Blog 9

            The three articles that we discuss in class were the two David Brooks articles and Barbra Graham’s article. I gained understanding concrete and abstract better, because I did not really a good understanding of those words. So after breaking down the three different articles.

            The most interesting connection that I had was when we talked about in David Brooks article, “The Epidemic of Worry” we talked about how different class of anxiety. For an example we talked about how a rich countries has more anxiety than poorer countries, because richer countries want more, they think that they need something and they do not want to miss out on there freedom. I did not realized that until we talked about it in class, because I did not think about how many times we think that we need something and we do not get it. We get upset if we do not get it or we just keep thinking about it. Another interesting connection that we discussed in class was in the other David Brooks article, “It’s Not About You.” When talked about how most people who graduate do not get married, they go job to job to find a better job each time to support themselves and they do not buy a house straight out of college. This connected to me because, not a lot of people do not get good jobs, buy a house and do not get married. For example when my cousins got out of college they went job to job, they did not get married and they did not buy a house.

            What was interesting to me was they way we broke down each article into pieces. By doing that it helped me better to understand each of the three articles. At first I really did not understand the David brooks article until we broke each one down. At first I thought it was going to be easy to compare the two different Brooks articles, and it was hard. But we were not able to compare the two different David Brooks articles as a class.

            Discussing with my classmates about the articles helped understand the articles. When we had trouble connecting the three articles we would help each other. Another reason is when we were in groups we would worked together we would get to here each other opinions on the articles, and we would help each other on the articles. Talking with my peers did help me understand concert and abstract better.

The Epidemic of Worry

            After reading “The Epidemic of Worry” by Brooks what stood out to me the most was when the author said, that worrying shrinks your mind so you will not enjoy what is going around you right now. That stood out to me in light of the fact when people worry that is the only thing that they think about, and what is mostly going through their head at the time. Another reason this stood out to me because this makes me understand about worrying shrinks your happiness. Sometimes when I am with my friends, and they worry about school that is the only thing that they talk about. They do not want to change the subject, and it brings down the vibe.

            Another quote that brooks says in the article that stood out to me was that “Anxiety changes people.” This stood out to me because one of my best friends has an anxiety disorder. By that I mean he cannot be way from his house for a long period of time. For along time he would never want to be home and now he feels like he has to. For an example my friends and I went to one of my friend’s bay house in Galveston for a couple of days. Towards the end of the trip my friends, and I knew that he was trying to go back home because he kept asking us to go back to Houston. He did this on multiple trips that we all went on. So that was the beginning of his anxiety disorder. About a month ago he had to get a service dog because the dog would cheer him up. At first when I met him he was not like that, but when he got anxiety he changed.

            The anxiety rate in an educated country just like America is 18.2 percent to get anxiety. In a less educated country just like Nigeria is 3.3 percent to get anxiety. In America the rate is higher, in light of the fact people have to make more choice, in an every day life than Nigeria. By being a citizen in a first world country I have not experience any of the anxiety that Brooks had listed; in light of the fact that I am usually around people that like. I also am usually in a good mood and I cannot stay mad for a while.