Personal Narrative- Amazon Experience Essay -- Personal Narrative

Personal Narrative- Amazon Experience Being a curious little twelve year old who was eager to discover the world, when my father asked me back in 1997 if I wanted to travel to Colombia, I jumped on the opportunity. Little did I know just how much I would be discovering. Colombia held sights, sound, and smells that I had never experienced. Crowded city highways with no marked lanes, the stench of lead exhaust filling the overcrowded streets of the capitol, the freshness of the Andean Mountains filling the country air. The thought of Colombia brings a dozen images and adventures to mind. Out of all of these, however, there is one in particular which I shall never forget. It was one of the last mornings we were to spend in Colombia. My father and I flipped through the hotel’s visitors guide looking for ‘must see’ places to visit that day. â€Å"Take a tour of the Amazon jungle,† one of the ads said, â€Å"and see the beauties of nature that have inspired thousands of painters and authors who have visited this site.† My father and I met eyes. If we wanted adventure, this is where it could be found. That morning, while eating breakfast at a small, family-owned restaurant in the country, we joked excitedly of the adventurous possibilities. â€Å"I’ll bet there are some savage cannibals out there, my dad playfully suggested between spoonfuls of Changua. â€Å"Yeah right,† I remarked,† lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!† After getting both our hopes and stomachs full, my father and a departed for our great adventure. Prior to our arrival at the day’s main attraction, we stopped at a tiny souvenir store along the way. As my father and I searched the store for some final gifts to bring back home to friends and relatives, my eyes were captured b... ...man walking along side the driver’s window. â€Å"My daughter says it’s too warm down here and she’s not feeling well. We need to run around.† â€Å"Please let us go. Please let us go. Don’t tie us up. Just let us go,† I thought. â€Å"All right,† he said to my relief. â€Å"Do you know your way back, or would you like us to escort you?† he asked kindly. â€Å"We’ve got it. Thanks,† replied my dad. I breathed a sigh of relief once I reached the paved road again. Looking back now, I realize what a silly twelve year old I was. My father was most likely right. Those primitive looking tribal men were just tour guides trying to make a living. My cowardice and ignorance kept us from exploring the wonders of the Amazon- a once in a lifetime experience! Perhaps if I went back know, I would have a different attitude. In any case, however, this was an experience I’ll never forget.

Big Brothers, Big Sisters Essay

Big Brothers, Big Sisters is a prevention program, which enhances the socialization of children through paying attention to their psychological and physical development and increasing their feeling of â€Å"being included† into community and school environment. Due to the fact that the project is mostly directed to planning interesting leisure and education-related activities for minors, it can be interpreted as prevention program, as it creates a friendly and harmonious environment which encourages and reinforces the child’s self-esteem through establishing a symmetric communication between the minor and adult and teaching important social skills. As for me, I believe that the program is effective, as it deals mostly with three important predictors of deviance and crime – absence of developing and diversified pastime, lack of engagement with community activities and academic failure (and the consequent loss of interest in education) in schoolchildren. In addition, the relevant study, provided by the website, demonstrates the following results: â€Å"Researchers found that after 18 months of spending time with their Bigs, the Little Brothers and Little Sisters were: – 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs; – 27% less likely to begin using alcohol; – 52% less likely to skip school; – 37% less likely to skip a class; – more confident of their performance in schoolwork; – one-third less likely to hit someone† (at http://www. bigbrooc. org/html/our_impact. html, 2007). There are three major curriculums, designed within the program. First of all, there is a set of community-based activities, which take place once a month. The community volunteers encourage the participants to do sports, play intellectual games, have meals together or simply take walks in the park. Group-based mentoring program includes monthly meeting of Big and Little Brothers and Sisters and learning new and unusual types of sports, associated with team playing. For instance, the participants do kayaking, play miniature golf or team bowling. All these sports are aimed at improving the children’s concentration, dexterity, ability to plan and make joint decision within the team; as one knows from developmental psychology, the progress of physical skills is particularly sensitive to influences at teen age, when the person is actively growing. The complex of school-based activities comprises weekly sessions, during which the minors are assisted in their home assignments. The major advantage of this program, which actually can cause in the jealousy of the similar agencies, is its image of partnership between adults and children, who receive not mentors, but friends, whose role models are more likely to be learned by minors. The typical agencies of this profile (working in the directions of prevention and diversion) more willingly involve competent specialists (in a limited number) than volunteers, so the underage target audience not always receives socialization experience and learn social skills during workshops and training. In addition, the Big Brothers Big Sisters project manages to maintain its focus on the underage audience in all points of its curriculum and stimulates the natural and healthy socialization in minors (through communication and team activities), instead of creating artificial conditions (like those in workshops and purposeful social skills training). The goals of the Big Brothers, Big Sisters project to great extent coincide with the orientation of the whole juvenile justice system. The major priority of the system is prevention of juvenile crimes and recidivism, but this goal is traditionally accomplished through enlightenment and education in the spheres of crime and punishment, drug addiction and alcohol use. The efforts of the program, on the other hand, are directed to improving the minors’ physical and psychological health and helping them establish friendly contact with the environment. This model is often neglected by the juvenile justice system, so it would be beneficial to introduce the program under the management of the network of government institutions, responsible for delinquency prevention, as the idea of healthy and natural socialization is likely to become a new direction in the functioning of the juvenile justice system and the unity of accountability will provide courts will more comprehensive information about the children. In addition, the program will also demonstrate success in the field of diversion. Finally, the program will correct the official and formalized image of the juvenile justice system and break the stereotype of the â€Å"punishing institution†. The major strength of the program is its positivist approach to prevention, which includes strengthening the minors’ social and psychological potential rather than intimidating schoolchildren about the adversities, associated with delinquency and illicit drug use. The project embraces community work, group work and school work, so that the major environments, in which the children operate, are influenced and to some extent altered. The ultimate goal in this sense is the development of the sense of inclusion into all these environments in the participants. On the other hand, the program lacks one important components, which is family-based work. As the website suggests, the underage participants originate from the households, where domestic violence and alcohol use are practiced. With respect to the fact that behavior models, learned in the family, are to certain degree determinative in teenagers’ behavior, it would also be useful to establish a contact between the families and the community and arrange activities, which imply the creation of a large team, consisting of children, their parents and the Bigs. Another weakness is the lack of basic psychological education for children, as at the certain stage of their development they need theoretical knowledge of building relationships and understanding others, so the Big Brothers, Big Sisters can introduce monthly discussions of the achievements and difficulties, experienced by the participants in their relationships with coevals and adults. Reference list Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Orange County. (2007). Official website, at http://www. bigbrooc. org.

Summary And Critique Of Bush s Arguments - 1437 Words

L. Russ Bush, professor of Philosophy and Dean of students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presents a worldview labelled â€Å"the advancement†, a naturalistic evolutionary view that better describes the philosophical era through which we are passing (ix). The author describes the origin and consequences of naturalistic philosophy over a theistic worldview and challenges Christians to defend and protect their religious rights (4). Bush presents how advancement has been detrimental to religion throughout history and points out the flaws of naturalism, classifying it as â€Å"internally inconsistent, empirically inadequate, and lacking in satisfactory explanatory power† (94). He presents Christianity as the true worldview, which â€Å"has passion†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"a Creator—or even an indirect reference, such as a reference to teleological purpose in nature—is ipso facto a nonscientific explanation† (19). Bush accurately d escribes the ethical consequences of it and the confusion of humankind regarding their own empirical and intuitive values. â€Å"The question today is whether a person can still be thought of as human at all!† (32). In chapter three, the author points out the weaknesses in advancement worldview. The epistemological problem in advancement, which is based on biological evolution and considers the mind as a â€Å"merely biological product† (37), is the first and perhaps the foremost problem for particular this view. â€Å"If naturalism is a proper description of reality, man’s mind could not be truly free to look at biological facts objectively† (38). The author compares the traditional and modern theories of knowledge and highlights the loss of freedom and the loss of truth. Bush strongly criticizes predetermination. Chapter four describes the theistic alternatives for naturalism. Bush mainly discusses the Process theology and Open Theism. These views are clearly in disagreement with the traditional position held by Christians. Process theology, that presents God as the source of fundamental structures of reality (55), hangs on a lot of scientific arguments and looks like a â€Å"mystical science† (58) more than a theistic worldview. The author poses that Open Theism, which affirms that God is fallible, is contradictory.Show MoreRelatedU.s. Bush s Administration On Foreign Policy Over The Last Forty Years1717 Words   |  7 Pages Introduction (400 words) Hook (80) Argument (120) This essay will critically review the understanding that G. W. Bush’s administration had of ‘unilateralism’, and it will thereafter argue that this concept was seemingly useful only in the short term, while proving to be unfavourable and hindering in advancing US national interests in the long term. C. 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