Category Archives: ENGL191

Multiple source paper

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Thesis: There is a conflict between psychological sciences and religion in that psychology is based on empirical evidence and religion is based in faith. Religion is pathologized among psychologists and it shows implicitly within the clinical setting. The client takes offense to the insult, whether he/she shows it or not, and often can leave the clinical setting worse off than he/she entered.

How many sides to an argument is too many? Can an argument get cluttered with too many counter-arguments?

Can my thesis be at the end of my paper rather than in the introductory paragraph?

If I only have content analysis as evidence in my argument, is that enough?

What are some formats for a good multiple source paper?

Is it possible to not have a definitive conclusion until all my evidence and reasons are on paper first?

Khadija Ali and Hanna Belay

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I liked how Professor Belay incorporated covid into the presentation and lead it into health disparities. I thought it was interesting how she mentioned that there were health disparities existing in the black community before covid and how that pre-existing condition is what contributed to the heightened risk of covid among Black Americans. Also, when she was talking about the ICU she said “nurses who work in the cancer, in the oncology unit or manage patients with cancers, they do have a lot of responsibilities treating not only the disease, the cancer, or the treatment but also the emotional health of the patients.” This may not be about my topic but it inspired me because I will be a nursing student soon.

I like how Khadija said that when she does her treatment of an individual, she keeps in mind whether the client has religious preferences or not and, whatever the answer, she respects it and uses there preference in their treatment plan. I kind of knew she would go in that direction because she is religious herself. To have that perspective is helpful to my topic because I can get to know what works in incorporating spirituality into a treatment plan. I will be interviewing her in the next week or so and I want to get her opinion if educating non-religious mental health professionals in religion is a good idea or if it should be an area of study for all who are on the mental health tract in college no matter what their religious preference is. I would also like to know if she has ever experienced religious bias within the mental health field and what she thinks about it happening to clients. Also if she has any alternative methods of dealing with religious bias withing the clinical setting. I like how she said she wants to make sure she knows where the client is coming from before she administers any treatment and makes herself aware of any bias she might harbor against, for instance, a Christian, because she Muslim. This tells me that she understands religious bias more so than some of her secular counterparts in the mental health field. I love the fact that she believes religion and hope and therapy work hand in hand.

 

Presentation 11/10/20

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Theresa Heck, Professor of Kinesiology, School of Education, at St. Cloud State Universty stated, “change is glacial, its an ongoing process.” What she was referring to is the ever changing diversity in schools and how schools and their teachers are implementing change in terms of welcoming minorities into the fold. A government claims that we are all equal but Heck refers to equality as “unfair,” “Equal is like a race in that we all start in the same place but,” its not fair in terms of black and white, or disability and non-disability. Or in the example Heck demonstrates for us, a monkey and a fish trying to climb a tree, the monkey would obviously get the banana before the fish would.

Theresa Heck had a lot of knowledge on the climate of schools and how to teach in them. I suppose she has to because she teaches teachers. I don’t know how I would implement her presentation into my topic, they are seemingly unrelated but if I was writing about diverse climates in the classroom and the social injustices that go with them I would have many things to implement. She had a lot of information and she moved quite quickly through it all. I wanted to watch part of it again but I didn’t see a link for the recording. Anyways, thank you for having Prof. Heck present for us and I look forward to hearing the other presenters.

Presentations

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In response to Shawn Williams, I observed that there is much being done in the teaching of new peace officers about bias in the field and in the workplace. I like the fact that it is not tolerated at any rate. In response to Smith’s question, “what makes a community safe?” I would like to answer that justice creates a safe community. Actions have consequences whether its a law broken or a name called, the policing and teaching of such events helps a community to be in harmony, and if someone interrupts that harmony, the police along with other members of the society quiets the belligerent so that the community can go on in the rhythm and rhyme that was before the interruption. Another thing that helps a community be safe is the community itself doing there part in creating a safe space for everyone. In this pandemic, I have observed the goodness of people, and the willingness of people to do what it takes not only to keep others safe but also in created ways of getting people involved. In the midst of social distancing we have found ways to socialize safely. Other things that keep a community safe is showing love and compassion everywhere you go. You have no idea the horrible day someone could be having and how just saying hello could brighten their day. Which brings me to Dr. Moriaty, I love how at the beginning she spoke of the politically correct way to refer to persons’ who struggle with homelessness and not only homelessness but also mental illness and other unfortunate events/crisis that people face. You never know how or why a person is in the position they are in or why they are the way they are. I know that the ways in which I was homeless and the reasons why are bigger than me just being a failure at life. It had to do with the support I had, my mental health at the time, my addiction, my religion, my perceptions, and the world around me with all its influences that I somehow couldn’t fight at the time, housing situations. It was much more than ‘go get a job.’ Same with my mental health problem, I didn’t choose this for myself and the same is true for many others, if not all others. I can connect a lot of the social workers’ perspective to my topic more so than with the criminal justice aspect. The fact that social work works so closely with mental health could provide me with some of the knowledge I need to back some of my reasons.

Work Cited: Williams, Shawn and Sheila Moriarty. “In Class Presentations.” Examining Today’s Social Issues, English 191, 5 nov. 2020, Zoom Conference

Multiple Source Essay

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The topic I will be covering is, ‘should health professionals be allowed to discredit a persons religious beliefs when dealing with mental health.’ The reason I am interested in this topic is because I have faced mental health issues for a long time and in my belief the issues come from a spiritual basis rather than a mental one. The things I deal with on a daily basis are voices condemning me and my past actions/sins. Voices that continually are against God even though I am for him. Voices that want me to sin against God and that become worse when I go to church or kneel to pray. I can hear these voices as clear as someone physically talking to me. These voices have lead me to hate God for not taking them away and with no hope I have wanted to die and never wake up. As such, I have sought the help of mental health professionals who reject such ideas as to a God and demons and Satan. Because of this when I talk to these therapists and psychologists they tell me these voices stem from my own thoughts. They stem from my past experiences and they are not real. When they say these things I feel they are insulting me. I feel they are telling me to reject my faith in the bible and what it says. Jesus talks of demon possession, that evil spirits can get into a human being and make them think, feel, and act in ways otherwise they wouldn’t. He says that satan tempts people to worry, and blame God, and to doubt God, how would he do this unless he were in you tempting you, thinking inside of you to do against God exactly like these voices I hear do? How can a therapist tell me that these things are not real when none of there treatments work in pacifying the “spirits” I hear. How can these mental health professionals tell me that what the bible says is wrong? How can they tell me that God isn’t real along with the other spirits that come with believing in him? I have rejected God to trust in medication that don’t work. I have tried to open my mind to maybe these things are just in my head and are a product of my past and my imagination run amuk. Also, an example of something these therapists say to me is that because I am so ashamed of my past sins, that is the reason these voices tell me that I’m condemned. This is when I believe within myself that I am not condemned, I believe that Jesus died for me and saved me from condemnation so how at the same time could I be telling myself that I am condemned, like these voices are my own voice?

What I would like to do is get the viewpoint of religion from various healthcare professionals. Learn why they prefer alternative treatments to spirituality. Learn why they tell me my belief in the bible is wrong. I also want to get the perspective of others that believe in religion rather than mental health practices. I would like to come at this article I am going to write from an outside view and leave much of my experience out of the picture. My argument is against the implicit bias of health professionals toward Christians and their beliefs.

 

Reaction Essay Article

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Work Cited:

Smith, Owen M. “Introducing the Universalization Principle.” Children’s Voice, vol. 20, no. 2, Mar. 2011, pp. 14–16. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rzh&AN=104653821&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Observation: The reason I picked this trade article is because psychology interests me. I couldn’t find an article that I I could contradict, like the example reaction essays that we read, so I picked one that I could interact with on a deeper level because of my interest in it.

Reading Reflection #2 ENG 191

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Observation: I chose Cultivating a Culture: Implementing Methods to Embrace Diversity and Inclusion, by Barbara S. Jacobs et al., because I have been a judgemental person in my past and want to educate myself a bit about diversity. I am also going to be a nurse or doctor some day and wanted to see what the healthcare field was doing in regards to embracing everyone for who they are instead of ostracizing whole cultures. The article mentions implicit bias and how they were implementing plans to reduce it.

Relevance: My topic is youth homelessness and what caused it. At the moment. I believe that genetics makes us who we are and tells us what our behavior will be like. If my father did; there is a good chance I will too. So this moves beyond why we become homeless to how we become black, or gay, or someone who gives up, or someone who is smart, and why we are judged for it and how do we fix it, or does it need to be fixed? I believe some of it does, like the homelessness and giving up in my genes; that needs to go. But does the black need to be cleansed from our genes? Hell no, and neither does lesbian, or gay, or transgender. Or does it? Was there a point in time when a baby is woven together that somehow the girl DNA was woven into the mind of a boys body? Is it a defect or is it normal? These are just ideas formulating in my mind but what is it? All I do know is that the people that this happened to don’t deserve to be judged. Corrected, yes, some. But judged and ridiculed and ostrasized? No.

Argument: I would say that the main objective of the article was to make it known, for one, that discrimination against every culture that is different from what we have portrayed as normal for generations is still a problem, and two, what are we doing/going to do about it. The argument in this article resides in a hospital in Annapolis, Maryland named Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC), and goes out to all other healthcare professionals who care to listen. They have “cultivated a culture” of professionals and leaders who are inclusive to diversity. Their plan of action includes; performance metrics which is a system that reads the performance of workers and judges them on things like equity and equality, business resource groups who have meetings, discussions, and even role-playing on subjects within implicit bias and the like, they have implemented programming to educate workers on all the different cultures and languages, and finally, they are moving toward acceptance of every culture, including LGBTQ individuals as well as African Americans and Hispanics and the like, onto the workforce within hospitals and other healthcare centers. This is an argument of compassion and love and of what healthcare providers and others want the near future to look like within hospitals and eventually everywhere else.

Reading Reflection #1 for ENG 191

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Observation: In reading “A Hidden Healthcare Crisis: Youth Homelessness,” by Marita Schifalacqua et al., I noticed that I can resonate a lot of what I was reading to myself. There were many times I was homeless as a youth or without a permanent address, and it rolled over into adulthood as I faced homelessness on countless occasions in my late 20’s and early thirties and it contributed to my addictions and sexual deviance. The social injustice in this, I would say, is on the part of parents and their insufficient way of living and there abuse to there kids and on behalf of social services who were not equipped for developmental issues back is 1989 as we are today. I believe I can trace my homelessness as a youth and as an adult to being in multiple fosters homes and seeming to always be in limbo as an infant and into adolescence. Just in 2013, the US government started tracking statewide youth homelessness, as it said in the article, and between that time and 2020 started making connections between youth homelessness vs. adult homelessness and human development/drugs/sex trafficking. Why did it take so long? Youth homelessness has been an issue since way before the 1800’s, they didn’t notice the effects of this back then? Or if they did, why didn’t they do anything substantial about it back then? Because it is still happening hundreds of years later. What can end it permanently? Can it be done? Reading this article though I can tell that we have made great strides, or at least Nevada has. This article was addressed to the rest of the nation and beyond. Why is this only happening in Nevada?

Relevance: As you can see from my observation, if I have a topic, It is quite broad at the moment. I didn’t even have one in mind until I read this article. Youth homelessness and what caused it. This article points out many reasons like abuse at home, criminal activity, parental substance abuse , or rejection, but I want to dig deeper into the mental health aspect on a generational scale. I believe it is a huge problem but we haven’t even grazed it yet.

Argument: Youth homelessness is a healthcare problem. With youth homelessness comes risks of pregnancy, std’s, mental health, suicide, and other illnesses. In many cases, young people haven’t the know how to take care of themselves and don’t want to seek healthcare for fear of judgement or getting reported to authorities. The Global Nursing Exchange in league with the Nevada Partnership for homeless youth (NPHY) and other homeless youth service providers formed a coalition to help cure youth homelessness. They created ways to “break down the barriers that often prevent unaccompanied homeless youth from accessing needed healthcare,” (A Hidden Healthcare Crisis: Youth Homelessness pg. 193), by bringing free healthcare to where homeless youths like to hang out, by parking their mobile healthcare van, which offers a plethora of healthcare services, outside the NPHY drop-in center to administer to youths in need, and by fundraising and gaining new partnerships to help stop the spread of youth homelessness and the horrors that come with it. The authors of this article wanted to give the world the news of how this epidemic could be taken care of. If it was done in Las Vegas, Nevada, it can be done everywhere else. To reiterate, youth homelessness is not just a problem for the various communities that have these young people running around unaccompanied, but it is also a problem for Healthcare professionals everywhere and the cure is a global effort.

Work Cited: A Hidden Healthcare Crisis: Youth Homelessness, by Marita Schifoloqua RN, MSN, NEA-VC, FAAN, Arash Ghafoori, MA, and Melissa Jacobowitz, MPA. These are their references:

 

Narrative Essay

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I decided that I would like to talk about 2 social injustices. One on how I, as a Christian, was persecuted for trusting in the bible, and two, how the bible made me judgmental of everything that came against what I perceived as true from the bible, like homosexuality, same sex marriage, sex outside of marriage and the like.  I will also touch on how I tried to use the word in every facet of life, from giving advice to rebuking the devil and others who contradicted my judgement and therefore God’s judgment. I picked this topic because it offers both sides of the argument and explains how both parties were being discriminated. I have learned though and will continue to learn while writing this essay, and beyond, that to live in this life and to be a good person you have to put judgments aside, otherwise you won’t make it. This topic has made me challenge my beliefs, and I have decided to not be a Christian, partly because of the other side that I wouldn’t look at. Part of my essay will include bits of history about Native Americans and what the bible, coupled with white Europeans, did to them in the name of greed masked by a plight of reform and making the native people a civilized race along with the whites. This essay will also involve facets of my mental disability and how I came to be a christian and have the views I had regarding judgement.

It happened 4 years ago when I was released from prison. I had been baptized there and was looking to live a christian life . I started hearing very small and subtle voices in my head saying, “daaaavvviiiddd, daviiiiiiddddd, daviiiidddd!” The only logical course for me was to ask, “What? Who is this?” Then the voices gradually got stronger and louder and started saying to me, “your worthless,” or “wiiise choices,”or, “if you didn’t want this then why’d you do what you did?” And another one they say is, “be gay,” and much more. No doubt a lot of you are probably wondering what voices in my head has to do with social injustice. To me? Everything! I thought these voices were demons come to persecute me for being a Christian, that’s when I really started taking everything in the bible literally and seriously, and consequently, when I started judging gay people along with pretty much the whole entire population of the world for not living by the bible, but living as sinners with no regret for what they were doing against God. This religion led me to live as a Christian monk at a monastery for a year until I realized, with all my praying, and chanting, and worshipping, none of these voices were going away, so there was only one of two conclusions, God condemned me, or, God doesn’t exist and I’m mentally ill. It took me awhile to face the music, even when I left the monastery to live with my Native American friend, Aliina. I didn’t want to believe it. This is where the story begins, this is where I really gave not being a christian a second thought because of the horrors Aliina’s ancestors went through. “How could God sit by while all this is happening, or let it happen?” “He isn’t real, or he wants this to happen, which is sick and demented.” This woman played the horrors of her ancestry back to me time and time again after I invoked God as part of one of our conversations, or arguments. She asked me, “how can a god let slavery happen?” I found myself questioning that, along with many other terrible happenings from the past and the present. This isn’t what I mean by discrimination.

When Aliina saw me reading the bible in her room she said to me, “why is that book in my room,” or “what makes that book so special that you trust in it whole heartedly,” my answer was “faith,” and she laughed. “David, its just a damn book that men wrote a long time ago to keep order,” “Jesus was a good person, thats all he was, a good person that got killed like Martin Luther King, he isn’t the son of God!!” Then came the talk. “When whites came over here, we, Native Americans fed them, and showed them how to hunt and fish so they wouldn’t starve to death and what did they do in return? Raped and murdered women and children and killed the men of the tribes. Then the ones they didn’t kill they made march the trail of tears to reservations, many died on the way there. Then they made us forget our traditions to pick up their traditions, made us wear white people clothes and taught us the bible. They seeked to make white men and women out of the natives.” I could not refute the latter without preaching to her and making her mad so I kept silent. “Why is she attacking my religion?” “Is she with the voices in my head? The demons?” “Its like she’s trying to get me to quit being a Christian.” Sometimes the conversations were about what was on the t.v, “Trannies have there own show now?” “Whats wrong with that David? Your stupid bible is making you judge people, you know, in my culture gay people were celebrated because the Creator endowed them with wisdom more so than the rest of us.” I almost laughed, “The bible says that the sexually immoral will have their reward in the lake of fire, I don’t want to hear this gay crap.” “Maybe your gay David, don’t your voices tell you to be gay?”

Judge not, lest you be judged. I judged Aliina for being a liberal and I attacked her heritage in the process. Aliina then judged me and that book I read, in turn insulting my religion. These attacks on both sides separated us naturally and we almost quit being friends. I used to believe in obeying your master, even if they are harsh or fools, like President Trump. Don’t gossip against them or put them dont like the news does, so I defended him when Aliina bashed him one time. She told me, “if your going to be a trump supporter then we are not friends.” I hung up on her. Then I thought about it, “I don’t know enough about trump and republicans to let this ruin our friendship,” so I called her back and told her that and apologized. This is the story of all my judgments when I was a Christian, my Christianity pushed not only Aliina away from me but many others. I didn’t hide it, I wore it on my shoulder. It wasn’t until I really started thinking about everything, from this conversation to slaughter in America right down to the voices in my head that I really started thinking, maybe I’m wrong.

 

 

Reading Reflection #1: Critical Thinking

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The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right Questions:

1 .Some values that critical thinkers have are adventure, ambition, autonomy, comfort, excellence, justice, rationality, tolerance, and spontaneity. To be honest, I didn’t hear any of these discussed along with our going over the classroom agreement. I would say though, that autonomy and tolerance are up there on the list of things to value within this class because within the class agreement are things like being non-judgemental and being respectful of others’ ideas and opinions.

2. The difference between strong sense and weak sense critical thinking is that weak sense is used for the sole purpose of defending beliefs and strong sense is used to evaluate beliefs, even the ones that we, ourselves, hold. I think strong sense critical thinking, to speak from experience, is harder to use because as a christian I didn’t want other points of view to contaminate my own. I didn’t want my judgement clouded so I rejected all other opinions other than my own. As a christian I held my beliefs closely and judged everyone around me for being the way they were. If anyone tried to question my beliefs I was quick to rebuke them with beliefs formed from the words of a book written 2000 years ago. Recent events though have caused me to re-evaluate my position and I have opened up to the possibility of there being no god and my judgements were for nothing. This will open me to new ways of thinking. Although christianity did give me useful values like prudence and tolerance, and compassion and peace and goodwill toward men, those values were very closed off by the judgements that religion had me take up. Now I can use those values in a whole world of people that might have different ways of thinking and being that before I would’ve just, potentially, dismissed. Also, If I was still a christian, taking this class, this book would’ve gotten me down quite a bit. The way it talks of rebelling against those that try to get you to believe a certain way or to be a certain way would have thrown me into the belief that the writer of this book is anti-christ and this book would have been in one ear and out the other. This book also called most christians weak minded through the use of the weak sense critical thinking because they don’t likely stray from the faith and will guard it tooth and nail, which I would say is still a pretty strong way of thinking and the book insults that way of life. Most of the ways of thinking in this book is dangerous to christians and that is why they won’t likely open up to the strong sense critical thinking, but now that I am not a christian I find this a breath of fresh air, freeing, and invigorating.

3. An argument in this class is a way to harness and grow our conclusions and those of others. It is a learning experience based on evidence, not a way to verbally abuse someone or put someone down. The books’ definition of an argument does not rely on “me” being right, whereas, often, in arguments between parents or friends, the outcome relies on who’s right and who’s wrong.

4. Everyone has there own opinion of how or why, things should be done. In my opinion there are many, “right answers,” and the one we choose should be respected unless it endangers someones’ life.

“Why Questioning?”

  1. I can relate to this chapter. In the deciding to come back to college I answered a huge question. I haven’t been the most successful person, to say the least. I was looking at my life and asked myself, “where am I going to be in ten years?”Am I going to still be working dead end jobs, trying my best just to survive? I want a wife, kids, a house, and other nice things. I can’t get any of that being a loser. I need to do something, and fast. So I applied for college and decided I am going to be a doctor. I am going to work my ass off to get what I want.
  2. I think it has a lot to do with the beliefs that are thrown at us growing up. If the answers are already in us, what’s the point of asking questions? Just do what has already been laid out for us. Also, I think it has to do with our insecurities. If we constantly believe we can’t achieve what others have and more, then we slink into what’s comfortable and stop striving. No more questions. “I can’t do that, that dream is way to big.” Then I tell you the dream is truly dead. Until you start thinking otherwise and just go for it. Bezos, Jobs, and Einstein obviously didn’t let poor thinking get in the way of them reaching the heights that they achieved.
  3. As a student I have to ask questions to succeed. I have to ask questions to gain the knowledge that I need to do well in anything that I aspire to do. As a doctor, I guess one question I should ask right now is, “do I want to be the kind of doctor that uses old techniques to diagnose and treat patients, or do I want to be the kind of doctor that will discover and build new ways of diagnosing and treating patients?”