Economic Lifestyle

I happen to interview a friend of my dads, Dr. Ramino Morales, a plastic surgeon in Fort Lauderdale over the phone. Dr. Morales is actually a USF Medical School graduate so he knows this school and the Tampa area really well. As we obviously know there is 4 years of medical school after undergraduate school unlike most careers. After that you apply for residency at a hospital that offers the specialty that your interested in. For example, Dr. Morales did plastic surgery which means he did 3 years of residency of general surgery then an additional 2 years of of plastic for a total of 5 years after graduating medical school of training. So it is definitely a long career, but as he told me time will go by no matter what your doing so you better use it wisely. 

Obviously, many students with the intent on becoming a doctor, do not make it. There are various pitfalls in this profession, whether it is not performing well on the MCAT, not doing well enough in undergrad, not getting into a U.S. medical school and having to go abroad then not being a able to pass the foreign med grad test, which enables you to practice in the United States, or just flat out can not afford medical school. So there are many incidents that may cause you to chose another profession. 

Being a physician pretty much guarantees you a job almost everywhere in the world, so there is not too much to worry about job security in this career. Now for job advancement it depends if you are a emergency doctor or you have your own practice like Dr. Morales, which most plastic surgeons have. If working in the emergency room, then yes you can move up in committees as they call them in hospitals. Now when having your own practice you are your own boss. 

Now to the money aspect, doctors in general make a pretty hefty amount. Plastic surgeons on top of that normally make more than a lot of other specialties as well. Dr. Morales was honest enough and actually told me a ball park figure of his annual income with happen to be about a million a year.  He also said he was a little higher than average for most plastic surgeons, but there are some that make up to 3 and 4 million dollars a year. 

So after all, Dr. Morales just told me focus in undergrad and try to achieve the highest grades possible, do research in the medical field during undergrad, perform well on the MCAT, and shadow as many doctors as I can before applying to medical school, and if I do all those well, he said I should be fine and get to have a porsche like him too. haha

One Challenge

The economy being the way it is, which is horrible, U.S. Medical Schools have made it even harder to get accepted into M.D. programs. Essentially putting more pressure on pre-med students than we already have. I understand the purpose of this change, but I definitely don't agree with the fact that the way the economy is has such a great impact on whether pre-med students that have been busting their butts for 4 years in undergraduate school now cant get accepted into medical school. I propose since the economy is the way it is at least leave the acceptance rates the same if not even lower them giving more people the opportunity to become physicians and professionals.

Ecological Lifestyle Blog

I figured that the most proper time to this no technology time period of 24 hours would be on a Sunday because there are no classes and no real reason to stay connected to the wired world.  So I went to sleep on Saturday evening with the understanding that Sunday morning I would be completely isolated from the technological world and have pretty much no way of receiving or exchanging information with the society outside my apartment aside from physically speaking with someone. Throughout the day Sunday was honestly not too fun at all. We as humans don't even understand how much we use technology on a daily basis. Like from the simplest things like finding out what my friend was doing to see if he wanted to hang out couldn't be possible unless I went over to his place and I would have to no way to find out if he was home in the first place.  So I forcefully ended up kind of relaxing all day which wasn't too bad after all. Waking up Monday morning and resuming connection to the technological world felt wonderful. I felt like a person in this world again .

Video Game Articles

Game creators tackle ethical issues

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-867451.html

This article argues the presence of immoral ethical issues in many of today’s video games. Edging on creators to make games that a more realistic and with a little social responsibility. A strong point in this article is the fact that children and adolescents are spending so much time playing with games filled with crime and wrongful actions that they are taking time away from bonding and spending time with their families which in turn results in them learning more about crime and immoral behavior rather than quality time with their respected families. I completely support this point and really think parents need to limit the amount of time dedicated to these games or at least completely see what these are really about before they purchase them for their kids.

Violent video games can increase aggression

http://www.apa.org/releases/videogames.html

This article explains the results of two studies performed on groups of college students that played violent video games for a certain period of time and their recorded actions after the duration of play. Psychologist, Dr. Craig A. Anderson said, “Violent video games provide a forum for learning and practicing aggressive solutions to conflict situations”. Which if thought about makes sense, playing these violent games for such long periods of time may actually cause you to react differently in conflict situations.

Dayan Sanchez BLUE

Thesis:

Persuasive games have been created to try to convince an audience about a problem or idea through some type of unrealistic game. It is the sarcasm and humor embedded in these games that makes an attempt to persuade the people playing.

Outline:

I. Intro

A. Briefly introduce both persuasive games (Airport Security and Xtreme Xmas Shopping)

B. Body 1 

Explain how Airport Security portrays sarcasm and humor portrays the message. As well as talk about the characters in the game and explain how they react to the certain policies.

C. Body 2

Explain how the shoppers in Xtreme Xmas Shopping demonstrate the ridiculousness of holiday shoppers in the holiday season. 

D. Body 3

Compare and Contrast both games and explain how they both tried persuading the audience through these games. 

E. Closing

Summarize and Conclude 

Dayan Sanchez- Persausive Games

One of the games I found is called Food Import Folly. It is a persuasive game in which the gamer takes the role of a FDA inspector that tries to protect the country from contaminants in foreign food imports. The message the game creator is trying to convey is that we have over the years drastically increased the number of food imports to this country without increasing the amount of personnel that checks these food imports for contaminants. Resulting in a vast amount of contaminated food being consumed daily by our fellow citizens.  I believe this game is obviously persuasive but in a sense slightly educational as well because I don’t think that the common person knew that this problem was even occurring. My personal interest in this game is not very strong because I don’t feel it has an immediate effect on my personal life. 

I also chose the persuasive game called Airport Security by The Arcade Wire.  The game has a humorous and sarcastic ideology of the newly prohibited items for passengers to carry on board an aircraft.  The game is a sense conveys to the audience the message that how far are they going to take these new airport security policies.  In the game they actually take away pants and shirts from passengers ridiculing the new policies to see if that’s the extremity that we’re going to get to. I don’t really find a purpose to this game because whatever the policies are that’s what they are going to be and no matter how many persuasive games they create, they aren’t going to change.

The last game I chose was also a persuasive game made by The Arcade Wire as well called Xtreme Xmas Shopping.  The game explains how crazy shoppers absolutely lose their cool during the holiday season and will do anything to get the hottest items on the market for their kids. I believe that those people are insane, I honestly think there are way more productive things to do with your lives then waking up at 5 AM to get to the store to be the first in line for some new gaming console.