Reflections

Memorandum Refection

Working on the memorandum was a very interesting experience for me. It was first time writing a memo. The article “The Miracle In Front Of You” by Janice Lynch Schuster published on The Sun Magazine is about a pediatric oncologist naming Raymond Barfield. Barfield has an incredible story of becoming a medical doctor with a goal to combine Philosophy and Spirituality with Medicine so that he might add a new dimension on medical treatment and it's process. Barfield thinks that the language of biology dominates medicine. Therefore he strongly encourages medical students to spend time understanding and interacting with patients more effectively. He says that it would be helpful for doctors in decision making who studied communication.

He provides a resolution where families of the patients also can play an active role in the treatment process. Personally, I can connect with Barfield and also agree that interaction is a necessity when it is about medical treatment. Some might argue that the emphasis that put on adding courses on communication is not relevant, because it does not affect directly on decision making. But I think decision making is important and this skill can be boosted by the practice of frequent interaction with patients. Because, it is necessary to understand the patient’s need.

Life is all about reinventing one’s inner self. It is an opportunity that we all inherit so that we can discover the purpose of our life and leave a mark on the heart of mother Earth. In like manner, Barfield reinvent himself throughout his journey of being a pediatric oncologist. He enlightens the fact it is important to discover one’s oneself as it will lead towards the reinvention of something more significant that will change lives. 

Profile Essay Reflection

            Working on the informative essay was an amazing experience for me.I found out that the field of nursing is a beautiful one. The amount of schooling a person receives shouldn’t determine how much a person gets paid, and the stressful situations a nurse must cope with should get them more respect. A nurse cares way more than a doctor does about the welfare of the patient, and they, quite frankly, do a lot more work. Anyone doing more work should be getting paid more. Whenever something starts to go wrong, the nurse is the first one on the scene. He/she assesses the situation before the doctor even gets called. The only useful things the doctor does are write out prescriptions and approve of anything the nurse does. The fact is, the nurse does it! 

When a patient goes home, a nurse is the one who told them about the home-care procedures. Because of the fact that a doctor has an MD doesn’t indicate that they deserve more respect than a nurse with her masters. It doesn’t indicate that one cares more than the other. The doctors in the hospital where I was working didn’t seem to care all that much about patient care. They cared about getting the patients in and out of the hospital, which is important, but not the most necessary service. The care that nurses provide is essential to the medical field.

The nursing field is growing in demand. The baby boomers are all growing old, and there is an influx in the need for nurses. Because of that fact alone, nurses should be getting paid more. If there aren’t enough nurses to provide for the high supply of patients, the nurses need to be better cared for financially. The under-staffing of nurses in hospitals causes the nurses to have to work harder and longer hours, and that fact damages their physical and mental health. If the nurses are becoming weary themselves, there won’t be a way for the patients to be properly provided and cared for. If nurses don’t get paid more, not as many people will want to be nurses. Working in pajamas just isn’t enough of an incentive, and the disrespect in comparison to the respect doctors get isn’t encouraging for the nursing field either.

Because of the long and strenuous hours worked by nurses, the nature of the work nurses do, and the increasingly high demand for nurses, they need to be paid more and be more respected. Anyone who is happy and satisfied with what they do is going to perform a lot better than someone who is miserable when they have to go to work. My aunt works all night long, sleeps all day, and gets not enough for doing it even though her health is on the line. Most nurses have a similar lifestyle. Keeping the nurses happy and healthy will make the hospital environment more cheerful, and it will encourage better work to be done.

Argumentative Essay Reflection

For the argumentative essay, I spent a few hours, on two separate occasions, just reviewing sources and copying down quotes and facts that caught my eye. Between these I spliced in my own thoughts, and potentially ways to incorporate whatever I had found into my final essay.  I outlined my essay, trying to organize how I believed my paper should progress through all the information I’d gathered from various sources offering differing perspectives on my topic during the past weeks, and wrote two drafts instead of one direct final draft. 

         The first draft was reflective of a more mature understanding of the nature of revising and re-working a piece. My first draft could be considered a “bare-bones” expression of what I believed should be included in the essay. I incorporated very little elaboration or example, and just stuck mainly to the facts which support my essay.  Instead of tweaking surface details of my writing, like word choice and sentence structure, I pieced together new ways of expressing my thoughts on the topic which more concisely communicated the main points of my essay. I added new sentences to the opening of the piece:

 “Women have been fighting for equal rights for years, battle after battle always working hard to earn their place in society. Colored woman have an extra battle to fight: societies norms on the color of skin. Black women and colored women have fought battles not only with society but inside their own homes as well.…………It is important for colored women to be exposed to literature such as Perry’s and media about strength because it influences them to fight against their stereotypes.”

         I believe it helped to further introduce my ideas to my audience, and give off a better understanding of my stance on the issue. I added smaller details to personalize the story, making a historical example into a piece of pathos, as well.

            Moving to my final draft, I tried to re-worked piece, and ended up with my final product. The more I reconsidered my position on my topic, and the depth of my ideas about it, the more I was able to concisely elaborate in order to say exactly what I wanted. Even the time spent peer reviewing the work of my classmates seemed much more productive, and the class seemed to flow more smoothly, since most of us now had a better understanding of the kind of editing and feedback which is actually helpful, and not just nitpicking. I think studying the process and elements of revision allowed my classmates and I to shed a layer of self-consciousness that held us back during peer review sessions. It seemed that, in general, my classmates and I were less worried about making an impression with our own work, or our own feedback on the work of others, and more concerned with sharing ideas and opinions—stress free.

           I would like to continue working on my writing process. I still feel the heavy stress of impending deadlines because I do not yet have the skill to work on a piece over time. Most of the prewriting and writing I do is consolidated into a few days of intense work on a single assignment. I feel that if I were able to pace myself, I could better organize my thoughts and more concisely express my positions and ideas. However, I do realize that I have improved in this field over the course of time and practice, and I hope that techniques I have learned in the classroom and independently will help me to build up those skills to the level that I want them to reach.

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