possible topics

1.  obama’s presidency
2. free healthcare
3. texting and driving
4. hazing laws
5. immigration laws
6. top 10 % college acceptance rule
7. welfare reform
8. recession
9. parking lot issues!
10. rules on classes outside of major

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i had to re choose my topic because my last one was not as local as it needed to be.

Non-Smoking, Please

Children are taught early on in their years of education of the harms of smoking cigarettes.  It has widely accepted and scientifically proven truth that they are detrimental to the health of those who smoke them.  It has also been proven that second hand smoking, inhaling the smoke given off by those actually smoking the cigarette, can be just as harmful.  Because cigarette smoke is an irritant, it is capable of causing people to experience allergy-like symptoms when they come into contact with it (
Allergic to Cigarette Smoke?).  It is banned in many public places, such as schools, restaurants, and even college campuses.  Keeping this restriction allows an easier maintenance of the health of so many people.  Because I believe banning it in public vicinities is the best way to maintain a campus full of healthy students, I propose that the University of Houston take part in doing so as well.

Our university is one that is so highly populated with students from a variety of different backgrounds-health included.  Like any other public place, it is only common courtesy to do what is best for the general population, and not allowing smoking would be doing so.  Secondhand smoke, also known as passive smoking, pollutes the air with chemicals that are known to cause cancer (Secondhand smoke: Avoid dangers in the air you breathe).  Because second hand smoke is a threat that comes with smoking in any environment, it would be best to deal with the threat by removing the possibility of it occurring at all.  Why allow smoking on university grounds, when the students are the pride of the university?  The health backgrounds of the vast amount of students are unknown, making it that much more important to take general health precautions.

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Parking Lot Worries

Many, if not most, drivers are in rushes to get where ever it is they are going.  Casual driving above the speed limit and taking short cuts-safe or not- are things we are all guilty of.  Everyone sees the parking lots that provide clear and direct pathways to the other side-the side we want to be on.  “Instead of sitting through this red light, I can just cut through this parking lot, saving myself a little bit of time.” The thought has crossed all of our minds.  But what the driver that makes the decision to storm through the parking lot does not realize is that by doing so, he/she is putting all the drivers in the parking lot-whose minds may be set on nothing but finding a parking spot-at risk.  Whether or not he believes so, the rules of the roads should apply to the driver that decides to make that cut when in the parking lot.  Should the driver follow through with cautious speed and attentiveness, they minimize the risk of an accident, such as collisions between cars or even between a car and a pedestrian, occurring.  I propose that, in order to minimize said risks, stricter laws on traffic in parking lots should be enforced.

parking lot problems

The topic I have chosen for my proposal argument essay is the increase in regulations in parking lots.  Even though I have not been a driver for very long, I have personally experienced the need to take more caution in parking lots than on the open road.  The lack of structure in parking lot regulations significantly raises the risk of possible accidents.  Any driver, careful or not, is susceptible to this risk when they are in a parking lot.  Even for responsible drivers aware of their surroundings the risk remains high due to those drivers who take advantage of the rules-free environment-zipping through parking lots in order to shorten their distance to their destinations.  Courteous drivers may use their turn indicators to make the other drivers aware of their actions, but not all drivers do the same.  Making this a rule, like it is on the roads, is something the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) or Department of Motor Vehicles has the power of.  Perhaps this problem has not been brought to their attention as of yet because of the minimal amount of accidents occurring in parking lots- however, bringing about this change will not cause any problems for drivers and only prevent future accidents from occurring.  I propose that the DPS create and enforce stricter laws on using indicators, stop signs, speed limits, and whether a parking lot can or cannot be used as a short cut.  I don’t see any harm that can come of this, because drivers should be used to those kinds of restrictions from traveling on roads anyway.  It might cost more to have some law enforcement branch, whether it be security guards or police officers, monitor the parking lots and actually enforce these rules-give out tickets, etc; the cost of paying these police officers would probably have to come out of the same money that funds the rest of the police officers.

The only thing that this proposal can bring about is the prevention of future accidents.  It may be a little bit of a nuisance to have to carry the rules of the road to the parking lot, but it only means also carrying the safety.  Even if it were a little less strict than when on the roads, these regulations would help to keep people safer than they have been.  It comes as a surprise to me that this hasn’t been done already, for I have found myself in situations many times that I wish I knew what the people around me were going to do and how fast they were going to do it.

Proposal argument topic?

The first story that stood out to me was the one on Roy Morales running for the position of mayor for the city of Houston.  I was shocked to read that Houston’s crime rates are higher than those of New York City’s, according to Morales.  If this is true, and he is truly capable of solving this large-scale issue for the city, as well as the smaller-scale issues he addressed, I believe it would be interesting to keep up with and find out more about his campaign.

Another article that caught my attention was the one about the Honors transfer policy.  The article itself has an example of a proposal made by two students who had planned on graduating with honors but decided to change their minds due to the rule that students with 66 or more transfer credits have to take extra courses at UH to graduate with honors.  It caught my attention because I had no idea that these students, who are obviously determined and hard working enough to care about graduating with honors, would be delayed from reaching what I’m sure to be great opportunities due to simply not having gone to the same school for all their credits.

An issue I had been considering, but not really in depth, was regulating the driving rules of parking lots and possibly adding stricter rules.  They are a highly dangerous place to be driving, due to the rushes people are in to get to their destinations.  Whether they are cutting through parking lots to shorten their routes or simply finding a place to park, drivers in parking lots are focused less on other drivers than when they are driving on public roads.  Because they lack good sense of their surroundings, this causes more collisions to occur, and in a spot where it may be more dangerous due to the increased amount of pedestrians.  More people are walking around in parking lots, and though the driver may not know this, the people walking around are the ones who yield the right of way.  It has been something I’ve been concerned with since I was pretty young and my dad almost hit a child who had fallen down in a parking lot, due to his lack of paying attention to the traffic rules of the parking lot.  I would want to write this possibly to the Texas Department of Public safety, since they may be able to do something about it.

Causal Argument

The topic I have chosen for my causal argument is the question of if reality TV star, Kim Kardashian’s fame in itself leads to the fame she is noted of today. Did her fame, whether it stemmed from being the daughter of OJ Simpson’s lawyer, or from being friends with icons like Paris Hilton, lead her to even more fame? What do most of her fans idolize her for? Do they even know? As I am someone who is always in want of bigger and better things, I find it somewhat appealing that someone like Kim, with no apparent talent, can lead such a materialistically successful life without having to work too hard for it.  I don’t really think that people would care entirely too much about the family years after the death of their father; even had he not died, I do not think that it is of any importance to the public how the family members of OJ’s lawyer lead their lives. So the sudden media attention that the new generation Kardashian girls are receiving must have come from their own actions- or did it?  I kind of want to prove that even though most people may not realize it, and although I am not against it myself, but Kardashian’s fame was the outcome of already being linked to famous people and her good looks.

Save Lives

Glee=blahh

The new and light-hearted comedy TV show, Glee, aired fairly recently, being quite uncommon in the sense that it is a musical television show.  It is among the few television shows nowadays that do not involve some form of reality television. In spite of its originality of being a scripted musical, however, many aspects of the show have been seen throughout the history of the big screen and even of television series.

In many movies such as Stand and Deliver, Fab Five: Texas Cheerleader Scandal, and Freedom Writers, runs the basic plot of a teacher, passionate for his or her job taking on the difficult task of providing a place for discouraged students to grow and achieve- usually much doubted by the rest of the teachers.  The teachers tend to have the obstacle of dealing with specific students whom they must then work with personally in order to push them to thrive for whatever it is they are capable of.  In the process of doing what they are most passionate for, the teachers put strains on their personal lives.  In the pilot episode of Glee, it introduces the club members: misunderstood teenagers in one way or another.  The teacher in this case is Mr. Will Scheuster, as he tries to form his employing high school’s glee club.  Mr. Scheuster has to handle the specific dealings of members Finn Hudson and Rachel Berry.

Comparably, in Freedom Writers, teacher Erin Gruwell deals with the underprivileged students of a high school in a less-than-wealthy area of California.  She works with individual students in hopes of helping them through their own personal problems.  Of course it takes her a while to allow herself to warm up to the students, but once she has done so the students form bonds with her and slowly start to depend on her.  In Glee, the students who lack the same talent as other glee clubs in local high schools form the same sort of dependence on Mr. Scheuster.  They depend on him to take what little talent they have and turn them into the talented local glee clubs.  Scheuster, being married, must balance his passion for teaching and the amount of time it requires with spending time at home with his wife who is not very supportive of his career, believing more money is to be made with a job in accounting. In spite of what she wants and what he knows is better for them and their expectant baby, he sticks to his passion and continues to teach the glee club.

Because the base to this plot can be found in more than one movie, the statement that Glee is breaking new grounds is not entirely true.  This is not to say that it is completely unoriginal; the impact of music gives the show a fresh twist.  Regardless of how many times the audience has seen the same plot, it is unlikely that they will tire of this show due to its different approach of delivering.

Believer/Doubter

BELIEVER

To be quite frank, in today’s world, money buys money and it takes money to make money.  Regardless of whatever methods an individual may take to attain said money, without it, making more money becomes increasingly difficult.

When my father came to the U.S., he was the first of his less-than-wealthy family in Pakistan to do so.  His parents had little money to offer him as he decided to find a better life in America.  That better life, so he thought, required going to school.  In order to go to school, being a non residential applicant, he would have to pay in full for his tuition; something he could definitely not do right away. After working and saving for about a year, he managed to save enough to get himself into a decent community college.  He only took classes that regarded the field he had hoped to enter: auto mechanics.  After doing so, and having saved up some money by working side jobs, he had enough business savvy to, not only work at one, but own an auto-repair shop and manage it alone.  Because his life was passing as he made these accomplishments, he had to do whatever he could to assure the quickest and most reliable method to getting things done: improve his skills. As long as he improves his skills initially, he will always have something to fall back on and even learn from for his future.  He could not have done what he did in the same amount of time that he did, had he gone to a four year university.

DOUBTER

Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, accountants, teachers; these are just a few of the jobs that will demand will never fall for.  There will always be a need for more doctors, because there will always be the ill. Because there will be a need for doctors, there will be a need for nurses and pharmacists too.  There will always be businesses and therefore there will always be the need for accountants.  And, of course, there will always be the need for the education they receive to be taught to them.  The skills required for saving lives, curing the ill, managing a company’s accounts, or giving someone the gift of education are not simply skills that can be picked up on-the-job, or by guess-and-check; these jobs require a deeper knowledge that only a higher level of education than high school or a community college.

Community colleges are much needed with the diversity in types of students and every individual’s methods of learning, but cannot provide the entire amount of comprehension as a university would.  The degrees a university is capable of rewarding ensure a sense of security for the future of the student who earned it.  Jobs will always prefer a student with a degree, with a little bit of specific training, over a student with ‘skills.’

Hello world!

In the short story, “Orientation,” by Daniel Orozco, an attendant of a new job orientation becomes familiar with all the information needed to take on the job; he or she is clued-up on everything from the location of office supplies and certain forms to the people in the surrounding cubicles and the intimate details of their lives. Throughout the entire story, the narrator, presumably an employee at a higher position than the newcomer, offers not only work advice in the form of orders, but also stresses on how to handle the personal information he or she delivers to the newer employee.  Although the orientation’s attendee has the option of voicing out whenever he or she wishes to, deciding not to, they opt to just accept the employee’s commands.  By deciding against voicing or even attaining a problem with any of the information coming from the employee, the newcomer causes the argument to appear in the form of one sided products.

After going through the private lives of the individuals in each cubicle, the narrator supplies the only way, right or not, to deal with them.  He or she does this with all the rest of the information being delivered as well.  No options are given to the new employee as to how he or she wishes to handle any personal business; the work load given during the time span of the work day is worked on at the pace that is given to them by the narrator; the new employee’s head is filled with preconceived notions on what his or her co-workers are like. Aside from those made of the personal decisions, none of the decisions made by the narrator and enforced upon the new employee appear to have any logical reasoning behind them.

Those with reasoning appeal to the logical emotions of the new employee and/or the reader.  Every decision made about the people in the office and whether or not to interact with them is reasoned by the sense of not wanting to be a part of a crowd with issues such as the ones the narrator depicts.  The decisions without any explanations, however, are not questioned, and certainly not by the new employee.

The narrator continuously puts the reader in his or her place by constant reminders of how certain mistakes can lead to being “let go.” Because the story is set up to the narrator speaking almost directly to the reader, it may allow it to play on the emotions of the reader directly.  By putting the new employee in his or her place, the narrator belittles him or her, thus enhancing the already higher status.