Maggie's Blog

In chapters four through six of Wes Moore’s, “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” one theme. This is the theme of the dangers of a parent living in denial. Denial is realizing the circumstances around you, but carrying on as if they were not happening. This theme is more prominent in the other Wes Moore’s life, as the denial of the people around him allowed him to carry on down his bad path. The best example of someone like this in his life is  Wes Moore’s mother, Mary. Mary constantly lives in denial about her son’s life and his actions. The first example of this is when Wes’s brother, Tony, begins to beat up Wes because he realizes he is dealing drugs. Mary begins to defend him, even though deep down she knows about what her son is doing. Moore writes, “But the sight of Tony punching him in the face infuriated her. Maybe it was because Wes was younger than him and she knew how violent Tony could be. Or maybe it was because she wanted so much for Tony could be wrong” (Moore...

  While reading the first three chapters of “Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” by Wes Moore, I noticed one recurring theme. This theme was inclusion. Both of the Wes Moores wanted to feel accepted, and went to great ends to try and get this feeling. And even though they may have ended up in different places, the ways they went about to fulfill this need were not all too different in the beginning. For Wes, the best example of attempting to fit in was in his new school. He writes, “I tried to hide the fact that my family was so much poorer than everyone else’s at school. I had three ‘good’ shirts and three ‘good’ pairs of pants. I would rotate their order, mixing and matching, so that each day I had on a fresh combination” (Moore 52). This is just one of the many examples that demonstrates how far a child will go to feel included. This inability to fit in causes Wes to act out and nearly makes him fail out of his classes. His experience reminds readers just how important it is to h...

  In today’s society everyone is often encouraged to go into college after high school and receive a degree in a field they would like to pursue. While many colleges are aimed at helping students reach this goal alone, others are there to provide students with a much deeper understanding of the world. But, of course that can come at a very expensive price for individuals and that can even turn people away from signing up. So the real question is, is higher education worth the price? I believe that higher education is absolutely worth the price tag. For starters, I think that it is important to clear up the misconception that it is impossible to afford a college education. While it is absolutely difficult and can be very taxing on a family, money for a college education is more accessible than ever. In Sanford J. Ungar’s article, “The New Liberal Arts,” he states this about the government and how they help students gain money for education, “But because of their commitment to e...

The lack of knowledge about financial literacy in the United States is a frightening topic to delve into. According to financial experts, nearly eighty percent of Americans are in some kind of debt. I believe this is because Americans are financially illiterate. As of now, only one-third of Americans can pass a basic financial literacy test according to the National Financial Capability Study. People may say that money is not important but unfortunately it is. This mindset is running our people and our country into the ground. If this continues, the next generation of Americans will be in even more debt than ever before. So, let’s talk about what can be done to turn this situation around.       The first step to saving our people from financial ruin is teaching them the importance of what learning about financial literacy can do in their lives. According to financial literacy experts and the department head of the Student Money Management Center at Texas Universi...

          As of now, the percentage of Americans in the United States that are obese is currently 42.0%. That makes the obesity crisis a nation-wide epidemic that affects nearly half of all Americans. At this point, one has to ask whose job is it to grab this issue head on and get it under the control? The answer is the government. While someone’s weight may seem like a private issue, at the end of the day, we can not continue to let this get out of hand as the consequences will be deadly. In the documentary “What the Health,” the terrifying realites of obesity are displayed through a number of people before they turned their lives around. One woman’s body was so damaged from the food that she ate she was no longer able to even walk around her block. Her heart had suffered so badly that she was actually thirty days or less away from having a heart attack. Needless to say, my appetite was gone after I saw the array of health issues she had. Sadly this is a...

 Is Pop Culture Good For You?      While I do believe that some elements of Pop Culture can benefit society as a whole and us as individuals, I know that overall it is not good for us. At its root, Pop Culture is an ever changing collection of trends that reflect things going on in society at any given time. For example, one common example of how Pop Culture affects things like fashion is the recent fascination the public has with “The Rachel” haircut from Friends . A much more serious and darker example would be how a trend of eating disorders in young teenagers erupted after social media because of pro-anorexic twitter pages that started in the early 2010’s. While it may insight change and help spread some messages, Pop Culture ultimately causes more problems than solutions.    Both of the articles and the Ted Talks discuss the importance of Pop Culture and the effects it has on society. I think even the articles that have a more positive outlook on these...

My Literacy Journey September 12th, 2021      My literacy journey began when I was a young child during my first year of preschool. I remember being small, so small that the books we read felt giant in my hands and they weighed a ton. My teacher would past those books out everyday and we would all practice sounding out the words before she would tell us how to say them. This was always my favorite part of the day and continued to be throughout my elementary years. As I got older, it of course got easier, but I still required a lot of encouragement from my teachers. They were always our biggest cheerleaders and supporters. They made sure we understood the text we were reading, and more importantly that we enjoyed it. Learning to read was supposed to be something fun and exciting, and it always was.      As I kept growing and kept learning, I began to want to read and write more and more. I loved being able to write short stories in school and being able to r...