First 50 Pages of Book.

In my book the author is experiencing a great deal of adversity from childhood and throughout his whole life. When he was 6 years old he caught his mother cheating on his dad with some strange man. (8) His father was always in and out of jail and struggling with alcohol abuse.  When his father was drunk he became vulgar and abusive. (11) His mother left him and his older brother and sister with their grandparents while she took off with some rich white guy named Richard and fled to San Francisco and got eloped.  (17) At age 7 his grandpa died and he and his brother were taken to an orphanage. (18) He would often get beat up for nothing in the orphanage (21) He was taken to a detention center after quitting school when he was picked up by his older brother and put back into his father’s custody. (30) He found out that his brother was raped and he started getting into gang fights and drinking. (33) At age 17 he was picked up and charged for murder. (36) He has his first relationship and break up with his girlfriend at the time, Theresa.  (38-42) He went to see his mother because he found out she was back in Albuquerque but that didn’t go as he planned and he felt betrayed by her. (44)

How I felt reading these first few pages was, I was sorry for him because he had a rough start and it didn’t seem to get better. The more he tried to make it better the worse it got, and it just wasn’t working out for him. I felt horrible because both his mother and father ended up abandoning him and he had to fight to keep his will to live up. I honestly don’t know how he did it.

Stress Levels of College Students

Since 25 years ago the emotional health of college freshman has significantly declined according to the survey they take. Involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges that took the survey “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010”, the percentage of the students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. On the other hand the “above average percent fell from 64 percent in 1985 to 52 percent. With today’s economic factors counselors are seeing more kids in their offices that need help with their loans that’s putting a lot of stress on them, because they are trying to figure out how to pay them off and wondering if they will even have a career after college in order to pay them off. To some extent it is also caused by the pressures some students put on themselves.  The reason why its declining is really unknown but they think that the economy has a lot to do with it. For many students stress starts even before college. They had been overwhelmed by everything they had to do in their senior year of high school and with everyday activities in life; it rose to 29 percent from 27 percent the last year. Men tend to relieve stress better than women because they engage them selves in sports and other activities to relieve it where as women really don't.

Stress that I have encountered was the stress from school. Getting things done on time and making sure it’s turned in. Also, trying to find a job in this small town isn’t as easy as it seems. I’m currently trying to get my driver’s license and that’s building on to it. So ass you can see my typical day would be pretty stressful but I manage to keep it pretty low and under control.

Why I Chose The Book I Did

The book I chose was A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca. I chose this book because I write poetry as well so I think it will help me relate and understand the writer better. How it will help me is I will Along with that I am interested in learning about the struggles he went through and how he faced them. Everyone deals with these types of things in different ways, and it interests me on how many different ways there are to get past something that you struggled with in your life.  Also the fact that his life was such a mess, and he managed to not only turn it around, but to do so in prison is amazing to me. Once I would have gotten to prison I would have given up and quit, or at least waited until I got out to try and turn it around. Also I wouldn’t have had the courage to learn to read in a place like a prison where no matter what you do someone is always shooting you down and degrading what you do. I wouldn’t be able to live in that environment let alone do what he did.

Stress Test

The stress test is a test you take to find out the levels of stress you are having. It includes things such as marriage and divorce to failing and/or dropping a class. You circle the numbers that corresponds with your answers or write them down to keep track. When you are done going through the list add up the numbers where it says points and that is your score. If your score is over 300 points or higher then you have a great health risk. If you score between 150-300 points then you have about a 50/50 chance of serious health changes within 2 years. If your score is below 150 then there is about a 33% chance of a serious health change.
The score I got was a 148.This means, as you can see from what i have listed above, that i have a fairly low chance of a serious health change. I think that the score that i got pretty good considering how hectic my life is right now with just starting college and keeping up with my day to day activies that i usually like to do. It can get a tad bit little crazy.