The End of Solitude William Deresiewicz is a former teacher for English at Yale University. Currently he’s a contributing writer at “The Nation” and published his most famous essay “The End of Solitude” in 2009. In his essay, he claims that through new ways to communicate with each other like Facebook, human beings would lose a certain sense of solitude and the space everyone needs to figure who they are and what they believe in. He opens his argumentation saying that we only live in relation to others without any solitude because technology is taking away privacy and concentration. He proves this point with examples of his students who, according to Deresiewicz, write 3000 texts a month and don’t want to be alone so bad that they sit next to friend, even when they have to write a paper.
Rite of Passage BSHS 342 September 19, 2011 Babara Kennedy Rite of Passage A high school boy, 16 years old passed his math exam. Math was not Robert’s favorite subject so he had to study really hard for it. His parents said how well he was studying and promised to teach him how to drive if he gets a B and would give him a car if he gets an A in his finals and if he passes the driving test. Robert literally spent time in the library daily receiving extra tutoring from a friend John, he meets at the library. Robert forgot about his x-box and had less time for his friends Mike and Sean, who didn't think he needed to study as hard as he was doing.
I was hesitant to get it because I feel that whenever I did set up a social networking account a new networking site was created making the old one obsolete. I did not feel like trying to keep up, but I finally broke down when I had a biology project due and realized that I did not have my partners’ phone numbers; I did know that they both had a Facebook profile. Although these types of sites do not consume most of my computer time, I do feel that I waste a lot of valuable time of the computer
High school itself is surrounded with the pressure of getting good grades for a future education and also the pressures of drugs, alcohol, boys, sports and adult influence. “The National Scholastic Journal took a poll of a group of one hundred students at random, “In today’s generation high school students believe the pressure they face has switched from peer pressure to pressure based of off social media” (Baur, 2013). Teenagers are hardly given a break & the media seems to add on to the pressures. A teenager’s biggest fear is to be considered an outcast. The media states in order for you to fit in you have to be thin.
A lack of audience causes the media to lose their power, and their watch on political life. Mindich proposes news should play a bigger role in school curriculum. He sums up by saying if you teach kids to read, and care about the news when they are young, they will care about it later in life too. Mindich feels qualified to speak about this issue because he has worked as an assignment editor at CNN. This article contains many astounding statistics about news readers in past decades vs. today.
Literacy Autobiography Playing sports, socializing with friends, and working – All reasons why I am an alliterate reader and writer. I never realized the importance of paying attention in school to learn to read and write properly when I was younger. Although I graduated from high school and have a diploma, the lack of initiative and motivation in school has led me to be an alliterate reader and writer today. While in high school, playing sports was more important then learning how to read and write properly. Socializing with friends and going out to have fun was another reason why I did not learn how to write proficiently.
Jon Elorriaga Dr. Patrick Muana English 1301 Reading Response 3 25 May 2012 A Critical Reading of Michael Bugeja’s “Facing the Facebook” In “Facing the Facebook” Michael Bugeja discusses the various problems associated with the use of Facebook especially in educational institutions. Many educational institutions invest increasing amounts of money in technology with the idea of enhancing learning through research. That students actually waste their study hours on Facebook and get distracted in class because of Face book is an indication that those institutions are wasting their money. Although many professors have yet to find out about Facebook and about its impact on students, educational institutions as a whole are looking for ways to stop students from accessing it, especially during school hours. Another important downside to Facebook, Bugeja notes, is that it creates an egocentric environment – what he mentions as “egocasting” in his essay.
Notes on Readings Chapter 1 31-62 Section: ____________________________ Page #: ____________________ Notes on Readings "Plight of the Little Emperors" by Taylor Clark There was a boy whose mom would come to class everyday so that she could monitor how he was doing with his studies. Parents would go to extremes to give their child the edge over everybody else. One test in China will decide what type of life you will have. If you do good on the test you can go to good schools and have a relatively easy life, if you do poorly on the teat then you will have to work hard for the rest of your life. All of the pressure on the young students has led to frustration, depression and unemployment because they are unwilling to take jobs that they feel
Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have become the place to go on the Internet. It does not take a scientist to know that generally a college student devotes more time to social networking sites than research. College students spend ridiculous amounts of time checking up on other people’s lives than focusing on more important things like studying and research. Missing friends from home is difficult, especially for a college freshman who is going through the culture shock of living away from home. However, college students need to understand that using social networking sites religiously is not just an issue about the amount of time devoted towards schoolwork, but that it can literally change how they think.
My freshman year, I took geometry as my math elective and I often corrected the teacher and got sarcastic remarks in return. I never did my homework because test in the class summed up to 70% of the grade, so I decided to get A’s on the test and pass, and I did. Science and English were the worst. All the experiments we did were strictly control; we would proceed with a step until the teacher allowed us to do so. And English has become a subject of intimidation, the reason being that in my four years of high school English; we watch so many movies that I did not learn proper writing skills and proper communication skills.