How does “place” matter in my discipline?

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While watching “Crash” I have realize how place greatly influences our daily lives more than I ever imagined. Listening to my classmates during in class discussions about their own experiences in their communities lead me to realize how my community has played an important factor in my life. Reading the articles “Integrated model of primary and secondary eye care for underserved rural areas: The L V Prasad Eye Institute experience” and “Designing a Virtual Environment Framework for Improving Guidance for the Visually Impaired” has also influenced my perspective of how place affects individuals.
Thankfully I cannot complain about my community, in my opinion it has guided me in a positive direction rather than negative. As soon as it’s time for me to start my own family I have no doubts about me buying a house and raising my family where I was raised. Unfortunately It is not always a good experience living in certain communities, as I saw in the movie “Crash”. In “Crash” we see how economy as well as ethnicity affects certain communities, which leads to affect the people within them. What I liked most about “Crash” is how it follows different people in different living styles. For example Jean Cabot was representing a white women and Daniel was a typical working Hispanic. The movie depicts both their daily lives, while people watch this it lights up a light bulb of how distinct their living styles are. I automatically saw the difference of lifestyles by how different their cars and houses were. I also noticed Daniels daughter being scared of getting shot while Jean always referred to her son as playing or sleeping. The kids alone explain how a community shapes someone. Daniel’s daughter had already seen someone get shot and this could be because her neighborhood is not the safest. On the other hand Jean’s son didn’t have to worry about getting shot because he lives in an upscale community where shootings are not common.

The article “Integrated model of primary and secondary eye care for underserved rural areas: The L V Prasad Eye Institute experience” demonstrates the success of L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in rural areas due to new health care systems. The article explains how health care offices have to be put in certain rural areas in order to reach out to those who cannot afford transportation. Also the location of where an office influences the coast of different treatments. Even though “The L V Prasad Eye Institute experience” does not use Geographic Information Systems, they tend to go to developed communities in India since it is more common for people in those communities to not have eye care centers. The fact that LVPEI reaches out to communities in need of free eye care motivates me to become part of a program like LVPEI to learn more difficult areas of eye care because they tend to have a high percentage of patients with severe eye problems.

The second article I read was “Designing a Virtual Environment Framework for Improving Guidance for the Visually Impaired” which speaks for the visually impaired community to provide them with better technology supported by GIS. Having a new piece of technology connected to Geographic Information System will guide legally blind people to their destinations faster and safer than having a white stick or depending on a helping dog. The issue with GIS in this case would affect people in cities because it usually has a positioning error that is frequently greater than 20 meters. In this case having an aid connected to GIS would create a safer environment for visually impaired people. It would not only guide people to a destination but it would also detect small items keeping blind people from hurting themselves.

Having the knowledge I have now after reading the articles I have realized GIS is useful in different ways to my discipline. Even though it was used very distinctly in both articles the outcomes were immensely influenced by location. Having the locations of underdeveloped communities in India it lead professionals to make a difference and change lives to those who had advanced eye problems. I would greatly enjoy being a part of a program who create projects like these to further my knowledge of eye problems. I would also be interested in how different communities struggle with different eye problems and how these are correlated. Having GIS technology in the blind community would also benefit many people and their families. If non visual impaired people use technology such as a GPS visually impaired people should also have the pleasure to be guided with more advanced technology. Its things like theses that I connect GIS and eye care and realize how they are both connect.

Work Cited

Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Perf. Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Paul Haggis. Pathe!, 2005. DVD.

Kammoun, S, M Macé, B Oriola, and C Jouffrais. “Designing a Virtual Environment Framework for Improving Guidance for the Visually Impaired.” Designing Inclusive Systems, (2012): 217-226.

Rao, Gullapalli N, Rohit C Khanna, Sashi Mohan Athota, Varda Rajshekar, and Padmaja Kumari Rani. “Integrated Model of Primary and Secondary Eye Care for Underserved Rural Areas: The L V Prasad Eye Institute Experience.” Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, 60.5 (2012): 396-400

Blog Post # 2 -How to Read like a Writer

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Reading like a writer is being able to analyze the text and find out why the author wrote the way they did. Being able to depict what decisions they made in order for the text to come across in such manner. The one main thing that should be established in the beginning of the text is who the intended audience and what is the purpose of the piece.

I chose to write about a short story written by Corbitt Nesta titled ” Responsibility and Corruption on Elm Avenue.”  This is a story about an elderly white woman in her 80’s befriending a black 17 year old boy in high school whose intial quest was to teach her how to send emails. Like most situations it wasn’t just that it was about friendship and inevitably what happens to often in society.

Just from the beginning of the story, I was able to make the assumption that piece would address the issues on race. Secondly, I had to figure out who the audience was, based on the information that was given and how it was given I would say this short story is intended for an educational purpose.  Lastly what you need to ask yourself is why did the author decide to write this, was it because she wanted to bring light to friendship, the struggle of black youth in society, or to live out the old lady’s story.

It is now once you have an answer to these question that you can begin to understand why Corbitt Nesta constructed the story the way she did. She began by introducing the situation in why Helen the elder lady would need Arsenius the boys help; to be able to send emails. Then how their friendship developed; her need with computers and his love of her ’57 chevy. It is then that Nesta began to explore the friendship they developed and how Helen began to care about what happened to Arsenius. It was then that story began to develop fully and when it takes a drastic turn. It is now that the author decided to show that not everything works out. The story continues by explaining how Helen and the Arsenius get into an argument because she feels that he is beginning to make the wrong decision by who he is associating with. It in now that the story takes a turn for the worst. With the next part the author decided to leave the ending to your own interpretation. What happen next after their argument is that they no longer spoke; but a day after the words “racist bitch” had been written across her garage. Then Helen was informed a week later that Arsenius had been in a fight and was badly injured. She was the only one who had been the hospital when he passed away a day after.  It is now that Corbitt Nesta left you to decide what is that happened.  I will share my opinion but it’s what I believe to happen. Was is that the crowd that Arsenius was hanging out with got upset about the argument he had gotten in and wrote those things. Then that Arsenius got into the fight to defend Helen from his associates.

Based on the story you can see why the author decided to write it the way she did and the purpose for it. It’s only after closely reading and understanding the concept of the story do you realize who it is intended for and what the purpose behind it was.  Learning to read like a writer is learning to analyze the concept behind the story and build from it in your own writing.

Nesta, Corbitt. “Short Stories: Responsibility and Corruption on Elm Avenue by Corbitt Nesta.” Short Stories: Responsibility and Corruption on Elm Avenue by Corbitt Nesta. Eclectica Magazines, Aug. 2005. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. <http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/RespCorr.shtml>.
Bunn, Mike.”How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 1. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2010. 71-86. Writing Spaces. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.

Blog #4: Metaphors

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My first metaphor of choice is “A Thousand Rules and Three Principles”, meaning that writers often get writer’s block because they try to follow so many rules, but there are only three real principles you need to abide by. Basically the principles state that you should write what your are passionate about, tell and show the story, and conform to the audience/ purpose you are writing for (4, Reid). In my writing I often get distracted by all the guidelines I am supposed to follow from previous teachers and my professors now, so I at times get very overwhelmed with all I am required to incorporate into my writing.

“Lost Money and Thank-You Notes: What’s in an Audience” demonstrates that with everything you write, including thank-you notes you have to write for your specific audience and secondary audience.For example, if you were writing a thank-you note to your grandma it would be informal and more personable; verses a thank-you note to a professor or boss would be formal and professional. It’s forming your writing to fit the audience and what is being asked of you. While I was in Girl Scouts we had to write short letters to friends and family to let them know I was selling cookies, if you made the letter more personable or explained what the cookie money was going towards you were more likely to receive an order.

“Fruit Jell-O: Balancing Arguments & Examples” illustrates that good writing is a balancing act between your arguments and evidence. If you have too many arguments your text becomes very boring and bland and too much evidence or reasoning makes your reader confused about the point of the piece. I find this metaphor to be very useful to keep in mind throughout my writing because I sometimes get carried away with presenting too many arguments and not explaining them as well as I should have. This at times creates an issue upon my writing because it makes what I’m writing very dull and my audience loses interest. So I recognize that using the Jell-O act of balancing is both beneficial to me as a writer and to my audience.

“Wash-and-wear Paragraph” refers to very difficult task of trying to decide how long your paragraphs should be and all those rules your professors told you to follow while writing. It is important to keep in mind that every paragraph is different and serves a particular need in your paper, much like different loads of laundry. Throughout school every teacher had a different rule for writing paragraphs, mostly saying that your paragraph had to be a certain length. Writing a paragraph and having it in the back of your mind that it needs to be X amount sentence is often overwhelming, but this metaphor explains that paragraphs need to meet only the requirement of stating your idea and keeping your reader the loop.

My final metaphor is “Hey Hey Hey and the Textbook Conspiracy: Annotating Your Reading”, this metaphor explains the benefits of writing while you read. When you make notes in the margin of the text your reading or all over the page you are fully processing and analyzing what you are reading. It enhances your reading and you become a better writer if you are able to sort out the most important things in the text you are reading. My freshman year of high school my teacher always nagged the class to annotate while we read and I remember hating it because it does require more work and time. After not annotating for multiple passages and books we read, I came to the conclusion that it easier to annotate now while reading then having to go back and reread the entire passage because you forgot the key points.

Works Cited

Reid, E. Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students.” Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 2. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2011. 3-23. Writing Spaces. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.

Crayola Think Ahead 6-10

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A new re-branding of Crayola's 24 crayons packaging. for 3-6 years old kids
A new re-branding of Crayola’s 24 crayons packaging. for 6-10 years old kids

Crayola Think Ahead

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A new re-branding of Crayola's 24 crayons packaging
A new re-branding of Crayola’s 24 crayons packaging. for 3-6 years old kids

Place and Healthcare

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Throughout the course so far, I have developed a much greater understanding of how place can impact people and how place matters. I still believe that where people come from is not a tell-all of who they will become in their future life, but rather, place gives people a jumping off point from which they can grow and become their own person. In this regard, while place does give influence, I would not say that it is the primary variable that matters. Having said that, I am now much more able to comprehend how place can impact us in different ways.

Place can play a great role in culture and worldview. I found that, when we were sharing where we came from as a class, that some people have a personality that bodes well with the neighborhood that they came from. Similarly, with Rosalba’s activity regarding the prices and sizes of housing in Oxnard, it is easy to see how even within a relatively small area there can be a great deal of variation in the community demographics. One house was located in La Colonia, which is historically Latino/a ethnicially, while the other was only a short distance away in a much wealthier beach neighborhood of Oxnard. It used to be difficult for me to think of such great variety in place on such a small small scale, believing that cities were mostly homogenous in their ethnic and financial demographics. This was also shown in our work with the Social Explorer system in how between census tracts that are immediately adjacent to one another there can be variance in the percentage of low income families or of ethnic diversity.

We have also discussed how place can influence health, which does fall into my area of study. In the video comparing the neighborhoods of High Point and Richmond, we could see a great deal of difference by the time High Point was renovated. High Point incorporated sidewalks and community gardens, as well as parks, all of which promote healthy living and safety in the community. Richmond, however, is a food desert. Its residents do not have access to grocery stores that supply healthy and fresh food; in turn, they wind up consuming primarily fast food or other snack foods from convenience and liquor stores. The limited amount of fresh food that they do have access to is often out of their price range due to the “poverty tax” that puts a premium on these goods. This is the sort of thing that, because of where I grew up, I never had to worry about, since the closest grocery store was never any further than a mile away.

The first article that I chose to analyze focuses less on treating place as a cause, and instead treats place as a result of other socio-demographic factors. The article examines place of death across Switzerland, particularly in regards to whether the elderly move to a nursing home prior to time of death or whether they die at home. Some of the factors contributing to home deaths were socio-economic position (SEP) and number of children, as it was predicted that those with a higher SEP were more likely to be in better general health and thus not be admitted to hospitals or nursing homes, and those with children had more family members to take care of them and did not require as much attention from a nursing staff (Hedinger et. al 7-8). I found this article interesting primarily in its treatment of place as the dependent rather than independent variable, which parallels my individual perspective on the relationship between people and place. In regards to my discipline, since I plan on working with the elder population, gaining knowledge of the reasons older individuals seek care in a nursing home or hospital is extremely significant to my field of study.

My second article of choice examines the relationship between place of residence and stroke hospitalization and death, particularly across the state of Florida. The team used ArcGIS software in order to link the data regarding mortality and hospitalization rates to the individual county geographic data that they received from the US Census Bureau (Robertson et. al 3). In their results, it was found that while there was no significant evidence of risk of hospitalization for stroke based on place, there was a much greater risk of stroke mortality in the northern part of the state. Based on the demographics for this region, there is a possibility that the cause of the greater mortality rate lies in the fact that northern Florida is much more rural than southern Florida. Part of the issue could be lack of timely emergency care in these areas (Robertson et. al 7-8). This study particularly increased my confidence in the idea that within my discipline it is possible to study spatial discrepancies between less populated areas and their overall access to proper health care and facilities.

Throughout our time in University 298, I have found that location can extraordinarily crucial in the examination of health care, whether it be because of an environmental factor affecting the quality of life of residents in a particular city, or whether it be because of lack of access to basic necessities for healthy living such as fresh food or hospitals. I am now confident in my abilities to apply what we have been practicing in class with the Social Explorer data, as well the techniques that I have been learning in my Social Statistics course in order to produce an individual research project to present at SAGE this May.

Works Cited

Hedinger, Damian, Julia Braun, Ueli Zellweger, Vladimir Kaplan, and Matthias Bopp. “Moving to and Dying in a Nursing Home Depends Not Only on Health- An Analysis of Socio-Demographic Determinants of Place of Death in Switzerland.” PLoS ONE 9.11 (2014). Web.

Roberson, Shamarial, Matthew Dutton, Megan Macdonald, and Agricola Odoi. “Does Place of Residence or Time of Year Affect the Risk of Stroke Hospitalization and Death? A Descriptive Spatial and Temporal Epidemiologic Study.” PLoS ONE 11.1 (2016). Web.