be checking someone in get through the instructions of the whole registration card and the guest will literally within 5 seconds after I finish inform me that they don’t know their lisence plate! One other reason this is difficult for people to understand is most who are arriving and no less driving here have no clue what they are driving their families around town in, don’t have a clue what kind of car they are driving and sometimes don’t even know what’s the color of this vehicle. To think that some of these people are actually considered productive members of society and probably vote on a regular basis for the last number of years!?!?! Where are people’s minds going these days, seems like they are slowly tossing them out the window. This isn’t even the half of it!

The evening before breakfast when guests checkin they are given a verbal list of amenities and information on the hours of operation for the restaurant; for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They are told where their room and the pool is located within the hotel and what time check out is supposed to be along with the check out time written on the key card cover that they are given. This information becomes irrelevant very quickly almost as soon as before they even leave the front desk. I have a rediculous number of guests that will shortly after checking in ask me all of the amenities that were rattled off to them at the beginning. Espeically early in the morning when there are a bunch of people just outside the class doors to the restaurant out back and there is people out there eating or tables and chairs with little silverware items on them and a waiter “Oh my gosh a waiter outside, on the back terrace, what they hell would he be doing out there?” Let’s go ask the front desk where we can get breakfast or a cup of coffee, as if it wasn’t already obvious.

I may be rambling about something that I can’t fix or that wouldn’t bother most others but really if you dealt with for hours and days on end I think it would really start to get under your skin too. I just sometimes have to laugh it off b/c it’s so hard for me to believe that people actually live their lives this way, its chaos! It feels like the whole world is just getting dumber and dumber as the days go by and as the economy gets worse. I wonder if there’s ever been a study on the population of an economy that is reaching shambles to see if the intelligence is effected by it all? I bet someone has tried! Someone like me that’s just watched people seem and act like they are alot more stupid than they used to be.

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6. April 2009 by student.

I am a tutor for multiple children and go into elementary schools each week for several hours to help them with homework. Before this, I had always known that we are programmed, but now I have a new perspective on it. One of the children is a girl in third grade whose name shall be unmentioned. Up until March, she was dedicated to learning the math I was helping her with and gave an honest attempt for each question. If she got a problem wrong, I’d simply show her where the mistake was and how to fix it. After March and FCAT was over, however, she stopped caring. Now she guesses on the worksheets, whether or not the question has multiple choices. All of her effort is gone, leaving me asking the simple question: why?

                From how I see it, FCAT is over, so the math doesn’t matter to her anymore. She’s tired of it. The only reason she wants me there is for a friend and has even admitted to me that by spending time with me during class time, she is excused from whatever the rest of the class is doing. FCAT takes us away from the real world. Sure, it ensures that students are all on the same level at the same age; however it is pressure on the teachers, students, administrators, and families. And now I see that after it’s done, very little is accomplished. The teacher may try to teach more, but whether or not they actually are able to because the students are so tired of the subjects is a completely different story. FCAT may help keep our kids on track, but it also makes them lazy. It holds back the intelligent kids and pressures the ones whom are slower to do better, or else. Without the FCAT, the teachers would be able to teach at their class’s pace and there wouldn’t be such a surge of laziness following the test.

                The laziness is causing her to guess at the answers and making me tell her she’s wrong, but who am I to tell her she’s wrong? One of the problems we recently worked on had a picture of two jars, one filled with marbles and the other only had a few. The problem asked to estimate how many marbles were in the one that wasn’t entirely full and the answers were multiple choice. There were some that were very evidently wrong, but it made me wonder what exactly the definition of ‘estimate’ is. Upon looking it up, I discovered it is “to determine roughly the size, extent, or nature of” and implies a judgment (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/estimate). What if her judgment is that there are a thousand marbles in the jar? Just because there aren’t doesn’t mean that her idea is wrong. How can an idea be wrong?

                It’s unfair for me to have to tell the girl she’s incorrect. What’s worse is that she will be told she’s wrong until she finishes college, and maybe even after that. On each test that she gets less than a perfect grade on, she’ll be considered wrong. Everything she does in life will remind her there is someone above her to prove her wrong. What if her idea of what lies in the jar is right? What if it’s the creator of the problem’s judgment that is wrong? What if I am the one who’s wrong for telling her she’s incorrect instead of encouraging creative thought? We are taught the basic rules for life in elementary school. Don’t hit others and keep your hands to yourself. Share. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Most important, don’t think outside the box.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 1 Comment »