Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
story of survival in poverty essay
story of survival in poverty essay
story of survival in poverty essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: story of survival in poverty essay
Profile Essays Profile Essays - Grandfather, Grandpa
By definition, my grandfather is handicapped. However, he doesn't act as though he is, and he certainly does not want to be treated in any special way.
In fact, most of the handicapped people in society do not appreciate being treated in a way different from anyone else. They just want to be accepted as human beings.
Some people become handicapped as a result of an accident. Others are born with their disabilities.
My grandfather was asleep one night on a Coast Guard cutter when another ship, a destroyer, appeared in the distance. The destroyer hit my grandfather's ship in the exact spot where he was sleeping. When he awoke, he found himself in the freezing water, watching his friends swim ashore to safety. They were leaving my grandfather there to die.
Luckily, an angel in the form of a Coast guard chef rescued him and sought out help. The next thing he knew, he was in a hospital bed without legs (from the kneecap down) and with a broken neck.
I admire the fact that my grandfather resumed a normal life-style after being released from the hospital two years after his accident. Not only did he get married, but he raised six children.
He used artificial limbs for a number of years while holding a job at IBM. After a while, though, he ceased using them because they felt too unnatural. Now, while enjoying the "retired life," his mode of transportation is a wheelchair.
As a young child, I remember how my grandfather's disability affected my life. I don't think that I even knew what the purpose of his wheelchair was. To me, it was just a toy, just another toy that my cousins and I could play with.
I almost always received a wheelchair ride around the house. I can't recall my grandpa ever complaining about those long wheelchair journeys down the hall to the bedrooms and the bathroom.
I am lucky for such a wonderful role model while growing up.
The disease called Alzheimer’s is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States (Weiner, 1987). It is estimated that the elderly population will double between now and 2030. During this period, the number of elderly will grow by an average of 2.8% annually (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). By 2050, the number of people with Alzheimer’s is estimated to range from 11.3 million to 16 million (Alzheimer’s Association, 2005). These startling numbers should prompt an examination into one of the leading causes of death among this group of people. Understanding what Alzheimer’s is and the known causes of the disease are a good starting point. For those who have aging family members, knowing the risk factors and warning signs of Alzheimer’s can be beneficial to both the patient and his family. Finally, once the patient has been diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s, a plan for treatment as well as providing the family and caregivers with a support system can help ease those involved through a very challenging, heartbreaking time.
The young girl appeared to be developmentally delayed, and the two middle-aged women engaged in conversation while pushing her. When the young girl attempted to speak to the two women, her attempt at contributing to their conversation appeared to be ignored by the two women as they continued talking to one another. Because of her mental disability, she seems to be treated as childish and does not appear to be taken seriously by the two women (Johnson, 2006, p. 31), who appear more interested in each other than they do in listening to the mentally handicapped girl that they are caring for. This interaction in addition to several others seem congruent with the belief that stereotypes of disabled individuals “reportedly get in the way of full participation in… social life” (Wendell, 1996, p. 61). It appeared that nondisabled individuals would only engage with the disabled individuals if they appeared to need help of some sort, appeared to lose something or spoke directly to the nondisabled person involved in the interaction. Otherwise, nondisabled individuals and caregivers appeared to treat disabled individuals as burdensome, unimportant, or even invisible. This was particularly evident during an interaction between an elderly man in a wheelchair and a middle-aged man in a green shirt. Throughout the course of their interaction, the middle-aged man rarely spoke to the man in the wheelchair and spent more time speaking with a park employee and another guest. Additionally, there were several significant periods of time during which he would leave the man in the wheelchair alone. His actions seemed to show a lack of interest in interacting with the man in the wheelchair, as he spent less time speaking with him than he did speaking to others or leaving him completely
I am not sure if the attitude was because I was a woman, did not have a wheelchair, or because of small town politics. This is far from the first time seeing someone in spaces without tags or place cards, or spaces that are legal in size but are horribly placed on the property. There are times when I have my ankle and knee braces on but do okay without my crutches, yet I feel compelled to adjust my straps so others can see that I really belong in the handicap space. In the United States, our “healthcare” system model works on the mode of you go to the doctor when you are sick in order to get better and move on with your life. That model does not work for those with chronic, mild, or invisible disabilities. None of the people I have talked to want to be a paraplegic – although I have some friends that are – or have cancer, but our culture makes people feel guilty for being ill for too long. One is either healthy or getting cured. There seems to be little patience for those who are in between, or for those who have greater disabilities, and have the nerve to venture out without a caregiver. Similar to John Hockenberry’s experience in New York City (Hockenberry 297), those who are handicap are seen as unwanted appendages that have a nerve burden the rest of society. However, Hockenberry’s experience in Iran was glaringly different (Hockenbarry 287). He was treated with dignity and as a fluid part of the group and not as an accessory that was to be disregarded when it was out of
Beato stresses out the idea that “American psychiatric Association (APA) should add internet addiction to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)” by bringing up its consequences, he is extremely right. In its first conception, internet addiction disorder may appear as a negligible issue in our society since some of its effects are the promotion of the stupidity and the increase of the unconsciousness. An example of how ignorant and insensate we have become, Greg writes an anecdote about “the 18-year-old who choose homelessness over gamelessness” (para. 7). However, when in paragraph 8 he presents the tragic brief history of the young man who killed his mother and injured his father because they wanted to take his Xbox one, this leads us to question ourselves on how the internet can seriously affect our behavior like drugs. In addition, internet addiction has a negative impact on our mind. In other words, it may conduct to a depression. In his article Beato backs up this evidence with an example of students who qualify themselves “jittery”, “anxious”, “miserable”, and “crazy” (para.3) when they were deprived of their connections to the Internet. Finally, many young people have prefer their virtual life at the expense of their social life. They do not know what it means to communicate with other methods like a letter or a face to face communication. Greg support this idea by using a statistic graph. According to that graph, “more than 1
A lot of the times a child has a disability they are treated completely different from those who
In Greg Beato’s article “Internet Addiction” originally published in august, september 2010 in to Reason magazine he argues that internet addiction is a problem in our society today. Internet addiction should be reported in the Diagnostic and statistic manual of mental disorder (DSM). It is a huge problem, he also says that internet is like narcotic drugs and very addicting. He states that if ones use Google for few minutes only it leads us to spend more than a few minutes on the internet and it turns in to spending hours. Beato refers that University of Maryland did a group study for 24 hour and all the students went crazy without their phones and iPods, one girl admitted that she is an addict. The students were anxious and miserable. He also says that one kid killed his parents because they took away his Xbox. Internet also leads to death of people, therefore it is a problem and we should put it on to the DSM.
In our grade school years we were taught that kids with disabilities were special. We
In this generation, everyone, mostly young adults, are glued to technology. We see people walking around, looking at the ground as if they have a ball and chain dangling from their necks. We see people sitting on their chairs and looking at their computer screens long enough for their backs to hurt and their eyes water from the bright screen. People addicted to the Internet are those who pay attention to a virtual world more than their own lives. Internet addiction has corrupted people’s social lives, prevented their maturation, and induced negative behaviors. In “Internet Addiction,” Greg Beato expresses how the Internet has corrupted lives and should be added to the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Behaviors.” If we continue our
The internet is an essential tool in everyday life. The age of a person does not matter, because whether they are a teen, an adult, or an elderly person in order to stay in contact with others they will need the internet. However, the internet is dangerously addictive. Some studies say that the internet is not the addiction, but the means of getting to the addiction. The more believable of the two studies are the ones that discuss the internet being the addiction. Curtis stated in 2012 that reports on the brain are showing that people who excessively use the internet show abnormalities similar to people who suffer from substance addiction. Curtis also stated that internet addiction was becoming
Throughout this course, I am amaze by how much I’m learning about what it was and it is to be disable in today society. But just like any other crisis, it’s crazy what people with disability went through in the passed and how far they have come and. Form perceiving disability as liability to the public and rejecting people with disability in schools, work places and communities, to accepting them open heartily and having laws that helps protect the form discrimination. Staying with the topic of disability, I would like to look at both the positive and negative impact on not only an individual living with a disability but also what the family have to go throw. Many people have views about the disabled but do not have them from first hand experience. As human, it is part of our nature to be judge mental. We sometime judge without even know them or putting ourselves in their predicament, but experiencing disability first hand, I’ll say it has it ups and down.
Individuals with disabilities have physical or mental deficiencies that prevent their performing one or more major life functions in the normal way. When an individual who has disabilities, or thought to have disabilities, is for this reason treated less well than other people, or excluded from opportunities most others enjoy, that person has been subjected to disability discrimination. People tend to target them to get them to go away or to do something they can do as a lack of understanding of the disability. Just as often, however, disability discrimination is the result of thoughtlessness. Practices built on the presumption that only normal people will participate can have a negative, and therefore discriminatory, impact on people with abnormal bodies or minds.
Some people have more experience than others when it comes to children with disabilities. There are lots of types of disabilities. There are mental, physical, and learning disabilities. Scientists have found out a lot of information for people to learn and know about when it comes to the causes of the disabilities. There are people out in the world that know what a disability is like and there are also people who do not know what it is like to have or live with a person that has a disability. I am one of the many people in the world that has first hand experience with knowing someone and having a disability.
A person who has disability does not want to be recognized as handicapped, they want to be recognized for their character. Also, they want to be recognized for who they are as a person. Everyone has challenges even if there not handicapped; people with disabilities want respect. They want people to respect them and not treat different from anyone else. They do not want to be acknowledged for their handicapped. They want to be acknowledged for their education and work skills. People with disabilities do not want to be treat as disabled. They want to be valued as a useful to people (Rosado,
When it comes to the words prejudice and discrimination it’s less likely that the two are not used together. Especially when it comes to the way the world views people with disabilities. The first thought that you get when you see a person with a disability is your prejudgment of them, while discrimination takes place right after which is the action involved. Although both of these words can be seen in a positive light they tend to fall more on the negative side of many situations. Societal prejudice and discrimination of people with disabilities are very common in society. It is rare that a disability is not defined and categorized upon an individual. Although, being a PWD wouldn’t be seen as “normal” they are normal within their own group. “The increasing proportion of the population with disabilities adds new dimensions to the concept of normalcy” stated Smart. (2001).
Technology addiction is almost similar to drug addiction. Technology is useful in many ways. Using computer, internet, cellphone, television etc. make peoples’ life easier and comfortable. Young people are the most user of it. They cannot think of a single day without use technical device. Tara Parker-Pope is an author of books on health topics and a columnist for the New York Times. In her article , she expressed that, “The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland asked 200 students to refrain from using electronic media for a day. The reports from students after the study suggest that giving up technology cold turkey not only makes life logistically difficult, but also changes our ability to connect with others.” ( Parker-Pope, “An Ugly Toll of Technology: Inpatients”). Her point is that, for the young generation it is quite impossible to give up from becoming addict...