Blog #7

The article "A Required Course in Beating the Freshman Blues" by Rene Sanchez, The Writers Response Book. The Article is about how colleges are starting to pay attention to the students needs over their own as a college.

This article is about how Colleges and Universities cannot afford to lose any students after their freshman year of college and to keep this from happening, colleges are putting all the freshman in the same dorm area as each other and have been hiring more counselors to be more involved with the freshman and students academic lives and just acknowledge to the students that someone is their to help them when they need it. In the article is says " We've finally realized that helping students succeed takes much more than what we've been doing." From reading this, we can see as readers that the college is taking the first step to reach out to students and really caring about how they can make the college life better for them in any way possible.


After reading this article, I thought it was cool to see that they are listening to what students want instead of necessarily concentrating on what they want to see from a staff point of view. As far as putting all the freshman in the same dorm wing, I thought that was kind of weird but in reality of it, I suppose it is a good idea. Over all, I enjoyed reading this article and I thought it was interesting.

Blog 6

The article "Dear Dads: Save Your Sons" by Christopher N. Bacorn which was published on December 6th,1992; Newsweek.  fathers influence their child when they are involved in their lives.

The article is about a boy who is 15 years old and he was involved with drugs, gangs, violence, and he even had failing grades in school. Ever since his dad left, he has felt like anything he does, nobody would care. His went to go talk to a shrink to see if they could do anything to help her son. The shrink explained to the mom that, he needs some kind of positive male figure in his life to show him how to be a man and to do things the right way instead of him thinking that getting into trouble is the only way to do things. When the mom wanted the shrink to talk to her son, she did but the son just thought she was dumb and clueless because he didn't think there was anything wrong with him. Whatever the shrink had to say, he would deny it and shut it down. Eventually, the shrink came up with the idea that he should be put into sports that involve teamwork so he can be around other boys and build a positive surrounding for himself. When the son heard this, he said " that's for dorks". At that point the shrink didn't know what else to do. Nothing was working to get him to be involved with other boys. The main point of this message is, when fathers aren't there for their child while they are growing up, they have no sense of male figure. They don't know their 'role' in society and often feel out of place.


I thought this article was very interesting. for three years of my life growing up, my dad left me so for awhile I didn't know what it was like to have an actual male figure in my life. Being a young girl, I can relate kind of to what the shrink was saying to get involved with activities that includes people with different genders. My first year of soccer really helped me build that image in my mind what it's like to have a male model in my life. I was kind of jealous of the other boys and girls on my soccer team or in general during school because they would always say "my dad helped do my hair today" or "my dad said we can play after school." whereas, I was the girl who said " my mom is bringing me to practice today, then we are going to the grocery store." until I was a little older and my mom got married, I finally get to say my dad this or my dad that. I do agree with the shrink, having a father or some sort of male model in your life actually helps you out in the long run.