Is Not Our Kind of Place

In the McDonald’s essay “Is Not Our Kind of Place” Amitai Etzioni talks about the negatives of teens having routine fast food job at McDonald’s. In his essay he talks about how McDonald’s is routine and never changing so the young workers don’t learn any new skills, leaves little room for creativity, and is un-educational. Etzioni compares this routine to robots and states that fast food franchises are breeding grounds for robots working for yesterday’s assembly line. Also that working odd hours impacts their attendance and school work. Amitai says two thirds of high school students hold at least a part time job and McDonald’s is the main choice “easiest to get into” for students. He also talks about how there is no adult supervision, to cut cost’s they hire other young adults to supervise. This leaves the student’s thinking they can do what they want when they want. I am at 50/50 with Etzioni’s statements, I think fast food franchises can impact students negatively but there are a lot more than just the job influencing the student’s behavior.

I think the McDonald’s essay is coming from a person who just had a bad day’s point of view. At first he talks about how working at McDonald’s is negative then moves on to fast food franchises are negatively impacting students. Then he talks up KFC, Hardees, and Baskin-Robin’s which all could be franchised. Moving on, he talks about a positive study done on students working at McDonald’s. He moves back and forth between McDonald’s, franchises, and fast food restaurants, I am not sure where he’s at; actually I am kind of confused! Any WHO, I can agree that fast food jobs are not the best start but have to argue that they are a start. I have never worked at McDonald’s but as far as routine goes every job has a routine. Don’t we all drive to work punch in, and start our job which is pretty similar to the previous day, eat lunch at about the same time and punch out at or about the same time every day? I worked at KFC the place he talked up and that was pretty much a routine job. Half of what I could understand I can agree with the other half I could not. 50/50 is where I stand.       

Serve or Fail

 The article “Serve or Fail” written by Dave Eggers, talks about how community service in colleges can shape a student’s future. A lot of students go to college treating it as if it were high school. They will study, get their work done, and prepare for exams. Eggers feels this is not enough, being in college means you are or are nearing adult hood and need to see the other side of the street and help out in our community. More colleges are taking the community service approach and giving credit for doing so. In 1999 Michael R, Veon introduced a bill to require over 90,000 students to perform 25 hours of community service annually. Overall America would have 60 million more volunteers than nonprofit organizations.

This is a great article and I could write on this subject forever. I think this is a great idea and I have seen it in schools. My first quarter in college, I was required to do community service for a globalization class. I got to choose a group that fit what I wanted to do for the community. A lot of people choose food shelters but I wanted to reach people on the other side of the law. I chose to find a way to help reintegrate felons coming out of prison. I designed and printed out hundreds of pamphlets and dispersed them to prisons all over MN. The program is called Friends of Felons and it helps felons find housing, jobs, counseling, and even housing supplies from other nonprofit organizations. I believe having community service in college’s can benefit the college student in amazing ways and have a great impact on how they look at life.      

Overdiagnosis In America

The article I chose to read “Overdiagnosis In America” was written by Ted Gup, Special to the New York Times. Over diagnosing from doctors is becoming a more common thing as society evolves. Bipolar, ADHA, depression, ADD, are only the beginning of the most common diagnosis thrown at patients. This article describes how a man lost his child and feels it is because he gave in and allowed his child to take pills for ADHA. At the age of 21 Teds son died in his dorm from an over dose of Adderall, heroin, and alcohol. He states that 6.4 million kids in the United Stated are diagnosed with ADHA and are taking medication.

This is a good subject because I also believe that too many kids are taking medication for ADHA at a young age. My son is 9 years old and started taking Adderall 1 year ago because he was getting in trouble at school. While he was taking the medication he received better grades, and no longer got into trouble. The down side to giving kids medication like in the article is that they can become dependent on the medication. Using medication at a young age may influence teens to try different drugs. I think Ted has a point with over diagnosing patients, but I can also see where he is grieving. This discussion can go many directions with different people but overall I think doctors are throwing pills at people