Don’t be afraid to seek help, they say. The suicide rate of college students have risen from five to seven percent in the past few years, and has increasingly been the reason for deaths among college students. On the outside, youths and young adults seem to have much to live for, and strive for goals only one can dream of achieving. However, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among college students, where the leading cause of death are vehicle accidents. Many would assume that college students have a higher chance of dying from alcohol related mishaps, but studies over the past few decades have shown that the suicide rate among college students have gradually risen over time, and the connection may be the education itself.

According to a research back in the 1960’s, over a course of 7 years, two researches, Micheal L. Peck Ph.D. and Albert Schrut M.D., have compiled data concerning suicidal behaviors among college students and non-college students. Of the statistics gathered from college students, Peck and Schrut “concluded that the rate of suicide was significantly higher than in students than non-students” (Peck and Schrut, 149), especially for those who were currently attending, at the time, prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Cornell, Berkley, as well as prominent British universities.

In order to prove the accuracy of their data, they “gathered statistical data from the Los Angeles County coroner’s office” which consisted of the data of college students who committed suicide between the years of 1960 and 1967. The data has shown in between those years, “78 college students have committed suicide”, which makes the suicide rate about 5.0~5.1 per 100,000 with minor fluctuations in between. Despite the research done and statistics collected, the suicide rate among non-students were higher than students at least in the county of Los Angeles, however, this could be an issue concerning the numbers in population.

Just in 4 years, the leading cause of death among college students rose from third to second. These students only have limited resources to safely guide themselves out of their depression and misery, but there is more fear in what others may think of them that engulfs their strength to seek help. Nevertheless, these students get advised to receive help; that seeking psychological help from counselors in their university is nothing to be ashamed of; to not be afraid to get help.

These words of support can only go so far in the legal state of mind of a counselor. There have been cases of students who have been suspended due to the counselor’s perspective of the student having high potential in harming themselves, or others, or that the student may be too clinically depressed for them to attend school at the moment. In the mind of a sane individual, medically dismissing a student from attending their university, even temporarily, will cause even more stress and depression, causing them to think that there is definitely something wrong with them. Arising issues like these situations cause students in the future to rethink about their decision to visit a counselor in their university.

As reported by Emory University, “every year, [about] 860,000 people attempt suicide”, which is about 1 person every 38 seconds. Nearly half of them are treated for self-inflicted injuries. If you do the math, according to the provided statistics, during a university lecture class that goes on for about 80 minutes, about 126 people attempt suicide, 28 of which are college students. In a year of an estimated suicide attempt of 860,000 people, roughly 12%, or 200,000, are college students. The biggest risk factor for suicidal behavior and attempts among college students may be stressful live events, family history, substances abuse, and exposure to other suicides.

Exposing themselves to other people, especially college students, is extremely dangerous for the eyes of a college student seeking a way out of their stressful life. Even today, we look up to leaders or powerful figures as our role model, and try to reach above the stars as they did. If a college student looks up and sees that another college student has hung himself, most would think that it would be a sad and tragic moment for that college student to have experienced such a traumatic sight. Though, in fact, it is very possible for that college student to see that if the college student who hung themselves found suicide as an answer, then they may influence others to seek for the same way out.

Back in 2006, a student in Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland hung himself from a tree in the middle the campus for a student to walk by early one morning and start off their day with such an eerie sight. Although we have many concerning issues that are given to students during their college orientation, such as sexual assault or physical abuse, we rarely get note of suicidal behaviors and attempts. The topic of suicides in students is a “growing issue of concerns to colleges and universities with considerable controversy over colleges’ responsibility for preventing these deaths.”

The strange part of this suicide incident is that the victim was a popular athletic student with excellent grades, as well as in good standing with the student body. Many have blamed his girlfriend for breaking up with him before his suicide, but there was more to that story that we would never find out. The tree became a shrine for many of the victims’ friends and peers, which left gifts, flowers, pictures, and notes. Soon after, the college disallowed the students from leaving any more offerings to the shrine, because the college was afraid that other student may see the tree as an answer for their problems.

In 2004, a former George Washington University student, by the name of Jordan Nott due to his severe depression he revealed to his counselor, which then the counselor transferred that information over to the university administrators without the students consent. Due to this incident, Nott sued the school after his suspension, which was followed by his hospitalization for his mental health. Nott settled with the university, out of court, for an undisclosed amount, which could all have been avoided if the counselor did their job right. I don’t know about everyone else, but I believe it’s common sense to not depress a student even more after admitting his severe depression, while in the hope of seeking help from a, what it seemed to be, trustworthy counselor.

On the contrary, there are some counselors who aren’t doing enough for their students, brushing off their concerns even after consistent visits for a certain period of time. In 2000, Elizabeth Shin, an MIT student, set herself on fire in her dorm room. The victim’s parents sued the school for not protecting their daughter, even though she constantly visited the school counselor with multiple counseling sessions for her severe depression and suicidal thoughts for a year. Her parents made a settlement of $27.65 million with the university in 2006, but no amount of money can ever bring back a preventable death. This lawsuit was immediately noticed by other college administrative offices nationwide.

Under the federal law of the United States, all schools can legally remove mentally, or non-mentally, ill students for disruptive conduct, which can include harmful behaviors, suicidal thoughts, etc. Also, school counselors have the power to expose details of the student to parents, law enforcement’s, and school administrators if the student poses an imminent risk to themselves or others without risking liability.

All of these presented issues can be potentially prevented if the legal privileges of university counselors and psychologists have specific restraints based on the issue that is being handled. If students acknowledged even the slightest possibility of successfully receiving help and treatment, then it is very possible that they would choose the higher road than taking their own life. These students aren’t ignorant of the helpful resources that is offered to them in their university, but rather fear judgement and the possibility of the worst case scenario; getting suspended or expelled due to university counselor’s judgement of the students’ mental state.

We are told by our family, friends, and peers to not be afraid to receive help, and that seeking help is a normal thing; that everybody does it. To these people’s eyes, they believe it’s an easy step for depressed people to just simply agree that they’re right and expect them to immediately pick up the phone to make an appointment with a therapist.

Truth is, making that first step into believing that help will even be helpful at all is the biggest denial that they have to accept. Sometimes it’s hard to believe for these people with issues, that causes them to tip their mental stability, can even find the right therapist to effectively help them; and how long will that help take? Because of this, the quicker method of suicide triumphs the necessity to seek for advice on their own will.

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Evaluation

1. Well, the title isn’t incredibly creative, but it shows a cause of issue of students, which points towards young adults between the ages of 18-30. My lede “Don’t be afraid to seek help, they say”. The part where it says “they say” implies that seeking help is actually wrong or the opposite of what you should do. It makes the reader think why the writer, myself, is disagreeing of seeking help because of it’s negative potential to stress or depress the students even more.
2. My introductory section of the article gives a glimpse of the statistics that will be more elaborated throughout the article, as well as showing how these young adults seem happy and perky on the outside, but in the inside, there are more issues than we assume there are. Since suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students, it shows that there is a big issue if students are taking their own life instead of poisoning their own liver to death. Rationally, we would think these young adults would stupidly or accidentally kill themselves through car accidents, partying, alcohol, fighting, etc., but the truth is college students are going through more than we believe if suicide has bumped up to 2^nd leading cause of death just in 4 years. Also, how university counselors aren’t doing their job well enough for these problems to consistently exist.
3. The entire fact of college students are having stress and depression issues with the education they’re receiving and the lack of help they’re not receiving is pretty much asking for support and evidence. No one can simply say that college students are going through or handling more than we believe, so that is something that is directly asking for evidence to support the article. I don’t believe this topic is very “obvious” to the readers; if anything they just know or heard of college students taking their own life here and there on the news.
4. The writer (myself) clarifies all form of information that needs back up evidence, such as statistics, professional input from trustworthy sources. The writer also orders each paragraph by what the writer believes is important to read in a specific order while the pictures show an idea of how the writer feels about what he’s writing. This isn’t necessary a historical topic, though it shows evidence of research from over 40-50 years back.
5. The audience of the NYT’s magazine may argue that it is necessary for counselors or therapists to do what they believe is right, such as letting the university administrators know the students information that is being told to the counselor in certain circumstances, but that is why I showed evidence of students being overestimate and underestimated of their mental stability. I do understand not all counselors and therapists are like this, but there are innocent students who simply looked for guidance and support, but got suspended for mental instability. I believe the order and sequence of this material isn’t exactly a “story” to make sense, but paragraphs of information that get more and more intense as the reader reads along.
6. I wanted to talk about a controversial issue by talking about my side of the issue so that others can attack me head on in this article to observe their view of this issue. I spoke poorly about counselors and therapist, about how they have too much power if they choose to, but I do know there are a good amount of counselors and therapists who won’t take extreme measures (speaking from personal experience).
7. I included 8 secondary sources, 2 primary sources, and multiple visual sources for readers to understand more than just words being written from left to right across the screen. There are two separate issues that need to be addressed here: the rise of college students suiciding, and university counselors unfairly suspending students and making them check their mental status from overestimating their mental stability.
8. As stated in the previous question, there were two separate issues that needed to be addressed that both tie into a similar topic. I introduced my argument by talking about various suicide cases and multiple cases of students being overestimate or underestimated of their mental stability. I believe I included enough evidence, statistics, and my argument to put my entire controversial issue in context, also enough for readers to come with an arguable debate.
9. I believe I effectively used the positions of authority (university counselors and therapists) to my own advantage, saying that some of these authority figures, that I specifically pointed out, can’t be trusted of their judgement. Just like not all teachers/professors aren’t qualified to teach/lecture, even if they’ve obtained a degree, I believe the same goes for university counselors. I successfully reached out to the audience using rhetorical tools by, hopefully, making them connect with these students who are involved in these stories.
10. I provided visuals, but not too much, for readers to establish a connection with the story as it’s being told. For people who think on a deeper perspective, they will visually understand what the visuals mean and how they connect with the article. I believe the visuals are very meaningful, not only to “brighten” up the article, but to not make the article look so plain. I don’t believe the article will be affected too much, because to a person of perspective like me, the content of the information is much more important than looking at visuals.
11. The article developed over time through peer reviews, teachers comments, and various drafts. The class exercise of scrambling the blog made me view the article in a different way and gave me an idea of another argument to include. Also, the way we included our “claim” helped me focus in on my argument more to make it precise and clear.
12. I included multiple hyperlinks by each story that supports my article on the name or main subject of that specific story. I believe it’s very effective for readers to click the link to look for back up evidence, and also very appropriately positioned.
13. I reviewed the article over and over again to check for grammar, check to make sure the style of the paragraphs are effectively separated for an article style, and the usage of hyperlinks, visuals, statistics, and factual stories helped make the article more credible. Especially because I used authority figures, such as university counselors, who can potentially have too much power, the readers will possibly have an epiphany that this may be true.

Lately there have been food industry related issues that raises questions on how the society aren’t raising eyebrows. Everyone loves Chipotle, and they do their very best to satisfy their customers, but sadly Chipotle has taken a toll on their number of customers. Usually you had to wait in a long line, which started the moment you stepped into their front door, but now we can walk straight up to the counter. Chipotle receives their so-called fresh supply of ingredients from specific farmers and ranchers who raise their animals humanely with organically nourished vegetables from healthy soils. If that’s the case, how did they receive meat contaminated with E. coli, or sickening people with salmonella with their tomatoes.

If you have been watching the news recently, you know that there probably are some uncertainties in the food you eat. It should only take a few minutes to take a look around the web through news articles in current food politics and food safety issues to find out that there are some serious problems in our food industry. Chipotle is a great example to start with, although it’s not going so great for them. They have been fighting a battle with themselves and the public about the e. coli breakouts. According to the CDC website, there have been past cases of food borne illnesses, such as salmonella, listeria, and e. coli, and most of the issues surfaced from contamination or the soil in which the produce came from.

As stated in the article “You Are What They Eat” by Consumer Reports, to assess this issue of the safety of the nation’s consumers, they have investigated on their own and interviewed feed-industry experts and critics, but none of the top executives were willing to speak. This was raising a lot of concerns about how the federal government wasn’t doing its job to protect the food supply, which we consume. For example, in the Food Inc. documentary, they have shown us that chickens are genetically modified so that their body grows much faster, and fatter, but because it is such an unnatural growth through medications, their organs don’t catch up to their physical body growth, which makes us question, how are their bodies staying healthy if their organs can’t even catch up fast enough to maintain themselves.

Why stop there? The possibility of our supply of produces being contaminated may not be the only issue. Only a century ago, according to Marion Nestle, the only issues that we had to be concerned with were spoiled milk from infected animals and spoiled meat from sick animals. Now, because we have made so many changes to our food system, the current problems of food safety haven’t shown any new diseases, but different symptoms of the same disease. There are many different aspects as to why this is an issue to the modern day, and our federal government aren’t the only ones to blame. Pesticides have been used by farmers to chemically clean the produce of microorganisms, whether good or bad, and that is what we intake into our bodies. Stated by Blake Hurst in the article “Organic Illusions” in The American, It is very true that there are farmers who use organic pesticides to treat their land, but because the concentration of the chemical in the organic pesticide is incredibly low, they have to end up pumping an immense amount just to keep up with a standard pesticide.

The Stanford study stated in the article of “Organic Illusions” have found how organic foods were significantly less prone to having pesticide residues, but much more likely to have e. coli. E. coli can survive in the digestive system and in fecal matter, so it is very possible that contaminated animals share the same soil with the farmland and the animals surrounding them, which is how it spreads. Overtime, our pesticides have been killing microorganisms, but we all know that even the hand sanitizers we use for our hands don’t kill all of the germs, as if it’s leaving one to survive to live to tell the tale of its lost brothers and sisters.

These pesticides are creating a new and different environment for these pathogens to adapt to, so what does that tell us? Our chemicals in these pesticides, whether standard or organic, are eventually habitable by pathogens to adapt to and create these, not new, but different illnesses. Although organic produces are labeled organic, it is possible that they may have traces of conventional methods. “Organic foods are labeled as organic because producers certify that they have followed organic procedures”, but there aren’t any precise procedures to tests these products for being 100% organic. It is possible for organic produces to have conventional pesticides present in or on them through leftover residue in the soil or the chemical drifting from neighboring farm fields.

If the pesticides weren’t bad enough, the medications that the animals consume may give you quite a shock. Of course even we, as humans, take medications from time to time to help ourselves with headaches or body aches, but we need to remember that everything the animal consumes, we consume as well. Because our chickens are treated with medications for the purpose of killing microbes and fattening them, the medication contains arsenic. I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t arsenic a toxic chemical?” Why yes it is, but because these medications, apparently, are necessary in the feed industry, the FDA has made a tolerance limit of 2000 ppb in the chickens’ liver and 500 ppb in its meat. Data was collected through the analysis of the chickens liver and meat, since it is the part most people eat, and the average level of arsenic was low compared to the regulations, but still, we need to remember that arsenic is linked to cancer.

Assuming these traces of chemical weren’t enough, we don’t even know if the seafood supply is completely safe. As reported in the “Consumer Reports” about seafood, the FDA is responsible for guaranteeing the safety of seafood, most of which is imported. The FDA, out of the 80% imported seafood, only tests about 2%, mainly for drug residues. Salmon is a widely popular seafood choice, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, but in farms, they’re fed concentrated fish and fish oil, which makes us question how heart-healthy these salmons are compared to the ones in the wild. The Hites team at Indiana University ran tests comparing carcinogens in wild and farmed salmons, and they resulted with farmed salmons containing more PCBs and dioxins than wild salmons, especially the ones from Europe. Still, the FDA was concerned about foreign fish and fish-feed producers for using unapproved drugs, leaving traces in food that may pose a threat to the human health.

We have come a long way as humans, advancing in different number of technological and chemical concerns, but if we have come to a point where we need to ask ourselves if organic products are truly healthy for us or not, then something is definitely wrong, especially in the food industry. Having said that, I’m afraid the soil that we pump our chemicals into, whether natural or organic, is altering the unrefined natural soil we used to have. Genetically altered produces are chemically treated to be more appealing in their physical form, but nutritionally, they aren’t any healthier. In Food Inc., the documentary showed us farmers who were wrongfully treated to treat their produce and animals the wrong way, but they have to make a living somehow so they don’t have a choice. They sign a contract to do the work they do and keep their mouth shut about it. Some even got their contracted permanently suspended by the people they worked for, which even they didn’t even come out for an interview to spill the truth.

We view endless commercials and public statement announcements concerning the health of our bodies and to keep fit, but how will that be possible if we can buy an entire meal at a fast food restaurant rather than one piece of fruit? Family income is the leading cause of obesity, which already says a lot, and we’re not doing anything to help this cause. If there is an issue, the first step is to address that issue in the first place, but we don’t see top executives coming out with apologies; only articles of people getting sick or dying of something contaminated that they consumed.

1) The writers project is a reiterated version of the source the writer is trying to emphasize on. It is to focus the writers beliefs and words from the writers point of view that they received from the source. I was able to obtain the view point of the writers project through, of course, the writers article itself, but also researching the sources that the writers said where they got their information from. My own project is to start from the beginning, as to where all these diseases and infections started becoming worse. Through multiple sources, it was found that our worries, in the subject of foodborne illnesses, have changed since we have made advance in the agricultural world.

2) The “sorting it out” workshop helped identify the experts, sources, main topic/idea, and sources the writer was providing. It helped categorize and separate each information that felt important to the topic, and although not every single piece of information written in the “sorting it out” workshop, it helped focus my topic into a specific idea of what I wanted the readers to know in my blog article.

3) My understanding of synthesis is a quick basic summarized idea of the topic one is trying to emphasize in order to expand and detail the idea more as the writing progresses. The importance of this is to start on the focus of ones topic so that they have an idea of what they need to fix, emphasize, or delete. I started out by writing a few sentences for what I wanted to talk about, and depending on the right transition between paragraphs, I emphasized the specific topic more in order to fully detail, as much as possible, the provided information for the readers.

4) My accomplishment in this unit is the in-depth research I had to do in a topic that I had zero experience in. I had absolutely no idea of the background story of farms, foodborne illnesses, political obstructions, and more. I had to intake a lot of information to fully understand everything.

5) My idea didn’t exactly “evolve” into something more. I basically had the same topic/idea from the very beginning, which I even emphasized during class about pesticides and such. I started with my draft, which was only a bit over 1000 words, and for the final 1400 word paper, I included another source to expand my reasoning as to why I believe agricultural advances in our history have made drastic, possibly dangerous, changes. Afterwards, I separated the paragraphs, bit by bit, as well as included hyperlinks in order to portray the view of a blog article.

6) This is the same question as question 5. The whole idea of “evolving” a draft of an essay is to organize it the way you, the writer, believes should be organized. Where is the lede going to be? What is going to be stated in the intro? What are you going to include in your first paragraph in order to pull in your reader? And so on. I organized by article by starting with the lede in order to pull in readers, which is talking about the love of many people around the nation; Chipotle. Then I compared Chipotles foodborne illnesses to other foodborne illnesses connected in my sources, and reasoned that this may have been caused by decades of changes in our soil and food system.

7) 3 things I synthesized on were antibiotics fed to animals, pesticides, and the lack of safety in the food industry. In the respective order that I listed, paragraph 3 & 4, paragraphs 4, 5, & 6, and paragraph 7 & 8 are examples of how detailed and concise the information I provided were. Again, through the process of my draft, I input all the important information that should be provided, and in my final, I simply included another source to expand my explanations and sources.

8) I did not provide a lede for my draft, for the reason that we learned about “ledes” on the day the draft was due. During class, I wrote out my lede in order to ease the readers into my article. I felt that if I started out the blog with statistical information, readers would find it dull and hard to take in the information, so I provided the lede to show a glimpse of what my blog was going to be about.

9) Now that I’ve learned about what a lede is, how to use statistical information to my advantage, numerous sources to back up my information, and transition between paragraphs, I’m eager to believe that my blog-writing skills have improved. Through peer reviews, I have learned that my paragraphs need to be spaced out more to fit the “blog” profile, and that I needed to include hyperlinks. Still, I was able to focus my argument and maintain the readers attention throughout my work.