Sophomore Research Paper

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During this whole month, I have been working on my sophomore research paper in my modern world history class. For this paper, I am supposed to either write about one country that is affected by three problems or one problem that affects three countries. I decided to write about overpopulation, disease, and communism in China. I chose to write about this because I thought that I would easily be able to find information on China since its a big, well-known country. While looking up information, I read a lot of things that I have never known before about China.

I never knew that China had such a bad environment. I used to think that China didn't have much pollution because I imagined it to be a place with a lot of farm land and not technologically advanced. I found some surprising statistics though. I found out that 320 million have no clean drinking water, seventy percent of lakes and rivers are polluted, and ninety percent of groundwater is polluted. The result of so much pollution is leading to a series of diseases. 400,000 people die of pollution-related diseases every year. Birth defects have been doubled in the last decade; More babies are born with excess fingers and toes.

The communist party is the most powerful party in the country. Even though the government consists of three groups, only the communist has power; the military and state council have little to no power. The communist party keeps a close watch on the public and does whatever it takes to uphold power. They forbid posters that criticized its policies, all religious activities are to be authorized by the government, and they tightly regulate the internet. This limits the freedom of the Chinese people. I have learned a lot through doing this research paper.

my dreams of the future

After I finish high school, I want to move far away from home. I want to go live in LA and go to a community college. I already planned to move in with Michelle; we've been talking about it since last year. We planned on how to be cheap and the different things that we're going to do like going shopping, going to the gym, having movie nights, etc. I decided community college would be the best for me because it is not as difficult as UC's or state universities, so I won't be as stressed. With more time in my hands, I can do more things that I want to do and enjoy my first years as an adult. I can get a job and take classes that I want to take like sports and art classes.



After two years in community, I'm going to transfer to a university. I'm not exactly sure where want to go; at the moment, I don't know what I want to study and have a career in. I used to want to be a doctor or nurse, but after thinking about it for a while, I think that it takes too much schooling. I also thought about working at like a grocery store or department store, but I might not be able to scratch a living off of such a low income and if that's the case, then I didn't need to go to college in the first place.



My career is undecided, but my other goals in life are to travel around the world. I want to go to Africa, China, Cambodia, Mexico, France, etc. to be exposed to new culture and sights. I might even move from the US and go live in Hong Kong. Hong Kong seems like an interesting place to live in; I heard that they have good food and shopping there. Also, I want to adopt kids in poor countries or support some through Compassion. I hope that my future will be a happy one and that I will live a long, fulfilling life.

After reading the article about portion distortion making American people fat, I decided to google the french diet because I was bored and had nothing to do. I found a lot of interesting facts. I found out that even though the French people smoke, drink alcohol and eat fattening foods, they are still able to stay slim. The reason for this is that the French eat way smaller portions than the ones served in America. They also take their time eating; dinner can take up to three hours. By eating at a much slower pace, they realize that they are full without consuming massive amounts of food. When they eat, they don't multitask, like watching TV or reading, allowing them to savor every bite. The foods they eat are fresh,wholesome, and have high quality. They usually do not eat processed foods.
Besides eating less, daily exercise contributes to their success of staying slim. In America, you see people exercising vigorously, desperately trying to burn calories, but in France people don't need to go to the gym because they get enough exercise from daily activities. It's easy to be active daily because they walk as a way of transportation instead of relying on cars and people usually don't stay at home to watch TV because French TV is not a very good source of entertainment. People walk to a number of stores to purchase goods; a pastry shop for dessert, a bakery for baguettes, a butcher shop for meat, etc. They are not lazy to take the stairs in the place of elevators and escalators. This French way of life is slowly declining due to the appearance of many more fast food places in France. They are receiving more exposure to the American culture. It is possible that France will soon have higher statistics of obesity.

(4.) Though this group of children, almost all of whom were White, did not live near a large Native American population and probably had had little if any personal interaction with American Indians, they all had internalized an image of what Indians were like. How did they know? Cartoon images, in particular the Disney movie Peter Pan, were cited by the children as their number-one source of information. At the age of three, these children already had a set of stereotypes in place. Though I would not describe three-year-olds as prejudiced, the stereotypes to which they have been exposed become the foundation for the adult prejudices so many of us have.

I annotated this paragraph by underlining things like "had little if no personal interaction with American Indians" and "Disney movie Peter Pan". I asked where to kids got the misconception of what they looked like from since they have never seen one before and it is not a common topic that is talked about. I noted that I thought Disney movies were good for kids to watch. I think that these two pieces of the paragraph are significant because it it explains kids as little as three years have stereotypes andwhat is responsible for it. From reading this paragraph I asked myself whether I got my conceptions of Indians from watching that movie also and I think I did or at least through some type of movie.



(13.) To say that it is not our fault does not relieve us of responsibility, however. We may not have polluted the air, but we need to take responsibility […] for cleaning it up. Each of us needs to look at our own behavior. Am I perpetuating the negative messages in our culture, or am I seeking to challenge them? If I have not been exposed to positive images of oppressed groups, am I seeking them out, expanding my own knowledge base? Am I acknowledging my own prejudices, thereby minimizing the impact they might have on my interactions with others? Unless we engage in these and other acts of reflection and reeducation, we easily repeat the process with our children. We teach what we were taught. The unexamined prejudices of the parents are passed on to the children. It is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to interrupt this cycle.

I circled all the ways in the paragraph to deal with prejudice like being exposed to positive images or engaging in reflection and reeducation. I linked them all to "we are not at fault" in the previous paragraph. I noted that even though we are not at fault we should not just leave our prejudices as it is. I also underlined the last line because I agree with it. If we don't disrupt this cycle, the next generation will continue to follow in our steps of prejudging other. People should get to know people first before coming to conclusions about them. This makes it more fair and people will less likely get offended.

tennis

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This past summer I started to play tennis and even tried out for the team at school. I wanted to try out because it looked like a fun pasttime. When I was at the practices, I was really worried that I was going to get cut from the team because I played really bad; I always hit the ball to the net or out of the court. Also, I felt inferior to everyone else in my tennis skills. A little before school started a list was posted at the athletic director's office with nine numbers belonging to those being cut from the team. As I was walking to see the list the day it was posted, I was so scared that the number five would be on there, but luckily it wasn't. After the first cut, I was even more nervous because Coach Wong said that there would be a second cut.
In the end, I made it into the JV team because the coach along with Mrs. Courtland and Mrs. Loo, the captains' moms, decided to keep everyone even though there were twenty-four people. Tennis practice is from 3:30 PM to 5:45 PM on weekdays and 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Saturdays. During tennis practice, our daily routines are to warm up, play some sets, and then do drills with Coach Ivy. Coach Ivy recently came to coach us because Coach Wong is usually busy and cannot come to our practices. He is a professional tennis player and I'm amazed that he would come coach us when he is capable of making more money elsewhere. He works us really hard by making us run whenever we do something wrong. I don't like the running, but I think its a good way to build character and to try harder to be more consistent in keeping the ball in the court.
So far the JV team has played three schools, Encinal, American High School, and this school in Lafayette. We won against Encinal and the one in Lafayette, but lost to American High . In all the matches I played in, I played doubles with Kimberly Pham. We won all our doubles games and are hopeful that we will win against San Leandro High this coming Friday.