Field Study At Alcoholics Anonymous Essay -- Research Alcoholism Drink

Field Study At Alcoholics Anonymous On Wednesday March 15 and 22 I attended meetings of the Serentiy Group, a local meeting group of Alcoholics Anonymous that were held at the Congregational Church in East Bridgewater. The meetings started around 8:00 pm and went until each member was given the opportunity to speak, or to share their feelings in some way. There was a total of 15 people present, including myself and my companion. The group was primarily made up of males, there was one female aside from my companion and I. The age of the group members was pretty much middle age (late 30s to 50s).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Before attending the meeting I was very apprehensive about going, for many reasons. The main one was that I did not know what to expect. I was unsure of who was going to be there, if I would know anyone, or if anyone would know me. I felt as though I was going to be invading the privacy of those in attendance. Upon arrival at I felt very extremely uncomfortable for two reasons, the obvious age difference, and the male to female ratio. The uneasiness passed quickly as the members of the group welcomed us in, and made us feel as if we were a part of the group. I think that part of my initial nervousness was due to the fact that I did not know what to expect, I was unsure as to what a drunk would look like. Once I arrived I realized that they do not look any different than anyone else. My initial impression was that the meeting would be very depressing, a ...

Little Fugue and Morning Song by Sylvia Plath Essay -- Sylvia Plath Po

A relationship is an emotional connection to someone involving an interaction between two or more people. There are many types of relationships, some functional and others far from being workable. I will demonstrate this through my texts of; Little Fugue, and Morning Song both poems written by Sylvia Plath; the movie, Love Actually; and the book, Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce. Little Fugue by Sylvia Plath is my first example of how we all perceive our different relationships. This poem is about Plath talking of her father and herself and the lack of communication between the two. Throughout the poem, Plath contradicts herself, saying, ‘I was seven, I knew nothing’ yet she constantly talks of the past, remembering. Her tone is very dark and imposing, she uses many images of blindness, deafness and a severe lack of communication, ‘So the deaf and dumb/signal the blind, and are ignored’. Her use of enjambment shows her feelings and pain in some places, in other places it covers up her emotional state. She talks of her father being a German, a Nazi. Whilst her father may have originated from Germany, he was in no way a Nazi, or a fascist. He was a simple man who made sausages. ‘Lopping the sausages!’ However she used this against her father, who died when she was but eight, saying that she still had night mares, ‘They color1 my sleep,’ she also brings her father’s supposed Nazism up again, ‘Red, mottled, like cut necks./There was a silence!’. Plath also talks of her father being somewhat of a general in the militia, ‘A yew hedge of orders,’ also with this image she brings back her supposed vulnerability as a child, talking as if her father was going to send her away, ‘I am guilty of nothing.’ For all her claims of being vul... ...r child being an alien, she still stumbles from bed ‘cow heavy’ at a single cry from the child. Morning Song is literally the cry of a baby, as it calls for it’s mother. The relationship between mother and child is strong although Plath seems to view her child as something totally unchildlike. She doesn’t seem to be able to connect with her child in any way. I have learned that relationships are diverse and can change from one moment to the next. I have learned that not all people share the same views as I do when it comes to the people I hold dear. The world around me is a very different place to my perceived ideals. Relationships are like diamonds, with many sides and facets. It can be perfect and clear, or cloudy and distorted. It is life. 1American spelling used as it is a direct quote 2Corus is the capital city of Aly’s home country, Tortall

Keeping Close to Home Essay

Bell Hooks essay â€Å"Keeping Close to Home†, describes her struggles after she was accepted at Stanford University to further her self-realization. In this essay Hooks talks about her journey to educate herself and no losing her sense of where she came from as African American woman from a working class background. Hooks parents wanted her to go to a school close to home, a non-diverse like Stanford was. They wanted her to go to a school no just close to home but were the majority were black too. Her family biggest fear was her daughter changing her mind or losing her values and the connection with them. They knew college change people. However Hooks found the way to keep close to home by visiting every year, sometimes when she couldn’t go home because she didn’t have the money to travel, she had to stay at school, she expresses in a passage how her family wasn’t happy or supportive about her decision about her going to Stanford. As she said â€Å"My pa rents had not being delighted that I had been accepted ad adamantly opposed my going so far from home. At the same time, I did not see their opposition as an expression of their fear that they would lose me forever, â€Å"Like many working-class folks, they feared what college education might do to their children’s even as they unenthusiastically acknowledge its importance† (101). Most kids have a very strong knowledge about were they come from like Hooks was, opposite to some others which doesn’t, this make them to be weak, they could change their values and they might forget about their families and community. . When kids go to college they are in touch with many different people from different backgrounds. It is normal that their parents could be afraid of their kids changing their minds afterwards they will be living away from home and this could happen. This changes depend on how strong their roots are. Having no contact with no contact with their families that could happen, like Hooks explains on her essay when she said â€Å"Often I tell students from poor and working-class backgrounds that if you believe [that] what you have learned and are learning in schools and universities separates you from your past, this is precisely what will happen. It is important to stand firm in the conviction that nothing can  truly separate us from our pasts when we nurture and cherish that connection† (108). The best way to maintain the values our family gave us when we go away from home either to college or to live far from our families is keeping in touch with them for this purpose talk to our families once in a while will be good also never forget were we came from. When I read Hooks essay, this send me back in time to the year of 1979 when I graduate from High School. As I was reading her essay I felt that Hooks and I had the same struggles. Before I graduate from High School I had my mind set about going to college. My family was very poor. My mother was always a very hard worker woman, she ironed all the neighborhood clothing. I am very proud of my mother being a single mother she was capable to race my little sister and I all by herself after my dad past away when I was twelve years old Hooks’s talks about how proud she was about her father too when she said â€Å" â€Å" I never knew how poor we were until I needed to go to college. I knew I will need to find a job to fu rther my education. Hooks reveals all the pain and struggles she had after she was accepted at Stanford, how her parents were not supportive. I had the same exact struggles. My mother was very upset when I told her about my decision on going to school, she argues with me about how her friend’s kids never came back to their homes and how they stop visiting their parents after they went to school. My mother was not being very supportive like Hooks parents were. She teaches us to how to be loving, caring, how to respect each other in the family and everyone else. She wanted for me just to find a job close to my house, she even talked with the owners of this pharmacy on the corner of my house to give me a job as a cashier. She said I should stay home and help her with the house chores, she never thought I could be anything more than a housekeeping. We lived in a very small town called Villa Canales which was eight hours away from the college I decided to go. That was the most painful decision I had ever made. After all I was the first generation going to college. My family was very tight with very strong values. My sister and I used to spend all our summers vacations at my grandma’s house when we were little, we loved to listen all the stories she had to tell us, while we grow up. This made my family very similar to Hooks’s family. However my mother was afraid of me being far from her and my little sister and forget about them which didn’t happen. Even when the communication was not easy in Guatemala where I grow  up, I did all my efforts maintaining communication with my family. Distance was not enough reason for me to stop keeping in touch with them the same and never forget about all the instructions she gave me. The same way Hooks never stopped her contact and communication with her family. The purpose of her essay is to argue about that students coming from a working class background should not be ashamed where they come from nor either forget about their families. Going to school far from home shouldn’t change people, at least no their values. To keep this values intact people needs to keep the connection as Hooks did by keeping in touch with her family and community. Universities separates families this should not happen because the only way we keep our values is being tight with our families.

Language Learning in Early Childhood Essay

Early childhood education and early schooling for young children usually starts at the age of three; however, language learning for all human begins at the very early age. Many new born babies start to communicate with meaningless words like pa and ba; perhaps, it is the first stage they want to begin learning how to speak. The question arises with a grappling impression of why it happens, and what pushes them to superfluously generalize those meaningless sounds. The reason behind this amazing issue is what has engaged many psychologists and linguists all over the area of language research projects around the world. Beginning to simply answer this question, Lightbown and Spata (2010), state that in very early stages children produce a specific group of repeated words to convey their thoughts: for example, a comfortable baby frequently repeats cooing and gurgling; however it is not the case with a hungry child. Moreover, they assert that the process of learning to communicate falls into different sequential stages, which is the focus of this paper. According to Lightbown and Spata (2010), as children grow up, the sense for communication eagerly start to discover many features of the language that gives them the idea of how meaning relationships are created through the language. A twelve years old month baby exactly knows the meaning of cookies; he/she is still unable to use an appropriate language to ask questions about that. To state the matter differently, the linguistic cognitive development gradually unfolds the puzzle of how language is manipulated to express ideas. Many children who could not produce correct grammatical utterances, they would learn that in later years as they hear complete sentences from the environment they live. Vygotsky (1976) (citing Lightbown and Spata, 2010), believes that a great deal of children language is acquired through interactions with families and friends; however, B. F Skinner, and American psychologist, explain the acquisition of language in term of behaviorism that marks learning of a language as practice of reproducing what children hear or receive in daily conversation. In addition to these two theories, Noam Chomsky, a well-known figure in linguistics; argue that children are innately capable of learning language; though, the surrounded environment provides them with fundamental contributions that help them learn the basic language rules. Although learning a language is a natural process, but things get worst if we think about negative aspects of language acquisition. In attachment with some biological types of obstacles in acquiring a language like deafness, articulatory problems, and dyslexia, there is one last hurdle oppositely functioning in course of language learning, which is called bilingualism. Children who face a different language during school periods, it is too difficult for them to maintain their first language, and they often lose the normal range of their native language. In this case, children are said to be caught in a confusing dilemma. They haven’t completely learned their native language not have been learning the other one. â€Å"To deal with the problem, we suggest the maintenance of the first language while a second language is being learned† (Lightbown and Spata. 2010, p 26). Indeed, it is concluded that language learning is a series of interconnected stages which is progressed within the first three years of child’s age. Many psychologists and Linguists have presented different ideas about language acquisition; however, they only partially understand about how language is learned. Besides, since Language is a social phenomenon, it must be the result of some interactive means of communication between human beings. Children have some kind of innate capacities that predispose them not only learn their native language but also enables them to learn languages that are spoken in the place they live.

Brendon Gallacher and Medusa Essay

Loss is a key, reoccurring theme in my two poems of choice; ‘Brendon Gallacher’ and ‘Medusa. ’ ‘Brendon Gallacher’ is an affectionate elegy for an imaginary, eponymous childhood friend, ‘Medusa’ is a poem divided into stanzas of mostly equal length. Both poets use varying language to help the reader visualise the characters’ feelings and persona. Emptiness and loss are presented in both poems through numerous techniques including alliteration, imagery and refrain. There is a childlike quality to Jackie Kay’s elegy for the death of an imaginary friend. The persona uses simple language and a range of techniques such as colloquialism. Contrastingly, in Medusa, Duffy uses a sombre tone thought the poem which helps the poem flow naturally and contributes to the developing sorrow. In ‘Brendon Gallacher’, Jackie Kay’s use of a repetitive refrain gives a song-like quality; this is further reinforced by the interjections that show grief in the last lines: ‘Oh Brendon, Oh my Brendon Gallacher’. The passing of Brendon leaves an empty void, filled by the repetition of ‘Brendon Gallacher’, which demonstrates fixation and inability to let ones feelings pass – an emotional attachment; ‘Brendon’ as opposed to the full name previously used. The repetition of the possessive pronoun emphasizes the idea that Brendan belongs to the narrator, and emphasizes the theme of loss and longing for something that is gone. Similarly, Duffy uses evocative language immediately by beginning on the theme of obsession/mistrust. Duffy emphasises this by the list of three, â€Å"suspicion, doubt and fear† which â€Å"grew in her mind†, allowing the flow of thoughts through enjambment. This doubt and fear shows that Medusa is somewhat compulsive and has lost any freedom or ability to control her thoughts. Moreover in Brendon Gallacher, they meet ‘in the open air’, as if Brendon represents autonomy and journeying; he talks of ‘Some place far’, which offers a purpose for the narrator to live on. This is all lost with the ‘death’ of Brendon. A physical loss rather than emotional loss is demonstrated through the words â€Å"we’d been friends for years† and â€Å"he would hold my hand† which suggests there is an emptiness of physical intimacy. Similarly, Medusa was once a beautiful woman who was transformed into a horrible monster by the Greek goddess, Athena. Jealousy and paranoia transform the hair upon â€Å"Medusa’s† head, in the poem, into â€Å"filthy snakes. † Already the reader is aware of the change ‘turned the hairs’, giving the impression that she was not always like this and did at one point have beautiful hair. Both poets have used descriptive techniques and imagery to show the physical changes and loss each character has undergone. â€Å"One day when it was pouring and I was indoors†, this paragraph in Brendon Gallacher uses pathetic fallacy to make the mood evoke a loss of innocence which is reflected by the rainy weather. Immature language and description is used to help the audience visualise the narrator’s childhood, â€Å"He had six brothers and I had one† can be conveyed as quite childish and this might have been used to emphasise that the narrator is talking about her past when she was younger, her childhood emptiness and loss. Also, in Medusa the rhetorical questions, â€Å"Wasn’t I beautiful? Wasn’t I fragrant and young? † show insecurity due to the repetition of questions but also shows a side of innocence as is normally related to young people. Both poems show a loss of innocence, albeit in different ways. â€Å"Look at me now. † The single line in Medusa emphasises the final request that appears as a paradox, a plea for sympathy but also a threat. Another, loss, this time more mentally affecting, Medusa has lost control over her decisions, this is further enforced by her turning of others into stone; â€Å"bullet tears in my eyes†, â€Å"you were stone†, Medusa has lost her ability to even look at others, and much like her tears, her fate is set in stone. This varied sentence length is indulging and engrossing as it really questions the empathy of the reader. All in all, both poems have certain similarities when trying to present loss. Both ‘Brendon Gallacher’ and ‘Medusa’ use language to bring alive the thoughts of the characters. Duffy focuses more on the imagery and tone of the poem whereas Kay brings to life the exact detail to provide the full picture.

“MYD Program”

The Make Your Day Program is shaped to develop classroom management through evaluation and assessment as academic protocols in enhancing the student’s performance in school as well as with the development of the â€Å"guidance† aided by the school instructors. Consequently, on the case presented, the most efficient way to bring back the enthusiasm of the student is through the utilization of parent-teacher collaboration and Make Your Day Program philosophies—â€Å"do what is expected and do it the best you can†Ã¢â‚¬â€which provides the student the opportunity to engage in self-peer-teacher evaluation tackling their efforts and behaviors on an everyday basis with corresponding points.   Conceivably, with the aide of constant communication and opening up the emotion of the child and making the student share the presupposed reason for the actions, the predicament shall then be given ample attention and analysis so as to draw the ability of the child away from the verve of unreceptive reactions. Classroom management dilemma The speaking incentive or the pre-requisite regard towards communication strategies has been evident in educational curricula in the contemporary society.   Hence, it is undeniable that there are students who possess the utterly â€Å"shy† personality by which they are unable to air what they wish to express in classroom for reasons which are laid on the issue on health, racial discrimination, status quo or an innate sense of anxiety (Aviv, 2007). These problems are cited by communications professors as a an â€Å"academic dilemma† since that it pulls back the student from getting the whole gist of what is to be acquired in school only because there exists a cold feet in expressing their emotions—which by hand is considered as a vital factor in learning—to be able to share their thoughts.   Studies show that there are students who fail getting a degree and drop out of further education because of the crippled ability in public speaking or in effective communication by which various profession pay high regard and attention. Reference Aviv, R. (2007, November 13, 2007). Don’t Be Shy. The New York Times.      

Criminal Justice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 5

Criminal Justice - Essay Example These children lack access to basic resources such as adequate food, basic health care, safe shelter and sufficient education to make them economically independent adults. Also children whose parents engage in crime and those who are neglected or constantly abused tend to become delinquents in comparison to other children. Another issue is youth violence. The widespread fear of crime in urban areas comes as a result of juvenile violence. Statistics show that between the period of 2005 to 2010 victimization rate, arrest rate, murder rates and homicides committed by juveniles between the ages of 15 to 16 shot up by more than 100 percent (Larry, 2006). The cause for this is increased involvement of youth especially African Americans in drugs trade. Since they cannot solicit for police protection, the youths acquire guns for protecting themselves and their valuable merchandise. The youth network through schools saw a proliferation of guns throughout a majority of youth community. Other than acquiring a gun for self defense, this habit also became a symbol of status. Finally, the issue of deterrence as mitigation to the fore stated problems is of paramount importance to CJA. Though deterrence works effectively among citizens with responsibilities, it is insufficient in instilling discipline in the impulsive, unsocialized and senselessly destructive people. The issues can be ranked in order of importance for a number of reasons, i.e. Deterrence, juvenile delinquency and youth violence. If administrators and public policy makers were to take the step of bringing parents into accountability then juvenile delinquency and youth violence would issues of secondary importance to CJA system (David, 2006). Apparently incompetent, rejecting parents who do not supervise their children and those who are abusive are to blame for the antisocial behavior of displayed by their children. Other risk factors for juvenile delinquency