Heart Attacks in Robeson County

Something that's peaked my interest lately is the number of heart attacks that has currently occurred in Robeson county.  Currently the rate of heart disease is 36 percent higher than the rate of the entire state of North Carolina.  Also the heart attack rate is 56 percent higher than that of the state of North Carolina.  Honestly I wasn't expecting the rate of heart attacks as well as heart disease to be this high here in Robeson county.  In a survey it was also revealed that 11.6 percent of residents from the tri-county area are knowledgeable of stroke symptoms.  This was something surprising to me that I wanted to post and I shall make another post regarding this when I gather more information of this issue that's currently present.

Annotated Bibliography

I managed to complete my Annotated Bibliography and and I have to admit that it was a true learning experience for me.  I've manged to learn about issues that revolved around stress that I didn't know before.  Also I learned how it ties into anxiety and how it generally can get mistaken as being the same thing as stress.  If I had a chance to do this project again then most likely I probably would.  With that being said I'm happy to say that I enjoyed this project as a whole as it was a new learning experience for me.

Homelessness in America

A topic that's caught my attention would be homeless individuals in America.  Major findings has reported that the state of homelessness in American continues to increase.  For example from there was an 3% increase from 2008 to 2009, or in other words the homeless population increased approximately 20,000.  Homelessness was also increasing in subpopulations such as families, individuals, chronic, and unsheltered.  As a whole 31 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia had an increase in the amount of homeless people.  At the rate that this is going homelessness around the world will continue and possibly double up in the future.

Finding Sources

Just a small update on the sources used for my Annotation.  So far I've managed to find everything that I have needed.  I just need to find some more sources to help me so I can provide strong points for the paper.  So far things are coming along nicely and I plan to have a well-written and well-thought out paper.  Everything is going according to plan thus far and it's staying that way.

Annotation #1

Annotated Bibliography

Works Cited

Wei, M, TY Ku, and KY Liao. "Minority stress and college persistence attitudes among African American, Asian American, and Latino students: Perception of university environment as a mediator." Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology17.2 (2011): 195-203. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.

Summarize:

This article primarily talks about stress and college life as a whole and how it affects minorities. Including, but not limited to African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino students it explains the stress levels in students. While everyone in college experiences a different level of stress it mainly focuses on that of minorities as they have additional stress merely because of their minority status. Also due to the stereotype that faculty has low expectations for them because they have low intelligence. Since African American's, Asian American's, and Latino's struggle with college persistence, they were used in a proposed mediation model. As minority students begin to experience more and more minority stress they begin to think of the universities overall environment negatively.

Analysis:

This source is mainly used to show how minorities under pressure would act. Although I have many more sources I could have used I preferred this one as it helped with getting the main point across effeciently. Going off of this will also help me with creating new questions that can be asked, answered and added to what I have thus far. Although the source is not from a credible news source, it might not be completely acurate. And with this in mind I will continue to look more into this and see what else can be tied into it.

Reflection:

Honestly I feel that this source fits into my research, mainly because it's being used as the starting point for my research. Thanks to this source it allows me to follow up and think of other questions about stress and education. I can truthfully say that this source has been extremely helpful to me as it allowed me to further investigate further. I will continue to look for more sources to better benefit the main topic at hand. By gaining more sources, I hope to explain how stress causes students to act in a particular way in a educational evironment.

Health Care Reform

Last updated on the 28th of September, I've decided to watch over what's been occurring with the Health Care Reform.  For those unfamiliar with the Health Care Reform, it is a bill which expands Medicaid for lower and middle class American families.  It was also the largest achievement of President Obama's first two years in office.  This post is merely acting as an insert for those who are unaware of what the bill is, or what it does for that matter.  This will also be discussed into further detail within the next post.

Cancer Cases

Another thing that seemed to catch my eye would be the number of deaths caused by Cancer as altogether.  Cancer had replaced heart disease as the leading cause of death in North Carolina.  In 2006 the mortality rate had shown that heart disease dropped to second place as the cause of death.  Overall the death rates for North Carolina since 1990 has declined by more than 30 percent, but the numbers are still high.  Overall I have to say that I'm a bit surprised and I'll continue to keep a watch for this as time progresses.

Update on Research Proposal and topic used

This is just something that I wanted to add in conjunction with my research proposal.  Firstly I have to say that I have managed to gain proof from a source about stress.  My source is a high school student whom explains that he is indeed stressed out due to the workload since he's in his last year of high school.  Talking to him helped give me more confidence towards my research proposal and the topic that I've chosen.  Quite possibly there's a chance that I might be able to find more subjects who feel the same way.  And this concludes my small addition regarding my topic for my Research Proposal.

Crime Rates & The Robesonian

Deciding to take a look at the crime rate once again as mentioned in the Robesonian I've noticed a pattern.  Firstly there seems to be around 4 or 5 crimes in a month from comparing all the results.  Not only that, but a majority comes from theft.  This is merely an add on to my previous post I made on crime earlier last month.  First off I have to say that I'm pretty surprised and I didn't think that the crime rate would be this high in such a small area.  However this is the crime rate that's within an entire county, not so much a small city, so I really shouldn't be surprised.  I might possibly get back to this topic, but for now I'm going to put this to a close.

Research Proposal

 For my research proposal I intend to write in regards to stress. To elaborate further, it will be the stress levels of students and how it affects their progress in the classroom itself. With the main research question being "Would people with lower education suffer more or less stressful days?". With this question being asked it also ties into how much of an impact does it have on their health. Also can it be asked on whether these stress levels are caused randomly or not randomly at all. It also depends on the quality of the information gathered. At this point in time I also have many other questions that could be asked, but as of right now I did not use them in order to keep things simplified.

The reason behind such a topic is that I wish to find out the reasons why some students tend to perform poorly in the classroom. Reasons behind this can include reccuring problems in the students household, to many other factors which leads to an excessive amount of stress. To me I personally feel that this ties in completely with wellness and health as a whole. Find the reasons behind stress, to get an understanding of why the student performs poorly. Although no worldwide solution can be created from this, by understanding the reasons behind stress and the cause, it can help the individual lead a much more healthier lifestyle. Personally it interests me because I have a family member who is stressed most of the time and due to the stress and the problems that come with it, he has decided to give up on school altogether.

Personally I already know that a majority of college freshman encounter serious levels of stress before college even begins. This comes from the fact that there is so much work to do during their senior year of high school. Looking at a percentage of the students involved in a test, women were found to be the most stressed, while men were the least stressed. A gender gap was also found where about more than 60 percent of women seek mental health services from the year of 2011 alone. Reasons behind this were the fact that women were more prone to explaining how they feel, while men on the other hand don't socialize about their feelings or even express stress.

With this in mind, I intend to find out information regarding students of a particular school or area, whilst gathering data on the ratio between men and women as a whole. Also how and if a number of the men and women seeked out help during the first signs of stress. And how they coped or intend to cope with the stress altogether. Although I metioned students I also intend to look not only at the college level, but at the high school level as well. In order to find said information, I intend to wholeheartedly dedicate my time to look for resources online and whever else that is deemed appropriate.

Food Deserts

Another thing I should mention, but I also took the time to look in Food Desert's and how horrible they are.  It seems pretty crazy how they slap low prices on fast foods, while the prices of produce is relatively high.  Hopefully there'll be a change in the future as I find it horrible how something like this even exists.

Class update.

Just a small update on what's been going on in class.  So far our first Portfolio has already been turned in and we have started working on a research project proposal.  The proposal is to be 500 words in length and I will be writing up my draft for it later on in the day.